New poll on Biohazard's twitter

Would there be a third option? I think "holding their breath for long" isn't quite as "alien Poseidon" as gills, what other things would be more plausible? Personally I think the disbelief in keeping the blood thermally insulated from the water the one hardest to suspend, but if the breath cannot be held for a significant amount of time I think some other option needs to be invented...

I've always found the Squids a little jarring, and wouldn't mind seeing them excluded. I don't have strong feelings either way though, I don't think.

Could they perhaps just be retconned as having been developed a lot more recently and rarer? So still available to player characters, but needing a bit more justification?

EDIT: I typed this out, and then spotted that Gareth Hanrahan (Who once GMed a Blue Planet game at a Con that I played in, and was excellent) has essentially posted the same thing.

For me retconning and making the squid a product of later genetic tech would be the best option, the historical setting goes more hard sci-fi, while the PC don’t lose a character option. Besides in a setting like BP with it’s advanced genetic engineering would be strange not to have a gill biomod.

I've never found having BOTH an issue. What has been the issue is the assumption that either/or is a problem in campaign terms. Having a genetically "produced" aqua-form, as opposed to a added-enhancement bio-tech upgrade... it's just a case of two different approaches to the same problem.

You make a good point! I think the poll and the related brainstorm has helped Jeff weigh and compare all the factors , but hard to tell whether the decision's been made yet. 

Hey Troy, hope you're feeling better now!

The main reason to consider retconning the Athena Project squid is the hard sci-fi approach to year 2085 and what would have been possible, or plausible, then. The discovery of Long John in 2187 of course opened up a whole new dimension of genetic engineering, making the squid aquaform relatively easy to achieve, but a hundred years earlier and before xenosilicates, functional gills in a human may have been too much to ask.

Having said that, the poll ended up being almost 50%/50% and Biohazard are still considering how to proceed, I think. 

You just need to reflect on the rate of acceleration in scientific progress made in certain fields. Some elements of early sci-fi made predictions that we have yet to achieve today (like faster than light travel), but in some fields, we've already easily surpassed what was predicted.  Many of the issues behind achieving these predicted "advances" is usually a lack of a "breakthrough" of one kind or another.  The ability to "Clone" has been around for a few years now, that and DNA sequencing, plus many other factors (on which I'm far too dim to fully comprehend) mean that predictable custom gene-modification of foetuses may be "difficult" but not impossible, even now... and it's only ethical considerations and a lack of "the profit motive" that have prevented such advances. Remove the former and provide a reason for the later, then such things are a definite possibility. It's currently 2021.. 2085 is 64 years in the future.. In a similar time period humans have gone from the wright brothers to moon-landings.  Who knows...?