Quote from: CRKrueger;559688... the VR of the Cyberpunk novels generally assumes some kind of Neural Interface, where commands can be sent at speed of thought without having to use your body to do anything, or if anything, minor adjustments, like hitting a key here and there.

Once you assume speed of thought commands it makes sense to structure the Virtual Realm in a way in which the brain can translate natural impulses and reflexes for movement into mental commands.  Thus we get the mental images of Ninjas fighting Medieval Knights or Terminators or whatever.  If the framework of the programs can be virtually structured so as to appear as natural body movements to the decker/hacker, then responses will be faster and more natural, ie. less training will be required and performance will be better.

This.

Also have in mind literacy is giving place to "iconteracy" In most societies in Shadowrun world. The default way of interacting with information at the time is playing with icons, not writing.

But the underlying code would be in a language.

This could give rise to a kind of technomancy; where someone in a VR setting could, by understanding the underlying language, change reality around him; he'd have to know the secret "vibrations" to open up the source code, and the right magical formulas to change the program.

That works surprisingly similar to western magick.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;560936This could give rise to a kind of technomancy;

It's a good idea, and meshes the magical and technological very well. That is, the technological aspects are real, and the magic has to interface with them in a specific way that fits their nature. That's exactly what a technothriller cyber-fantasy campaign should be.

The magic is magical, the technology plausible. And how they interact, explicable.

I already have technomancers who can access computers remotely with their minds. Your idea is a great fit with that.

(I'm also thinking hard about technomancers who hack people's brains. Using Inception as inspirational material is almost a cliche now, but I did love the movie, and something like it might work in the game. I'm mulling it over.)

Quote from: RPGPundit;560936But the underlying code would be in a language.

As would any information in the system, so would be just as vulnerable to technomage rituals. And accessing paydata is one of the most frequent reasons to hack.

I wasn't actually suggesting it be literal "magic" in the sense of the supernatural; just that the way that "hacking" would work in a VR world would be similar to the structures of how "language magick" has been used since just about forever.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;561213I wasn't actually suggesting it be literal "magic" in the sense of the supernatural; just that the way that "hacking" would work in a VR world would be similar to the structures of how "language magick" has been used since just about forever.

Ah, I see.

Still, your idea does work very well to explain how a supernatural technomancer could operate.

The underlying premise that's interesting is that both western and eastern systems of magick tend to assume that our material world is a kind of VR simulation in and of itself.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;561213I wasn't actually suggesting it be literal "magic" in the sense of the supernatural; just that the way that "hacking" would work in a VR world would be similar to the structures of how "language magick" has been used since just about forever.

RPGPundit

However, from the position of additionally incorporating the decking system into your version of SR, using a system of program stability and mental fatigue reminiscent of the magic system could help keep things controlled some.  

One thing I'd steer away from is the excessive complexity of the decking that started to bleed in around SR 3's decking book.  I'm not sure if they fixed that for 4th edition (green text makes me sick and I didn't like some of the other changes that I got to before reading anything about decking, so I pretty much ignored it and continued running SR3)


My personal preference, even in CP2020 was to use something more resembling the interfaces in GITS:SAC.  I had a tendency to have a LOT of offline systems or single access point closed systems to make sure that IF hacking was necessary, then usually the group would be needed to get the hacker into the site or nearby to do it.  

From the position of a multimillion nuyen/euro/nudollar corporation (or a small nation) having your sensitive systems online and directly available to the general public via network connections is a security risk, so there were always things like proxy servers and network chokepoints to increase the amount of interaction with hardware that hackers would need to do prior to reaching the even vaguely sensitive stuff, and the really juicy things would be kept on isolated or multi-kb encrypted network servers inside secured facilities, where the characters have to break in just to find a terminal that's on the right side of the KIV.

Anyways, I think the mistake that most cyberpunk games I've seen does with VR is that it has a setup where the VR world is this special place that only hackers/deckers/whatever go, and that's where they do their hacking/decking/whatever.

What they should do is have the VR worlds be where EVERYONE goes, for everything from mundane shopping to adventure gaming, to having weird "second life" style worlds for corporate bosses, millionaires, cults, etc.; and the hackers/deckers/whatever are actually the guys who can tap into the "underlying programming code" that exists behind that VR interface and fuck around with "reality" in the virtual universe (in a similar way to how the wizard might fuck around with "reality" in the material universe).

RPGPundit

If I ever run a Cyberpunk-based game again (highly unlikely), things like "decking", "netrunning", etc. will go out the door.  It's like psionics in AD&D: neat for the GM and for the 'netrunner (psionic) and exactly nobody else.

What I will do is describe pervasive computing thusly:

Yes, touchscreens and mice are still around - grandpa uses a touchscreen and grandma, Hubbard bless her, still motors around with a bluetooth mouse.  The nearly bankrupt state-run school has old, silicon-based computers with them.  The corporate schools?  The up-to-date and well-to-do?  They've got various AR based input devices.  Your working poor (you know the type - you drive by a trailer park and can see a 50" flatscreen on the wall and a '21 Honda sitting in the front yard), they make do with actual glasses.  They come home, stare at the TV for an agonizing 2 or 3 seconds while the cheap things sync up and now they're finally on-line.

The well-to-do have theirs pixie-dusted right onto their eyeball, or implanted in an intermediary lens in the vitreous humor, hanging out, not doing anything until you need to buy something - then you stare at the barcode in front of the store for a half a second while holding your purchase (or rather, your bodyguard holds it) and bam, transfer made, you never felt that $4000 come out of your account for that bottle of wine.

But in either case there's never the whole "This big polygon represents MitsuChibaDarkToykoBank, and this all chrome drill I'm holding represents a Black-ice-mark-9-code-cracker!" shtick.  It's too silly for me now.

Somewhere in China or India there's a _real_ wage slave still hammering out shit into a text shell, writing lines of code that make up the stuff you can do on and with the internet - but just as most people don't think about the laborers at the back end of the chain who are (literally) dying to make ipods and ipads, so it goes (and will go) with coders.

"Cracking", "hacking" etc will still come down halfway to social engineering: can we get into the Wal Mart server farm warehouse, past the automated defenses?  At that point, the guy with the augmented vision becomes the guide, once everyone's in.  Now he's got the local floor-plan and can get everyone to the backup storage vault and get the <#ITEM>, maybe pause to disable some security systems along the way with a quick glance (assuming they're cybernetic and not a couple of barely-citizens with MP5s, little Inglés and less patience for intruders).  

Ultimately, when the rubber meets the road, "If they think you're high-tech, go low..."  Now your hacker breaks out the keyboard and a roll-up flatscreen and starts doing some arcane shit when the bullets start to fly, maybe filling the room with the minty taste of HALON-1301 for a quick smoke-screen, but all the while they've got a "monitor" right in the periphery of their vision, showing them the results of their brute-force password attack on the vault's lock.

There's no reason good cyberpunk, nowadays, has to involve cranial jacks, 80s ideas about 21st century VR, or whatever.

Quote from: RPGPundit;562077and the hackers/deckers/whatever are actually the guys who can tap into the "underlying programming code" that exists behind that VR interface and fuck around with "reality" in the virtual universe (in a similar way to how the wizard might fuck around with "reality" in the material universe).

The easiest way to do that, oddly enough, is to reverse the normal Shadowrun Decking paradigm. Everybody enters the VR, except the hacker.

He's outside, with taps on their simsense streams, simultaneously monitoring them and the target. He's the "angel on their shoulder."

They need a VR door opened? They can either pick locks (using VR duplicates of real tools), or the hacker can magic the door open, by turning it off or whatever. The hacker can tell them "there's security on the other side of the door."

The whole group plays (mundane skills like stealth and guns having use in the Net), the hacker is god in the Net, and the VR paradigm matches perfectly what computer hardware would be.

Of course, sysops are the exact same thing, and have their own minions in the net. (Some expert systems, some human guards.) And every time he breaks the VR world, he sends up a flare announcing "A hacker's breaking in!" (not exactly, but closely enough).

In VR, computers become a space, and that empowers and limits those building the systems. People can sneak in

This setup resembles The Matrix movies greatly (without the "I know Kung Fu"). I had one much like it worked out for another setting, I should go get those notes and see what else I said.

EDIT: Then technomancers, real magic-using ones, actually go into the system and break the laws of virtual physics. A hacker-technomancer team will eat their opposition alive.

Now that's fsckin' cool.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;562123The easiest way to do that, oddly enough, is to reverse the normal Shadowrun Decking paradigm. Everybody enters the VR, except the hacker.

He's outside, with taps on their simsense streams, simultaneously monitoring them and the target. He's the "angel on their shoulder."

They need a VR door opened? They can either pick locks (using VR duplicates of real tools), or the hacker can magic the door open, by turning it off or whatever. The hacker can tell them "there's security on the other side of the door."

The whole group plays (mundane skills like stealth and guns having use in the Net), the hacker is god in the Net, and the VR paradigm matches perfectly what computer hardware would be.

Of course, sysops are the exact same thing, and have their own minions in the net. (Some expert systems, some human guards.) And every time he breaks the VR world, he sends up a flare announcing "A hacker's breaking in!" (not exactly, but closely enough).

In VR, computers become a space, and that empowers and limits those building the systems. People can sneak in

This setup resembles The Matrix movies greatly (without the "I know Kung Fu"). I had one much like it worked out for another setting, I should go get those notes and see what else I said.

EDIT: Then technomancers, real magic-using ones, actually go into the system and break the laws of virtual physics. A hacker-technomancer team will eat their opposition alive.

Now that's fsckin' cool.

Yes, that could work too.

RPGPundit

Everybody Hacks

"Everybody drops, everybody fights."
- Johnny Rico, Starship Troopers.

VR Hacking shouldn't be a solo dungeon crawl. What it can be, and should be, is a cooperative endeavor.

Everybody hacks.

Not "everybody knows how to bypass computer security" but "everybody goes along". Hacking a system is like breaking into a building. Everyone has a chance to participate, everyone's skill set can be useful.

Sneaking? Useful. Shooting a gun? Useful. Picking a lock? Useful.

Everybody hacks.

Why? CRKrueger said it: once computers become DNI based, everything is built around that assumption.

Many OS's today are highly modular. A skilled user can alter config files, stored as text, then logout-login and something changes, maybe something critical. People can even recompile a rewritten part of the OS, kill and relaunch the daemon, and things in the OS just change.

Back to the past.

The classic MacOS was different. Once it booted, the OS had a specific set of rules governing look and feel, commands available, etc. These rules were stored in "resource forks", which could be edited. But to activate the changes, you had to reboot the computer.

The same is true for DNI systems. They are virtual spaces, in effect office buildings with infinite space. The user jacks in, and is inside a space with its own laws of physics, its own appearance, its own "presentation". He himself has a presentation, what he looks and sounds like in the simulation.

The OS boots, and it sets the laws of physics. It sets the appearance. It sets the presentation. And this cannot be altered. (Not without rebooting the whole system.)

Why VR? It's a User Interface. It exists to allow users to accomplish tasks, to utilize the computing resources of a system. And physical laws that match the meat world, allow people to use what they already know how to do. Walk. Open a door. Unlock or lock a door.

Users already know how to operate the system, because they know how to live. But so do intruders, including the player characters.

VR-as-Space offers some ease for admins and owners. You can build vaults, work spaces, virtual labs, whatever you need for your employees.

It also offers some weaknesses. If a door can be unlocked by guards, it can be unlocked by intruders. If a wall keeps low-level employees from seeing into a lab, it keeps security guards from seeing into a room.

The laws of physics of this system are set, and they cannot be changed. But they can be finessed. And that's where the hacker comes in. (And this resembles Pundit's idea.)

The expertise of hackers is in exploiting the laws of physics in a VR system. They take advantage of oddities. They do things normal users can't. And if the system is set up so certain people have superuser accounts... the hacker can hijack said account and gain its privileges.

Suppose the LoP is "guards have glasses that can see through walls." Well, the hacker can hack up a set of those glasses, and hand them out to his mates. Whatever users can do, the hacker can hijack, duplicate, or fake.

The converse is also true. Whatever users cannot do, the hacker cannot hijack, duplicate, or fake. The laws of physics in a system are set, and cannot be altered by anything short of a reboot.

Everybody hacks.

Systems are a place, with laws of physics. Your skills, even as a non-hacker, are applicable. But hackers have an edge.

They are the trickesters and gremlins in a system (or vandals and wreckers), hijacking it for illicit uses. Which is, in the real world, what hackers actually do.

NOTE: In the previous post, I posited an "angel on your shoulder" model of hacking. While this should be possible, it should be the mode of an NPC hacker. The PC's do the work, think through and overcome problems in the system. The NPC aids.

PC hackers have a choice. They can go along, or ride overwatch. Either way, their abilities remain the same.

Quote from: RPGPundit;562077Anyways, I think the mistake that most cyberpunk games I've seen does with VR is that it has a setup where the VR world is this special place that only hackers/deckers/whatever go, and that's where they do their hacking/decking/whatever.

What they should do is have the VR worlds be where EVERYONE goes, for everything from mundane shopping to adventure gaming, to having weird "second life" style worlds for corporate bosses, millionaires, cults, etc.; and the hackers/deckers/whatever are actually the guys who can tap into the "underlying programming code" that exists behind that VR interface and fuck around with "reality" in the virtual universe (in a similar way to how the wizard might fuck around with "reality" in the material universe).

RPGPundit

Agreed. All cyberpunk games Ive seen do exactly this. Even if they mention otherwise in the fluff, in the end cyberspace works like a exclusive "hackers-only" dimension.

This reminds me a bit of the first time I saw how magic work in Runequest. While in D&D-like games magic almost always work like just another kind of weapon, used by just another kind of combatent, Runequest showed how magic could actually have a coherent and plausible role in the world, permeating peoples every-day lives in an organic way.

The ideal cyberpunk game should treat cyberspace the same way Runequest treats its magic.

RTG tried to correct that aspect, first with the overlays in Cybergeneration, and then with the nano-magic junk in CP 3.0.  Neither one caught on very well, since pretty much the whole of the sensory VR interface is based around William Gibson's initial visualization in his Neuromancer series, which pretty much established the feel for cyberpunk in everything that followed.