Things like this are always so enlightening to hear from a freelancer, especially one who advocates for design decisions that revolutionize the setting.

Last time I checked taking people's own words at face value was not ridiculous. But I understand writing condescending forum posts is more fun than forming an informed opinion that can be supported with facts and not handwaving considerations away with "whatever I write is your problem and not mine".


I have to agree with that. I have precisely nothing against Matrix mysticism, after all, Shadowrun is a setting where magic is real.
But the newly designed Matrix protocols being entirely based on tech so unknowable no one has any idea how it operates? That's beyond ridiculous.
Seriously? No, I understand that's "metaplot" angling for some bulldrek explanation like "ooooh the dragon Jew AIs did it" or "ooooh the alien zombie nanite goasts did it", but... really?
Give me one goddamn reason for the megacorps to agree to that setup. They're having the entirety of their networks, up to the very black hearts, running on the code designed by fuck-knows-who, and nobody has any idea how it operates? With the vast majority of data, except for a few select bits, stored on Matrix cloud storage? Have you talked to an IT security person once in your lives? (Much less read the security guidelines real corps and governments operate upon, like the Orange Book, for instance?)
The only reason all the megacorps would agree to that, rather than building their own networks on their own proprietary standards), is if they actually have complete control and understanding. But given what the book says, that understanding must be the privilege of the very few, most likely those who designed the Matrix protocols. Which, in turn, means that these very few must be scattered across every corp with enough resources to design its own proprietary Matrix standards and hardware, and have enough weight in each to force the switch to the new Matrix.

Which means that there exists an entirely unknown group of individuals with computer knowledge so far beyond that of general metahumanity that to the best of the professionals in the population their tech looks like magic, and that group controls every corp in the setting worth notice.
Well, or it means that what we have in the book is complete and utter bullshit, either or.

So, once you're in the sanctum sanctorum of the GOD, the GOD is no longer watching you.
Makes perfect sense, A++.

What happens if a teammate physically pulls the trodes off?
Perfect rules for a perfect edition.

...
You want to adjust your host's sculpting a bit? Better hope you've written your last will.

*sigh*

Playing Devil's advocate for a moment, I guess it depends on how they sold it. Remember we get to see behind the veil a bit ala the book, but consider how this might have been pitched the CC and the corps in general.

Whoever is backing this turns up to pitch something they claim is mega-advanced shit hot code that even your best boys can't make heads of tails of it, offering teasers to the corps and the renegade console cowboys alike to show off just off how effective it is.

Sure the corp IT team is freaking out because they can not explain a fraction of what they get to see and that they strongly advise their corp masters to steer the hell clear of it because it would amount to putting your eggs in someone else's basket.

However the corporate heads and bean counters see something so out there that if their best eggheads can't crack it, surely Joe Hacker won't stand a chance, so they approve the go ahead on this overriding their techies advise.
The ITs and boys in security get a small bone by being brought on board as Demi-Gods and such. They still can't explain it, but at least have enough tools to make use of what is there.


Yes, but none of the corps want to admit being totally ignorant on what they got and while it is some weird stuff, it works so they put on the smiling corp director face praising the system all the while they are no doubt digging into it as fast and discretely as they can, because who ever can twist it to their own end wins all the internets... literally.


I admit it does stretch the credulity a bit that such a system could be sold worldwide, in a way I would have expected to see this being found in individual corp systems like Renraku and such, but I can think of a few heads of business or state who have overridden sound advise by their security and IT alike and gone off on a boneheaded direction implementing what basically turned out later to be unsafe code for their systems because when they bought it they had been convinced by the sales rep that it was the new fool proof shiny.


As for the other bits like logging out through node only... yeah.. I got nothing .. unless that's how new E-ghosts are made.

Sure, that could happen to a corp or two. But anyone who's worked for a real corp or a government knows these operate on formally defined rules and guidelines. Believing that they will all, each and every one, switch to a system that factually amounts to a public cloud, except run by unknown entity with no legal responsibility whatsoever, is stretching imagination beyond belief. The IT security will go batshit insane, the lawyers will, the finance with its triple accounting will, etc.

Remember that the Foundation treats even legitimate users like intruders

My response was "When someone noticed that the core feature of the new matrix not only has a massive security vulnerability but no one actually understands how it works, why wasn't it replaced with something that doesn't suck?"

The Matrix needs to have loopholes that allow hackers to exist. We can all bullshit modern security this or that, but that doesn't sound fun to play. The whole point is to have a playable system, it's a conceit of this being a game. Holes have to exist in security systems so that runners can exist and run the shadows. Or do we want to go back to first and second edition with nations that have such tight and perfect control that it's impossible for runners to exist and run in those nations. Because I'm sure we all remember how much fun it was to run in Tir Tairngire and Japan back then.

Then on top of that, it is also thematic for technology to be beyond understanding and take on a life of its own. That's literally what the Deep Resonance is/was. Foundations tapping into that makes sense to me. Or it could just be some kind of mass hallucination from all the code that is beyond understanding.

I just would like to point out that you gave a real world example that directly contradicts your statement that nobody would ever deploy untestable spaghetti code. Yes, it was stupid and dangerous, and they did it anyway.

You always needed to be submerged to use a Resonance Skinlink as a Technomancer.

Shadowrun hacking already has a loophole, a magical theorem that allows cracking any encryption in seconds. There's no need to add stuff that makes no sense to adopt for the corps whatsoever.


One company did it. And they had to rollback.


Yeah, but now Resonance Skinlink is the only skinlink

At least until Tamanous figures out a way to skin a TM and use their hide as a component for Skinlink gauntlets for the mundane customer.

Not saying I have mine on pre-order or anything.

Oh boy, that sure sounds like fun to turn the Matrix into just one decryption test. That sounds like endless fun to me. Just one test and we're in. We hacked all the gipsons.

Are you having fun talking with yourself?

I'm not sure the implication here is that the Corps built the new matrix on an underlying system no one understands. Clearly the system is that now, but I would not be at all surprised if that wasn't what they intended.

They built a new matrix protocol that does a mesh-network mass-distributed-computing trick with all the attached hardware. It's not all just a giant network, it's actually a giant super computer. A much more advanced version of the SETI thing. As a whole its the largest and most complex system ever built.

Only, this isn't the real world where things work more or less as you make them to do so. This is Shadowrun, with technomancers and resonance. What if as the "new" matrix became larger and more complicated (as systems became integrated into it), it also became connected to or drew the attention of some deep resonance thing?

What if that's why the people who built and designed it don't understand it? Everyone thinks it's "black boxes" all the way down, but somewhere in the lower levels of how the matrix works, something else supernatural has moved in?

then the megas should be killing it with fire even as we speak. there have been something like 3 worldwide catastrophes in the past decade that all originated from stuff they don't understand on the matrix. catastrophes that cost the megas trillions of nuyen and led to massive shakeups including some disappearing or losing AAA status and being replaced by others. do you think the current megas want more risk of major shakeups, or do you think they'd like to be able to inexorably crush the life out of their weaker competitors like a giant anaconda without worrying that their entire empire is going to implode tomorrow and they'll be the Cross Applied Technologies of the 2070s?

Not to mention that the Crashes also cost several CEO lives.
Agreed, if the Foundation is something unexpected that the corps couldn't foresee (which they should've, I mean, they're perfectly aware of the technomancers, Resonance, Resonance Realms, and such), they'd be pulling the plug as soon as they're able.

To me this seems to go from one extreme setting description to another one:

My initial problem with the switch to the new Matrix protocols was how smooth the transition appeared to be for what by all rights should have been a migration nightmare. How complete the compliance was for something as intrusive as a constant centralised scoring of somehow flawlessly identifiable illicit interactions. To me that seemed to go against the idea of the Matrix as this incredibly arcane and layered network infrastructure, since of course nobody ever builds a new Matrix as nobody will build a new Internet. You just repurpose parts or add to it. [Digression: I bet there is a Bitcoin mine somewhere in China, that is run as an off the books side project. Only the owner has died, the techies get paid automatically from the mining income and churn on as slaves to the machine. In the history of the Sixth World that has only happened a million times.]

Now this is fixed with another extreme: It's alright. Actually while it appears as if GOD and the Big Ten are in control, their grasp of the underlying technology that gives them that control is so limited that at any point some nifty hackers could find a way around it, if they aren't beaten to it by some Matrix-born super-consciousness. You never know when one of those shows up. The leadership of the triple-A tier has somehow agreed this arrangement works for them (or fallen prey to a system administrator conspiracy--system administrators with a mad scientist complex to be specific). Somewhere in this the line "This freaky Dodger guy says, it will all work out fine, now if we could just help him find his decompiled girlfriend?" must have been uttered.

the problem with that conspiracy is that none of the conspirators stand to gain anything from it. unless the system administrators and GOD are all just meat-puppets for whatever thing it is that truly controls the matrix, and somehow nobody has noticed that.

Which is not an indictment on Technomancers...

Technically most of it is solid work but the art direction definitely is weird. The new standard for matrix graphics apparently is photorealistic real-world iconography, but just to remind everyone that this still is VR, the individual elements are deliberately mismatched (punk girls climbing glaciers) and/or get The Matrix-style "digital rain". Can't say I'm a fan...



Yep, that was my first major stumbling block, too. I don't mind pop culture references, but you can't make understanding the actual content dependent on the reader being in on some obscure internet joke everybody forgot after a year. When a cahracter is named Ibn Eisa, the reader can get the joke and chuckle or not get it and see just another Arab name. Same with a Shadowtalker yelling "ORBITS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" (Clockwork in Conspiracy Theories). But when a quality is called "LEEEEEEEROY JENKINS", what is the uninitiated reader supposed to take away from that?

Indeed... I am an avid reader, gamer, and internet geek and even I had to look that one up. *shakes head*

Interesting; I had seen the WoW video that spawned it once long ago, and knew it right off. I smirked but that was about it, though one other guy I told about this did the "Oh GAWD!" eye roll.

Well, it's a decade old meme at time of print. An entire new generation of gamers has gone from kindergarten to high school since it was relevant.

Hell, it's older than SR4, and apparently according to Backgammon, we're not supposed to be concerned about the timeline of the game that far back, so why the expectation that we should know unrelated internet fads?

Funny that you complain about that, yet can't even accurately convey a posting just a couple of days old...

Setting aside the Foundation, they don't even know how Hosts (one of the key functions of the matrix) are generated.

So, to further attempt to parse the dumb, I have a rules question.



So pop quiz, hot shot. What happens if your buddy (you've got a buddy watching your meat, right? Like a reasonable decker...) yanks the cord?

Are you lost forever in time and space? Do you take normal dumpshock? What gives?


Also, for crack writing fun, have a sidebar :

I actually loved that sidebar. I'm working on compiling a list of all the corporations that can issue SINs (so AA's, I got a pretty good grasp on the triple A's) and that was super helpful and let me add some new ones. Especially Apple. Also, does anyone know who AA is?

*EDIT:* I just realized it's probably American Airlines.

Really? I figured it was Ares Arms.

I figured since the foundation is a pseudo UV host it'd use UV host dumpshock rules for if you unplug someone while accessing it.

But I kind of like the idea of being lost in the fondation forever or becoming an e-ghost.

Why are there so many subsidiaries among these companies?

I'm not some corporate manager guy or anything, but I imagine it's probably a lot easier to manage if everything is separated into neat little boxes.

That could be. I just don't really see Ares as a forerunner in AI rights, though I could be wholely wrong.

AA = AI Anonymous?

Their 12 step program is still in C++ I hear.

The problem is that darn "Step 13, GOTO 1" routine.

You'd think that wouldn't even work anymore.

I finally found some time to open the book again, so I went to see what all the fuss was about. As far as regular hacking is concerned, Hosts are now VMs running on a cluster that is essentially the spare processing power of every matrix device. This does explain rather nicely how hosts do not have a physical distance, are on every grid at once, etc. and also explains the existence of hosts like Jackpoint (which would be rather vulnerable if they had a physical location).

Below that and out of sight of the regular (ab-)user is the "foundation". The cluster all those hosts are running on turns out to be something even its creators cannot control nor even understand, everybody who accesses the foundation experiences a kind of Alice in Wonderland meets astral quest scenario into which they have to blend into the "Paradigm", otherwise the world goes full Inception on them. I think the idea of the matrix engineers creating something which inexplicably works in ways it shouldn't is really cool, as is the idea of corporate deckers having to fight through the dangerous wilds because they need to service their host.
The problem is just that you mustn't start to think about it: Emergent matrix phenomena are something the corps got badly burnt from twice. The foundation permeates all hosts, you can even leave an "anchor" in one foundation and then journey to that host from another one. Also, system maintenance via expeditions into the deadly wilds sounds cool, but seriously, who would do that? All in all, it's so much style over substance I would not have been surprised seeing an implanted tape deck for 10D6 Humanity Cost

They don't have these concepts in Shadowrun, so they can't begin you explain how it works!!

I'd also say that it's essentially unplayable unless you specifically prohibit the players from using the system.
Each time you reconnect, unless you leave an anchor, the Paradigm is reset. Your players can't figure out the puzzle? BLAM - there goes your preparation time. You wing something on the go? BLAM. BLAM. BLAM.

In SR it's hosts and the foundation, but that would be the closest analogues in RL tech.


Funny, I had the opposite impression: The paradigm rules let asshole GMs arbitrarily screw over players who play the game "wrong", and they can't even jack out until the GM let them find the exit. But both cases come down to the same point, such "dreamworld" scenarios only work when everybody at the table is committed to playing the shared imagination.

Yeah, I understand. But they can't make heads nor tails of it.

And precisely the scenario at hand, yeah.
With NO in-game mechanics binding them to do so.

"Play along or the whole world turns on you before I let you find the exit" sounds like quite a way to get players under the GM's thumb. Heck, the fluff its even mention an episode where the exit itself attacks the unlucky visitor.

As I said, the problem I'm seeing is the GM spending massive amounts of time to prepare the Paradigm only to have the players reset it when they can't figure it out.
As far as roleplaying conventions go, "figure out this puzzle or I'll set the whole world upon your character and kill him" is about as far from good practice as it gets, imo.

Don't beat the scenario, beat the GM. Iterate until the problem is solvable.

Also, I still want to know what happens when you dumpshock someone in the Foundation. (Or chuck the technomancer who's stuck into a Faraday cage.)

E-Ghosts


Ok, hopefully not.

Hey, if we can reliably create e-ghosts, sign me up. I could be making a mint off of old deckers who want out before the meat gives way.

That would be an interesting concept that would draw some attention.

...

Ahem.

Probably too late to save FastJack though.

As we previously established for 4e rules, that someone disappears in a puff of RAW (or, rather, RAnW).

Why would 4E rules be referencing "The Foundation"?

What do the 4e rules have to do with a game mechanic and setting concept that didn't exist until a month ago?

That was what happened to a grenade which hit the target with zero net hits on an attack test (if I remember), which wasn't covered in the RAW just the way Foundation dumpshock isn't.

You cannot hit a target, with a grenade, with Zero Net Hits, and therefore you have Scatter with no reduction due to accuracy. There are indeed rules for this in SR4/SR4A. Problem is that the Scatter was pretty ludicrous.

Yeah, I houseruled it back to basic 4e values to keep it at least somewhat reasonable.
But this is beside the point.