Copy Protection, Information as inventory Options

[Serbitar]

Well, thats what hackers do. Mages have initiation, rituals, metaplanar quests and so on. And as long as it is not extremely game relevant you can just estimate the result.

Thats a general rule concerning hackers: Dont play out everything. Hackers can (and will, if they are not kept back by the GMs) hack into the comlinks of every single guy in a night club. Should you roll it? No.

The back door rules are like SOTA rules:
they are
A) a GM tool to explain why not everbody just uses software from some P2P network (its all about trust)
B) a simple and fast way to add some flavor and options/posibilities

The software skill is not that usefull at the moment.

[Pyritefoolsgold]

A couple of things:
I like the idea of programs that degrade over time, to represent that the vulnerabilities they exploited being patched and so on. This would also reward hackers who make their own software, as it would degrade at a slower rate, so long as no one else is using it.

Also, sometimes a rating 6 program might get targeted by a major effort (maybe after a particularly successful run) and drop all the way down to rating 2 within a month. This would really give the sense of the tumultuous matrix, I think.

And as far as spell formulas go, first off there are a lot less magicians in the world then hackers, and second, the average mage would only have magic 3, so most free spells would be at force 3 or less.

[cetiah]

[Spike]

I personally favor SOTA degredation of software (and to a lesser extent matrix hardware). Whatever system you use, simply make ever additional copy of a program increase the speed of degredation automatically (representing all the other guys that gave out a copy of that particular software to their buddy).

Anything downloaded from a data haven automatically runs at at LEAST one rating less than it was bought at... if not more, and it would be simpler to simply suggest that the maximum rating available was two or three, the turnover is just too damn fast for anything but raw luck to give you a genuine cutting edge program for that next (and ONLY that next run) before it gets patched to hell and gone. (spend edge to get a real software)

Obviously, SOTA degredation doesn't explain how mages can't always get free rating six spells offline. Essentially, assume that any spell can be got for free up to about rating two, some chump somewhere posted his 'hot shit formula' and it is forever in the net in a thousand versions. Wading through all that is, however, problematic. Computers can't really tell you just how good or bad a spell is, and people will constantly lie about what a file really holds. Think about some of the shareware now, when you think you are downloading Black Hawk Down you are getting 20 seconds of gay mule pr0n. You don't know until you've downloaded it and forever killed half your brain cells trying to drink the memories away.

So, make downloading free spells equivilent to doing the research the hard way. Wade through databases full of junk, misleading labels, vandal viruii and trojan horses disguised as spell formula and more. End of problem. You simply replace yoru 'magic theory' skill with your 'data search skill' for the purposes of research. Two ways to skin that cat.

[shadowbod]