A thread for players who are matrix inclined, what have you seen or maybe used as personas for decker characters, or even just online users in the matrix? How do their utilities manifest? I thought it might be a good idea to put up a Shady Dragon Inn of characters one might be able to use. While the ones presented in Target: The Matrix are good, I just wish there were more.

For example: A current decker in our campaign named Lobo presents as an anthromorphed wolf dressed in an old west sherriff's outfit. His detection appear as him sniffing the wind, and has bites and a sixshooter for attack...

I had an idea for a decker with the Wing Zero Gundam as his persona.

D Attack program = Double Buster Rifle
S Attack program = Beam Saber
M Attack program = Machine Cannons
L Attack program = Vulcan Guns

Sepherim's icon was an implanted demon (I mean, angel with black wings and all that kind of demon, not Mr. Red one) who used a flaming sword or a assault riffle that shot fireballs. Most of his search programs manifested as a small red demon which went through the Matrix to find what he was looking for.

The Starship Enterprise. The decker takes the view from the Captain's chair, and interacts with everything through his crew, which are his various utilities.

Rache Bartmoss in an Elmer Fudd costume.

You'd have to be there.

A female form of black liquid, with the letter aleph faintly visible on her back. Utilities formed out of part of the liquid.

~J

My persona was basically Spike from Cowboy Bebop.

Best one I've seen though was a little toddler, just barely old enough to walk, whose attack program was to pull out a gun 10 times larger than she was. Think the scene in The Mask and you'll understand.

The Abstruse One

A muscle diagram of a male human body made from fiber optic cables instead of muscle tissue with two pinpricks of white light for eyes. The utilities were all light and fiber optic based, usually extending from his fingertips or from prisms floating around his head.

I had a Decker NPC (our regular decker) who was a schoolboy decker whiz, he excelled in all manner of computer studies, before he finished highschool he was headhunted by docwagon to join their matrix security team after he finished school.

He did and before he was 21 he was the Head system protection decker, he was GOOD. His icon was a Docwagon HTR medic.

Anyways, one day he was on patrol and challenged an icon at random, it turned into a little black boy with a silver cape.... it was DODGER.

He had the homeground advantage, some seriously badass hardware and was directly inside the mainframe, he had the reaction and the skill, he fought dodger on his own, never stopping to call for backup, he wanted dodger, anyways, dodger dumped him, and made off with some delicate information.

He was fired because he breached procedure (not calling for help)

now his passion other than decking was old WW2 movies, so his icon is now a WW2 Medic, with a medikit in one hand and a honking shotgun in the other.
his programs either take the form of grenades, shotgun shells, or medkit items.

6 ft tall animorphic chicken with sunglasses.
smartarsed personality. Attack programs are beercans he throws at people

Taz, the Tasmanian Devil?

Nah...

I'd go for "realism 101" personas...

How's this: The decker who uses the handle "Shadowrunner" whose Icon is the stereotypical street sam as portrayed by the media in things like "Sapphire: Shadowrunner for Hire" and "Karl Combat Mage." People look at him and think various unpleasant things - i.e. wannabe, newbie or just plain idiot. But it's all camouflage! It also gives you the opportunities to use real world stuff as your programs - Cybereyes/goggles as analyze/Browse, Big honkin' AACG as your attack(S) and a rocket launcher for the one-shot(D)! Lined coat for armour, slap patches for medic... the possibilities are endless...


Or you can just pick a cartoon character at random... The Tick?

SPOON!

our deckers are npc's but one I came up with was
uniformed high school girl
relocate - cell phone "just gotta go"
Analyze- checking make up in compact
Decrypt- has a "friend" next to her she asks "what did you get for #...."
sleeze- smokes a ciggarrette and blows the skoe out
smoke- billowing cloud of homework papers.
Distract(what ever the other sleeze was) turned to show an impossibly high hem line on skirt.
restrict- entangling phone cords
Mirror- gaggle of other girls, all uniform in their appearance, hair and voice
and my fav, combat- her football player boyfriend ready to punch your lights out.

The Angry Nudist!
He's naked except for that mosaic-tile effect covering his genitals and buttox. He also carries a stop-sign around and is prone to screaming.

Attack programs = hitting you with the stop-sign
Sleaze: the mosaic effect grows to cover his entire body.
Crash Plants the stop-sign in front of what he want's to go down.
Armor > Chunks of the mosaic-effect swirl about, intercepting incoming attacks

a quick (severely incomplete) idea:

japanese feudal era Samurai.

attack programs: various forms of an ancestral style

relocate: very fast movement, 'floating jumps' etc.

Improvised Defense: Bare-handed blade grasp!

analyze: meditation

A little red anthropomorphic dragon in a black fishnet shirt, black Jnco's, combat boots, and a skull 'n bones ballcap. He carries a Baseball bat and a Ruger T-bolt.

Oh yeah. And he has a datajack. Just behind his ear.

an npc named smoke

he appears as just that and most of his utilities are defensive/operational. his attack would be a jet of fire (where there's smoke...ya' know?)

but his other utilities are wisps of smoke floating around doing what he needs.

when he's located, he is a rough human form of smoke, but otherwise he's just a layer of fog that permeates the area.

Ork decker I made up a while ago from Orkland called Aftershock.
Looked like a Colonial Marine from Aliens.

Armor was the M3 Armor
Attack was his M-41a Pulse Rifle (one shot deadly for GL + Moderate for rifle)
Scan was motion tracker
Analyze was his IR scope
Decode was the hacking tool that Hudson had.
Medic was a field kit

I think that's it.

One persona I've been having fun with over in the "Idiot's Guide to the Matrix" thread is Lady Cheng -- a pirate queen much inspired by "Pirates of the Caribbean".

Basically, the decker's icon is of a young, athletic Asiatic woman dressed in trews, tunic, sash, and leather boots, with a bandanna to keep her hair from her eyes and a naval greatcoat shrouding her shoulders. She has a number of things in her belt or concealed within said greatcoat's pockets, including:

Attack-S: a gleaming, runed Chinese longsword, with a pictorial representation of a dragon amongst the blade's pictograms.
Attack-D, one-shot, targetting: an anachronistic hogleg of a wheel-lock pistol that does lots of damage, but must be reloaded after each shot. Fortunately she can carry more than one of them...
Black Hammer: a huge medieval Chinese rocket launcher (a la "Mulan")
Analyze, sneak-2: a stick of incense which she coaxes to smoking, then uses to paint runes in midair. The runes morph to present the desired information, which she "inhales" and absorbs into her system. Adjustable to present information in English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, or Russian.
Browse, sneak-2: a ricepaper scroll, which she whispers her request to and which manifests characters as a "treasure map" showing locales.
Cloak: a tiny little grey capsule, which when she tosses it explodes into a noisy smoke-bomb. It provides distraction/cover for her combat maneuvers.
Erosion (blinder), targetting: an elastic sphere, filled with a viscous purplish vapor. When thrown at a target, it swerves to follow said target through attempted evasions, explodes into a miasma of smoke that manifests nasty little blades and drills and needles which strike at the target's means of perception.

I've got lots more, but that's an excellent selection of possibilities.


Another decker I had ran a electricity-powered automata-golem as his persona, like a combination of MageKnight's Steam Golems and "the Iron Giant" from the film of the same name. Most of his programs were electrically based -- his Matrix name was "Tesla".

Elf wannabe who idolizes all the elfie stereotypes, flowery speach, magical ability, pseudo-medieval style of dress, etc. Basically his reality filter is a D&D dungeon crawl and he is an elf fighter/magic user. Utilities are spells and magical items, like a cloak of invisibility and amulet of true seeing. Attack utils are a sword and long bow.

CyberGod (NPC): A very nerdy, but very good decker. Since he was a player contact, we never actually see his matrix icons, but when chatting with him on the phone the vidscreen shows a field with a few trees and the sky. The weather changes along with CyberGod's mood. Big Booming Voice for audio communication.

One of our PC deckers had the Faceball from FaceBall 2000 (An old SNES game)...basically a big 3d yellow smiley face.

My favorite decker has a undead type style.

His basic persona is a mounted undead knight with chainmail and some plates. Think Wild Hunt and you will not be far off, except his persona doesn't have a helmet, he wants to show the grizzliness of his visage.

Armor is well his armor, it changes depending on the rating he is running.

Attack(single target) is a huge rusty chipped scyth
Attack(area) stitches that hold mouth shut burst open and releases a horrid bashee wail

Analyze stitches on his eyes unravel to reveale empty eye sockets and bug crawl out and then all over the target

Browse again the eye stitches open but this time an erie glow emits and crosses what ever the target is

Commlink again mouth stitches open slowly this time it emits a low ghostly speech

Decyption usually running all the time, when activated a thick cold fog rols in and envelopes him then recceds to reveal he vanished

Sleaze he goes incorpreal bacisally like a ghost

Shield well it is a shield that pulls out usually slung on the personas horse

Spoof since I was a small child and my uncle showed me some freaky movie which had marionett pupets in it I have alway associated them with horror, so when he tries to spoof things he pulls a marionette handle from saddle bags and the strings fly from it and attach to the target then he begins to puppet it

Validate and decrypt are both the same looking which is a huge set of skeleton keys that he has attached to his belt, when he goes touse that program he holds up the ring and the appropriate key moves around the ring into his hand

Read and Write is a scribe with a big book and quil pen set that is chained to his horse

Steamroller he puts out his hand to touch the tar babies and the ice over

Crash not really an image but programs don't really need to be visual at least I think, it is deep rumbling church bells that slowly start to rock the "earth" as the attack does it's work

Most of his other programs are represnted by small "evil" type creatures and "familiars", like crows, bugs, snakes an other things considered icky or disgusting, or middle age trinkets like herb bags for Medic, big brass damaged looking locks for Encrypt. He also has some frames that are usually war dogs or bigger ravens. He also has a few agents that are built to look like undead minions, depending on their job he built them for. Like weapon platforms are huge horrid, rusty noisey knights or barbarian warriors which ride in like the mounted hordes of Asian steppes. A frame designed to run commlink scams to run his illegal phone services are more scribes chained to big tomes on podiums frantically scribbliing on parchment and letting the pages fly into the wind. Really his style is a really dark evil beyond evil looking gothic, I have the decription written down some where this is just from memory. We let your Icon chips to incorporate different things into them, like emotions of sorts, like you can project cold clamy horror type feelings to reslly set the effect, they have no effect on the person or their deck what so ever, but it lets you make a memberable presentation to people, ecspecially when your Icon chip is about a rating of 12 where everything is so life like it is hard to determine the difference. Smells are another good one like you can really smell the death on this Icon. It is not very good to go on a buisness meet with that Icon running but sometimes it is just fun to make the "norms" in the 'trix not want to chat or what ever while strolling around looking for a good club or restruant.

I have a couple of othe deckers, but I have to look on the their sheets to remember exactly what they were styled like.

My first decker was "Poodle" - her persona was a '50s (1950's) high school-girl, complete with poodle skirt and fuzzy sweater with the letter 'P'....programs were different sizes and breeds of poodles.

One of her favorite creations was her smoke/crash program - a teacup poodle that would yap real fast - and with each yap would make a copy of itself, which would also yap and copy, and so on - so that any node would fill up quickly!


A later creation was a blind decker that used a reality filter to turn everything into different sounds. To everyone else, his icon was UMS standard, until they got sucked into his reality...

Though I've no idea what happened to the character sheet (including stats, programs, and manifestations), my favorite decker persona was "Neon Noodle", as found in an old Daffy Duck cartoon. I just liked the idea of a persona in the form of a single, variable, strand of neon color...

The decker I'm running now is also a Card Gambler (thinking of giving him the addiction flaw), so his Icon takes the persona of an 1800's Western-style Poker player, complete with monacle, handlebar moustache, suit-vest, and derby hat.

Attack: Derringers hidden in the sleeves, or Improvised attack of the Ace of Spades card growing into a large bladed weapon.
Browse: Sprays the card deck into the air and follows the cards that don't fall to the ground.
Analyze: He uses his monacle to focus on the target.
Shield: A Poker chip hovers in front of him and grows to the size of a large shield to block attacks
Armor: The cards fly around him in a cylinder pattern to absorb damage (cards can fly away to represent degradation).
Sleaze: He just pulls his derby down over his eyes and hopes no one notices him
Validate: He deals a hand of 5 card draw, one set for him, one set for the grid. On a success, his hand beats the grid's.
Spoof: Manipulates the deck of cards in a way that acts as the controls for whatever he's trying to spoof.

Two of my more unique icons & deckers:

Mobl Zoot: A zoot suited gundam F95 that carried a violin case and wore a fedora and spats. Made very mechanical noises when he moved. Had a tommy gun attack program and used lapel flowers for access keys.

Yuri Null-A large and disgusting database of scatalogical humor. Originally based off Pee Wee Herman's talking toilet. What else would you expect from a russian ork?

Jack a jack in the box when ever he load a new utility his icon closes and then SPROING!! he comes back with the appropriate (clown themed) utility.

Thor, God of Thunder, for a dwarf decker. Black Hammer would be...Well...A big black hammer. As for the others, besides attack, I'm not sure. Maybe summon thunderstorms for the Smoke utility?

There are two deckers in the team I currently GM for:

One uses a star-shaped hover-drone as her icon, pulling utilities out from inside the drone with retracting mechanical arms - attack programs are missiles or machine guns.

The other one uses Cernunnos from JM Linsner's 'Dawn' comic - but most of his programs are stolen, so instead of suitable iconography he runs around with a pair of Sandler TMPs for his attack program, floating iceblocks as shield, and a bunch of other mismatched icons. Of course, his handle is S8 - Section 8...

I have an NPC decker going by the handle MrSanders - his icon is classical Winnie-the-Pooh and his reality filter makes every system look like the 100 acre forest, where paydata are jars of honey or honey in trees, IC takes on various forms from obstacles that appear in the books, etc

Wasn't it Mr. Saunders?

~J

They were only NPCs so I didn't flesh them out all that much but here are a few Iconographies I've used:

Cyberpede-This girl had a real obsession with all sort of bugs and her flat was filled with stuff like antfarms, tarantullas and scorpions in aquariums, spiderwebs all over the place, etc. Her favorite bugs though were centipedes, so her icon looked like a cross between a centaur and a centipede: human from the waist up but with a long multi-legged lower part, oh and she had these long antenae on her forehead. Whenever possible her programs had a buggish theme (Trace would involve following an ant path, Attack programs would appear like some sort of poisoned stinger, etc).
Going to her place was a rather scary experience with all those poisonous bugs all over the place, especially after Chicago...

Gears-This guy used a reality filter that transformed everything into some sort of huge steamdriven Babbage computer full of gears, chains, levers, perforated cards and other stuff. (Anyone who's read Gibson's the diference engine knows what I'm talking about). Whenever he decked a system it'd be like entering a huge warehouse-sized steampunk "computer" and pulling some levers or jamming a steam valve.

The Genie-This girl used an Arabian Nights sort of filter, she was dressed like a belly dancer and carried a lamp in her hand. Obviously whenever she performed a system op seh'd rub her lamp and a Genie would appear and do whatever she asked of it. And she also had a Flying Carpet of course.