A post I dropped in the Cyberzombie thread earlier got me thinking...

How many of your players have skillwires?
How many of them have upped the firewall, added IC etc to the skillwire control module (it is a device after all)?

As I understand it, the skillwires override your body's normal nerve signals, basically if the skillwire controller says jump, you jump.

What fun you can have if an AI gets into a characters skillwires...

Initially, the AI only takes over when the PC is asleep - he wakes up in strange places with cryptic formulae written on his arms in sharpie, etc

Naturally, the players will lok for magical control or spirit possesion. I guarantee it will take weeks forthem to figure this one out...

Why would anyone in their right mind have WiFi enabled on skillwires?

Just turn it off and you are safe from this puppeteering, if it even works.

You're right, as they are wired directly into your brain, they probably don't even have a wireless connection but what about the next time you go into the ripperdocs and plug them into the diagnotic computer...

What reason does the ripperdoc have to screw with a dangerous augmented criminal?

The ripperdoc has no idea that his node is currently hosting an AI.

How the AI gets into the skillwires wasn't really the point. There are other ways it could happen, for example the runner loads what he thinks is a skillwires program but its not.

The point was that it would be an interesting twist on a posession type story.

OK, but why would an AI write cryptic formulae on the character's skin? Why would the AI even want to inhabit the character's skillwires?
If the AI wants to interact with the physical world, won't it prefer to inhabit a (humanoid) drone? Even if the AI controls the skillwires it does not have any sensory input from the outside world.

Also wouldn't rebooting the skillwires remove the AI, effectively killing it unless there is a backup somewhere?

Hey, I am just thinking aloud. It sounded more interestingthan 'you wake up covered in blood'. The AIs agenda is totally upto the Ref.



That is a fair point but I am sure an inventive Ref can work around it.


Well unless you have a big on/off switch on the back of your head, 'reboot' would be a software function which you cannot access at the moment. Or the function could be triggered by plugging in a diagnostic machine (which is what got you into this mess in the first place). Plus I am pretty sure the AI would object to this and since he has control of you heavily augmented body that is a problem.

I thought you were building an adventure. I was just giving you food for thought.

Actually, as far as I recall, rebooting a node doesn't kill an AI, it simply reboots with the node. It's temporarily inhibited, of course. Shutting off a node is a great way to keep an AI prisoner, I think. Destroying the node kills it, of course.

Also, I always figured that skillwires have a more indirect and subtle approach on a character's abilities. Direct, manual control, that's what Move-by-Wire is for. You may look up the high-class criminal called "Charlie Wire" in "Vice" (famous criminals chapter). He's actually a guy who's rigging people, often via skillwires. The authorities have so far not many clues how he does this, so it might be quite difficult to work out. My personal bet is he's a technomancer with a few very special echos (some lean in that way).
Skillwres also don't get something like sensory input. An AI controlling a person's skillwires still cannot see the outer world without any further equipment (a simrig, for example).

You could always have the AI just evolve from the skillwire programs themselves, for simplicity's sake. In fact, if it wasn't a malign it could even give a boost to the wires somehow, IIRC AI's should get abilities and programs based off the code they originated from. I'm not sure if it can actually buff the wires.. just a thought.

I thought about this and the skillwires system must have some sort of input. if the wires system is sending the signals to move your arm, they must be able to sense when your arm have moved to where it is supposed to be. At the very least they must have a touch based biofeedback system but if you consider the precision of movements required by a Surgery skillwires program, you must agree that the skillwires controller is also receiving sight data from your nervous system. Skillwires couldn't possibly function without a sensory input.

This depends on how you interpret Skillwires to work.

I myself side with Modular Man here and say I've always handled Skillwired to be far too subtle to be 'riggable'.
I figure they're based in the cerebellum, to be able to use chips as 'muscle memory' and fire the motor nerves from there. Might as well have optics paired up with the nerves though, which would definitely make them riggable. This sounds more like the stuff of Move by Wire though.
In either case, they'd need no form of sensory input beyond what the cerebellum uses for all other movements. And I fear my knowledge of the nervous system is a tad too nonspecific to answer how much that is.

The fact is that skillwires don't make any sense. Once you set logic aside, you can get down to dealing with them.

They definitely are in the brain, because they (inexplicably) work on all kinds of non-physical skills. They definitely draw on your brain's sensory/cognitive inputs, because they help you shoot guns, etc. They definitely *interact with* (not override) your existing functions, because they work with your Attributes (and some other minor reasons).

The problem here is that we (at least I?) always thought they were a secondary 'wires' system that puppeteered physical actions only… and god knows how they aimed for you in the first place. I assumed sensors (or simrig/cybereye feeds), just like Pilots. The *other* problem is that cyberware hacking (/AI possession) is a murky, quarter-baked area of the rules. You theoretically can control people's cyberlimbs, for example… except there are no rules for doing so. Hacking skillwires is the same issue, only more so.

Yes, I've always liked the idea of skillwires but the way it "works" is trough unobtanium, dikote and handwavium.

I mean, in one hand, you have knowsofts that could basically be a big database of information that the skillwire just searches through and tells you what you want to know, then you have skillsofts like firearms that aparently work like an overriding of your muscles' memory and helps you aim, clean the gun, reload, etc., so far so good.
But then, you have skillsofts like hacking that, well, I don't know what to say...

First off, skillwires are not what you think they are, that would be a stirrup interface a specific piece of cyberware that is a generation up from Move By Wire (so effectively two iterations from skillwires.)

The other really important question to ask yourself, is how much do I want to punish my players for daring to not play magicrun?

Skillwires are one of the few areas that cyber is actually pretty decent at, then they made skillsofts prohibitively expensive (because LOL the skill to drive a car should totally cost more then the car itself). Further openigna vulnerability in skillwires is not a good thing to explore in my opinion.

Activesofts aren't too bad if you make program degredation not apply to active/knowsofts that have been pirated. The pirated costs for skillsofts are pretty reasonable, and while it makes sense that stuff like hacking programs are outdated within a few months of coming out, shooting a pistol doesn't change that much from month to month, nor does driving a car. Those programs should only really degrade over the course of years, and that only with newer gen skillwires that aren't necessarily compatible with the old software.

So you are agreeing with him that skillsofts are quite reasonable if you reduce the price greatly...

So do I. In any game I run, I'm tempted to reduce the price by a factor of 5, maybe 10. The whole point of skillwires is the ability to grab a skill you need on relatively short notice. If you have to mortgage a kidney, something is wrong.

Yeah, I wasn't really disagreeing with him so much as pointing out a minimal change that can make it work.

It makes sense from the fluff that skillsofts are expensive-The skillwires themselves are cheap, but the corps producing the software want to put the workers who rely on it into deep debt to keep them working for them basically forever. Having to mortgage a kidney to get a good one makes sense. That doesn't stop a runner or others who aren't worried about legality from getting it on the cheap, and they shouldn't end up with high maintenence costs keeping up software that has no logical in game reason to degrade.

Logic doesn't enter into it. Software degradation is a balance mechanic. In the case of legit activesofts, you're paying enough that you shouldn't have upkeep… and you don't. If you don't buy legit, you're *not* paying enough, so you should have upkeep.

The argument could be made that skillwires are still under voluntary control at all times. Even the restricted ones (can't shoot Ares people, etc.) aren't actually forcing you to do something. Therefore, you could take the position that even hacked skillwires would not allow you to puppet someone (yes, as opposed to the Stirrup). You could still turn them off, load/unload activesofts, etc.

It would actually help a lot if they didn't call them *wires* at all, because they're nothing like Wired Reflexes, MBW (as a whole), or the Stirrup. I think Eclipse Phase calls them 'skillware' instead, which is a good, simple change.