malek77

I have to read Neuromancer - I managed to start it once when someone had it online...never finished though. Damn.

OK - Coding.

How do we feel about the writing of our own software?

How hard is it to write a 'demon' incorporating other software?

How should we make 'software depreciation' work?

(Next I'd like to get into cyberdecks/parts...I'll prolly start pulling the netrunning rules together into something nice and coherent soon...)

I actually tried this the other day with some hotwheels...

Using the CP vehicle rules, try drag racing. I called it 'jousting' and the idea is a bit of a mechanised blood-sport - get two cars at either end of a track. Have markers (like a barrel) just in front of each of them. They have to get to the other end and back twice...without getting blown up. This is where Mr.sniper can have some fun. The other half of the idea was that the passenger can have a rifle (the driver can have a pistol) and the cars try and blow each other up as they go...

Strange. But hell it was fun.

What would street/drag racing be like in 2020? I imagine all sorts've cool hardware, employment as couriers and convoy protection, as well as the chance to have the most metal around you of *anyone.*

Plot ideas - a heap've illegal racing parts have come into the city. Most of the racer teams (read - gangs) would just like to buy it off you, but the local boostergang has decided to just take the stuff by force.

Shift said parts/drugs/guns into/out of the city, while running blockades, road gangs and police.

Blood&Iron sports - get involved in underground racing involving guns etc...for money...

You like?

Cool...I like the idea of a corporation able to face down a gov't.

Here's an idea =

I think gov't will prolly always exist on Earth in some form or other - because Earth is going to horrible and parochial.

Space, however...Governments don't like spending lots of money on pure reesearch, especially when they've got a lot of other stuff to worry about.

I tend to think that (via gov't research) when space development becomes economical, the corporations will go to space, nominally under government control and having to pay taxes to the originating country, but if they're smart and quick about it - they will 'own' space.

Business may well experimentally arm themselves, trade amongst themselves and setup offices outside of the physical area any Earth based government can control - thus avoiding tax and law.

The gov'ts of the world couldn't physically couldn't stop the Corporation doing whatever it liked up there...and by the time Gov't realises this, the Corporations will own LEO and therefore control all airspace - with a corresponding effect 'groundside.'

It's for this reason I think real government is screwed. I don't think it will be all that powerful in 200 years time. Extra-solar Colonies are going to be Corporate...

..meantime, old style gov't will continue to war over tiny pieces of polluted land back on Earth like an enormous balkans/rwanda while the 'wave of the future' (Corporate Colonists to you) get entire planets.

Back on topic - Corporations aren't as powerful as gov't on Earth, but will have it all over them in space.

I hope

The mob always seemed to me as if they'd use something like the Nomad family stat, and have high intimidation and torture abilities. They work by training you to behave...

Basically - they're bullies grown up. If your organisation can face them down, they'll bug out and seek revenge in some pathetic fashion, like trying to blow you up.

The basic tenet of the Mob is denial of cowardice.

"Yeah, we're tough. Becos we're six meatball's with guns and you're a 60y.o. grocery store owner. Pay us."

They don't like it when you fight back - it makes them really pissed off. That *can* mean they'll launch an effective attack on you, most likely it'll be something ranged or total overkill (like 10 men with smgs VS you. Alone.)

..but they'd prefer to give you a breathy phone call talking about they're going to "F****ng kill your f***ing dog by f***ing it in the ..." you get the idea.

Scaring you into submission is much easier.

Try  amercianMafia for some stories about em.

They were originally anti-german freedom fighters in Sicily - and after the war they kept playing...

Hey - here's one for the paranoid among us...

http://www.countermoneylaundering.com/

Check out the link to the 'Risk Values' stuff...and their .pdf brochure. http://www.riskvalues.com/brochure.pdf

What its about is assigning risk values to bank customers, to tell if they're likely to fund terrorism. Thing is, it can't be racist, so they use a statistical method of figuring out who is most likely to be funding terrorism. The trick is, apparently, that funding for terrorism isn't from money laundering but is quite innocent - so what this RiskValue software does is look for people by isolating "...those with the greatest development of a particular moral characteristic."

They do this with a questionnaire that is supposed to fit in with existing questions or something - they didn't specify detail on that.

SO : just from your banking history, these people think they can narrow down the likely terrorists without breaking any laws. Using public information.

Then you monitor their account for any 'unusual' activity. I wonder how this would hold up in court...what kind of evidence does it constitute?

There're 2 possibilities - it doesn't work, it just finds innocent people by elimination. And they just have 'strong moral characteristics.'

It does work...and its almost like divination but they can ping terrorists, drug dealers and assorted freaks from anywhere without reference to their physical person, just their data shadow.

Imagine - the banks, gov't and school all ping you as having 'strong moral characteristics' in high school and you're monitored automatically and subconsciously by the security database system...until it decides you're probably a big threat right now, and send SWAT down on yo ass.

How's that for paranoid prophecy?

The art in CP2020 second edition is done by...

"...The new art in this printing is from the great guys at Stratelibri, who publish the Italian Cyberpunk..." p5, and inset box.

The artists are...Justin Chin, Paolo Parente, Chris Hockabout, Sam Liu, Riccardo Crosa, Angelo Montanini and Scott Ruggels.

There's the website too www.stratelibri.com

Is that what you wanted?

Don't forget mouseholing charges!

CP has detcord or something...but the point is - if you go in through the proper entrances, the enemy know where you are. They can expect attack from smaller 'windows' - which they can then cover, or booby-trap things. Impact explosives behind doors etc...

Mouseholing is blowing a chunk out of the wall so you can go through it...creating your own entrance the enemy can't predict. It's also rather threatening...and as soon as the charge goes off you should expect lead and flashbangs to follow...

How to slow down a swat team...hostages. It's about the only way. The point of a swat team is to be surgical and save lives. If they didn't need to be careful, you'd not use swat but a bomb.

Incidentally, if it ever becomes appropriate to surrender to a swat team, or they're turning up to save you but they don't know what you look like - loose any guns, take of as much bulky outer clothing as possible (ie: so you're not hiding anything) and assume the hands on head legs apart arrest position on the floor.

You'll get hammered by flashbangs, but you won't be dead.

fwiw

My mum's a genius. I have to credit her with this one...

Do people still get married in 2020? If they do, imagine the security required for a big corporate wedding...lots of important people getting drunk and chatting and plotting as Romeo and Juliet from two competing Corp's get married, cementing the companies relationship Medieval politics style.

This lead to the idea of an official Arasakan wedding planner.

Imagine - the boys in black dealing with cake decoration and flower placement for the optimum safety of the event...the teams running around checking for snipers, the thugs on the steps protecting the entrance - the final march out to the limousine AV surrounded by uniformed troopers watching for the lone psycho with a grenade. The tricky aerobatics and swap overs required to get the newlyweds away to their honeymoon without being shot down by SAM's...

Let alone Arasaka's idea of a bucks night.

...has anyone tried this? Or would it be just too cruel to do to your munchkin players, making them suit up for the reception?

Ultra tricky plot complication :

Fer the sake've argument - the guy(Mr.A) for extraction is likely to be moved into Mr.X's dept at Arasaka - but this'll screw things up for him if this guy is as smart as is made out. Maybe Mr.X is worried certain accounting innacuracies will be discovered by this person.

So he decides to kaibosh the operation...and sends Mr.A a friendly message. Problem being, the wording is something along the lines of "Arasaka has been pro-actively investigating your security, to see if you would be interested in our wide range of services...blah blah - " & therefore Mr.A is pleased by Arasaka's 'niceness' and ponders being a co-operative extractee.

The team is readying to go in, and Mr.X starts getting in the way or dropping false information...

The girlfriend is actually a body-guard hired by the initial company and resents Arasaka's intrusion...and she likes Mr.A as well & won't be easily turned. Mr.A tolerates her, but is trying to have an affair with someone else - who is readying a hit on Mr.A's bodyguard, because she's worried abt competition...

Just have really wierd stuff happening. Keep the players being precise, but they think they're in some kind of madhouse as they deal with the situation and various spurned lovers, their hostile 'boss', and a semi-co-operative target...

Ok. I've raved enough. But I think I'm going to go write a novel...did this help?

Arrgh! SIN cards! The mark of the devil! It's the end times!

Just a point about Big Brother - the original of 1984 fame didn't need SIN cards - just the equivalent of a TV with a webcam on top.(...& aren't we all running out and buying those cute little eyeballs for ourselves?   bigBro by consumer choice...far out...)

Idea for your netrunner : if the SIN cards all talk to a central registry - your runner could send in a false death notice.

Then his enemy is legally dead, and can't buy or sell anything in the same way as a cancelled credit card.

OR - for the practicality of said cards - why don't they hold say a year of historical data themselves? You've seen those memory stick things...surely the card itself is capable of holding a fair bit. I have at this very instant a 'smart-card' just to get into and out of my *classroom* - the doors have electronic locks and won't let us in unless we swipe them. Then there's the little chip that is supposed to hold some money so I can buy stuff from the canteen and make phone calls. Which is a load of rubbish...I've never seen anyone try it. But the idea is there, if not the infrastructure.

(& hey - chill out everyone! All the above options could physically work, its up to us as voters to make sure the gov' chooses the most vulnerable one... )

If you want artists from the books they're listed in the front...I'm sure I can post a list if that would help... ?

But if you're after *CP* style artists...well, that's an altogether easier matter.

Just go to google's image search, and put these in...

Syd Mead - (designer of Blade Runner stuff)

Masamune Shirow - (Ghost in the shell)

...AND, assuming your parents aren't watching over your shoulder...

Hajime soroyama OR sorayama (different sites, dif spellings)

(freakily cool robotic swimsuit models...very 80's, very CP)

Marcus Gray - Um. I'll give a strong warning on this guy...he does CP stuff - particularly his 'web' series which is to do with these ultra cool full body suits for connecting to the net or something, but he is primarily a (a)fetish (b)erotic artist. Some of his stuff is *way* beyond what would be considered acceptable by your average school internet policy. You have been warned. And you're probably being monitored.

Does any of this help?

I'm just wondering...

Ok. We jack the nervous system up 200%. Great. We get the message to the muscle at lightspeed rather than the 80k's an hour our nerves work now. Cool.

How fast does the muscle work? Is the boost merely who is getting to move their (equally slow) muscles first - or is it that the muscles work quicker too?

I'm not sure how it could be done - I think we could probably manage a nice safe version of 'speed' reasonably soon, but I'm not sure.

What we should ponder, perhaps, is what would be a suitable substitute for nerves? I like the idea of fibre optic cables myself, but that then requires more engineering at the terminus to turn it back into an electrical signal. (Imagine - glowing lines under your skin - pwetty )

Real nerves work by sending an ionic chain reaction in a spiral along the nerve. The actual chemicals are something like a potassium charge building up and changing the porosity of the cell membrane to something that allows a flow of charge Na+ into the next cell, which repeats...(I'm pretty sure of this, but may be wrong. Its the general idea.)

We can't just wire into them. Damn.

Muscles use calcium ions (I think) and their contraction is part electric, augmented by blood pressure.

Maybe you could just wave the wand of 'amazing future chemical enhancement', but I don't have great detail on reality.

Ummm... (I hate playing critic...)

Perhaps describe the character not by literally telling the reader about him, but through how other characters react to him.

If he's really tall, people are going to be looking up at him - if he's lost and confused, he's a mystery, and filling in the mystery slowly works better than doing so in one hit.

Archetypes aren't a bad thing. You just have to keep doing new and unusual things with them - that's what good they are. An immediate frame of reference the reader can grab and the writer can use as a springboard to get the reader deeper into the story faster.

Finally, don't stop. Keep writing. You never improve if you never practice...and when you've got something even half done, let us know. I'll have a look over if you want

Just on the topic of books based on a game world...

I'll assume you're all familiar with Warhammer 40,000 (whether you are or not...) I've just read something called 'Gaunts Ghosts' and damnit its the most evocative novel I've ever read. I understood and could picture everything perfectly - its a sort've WWI gothic sci-fi style. Which is wierd...but for that book alone my opinion of game world novels has been lifted to heights I never thought would be possible.

On the topic of CP2020 stories - I myself am guilty of having a write using the game rules as a sort of 'engine.'

I don't think I'm producing saleable work, and I know I'm not sticking to the official story line - but its fun.

Anyone else tried writing based on CP games? I'm thinking fanfic more than anything else...

1) I'd love to join a mars mission - but I don't know what good I'd be. If I felt I was contributing rather than just being a paper-weight...

2) Dunno yet. I s'pose I'll find out one day...

3) Staying with a pack of wolves for a year...interesting, interesting. No. I wouldn't. They live in cold places, and I don't like the cold...but - Is there a story behind this? I'd love to hear it...

What's Alien Crossfire? I haven't come across it before...

wtf?

I liked all tommorow's parties...but thats cos I just like to sit there and vegetate in the world Gibson creates.

And the ending was ok...like, its better than other things I've read. At least it doesn't end with some macho gun battle. That comes in the middle.  

Is that something like what you were trying to say, Neutrino?

The allusions to chaos theory and surveillance threw me a bit...

(...you never contributed to 21C, did you? )

Excellent...das ist gut...(imagine that in a corny german accent...)

Anway -

Probing the target - I suppose other than the 'social engineering mentioned' we only have the software based port scanning - which would just be opposed detection/stealth rolls. Cool. (Unless someone has something to add on that front...)

Which brings us to...

Preparing the ICeBreaker.

In very Neuromancer terms, this is about writing special software for the target rather than generic stealth attack programs that are supposed to work on everything. Like that thing Case had to make. (Or was it Mona Lisa O/D...)

I have this notion that an ICeBreaker is going to be something like a Master Controller Program operating a bunch of smaller programs beneath it. This little prog for stealth against CoolSys V109 firewall, this prog for fast searching, this for ....etc

Rather than the human runner going in and choosing things on the fly. The potential of this is a massive speed bonus - if you can correctly predict the sequence of events and have the programs ready to deal the instant a problem arises, you'd be able to compete with even an AI system.

Then when it did something out of the plan, the ICeBreaker crashes and you are on your own...

I read in another concept article about ICeBreakers that they'd attack everything at once - rather than just the runner trying one intranet PC at a time, you have the breaker going for all 200 and the ones that give in first you capitalise on. That was the concept.

Thus we have two concepts - aimed ICeBreaker and scattershot breaker...one attacking a known weakness, the other searching for weaknesses to exploit.

Maybe you could have the player write up a flowchart of how their breaker would react...and the actual defence could be the same kind of chart...like a game of 'mastermind'

Thoughts? Ideas?

Hey cool!

I'll definitely keep an eye out...thanks...

We've all been fogetting something about our worlds future.

The spike. The singularity.

Does anyone else here believe in it?

And model human beings. I think we'll only get them with

a) genetic engineering

perfected methods of 'writing a brain.'

...and then they'll only be a 'model' for whatever paradigm is in charge at the time. Like - what would a model woman be like from the 50's compared to one from now? Eek...

The way I think about 'humanity', Aliens would find us pretty frightening...we're all capable of violence. We can make decisions that will lead to our own death - for other causes altogether. We group together and create our own propaganda to tell ourselves that 'being human is a nice thing' (Star Trek, for instance) while making some of our number go and kill other people for our own safety(the war on terror !?!).

Everything we've ever made has been turned to war and sex.

Humanity is the ultimate weapon - we (think) we can kill anything, outsurvive anything, out-think anything, outbreed anything...

Basically, the average human is quite a disturbing thing.

This isn't to say I hate everything...there is good in the world...but good ain't normal. I don't kid myself good always wins. I do kid myself that it will win in the end.

(btw - how old do you think I am?)

I've come across a writer who does modern style SAS stories...and does them well. The reason they're so good - is that he is from the British SAS and has seen action. With the result that his novels are fascinating to read if you've got a thing about finding military terms and techniques and what it would be like to jump out of a plane from high altitude.

'Firewall' is about the ROC (Russian organised crime) hacking into Echelon. It certainly reads as highly realistic...whether it is or not, it just feels right.

I'm bringing it up becuase I think it would be excellent for people trying to work out how to roleplay an intrusion expert or a solo who actually tries to protect his identity properly...or even how to conduct negotiations or briefings realistically.

There is a constant sense of dread in the books - because something always goes wrong...and its always for the best of reasons. And if a situation goes way beyond controllable - it doesn't turn into a Rambo lone assault - if you lose, you lose. Characters get maimed, mangled, rearranged and killed in a harrowingly realistic fashion...

Anyway - I've read Firewall (which was my first experience of McNab) and have just got into Crisis Four...check it out.

Methinks that article has solved a problem - if we ponder each heading in turn, we'll have the game at the end.

Taking precautions:

Proxies : a cumulative -1 or -0.5 speed penalty for each proxie? This is counted against deck speed, which is a function of...what? How should we calculate deck speed.

Fraud : sorta safe, but it would have the effect of making computer security very much about tac-teams as the only way to catch the 'runner. Still - if you desperately need that extra 0.5 of speed...and what Phipps said about a slow systems earlier should be included too.

How easy should it be to create proxies? They seem to require almost as much knowledge as the main target of the attack, because you'll be going up against even more secured systems. Resulting in 'runners creating trails they use regularly - and thus making them vulnerable. Netrunning becomes like meat-world moles who must maintain several elaborate cover stories to protect themselves?

This also raises the idea of a dedicated hacker's redialler - which brings in law. How would you go about setting up a safe re-dialler without netcop's bombing you from orbit?

Secret corporate/govt ones? Hmm...

It sounds like we need to include a software depreciation rule...even now a virus will be detected and a lot of systems/Firewalls will be patched against it pretty quickly.

Make commercial software depreciate faster (whether a legal Firewall or a commonly used IC), and have home-brew software last longer. Big incentive to write your own...

I'm looking to create a system that is solid in its own right as a tactical game - something chunky and mechanical, something that depends on effective deployment more than good dice rolls.

SO: What say we start with detection? The average netrunner is going to be reasonably adept at not being seen...ie: blocking his deck from returning any pings it picks up. But if there are other ways of detecting the runners presence, the fact he's there but hiding might be more dangerous than just being visible.

Perhaps add 1 for every program running in an overt fashion(ie: would require server processing time to work) to a base detection rating of 1...which would prolly create an average of '3'. Hmm...base detection of 15? To create a 'to hit' number?

Perhaps classify progs' into 'active' and 'passive' like radar.

Thoughts?

Would anyone be interested in going through the whole thing in detail or should I go away and vegetate and bring back a prototype?

Hm. What you want is intergalactic netrunning without a millenia of timelag...there's always a simple solution to any such problem in SF - wormholes.

For something vaguely plausible (& I'm not saying your idea is implausible...but for a system people will recognise) what about linking various parts of the colonised universe with wormholes? Then you can send your data through them and get it places fast. This also makes your 'space' into nice chunks, and you can make your players be nice and tactical about which wormhole they go through. A private corporate one might be useful too...

There's also the point that you might be able to open one end of a wormhole now, and the other end later, and be able to transmit into the past...cool, huh?

It'd become a huge issue - who controls the wormholes, controls travel, controls the universe. Make it so you can't make them - there are only natural ones - and some corporation has one that allows them one or two days ability to travel into the past. Could be interesting.

Now - if you add aliens to the net, what would their net look like? You could simply use a hex or triangle grid just to make it look different for each race, assuming the overall concepts were similar.

Then - there's the whole mental interface/consensual hallucination thing. A netrunner going head to head with an alien is going to get some screwy ideas...

Hey! More plot! Aliens resist any attempt at humans linking mentally to their net, because their brains are easily imprintable. Or vice versa. Or people start to get brains that are conceptually half alien, half human and an epidemic of xenopsychosis rips across the galaxy as alienated/humanated sentient beings only partially understand what's happening to their head and they go crazy trying to explain it to others.

Play it like a new form of cyberpsychosis.

100yrs in the future or more - I imagine a lot of smart materials and computers in massivley parrallel arrays - I think cyberspace could then truly realise its potential as an ecology for digital life forms. The creatures from alien xeno-nets start invading the human one, vice versa - they get intelligent, people start hunting/worshipping/befriending/enslaving them.

Combat...um...that's an issue anyway. How about something excessively abstruse with names like 'accelerated meme splicing'...(basically meaning - effective ways to combine/control beliefs your target already has by use of propaganda)

I imagine netwar would be like how we imagine angels and demons fight...wierd semi-mystical authority-over-subject things.

Make it all about stealth/detection stuff? Like hunters tracking each other through the 3d alien meta-arcology of netspace...

...Hehehe...make it five dimensional.

I think I'm going off my head now...this has *way* major potential though...if you want someone to test run ideas on, I'm volunteering...

Someone asked about an earthquake device...

Apparently back in the 60's the US gov' was looking for cost effective alternatives to nukes - and one idea was to launch a Titan rocket from orbit straight into the ground.

If it could survive re-entry, the resultant shockwave would be so huge that (and I quote) it would be more of a minor cosmic event than a weapon. (End quote.)

It would cause earthquakes, big ones. I can't prove it, but it sounds right...just think about meteor's for a while.

I also like anti-matter...a friend and I worked out that a 2 kilo (ie, 1 of real matter and 1 of anti') would produce 9billion joules of energy. Your average stick of dynamite makes 150joules (I think). I figure that for a very big bang from a very small bomb.

I should point out that the energy released would probably be a bit lower though, because since then scientists have found that matter/anti-matter doesn't explode tidily - the protons don't blow up as cleanly as they should. (Yes - antimatter does exist...they've been making it in Europe for a while now. A few atoms at a time, but we've managed it... )

Well - add this to the stew.

A guy doesn't like fried chicken.

For some reason (apparently not from eating said chicken) he ends up needing a heart transplant...

When he's all healed up he discovers that he now *loves* fried chicken. He begins to consume it regularly, amazing friends and dreadfully upsetting his doctor.

Thing is, the person the heart came from liked Fried chicken...and that's the only link anyone can find.

I heard this on a science show on the radio, and there're apparently lots of other examples. It must be true...

The reason the subject was brought up was a question about consciousness - and that it might not solely reside in the cranium, but is instead distributed about the body.

SO...start chopping bits out of someone, for whatever reason, are they going to lose that bit of consciousness that makes them really like fried chicken? Intellectually they'll know they don't mind eating it, but the *drive* mightn't be there.

Wierd huh. Two roleplay options -

Boring realism. They stop liking human stuff so much. This might lead to alienation, and that might lead to becoming obsessed with the cyberware...then the god complex can step in. Or they might become a zen buddhist, no longer having human desires...

Fun SF/Spiritual. Mr.Cyberheart doesn't like fried chicken, he likes something else that a machine would understand...but his friends don't. Like an obsession with machine oil or something...starts falling in love with AI's and car's and things.

On the topic of going borg - I think I would go off. If I got an FBC, there're some people I'd like to re-educate. And if I believed I could out-run,shoot,armour,fight...etc anyone else, I'd probably have a good go at bonking some people on the head. Hard.

But what if I went bit by bit, and lost my human desires for food and revenge? By the end of the process, I might look at people the way your desk-pc is doing now - I take input, I react.

By the end, what is important to me will be...what? What does a machine want? I don't think a car wants to kill people, and its got as much metal as an average borg.

Another scientific example -

This guy has severe epileptic seizures.

Doctors find the dud bit of his brain (by electrifying it!) and cut it out.

He no longer has emotions.

He doesn't fear death, never feels hungry, can't be bothered doing anything. Total apathy...

He requires extensive counselling to make him set goals and go do things...

Maybe borgs might go like that? They're a machine, and they require heavy human guidance to make them do things.

Back to the rules...if I ever get a long enough game for someone to buy gear part way through it, I'll secretly roll the HC and then apply it 1pt per day until finished. This means you do get out of the ripperdocs lab before you go psycho...(ever wondered what happens to the doc's who put the last piece in before?)

How would you go borg? Think; amplifying desires that would be made more easy to fulfill by getting hardware...