Alternate Matrix Rules, Everyone is doing it Options

[FrankTrollman]

The Ends of the Matrix
"Let's go talk to our Matrix expert and get him to do… whatever it is that he does."

Throughout the four editions of Shadowrun, no rule-set has been changed more dramatically nor inspired more complete house-rules than the Matrix section. And this is unsurprising, because the Matrix touches upon something which is somewhat real – computers – while at the same time living entirely in the realm of deeply speculative fiction.

But more so than that, the Matrix has always had a tremendously difficult problem with abstraction of action. That is, it is entirely possible for the game to model every single pull of the trigger on a gun, every invocation of a spell, every turn of a car – but it is not possible to model every machine language command that flashes by a hacker. Every time you blink your eyes, a quadrillion processes crank through to completion in the Matrix. Equations are solved, numbers added and lost, and even listing all of them that had past during a heart's beat would be longer than every book ever written. So actions in the Matrix have to be abstracted. And yet, no past or current edition has had a consistent degree of approximation, which leads to wrinkles in the game system.

At the beginning, a computer system that an NPC used was modeled as a separate "room" for each arbitrary part of the computer (I/O, Storage Memory, Graphics Card, whatever), while the computer that the PC used was modeled as a series of attributes which modified the "Decker's" matrix icon (Where I/O was a location in NPC computers, it was an attribute in PC computers). In 4th edition, all processor power is abstracted and programs run arbitrarily somewhere in networks. Except that Agents/IC are specific code that runs on specific hardware and then takes individual actions in the Matrix based on how many copies are running somewhere in the arbitrarily large computer system they are stored in.

What is presented here is not the only method to realize the Matrix. Indeed, there are literally an infinite number of ways you could imagine it. Like Astral space, the Matrix does not exist; but unlike Shadowrun's magic, the Matrix isn't even loosely based upon folklore. What is here is hopefully a manner of realizing the Matrix which is consistent, playable, and fun. After all, if the rules are playable and they agree with the presented fluff to the extent that unplanned events can be extrapolated from the rules – then we can get back to what's really important: playing the game.

But before we can get some answers, we are going to need to formulate our questions.

Why Crime?
"Why yes, Big Brother is watching. However Big Brother has ADHD, so I'm going to sit here drinking my soykaf like any of a billion wage slaves are doing right now. And then Big Brother will get bored. And distracted. And then I'm going to do… anything I want."

One of the core conceits of the Shadowrun game is that crime is possible, and that crime pays. Given the wealth of potential satellite oversight (just look at Google Earth in 2007 – imagine the law enforcement version in 2070), and the incredibly daunting task that is cracking through somewhat decent encryption, it is entirely reasonable to project a future where getting away with any crime at all requires some sort of elaborate social engineering to pull inside jobs that play off of secret limits of the anti-crime system. But this isn't Minority Report or any other Phildickian setup, this is Shadowrun. And in Shadowrun bad people shoot other people right in the face for money and get away with it to do it again.

So here are some quasi-plausible justifications for that:

A Revolution in Data Collection, a Crisis of Storage
"I'm sorry, I seem to have misplaced my 'give-a-damn'."

Throughout human history the creation of data has exceeded the capacity to store it. It starts in infancy where a babe simply doesn't remember every single thing she sees, and it continues on through the Age of Bronze where not every conversation or every play gets written down, and it continues today. It could very plausibly continue in the Shadowrun future and for the sake of playability we're assuming that it does. The cameras in the world exceed the number of people who could watch them, and they collectively generate more video footage every day than can be stored on all the world's storage media.

And that is amongst the things that makes crime possible. When you go to the bathroom, a computer is measuring the mass of your deposit. When you flee a crime scene you're being watched by every store front you pass. But likely as not, none of that information will actually be saved anywhere. Some of it may be, but it quite likely isn't organized enough to actually identify you as the perpetrator (of the crime or the leavings). More importantly, information getting deleted isn't really news. If 18½ minutes are missing or overwritten by elven pornography, that's not weird.

Furthermore remember that in the world of 2071, it is entirely possible that a "legitimate" information request from investigating authorities will simply be refused. There's nothing in it for a Wuxing or Aztechnology subsidiary to share their security footage with Evo security to assist in the investigation of a crime against Evo or one of its subsidiaries. Corporations, especially major corporations are in competition, but beyond that they actually are regularly committing crimes against one another. Even showing what footage Aztechnology has of an event would be tipping its hand to Evo and it isn't going to compromise itself that way under normal circumstances. Further, it is in the interests of Aztechnology to make investigation and enforcement as expensive a proposition as possible for Evo as this reduces the company's ability to compete with them in other areas. So even when data is successfully stored, there's no reason to believe that investigating authorities will ever be allowed to actually see that data – which when you think about it is a lot like that data being lost or simply not recorded in the first place.

A Cacophony of Echoes
"OK. Everyone who agrees that I'm Jennifer Woodyard, raise their hand."

Your SIN, your driver's license, your home owner's insurance, your medical records, and really every other thing about you are stored electronically in the Matrix. It's like your credit report today. And like your credit report (or wikipedia), pretty much anyone can put stuff into the data stream at any time. You can challenge the data in court and maybe get it changed, but by and large stuff just accumulates in the data stream. Because of the fact that things aren't always correct and some people are total tools, the system is equipped with failsafes to try to weed out incorrect data. Data which is repeated many times in many places (or in important or "trustworthy" places) is considered to have a high veracity. Data which shows up only a few times or in very sketchy places is treated as having a lower veracity. If data conflicts, the system automatically chooses to believe higher veracity information at the expense of lower veracity information.

An example of this in action might be someone getting your name wrong on a delivery of NERPS. Your name is something like Chris McGee, but on the invoice it says Chris Maggie. Now off in the Matrix somewhere there's a little piece of data that your name is in fact Chris Maggie. But fortunately for you, your UCAS driving license and your AzTech Tech diploma are both in your real name. So in the future when machines check your name, the right name will have a higher veracity and displace the wrong name. The Chris Maggie typographical error will only show up again after low intensity searches which stop after the first couple of hits. So the "Chris Maggie" spelling may continue to haunt you for the rest of your life, getting picked up by cheap companies that purchase sales information from NERPS distribution; gradually gaining veracity as it is passed from company to company and appearing in more and more places in the Matrix – but it probably won't.

This can be used by criminals (that's you). Because of the complete lack of a central authority of Truth©, you can actually create truths that happen to suit you. If you treat something as true long and loudly enough, everyone else will treat it the same way. While archaic considerations like "statute of limitations" are out the window, the fact is that if you can fool the world into believing that you've always lived in Nag Kampuchea for a while, the world will continue to believe it pretty much indefinitely. The world of 2071 has an extremely short attention span and you actually can reinvent yourself with sufficient effort.

Why Hackers?
"There are people who can sling a spell or swing a sword and I'm sure that on some level what they do is fine. But in my world, I'm the best you'll ever see."

A core conceit of Shadowrun has always been that a savvy matrix expert is an essential member of a Shadowrunner team. That means that the Hacker character's skills and attributes have to be important; it means that the Hacker's contribution to the team has to matter; it means that the Hacker is not easily replaced with a contact or a device that says TraceBuster on the side.

The Meat in the Machine: Power for Precision
"Can I run some of these programs on your sister? She's like a little porcelain doll."

How powerful are the computers in Shadowrun? Very powerful. But exactly how powerful has never really been explained. And honestly, it shouldn't be. Computing is very fast, very accurate, and very awesome. But for whatever reason, human brains are still employed as an important adjunct. This is itself not particularly surprising. The human brain is in total capable of over 100 trillion computer instructions every second. That's an amount which is, quite frankly, ridiculous. It's a very, very large amount of processor power, and although a tremendous amount of it is being "wasted" in subconscious thought about whether you'd enjoy a Blue Donutâ„¢ or whatever, it still has more total processing power than any device in Shadowrun. Computers aren't really ever more powerful than a human brain, they are more dedicated and more precise. A computer can get the same answer to a question over and over again without ever being wrong (or creative) and that right there is its strength and its weakness.

In Shadowrun history the Cyberterminal was created in 2029 and it is established that no existing computer system could possibly stand against someone using one. This isn't because the cyberterminal was a revolutionarily faster and more powerful computer capable of crushing other computers with its virtual biceps (though it was), it's because the cyberterminal was cybernetic – it literally plugged into the brain of the user. And it crushed other computers not because thinking instructions is so much faster than typing them (though it is), but because a cyberterminal actually uses part of the human's brain in its computer operations. That alone gives it a processing reserve that is well over one hundred thousand times what a super computer was capable of when Shadowrun was first written.

Shadowrun progressed through the existence of the cyberterminal to the cyberdeck: a portable computer which was nonetheless able to utilize the powers of the human brain. It was the standard in 2050 and for the next 15 years it remained on the cutting edge for Hackers. And that's where the history gets confusing. Because it's entirely possible that at some point the people in Shadowrun managed to create something portable that was in fact more powerful than a human brain. And at that point, the human really is just a vestigial appendage whose purpose is to press the Go button. But while that's admirably dystopic and fits into the overall cyberpunk genre fairly well, the game still centers on the player characters – who are still "just" individual humans. The moment they become obsolete, the game is over. Not just your particular campaign, but indeed the entire game of Shadowrun. So we're constrained to believe that in fact the human element is still vital to the operation of high end computing. That's fine, there can be many revolutions in computing power without actually pushing the one hundred trillion computer instructions per second threshold.

So when we get to the Commlink, the one thing we know didn't happen is that the Commlink did not replace the need for it to be connected to a serious metahuman brain in order to orchestrate enough processing power together to do real cybercombat. We know this did not happen because we are still playing the game.

Equipment Spotlight: The Math Subprocessor
Many people have asked why one would bother with a math subprocessor as a cybernetic enhancement. After all, a handheld calculator has a stupidly fast and accurate look-up table for approximating trigonometric functions and you can jolly well just hook such a function up to your datajack and get the answers to any reasonable "math" question in less time than it takes to ask it.
The answer is that a Math Subprocessor is not a calculator that feeds you answers. It's more like a nerve staple that forces part of your brain to perform mathematical analysis on demand. That's why it applies to things like signal jamming, it literally turns part of your brain into an incredibly powerful bio-computer slaved to the tasks you designate for it. In some ways it actually makes you less intelligent: you are seriously using less of your brain on a moment to moment basis. But when the chips are down and you need to extrapolate a wave function or predict the results of a three-body problem, the Math Subprocessor is your friend.

Modern Data Management: The I and the Storm
"The falling cherry blossoms symbolize both the beauty and the transience of life. The blossoms fall as men fall and remind us of our mortality. Also every one of them is a music player I've harnessed together into a giant parallel processing computing gestalt for the singular purpose of calculating how to make your life a little bit more transient."

The Wireless Matrix heralds a new paradigm of computer use. Not necessarily in computer power, but in utility. In the real world of 2007 parallel processing is a difficult problem; but by 2070 it is the norm.

With so much computing power all over everything it is a wonder that anything gets done. Indeed, quite often things don't get done simply because the instructions to do so are buried so deeply in lists of things to do that they just never get looked at.

Equipment Spotlight: the Toaster
Computing in Shadowrun has reached a level of abstraction that is truly epic. The toaster on the shelf not only has a computer in it, but it has processor cycles to spare after calculating the proper toasting methods based on the thickness and consistency of your bread compared with your stated preferences regarding toast. Not just that it could be utilized as a calculator or day planner while not heating bagels – but that even while in use it could potentially be added to a network and contribute helpfully to the entire operation of a network. The implications of this are far reaching: most importantly it means that the actual amount of total processing power available to your network is both large and unknowable.
Seriously, it's unknowable. This is a boon to both the Player of the Hacker (as it means that he doesn't have to keep track of exactly how much memory he has to play with), and to the Hacker himself (as it means that there's an unknowably large number of ways to sneak data and access into the networks that he is infiltrating).