Uncanny Valley/Tabletop Games: Difference between revisions

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* The [[New World of Darkness]] roleplaying game ''[[Promethean: The Created]]'' puts a different spin on the Uncanny Valley. The player characters are [[Artificial Human|artificial humans]], ranging from [[Our Zombies Are Different|reanimated corpses]] to magically [[Golem|animated statues]], who appear human through the [[Paper-Thin Disguise|thinnest]] of [[Masquerade|supernatural veneers]]. [[Muggles]] can tell the difference on some deep, fundamental level, meaning that spending too much time around them is enough cause to haul out the [[Torches and Pitchforks]].

* A similar effect happens to [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampires]] in ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]''. As they get older and lose touch with their [[Karma Meter|Humanity]], it gets harder for them to interact nicely with mortals. They forget to do things like blink, breathe, vary their vocal inflections or send off the other signals that humans unconsciously do without thinking. Even if they do make an effort to do all these things, vampires that have lost enough Humanity will appear like walking, talking corpses:

{{quote| A Kindred with low Humanity can put great effort into acting like a living person. He can force himself to breathe and remind himself to blink now and then... but he can't fake that subtle, unconscious dance of nonverbal interaction. Mortals soon pick up on this. They cannot consciously spot the problem, but their instincts tell them that something is '''''very wrong''''' and they should '''''get away'''''.}}

{{quote|A Kindred with low Humanity can put great effort into acting like a living person. He can force himself to breathe and remind himself to blink now and then... but he can't fake that subtle, unconscious dance of nonverbal interaction. Mortals soon pick up on this. They cannot consciously spot the problem, but their instincts tell them that something is '''''very wrong''''' and they should '''''get away'''''.}}

** The Nosferatu clan gets this ''all the time'', no matter how high their Humanity. Some of them look just plain ugly, but others might look perfectly normal... but when they interact with other people, they may carry about them the sterile scent of a hospital ward, or a gaze like they want to see what the other person's guts look like. They always carry the idea that there's something ''wrong'' directly centered on them. There's even an entire [[Prestige Class|bloodline]] devoted to inverting the curse by [[Blood Bath|bathing in blood]] to improve their appearance... and even then, it doesn't work, because they become ''too beautiful'' to be anything human.

* The [[Hot Chicks]] RPG doesn't address this so much in the game as it does with the artwork. The CG art instils the [[Uncanny Valley]] much of the time, that is when it doesn't fail to get that far with the fact that 2/3rds of the women's facial expressions look like they were modeled off blow-up dolls.