Just got done reading Emergence. . . and I have mixed feelings.

I wasn't planning on running an Emergence campaign, but I got a copy of the book and figured I'd read through it for some info on Technomancers, as was planning on involving them in the game a bit. First off, love the book design as an out-of-control message board thread. Cool idea.


But what has got me as a sticking point are these 'psudeo AIs' I only call them Psudeo because they are, unlike Deus, not all-powerful in the matrix. Some have horrid stealth or spoof abilities, and they can be 'killed' (some of them fairly easily.) I am unsure if I should include them in my game or not. It seems to change up the system a bit too much for me.

Technomancers essentially replace Otaku. Yes, their abilities are different and yes, they have different rules, but the baseline is that Otaku were kids that could interface with the machine world without a computer, and Technomancers are the same. They have some cool abilities and they are pretty nifty, but essentially otaku are out, Technomancers are in. As far as the metagame of shadowrun is concerned, one leaves and one enters, it is a net change of zero.

But these new AI change up the game, and I don't know if I should use them or not, as they might upset the 'balance' of Shadowrun (in a metagame sense, not in a rules sense. We all know how well balanced shadowrun is. )

I can understand the idea about these new AIs being like free spirits, but it just doesn't jive with me. After all, code is code. Unlike spirits, you could run an AI through a decompiler (which I understand would be tannamount to torture for the AI) and figure out exactly how it ticks, given enough time. Then you could recreate your own AI at the snap of your fingers. It took Renraku untold masses of to make Deus, and we all saw how well THAT turned out. . . Besides, I never used free spirits in my game, much. I do have to keep track of them though, as in what if my players go to Chicago, and How DO I deal with insect spirits? I don't want to keep track of AIs as well.

Has anyone run with these new AIs in their game? How many are there? When/where/why do you use them, and how have they worked out for you. How did you have to change the game to cope with them?

No you can't re-engineer an AI. Further Information about 'em is found in Unwired and Runners Companion.

Doesn't change much tough. They are to darn rare. In theory, i explain soon.

I played an AI once and have a plan for another AI with a full background and stuff i really would love to play. But other than... we often play pre-Emergence since my GM want's to wait for the german release so my TM and those AI Concepts are pretty much "in the closet".

You can do that with people, too. Skillwires, Knowsofts, Simsense, Personality Fix, Cloning. Consider an AI just a person without a meatbod. Treat them just like people and they're no more or less work to keep track of.

But AIs have a Mystery-X ingridient that cannot be copied. Their soul, if you will. You cannot recreate them with the snap of a finger.

I have an AI in my group, and He and group Hacker have been experimenting with copying him. They keep ending up with the Program he evolved from, without sentience.

There's a little bit of a quantum Zeno effect happening in that sense. The very tools used to analyze and copy code, alter its structure, slip through and around the living essence of the thing. A full recompile ends up with a semiautonomous knowbot with a lot of extraneous data - much like a human turned to chip. The trappings are there, but something's missing, that je ne sais quoi...

Go compare with Mel' blackjack program


The difference between a mundane knowsoft and an AI (at least in SR) is spread all over millions of lines of self-modifying code. You may be able to copy an IA, at least if there is no environment-dependent values. Maybe you could still wait the AI to leave a system and then reset it to the state it was when the AI was loaded, effectively duplicating the AI. But you could not modify it to make it, say, a bit less egocentric and favoring Gershwin over Schubert.

It doesn't affect the balance of the game's metaplot in any matter either. AIs as an all powerful god-like entity bending the matrix to their will wasn't typically a cyberpunk idea. Even in Gibson's novels, AIs existed but still had to rely on their human pawns to do all of the things they couldn't. The point of singularity in Neuromancer causes a bunch of other "ghosts/gods in the machine" as well, and they are still not that powerful, each of them dealing with important things, but not controlling everything.

Now that Shadowrun has a whole plethora of smaller, less powerful and somewhat foreign intelligences in the Matrix, it is actually getting closer to a truer theme of evolution of communications and digital sentience like in Gibson's original cyberspace trilogy.