Okay, I hate Reality Filter. If I want nearly every digital environment to be the same, I'll just say that 99% of people use their Windows default background equivalent. But I don't want that. I want individual nodes to have personalized qualities, so I've just written Reality Filter out of existence and instead worked on Background and icon archetypes. The reality I want to paint is more like myspace. A person's node is somehow like an extension of their personality, and, in a world where kids log off from virtual school and then go over to each others nodes to play, these virtual environments are going to be a point of pride for most anyone having grown up in such an environment. It's quite possible that good friends will VPN their nodes together into virtual neighborhoods, but each location in such an area is going to have a personal theme. So, let's real quick put down some default themes and basic icon sets.


Retro collection: Basic low->medium (1-3) Response sets - Basic rules of physics as seen on Earth

Gothic Church - Firewall is Wrought-iron fences and towering stone walls. Encryption is locked doors and cabinets. Agent is robed servent. IC is gargoyles. Data is scrolls, books and bejeweled items. Hand bells ring for alarms. Silent alarm is far away chant. Tower bell is rung for alert. Purge program is a straw broom. Stealth is deep shadow. Data bombs are spring spike traps.

Roman Villa - Again, walls are walls. Encryption is bars and crossed spears. Agent is cook. IC is centurion. Data is papyrus scrolls and food. Alarms are voiced calls. Silent alarm is laughter from far rooms. Alerts are small glass bells. Purge is bucket and rag. Stealth is evidenced by dropping tapestries. Data bombs attract lightning from Jupiter/Zeus.

Japanese Temple - Bamboo spear walls block access. Encryption locked doors and chests. Agents are serving women. IC is Samurai or spear guard. Data again is scrolls and iron-forged goods. Alarms are sharp wood-on-wood claps. Silent alarm is song birds. Alerts by gong. Purge is floor towel. Stealth is leaves or rotating walls. Data bombs are bamboo grenades.

Rammed Earth Citadel (as was common across the Middle East to China) - Elements common to above temple entries. Surely you've got the pattern by now.

Victorian Mansion - Basically a skin for the roman villa.

19x0's Suburban Home - White picket fence for firewall. Locks and safes for encryption. Agent is wacky neighbor, maid or pet. IC is police constable or pet. Data is books, records/tapes/CDs/DVDs, folios, baked goods. Alarms are basic house alarms. Silent alarm is dogs barking in the distance. Alert is egg timer. Purge is a vacuum cleaner. Stealth is evidenced by being under rugs and behind furniture or from the never-ending doors and closets. Data bombs are leaky bottles of poison or what have you.

Full Environs: Meduim to high (2-5) Response sets - Large area with lots to see at once; exaggerated physics.

Naturalist's Retreat - Straight up woods surrounded by thorny briers. Encryption is a bit more abstract here. Data is kept in knotholes and the ability to climb up the trees and reach them determines access. Agents are things like owls and raccoons - tree dwelling creatures. IC is things like bears and large cats. Data comes in the form of stashed nuts and berries. Alarms sound like crow calls and are punctuated by the briers lighting aflame. Silent alarm is cicadas or crickets. Alert are handled by owl hoots or such. Purge is handled by insects. Stealthed items are revealed by falling from tree branches on spider webs. Data bombs are beehives. Popular with users who prefer animal personas.

Underground Bunker - The most common choice for most corporate nodes. Blast doors aplenty. Teleportals and laser grids control access. Agents are IC are basically what you'd expect - robots! Lots of sci-fi awesome here. Data is glowing energy rods or beakers full of knowledge. Alarms are pretty standard. Silent alarms like theremins or distant machinery. Alerts are vocal messages. This whole thing should be pretty familiar to anyone with shooter experience.

Space Station - Zero-G Physics. Much of the same science tropes and hallways as the Underground Bunker, but with an alien bent.

Tree Fort - First you have to get up there, firewalls restrict access through height. Cracking encryption leads to rope swings and zip lines. Metaphor sets can go several ways, from kids to woodsmen. Anthro-animals or fantasy elves not uncommon for woodsmen IC and agents on this one. Otherwise, you've got your basic Peter Pan thing here. Customized to the robin hood or pan archetype, you might run into a Friar Tuck Agent or a Rufio IC. Basic spatial warping within structures. Bigger on the inside like unto a TARDIS.

World is Tiny - Godzilla theme. The world is small and you walk around skyscrapers like coat racks.

World is Huge - Honey I Shrunk the Node. Lots of complicated structure piles. Soft gravity.

Toon World - Everything from 100 Acre Wood to whatever they come up with in the next 60 years.

Belly of the Beast - Ewwwww. Organic backdrops on everything. Much like the bunker or station other than the skin change.

High Response (4-6+) sets: Characterized by abstract physics and sweeping, expansive vistas

MC Escher 4D house - All that spacial distortion goodness.

Magic kingdom - Fantastic world of dreams stuff. Ride across sparkling canyons on waves of sound. Fall through water pools into a new room where you have to climb down. Metaphors are specific only to the room they are in. Icons and relationships will change even in your hands as you move around.

Small Alien World - A tiny planetoid with specialized gravity and physics. Expect firewall to be planetary forcefield. Encryption is natural hazards and closed up alien ruins. Agents are critters. IC is nasty critters like OMG SAND WORMS. Underground cities, sprawling tunnel systems

Funhouse Disco Party! - Rooms full of data as sound and light.

Living Library - Jump from book to book and world to world.












OH MAN I AM GOING TO FINISH THESE WHEN I HAVE SOME MORE FREE TIME BOY HOWDY.

Love it! I've done away with the Response Bonus for Reality Filter, instead if the Filter does not succeed, or if you don't bother with it. You have to deal with the physics of the node.

You'll have to run through virtual corridors or walk hiking paths, search libraries full of books etc.

Uh, as a matter of fact, Reality Filter just gives the hacker an ability to operate in a familiar environment with a metaphor set he's used to. Sure, when you come as a guest, you can always appreciate the beauty around you. When you come to hack, all those nifty trinkets are only distracting.
So, frankly, what's the problem with Reality Filter? If your hacker is not willing to hear about node sculpting and such, why force him?

One SR novel which featured Archangel had her hacking into some megacorp and overwriting its reality with her own, making it baseball themed. That's how I always imagined reality filter working. Not breaking down the reality so much as restructing it in such a way that is beneficial and familiar to you. Everyone else still sees the same node setup.

I had taken out the game effects of Reality Filter; it seemed like some more bookkeeping. But your idea is actually quite cool, I'll have to think about that.

Yeah, but how much do you care how something looks to everyone else? Not at all? Yep...

"Let me describe this digital environment to you real quick. You remember the last one? Actually, do you remember all of the digital environments you've ever seen? It looks exactly the same as all of those."

Whatever. Nothing wrong with posting some metaphor sets, neh?

Of course. Banning perfectly valid options without a good reason is everything wrong in the world, though.

Most of the time running Reality Filter just doesn't make any sense. If you succeed you get the +1 Response, which is nice. But if you fail it's -1 Response, which could really ruin your day. Not to mention that the Hacker in my game is always too rushed for time to spend a complex action for a program which seems like it ought to be useful but in reality could do more bad than good.

Anyway, I came up with this solution because after the first few games, I found that I had yet to describe the metaphor of the nodes he hacked into. Not only that but it really didn't make a difference if I did or not. The Matrix was just rules, it had no reality. It had no dimension, space, or mass. All it was were words.

Which is fine if all it is is a bunch of zeroes and ones flying across your vision, but that's not how it is in SR. I imagine, just like the OP, that the Matrix is a place where people go for work and play. I imagine that going to the movies, dining, traveling to exotic places, dancing, pretty much any kind of entertainment could be had in the Matrix. If fits into a dystopian setting perfectly, because even though the world is a mess, the Matrix is utopian.

...crap, OK I think I have a point somewhere...

That's profound. No sarcasm, no irony. I mean it.

The only problem that I have with this is that none of the spatial or physical properties of the node actually exist (unless it's a UV node), making most of the sculpting a moot point for hackers that know what they're doing. A hacker can be anywhere in the node at once, he doesn't actually have to move anywhere, he can just sort of be there (save "doors" as access to encrypted files). Any icons you describe he is going to access with a "I decrypt this," or a "I attack the Centurion." Sure, depending on what the node looks like you won't know what the different icons are, but that can be solved with a couple simple matrix perception tests. As it is the matrix bogs down my group enough already, so unless you're doing some extremely intricate node structures (describing a node within a node as a vault within a castle) in a very matrix heavy game most of it will just bore the other players.

This being said, I love your ideas. I love the matrix as a sculptable interactive environment, and I think reality filters are just dumb. My TM has a commlink which is sculpted into a 3D plane of empty white space folded into itself, so that any attempt at movement is extremely disorienting to anybody not used to extreme mental gymnastics. All sensor information from subscribed nodes appears as a viewscreen in a panorama, while all data and icons are glyphs put slightly out of reach of everybody that doesn't have Admin access. They're accessed just like you'd access an AR icon, by touch.

In terms of game mechanics it just means that all rights are restricted to admin access, and the disorientation doesn't do anything dicepool wise save being extremely, extremely annoying.

The point of the metaphor sets isn't to obfuscate things, but to aid in description. Sure, accessing the stored data takes only a blink, but what the VR user experiences in that blink can be opening a door, climbing some cold stone steps, cracking the door to the library and being hit by the smell of dusty books and old ink. It's all there just to keep the martix stuff from being "I browse for security logs," "okay... you find them."

The matrix is like, well, The Matrix. Those UV systems are all old tech in 2072. In a high-end node or nexus, users can eat that steak and have the matrix tell their brain how juicy and delicious it is. I want that for players.

BTW, cool idea for a stark environ. I need more clinical ones for no-nonsense professional types.

Additionally, anyone want to help out with some Nodes for Ladies?

I just describe the last show my kids watched as the motif. One day it's scooby, the next, CSI Miami.

Lol, I'm not sure you could get away with that kind of phrasing today, nevermind in 60 years' time!
But let's give it a go.

Jane Austin
Landscaping features workhouses (background operations), resplendent manors (administrative processes) and sweeping English countryside estates (data stores) with horse-drawn carriages for getting around. Files are game for hunting, encryption is in the form of nobles needing eloquent persuasion, IC are period soldiers whilst agents are servants and errand boys. The firewall is represented by being completely ignored by your social peers.

Shopping Precinct (Mall)
Landscaping is an impossibly big retail site with plenty of things to do (besides pretend shopping). IC are security guards, agents are personal shoppers, files are items for sale, encryption is massive crowding and decryption is finding the desired item in a shop the crowds haven't found yet (or it's the difference between an item being full price and being on sale). Travellators and multitudinous glass lifts make travel easy and convenient. Navigation is covered by maps of the complex. The firewall is a car park of Escherean complexity.

Fairytale Castle
The node is a beautiful, ivy-clad stone castle on a forested mountainside. Files are ornaments, statues, works of art and books of poetry. Encryption is in the form of mazes of corridors with decryption being the appearance of glowing faeries to show you the way. Agents are string quartets who achieve their assignments through song and IC are dragons circling outside surveying the inhabitants and plucking away masonry to get at trespassers. Programs, especially combat ones, are almost always in the form of a Prince Charming coming to your aid. The firewall is a tangled forest to be navigated.

Disney
That's all I want to describe for this one.

Walk-in Wardrobe
Landscaping is of a clothing storage unit that makes Narnia look like a shoe box. Files are dresses, encrypted dresses make you look fat and decrypting them is represented by finding another option after your boyfriend has confirmed for the umpteenth time that the first one was perfectly fine. Agents are calls from girlfriends about clothing, gossip and the night out ahead whilst IC are spiders that make you run screaming from the node. The firewall is having to get your hair and make-up just right before allowing yourself to consider what to wear.

Oh man!

I've got images in my head of the team's mirrorshades hacker-sam running through a mall trying to load up on as many pretty shoes as he can before the security guards catch on!
So awesome!

That would be true of any public node where ease of use is the key. However one layer of security for a non-public node might be a deliberately confusing metaphor; one that only the system administrators and designers understand. For example, a user might have to engage in some Myst-style shenanigans of cranking wheels, turning dials and pushing trees around to be able to browse a set of files. This can be overcome by succeeding on a Reality Filter Opposed Test but if the node's metaphor wins in that test it's hampering the user, which is a win for the node's security.

Or you could not even bother with the test at all and get a whopping +0!

Why is failing the test worst than not even trying?

Because if you fail you take a -1 on your response? Most players tend to get Response, System, and all their programs up to the highest rating possible. If Response goes down then everything goes down.

That's a hell of a lot worse than +0 to Response for not even trying.

My best guess, Draco, would be that you're actively trying to beat the metaphor once you impose your reality filter. You are taking the -1 if you fail because the system realizes you were trying to overcome it.

Then why bother?

Mechanically? Cause it can just give you the edge you need.
Fluff-wise? See above.

I don't see why anybody would. Reality Filter is a nice idea, but it's rules set make it pretty much useless.

In my own games I've been struggling to bring the Matrix into the "main stream" like it is in the SR fiction. One of the barriers are the rules themselves. I don't see any of my players going out of their way to learn the rules unless their character is a hacker/technomancer.

I've been trying to bring the Matrix setting to life by not going to the rules, but by describing the scene, like the way you would for the physical world. One of the Johnson's meeting place is a gaming site called the Red Planet. I describe it as a huge ornate baroque style hall with walls that from certain angles seem transparent and through it you can see the red landscape of Mars.

Here you can order private tables and have coffee, or a meal with your friends in the grand hall or a private room. Side passages send you off to various places that you can play Mars or outer space themed games. There are countless people who visit it, but there is never a wait for anything. There are various rules for the site's users, an extensive list of acceptable icons that you can wear, you can join a "house" which is basically a group of some kind or be a free trader, think space port theme with countless races from different planets, merchant unions, even federation like organizations. The games have endless variations. Games that follow a plot, like conflicts between different houses, or one shots.

Its a nice setting, but it only works if the PCs can interact with the NPCs in a similar way as the physical world. I want to run whole games in this setting. Perhaps the runners have to infiltrate a house as part of a run. I imagine them starting off as space traders and pilots running minerals and ore to and from Mars and Titan for example.

But how do I handle the things that they would have to do which can range from flying space ships to sneaking and combat. Keep in mind that this is not a hacking situation.

Just use their relevant skills then. Seems like the most obvious way to go.
Alternatively, it could be a good time to have an Eclipse Phase one-shot - minding that the mechanic is basically Shadowrun with percentile dice instead of dicepools, your players shouldn't have much trouble learning the rules, and a little variety is always good for a long campaign.

Either:

a) its a UV node, in which case they use active skills + attribute

or

b) its not, and you need programs. Why one would need a "maneuver in zero gravity" program just to use the bar is beyond my comprehension. How much it would cost, etc. etc. is something else I don't know. If the bar supplies these programs for free, then everyone is on (more or less) equal footing, which belies the nature of the situation.

You can just say it's all wrapped in a neat little package called "The Red Planet Game".

If the bar supplies these programs for free,* then everyone is on (more or less) equal footing, which belies the nature of the situation.

*Such as wrapped in a neat little package called "The Red Planet Game."

Firstly, I don't want to derail this thread so if I need to move this to a new post please, someone tell me (I'm clueless).

I was thinking that I would convert the Mental Attributes to Physical ones like in Astral Space. Also if someone has the relevant skills, he can use it (firearms, piloting, infiltrating, etc.). Or he can substitute knowledge Matrix games for any skill.

Now, trying to relate what I've been saying to the topic of this post: If the site allows for someone to do all these actions like in the physical, why would someone that hacks into it not be subject to the same rules, such as distance and time?

I can see that a user with administration or security access would have certain rooms or perhaps even planets open to them, but what if you have to board a space transport to get to the administration planet. Does walking or talking for one minute in the Matrix mean that one minute has gone by in "real" time? Perhaps it does not, perhaps the passage of time can be simulated like simsense emotions.

But I can also see that the administrators have their own reality filter turned on so that they do not have to interact with the world the way that users do. To them the administration planet is just an icon that they can reach out and touch, accessing it instantly.

By fluff--by which I mean the novel Psychotrope--there is a sense of time and distance, although altered (time being "as fast as thought" or about 10 perceived seconds to 1 real time second), and traveling from place to place in the same node did in fact take measurable time.

I suppose you could use Second Life as a model (the two are very similar in a number of ways) and that your administrator icons are HUD elements that they get and by interacting with them they are teleported from their current matrix location to "the admin planet" as you described (a function that Second Life nearly has--those HUD elements offer landmark 'items' which can be used to teleport and auto-activate, eg. they bring up the "teleport now?" dialog).

I would suspect that these UI controls are stored server-side (so the admin can log in from anywhere and have his tools), which would mean that the hacker who logs in as the admin also has them; similar to borrowing someone's SL login.

This is also a possibility, and a good one. But my hesitation with this solution is that it makes Reality Filter once again a shaky proposition at best.

But maybe I'm just over thinking it. Allowing security and administration users to forgo the old dungeon crawl is simple and explains a lot. After all, how often is the hacker going to break into a node, mayhem in mind, with anything less than a security access.

Perhaps I'll just house rule that failing a Reality Filter test does not get you that -1. It never made much sense to me anyhow.

I am of the same mindset. Failing the reality filter test and getting the node's shouldn't be worse than accepting the node's filter. Getting +1 response for having your own metaphor--because its familiar and you have your own tools available is handy--is appropriate, but not risky.

Why not keep trying to enforce your metaphor on the node again and again and again until you succeed in the test then?

Seems to me that doing this will invoke the retry failed test rule, and the character will accumulate -2 to dice pool for each retry.

Okay, so he'd still be rolling some 3 or 4 dice pools instead of one - and possibly without ANY consequences.

-2 cumulative penalty.

I suppose you could interpret the rule that way. My assumption is that the Reality Filter only comes into play when a hacker is facing a metaphor he doesn't fully understand. You're not going to get a +1 bonus or -1 penalty off of a Reality Filter test on the Kong Wal-Mart shopping node because it's already designed for open and easy use and understanding for any idiot.

A node user understands the node or he's guessing. One cannot understand something even more... else the reality filter would allow a hacker to achieve ultimate enlightenment off a very well designed public node.

In game it would be more logical and make more sense from a mechanics perspective if Reality Filter tests are limited to secured nodes that untrained or unauthorized personnel aren't permitted to access in the first place.

Your mileage (and rules abuse) may vary.

Yeah, a -2 cumulative penalty to his attempts to use the Reality Filter.
What a hit.

If he doesn't understand it, by RAW if he doesn't activate his Reality Filter he's just as good as he was otherwise. If he wins he gets +1, if he loses he gets -1. It's like, activating your Reality Filter is only partially effective, creating this hodge podge mess of a metaphor.*

*To which I am reminded of one of the (earlier) Animorphs novels where...Jake, Visser 3, and Ak end up in some weird scenario where they each think about their home and the resulting location is this messed up patchwork world with hunks that are Andelite-homeworld, chunks that are Earth, and festering pits that harbor more yerks (and those areas have a poisonous atmosphere that Jake has to avoid--its unexplained why the air doesn't leak out into the surrounding portions).

Man, what's that series up to now, like 53 books?

The consequence is time spent trying to get your Reality Filter to work. After the first failed attempt, your chances go down that you'll ever get it to work. All of a sudden you are 3 to 4 complex actions that nothing has been accomplished. This is OK if you are probing, but when on the fly, time is of the most important essence (most likely).

As all murky rules are, that's open to interpretation. Using precedent and tradition as a guide, if a hacker doesn't activate his Reality Filter in a node he doesn't understand he's taking the -1 penalty regardless.

That would make sense...if they actually said that.

Really, an obfuscated or confusing metaphor set would only require a player to make a matrix perception test to identify the what's what.
I'm not specifically interested in altering the mechanics of working in simulated environments just now. I just want matrix stuff to be visceral. If you make interesting worlds, then awesome story ideas, like Monk's, will just naturally come to inhabit them.

It also allows for hacker characters to get their full social-engineering set into play. They might have to trick a kidnapping victim out into the open by working their way into their virtual social circle. The whole team could get involved to set up the introduction and then they leave it in the hands of their hacker/face.

Nothing in the RAW conflicts with what I've said. And, granted, neither has it conflicted with anything you said. But I simply choose to read between the lines of murky rules and make a logical interpretation within the scope of the game rather than frump about a rule not making sense.


Well, yes and no. My interpretation is that the Reality Filter provides its bonus by examining and rearranging the hacker's "perception" of the virtual environment as a whole whereas the Matrix Perception test allows for examination of a specific "item" within a virtual environment, be it a node, ARO, IC, etc. Reality Filter speeds up interactivity with a node, whereas a Matrix Perception test gives the hacker details on what a specific thingy does or what its status is. According to the RAW, a hacker has to be specific as to what he's examining with the Matrix Perception Test.

Your mileage may vary.

It's pretty easy to assume that a Reality Filter test happens every time someone accesses a new node, and if you don't have a Reality Filter running, you automatically lose.

But, (I think it was Monk who suggested this,) it would make just as much sense that running Reality Filter and having it fail would result in the response loss from misinterpretation due to mixed metaphors.