Integrating the matrix, How? Options

[Sengir]

My personal interpretation/houserule is that the prices given in the books are what Shadowrunners pay, i.e. the price may include a certain makeup for your shadowy dealings. On the upside, the buyer is registered as Ivan Ivanovich from Farawayestan, and you miss "features" like the equivalent of SIM locks.

So of course Joe Wageslave can get his commlink (+ sim module and trodes) for cheap. But just like a cellphone, it will be bound to a contract and all purchase data ends in dozens of databases.

[DireRadiant]

Commlinks are listed as a purchase item in the books because it is something that we expect Shadowrunners to purchase outside of "lifestyle". For Joe Wageslave, a commlink comes as part of lifestyle. It's not 125 nuyen, Joe Wageslave just has one.

Don't apply the price list and items given for Shadowrunners and apply it to the world at large as if everyone is just a wannabe shadowrunner who just happens to live a different life. The price list isn't a model for the world, it's the view of the world of shadowrunners.

[Ryu]

Given the number of megacorps in SR, one would assume that special rates and packages of affiliated matrix service providers would enable the customer base to participate in all the online shopping. Providing the "free" Search program you do most of your online shopping with is well worth providing a commlink to anyone with a minimal credit rating.

[hobgoblin]

Its easy to SAY that, but when you actually look at the rules, even googling Data Searching needs one hit or two.

And since you can't default to skill on the matrix.....

well, even 'simple' operations are going to need a rating 5 program (you default on program -1) to buy a hit. (if you don't have the skill, i'd be dubious about allowing hits to be bought anyway).

Or even changing your access ID, which is something every runner should know how to do. Thats a 2 threshold spoof test.

So yeah. Handing a freebie skill at one actually makes a lot of sense if you know what you need it for.

The way i read data searches in SR is that using the browse program with the data search skill borders on running your own web crawler. Most others will be dialing up their MSP or similar and use their browse equipped agent. This while the MSP is looking at the search terms and adding those to the targeted ad profile for the goods and services suggestions the user will be presented with soon.

[Ascalaphus]

This while the MSP is looking at the search terms and adding those to the targeted ad profile for the goods and services suggestions the user will be presented with soon.

You mean like in the real world?

[hobgoblin]

You mean like in the real world?

Pretty much.

[Epicedion]

Shadowrun doesn't work well if you allow real-world high quality free information services. Like Google. Shadowrun is a more paranoid world, where satellite maps and things are guarded on corporate servers, and only really accessible to powerful data searches. The average Joe Wageslave uses his Browse to look up soy recipies and movie times. Info that's literally freely available, and should be an automatic success.

Anything you actually have to roll for should be in some way masked or hidden. Sensitive corp info that's been leaked, the latest aerial shots of the new Ares project site, the contact info for a high-dollar smuggler, etc.

[Ascalaphus]

Shadowrun doesn't work well if you allow real-world high quality free information services. Like Google. Shadowrun is a more paranoid world, where satellite maps and things are guarded on corporate servers, and only really accessible to powerful data searches. The average Joe Wageslave uses his Browse to look up soy recipies and movie times. Info that's literally freely available, and should be an automatic success.

Anything you actually have to roll for should be in some way masked or hidden. Sensitive corp info that's been leaked, the latest aerial shots of the new Ares project site, the contact info for a high-dollar smuggler, etc.

I agree.. SR took a different turn somewhere in the nineties. Internet didn't make important information more accessible to the general public, and computer systems weren't made "for the people". Older editions focus much more on mainframes and large matrix/grid infrastructures; a very different development from the real world (and yet intensely "retro chic"!)

With that in mind, you could actually have a campaign about that: how Matrix 2.0 is more open, lets common people get to information that Matrix 1.0 kept hidden from them - and not all the corporations are prepared for that. Sure, in the past, shadowrunners had clues about what was really going on, because they used the shadow matrix. But ordinary people didn't have access to it, and now they do. Maybe now Aztechnology will have a much harder time keeping its secrets hidden? Maybe Horizon is so effective because they're the only corporation who really understands how liberating the new Matrix is?

Gosh, that could actually be an optimistic campaign!

*itch* Suddenly I want to start writing up that campaign...

[CanRay]

Thing is, you suddenly have the opposite problem that occurs from freedom of information: Information Overload.

Yeah, the Governments and Megas are opening up their datafiles a little bit, but remember that those items were,
One: Corrupted by Crash 2.0, and incomplete.
Two: Written from a bias of the originator in the first place.

Johnny Q. Wageslave, Junior learns about The Chicago Containment Zone Event (A public event) in school, and does a research project about it. He takes the school-provided Commlink (With NEW IMPROVED FIREWALL TO PROTECT TECHNOMANCER BRAIN MELT! MCT Security Suite, for all your matrix security needs! "We think about the Children."), and finds out that there are many different takes to the events that lead up to, and happened during, Bug City. And with the public records and news reports incomplete and missing referring documentation in the items that did survive Crash 2.0, only can go off of what was heavily censored out of the secure databanks, and gets a very skewed version of what happened. He does his best with his news report, citing his sources, but gives a report that sounds like it came from someone with various psychological disorders, not the least of which Dissociative Identity Disorder (Previously called "Multiple Personality Disorder").

He doesn't even get to the Denver Data Haven posts which are intact to get the story from people who were in Bug City and reported things at the time at all. All he gets is what is released after the censor has redacted "dangerous information" with his/her digital marker.

[hermit]

He doesn't even get to the Denver Data Haven posts which are intact to get the story from people who were in Bug City and reported things at the time at all. All he gets is what is released after the censor has redacted "dangerous information" with his/her digital marker.

Unless, of course, he is /dev/grrl, who regularily researches her school papers in heavily ice-protected data havens apparently ("I wrote this paper on Deus and only got an A- D: D: D: D: D: D: D:").

[CanRay]

I seriously doubt that /dev/grrl is named "Johnny". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[James McMurray]

I seriously doubt that /dev/grrl is named "Johnny". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Which would make it the perfect alias. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[CanRay]

Now her(?) discussion about skateboarding in a sundress disturbs me even more. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Fatum]

Actually, a more open matrix would certainly mean lowering the quality of shadowboard posts. Compare what the books have to the comments of today. I imagine any actually relevant data would only be found in more or less closed runner-only boards or VPNs...

[CanRay]

Actually, a more open matrix would certainly mean lowering the quality of shadowboard posts. Compare what the books have to the comments of today. I imagine any actually relevant data would only be found in more or less closed runner-only boards or VPNs...

ShadowSEA (The descendant of Shadowland) might have gone just this way... IIRC, that's why Bull made the Dumpshock Data Haven, right Bull?

[hobgoblin]

SR from 1 to 3 was stuck in a futuristic version of the BBSs of the US 80s (they became partially popular because US local calls where free, iirc).

Hell, SR deckers are part phreakers as they hack into LTG and RTG systems to get a route from them to their target.

This similar to how real life phreakers would set up world wide conference calls by finding the unlisted number to the local telco switch (security thru obscurity ftw), or play the right kinds of control tones into the phone.

SR4 brings SR tech in line with real life. And i think SR4 corps hide their dirty underwear in the fog of data overload rather then by running unlisted mainframes. That is, spread so many rumors that by the end of the day the casual observer do not know whats what. We can see this IRL as the Chinese politburo have a section that specialize in posting disinformation on various forums. And at least one admin of a big name blog have mentioned tracing several usernames to a marketing firm in the past. User names that only gets activity when specific topics show up on the blog.

I suspect this is the kind of marketing/disinformation blitz that Horizon specializes in. Being able to seed so many counterclaims that unless you dedicate time to map the web of references and such you will never be aware that there is a single source for what looks like a majority argument.