People have been saying for years that print is dead. Newspapers and magazines are failnig and now systems like amazon's Kindle means some people don't even have to carry books. I would expect that trend to expand more, why have a bookshelf groaning under the weight of books when you can just have a device the size of a single book there instead? BUT as runners evolve I think print will have a resurgance.

In RL I was looking at my work e-mail and was reminded that if you use corp systems to e-mail anything, there is the risk that it will be read by the corporation. That's pretty standard, so much so we created the temrs 'work safe' and 'not work safe' for stuff we send to each other on someone else's time.

Well by the 2070's human nature is not going to change but corp controls are even tighter. I mena there are parts of town you can't even walk in without an active comm unit running so you can be identified. For all that we think runners are cutting edge, to be fair at the higher levels corp deckers and mages have more resources and can be just as good or better so they can peer into any dark corner of the matrix to see what you runner or corper is looking at, reading, scheduling etc.

It occured to me that the way around this is something not in the matrix at all. The written word on a hard copy. A book, a magazine, a newspaper that can be printed to spread word away from the controls of a corp and who's source was untraceable. DLN's husband said when he was in school they were going to close up a cold war bomb shelter in his HS and several of them created a time capsule there by hiding an old hand worked printing press, matterials and some Communist propaganda sheets in the area before it was sealed- a teacher helped them. The door was covered by tons of timber for the wood shop but should that ever been moved and someone goes in long after the actors are long gone...

The corp might not like you reading certain books- look at modern China in RL but it becomes much harder to control if a corper has a copy of Catcher in the Rye or Animal Farm in her purse.

A runner's plan of a target's shcedule might be picked up in the matrix- lots of search activity around X sir, but the trail ends when the stuff is just written on a piece of paper.

Lastly nothing is ever really erased in the matrix, evidence can always be found, but a lighter and a few minutes can destroy the evidence of paper.

What do you think?

All of these things I've used. Good old spy tricks like flash paper ("Watch this magic trick!" Hold over a candle at a table and done.) and such are great tools. Disintegrating paper is also handy.

Another thing you can do with paper but can't do with electronic format is FOLD it. Like those Mad Magazine covers we all loved as kids (Except for you young whipper snappers out there! Go to school!). Secret messages you can hide in the folds are great.

One character that a friend made (He works out character ideas in his head constantly, and I yank 'em for NPCs.) has his SIN Registry information on print-out, using UCAS Census Letterhead, just in case of another Matrix Crash. He's an Elf, so he might live to see another one...

Disposable commcodes written on Cocktail Napkins replace old phone numbers. Same deal, really.

I also wrote in my Shadows of Winnipeg that Horizon is doing Print on Demand for books, for the folks that like that "Old World Feeling", using Hemp Paper. I left it up to the reader/GM/whoever is using it to see if the reason is Sinister or not, but in my mind they're just getting set up for if/when it takes off again, attempting to get people really literate rather than "iconoliterate". Educated consumers make educated choices, and Horizon is on the ground floor of all those types of things.

Finally, I see a number of characters having some ancient phone books hanging around to beat people with, like old school policemen. It just makes sense.

Hey! I know what Mad Magazine is! It was on the Simpsons!

Nah, print is dead. Use more creative security, erasure, etc. Read-only media, physical destruction, whatever seems fun.

The Bible, by Horizon...

Oh, I'm sure there's still orders of Monks out there hand-making bibles.

They'd make great Foci for the Catholic/Christian Magicians!

"The power of Cline compels thee!"

With all that latent potential for unarmed damage, how do the monks make bibles without turning them into dust?

That's a good idea! I never thought of anchoring a concealment spell to a book!

That's what they said when TV came around, but tell that to some schmuck named Bob Woodward.

Seriously though, when one format of media comes around that surpasses another, it rarely means the death of that media, simply it's transformation.
To give some examples, folks thought movies would be the death of theater, but it changed theater dramatically(pun intended.) Because plays could no longer be about two good looking ingenues running around looking for a money purse, you could now get that for a nickle at the picture show. Now it had to be about realism, connection and truth, which is where the modern theatre movement came in.
Same thing with painting and photographs, giving us everything from cubism to modern art. Same thing for photography when film came around, truning photography into an art rather than another form of media.
Even television forced newspaper reporters into a more focused form of journalism that brought us Woodward and Bernstein, which before could not have existed in the Hurst days.
To give an example from a different medium, cars saved horses as we know them. No horses are a thriving industry supported mostly by those who can afford to care for and put a great deal of thought into their ownership, whereas before internal combustion, they were a means to an end.
Cars didn't kill horses and movies didn't kill theater, and so computers will not be the death knell of books. There will always be collectors and specialists and people like me who simply prefer the smell.

Books and newspapers aren't going anywhere, but they will change a bit and they have a place in the Sixth World.

Movie theaters *are* dying, though. Took longer. Newspapers are terminal; a newspaper's website is not the same thing. That's exactly what 'print is dead' means. If something changes that dramatically, it's not honest to say it's not gone.

If you call the state of horses and even of theater 'living', then you're in a different argument than I am. Cars killed horses… as a mass (or even significant) transport system.

Theater has been "dead" for over a hundred years, yet it somehow finds a way to live on. But I'll agree that it isn't nearly the same as it was at the turn of the last century. That's a good thing, though. Most people in theater today wouldn't recognize theater before it "died." Because it sucked. By all accounts anyway, I wasn't there. It had to change and, in turn, it changed acting with it. The "death" of theater created the theater and acting as we know it. Sure, a lot of theaters are struggling, but that has always been the case. The same can be said of ballet, opera and orchestra. They are in no more danger of disappearing than they were when TV or film came around. They serve a necessary, artistic purpose and they will still be around in 2070 as well.

As for horses being "dead" there are anywhere between 7 to 9 million horses in the US alone. That's hardly on the endangered species list. They aren't used for mass transportation anymore, but that is a very good thing. Horses used to be abused and neglected, as well as poorly bred for a very long time. Making them a beast of burden for ranchers and enthusiast saved the animal from being too genetically homogenized.
Sure they aren't as common on the street of Chicago as they used to be, but most people I know owned at least one at one time in their lives. Of course, I live in Texas and where I game has two horses in the back yard, so I'm probably a skewed sample.

Something changing doesn't mean it's gone. TV changed within the last decade from four camera set-ups about fat ex-comedian dads and their hot wives to reality shows(cheaper) and Mad Men(artistic, but high DVD sales). Well, CBS hasn't changed, but their average viewing age is still worried about attacks from the Kaiser. Would you call TV dead? We're watching more than ever these days.
Change is a natural part of the evolution of media. Technology forces old mediums to either evolve or die. Some mediums really do die off in all but the minds of historians, like vaudeville. Some find a way to persist despite growing trends, and in doing so they have to change. This isn't dying, it's evolving and adapting.

The same will be done print. Books won't be as prevalent as they are today, but plenty of people will still own them. Seeing one won't be odd, but owning a shelf full will. Having a newspaper subscription won't be something everyone has anymore, but knowing the name of your local paper won't be out of the ordinary. In that way, print media will live on. It will also be something the corps can't track, giving it an edge in the underground. Something Shaddowrunner can take advantage of.
If you want to say it's "dead" because not everyone uses it anymore, I'll acknowledge that fact. If you want to say it's "dead" in that books will cease to exist, history is against you on that point.


I would also like to point out that there are a bunch of World of Warcraft players right now claiming table top RPGs are dead. I think we're proving them wrong.

You do see horses on the streets of Winnipeg on occasion.

Well. One street.

And there is *ZERO* crime when you do see them.

Correlation = causation. Everybody buy a horse!

Actually, it's more the policemen on top of the horse that does it.

And the sure knowledge that, no matter how fast you run, the horse can beat your hoop hands down.

And that is why there should be more centaur cops in the NAN.

Are you saying the horse is a crimefighting superhero?






-k

Changes in TV *programming* are the same as changes in the words of a newspaper; no bearing on this discussion.

As I said, Fortinbras, 'the horse' as transportation is (all but, I guess) dead. That doesn't mean horses are extinct. 'Print is dead' doesn't mean that paper doesn't exist, either.

I agree, 'dead' is figurative in this 'print is dead' kind of statement. I do think it's fair to use 'dead' to mean 'a pale shadow of its former self', relegated to specialists and collectors. You're right to point out that it's not literal, but it's not a false statement.

And I still say that various digital technologies would be superior to print for clandestine use in 2070.

in the world of shadworun it would be a crimefighting superhero technohorse thank you.

It's dead; no pulse.

Everybody buy a policeman! Lone Star does them cheap!

Everybody buy a Lone Star! Steak is the new black!

RL when Amazon came out with Kindle they nearly destroyed it by cancelling a book people had purchased, and deleteing it from their kindles. What they gave they took away. Do you really want to run that risk? They were able to reach out and touch people who had the item, that means they can do it again and that is in 2010. By 2070 the corper's tech will be far superior.

and again the point is that corps don't know what is in the possession of the book reading public the same way they know what is onan e-book. You really think The orps will like people reading Karl Marx? Moa? Che? maybe they will see a reason to reject someone else. Plato? Mill? Gracho Marx?
Someone already suggested they could rewrite books like the Bible?

I felt the part about god was a little far-fetched. Could they fix that?

None of that is relevant to my statement about *clandestine* use. You keep bouncing between the security of paper, and the politics. One at a time, please. Besides, SR 2070 is a setting *ruled* by the hackers. They're so much stronger than is 'realistic', so I don't think we have to worry about Mao not being available.

On the subject, still, of clandestine use, I'm saying the encryption and digital distribution mean that it's easier to get and hide information (whether it's attack plans, or Duck Soup). If you're searched, they first have to find the tiny data chip, or file on your commlink; then, they have to break the encryption. If you had the book, they'd just have to glance at it. Now, in SR 2070, we do know that encryption is flimsy, but there's the Strong option, and realistic encryption is stronger still.

Have you seen what some of those guys can do?
Then again, in a world where top level security can be built or torn down in a few seconds by a good roll, I guess the tide is in favor of hackers.

I guess the issue with SR hacking is the same as with giving gods stars in D&D. If there are numbers, someone will find a way to overcome them.

Problem is that right now RPG gamers seems separated in two amorphous categories, one that forgoes numbers more or less fully and focus everything on story (to the point that what is going on may well be collaborative/competitive/round-robin storytelling rather then a RPG session), and those that want numbers for everything as that stops the GM form "railroading" (shock, horror).

Look at modern china and it's control of the internet there. Try to access information about topics the government doesn't want you to look up and ten imagine instead of a govermnet controlling as nation of 1.3 billion it's your employer upon whom you rely for you food and shelter and the well being of your family. Do you want to risk the corp hackers won't check you out? sure they are not going to check out every person BUT suppose you pissedo ff some collegue or a boss who then has a reason to want to see you to fail.

That is one thing to keep in mind about the SR matrix. Unless your running some kind of stealth system (used to be the big defining deck aspect in previous editions, now it is "legal" to possess) all actions you do is visible to anyone else within line of sight in the metaphor of the nodes sculpting. This means that anyone else working on the same node can potentially see what your up to.

On a RL computer, keeping a similar level of overwatch would require complex monitoring software showing trees of programs and open files for every user present.

i am really surprised that black hammer, stealth, sniffer, track, spoof, exploit and decrypt are not listed as forbidden rather then restricted in SR4. The corps and governments would be able to deploy them without risk anyways, as they would be writing the laws that made such programs forbidden in the first place.

Snow_Fox, are we talking about SR, or reality? Are we talking about runners/spies, or repressed populations? They're each good discussions, but they're very different.

...exactly. I buy a rule book (or more likely a PDF) and I pay once for it. To be involved in an online MMO I have to pay for a subscription as well as my ISP to play (which can be an issue if there are DL/UL limits). The other part about online games I do not like is hey are not face to face, and therefore difficult (if not impossible) to actually "play" (as an actor does) a character. I love to do dialects and accents you can't get that to come across as well typing it as you can verbally. Yeah, I've been involved in IC play on the Welcome to the Shadows forum, however, typing what "The Kid" says compared to actually falling into her role at a live session are two distinctly different things.

MMOs also tend to be pretty basic - whack the monster (or other PC) steal the treasure/items, level up, and go to the inn to recover - and thus miss a lot of the subtlety that can occur in a live RPG session. Also the setting is only one person(s)' (the MMO developer's) world view so I find it rather impersonal in that a character's actions does not have an effect on it other than how the character/critter you are fighting reacts. For example, in a recent 3rd ed campaign our team actually founded and owned the Twisted Helix club in Seattle (a couple of us underwent SURGE and had a lot of nuyen in our pockets from the last mission). MMOs are not as flexible, and cannot be due to the fact they are a basically computer programme that has to deal with a very large audience with a reasonable level of response.

Finally, if you have a slow or spotty connection (such as I do) it can make play more frustrating than fun. Imagine being in the middle of a fight and then you get hit with a network reset or timeout. While you are reloading, your character is just standing there playing "punching bag" for the bad guy as you are still effectively logged in and the world keeps moving with or without your input.

MMO's did have an effect on RPGs. Just look at what happened to "that other game" in it's current incarnation, and to a lesser degree, even here.

-----

As to the OT, I can agree with it. One of the reasons I would actually put extra points into the R/W part of at least one language my characters knew (not necessarily the "native" one either).

As to government controls of digital information, in the 2050s/60s there was the LPO's Information Directorate in the UK which pretty much controlled the C-Net (the government's databases and matrix) as well as "censoring" the UK's public matrix and media.

So I believe there is a correlation between RL and SR. Britain (before the crash at least) was a pretty much a police state under the auspices of the LPO. The familiar "bobby" was replaced by an automatic weapon carrying paramilitary specialist. When the Triple-O operatives (the LPO's secret police) showed up, people disappeared. There is the above mentioned censorship of the media as well as the Education Bureau's stranglehold on secondary and post secondary education. Effectively, the government was allowed to take whatever action deemed necessary against individuals or entities under the bumbie of "National Security".

Not very different in some ways than China today.

In my RiS campaign, Serbia was even worse, rising out of the ashes of the Euro-Muslim conflict to become a true dictatorship (with a little help) with full control of the media and National Matrix. The Beograd regime had two powerful weapons for keeping their and occupied Croatia's population under control: propaganda and fear. State Security's secret police (referred to by the Croatians as "Blacksuits" due to the clothing they wore), were like the Triple-O, people you didn't want to meet up with. Many were awakened, (usually Social Adepts but also practising mages among the higher ranks) who were well schooled in the art of psychological warfare. There were the infamous "Conversation Rooms" (interrogation chambers), and the "Re-Education" Facilities, where "conditioning" (read brainwashing) was taken to an art form. If you were deemed "unrecoverable", you'd be sent off to the "Soldier-X "programme.

In both Serbia, and particularly occupied Croatia, where any semblance of an "open" information infrastructure was pretty much non-existent, the "old school" ways were the only means Resistance groups and disaffected citizens in either nation had for passing information. It was only limited by the creativity one had. "Free" deckers (not impressed into and "properly trained" for government service) were few and had to be really really good to avoid detection (and subsequent capture since they were seen as valuable candidates for Re-Education by state), often carefully probing a local node for a day or so before actually going in.

As this was occurring in the Balkans, where instability was the norm, the rest of Europe (still recovering from the previous Euro war) pretty much avoided the situation not wanting to become involved in yet another conflict. Besides, it was the Balkans where someone else would come to power in a year or so, wouldn't they?

Of course I am not up to speed on the European scene since the Crash since I retreated back to 3rd ed after both playing and GM-ing a short campaign in 4th. Just didn't care for the change of mechanics, though I will admit from what I have read, the setting has become more dystopic (almost 1984-ish) with the "ever present" wireless matrix.

Maybe. At least in Seattle, it seems like you can do whatever you want, especially the hackers.

(MMOs and tabletops are distinct, so it's not revelatory that one didn't replace the other. But you do use PDFs, and chargens, and chats, and all of that. I haven't used pen and paper for PnP in years.)

Yet MMOs and other video games are still seen as more socially acceptable. Everyone plays video games, but rolling dice? No way, I'm no geek.

Something actually told to me after I described RPGing: "That sounds pretty Anti-Social. Why don't you try communicating with people like playing World of WarCraft?"

Talking to rocks doesn't count (because ANY sentient being should be able to realize the inconsistency of that statement).
Did you explain to this rock that Table-top roleplaying most often involves being in the same physical space as the people you're playing with?

Focus, guys. What's that got to do with 'print is dead'?

I would like to point out that there is a printer accessory for our comms on page 328 of the SR4A.

Sure, there could be a electronic trail to that accessory if you aren't paranoid enough with your comm, but I'm just saying, there must be a reason that accessory still exists in this setting.

And I would like to hope that 3D printing would become a bit more of a possibility at a lower price point in our fantasy futuristic setting, once you take that into consideration, how crazy our your spy games going to get then? And I am sure there is some long since forgotten print encryption techniques available to stump those perusing your printed diary/journal/memos of dirty deeds done dirt cheap if you bothered to invest the archaic knowledge and language skills.

And I can't be the only one pondering the possibilities of e-paper, e-ink, holo-projectors, nanites, RFID tags, AR, and so forth when it comes to the printed word, symbols, and graphics. Surely we can get up to no good (or maybe its good in a dystopian world, freedom!) with such wonderful tools for sketching on the cave walls of the unwashed SiNless masses in the various barens.

Print isn't dead, it just became a cyber zombie

A bit dated maybe, since The Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America was set in 2052.

Both apply but I'm thinking of the general population more than anything. Corpers living in corp facilities, lesser workers who live in their own homes but still rely on corps for work, intelligensia who object to the potential filtering of knowledge, anarchists who love something able to slip past the controls of "the man."

"What do you mean, you only shot the corpse in the head ONCE?"

"OK, are we all up to date?"

"No."

"Damnit, Janet! The Holo is right there! It's all laid out."

"I can't see Holos."

"Fraggin' Free Spirits, OK, break out the printer and blow the dust off of it..."

Indeed.

I wonder if it print concealed or out in the open barcode ids for the printer and such like some printers where found to do IRL some years ago (supposedly to counter printing fake dollar bills and such, tho i am sure the Chinese government would love to be able to track down who printed some poster or flier).

Why would a materialized free spirit be unable to see the contents of the physical plane (ie light -> ie holo)?

They just can't. Logically, they probably can't read paper either (or street signs, differentiate colors, etc.), but that's not how it works as written. No, it doesn't make sense.

You'd think they could create an e-ink solution using the astral pigments, though probably it's expensive. I'd probably also let them use more standard things if they purchased a vision power, like Low-Light (and there'd be an option for 'normal'). Don't hijack the thread for this like I know you're about to, though. Hehe.

*Slams my way into the cockpit Pre-9/11 style and jams a pistol into the pilot's ear* This this thread to Cuba!

They can't read screens and holos, which is basically anything that provides AR, anything else they can see, IIRC.

You know me too well.

Too small an audience.

As for Free Spirits being able to read, I think the proof is that Buttercup reads manga and Dunkie's comic book collection.

Unless she assenses them. "This Spiderman comic has an aura of AWESOME."

Only if random fluff crap is proof, CanRay. I know that the spirit rules/fluff a complete inconsistent mess, and I'm not saying what's right.