1st. lets start with the Augmented Reality Environment programs...... What the most creative uses you have seen people come up for these?? Person/Pet to represent agents and drones?? Haha maybe your favorite Predator 4 is a hot woman.

2nd. How many people have hackers or GM's who actually talk about the iconography of the matrix as they are hacking?? Is it a waste of time to think about how I want my hacker to view the matrix because most GM's will never bother with it? What is your iconography based on if you have thought about it? What does your persona look like?

im getting tired...I really want to come up with some interesting background/concept for my hacker FIRST before I get around to playing with his stats and buying gear. Usually its the other way around mostly. I am thinking it would be cool if my character was disabled somehow, he wont be running around, shooting at people when he isnt hacking. I dont want to be dead weight to the rest of a group but it would be cool if he had some definate problems in the meat....I dont wanna think about that right now.

Just a quick overview of what I was planning to do with my Iconography. My Persona will probably be a heavily cartoony/anime zombie. his home node would look like a graveyard and maybe a crypt or chapel or some other buildings there. I think my agent(s) will look like a swarm of zombies even if its just one agent lol. (no I dont plan on agent smithing). Maybe the stuff I fight against would look like normal humans lol. One of my attack programs will definately look like projectile vomiting. If you have seen my simsense thread on here you know I plan on linking simsense sensations to my attack programs hehe. If i cant do it at character gen I will sure as hell be getting my hands on some afterwards. The goals is to make it so if the other guy is open to simsense, when he gets hit by my Puke attack he will actually feel like somebody puked on him, and he will also smell it, taste it.(dont ask how i plan on getting the simsense files for that)

Have you guys seen those verizon commercials where some dude is talking to somebody and then the other person asks "who are they" and the camera turns and you see this whole crowd of verizon employee's?? Maybe I could make my agent look like a whole freaking crowd of zombie in my field of vision with virtual person. That could be pretty freaky. Imagine if you used like some scary person like Jason or the ghost from Scream, or freddy krueger or just some random dude who looks like a killer and you had it programmed to randomly scare you or show up in wierd places. You wouldnt just turn and see him, you would turn and see him behind a crowd of people watching you, or moving around a corner just as you turn, or any time you looked at a reflective service he would be somewhere behind you. That would be messed up lol. I dont like horror flicks like that lol.

It would be really hard to resist turning your icons and ARE into one giant porno lol.

Personally I tend to ignore the entire "Tron" aspect of the Matrix as much as possible, with the exception of UV Nodes and online game/chat rooms a system has to have a reason to be sculpted and a Decker's interface when hacking a system or engauging in cybercombat is more about flashes of emotion and sensory input instead of an actual description as such 3D thinking simply isn't useful in the Matrix.

AR tends to be fairly tame as well in my games as well the escapists tend to find AR too bland when compared to the latest drug or BTL, which in turn actually makes it an even more powerful weapon in a clever Decker's arsenal of tricks.

My Hacker's Icon
My First Agent To do all my dirty work



The most memorable 'trix I was ever in was described as a nature perserve; The paths all lead to different nodes, the animals were different actions being taken by the system (birds = email, bear & lion = IC, etc). I think that was the best node I was ever in.

When I have GM'ed, I once described the system as a giant factory with different size boxes (The size of the box represented the amount of information). The utility room was a secret set of nodes that were hidden. There was a 2nd floor which represented the system's security, both physical and in the system. I think all my players, not just the hacker, enjoyed my rendition of it.

I think when you take the time to make a system unique, It makes the game that much funner.

mmmm icons huh. Well I have one char that uses agents alot...They all look like Jawas

If you're using it in conjunction with a program icon, there is no special tests you need to make in order to "add simsense sensations" to an attack. An attack program is doing all the bypassing it can, and will look, feel, smell, and taste however you program it too. Getting hit by a fireball attack icon feels like it's burning when it damages the persona, and can even smell like burning flesh, etc, without extra effort on a hacker's part. A swarm of wasps attack feels like being stung all over your "body". And so on.

Your persona icon can reek in AR/VR, smelling like a rotting corpse to any one perceiving you, if you'd like. And they could Filter that out, if they want. Piercing a zombie Stealth might look like shapes moving about in fog. You could have your Track appear as flesh-eating necrosis. For agents, what about "Thing" from Adam's Family?

I would skip a Reality Filter, if you want the GM to describe iconography. I know, I know, "+1 Response". Skip it, encourage the GM to create systems, just as he would other places, like a nightclub. And with AR, if your team's using it, the two scenes can be one a lot of the time. AR waitresses dressed in various levels of scandalous clothing (based on your PG setting) skating about the packed club with their disgustingly cheerful smiles and high pitched voices asking if you need anything. The camera drones, spattered around the ceiling look like bobbing glowing blobs, but a closer look shows a shadowy shape slithering around one: someone's already subverted them - you hope she doesn't mind you joining the party, as you toss a Hand at the nearest surveillance node...

Haha that would suck if the GM was into making cool iconography for a system and then the hacker comes in, hits a button, and overrides everything lol. =Instant Black IC swarm.

I thought of a really really obvious iconography. BATTLETECH!! That would be sweet. Hmmm that also makes me think of about why everything is based on the ground, why couldnt you be flying around in the sky or in space or under water? Hmmm

Hmmm for Virtual Weather I could turn daylight into a Giant glowing full moon with a night sky full of stars..

Wall Space is hard to understand lol. I can plaster video's and stuff on the surfaces of buildings and such that include sounds smells and sensations??? How the heck does that work? About the only thing I could think of would to record me and my zombie swarm agent every time we are in cybercombat and create a video slide show out of them to display on the biggest surfaces around. I could see hearing the video...how do you smell a video though from my zombies perspective? The book talks about tactile sensations in the form of warmth and air movement...from a flat surface of a wall?? wtf?

That does bring something else to mind though. I thought about what the attack programs im fighting would look like... but not what they smelled like or tasted like or felt like...... lol Hacking a system could actually be a pleasureable experience if you had the porno theme...

Still I need idea's for wall space. Virtual Surround Music is pretty obvious that would be keyed into different matrix actions, if my system picks up that im being hacked I may hear angry chants from a large group of humans saying stuff like "death to zombies!" or "aim for their heads!!" in the distance, which could coincide with hmmm there isnt anything to create fake images in my field of vision of people? I was thinking it would be cool to start seeing humans taking out zombies in my field of view if i was alerted to the fact i was being hacked. I also wanted virtual music to have zombies be heard in the distances every now and then moaning and maybe an alternate form of a hacker alert or a recieved message would be for them to says "bbbBBrrraaaiiinnnssssss" lol.

I have fun describing the icons and avatars of hackers, agents and sprites to my players, personally. For example, my NPC TM, Maya, most of her sprites have a simian theme going for them; the courier sprite looks like a little bronze clockwork monkey, festooned with pockets and drawers, the data sprite is an orangutan that goes Ook and Eek, the fault sprite is a chimpanzee carrying an obscenely large adjustable spanner wrench and the machine sprite (my players' favorite) is a chimp wearing grease stained overalls, with a name tag reading "Grease Monkey"

great NPC that Maya! "Grease Monkey" sprite , ha!

From my games: One guy has an agent to do matrix cover who is rendered as a Matrix version of a Mr. Johnson (who, incidentally, looks like Paul Newman) ; the agent is aptly called: Newman

A japanese street sam with a tricked out motorbike. Itwas called "tsunami" and could be seen in Ar as a wave with foam and a torrent of water alongside.

Wall space and image link used to make data displays appear in reflecting surfaces available... sides of buildings, car windows, etc.

A couple systems included:

-a medieval japanese castle, with Samurai for IC. (the AR program included "extras" and "help" agents dressed as japanese officials and clerical staff who would happily engage in conversation) Not so original IMO but it was really cool when a samurai in a black kimono stopped the technomancer and asked her questions in a very polite but increasingly threatening way. The TM signed out to see the backroom in the nightclub where she had jumped to VR initially. Next, one of her teammates starts freaking out when a japanese samurai dressed in medieval black kimonos enters the main dance floor. (the night club provided for AR "guests" and also linked to a yakuza system)

-A "white" version of a building. white rooms, walls, furniture, agents (people in white lab coats), white doves for emails, white picture frames that would become coloured with data. However, Black IC kept its motif colour; quite a shock in that context. The building was a Z-IC secret facility that hid a nanobot laboratory. The main lab had strict isolation measures: "the white room"

Many more I don't remember right now, but will probably come up after I sleep some. !

Cheers,

Max