... That block you quoted isn't relevant to the question of seeing icons as being relative to their physical location. And remember, that bit about hosts doesn't apply at all.

Because other than specifically mentioned in AROs, the book generally seems to assume that the Matrix topography is completely unrelated to physical topography, without ever really clarifying.

This chapter is really a trainwreck.

Other than the fact that the icons which appear closest to you are the ones linked to the devices closest to you? There's some presumption of Physical/Matrix location correlation.

Though I will agree that the Matrix chapter is full of problems.

Except that GPS in Shadowriun is not as precise as GPS in the Real World apparently. You track to an area of 100 Meters (50 meters in SR4A). Which is extremely imprecise.

I feel the problem is that people can't get out of reality. I keep seeing about how this works in the real world and how that works in the real world... and quite frankly who cares?? We are not talking about the real world. We are talking about a fictional world and fantasy game. If you can't separate the two, then no RPG out there will work. I am a network engineer by trade and training and none of this works like the real world. But there are some parallels.

Draco: you say that you should be able to see the location of hidden icons because of GPS. My cell phone has GPS. If I turn my hotspot on so that it broadcasts its SSID for your cell phone to pick up wirelessly, you don't know where it is at, only that it is there and approximately how close it is because of the signal strength. But unless you are moving around and comparing signal strengths by your location, do cannot find it exactly even though it has GPS enabled and is using it.

RHat: You keep going back to that one line in the Matrix Perception Chart. What information do you think you know? You may know that there are guns there physically, but that does not mean that they are running silently, or even connected to the matrix at all. Running with wireless off (which you would not know about) = no matrix icon; throwback weapon (which you would not know about unless you did a detailed visual perception test) = no matrix icon; running silently (which you would not know about) = no matrix icon (that you can see until you pass two tests). You can't spot something you know nothing about.

For those looking for physical locations there is a matrix action called Trace Icon

So to find the physical location of something you first have to have 2 marks on the icon and then you can spend a complex action and do a Trace Icon.

Congrats you just pointed out why it takes MORE THAN ONE NODE to figure out location data.
I said a minimum of 3.
(Guess how many GPS satellites you need to have in line of sight to get your location? Surprise surprise: three!*)

*Actually four, but you can get away with 3 as you can use the surface of the earth as your 4th intersecting sphere. If you don't (or can't), you need 4:
http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/128...four-satellites
Same thing applies to broadcast ranges of cell towers or wireless network hotspots. Although it will get less accurate if we are unable to determine an exact distance and can only infer a region from coverage zones. It's the same principle of locating a cell phone based on looking at which towers it was in range of. Which we can do. Today.

Well, At least One Mark anyways...

Except that it's something of a two-way street. If a game system says you can do X, and it's sufficiently within the realm of believeability, people have no problem with X being a thing that can happen. But if the game system then says you can do Y, and it's just utterly and completely divorced from reality in a bizarre and difficult to understand way, people will quite rightly be upset with Y for being absurd. People need to be able to suspend some level of disbelief, but at the same time the game has to be able to not demand too much suspension from people, or the system breaks down.

Shadowrun has a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Magic came back to the world? Okay, sure. Orks, Trolls, Elves, Dwarves, Dragons, and all the rest are a daily reality? Fine, I can handle that. Spirits, spells, terrible magical viruses, paranormal creatures, a corporate dystopia, retro-futurism? All digestible, despite varying degrees of disparity with reality. But if suddenly you told people that eatting thirteen blueberry pancakes on a Tuesday while listening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would summon a magical unicorn out of thin air that can count to infinity, freeze time, and kill instantly with a thought, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone other than very young children who could take you seriously.

People who play games know how to suspend their disbelief - they do it all the time. When they stop and invoke reality as a means of complaining about something, what they really are saying is that they're being asked to suspend more disbelief than they are willing or able to manage - that what they are being told is true seems so patently absurd, impossible, or just plain stupid that they are personally finding it difficult to take it seriously in any measure. If people are struggling to suspend their disbelief, you can't simply blame them for not believing strongly enough - you have to recognize that just maybe what you're asking them to believe is a step or two beyond reasonable.

~Umi

The matrix rules don't come anywhere near doing this. Is it that hard to believe that a perception test lets you know the location of a node within 100m, even if you don't know what it is? Who cares how many satelites it needs now? All I care about is I can use my fancy super computer/guitar to hack into other computers and force them to do my bidding. I don't need it to fit into my understanding of physics. Most people don't have an understanding of physics or care for one. They just saw Bladerunner once and thought it was cool.

This debate stems from fact that a lot of people don't like the rules so they look for minor logical inconsistencies and state that the rules are broken. Problem is, you can do this with every Shadowrun ruleset to date. The 4th Ed matrix rules were so comvoluted that I've been playing it pretty much since it came out and I still don't understand 1/2 of it....... Weren't all these issues that people claim are problems now, problems then? What was stopping places employing millions of RFID tags to render hackers pointless. Nesting nodes was a great one too.

In the end, Shadowrun is a breakable game. It's up to players to see the intent of the rules and make sound judgements that allow things to work. I'll definately be allowing players to do a matrix perception test to know where hidden nodes are in real space and I'm confident i don't need to bend the rules that much (or in fact at all) to be able to do it.

Something doesn't have to be completely insane to still to be too much of a suspension of disbelief. Moreover, there's no real agreed upon limit - you can't quantify what is or is not too much suspension of disbelief to ask from people.

If the way the Matrix operates doesn't ask too much of you personally, good for you. But the fact that significant numbers of other peopel do feel that they are being asked to suspend their disbelief more than they are willing or able to is all you need to understand that something is amiss.

~Umi

But that's clearly not what's going on here. These arguments are not about suspension of disbelief, it's about people not liking the direction of the system and using logic as an excuse because they believe it's a more compelling position.

Here's an example that I've yet to be able to get anyone to discuss. Why does a deltaware cyberarm cost less essence than that a regular one? It still replaces your whole arm. Your whole meat arm is still gone, and yet it costs 1/2 the essence! OMG system destroyed right? Well no, people don't give a shit about it because it doesn't matter. It provides an upgrade path for Sams, simple as that. I can get my new shiny cyberarm and then get a datajack for free.........in my head......... oh well it's fun right!

People claiming that the system is broken are ignoring the fact that it always has been, because that's not their real issue with 5th edition (not picking you out specifically Umi, you tend to play devils advocate a lot it seems). They're like hippies trying to convince me that we should legalise hemp because it makes shitty t-shirts.

That's a question that's had a stated answer for twenty years, if you'd care to go look.

Deltaware costs less essence because it is designed to be less intrusive. Essence loss is a mechanic for how much cyberware has disrupted the body's natural state, especially as relates to mana flow. Higher grades of 'ware use more expensive and more difficult, but less intrusive methods to cause less disruption. Losing an arm and just being armless doesn't cause Essence loss, unless the docs fuck up their surgery checks.

For example, a cyberarm requires reinforcing all the joints and bones that support that arm to make sure the greater weight does not break them when any force is applied to it. The standard 'ware would resolve this by replacing those bones and joints with metal, and adding artificial muscle to help support the added weight in motion. The Deltaware version would go about this completely differently, opting to instead use tailored nanotech or biotech to encourage the body itself to reinforce the joints and muscles required, as well as using much more expensive lightweight materials so that the strain on the body would be less in the first place.


Yes, this is something that apparently needs to be spelled out for the modern player again, but it's all there in Cybertechnology. It doesn't get discussed because it's a given fact of the system and setting, and has whole chapters on why and how it works.

Also Cyberware (at least in part) is powered by the bio-electricity of the body, a fact, that is in turn disrupting the flow and putting stress onto the organism.

So when they remove my standard cyberarm and replace it with a deltaware one why is there an essence hole? Surely the parts that were relaced as part of the original replacement (such as the reinforced joints and muscle with reinforced synthetics) still need to be there to support the new arm, the original parts aren't regrown and attached.

I'd be interested in knowing where this chapter you speak of is? Are we speaking about 4th Ed augmentation here? Ok, sure. To bad if players are new to the game. I just read the Essence, Augmentation and Cyberware sections, and they talk in vagueries about 'loss of humanity' and how it affects magic and social limits. The point is that it is an abstraction. It's probably a bit to do with original body loss, nattery power and Ki flow. However, no matter how you look at it it doesn't make sense. What happens if I remove the cyberarm and not replace it? My battery levels stay depleted, the intrusiveness stays the same (apparently). Why is it that a quad-amputee has an unblemished meta-humanity but someone who had a cyberarm and then removed it is down an essence point?

Then there's me choosing to interpret it however the hell I want and then blaming the rules. I choose to see essence loss as just body loss because in the real world the is no such thing as Ki and your body could not produce anything like the current required to power what are effectively power tools. So the rules are broken right?

The cyberware/essence rules are as fantasticly unrealistic as the new matrix rules but no-one complains about it. Ergo, realism is not the problem.

There's an essence hole because the body's energy flows have already been screwed with, and as of yet, there's no way to fix that. So you can add more stuff without making it too much worse.



Cybertechnology. The book. The whole meta-narrative of the thing is Hatchetman becoming a cyberzombie, and it explains a lot about how cyberware works in relation to people.

No matter if you believe in Chi or not, the body has an energy flow and it definitly has and needs his own harmony. There are plenty of ways to mess with that today and you can recover partialy from many of them, but all in all you pay a price.

Essence is ofcourse abstract, every part of the ruleset is. While Shadowrun, has nothing to do with realism, one surely can question its belivablility. An "essence-hole" may make sense, a full recovery may do too, but if I take a look at reality, we usually end up paying and losing until we die. In the light of that, not fully revovering from implants makes a bit more sense to me. If we let aside questions of the reality-metaphor, I'd say that a full recovery should be more fun in most cases, as it let's you decide freely.

It is OK to like things better, that do not necessarily make the most sense, but provide for more fun.

I feel obliged to point out that since SR4, there has been 'rejuvenation therapy' that can restore lost Essence, as long as that Essence is not being occupied by augmentations.

So if you lose 2 Essence to a vampire and one more to addiction, then get rejuvenated, you can restore your Essence.

Same with essence hole created by removing augs/upgrading them.

It is, however, expensive as balls.

Indeed. However, price is always negotiable... With your GM, if nobody else.

It is good, that there are ways to fix essence loss, especially since there are ways to steal it. Most characters really need all Essence they have and a problem without options usually is no fun at all. I really hope that this therapy makes a comeback in SR5.

I hope when it comes back it has a chance of turning people into vampires.

Are you talking real world here? I'm missing context obviously.



I'm ok with how it works. I'm just pointing out that it makes as much sense as the matrix rules which I'm also ok with. I'm just saying that it doesn't make sense that losing an arm horiffically in a mangled car wreck does not affect your essence but having a smuggling compartment installed in your pinky does. I'm not going to go complain about the writers about it. It's the way it works in the game and that's all I need to know.

I just want people to stop using the disingenuous arguments that they care so much about matrix realism but every other aspect of the game can break realism as much as it wants.

I see, and I am with you on that. Discussions of realism are tiresome anyway; at least in the context of things that aren't real, where it is more about makebelieve. The Matrix rules took a step away from todate reality to make the game more fun. While fun is no actual prerequisite for a game, it usually is what people are looking for in a game.

Essence, while not being an unreasonable concept fluff wise, mostly is crunch and a means of balancing. If it is easy, hard or possible at all to regenerate this stat, is simply dependant on what serves the game best in whole.



Sorry for being vague there (or confusing ). I was talking real world, yes. Burn-out, transplantations, drugs (and so on), can mess up the balance of your body (and badly so), bringing your immune system to act up or to break down, making you tired, depressed or anxious and so on. There are paralels. These paralels let me think along a course of logic, and use the comparison, to decide, what is believable or not. That is why essence-holes sort of make sense to me fluff-wise.

Funny thing though, there are enough people out there, that find and claim many things of our today world, as not realistic.

I guess I should catch some sleep... I feel like I am starting to ramble.

Haven't you heard - The Real World is overrated.

Except that in the real world we have computers, and know how they work!

We're also pretty well aware of the physics behind how RF transmission works.

We know quite a bit about the metaphysics behind how Essence works, because the game created them from whole cloth and laid them out for us.

It isn't a very apt comparison at all, really.

Right. The matrix requires that we set aside everything we know about computers because the gameworld's computers were envisioned by 1980s writers who were not engineers. Setting aside everything we know about Feng Shui in order to "get" the idea of Essence is comparatively easy: most of us are like "Feng Shui is that thing that Easter cultures do, right?" We don't actually KNOW anything about the spiritual core of a religion that is not our own, so there's no disbelief to suspend. And that's assuming of course that Essence is based on the idea of "bodily Feng Shui!"

"Computers are Magic", there discussion ended.

Why can people NOT get over that.

It's not the magic. It's the idea that people who subvert every other aspect of the world the megas have built are still using the matrix exactly as the corporations intend.

Because they aren't. Thought that was pretty obvious, actually.

To access M.A.N.A., doesn't it need to be a T.A.P.ped (Technologically Acquired Product) device first?

Snrk.

I've been half-writing this piece of flash fiction for 365 Tomorrows based on the idea that magic can be tech. Not indistinguishable, but the same thing.

So if someone had told you 30 years ago that we'd all be carrying around computers in our pockets 10,000x more powerful than your current desktop that was also a phone and GPS that could connect to this thing called the internet that we'd all be massively reliant on for almost everything you would have been totally up to speed with that based an the way AM/FM radio worked? Somehow I don't think so.

So take the amount of time in that example and double it and that's how much different the world is in Shadowrun + Magic. How we can all sit back smug in our armchair knowledge of everything and claim we know how everything should work is beyond absurd.

The essence example is a no brainer. We don't need to know how it works in the real world (psst! it's not real) because it doesn't make sense in it's own context, yet we're fine with that.

What about Thor shots? The physics are bullshit and the application impossible, but they're a cool concept so why not?

Why does my pistol have the same range penalty as a sniper rifle during chase combat? Why can I even use the scope of my sniper rifle in chase combat?

Why does a helmet add to my overall armour when it also stops people ignoring my armour with called shots? Shouldn't it just do the later?

Why is it that someone within the realms of a normal human (6 str) can destroy an armoured vehicle with one swing of a steel axe?

Why is it that I can dodge bullets shot directly at me, but I can't have any impact on how far I am from the point of origin of a grenade's explosion?


Why aren't all these things system breaking inconsistencies? Is it perhaps that we like them?

This is actually the problem: Shadowrun's tech is based on one possible future of technology, one that did not come to pass.



1) Some of them do. The reason we deal with them is due to the level of abstraction. "You have to decrypt a wireless signal before you can record (intercept) it" isn't an abstraction. It's just wrong.
2) Some of them just aren't a big deal because we as players don't know so much about them.
3) You obviously haven't played around with axes. Or destroying cars. "Destroy" in Shadowrun's rules is not "reduce to a pile of scrap metal" it's "prevent from performing normal operation." Most of us could disable a regular car in that manner using a screwdriver. Steel axe? Pssh. Steel axe, meet battery. That hood? Not so thick. And armored car? It's not armored with steel plates, it's intended to absorb the impact of BULLETS not edged weaponry.

This. It bears repeating (simply because most people either refuse to acknowledge it or forget it) that the tech and even the underlying physics of the SR game world is not the same as ours.

You mean like Star Trek did in the 60's?

And physics does not cease to exist in Shadowrun... Thought I would mention that. *shrug*

Damn, now I have to rewrite the whole campaign...

The trials and tribulations of a GM.

Which is exactly why it's so hard to suspend disbelief when those things come into dissonance with what we know.

That is something I have to keep reminding myself involving Shadowrun. Technology diverged in the 80s/90s, and never looked back. The Internet we know of never existed, it is very likely there was never 'Net Neutrality', and moving into the turn of the century, Corporate control of the Internet was probably a sure thing. The standards we take for granted? Probably not there. And if the Corporations want to control the Matrix, I'm certain they used different standards than we did. They probably didn't accept some 'publically designed' web standard, and it probably took a lot longer before they played nice with one another about what scripts could run on the Internet. I'm half wondering how long it took to move from BBS to something even remotely resembling the Internet we know, and after the first Crash, I'm pretty sure standards were put into place we can't even remotely understand.

Bluetooth technology, and wireless technology, were probably slower to develop, simply because of things like the Awakening and Vitas altering society and culling the population. Some things, the Corporation just wouldn't want to have in public domain, and as society progressed, the Corporations probably moved to keep as tight a leash on the Internet / Matrix as possible.

Yeah, I'm actually QUITE certain that the Matrix of Shadowrun, and how things work, veered far, far away from our reality.

I.E. "Magic" problem solved.

On the point of Net Neutrality, in Shadowrun the Electronic Frontier Foundation became an internet pirate organization in the 90's and later started the Denver Data Haven after the Crash. So a very true point.

Standardization happened with the advent of cyberterminals, and the 'trix was built for them after Echo Mirage showed just how powerful they could be while fighting the Crash virus. Thus the reason they had the Universal Matrix Specificiations iconography in the 2050's.

Um........ isn't that Science FICTION?

It sure is, and in the '60ies our lives today, would also have been sience fiction. Not to mention, that science fiction has inspired science on a regular basis.

And you have? Here's what I have done with an axe: Cut wood. There are some species of gumtree here in Australia where splitting the block with a block-splitter, let alone an axe take a fair amount of effort. With that experience, although I admit that I haven't had the common experience of attacking cars with axes that you obvious have, I'd wager that the only way that I could disable a car with said axe would be to penetrate the bonnet and hit say the distributer cap or the battery. If you hit the engine block I'd be surprised if it did anything.

Now apply that scenario to an ACTUAL armourded vehicle like a Bradley or something or even just an armoured car. I can see the axe breaking before it does any real damage.

It depends on the car and the axe. Armored cars main concern usually is bullets, but it does not need to stop there. A standart modern car, should not have much to offer in matters of surviving the axe.

Doesn't take all that much to disable a wheeled vehicle. Drop a tire or two, wreck the radiator, scuff up the bulletproof glass enough that the driver can't see shit anyway... all pretty easy.

Or just use that axe to fell a tree and drop it on the car.

I highly doubt even a very strong fellow used to axing tough questions of trees all day (IE, a lumberjack,) could disable an armored car with that axe before someone could stop him or drive it away.