How so?

Because with the packet apporach, this turns 'infinite potential connections, only System x 2 active (which I understand to be communicating) connections at once' into 'near-infinite active connections through multiplexing'.

Yes, in the matrix FAQ

I have a version with my own answeres here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=15863

Because, you know... metaphors are not real.

This argument sounds nice, but to me it is like a waiter in a restaurant bringing you a tray of ingredients and explaining - "Hey, we didn't want to lock you into any one culinary choice, so we thought we'd just let you create something on your own."

To which you reply, "Um, I can do that at home."

You say the gray areas "allow" the GM to improvise, to make wild, creative, free-ranging choices.

Well, all GMs can and should do that ANYWAY. That is a basic premise of RPGs - that the GM can do things the way he wants, fill in what the rules inevitably miss, add stuff to keep players on their toes, and on and on. That is "allowed" from page one.

We shell out money for a rules system because we are looking for a shortcut, a WORKING framework for the creativity.

We need this for two reasons:

(1) In a table-top RPG, everyone imagines things a different way. Everyone has a different idea of "how things work." A defined set of "rules" allows everyone to be on the same page with regard to what they can and cannot get away with. Like rule of law and property rights in a free economy, they give an incredibly complex system predictability, upon which people can then add their creativity in constructive, mutually recognizable ways.

(2) Most gamers do not have time to make this set of "rules" for themselves. Many may like to, but they have to go to work and make money or whatever. So like all successful civilizations, there is a division of labor in which we all pay a little of that money to a few of the best designers to do that work for us - and hopefully they really are the best designers.

Now, I appreciate that the new system can be sort of run like the way Ultraviolet systems were supposed to go - don't be so rigid and treat things like an allegory of the meat world. But (A) it's NOT the meat world or an ultraviolet host, and (B) we could already do that anyway if we were so inclined; we don't need anyone's permission.

As they stand now, the matrix rules do NOT meet EITHER of the above-mentioned criteria (1) or (2).

They do not provide a point (1) shortcut to a common point of reference for players and GMs, since besides being near-unintelligible, they are self-contradictory. No one will know what they are capable of as a hacker or TM without first having some LONG conversations with each individual GM. And the necessity of having those LONG conversations essentially invalidates point (2) in that instead of PLAYING, the GM is now spending an inordinate amount of time figuring out and ruling on how things work - something he paid good money not to have to spend his precious free time doing.

I have played Shadowrun pretty much religiously since, what, 1993? There have been ups and downs in the writing, both of fluff and rules. But always way more ups than downs, as far as I am concerned. I will absolutely continue to support this product.

But someone needs to admit that the current Matrix rules are a total joke - THE worst thing the game has ever put out. If you want proof, all you need to do is look at the sheer volume of rancor and controversy they have engendered. Someone needs to have the guts to admit they dropped the ball on this mess and start again from the ground up with the upcoming books - they need better organization, some playtesting by the kind of players that love to develop ingenious workarounds (as every shadowrunner should), and ANY examples of play would be a nice improvement.

Nowhere near complete, but given enough pain...

Perhaps it would be a good idea to start a sticky.

That's never a good judge of proof, first of all. Because lumping all the feedback in together doesn't mean that all the feedback is addressing the same concerns. For an example, there are people who complain that the Matrix rules don't reflect reality enough. Fair enough, but there were conscious and required concessions made in that regard in order to streamline Matrix play for gameplay reasons.

You're never going to make everyone happy. And frankly, when you design a game (whether it's pen/paper or a video game), making everyone happy isn't a design goal.

Now if the feedback is about valid concerns that impede the design goals that were intended, that's worth keeping track to see if it can be corrected.

A complete rework from the ground up in a sourcebook is just not going to happen. Sorry.

But the reason I asked my above question about a clear list of the concerns is that with a list in hand, the writers and developers can go through and see what we can address in the future sourcebooks.

It isn't even necessary.

There are some procedural kinks in the rules that can be corrected by changing a few sentences, which is well within the scope of an Errata.

Sure they are. There a real, valid representation of an unfamiliar concept in a familiar way. That concrete representation is the metaphor. I see no reason why this somehow implies omniscience with respect to Agents with a dog-brain Pilot.

Hell, I studied education at university, and it's a well known technique in Behaviorist theory to take the unfamiliar and make it familiar. If it's unfamiliar for a person to use multiplication (we're talking third graders here) then you teach them multiplication with the familiar arithmetic concept of repetative addition. In this case, the metaphor that you're using the represent the unfamiliar multiplication is the more familiar addition operations. Once day, the person because adept with multiplication and moves beyond this metaphor.

Within each metaphor there are rules which are defined by that metaphor's setting. All characters who act within the metaphor are subject to those rules. And, I don't see any reason why what is real within one metaphor has to be real within another one.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that the developers made the wise decision to take things as a far as they thought they could to provide a set of basic, applicable rules to the majority of situations that a gamer would encounter. After that, they simply said your mileage may vary and leave it up to the GMs.

I've found that they do. As I indicated above and in other threads, I've no problem with the current rules, nor have my probably between 15 and 25 different players over the two years since SR4 was released. Is this a statistically significant portion of the population playing SR4 as a whole, probably not, but it's significant to me.

I continue to maintain that nothing is contradictory in the matrix rules and that they are intelligible. I've had hacker characters from people who have very little knowledge of computers and they've been able to read, digest, query, and respond to these rules and create successful characters.

Because the Agent is neither unfamiliar twith the concept, nor is the metaphor the concept - it expresses it.
The Metaphor exists for human users only and expresses the processes of program running on that machine. An Agent is a program running on a machine, and thus, it's creator has neither need nor incentive to make it use the metaphor - it can use the direct interfaces the metaphor is build upon.

That's a really bad example. Mostly because that's how digital calculations are done.

Don't worry, such blissfull ignorance fades quickly after the first programming attempts and the hours spent at debugging.

I wasn't going to go this deep into my views on sub. lists, but I will now, I guess, since the short version wasn't clear.

I see the infinite subscription list as a list of devices that can request priority access to another device. We'll stick with the Sammie's PAN for now. All 'ware, gear, etc. that the Sammie has is in the subscription list for their commlink and, thus, any item within that list can request priority access to the commlink.

Note, I'm not implying the priority access is somehow a technical term for the game of Shadowrun. I use the word "priority" here to indicate that a device is indicating to the commlink that they would like to be added to the active devices in the subscription list which are limited to System x 2.

Now, I feel that any player can set a number of devices (up to System x 2) as having priority access by default. For example, the Sammie might want her smartgun to have a dedicated, active subscription at all times. Thus, it has active access to the commlink regardless of whether or not it's trying to send packets back and forth at that time. Plus, perhaps the Sammie is also a medic and subscribes the biomonitors of her three teammates at all times. Now she has 4 devices actively subscribed and she can actively subscript up to System x 2 - 4 more devices before she has to start playing around.

Yes, the cyberware like limbs or fingertip compartments or whatever that don't require this dedicated access can remain the subscription list but inactive. And, if there was at least 1 active slot left in the active list, then I'd allow any number of devices to potentially use that channel and then pass it along to another device that needs it without worrying about devilish details like transfer times, bandwidth, etc. because that's not a level of reality that I wish to represent in my games.

I will admit, most people in my games have had a System of at least 3 on their commlinks regardless of their archetypes. As a result, I've not had a major probably with subscription lists because people have generally only subscribed 2 or 3 devices by default to their commlink. The rest of the devices just send messages to it as necessary. This is also, incidentally, what facilitates the communication of teammate with teammate.

But the agent is instructed by a person and the person requires the metaphor. Thus if the person is constrained by the metaphor, I see no reason to assume that the instructions (still constrained by the metaphor) can somehow free the Agent of the constraints of the metaphor. The Agent doesn't see the metaphor, but there's no way for the person not to be involved therein as it instructs the Agent.

When I program an application, I have to work within a specific language (or set of languages if I'm including compiled libraries, I suppose) and that language presents me with a metaphor, if you will, which constrains the way in which I communicate with my program (my Agent) through that language (the metaphor). If the metaphor somehow forbids an action then I cannot instruct my program to do that.

It was perfectly clear.
Unfortunately, my version obviously wasn't.

Take your approach.
Make those connections activate only for, say, a nano-second at a time - which, given near-infinite bandwidth is enough to transfer quite a lot.
Let everything cycle trough, based on priority.

Now you got a standard networking approach that, even with a limit of one connection at the same time can process near-infinite connections near-simultanously. The limits to that are: bandwidth, processing speed, memory and human stupidity. (After SR and Einstein, three of those are de facto infinite.)

That's what the test when giving orders is for. Then, the Agent acts unrestricted by the metaphor... just, sometimes, the metaphorical orders are so obscure that they are not intelligible to the Agent.

If you take someting that works well in a game system, thats designed to offload some of the overhead, and to make the game run smooth, and then apply it to the real world and seak to abuse it in every way shape and form, yeah it breaks.

Congrats.

Do they? Sure. Are they still working within the metaphor at all times? Yes they are. Regardless of how you spin things the Agents actions will allways coincide with the metaphor of the topology of the node. So the metaphor for your stealth program, a wall, will block the agents 'sight' directly to you. But he, the agent, may 'see your shadow poking out', or maybe 'hear something' behind the wall and raise a alert. All of those actions are essentialy getting a success on the die roll but all play out in the realm of the metaphor.

You can not just seperate the metaphor from things. Its always there as long as a persona is there to percieve it. Actions with a persona present are always done in context of the metaphor. Allways. The metaphor is as real as the actions behind it.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the character can dedicate an active channel to a device for as much time as they choose to do so. In other words, they can define top priority to a number of devices equal to System x 2. The other devices not given that priority do, as you say, compete in a round robin. This has forced players in my games to make sure that they have at least one subscription list index open at all times so that nigh-instant communication can take place between devices as necessary.

Yes, I agree that with a System of 3+ it becomes almost pointless to worry about subscription lists except for (a) the very meticulous player and (b) dedicated hacker/rigger type characters with Agents and Drones.

I disagree. The whole concept of the matrix in Shadowrun breaks down if you assume that Agents are somehow omniscient. They're not. They're pilot programs with limited understanding and limited potential. They are limited in their understanding and potential based on the metaphor within which they're acting. In fact, it is the metaphor which gives rise, I feel, to these limitations.

You and others see the metaphor as window dressing so that the matrix isn't simply gambling (rolling dice) and, instead, has some attractive bits that you can use to try and spice up a matrix with respect to roleplaying, or at least that's what I think I'm understanding from you.

That's the understanding I disagree with. Metaphors are, for me, a specific virtual reality in which Agents and Hackers are constrained by the rules of the Metaphor. This is a basic interpretation of the nature of the game and I'm not willing to, nor do I see a need to, be flexible on this matter because the alternative that have been shown to me all seems to lead directly to an unintelligible mass of rules that don't make sense. What's the incentive for me to change and, for that matter, what's the incentive for you not to?

Yes, I'm being egocentric here, I don't mean to offend.

I'm sorry, but your argument is wrong. I never said that nobody else can have a problem with the rules just because I don't. My group uses the rules as written and does not have a problem with it; that's a fact. Yours does not; that's a fact, too. The two are not mutually exclusive, so there's no disagreement. It's like saying that the sign posts in my town are green and in yours they're yellow. We don't have to "agree to disagree" about that.

Actually, a sota computer system that allows 12 connections max is already broken by design.

Actually, that's perfectly possible and the basis of any sculpted system like online bars and the like - metaphor without any meaning, the equivalent of illusions. You even can exchange metaphors, that's what a reality filter does.

And Agents. That's the only real balancing issue AFAIS... the amount of Nodes your Persona an be 'active' in is not really a balancing issue, since it can only act in one at a time.

Unfortunately it limits devices on you PAN, communications, newsfeed, etc. - all that fluff stuff that makes a world of information buzz.

But that's house-ruling, and just the first step towards true multiplexing.

And that is as it should be.
In SR3, neither as a GM nor player I had to worry about connection limits. Suddenly in SR4, I have to worry about network management on connection level... thats micro-management at it's worst.
It should just work - like it does today.

Nobody is talking about omniscent. They just are programs that try to do certain tasks - and whether they succeed is determined by tests. Not the metaphor - it just describes the results.

That would work pretty well, indeed.

Add in unlimited connection in 'tortoise mode', i.e. accessing information (feeds, comcalls, slaved devices, etc.) on nodes without your persona, and the connection limit doesn't cut into fluff anymore.

It is? How many controlers will a xbox 360 recognize as being connected at any given point in time? Is the xbox 360 by design broken as it only supports 4 controllers?

But really his solution works quite well...if you know, use it as its intented and not try to loophole it like a munchkin.

In neither of those instances are you seperating things from the metaphor. You're applying different metaphors certainly, but you are not seperating the actions from the metaphor. Swap as many metaphors as you want, but as long as you're there you're percieving everything in a metaphor and everything acts within the metaphor.

No one looks at the matrix without a metaphor. Be it the systems metaphor or not. Even way back when sculpted systems were rare there was still metaphor. SAN's looked a certain way. Datastores looked a certain way.

Heck, we're looking at a metaphor right now when we view this page. We're looking at the gui so to speak of the internet. None of this looks like this in the code. But when we view it it looks like this unless we purposefully seak out the code. Its -no- different in the matrix.

Agents do. IC does.

The XBox360 is not only broken by design, but also Defective by Design.
But we are talking about wireless connectors in the futures... what exactly is the pair limit on BlueTooth? 7? Wow. That means that the average bluetooth-enabled cell phone has a Response and System of 4!

..you truely managed to miss The Point.

No, that shows that what really happens is completly independant from the metaphor.

That's a thesis you don't want to defend.

Indeed. If we purposefully disable the metaphor, all programs still run - there just isn't a human interface anymore. That's all the mataphor is - a human interface. Programs don't need that, the communicate through specific bus interfaces.

How do you figure? I don't understand this assertion.

Then why are you so bent out of shape about it?

I thought RCD's had limits. Maybe i'm wrong there.

And in sr4...theres only as much micro-management as you want. Do you want to worry about every last connection? Do you want to worry about if Johnny Samurai has to do a complex action to get the message from his underware that he should change them soon since he just soiled himself when he finds out his Johnson turns out to be Dunkhelzhan?

The long and short of it is, theres a limit, for reasons. Does it make sense for someone to be able to subscribe every single device within the range of his commlink?

"it should just work - like it does today." If you're talking about todays wireless technology? It prety much does. And people here have given you plenty of ways to, well within the rules, take alot of the micromanagement out of the game. Can these ways be abused? As you did to try to ruin his argument, yes. They can be.

But you're abusing them via micro-management...which you claim to not want in your game. So whats it going to be, micro-management, or no micro-management?

Because I paid for rules expecting them to work.

The metaphor exists solely for the benefit of the human user. The programs aren't bound by the user interface.
If your computer is analgous to a system in SR (a reasonable comparison, I feel) then the host's metaphor is like your desktop. It's got images, and windows, and a mouse pointer. If you want to access a file you use your mouse pointer to point to things, you open windows, etc. If your virus scanner (which could be analgous to IC, or Scan, or what have you) does not need to take control of a mouse pointer, or look in windows or icons. It bypasses the user interface (the metaphor) completely and deals directly with whatever files and processes it needs.

I'm sorry, I feel like I'm trying to explain something axiomatic, here. Can someone help?

You aren't. However, Decks emulating RCDs hadn't.

The rules make us worry.

Yes. That's what the wireless age is all about - senselessly being online, consuming everything at the same time.

Actually, no, the didn't. They presented some houserules.

And it does work. I feel I've illustrated exactly how it could work. If you don't accept that illustration as being possible (not necessarily correct, just possible) then I don't see how we can continue.

..it's a houserule. I can make those up, too. In fact, I did.
But we are arguing about the RAW, and it's potential need for Errata - not about a houserule compilation.

I agree with your example, the virus scan does not need to move the mouse pointer to access files, etc.

However, I disagree that this example -- this metaphor -- is the way it works in Shadowrun. The way I understand and have used the rules is that the metaphor of the system directly impacts how the actions of programs or hackers within that system are resolved.

Once again we'll go back to the multitude of other things that have been put out there that you ignore or toss aside because they don't fit your world of "everything just works because thats the way it does in real life".

And what is as you put it 'The Point'. That theoreticaly someone could abuse the way he has things work? Or that you don't believe the way he has things work is in the spirit of the rules?

Sure it is. Prove me wrong. When someone enters into the matrix, via AR or VR when does he see nothing but the 0's and 1's. And prove to me that his seeing those 0's and 1's is not a metaphor in and of itself.

Not entirely. A program doesn't know how to use a bus unless a programer tells it how. The programer tells it how through a programing language which is usualy a metaphor for machine language, which is a metaphor for the flow of electricity through circuits. Even the program itself exists in a metaphor so to speak.

It is not a house rule. It is explcitly stated on the RAW. I quoted it above. The subscription list has a nigh infinite amount of slots but only System x 2 slots can be actively subscribed at once. I understand the meaning of the phrase "active subscription" to man that one device is sending information to another device during some quantity of time. That information may simply be the fact that the devices are still there (that is a null operation, for lack of a better term ... perhaps a networking handshake would be better).

There's no houserules there. A hourerule would be: In my games, there is no such thing as a subscription list. Or, perhaps: In my games, one can actively subscribe System x 3 devices.

The basic rules of the game do not, and should not, describe the context of an active subscription's communications. The rules of the game, thus, allow me to interpret them as I have above. To use Moon-Hawk's Virus Scanner example, I as the user of my computer don't have to request that my virus scanner tell me about viruses only at certain times (though I probably could). Instead, my virus scanner analyzes files as I open, close, modify, and create them constantly looking for viruses. When it finds one, it shows me a dialog window that provides me options of what I want it to do. That presentation of the window is an active subscription. However, when it's done showing that window and waits for me to create an event by somehow interacting with said window, it is no longer actively subscribed because it isn't communicating. When I click the button, it is subscribed again and will accept my command and then, shortly there after, is no longer subscribed as it goes off to follow my instructions.

This is almost exactly how the RAW describes commanding drones and then unsubscribing them so they don't count against your limit on p. 238:

I trust the programming of my virus scanner to know what it means when I tell it to go "disinfect" an infected file. It will perform that action without me having to remain in constant, active communication with it.

Fair enough. At least we're understanding each other. I happen to disagree with your interpretation, but AFAIK there's nothing concrete for either of us to prove the other wrong.
I guess I personally feel like, since the metaphor of a system can be so easily changed (via Reality Filter), that it must not have any real bearing on the actual underlying system processes and is more like a simple skin or desktop theme. The Reality Filter program implies, to me, that it's more of a user interface than something that has direct impact on the system.

My subscription list is unlimited in size.

At any given point in time i can only be accessing my System x 2 nodes.

There is nothing in the book that says Dash's interpretation of how things work is false.

There is nothing in the book that says thats not how it works.

However atleast with Vista features are enabled or disabled based on which desktop theme you're running...