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Ideas for Vat-Grown Humans

Discussion in 'Lore Discussion and Suggestions' started by thatguyfromlife, Nov 22, 2019.

  1. thatguyfromlife

    thatguyfromlife Bartender

    Lately there's been more discussion of Vat-Grown's and their lack of lore beyond the fact the exist, are legal and are real people, not clones or flash grown. A few people, myself included, want to add some more details to them, in order to clear up what they are and aren't. I wanted to make this thread so the idea can be discussed, people can share their ideas, and we can all agree that Vat-Grown's aren't slaves, or clones, or forced labor.

    My basic idea would be to make the Designer-Baby vat-grown's the majority, around sixty percent of all vatties where made for families, and raised in normal households, and where basically just normal people, who where grown in a tube. They might have gotten some bullying for being vat-grown, or felt strange at having been non-born, but by and large they're almost indistinguishable from baseline humans. Some mass-produced models are even made to be placed for adoption, for poorer families that can't afford a designer child. The other forty percent of vatties would be mass-produced models, the ones with numbers or letters as designations. They'd vary in how mass produced they are, and how they where raised. Some companies raise them all in a massive school, teaching and housing them, pushing them to work for them once they're of age. Other's are cared for, but given full freedom of choice in who they work for and where they go. None of them are forced to work for the people that made them, of course, being humans they can chose to leave once they turn 18, or quit their contracts at anytime. Some corporations might make it seem undesirable, or difficult to quit, but not impossible by any means. Those that are taught skills to work for the corps that made them tend to be made for large scale work, such as deep space colonization, working in massive installations such as mining, engineering or medical stations, where finding enough baseline workers could take years, and so on. Vat-Grown workers made by and for a corp would be sort of a long-term investment, housing and teaching them for 18 years for the trade off of a large group of loyal workers that don't have to be paid more then a livable wage.

    Some corps may turn to shadier actions and tactics to ensure they don't lose too many workers once they turn 18, such as enforcing the idea that only the corp cares for them, that they wouldn't find work outside of them, or that if they where made for this, why do anything else. The vat-grown workers have to sign the contract without being forced and knowing they have a choice, but no one said they can't be pressured.

    I know that vat-grown is a bit of an issue to work with, since anyone can pick it without a white-list, but I feel adding a few more facts and some information will help curb the clone slaves issues that are mentioned, and clear up for people why some vat-grown's act normal, and some are a bit more distant.
  2. CubecsMelody

    CubecsMelody Petty Officer First Class

    who are you to speak, you throwaway account looking d20 dice, take a breather.

    just because they get some lore doesnt mean the player will not be able to choose their backstory. What Thatguy suggested is already widely accepted in the community and most already hold value to that. Having this written down in the lore will not greatly impact anything, besides- nobody is going to cut your head off for you playing as that rare 1% of vat-growns wich do where born somewhere beyond SCG law as a slave.

    The Server sure as hell needs more lore, there are many things that are undeveloped, wich would make the setting/experience more unique and interesting. The only thing the lore needs is a clean-up as many things look outdated but arent marked as such. I mean there is still a page about tajarans.

    The lore thatguy suggested will not change that what so ever. Also who says that every common sci-fi trope is good? lets just transform Bay into the most blant standart-ass sci-fi universe imangable, infact, lets add lore that states that the SCG-Army is full of Vat-Grown clones! thats an original idea!

    No, the Adapt's dont need to be the focus here, mules and boosters need to be, as their design is rather blant and visually unapealing comparing them to thoose.

    Space adepted human traits would instantly come into existance as soon as you have 2 generations of humans breeding in space and only ever breeding in space. it would be a natural evelution. the expanse has a few nice scenes pointing that out.
    Grav adepted humans traits are just the same, they would instantly come into existance as soon as you got 2 generations of humans breeding on a planet with a higher gravitational pull then earth. Not to speak that in the future you could propably have some form of DNA altering to speed up that pogress.
    Tritonias are fishpeople, i dont think theese guys would be possible in the way they are potrait without any significant DNA altering, so you may be right for them,but only them.

    Vat's,Spacers,Gravers and Tritonians all have their unique abillities wich do not make them OP in anyway while still changing the gameplay enough AND looking unique.

    If you put it on yourself to criticise someone who makes a completly valid idea that is open for discussion in a tone that suggests you think lesser of them for it, then you should take that /modicum of sense/ and use it yourself to make an argument that is actually good and productive towards the conversation.

    Have a nice day
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2019
    flying_loulou likes this.
  3. Loaf

    Loaf Retired Staff

    The design intent of the human subspecies was to add some mechanical and aesthetic variety to people's options without requiring them to memorize species-specific lore or apply for a whitelist.

    If you want to restrict play or enforce canon, make a whitelisted species. If you want to add more inspiration for human subspecies players, add more lore to the codex. Doing both and giving them a hard canon is actively detrimental to their purpose.
    d1536239 likes this.
  4. Sergeant Adam

    Sergeant Adam Game Administrator Game Administrator

    This thread is going to need to chill, or forum privileges are going to be revoked from the offending parties.

    Be cool. If you cant do that, then don't post or you're going to be risking penalties.
  5. thatguyfromlife

    thatguyfromlife Bartender

    The main reason I made this thread was to talk about vat-grown's lore, since the past few days have had people talking about it and claiming that some vat-grown players are playing them "wrong". I wanted to either open up some actual discussion for lore behind them, or get the hard answer that as long as it's not against lore, the IC law or OOC rules, players are free to make up background such as corps making vatties, or how they're raised and trained.
  6. WickedCybs

    WickedCybs Retired Staff

    I believe they already have a little bit of "canon", right? Things such as flash-cloning and slavery are illegal in the SCG. That said, the whole corporate vat aspect where you have various vatborn "lines" and such, re-education, referring to the "manufacturer" and so on could use a little bit of clarification in my opinion. Can corporations get away with what is essentially slavery still when it comes to the non-designer baby types?

    If its not against anything, so be it then I suppose.
  7. Persona E

    Persona E Game Administrator

    The SCG's attitude toward the level of coercion and exploitation being mentioned is the most important piece in deciding whether lore that affects Torch characters is acceptable, because the Torch is an extremely visible SCG project, and a liberal democracy like the SCG is not going to be featuring anything more than "hm, that seems coercive" on the Torch as uniformed or EXO personnel. (To distill that: there is NO slavery, flash-cloning, indentured servitude, etc. as far as any Torch character is concerned. There surely IS that sort of stuff happening somewhere in the setting, but it happens offscreen by necessity, because the SCG isn't doing it.)

    The most important thing to consider, in my opinion, is that we're not to assume that the SCG is not going to break its own laws, or encourage (by contracting from) a company to break its own laws, for the purpose of any one player character.

    I think this is far more important for vatgrown humans than it is for, say, GAS or IPCs, because the SCG is an explicitly human state.

    This is about the right level of grim for the setting, in my mind! It allows players to play an interesting character, one who is out on their own after changing their mind about whatever corporation they had been raised around. There's the other angle, someone contracted with the EXO but currently employed by that corporation - that gives me pause but I don't know that it would be a problem.

    My own suggestion was that a company might be incentivized to populate a colony with (free, non-coerced) vatgrown humans for one of a few reasons. I think this can easily exist alongside your suggestion and give more variety for vatgrown backstories. The reasons I had in mind were:
    1. The SCG offers a government contract for development of a new colony or installation.
    2. Another corporation puts out an RFP for development of a new colony or installation, because that corporation will benefit from that location's development, and a specialized vatgrowing company does it.
    3. A corporation directly creates a bunch of vatties to populate a new colony or installation, because it benefits from that location's development itself. (More or less what you're suggesting, except without directly employing them afterward.)

    Designer babies are not the problematic part, so I didn't mention them at all. I like their current lore.

    I am glad you're posting suggestions and I hope we adopt something like this to flesh out the current lore.
    Eckles and CubecsMelody like this.
  8. Persona E

    Persona E Game Administrator

    Sorry for the double reply but I just love posting.

    I appreciate that intent, and I think it worked out very well for grav and spacer subspecies, but there are pitfalls for players of vatties to fall into right now that cause them to break non-species-specific lore. Many new vatgrown players assume there's some sort of slavery, supersoldier breeding, or flash cloning going on, simply because the lore for vatties on the wiki is two lines long and not adjacent to any of the lore that would fill in those pitfalls.

    My suggestion previously would have been "get rid of them as a subspecies and roll them into baseline human lore," which I'd still support over the status quo.
    CubecsMelody likes this.
  9. Omi

    Omi Bartender

    I agree with Persona in that this is pretty much the Goldilocks zone as far as grimdarky type stuff goes. I play primarily vat-growns and always take this kind of angle on them -- the cheapo cop-out that is going full grimdark (and against what little more we have) always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Every single one of the more robotic and clichéd vat-growns I've run into has been at best boring to interact with, and at worst an outright unpleasant experience.

    There's plenty of room to make interesting and varied vat-grown characters within the frameworks laid out in the OP, and it does kind of grate to see so many being drawn up along the same lines of sadposting robotic individuals in some sort of vague and undefined eternal corporate slavery. They're some of the worst written characters around, and go so hard on the pandering that it beggars belief.
    Persona E and CubecsMelody like this.
  10. Loaf

    Loaf Retired Staff

    Ultimately people playing vat-grown at odds with SCG lore is more down to the pervasive ideas people repeat on Discord/OOC than the species itself. It's not really any different to saying that your Tritonian is from bluespace or something equally as absurd.
    There is nothing in here that says 'vat grown are megacorp slaves even though the SCG doesn't have slavery and megacorps'. It doesn't even imply it except by an extreme stretch of 'ethically grey'. Pointing people towards the SCG lore that says slavery isn't a thing would already achieve what this thread is suggesting an exhaustively defined canon for them would, without front-loading it onto the subspecies.
    Persona E and Eckles like this.
  11. Persona E

    Persona E Game Administrator

    I agree that, because vatties are (and should remain) an alternative to baseline humans that new players can play without getting a whitelist, their lore needs to remain open-ended.

    It would, however, be extremely helpful to list something like this to give a handful of starting points for vatgrown characters.

    The suggestions in this thread could all be distilled into a paragraph or two, which doesn't need to exclude anything or provide an exhaustive set of the only acceptable vatgrown options. The only exclusion or negative that should be listed imo is some blurb that points the reader toward lore re SCG law and mentions that slavery and flash cloning are not a thing (or if they are a thing, they are illegal and therefore are not seen on the torch).
  12. thatguyfromlife

    thatguyfromlife Bartender

    That's really as far as I think anything needs to go with vat-growns. They're an option for anyone to pick to add flavor to their character and RP, but their nature raises some minor issues like the clone soldiers thing. Just having something that we can point to and say "As long as you don't break the rules or lore you can make up your own backgrounds.".
  13. Persona E

    Persona E Game Administrator

  14. Eckles

    Eckles Senior Administrator Game Administrator Skrell Species Maintainer


    So evidently the whole clarification on the clone thing has upset some people and I understand that. So. To that end, and because lore is flexible and not this immobile monolith, I would like to discuss how to make it work.

    So like, how do we feel given the rest of the lore as a whole could the idea of vat grown clones fit within what the SCG is, how it could play out, and like I said, how it works.

    And to clarify the discussion that was given was, very specifically, referencing cloning for the purpose of mass-growing a bunch of people for a colony. Which is, well. Not really sustainable.

    Given some people have a lot more investment in this than me I would really appreciate hearing ideas or implementation suggestions.
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2019
  15. Asillyn00b

    Asillyn00b Chef

    Though I'm just copy and pasting I think this was a really good proposal into what the vatborn expanded lore should have been
    thatguyfromlife likes this.
  16. Albens

    Albens Sol Gov Pilot

    I don't have any cards here, as I don't play vatties.
    But spit-balling in #lore, I offered up a suggestion, and was told to paste it here.
    It's not designed to please anybody. Only to make the lore some people desire attainable without bringing along major concerns.

    Individuals and Companies may clone Vatties.
    Anyone cloning a Vattie;
    Must provide them an acceptable home life, education, and all things require to raise a child, without exception, at no cost to the Vattie.
    Must make Post-Secondary Education or Training, without restriction and of decent quality, available to the Vattie. Post-Secondary is optional to the Vattie. They may just leave, at 18, without anything they owe.
    However if the Vattie does take the option of Parent-Entity provided Post-Secondary, they are require to pay their Parent-Entity back, and are on a Parent-Entity controlled contract for a well defined number of Years.
    Parent-Entity could push certain Post-Secondary choices. As the Parent-Entity both gets paid back the actual cost of Post-Secondary, and they control the Vatties work-contract, it's profitable.
    All aspects of the above have heavy Government Oversight and some aspects are have legally-defined Mandates to prevent indentured service. Directly comparable to IRL Orphanages and Adoption Services, with some added caveats about education.

    This isn't too heavily defined, and still allows for people to make their own Characters within this sane and reasonable framework.
    Designer-Babies slots right into this criteria, but the actual parent can just.. wave the Post-Secondary contract and loans, like normal rich people.

    There is nothing stopping a Vattie from just leaving at 18, without owing anything.
    There is nothing stopping a Vattie from taking a Post-Secondary career path heavily pushed by their Parent-Entity who's well know for that Career path, leaving Post-Secondary with a fixed, Government Mandated, 5? year contract held by Parent-Entity, while also holding loans (payable to Parent-Entity, of the actual cost of education) that they pay back like a normal person.

    There is nothing stopping a Vattie from making their way to developed Sol-Space that has good Government Services and get their own Student Loans, or get a job. Just like any 18 year-old in a developed country, because that's what they are.

    They can also just get hired by (or through!) their Parent-Company, following the same Labour laws everyone else follows, provided they don't take Post-Secondary from their Parent-Entity.

    Parent-Entities would, by the nature of the above criteria, primarily operate towards the fringe of Sol-Space, where opportunities are limited and few government services exist.
    Cloning and raising Vatties is of objectionable, questionable profit. Some companies might be able to turn a profit, others might be profit-neutral, subsidized by Companies trying to get a skilled labour force in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere.