Cloning of historic heroes?

[Mallak's Place]

Can I play a genetically altered Clone of Nikola Tesla who is a Zapper?

[Damian Magecraft]

Can I play a genetically altered Clone of Nikola Tesla who is a Zapper?

Possibly - I would push more for a Techno Wizard or a Rogue Scientist type

or Maybe he should be an immortal blood sucking vampire with electro-kinessis?

[Failgoat]

everyone else gets their tech and fancies from finding pre-rifts stuff so why not this too?
clone technology with frozen dna from the elite of the elite from back in the day.
i call dibs on bruce lee

[Failgoat]

everyone else gets their tech and fancies from finding pre-rifts stuff so why not this too?
clone technology with frozen dna from the elite of the elite from back in the day.
i call dibs on bruce lee

I'm diggin the idea of a Bruce Lee
What OCC would Bruce Lee fall under? What stats would you give him?


Who or what organization would scour the globe collecting DNA? Or what organization would have stockpiles of DNA laying around? Would it possibly be alien?

not sure on the who. if the tech was developed im sure dna could be obtained from graves or something right? either covertly or purchased. depends on how developed the tech is...i.e. can i clone bruce lee and make him my bodyguard? i'll pay a gajillion dollars thx!

as for his stats, i'd give him P.P. 30, nothing extraordinary on the rest except maybe a decent P.S. and M.E. the guy was fanatically dedicated to his training and could generate quite a wollop for his 5'7 135 lb body. the rest i dont know enough about him to say. kinda small for a good P.E. they say he had a special charisma that was very unique maybe his M.A. would be good too.

O.C.C. ? dont think one fits from Rifts.

[Pepsi Jedi]

You'd use the OOC's out of Ninja's and Superspies to make Bruce lee. The ... Sorry memory fails me. The 'Biggest' of the martial arts ooc's there. You can even give him "His" Martial art, at lvl 15. (( I think it's in one of the rifters if it's not in N&SS itself))

[Failgoat]

You'd use the OOC's out of Ninja's and Superspies to make Bruce lee. The ... Sorry memory fails me. The 'Biggest' of the martial arts ooc's there. You can even give him "His" Martial art, at lvl 15. (( I think it's in one of the rifters if it's not in N&SS itself))

not too familiar with ninjas and superspies, think theres an O.C.C. in there called dedicated martial artist? not sure tho. ya, jeet kun do at lvl 15 proficiency sound bout right, although i doubt the martial art form in n&ss does any justice to the awesomeness that was bruce lee's skill as a fighter.

[Pepsi Jedi]

You'd use the OOC's out of Ninja's and Superspies to make Bruce lee. The ... Sorry memory fails me. The 'Biggest' of the martial arts ooc's there. You can even give him "His" Martial art, at lvl 15. (( I think it's in one of the rifters if it's not in N&SS itself))

not too familiar with ninjas and superspies, think theres an O.C.C. in there called dedicated martial artist? not sure tho. ya, jeet kun do at lvl 15 proficiency sound bout right, although i doubt the martial art form in n&ss does any justice to the awesomeness that was bruce lee's skill as a fighter.

Yeah. Dedicated or worldly or something. It's been a few years since I've looked though N&SS.

You give him Jeet Kung do at lvl 15 with all the "martial arts powers" that it intells. give him an astronomical PP, PE and SPD. Moderate to high PS. Don't forget that that ooc allowes for a secondary martial art, or two, which you also max out, and the 'martial arts powers' from those as well and all the bonus' they intell. A couple of the Kung fu's Maybe? I forget what Lee studied before he made his own art.

[glitterboy2098]

i wouldn't recommend cloning as the "macguffin" for using famous people.

a clone is a copy of the genetics, and thus body, only. it will not come with the memories, skills, or personality of the person that was cloned. so if you clone Bruce lee, you just get a guy who looks exactly like bruce lee. but he'll never have the memories, skills, or personality of bruce lee, because those are all learned attributes.

[Failgoat]

i wouldn't recommend cloning as the "macguffin" for using famous people.

a clone is a copy of the genetics, and thus body, only. it will not come with the memories, skills, or personality of the person that was cloned. so if you clone Bruce lee, you just get a guy who looks exactly like bruce lee. but he'll never have the memories, skills, or personality of bruce lee, because those are all learned attributes.

ah but again i think it comes down to the level of the tech. they are already starting to have the ability to control what characteristics will emerge from unborn children. and the potential will always be there. so your talking about a bruce lee clone with the potential to be just as great given the external stimulants are available to produce the required result. but im certainly no expert on any of this. in the end the details may come down to what the gm wants for his campaign.

[glitterboy2098]

no amount of 'advanced' tech is going to fix this though. skills, personality, and memories are not genetic, and thus cannot be cloned.

the characteristics discussed when people talk about selecting for things in unborn kids are things like stronger hearts, stronger muscles, better eyesight, etc. physical attributes that are governed by genetics.

yes a bruce lee clone would have the same potential to be a good martial artist, but he's not bruce lee. he will be a different person, because he experianced different things and had a different life.

[Failgoat]

you wouldnt want his personality and memories anyway. i said external stimulants to provide a desired result. the potential. did i say the advance tech was going to give you bruce lee's personality and memories? no, i implied it could give you a human with the same potential through proper stimulation.
now if you want bruce lee himself, then i think your looking at rifting the guy in.

or if your into a little more mysticism, id let the celestial court bring him back as a demi-god or something, then all bets are off, you could do with him as you please, and it could be the same guy.

[Failgoat]

i wouldn't recommend cloning as the "macguffin" for using famous people.

a clone is a copy of the genetics, and thus body, only. it will not come with the memories, skills, or personality of the person that was cloned. so if you clone Bruce lee, you just get a guy who looks exactly like bruce lee. but he'll never have the memories, skills, or personality of bruce lee, because those are all learned attributes.

ah but again i think it comes down to the level of the tech. they are already starting to have the ability to control what characteristics will emerge from unborn children. and the potential will always be there. so your talking about a bruce lee clone with the potential to be just as great given the external stimulants are available to produce the required result. but im certainly no expert on any of this. in the end the details may come down to what the gm wants for his campaign.

Well that's the key in the plot line. A company has figured out how to not only clone, but upload personalities, memories, and also selectively upload other skills/knowledge if need be. I'm thinking they would be able to do so by some sort of virtual reality uploading during the incubation phases. Maybe the company would use genetic memories (like assassins creed explains), documented incidents of this persons background, and then make assumptions to "fill in the gaps" or "improve" their personalities. It would kind've be a Jurassic Park-ish type technology and I assume it would be super expensive. Maybe orginally created as a means to clone loved ones , or a way to get extrodinary people for stuff such as bodyguards, heroes, mercenaries. Imagine if a town could put Joan of Arc as its town guardian, or if an army could put the likes of Patton, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon at a table to talk strategy.

ohhhhhhh....so he IS getting bruces memories and what not...because of what is underlined and bolded in my previous post

[Failgoat]

all in all its an interesting concept icemaster. hope its a fun campaign for you and your players

[glitterboy2098]

except you also said you want players able to play people from history. this includes personalities and memories. otherwise there is no point to using historic people as opposed to just regular characters.

[taalismn]

You'd use the OOC's out of Ninja's and Superspies to make Bruce lee. The ... Sorry memory fails me. The 'Biggest' of the martial arts ooc's there. You can even give him "His" Martial art, at lvl 15. (( I think it's in one of the rifters if it's not in N&SS itself))

not too familiar with ninjas and superspies, think theres an O.C.C. in there called dedicated martial artist? not sure tho. ya, jeet kun do at lvl 15 proficiency sound bout right, although i doubt the martial art form in n&ss does any justice to the awesomeness that was bruce lee's skill as a fighter.

There's 'Worldly Martial Artist' which supposes somebody who wanders the world, picking up several styles and survival skills, and the Dedicated Martial Artist which is supposed to be somebody who's spent their life narrowly focused on one or two styles, while closeted away in a single village, monastery, or training hall, without much exposure to the world outside.
There's always the Rifts China and Rifts Japan Martial Arts OCCs, but these tend to be more specifically oriented towards a particular MYSTIC martial arts style, which wouldn't be in keeping with a general martial arts badass like Bruce Lee.

[Armorlord]

Being rifted in is one option.

Us, we've got Elvis. Though he's actually an android programmed to be Elvis. His skill set, personality, and somewhat contradictory memories based off of his movie roles rather than Elvis himself.

Archie and his experimental models, go figure.
Of course the tracking, recording, and reporting systems are all in proper working order.

Amusing part is that no one he or the group has come across has been well versed enough in Elvis to note any discrepancies. Though the party members wonder about the glimpses of metal that have been seen under his skin, Elvisbot assumes/believes that is perfectly normal for him.

This thread has me wondering about making an NPC based on Bruce Lee from the same line of experiments. Need to break out the false crazy and juicer bot tech for that one..

[csbioborg]

okay this is completely out there but here is one for a knight of the round table
I used it for Sir Kay my favorite of the bunch (no disney did not do a accurate job)

the historical Kay problay died fighting the Romans
in my rifts he left after not being able to convince his liege that Merlin was up to no good
and opted to go out in a blaze of glory
when he died his soul entered the Golden Table that can be found in Rifts England
and for millenia has been getting knowledge from the other souls in there and giving out advice when needed
Dagda decided to bring him back to fight Merlin and he's been doing that since (Dagda also upgraded his body to that of a godling)

Civil War heros could be ghost from Dino Swamp
and you could use some artifact to make them human again

CHinese Hero's is easy just find their ghost in China

You could simply do a ressurection on plenty of them were their is a corpse
they could be in the Halls of Vahalla were the brave live forever

If you wanted Bruce Lee that's pretty simply
one of the theories by which he died IRL and his son is a demon got him

so the Demon could have kept the soul and Bruce escaped

[Zer0 Kay]

Can I play a genetically altered Clone of Nikola Tesla who is a Zapper?

Possibly - I would push more for a Techno Wizard or a Rogue Scientist type

or Maybe he should be an immortal blood sucking vampire with electro-kinessis?

I call Quasimoto on that one.

[Nightmask]

i wouldn't recommend cloning as the "macguffin" for using famous people.

a clone is a copy of the genetics, and thus body, only. it will not come with the memories, skills, or personality of the person that was cloned. so if you clone Bruce lee, you just get a guy who looks exactly like bruce lee. but he'll never have the memories, skills, or personality of bruce lee, because those are all learned attributes.

ah but again i think it comes down to the level of the tech. they are already starting to have the ability to control what characteristics will emerge from unborn children. and the potential will always be there. so your talking about a bruce lee clone with the potential to be just as great given the external stimulants are available to produce the required result. but im certainly no expert on any of this. in the end the details may come down to what the gm wants for his campaign.

Well that's the key in the plot line. A company has figured out how to not only clone, but upload personalities, memories, and also selectively upload other skills/knowledge if need be. I'm thinking they would be able to do so by some sort of virtual reality uploading during the incubation phases. Maybe the company would use genetic memories (like assassins creed explains), documented incidents of this persons background, and then make assumptions to "fill in the gaps" or "improve" their personalities. It would kind've be a Jurassic Park-ish type technology and I assume it would be super expensive. Maybe orginally created as a means to clone loved ones , or a way to get extrodinary people for stuff such as bodyguards, heroes, mercenaries. Imagine if a town could put Joan of Arc as its town guardian, or if an army could put the likes of Patton, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon at a table to talk strategy.

You're talking more of a knock-off though, rather than putting the 'real' deal into things. Even with a perfect genetic copy cloned if you're just downloading information into the brain since you don't have the original's memories to copy it's going to just be ones interpretation of the original not the original.

Actually that's something that was seen in an old sci-fi story called the Duplicated Man. A cloning machine was used to replicate a specific individual to deal with a great crisis but it required that at each station a living person wired in. Well you get all these duplicates that don't actually look or act perfectly like the original except to that particular individual. The machine's copies were colored by the individuals involved (so one saw the guy as a wimpy weasel and that copy was visibly smaller and touchy, meanwhile the woman that idolized hiim ended up generating a clone that was a paragon physically and mentally in personality), even though the copies all held the same memories.

[Zer0 Kay]

I'm gonna get thwacked for this. I'm going to combine DNA from Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Grigori Rasputin, some viking named "Ulrik The Batterer", the reptilian king "Takshaka" and... Sgt. Slaughter

of course he follow all his orders with "This I command!"

Soooo BAD

[Nightmask]

I'm gonna get thwacked for this. I'm going to combine DNA from Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Grigori Rasputin, some viking named "Ulrik The Batterer", the reptilian king "Takshaka" and... Sgt. Slaughter

of course he follow all his orders with "This I command!"

Soooo BAD

Left off a dead (but he got better) ninja named Storm Shadow.

[Armorlord]

CHinese Hero's is easy just find their ghost in China

You could simply do a ressurection on plenty of them were their is a corpse
they could be in the Halls of Vahalla were the brave live forever

If you wanted Bruce Lee that's pretty simply
one of the theories by which he died IRL and his son is a demon got him

so the Demon could have kept the soul and Bruce escaped

China! Man there's a lot of options there, good catch.

As far as Bruce and demons go, however, that Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story movie is pretty much all Hollywood. I mean basics facts were wrong all over, not just the demon thing.
Now there is some stories that his new house at the time had bad fung shui, and perhaps even more dangerous was that he generally made a point of not working with the local mafia in a town where they generally own the major actors.

Now, if I were to look for a supernatural means to bring Mr. Lee into Rifts Earth, I believe this right here would be the proper conduit. Seems like the right sort of focus, and just imagine that striding around near where Hong Kong had been. Oh yeah.

Hm, also just came across a theory I had not heard before while digging up that image. Apparently it is believed that Bruce received a Dim Mak strike several weeks beforehand, punishment for bringing martial arts to the western world. Even commented on in the magazine run by a friend of Bruce's a few years later.
I don't know about real life, but if it ever comes up, I think I'll have to go with this story in Ninjas & Superspies.

Also:

Can I play a genetically altered Clone of Nikola Tesla who is a Zapper?

Possibly - I would push more for a Techno Wizard or a Rogue Scientist type

or Maybe he should be an immortal blood sucking vampire with electro-kinessis?

I see what you did thar.
Man that show is great stuff.

[cornholioprime]

i wouldn't recommend cloning as the "macguffin" for using famous people.

a clone is a copy of the genetics, and thus body, only. it will not come with the memories, skills, or personality of the person that was cloned. so if you clone Bruce lee, you just get a guy who looks exactly like bruce lee. but he'll never have the memories, skills, or personality of bruce lee, because those are all learned attributes.

What he said.

Why don't you just have a quirky God or Alien Intelligence (how about Zurvan? He's certainly powerful and knowledgeable enough to do so, PLUS he would do this sort of thing for experimental purposes anyway) who, for fun or knowledge, magically creates mental/soul/personality gestalts of Player Characters and Famous Historical People? It would be like "Quantum Leap," only the two peoples' spirits are one and the same for the duration of the experiment.

Here's a second idea:
Why don't you have the God/Alien Intelligence/Hyper-advanced Alien Race (the First?) kidnap your Player Characters and give them a pool of pre-selected Famous People (you pick 'em beforehand, GM) to choose from?

Imagine requiring your Player Characters to ALSO have to play the sensibilities and moral views and personal ethos of those characters as well! Think Genghis Khan making every third threat to the other PCs a dip in boiling oil -tee hee!

[Long Shadow]

Why not use the Book of Heroes and have the historic character be avatars or reborn from the book?

[Zer0 Kay]

I'm gonna get thwacked for this. I'm going to combine DNA from Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Grigori Rasputin, some viking named "Ulrik The Batterer", the reptilian king "Takshaka" and... Sgt. Slaughter

of course he follow all his orders with "This I command!"

Soooo BAD

Left off a dead (but he got better) ninja named Storm Shadow.

Nope... that was the comic book one the one from the original animation (not saying that the animation came first, but the first of the animations) didn't have Storm Shadow, just like the comic didn't have Sgt. Slaughter. The comic also made him as a figure head and he got out of control while the animation had him made as a replacement leader. STILL just as bad either way, but nothing can be worse than Cobra LA

[taalismn]

I'm gonna get thwacked for this. I'm going to combine DNA from Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Grigori Rasputin, some viking named "Ulrik The Batterer", the reptilian king "Takshaka" and... Sgt. Slaughter

of course he follow all his orders with "This I command!"

Soooo BAD

Yeah, but what if all that badassery in one person cancels each other out...and you end up with Bob the Mild-Mannered, the lab cafeteria mop-and-dishwasher guy(admittedly with some impressive temper tantrums every once and while)?

[Blindscout]

I'm gonna get thwacked for this. I'm going to combine DNA from Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Grigori Rasputin, some viking named "Ulrik The Batterer", the reptilian king "Takshaka" and... Sgt. Slaughter

of course he follow all his orders with "This I command!"

Soooo BAD

*Takes a short drive over to Snoqualmie*
Well since you seem to want it so badly.........

Is it sad that I knew exactly where that was going when I read the second name on the list?

[CombatMedic]

So I decided to start up a new Rifts campaign. The catch though is that all the players will have the opportunity to play historical heroes/people (albeit a bit larger than life). I wanted to figure out a way to make this possible in the story but I have kind've fallen flat as far as how and why this would happen. Would it be through cloning? cyborgs? the actual people being rifted from alternate dimensions? What person/group/organization would do this? I'm open to any ideas canon and invented? So whadya got?

Cloning really doesn't make much sense to me, as a clone would just be a child with the same genes as the 'parent.' The clone would not have the memories, personality, or training of the 'parent.'


I'd go with parallel persons rifted in from other dimensions.

YMMV, of course.

[finn69]

[quote="Blindscout"][quote="Zer0 Kay"]I'm gonna get thwacked for this. I'm going to combine DNA from Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Grigori Rasputin, some viking named "Ulrik The Batterer", the reptilian king "Takshaka" and... Sgt. Slaughter

of course he follow all his orders with "This I command!"


you left off a part.....YOU MAGGOT!!!!!