Biofeedback Training is the best kind of BodyTech because without ever going under the knife for surgery or becoming a drug addicted junkie, a person of reasonable wit can learn months worth of training super fast. The headaches aren't as bad as you've heard!
Biofeedback Training (BFT) is a technology that allows a person to temporarily learn vocational, language, and physical abilities in a matter of minutes or hours, not days, months, or years. This is achieved by using NET-related technology and virtual reality machines referred to as BFT Rigs to insert a person's awareness into a virtual training environment where they interact with curriculum in a sped-up simulation.
Invented about 23 years ago by Verital Labs (one of the several Bell T&T subsidiaries that survived their parent company's death during the Corporate Wars of the late '90s), BFT was originally designed as an educational aid allowing people to do things like learn a foreign language overnight and other similar amazing learning feats.
After being introduced into society at large despite the best efforts of many prestigious collegiate-funded lobbyists, it revolutionized the state of education the world over. No longer did a person need to sit through long boring hours in a classroom to maybe learn something. They could instead just jack into a BFT Rig and pick up enough of whatever skill they needed to get by on.
In the ensuing backlash, numerous colleges and universities floundered and failed, but eventually the survivors adapted and found ways to maintain their relevance; the best colleges were now determined by the quality of their BFT content, and their student body was primarily remote subscribers tapping into their curriculum. BFT became an integrated part of corporate and collegiate training and education methodologies and is now as accepted as any other facet of daily life.
However, about 12 years ago, a couple of scientists that also happened to be Hackers on the side, doing Runs with a team in SanRico to fund their scientific research, started experimenting with using BFT to enhance their ability to do Runs. From their early experiments, they developed an effective variation on BFT and stopped Running altogether to found their own company, Cogito, providing a facility with the equipment and software necessary to their process.
Cogito was moderately successful with local Runners, and ultimately was an attractive enough concern for Verital to purchase the company to maintain its hold on the BFT technology in general.
Verital expanded Cogito's business model to more markets, and also expanded the technology's capabilities largely by making certain segments of it open-source, which allows independent devs to script custom training routines (and also helped Verital maintain its cred as a geek-friendly company).
BFT does not require surgery or drugs, is not detectable, and has no short or long term side effects aside from an occasional headache after intense usage.
The only actual downside to using Biofeedback Training is that it recurringly eats time and money. But those who are big into it swear by it, mainstream users and Runners alike. A person particularly good at using BFT can be a respectable Hacker one week, a walking, breathing expert on a target company the next, and have all the schematics and street plans of a target site memorized cold the next.
Critics of BFT point out that rather than hiring on a person that is an expert on something for a week, they can hire someone else who is an actual expert all of the time. Counter-critics point out that a capable individual with the ability to tweak their skill set to suit a task brings general competency to the table in addition to whatever they've booted up via BFT that week. It is still a somewhat divisive topic in some circles, but the results speak for themselves.
To use BFT a character must have one or more Cramming Skills, and access to a BFT Rig loaded with a program designed to teach the desired ability.
To use Biofeedback Training (BFT), a character must have at least one instance of Cramming, Improved Cramming, or Martial Cramming, which can be thought of individually as BFT slots. Hardcore users of BFT typically have several such slots of one or more types. For instance, a particular character might have three Improved Cramming skills and a Martial Cramming skill.
| New Skills | |
|---|---|
| Improved Cramming | As Cramming, but a full (CHAR/5) Skill Roll is learned. Any relevant skill levels are applicable to the crammed Skill. |
| Alternately, up to 5 points of fluency in a Language can be learned instead. | |
| Cost: 10 Character Points | |
| Martial Cramming | As Cramming, but any Martial Maneuver with a cost of 5 points is learned. Any relevant Skill Levels or Damage Classes are applicable to the crammed Maneuver. |
| Alternately, any Combat Skill with a cost of 5 points is learned. | |
| Cost: 8 Character Points | |
Upgrading Cramming to Improved Cramming
A character can upgrade a Cramming skill to either an Improved Cramming Skill or a Martial Cramming Skill via the expenditure of experience points to cover the differences in cost. A character cannot upgrade a Martial Cramming Skill to an Improved Cramming Skill and vice versa.
With access to a BFT Rig and sufficent time to use it, a person can rapidly upload a variety of options directly into their brain, as follows.
Cramming Upload
One of the following options can be loaded into a Cramming Skill, after 5 minutes in a BFT Rig with the relevant program loaded:
Improved Cramming Upload
One of the following options can be loaded into an Improved Cramming Skill, after 1 hour in a BFT Rig with the relevant program loaded:
Or, after 5 hours in a BFT Rig with a premium curriculum, the following option can be loaded:
Martial Cramming Upload
One of the following options can be loaded into a Martial Cramming Skill, after 2 hours in a BFT Combat Rig with the relevant program loaded:
Or, after 5 hours in a BFT Combat Rig with a premium curriculum, two Martial Cramming Skills can be pooled together to load one of the following options:
BFT Rigs come in two types. The most common "normal" type is used for non-Combat Skills and takes the form of a reclining couch something like a dentist's chair, with a lowerable NET hood and some synapse leads.
For Combat Skills, the rigs are much more complex, involving an expensive virtual reality suit and a suspension system allowing stimuli to be delivered to the entire body, and for the person using it to move around in practically 360 degrees freely.
In both cases, a person does not have to have a brainjack to use a rig; the helmet is an old-style projected visor, patching into the brain through the ocular nerves.
Lounge-style rigs are reasonably sized, easy to use, consumer-grade products. They are commercially available starting at ~1,000,000 credits for an average unit. Many scholars and professionals have one in their home; power couples and upwardly mobile households often have two or more.
A suspension rig is larger and much more complicated and requires periodic servicing. Such devices are effectively industrial grade and cost ~10,000,000 credits for a basic model and go up from there.
To determine the cost, duration, and possible side effects of a BFT session, select the option being trained, the quality of the BFT Rig being used, and any modification of pricing affecting the cost, and it will calculate the outcome automatically.
High-quality BFT Rigs and courseware decrease the amount of time required per session but increase the cost, while low-quality BFT Rigs or courseware do the opposite. If there is a mismatch between the quality of a BFT Rig and the courseware, use the lesser quality.
A person using a personally owned BFT Rig, or a friends, should choose "Free" from the Pricing drop down. The amount of time and potential side effects will still be calculated, even though there will be no credit cost.
For those that do not have their own BFT Rigs, they can be rented at parlors and learning facilities at a wide range of rates. Combat Rigs are much rarer and more expensive to rent access to. Some places allow a client to bring their own programs to upload, others require you to pay them an extra fee to use theirs. Some places are fancy and charge accordingly, others are cut-rate bargain basements with outdated tech. Select the Pricing option appropriate to the venue.
Headaches and Fatigue
The more time spent per day using a BFT Rig, the more likely a mild headache or fatigue will occur. Even if individual shorter sessions don't cause side effects, most people develop an initially mild headache after approximately 5 hours of prolonged usage, and risk fatigue if they press on. The GM might call for a CON Roll to determine if this affects a character spending prolonged periods of time cramming abilities in this way.
A character that has "crammed" a particular skill or ability with BFT at least three times and currently has that ability "crammed" may just pay the character points for that ability to permanently add it to their character sheet. This frees up the Cramming Skill being used to hold that ability immediately, and the character can use it to emulate some other ability.
In this fashion, a BFT user can rapidly develop their knowledge and capabilities without going through normal periods of training and learning. However, any normal restrictions, such as the minimum Martial Arts buy-in of 10 points, must be observed.
EXAMPLE: A BFT user with Martial Cramming spends the rig time to cram Leg Sweep several times. The player realizes that they are fond of the capability of this maneuver and decides to go ahead and invest character points to make it a permanent part of the character's repertoire.
Because the character has used BFT to cram that maneuver three or more total times and currently has it crammed, and assuming the character already has at least 10 points in Martial Arts, all that is necessary is to pay the 3 points for the maneuver and annotate it on the character's sheet.
The Martial Cramming Skill is immediately freed up and can be used to cram something else, and the character did not have to go through any real physical training over a prolonged time to learn how to do it the "hard way".