That works against anything that is not a Agent... or a technomancer...

And since it is a contested roll (Matrix Perception vs the Hackers Stealth + Hacking roll) that agent of yours (his) may NOT notice the Hacker...

Just sayin...

Keep the Faith

I haven't seen anyone mentioning the possibilities of the near-infinite storage capacity in SR4 combined with one-time pads.. you could plausibly have enough one-time pads on any one device to never run out. At least not before the device is scrapped due to the same kind of planned obsolescence that gave us program degradation.

There is no question that the Matrix rules in SR are completely "Gibsonian" in nature and utterly bogus. This was a deliberate decision on the part of the original designers. We started out with a much more realistic 'simulation' of late 1980's network topology and security, filtered through an admittedly shallow lens of what seventy years of technology change would bring, and ultimately it wasn't any fun to play. (And we knew of what we modeled since one of the early authors worked for a megacorp dealing with just those issues.)

Whomever upthread said that the SR Matrix rules were written to play out like an action movie is spot on. During my tenure (I cannot speak to what occurred afterward) the Matrix rules were probably our least successful rules set. There were a variety of reasons for this, but the primary reason was our inability to translate a primarily visual/sensorial experience into dice, tables, and goofy rules.

If you think that your SR game, and more importantly your players, would benefit from a "more realistic, less hand-wavey" system, go for it!

Tom Dowd

I don't see that you need to keep a list of the routing to everything on the matrix. You just keep a list of the things you are connected to, and they tell you what they are connected to, etc, out to some arbitrary tree depth. If what you are looking for isn't in that tree, you send a request to the device corresponding to every "leaf" in your tree, and they check their trees... etc. I doubt many devices would have more than 15 degrees of separation.

Healing in SR is absurdly quick, yes. But there's a fine line between "realistic" and "practical in game terms."

I have played a game (system) that did not have magic, and your "damage track" (in SR terms) was infinitely long. You were declared dead when your penalty was so great that you couldn't succeed at anything (or if you failed the "devastating trauma" from a high-damage attack and outright died/passed out).

Long story short, my character got into a cage-fight against his boss (over three times the strength, with twice the size and toughness*) at a bar and promptly lost (almost fist to the face one-hit KO; I threw in the towel after 2 combat rounds**) I was surprisingly still on my feet after taking both punches and landing nothing. Spent over 2 months in the hospital recovering.

That became, effectively, two full months of downtime for the whole party--not because I was important, but because no one wanted to play 2 months worth of game-time with me just twiddling my thumbs.^ Thus healing--for a game perspective--has to be fairly rapid: enter medkits and First Aid healing up debilitating wounds in minutes or less.

*What would you expect to happen if a polar bear got into a fight with a large monitor lizard?
**No "initiative pass" system either, just: him, me, him, quit.
^Given that I was the only person to make every game session....I think that would have dropped "party attendance" down to two.

Yet, you don't apply the same lenience towards hacking and matrix mechanics? Isn't that a double standard?

Actually, I did mention this, in my first post. This realization was what prompted me to start this thread in the first place.

The problem with the theory is that this type of 'decrpytion' simply changes from brute-force computing to brute-force fist-to-facing. It's still not unbreakable because it relies on hardware and data, and the transmission of both, to all parties involved. Intercept that, and you've 'broken' the encryption.

Yeah, but everyone has the hardware (it's called a Commlink) and the data can be generated by holding your Commlink out the window to listen to audible and wireless noise for several hours. Transmitting the data is as simple as meeting in the pub since everyone is part of this great big wireless network thing. I think the books might have mentioned it once or twice.

Right. And all you have to do is mug the guy when he leaves the pub and bam, encryption broken.

While I may have named the thread "Unbreakable Encryption" to get you all to read it, I should clarify that I never actually said this encryption was unbreakable. Rather, I said that it is unbreakable simply by intercepting the transmitted signals, which is both true and a huge improvement over stuff encrypted with Encrypt, which can usually be broken in a matter of seconds.

Assuming you can tell OTP key from ciphertext, sure. And know the people are exchanging an OTP key.

Chances are that you'll have researched that if the code is important enough to be worth the trouble of trying to break. Else, why even bother with it to begin with? Why even have the coded message exist, and why waste the time describing (to yourself or anyone else) how it works?

Also, please bear in mind that the rules, unrealistic as they may be, still assume the people reading them have a modicum of common sense . You shouldn't take them too literally. Storage space in SR4 isn't literally infinite, just large enough not to matter for most applications. While I'm glad no one has to keep track of megapulses anymore, the GM still gets to say you ran out of space if you try to do absurd stuff like download the entire contents of a corporate mainframe into your portable commlink, or generating and storing enough one-time-pads to cover everything you'll ever send or receive for the rest of your life.

No, that is precisely what the GM does not get to say—at least not without being a dick. Hidden limitations only discoverable after it's too late to plan for them need very good reasons to exist, and this just doesn't have one.

EDIT: correction, that's the mainframe issue. The OTP issue presumably doesn't occur in a difficult-to-replicate circumstance, so having not properly planned for the hidden limitation isn't as disastrous, and that limit might be ok.

~J

No, that's exactly what the GM does, because it's not hidden. The players know from the start that data is big enough to *mostly* not worry about, but also that it's not literally infinite. It's not like they'd invest in something like that first and only then be told they couldn't; there's no 'after it's too late'.

Storage is subjective. Let's try to find some common ground by answering some questions:

-Does an average commlink have enough storage space to store an entire BTL?
-Does an average commlink have enough storage space to store 24 hours worth of simsense?
-Does an average commlink have enough storage space to store a week's worth of simsense?

Personally, my answers to the above would be "yes", "yes", and "no".

The answer SHOULD be yes, yes, and yes. Remember, we're dealing with computers that put modern day supercomputers to shame (in much the same way that modern day computers put 20 year old super computers to shame) except its by several orders of magnitude.

I could store a weeks worth of video on my 1.5 TB HDD very easily, maybe a whole month's depending on resolution and compression.

Yes, but it's an interesting and fun adventure, not one guy rolling dice in the corner for 30 minutes with the GM.

The other element is that encryption in worthless when you own the system. Nobody is going to carry around a little book full of unique 64 character sequences they have carefully to enter every time they want to look at the report they wrote last Monday; its all going to be done by the OS in in the background. Once you are recognized as the OS (or the user) by the system decryption just happens automatically in the background. We have this fight every 6 months with clueless security guys who wan to spend a small fortune and months of man-hours and will, in the end, provide no value to us unless someone breaks in and physically steals a server.

No arguments from me.

I'm not holding a double standard. The matrix rules, as written, are both a) complex to the point of irritation, frustration, and endless forum threads (such as this one) and illogical from a common sense point of view (everything is hackable to the point of encryption being trivially beaten in seconds) while at the same time offering "it can't be hacked, not in a million years, forever, lalalalala I can't hear you" encryption. There's no middle ground. AND everything is wireless (except for all that stuff that you know, might have a security issue with being wireless (except for all of the gear that might have an issue being wireless, but the players own it)) which makes it trivial to hack (see previous point).

Healing on the other hand was just simplified to make it so you don't have to spend 6 to 9 months (and $8000) recovering from a job that went south (and paid out $8000).

Matrix rules that are simple, easy to use, and internally consistent are all I ask for. If its fun, then so much the better (the current rules are none of those).

This.

Odd that you say that, and I am not trying to be a prick about it, but I have yet to see anything truly difficult about the 4th Edition Matrix Rules... they are, in my opinion, simple, easy to use, and relatively consistent... to a point... the biggest inconsistencies are generally those that individuals manufacture to be inconsistent... the Rules were never meant to be a picture of real life, they are meant to be a method of providing a system to quickly model an electronic intrusion (as someone previously said in this thread... too lazy to look it up though)... In my opinion (I know that I am in the minority here), the rules are fun, and have succeeded in that regard, at the least.

The truly odd thing to me is that the people who truly do not like the rules provided (or their optional additions), try to intentionally make them more difficult to understand than they really are, and I am not sure exactly why that is. I know that the rules do not mimic real life in any way shape or form (nor would I want them to do so... talk about boring with a Capital B), with the possible exception of several buzz words that may share the same meanings. But that is really okay, there is no real need to over complicate the rules... And, for those who like a more complicated, or more realistic version of the Matrix, there are plenty of Optional Rules to provide such a version.

When you start bringing in real life/real world terminologies and expectations to the Matrix, then yes, the rules will bother you (As the Encryption Topics so generally provide)... I would say just relax about why it ISN'T what you want it to be, and play with what it is intended to be...

Anyways... enough of my ranting... I am pretty sure you are tired of my POV on this matter, so apologies if I have offended anyone, that is not my intent...

Keep the Faith

Not offended, I simply don't agree. I've attempted numerous times to use the matrix rules and have come to the conclusion that they are poorly written, not well explained, have few examples.* The only part about them that I like is ... actually, I don't think I like any of it. I would say I liked the fact that they exist and offer an option, but without understanding them fully they are unwieldy, confusing, and downright unhelpful.

The last thing I did with them personally was take over from the GM while a technomancer hacked a system. My job was to roll the system's analyze and throw a trace at the player.

After about four rounds of tracing him and letting him do his thing I stumbled upon something I'd missed which ret-conned the entire thing back to "ok, you *DO* notice the trace..." At which point I threw the book aside, looked at the player and said, "you notice the trace, you trivially avoid it" (as I knew the odds of success on that, based on his dice pool and mine) "and get the pay data without getting caught."

The player decided next session that the technomancer wasn't any an interesting/viable/fun character to play.

*Ok, so points A, B, and C are variations on the same. But they are different. Poorly written means you need better explanation, which can be done with examples, but doesn't need to be.

Hey, No worries Draco18s...

I agree that the rules can be confusing... no Doubt about it...
Better Descriptions would definitely help, and more Examples, or more detailed examples, would help even more... I think that the redesigend section in SR4A may have helped to clear up a few things, but I could be wrong on that count...

Keep the Faith

Draco,
If you would like there to exist an alternative to the current matrix system, why not start to make one? It may be a significant amount of work, and contentious to a number of other posters, but doing it publically on these forums would probably generate suggestions made in good faith. I know that I would enjoy assisting anyone embarking on such an endeavour.

Someone's suggested one, I'd like to see theirs.

As for fixing it myself, I've thought on that and haven't been able to come up with a solution that adheres to existing game rules (that is, uses the same success/fail mechanic).

While the number-field sieve is the best method currently known, there exists an intriguing possibility for a far more elegant approach. Here we would find a composition of extensions, each Abelian over the rationals, and hence contained in a single cyclotomic field. Using the Artin map, we might induce homomorphisms from the principal orders in each of these fields that z by f z. These maps could then be used to combine splitting information from all the fields. Interspersed with this in turn would require the standard Kummer extensions that non-torsion form of the Jacobians of the Fermat curves gives rise to. It would be a breakthrough of Gaussian proportions and allow us to acquire the solution in a dramatically more efficient manner. Now, I should emphasize that such an approach is purely theoretical. So far, no one has been able to accomplish such constructions. Yet.




-karma

On a more serious note, wouldn't rotating personal ciphers be more or less unbreakable as well?

I mean, if I decide the word "Donut" means "Target what I'm aiming at and open fire" to my drone, and the word changes every time the command is given, there's no crypto-breaking system in the universe that could figure that out just from the transmission. They'd need access to either me or my drone.



-karma

Frank Trollman took that suggestion to heart. Unfortunately, he got into a fight, and his alternative proposal was never really discussed here. A shame, because it has a lot of ideas.

LINK

I've made suggestions on Frank's aWoD project on TGD. I know about The Ends (it's a sticky after all). I even have a PDF copy of it.

Some people find brain hacking objectionable, and I would enjoy seeing Dumpshock create a matrix alternative. We have a lot of decent minds posting here, surely they could do something cool.

What's purple and commutes?

An abelian grape!

Frank's Matrix material is well thought-out. I wish he'd been involved in the SR4 Matrix mechanics conversations. It is different than the standard rules, but he takes the time to consider all of the considerations that the SR writers had to think about when developing the Matrix rules for Fourth Edition. And in many cases, I feel Frank thought about them more clearly.

Too often, I see criticisms of the Matrix rules without proposed solutions, because the solutions are hard. And many of the things the critics say they would want effectively destroy the Matrix as a playable part of Shadowrun, which obviously no Shadowrun writer is ever going to do (or would be allowed to do).

One thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize is that it's far easier for one person to come up with a complete set of rules that are internally consistent than it is for a group of people, each writing different sections, to do the same. So while things may seem better thought out and organized when done by a single person, that doesn't mean the same amount of effort and energy didn't go into the other. It also doesn't mean that those rules are going to be balanced or immune to abuse anymore than any other set of rules, such as in the case of the discussed house rules. There's a lot of goofiness in there, and stuff I'd never even consider introducing into my games due to the absurdity thereof.

Don't quote me on this, because I'm not 100% sure, but I think most of the Fourth Edition Matrix rules were written by one author. For the most part, the SR4 writing pool was very small because the project was kept secret even from some freelancers (like myself) for quite a long time. The rest of the freelancers were brought in for playtesting, but the number of writers involved in creating the rules was fairly small.

Yerameyahu nailed it. It's not a "hidden" limitation at all, it's something everyone should know from minute one of the campaign. I believe it's even stated in the book. It's simply a common sense thing - of course a mainframe or nexus is going to have much more storage space than a commlink. Even if the commlink has enough space that you don't need to worry about it 99% of the time, of course the entire contents of a mainframe's storage will exceed the space you have available in your commlink.

On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that most missions will not involve downloading the entire contents of a mainframe's storage, and if they ever do the Johnson is going to provide a large storage unit for the purpose. Downloading the limited set of data most runs require should pose no problem, even if you do take some additional paydata on the side. But copying everything on a mainframe into a commlink is pretty obviously impossible. Complaining about it is like complaining that putting a loaded gun to your character's head and pulling the trigger causes damage.

Frank publicly blamed Aaron for the goo that is the SR4 matrix rules, and Aaron's obnoxious defense of the wonderfulness of RAW Matrix supports that. He's also pointed out that there was at least one other author, because a critical concept gets used as though it means something else in one part of the rules. I can't remember the exact point, but it provided a reason for the opaqueness and internal contradictions of the rules.

Frank also had the advantages of getting to see the SR4 BBB matrix rules in action before writing his houserules, and having no deadline. Frank even had an advantage from not needing to keep his rules secret from the world at large, as they're not intended to be a commercial venture. To paraphrase Linus' Law, "to enough eyes every problem is flat."

Good discussion. I don't have much to add except...

I decided to post my amusement that one of the original SR creators (with only 12 total posts) throws out his viewpoint on the original Matrix design and the discussion continues as though nothing was said. Maybe that sounds fanboy-ish, but I'm intrigued that Mr. Dowd still takes the time to peruse DS now and then.

I didn't even see his post. Interesting..



"Inability to translate visual/sensorial experience into dice." Huh. You know. Like the entire rest of the game. Last I checked there was a Perception skill that covered that kind of stuff.

(Not to bash Tom Dowd, but that's what I thought when I read his post. RPG games exist to simulate "sensorial" experiences and emulate effects with dice. The dice might be representing a physics action, rather than raw visual data, but really, when you have a matrix that effectively emulates Real Life, its ok to use existing game rules for those virtualized scenarios. The end result is the same: the character takes an action, using a skill and an attribute, with success modified by gear against an opposing force).

He also didn't have any developers saying that he needed to do it a certain way because of design decisions. Which, of course, is part of a developer's job but it does put constrains on the writers at times. I mean, when I saw SR4 during playtest, I wanted so badly for them to remove technomancers, but I was totally overruled on that. I'm not bitter about it, it's a direction they wanted to go with SR4. I didn't like it much, but it's not my call.

Unofficial material is much easier to write!

The interesting thing that I see about Tom Dowd's post is that it matches something I've seen in every old-school game developer - the rules aren't set in stone, mess around with them yourself until you find something that works. Maybe it's just me, but people seem less willing to do that nowadays (especially with The Other RPG).

That's been a big beef of mine for a while now. All the people who run around shouting about "RAW" and using it to bully people into shutting up is totally ruining the hobby for me. Apparently it's some cardinal sin to sit back and discuss ways to change, improve, or re-interpret the rules so that they make more sense or are more comfortable to use. It's one of the main reasons I get worked up a lot around here.

That's not what he was talking about.

The main reason is that you are having trouble discerning when a discussion of alterntive rulings is appropriate and when not. In a thread about a particular rules question, you can only argue by the RAW. Everything else will lead to no result and endless battles of opinions. It's really quite pointless.
On the other side are thread that specifically deal with house rules, rule interpretations, differen rues proposal, or even complete rewrites. In such threads chimin in one's own opinion or one's own house rules not only makes sense but constitutes a nescessary and welcome contribution.

Care to...fix it for me?

Or are you just going to say "you're wrong" and move on without attempting to correct me? If so, then "I'm right, so STFU."

Nah, I just wasn't sure whether you were joking. What he was talking about was not how to represent matrix perception into rules, but how to represent something the developer can only imagine in audio-visual terms (read: a movie sequence, the imagination of a story sequence, the imagination of how they would like things to look like in SR, where they out into a audio-visual medium) into abstract, yet easy to use rules that are fun and internally consistent.

In other words:

How do you translate something your see and hear and feel into dice rolls? How do you translate a rollercoaster ride into dice rolls? How do you translate your first kiss into dice rolls? How do you translate the death of a loved on into dice rolls?

It really is the same thing as astral projection. If you can do one (astral projection), you should be able to do the other (VR) using pretty much the same rules philosophies. The problem is Shadowrun has always insisted on making the Matrix rules convoluted and alien to the rest of the system.

I get where you're coming from. But how would you represent paydata and encryption on the stral plane? How would represent access restriction on the astral pane? Or would you do without them?

Ok, I get what you're saying here, but I disagree that hacking the matrix is similar to those types of experiences. Hacking isn't something that happens to you, otherwise there would be no programs, options, actions, or results. Hacking can feel like those experiences, but that's not what it is as a whole.