[scoobysnacks]

Ok so I am writing a new session for my group and I had a few questions about personafixes.  Basically I was inspired by the Sex in the Shadows thread and wanted to have a run that might require rescuing some girls from a particularly messed up bunraku parlor.  To make it interesting, I was going to make it so that the girls didn't really want to leave because of their personafixes.  So far nothing out of the ordinary right?

So the trick is, the girls have some basic pain editors installed (for sick business reasons) which means that forcing them out the door is a little more tricky then normal.  The team can't just stun them and walk out the door with them.  They have to come up with some other way of getting them out, probably in the middle of combat with Yakuza.  So here is where my questions come in.  What other ways could the team get them out?  Does mind control or influence work on someone with with a personafix?  Can you hack a personafix if it has wireless enabled?  Can you smooth talk someone with a persona fix to do something that they wouldn't normally want to do?

I guess I just don't really understand how a personafix works.  How much agency does the person implanted with the personafix have and how much control does the implanter have? I realize I could just make up all of those things above, but I think things are far more interesting if I try to stick to the canon.

[Senko]

I think from what I've read it basically replaces your entire personality so you aren't so much forced to act a certain way against your will as that is what you do naturally. Think of someone you know and then imagine that personality in your body. How they talk, walk, what foods they like etc. Your still you but your a different you. For example say you were a guy really looking forward to an upcoming sports game and we uploaded a basic female personality you'd still be looking forward to the game but all the things you do e.g. walking, inflection when talking, crossing your legs when sitting would match the female personality uploaded and you wouldnt notice them as theyre natural.

To take it a step further a few treatments, a more complete persona fix and bam you look like arnold schwartzenigger, sound like him and think you are him. Except instead of going into politics your happy to make whatever paid for time with you feel like your world revolves aroind her, till time runs out.

Its why their so dangerous kidnap someone off the street, install a persona-fix and their goals and dreams are replaced by a desire to serve you even if theyre still the same person otherwise and theyll sign whatever you want with a signature indistinguishable from what they used before then legally you can do whatever you want to your new enployee because they signed the contract.

[Crimsondude]

This was the description when they were introduced in SR2:

The yakuza have come up with a new and disturbing develop- ment in the prostitution industry, known as “bunraku”—the word for the puppeteer in Japanese puppet theater. In bunraku brothels, the sex workers have specialized cyberware installed in their brains. These implants combine a neural cutoff—known in the biz as a shunt—with a direct-feed for personafix BTL chips. While the shunt is operating, the subject is unconscious—totally unaware of what’s happening around him or her, or to him or her. Meanwhile, the personafix BTL controls the subject’s body, letting him or her act in as normal or abnormal a way as the client desires.

Cannon Companion (SR3) has a whole chapter on Simsense and has various rule for creating "cluster" chips that combine the p-fix BTL and Skillsofts, but also gave them and everything else with simsense various ratings. So now not all p-fix chips completely subsume the user's identity:

Personafixes, also called p-fixes, are the strangest and most dangerous BTLs. A combination of simsense and skillsoft tech- nology modifies the basic personality responses of the user, installing the mnemonic routines of certain behavior patterns. In effect, the user is invested with new personality traits, virtually transforming him into a different person. ... At lower ratings, p-fix chips produce minor psychological effects. At higher levels, the artificial personality takes control. Personafix chips are often mixed with skillsoft programs via the cluster option (see p. 60), to truly mimic the personalities and skills of the person being copied. The “workers” at bunraku parlors are fitted with personafix BTLs, usually combined with data filter cyberware.

As I said, p-fix have come out of the shadows and are becoming mainstream. There's more suggestive information out there tracing the evolution of their usage and why they're not used more often, but this sums up the p-fix in the early 2070s:

PersonaFix come in many styles. The basic P-Fix is a personality that nudges you in a new direction, like a small shoulder spirit that allows you to make decisions, but gives you advice on your choices. These are the most common because they are less cost. More well liked are Advanced PersonaFixes, which replace your personality with a new one. For many years, there has been one more, the Extreme PersonaFix, or XPF, which combines an Advanced PersonaFix with skillsofts, creating a new person with abilities that you do not have and which can use them in ways that you would not. These are not popular because of the cost alone

Anyway, I doubt you'd want to mess with higher ratings, so these girls would have a p-fix at or below Rating 6.

Rating would be the Willpower Test Threshold to break free of its influence, obviously. Addiction Test information is on p.414 of SR5.

[martinchaen]

The team could also use gas; while a pain editor might combat the effects of wound modifiers, nothing in the text makes me doubt that tranquilizer gases and paralyzing toxins wouldn't work.

[Crimsondude]

It would.

Pain editors make them oblivious to pain signals, but they don't make users impervious to jack shit.

[scoobysnacks]

Cool guys, thanks, this helps a lot!