Mentor Spirits for Technomancers?, I'm a technomancer of freakin SUPERMAN! Options

[Ankle Biter]

This is a light hearted look at an idea for fleshing out Technomancers that seems fairly logical. I did it tongue in cheek, but there is scope for generating a serious chunk of matrix mythology if you are that way inclined.

It occurs to me that there is scope for the existence of a mentor spirit equivalent for Technomancers. I have decided to call them Culture Daemons. While mentors are the creations of public mythology Daemons would be the constantly upgrading free sprites hidden in the deep resonance, an emergent product of modern culture.

They are bought with build points at start up, and behave a lot like mentor spirits, but instead of communicating in dreams, they use coincidences in the flow of data to bring about signs of things to come. For example a Technomancer walking along doing their thang could notice a few letters are fritzing in the AR sign of a local music shop "Bass Boosted" with "We want yo ass" by a breakout band called "The Corporate Whores" on special offer. Obviously a sign that a corp is out to get them, and not in the good way.

Here are some ideas for Culture Deamons, note that logic and intuition is used for the disadvantages as they represent looking for a flaw in the rules that allows a Technomancer to follow an uncoded path.

Fashion
Fashion loves the bleeding edge and literally cannot live without it. It is the expression of the people's need to be ahead of the game. Fashion is flighty and fleeting, one minute you are the next big thing, and the next it ignores you in favour of a new rising star. Keeping fashion's favour is a time consuming process but there are advantages to being the man of the minute.

advantages + 2 dice to analyse and edit tests
disadvantages logic + intuition (3) test required not to jump onto the latest fashion bandwagon or cultural fad. The threshold decreases by 1 for every fashion the technomancer is currently following. The Technomancer need not roll to follow a fashion conflicting with one they currently follow, but can choose to follow it in replacement to one they are currently following.

Super Hero
Since the early days of Square Jawed men beating up on nazis and commies to the modern muscle bound trid star shooting the ork toxic shaman and saving the orphanage, global culture has always had a place in it's heart for the big guy. The super hero is the muscle-bound powerhouse who sees the world in black and white, kills the baddies and gets the girl. It's a wonder he's still alive, but he has a knack for surviving even the most perilous of situations.

advantages +2 Armor + 2 Attack. Anybody in regular contact with the Wireless matrix who captures a Technomancer of Super Hero either in the Matrix or real life must make a charisma + willpower (3) roll not to tell them their evil master plan.

disadvantages -4 dice to Stealth, must make a logic + int (3) to break the law except when saving a life or punching a social superior.

Blue Screen Of Death
Master of bugged software and personification of people's fear and mistrust of technology, the blue screen of death feeds off of the despair caused by corrupted essays, the wrong concert ticket, and lost luggage. His technomancers are crackers of the worst kind, trashing data for the joy of destruction.

Advantages +1 Attack +1 data bomb +2 to tests involving fault sprites
Disadvantages int +logic (3) test required not to try to crash a program the Technomancer does not own, has used, and is no longer using.

Llama
Nobody knows why, but references to the llama (Lama glama) have been a hidden component of almost all major pieces of software since the creation of the computer. It may have been a running joke, a weird coincidence, or a plot by sentient Camelidae to take over the world, but whatever it was, now it lives. There is a theory that both of the matrix crashes were actually attempts to get rid of the thing, yet the llama remains, ever present yet never active. The motives of the llama are beyond the remit of modern technomantic philosophy, the best they could come up with is that "it just is, ok, now leave me the drek alone, I have a headache just thinking about it". One thing is certain; Techomancers of llama are all as weird as llama is.

Advantages "Lluck of the llama" if a Technomancer of llama rolls a critical glitch on any dice roll made in interaction with the matrix, a llama sprite compiles at the nearest matrix node. This replaces all ill effects of the critical glitch, bar the fact that the roll was a failure. The local matrix node is alerted that the technomancer has summoned a llama sprite into it, which can have ill effects of its own. A normal glitch does not trigger this effect.

Disadvantages "Curse of the llama" if a Technomancer of llama rolls a bonus worthy critical success (GM fiat) on any roll at all a llama sprite compiles at the nearest active matrix node. This replaces all beneficial effects if the critical success save that it was a success with a high number of net successes. It does not alert the matrix node of where it came from. The technomancer may spend 1 point of edge to buy the positive effect back, this does not count as spending edge on the roll, and if the bonus was to be a point of edge, oh well.

Llama sprites
A llama sprite waits until it is noticed then immediately runs an extremely high level stealth/edit program adding itself to the coding of the node it is in. The only way to find evidence of a llama sprite's presence in a node after this occurs is by manually rebooting the entire node, running it from read only back up, and/or wiping or replacing all of its active and storage memory. If you do this the line "running llama.exe" is inserted into the node's usual boot up codes.

Phone Phreak
As long as there was a system there were people playing it. The phone phreak is the personification of those who seek to expose flaws in the system. The phreak loves to code, but loves finding flaws in others code even more. Technomancers of the phreak are an active bunch, constantly probing and testing their boundries to see how far they can go. If they have a problem it is their ego, they rarely can resist the temptation to point out where their opponents went wrong.

Advantages +2 exploit +2 spoof

Disadvantages int + logic (3) test required to avoid posting security flaws in a system once they have finished exploiting them. They must either post the exploit in a shadow bulletin board, or to the sysops or equivalent of the node they hacked. They may do this anonymously, but must use the same unique signature on each exploit they post.

[mfb]

as much as i dislike technomancers... these are good.

[Kremlin KOA]

sonow I canplay neo and have morpheus ad a mentor spirit...

[ronin3338]

Not Morpheus, as these would be general types, not specific people.


Ankle:
You could add "The Man" (reminiscent of Mr Smith, maybe)

[Ophis]

hmm we just need a Macguyver based one now...

+2 on all tests to improvise equipment, +2 on tests with machine spirits.
-800 to any test where having a good hair cut is important....

[Kremlin KOA]

[Dranem]

If there are Mentor Sprites like 'The Man' then you would definately have 'The Oracle' she who guides the 'mancer through the discovery of their gift and how to use it. ;)
[edit]
Superman is a concept, Morpheus was a movie character.

Query: Didn't someone come up with the notion of Mentor Sprites a month or so ago?

This post has been edited by Dranem: Apr 8 2006, 02:15 AM

[Ankle Biter]

[Kremlin KOA]

superman is a single fictional character
as is morpheus

[Dranem]

Founds it... dated March 6 - I am one with my search-fu!

Mentor Sprites

[Ophis]

On a more serious note than Macguyver how about "The Savant" a sort of super tech literate geek type who knows far too much... hmm maybe thats technos already.

I just like the llamas, though they aren't as good as Drop Bears, which gives me an idea...

*stands firm in the face of expected attacks*

[Kremlin KOA]

The Tick
"Can I get Moth wings for my Virtual person?"

[Ankle Biter]

[hobgoblin]

hmm, RMS anyone?

[nick012000]

Root Mean Square? What does that have anything to do with anything?

[Butterblume]

Behold: The Bug

Insect Sprites, scary :eek: .

[Ankle Biter]

[Ophis]

I would have thought the obvious analog to insect spirits would be a programming concept the works on "efficency" and standardisation of the matrix. Windows sprites.
Be afraid.

[hobgoblin]

[Ankle Biter]

[mfb]

what? it's a guy who wants to be Peter Jackson playing the recorder for his spirit animal, which happens to be an Internet-addicted moth. what questions doesn't that answer?

[Lindt]

Im loving the phone phreak. I have a player who ran an otaku doing that, hack in, and then leave messages in places to tell the sys ops why they sucked, and often how to fix it.

[hyzmarca]

[hobgoblin]

[Ankle Biter]