Anyone thought of a good reality filter?

heh. amusing.

i like going old sk00l--Pac-Man or Galaga filters, maybe some Bad Dudes if i'm feeling really pugnacious (NINJAS HAVE KINDAPPED THE DATAFILE! ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO SAVE IT!?)

@ mfb LOL that was quite amussing.

I've known one Gm who while a decker decked a system with a certain iconograpghy instead of using the normal system handed the player a PS 1 controller and said "Since your computer skill is 6, you have 6 tries to come first" (the game was wipeout).

Why i bring this up? Cos i've always thought that Wipeout wuld make for a cool reality filter

I know of somebody that did Tron.

What about Metal Gear Solid? As good a reality filter as any.

"Zero Wing" with the bad translation and everything. Then you could go around saying "All your data files are belong to us!"

I had one of my female players use a Strawberry Shortcake reality filter.. Even her deck had a red, white, and pink motif. I thought it was a pretty cool concept..

But my favorite personal filter would have to be my western filter.. My icon is a cowboy, hostile icons are indians.. Weapons are either bows and arrows, tomahawks, and spears, or revolvers, rifles, and bowie knives. It was pretty fun to play.

That's a lot like my Riverboat Gambler filter (the gunslinger. Not SBSC). I had an NPC decker that had a sprawl RF. His persona icon was a vat-job sammie. Programs were various implants or (huge, oversized) weapons. The whole thing was very "post-apocalyptic-anime".

Classic Matrix icons. Datastores are big cubes, CPUs are polygonal solids, SANs are triangular prisms...
In my games, enough of the chosen system iconography tends to be important to render a reality filter crippling in all but the most basic systems, so I tend to think of them as crutches for n00bs.

~J

Had a few Star Wars metaphors (IC are stormtroopers or imperial troops of varying denominations, regular terms are jawas, other deckers are cantina aliens for example), as well as mechwarrior, and I personally have had one of those SMU filters like Kagetenshi described, just to mess with the GMs head!

Another good one was 3 Musketeers In Neon where everything was in unrealistic day glow colours, and I've always like Renraku's feudal Japan as well.

Well, I had a player who tried to use a "porno" filter. I'll leave that up to your imaginations.

Unfortunately, he didn't last too long. He got... distracted

Wasn't that a icon metaphor in the back of virutal realties?

ReBoot filter. Make all Black IC icons look like Mike the TV. Because we all know how utterly insane he can drive you.

INNNNNSAAAAAAANNNNNNNNE!

6LN BUMP!

This thread has 8 Bulwark, so that doesn't even scratch it, IIRC.

Why the bump?

~J

I wonder how many people have designed Matrix (ie, the movies) Reality Filters.

Hee hee.

Those are the people who get hit. In the face.

But really slowly so they have a chance to dodge it with their Evasion.

I always wanted a command line filter. Vi editors for everybody. Either that or one giant library card file system complete with old lady librarian ICE.

<Classic Matrix icons. Datastores are big cubes, CPUs are polygonal solids, SANs are triangular prisms...
In my games, enough of the chosen system iconography tends to be important to render a reality filter crippling in all but the most basic systems, so I tend to think of them as crutches for n00bs.>

I don't understand why you would penalize someone for using a reality filter. Reality filters are designed to make things easier for you. If your filter wins the test, the iconography should change over without a problem.

I like a 2-D filter. The system you're in is represented as a green grid. Whatever you need is a white box. You walk around, and if you walk on the wrong square, IC attacks you. You must get to the box and press A. You have to be really l33t.

Reality Filters help the decker sort out the drek from the things the decker should worry about.

Without one, a decker in a sculpted system is basically guessing or increasing his security tally by analyzing every icon he comes in contact with.

I can't see how being able to quickly, and correctly, identify icons without having to run a system test is "crippling".

Something I do miss from VR 2.0 is being able to swap out chips for the reality filter; it came up in a couple of games plus the shadowtalk. Now you can't do that, unless you go house rule and say that the reality filter is tied to the icon chip. Change the chip = change the filter. Unfortunately, you can't do that.

Don

The only decker i ever ran with used a Dark City motif. Really really NASTY stuff was pale bald guys levitating down to destroy him.

I've never RPed reality filters - or system iconography, for that matter - because thinking too much about how the Matrix supposedly works makes my brain hurt. I can handle magic talking dragons from Atlantis running extraterritorial corporations, but being asked to believe that the Matrix is a usable computer network violates my suspension of disbelief with a cattle prod. Damn William Gibson's ignorant Luddite ass, anyway. It's his fault that we're stuck with all these flashy but totally impractical UIs in our cyberpunk computer systems.

Anyway, I just add up the numbers, roll the dice, and stay as far away from describing what's going on behind the game mechanics as I possibly can.

The three Reality Filters I used most recently included one based around American McGee's Alice (with the decker using a persona icon of the Mad Hatter), one based on The Nightmare Before Christmas (with the decker as Jack the Pumpkin King), and one based on a stylistic sewer system for a Rat shaman decker named Filthy Rich.

Herein lies the problem: what if there are "puzzle solving hints" within the metaphor of the (original) system design? If you have a reality filter, then...you're screwed.

Exactly. Information could potentially be encrypted and have a decrypter built into the system, the metaphor being books and a lectern to place the books on to read. This could be done to facilitate additional monitoring of what information is accessed, but could still be usable by a runner not using a filter. Or the routes between locations could be outlined on the floor in differently-coloured tile, to trap runners with reality filters. Legitimate users are, for the most part, not going to use reality filters; the only people who would would be those changing systems a lot of the time, like runners.

~J

Trying to put rational thought into the Matrix is a completely pointless endeavor. There's nothing even remotely realistic, let alone believable, about it. At least the magic system is somewhat believable. Just enjoy it for what it is.

A Clockwork Lime, Why does the matrix system make no sense to you? Or rather, what part about it?

Edit: I'm a network engineer by trade, so maybe thats why I've been able to pigeon-hole the matrix into a system that works for me. I'm just wondering what part people have a hard time with.

Erebus: I think you broke him

~J

I have no problem with a fully three-dimension virtual GUI. It's just the way cyberpunk handles it that's utterly ridiculous.

For starters, apparently all that processing speed eating up your system and bandwidth just for the interface alone is a better way to be faster on the Matrix as opposed to a command line interface where you're transmitting not much more than a few bytes of easily compressed data. Then you have the bit about how it's apparently incredibly difficult to add a friggin' fusebox to a deck. Or the ridiculous prices of software, most of which is being put together by hackers to begin with (and we all know how hard it is to get your hands on that kinda software). Scoring a datafile worth hundreds of thousands of nuyen on the Matrix? Cakewalk. Scoring source code for a common utility on the Matrix? Not bloody likely; you gots to dish out a few hundred thousand nuyen for that priviledge, bucko.

Then don't even get me started on IC, security measures, and all the other crap. Grr.

Ahhh Ok.... That I can understand. I generally explain that away due to hardware availability/changes due to the technology shift after the crash. The corps basically tried to monopolize the new incarnation of the Internet since they had to start over from scratch to begin with, and wanted to introduce a new "profit" capable infrastructure that focused on the strengths of the old while minimizing it's weaknesses. As far interfaces, doesn't that happen now with Microsoft... Prettier w/ more overhead = More Market Share even when you charge more. Those hackers writing the software though are smart, they work for the corp and rake in the nuyen with cush little dorms w/ping-pong tables.... hmmm very similar to Microsoft today...

I thought we were talking the shift to grids/hosts from SR2s CPU/SPU/IO.

Hence my original comment: Just enjoy [decking and the Matrix] for what it is.

about the sourcecode stuff, i have a feel it have something to do with drm. most likely any computer sold after the crash had some for of drm control buildt into it. sure you say but its not just the tech in itself, its the fact that its on every machine out there, and that just maybe hardware you buy of the shelf will refuse to work unless all the other hardware id itself via the drm system. that means that you have to get stuff custom buildt from the ground up to get hold of drm free stuff, and if you want to interface with drm enables stuff you have to eiteher fake the codes or forget about it. and most likley if your found to be selling drm bypassing stuff from the back of your shop then in comes maybe a runner team and blows it up or maybe a corp black ops. the open market selling of copyprotected stuff would be of as now the corps have theyre own court and theyre own offensive security forces, no longer is the protection of copyights a civilian matter, people may dissapear just for hinting that they know how to crack SK's latest simsense blockbuster...

as for the decks, they where originaly made for the goverment (team mirage anyone?). hell the first off the shelf ones are described as grey-market meaning that it was on shakey legal grounds allready.

then there was this supervirus that some in here have theoriced was on the edge of being a SK (and maybe evne coeed by a dragon, yawn). this was able to adapt to team mirage's attacks and barbeque hardware. while the virus itself was never taken apart, stuff like what signals it sendt out and so on was and used to make the first IC.

the problem realy is that there are a lot of unknowns in the SR matrix on how it works. i have a feel that a lot of the info we today take for granted when it comes to computing was never officialy released outside corp and goverment after the crash when they changed stuff and at the same time the same info was make into a matter of national security or similar so running of with them and you risked being shot, not just handed a civilian lawsuit. and most people would probably not care, just like now, as long as it works and does what its told. in fact the info on how the net works are abnormaly open, i know more about the internet then i know about how my cellphone talkes to the local cell.

it seems that everything from protocols to hardware have been changed around, and it seems that routers and firewalls in sr are not as secure as they are now, alltho we are never told why except a hint towards team mirage and the virus.

some may find this hard to swallow but im not surprised, sooner or later we will end up with technology that makes them not as secure as they ones was. and it allso makes the sr matrix a less boring place then the current internet is

oh and one last thing, about the original topic. someone said something about swaping out icons but not reality filters. i envision both as on a chip that you have to turn of the deck to replace, nothing something you can do in the middle of a run. i do belive one can turn of the reality filter tho...

My reality filter is of Joe Musashi. I waste every host, but first I always have to go around releasing my four buddies who got kidnapped by IC.

~J

So, from a purely game-mechanic standpoint, why would one want to use a reality filter? Does it confer any benefits aside from increased matrix initiative?

Wouldn't the effectively-lowered-persona ratings make you a hell of a lot weaker for anyone not running a seriously drek-hotter deck than any starting runner could get? (Fairlights probably benefit more from the increased initiative than from having normal persona ratings . . . but I dunno, never had one )

Is all of that completely deprecated from vr2, and do reality filters behave totally differently in Matrix?

I'm just at a loss as to What the Point is, I guess.

Do you need much more of a reason than that mechanically? It's like asking "okay, so what's the point of Wired Reflexes beyond an initiative boost?"

Using twentieth century culture as the basis of a 2050s era reality filter is Totally Lame. That said, I am Totally Lame. The decker in my campaign has a reality filter where he is the Great Gatsby enjoying a night out on the town. The icon for his entry point into the matrix is the Rolls Royce that brought him there. He also runs a sculpted system, which is his mansion. There is a party going on there all the time. The access IC at the front door is the doorman. The blaster IC that takes care of troublesome "guests" is the butler and his staff. The tar pit IC is the socialite lady that drags you into a conversation you just CAN'T get out of. The trace and report IC is the retained private eye. Actually, some of this terminology is probably a little off. I don't get to play very often, because I'm stuck in a cocoon becoming an ivory tower intellectual that will be first against the wall when the Revolution comes...

<<Exactly. Information could potentially be encrypted and have a decrypter built into the system, the metaphor being books and a lectern to place the books on to read. This could be done to facilitate additional monitoring of what information is accessed, but could still be usable by a runner not using a filter. Or the routes between locations could be outlined on the floor in differently-coloured tile, to trap runners with reality filters. Legitimate users are, for the most part, not going to use reality filters; the only people who would would be those changing systems a lot of the time, like runners.>>

I would like to think that your reality filter would be able to compensate. I could think of a few ways that a reality filter could represent the lectern, or the differently colored tile. Then you would say "Well how do you represent a computer icon, in a middle ages reality?" I say then it should have a scribe's tools there instead. There are lots of different ways that items from different time periods could be represented, none of them perfect.

I guess it really comes down to how you view the matrix. Are the actual descriptions, and look of each icon important? Or is the function of the icon really what matters. A SAN could look like a doorway, a window, or the picture book on the desk. I run my browse program and it tells me that this particular Icon is a SAN, well no matter what it looks like it is still where you have to go.

My games (on both sides of the screen) have generally dealt more with the functions of icons. I get/give a general feel for the host, at the begining, but unless someone was on a UV system (only happened once) the function is more important than the look. And deckers have numerous programs to tell you what the functions are.

What Arleigh said.

In those examples, the reality filter should communicate that every file is encrypted, or the colored route is the gateway to the next host.

Even if the Decker does it differently then expected, that's what the Security Tally is for, IMO. A decker with a good detection factor won't be noticed when they pull out their flashlight (decrypt program) to read the book.

I could very well see it being an in-game social stigma amongst '1337' deckers. However, I'm sure most practical deckers would realize ithe advantage in quickly identifing that the baby in a carriage on a host that's sculpted to look like a walk down the boardwalk is in fact a Psychotropic Black IC

The only problem I could see outside the stated disadvantages, is if the Reality Filter's library doesn't have a reference for an unusual icon. And even then, the decker could always just analyse the icon in question, or just plain turn it off and guess how it relates when the sculpted system comes back.

It's a tool, use it when it provides an advantage, such as when the decker needs tha extra MPCP, or the sculpted system is too powerful and sends mixed signals. It doesn't hurt the decker by having it just in case, even if he never turns it on.

a hosts metaphor works on the idea that a human being after some time of repetetive tasks gets a kind of memory on where stuff is a looks like. so if your working on the same host for a long time you will know that some special icon is the text file your looking for and that gruff looking person in the corner is a IC guard (ok so the guard you can guess but you still get my drift). a reality filter is a portable metaphor, therefor it gives the decker the benefit of this memory. you dont need to fire up your analyze util to figure out whats what.

just look at how windows works today. special icons for special tools. more often then not you can id mutch used tools by where they are and how theyre icons look without reading the descriptive text. the sr matrix have just taken this idea one step further. to send a file to someone you grab the file from the filecabinet and stuff it in the faxmachine and enter the persons address, its just that your doing all this virtualy so what your realy doing is emailing (or maybe in fact faxing as they are both connected to the same system so if the fax is matrix enabled then it should be able to handle a email and just print it like anything else and ocr it or just scan it and stuff the images like in a pdf when you want to send a physical paper to someone) it to whoever wanted it. if you want to copy a file you grab it and bring it to the copymachine and put the copy in a new binder when your done. as its all virtual the copyer and the fax can check the DRM signatures of the file before anything is done to it so if you try to do stuff your not allowed to then you get a warning and gets logged.

what the decker does it bring his own set of tools to do the same job