The last time I was a Shadowrun player, around 7 years ago, this is exactly what my character had, with every single piece of equipment being bottlenecked through a relatively secure device.
And that was 4th. 5th would mean even more thought about how to secure your gear against wireless attacks.

The anti-VR arguments are similar to thsoe that ridiculed the intial idea that became Echo Mirage within the universe.
It's a VR because thats how the submerged human conciousness interprets the dataflow that is the Matrix, like a dream or hallucination. Also in the SR universe they discover things about the capacities of the human brain when connected through SimSense that were until then unknown, including it's ability to process and analyze data and the forms that data takes.
As for time saving, yeah it's measured in fractions maybe, but thats why the nanosecond buyout caught people off guard.
Mostly it's in the game because it's a classic and cool aspect of cyberpunk.
Most of the work IS being done by the computer but a Deck is faster and requires the Decker, it takes that mental/instinctual impulse and makes it faster than a keyboard, mouse and screen interface powered by nerves and fingers can hope be.

To use the FPS analogy again, for most Matrix use (again for 3 editions of the game) you don't need the VR, because all the speed and extra stuff a Deck does with ASIST is wasted. But imagine playing the FPS but instead of having a console controller and images on the screen you're playing buy reading and typing the code responses into the administrator/dev console and then reading the live as they happen responses (classic 1980's/1990's hacking in the movies with the wall of scrolling text). This is why before we get to 4th/5th the VR jump is Deckers, Programmers and a few others with most of the people using screens and manual interface and others using Trodes (because the VR is there). Deckers and Programmers are messing with code in visual form, or using programs and manipulating the Matrix in a way that is faster than typing out lines by the thousands.

Or to break it down, it's there because the setting material tells us it's there, gives us a few reasons why (regardless how RL accurate they may be based on our current understanding of things) and the rules back that up. They back it up better in the first 3 editions of the game than 4th or 5th have ever even tried to do so. So, the setting tells us it is so, provides data to that effect and thus it is so and has rules to reflect that. If you want you could make a non-decking hacker and put it up against a decker in 3rd and you see why.

Except it's not. You decide what your persona looks like, and the host decides what computer generated landscape you see.

Of course, you can find part of the books describing what you say. But you'll find part of the books describing exactly what I say. Things are contradictory, because, as the "anti-VR" arguments go, all this is a bit stupid and doesn't make much sense.

Why would you waste any of your cyberdeck's power for useless graphical rendering instead of just using your own VR interface that will always be the same?

Because the Lore of the setting tells us one is superior to the other starting with Echo Mirage which is the beginning of the Matrix as it appears throughout the rest of the game. Regular hacking and programming principles could not put down the uber semi-AI virus that was infecting the system but the new software, hardware and wetware combination in Echo Mirage got the job done and gave rise to the consensual shared computer generated illusion that is the Matrix.

Don't forget that part of the lore in the setting is as they developed and introduced Datajacks and other Cyberware that what could be achieved with DNI and the processes of the (meta)human brain were found to be greater than previously realised (whether this is RL true or not doesn't matter, but we seem to be going that way), then they discover these processes and abilities paired with the right technology (RiggerWare if i am recalling my developement of events correctly) creates results in excess of those anticipated. Then when mixed with the right computing software and processing tech as well as the correct medium, which turns out to be a Virtual Reality and iconographic representation (ASIST and Reality Filters) , it exceeds all expectations and previously 'secure' sites and 'impenetrable' security measures prove ineffective. The potential for this is staggering (regardless on how accurate that may be based on modern computing wisdom and neurology sciences, the lore tells us this thing is discovered to be so).

Cue the virus, echo mirage and a new networking and programming set of protocols that become the Matrix where conventional hacking as was simpley doesn't work because it's too slow/inefficient/you'd need to read three screens at the same time to do it/the Rigger type DNI lacks some key something which is what you need the Cyberdeck for. So far it's internally consistent and matches both the inspirational material for the game and the general suspension of disbelief required for any other aspects of Shadowrun.

The Matrix in SR4 changed a few things because Deckers became Hackers and the theme of the matrix altered.

Listen, you can't say two things mutually exclusive and pretend this is coherent. Namely, you can't have, one the one side "the dataflow of the matrix is perceived as some kind of hallucinations which is actually the VR" and "the VR is a computer generated landscape chosen by other people than the hacker" on the other side.

Also, you can't say that it's ok "suspension of desbelief"-wise on the one side and have on the other side: "(regardless on how accurate that may be based on modern computing wisdom and neurology sciences, the lore tells us this thing is discovered to be so)". If someone barely science-literate or computer-literate will know for a fact that it's really a stupid idea, suspension of desbelief is broken. Because it IS that stupid: you will never have anyone accept that you NEED your mind to accept that the Mitsuhama IC are samurais in order to defeat them.

And clearly, being part of the Lore of the setting is not something anyone denied, and is not a reason for it not to break suspension of desbelief. The first time I read about Echo Mirage (and I had to look it up again when you mentioned it because my mind has erased it, because I'm such a fanboy I ignore the stupidity in this game), it was in SR3's BBB, and honestly, this just looked stupid and I couldn't care less. it was the early 2000s, everyone loved the first Matrix movie, and despite all that I facepalmed myself when I read that about the Echo Mirage team.

Now, since the topic is about shadowrun 6, and what would make it a good game, I wanna venture that it's a good idea to get rid of all this once and for all.

What freudqo said.

Part of the discussion of 6E is how much of the lore would need to be rewritten for plain coherence.

Because let's be honest, at this stage the piles of crap have left us a pretty incoherent landscape.

Absolutely nothing about the Echo Mirage thing makes any sense unless you assume that the computers themselves are hugely pre-processing data, at which point you're moving the humans to a decision-making, strategic role which again raises the question of why on earth you need a hallucination to get Donny the Decker to say: "Do the thing with the stuff."

It's a real rabbit hole of unexamined premises.

In which case you don't need a 6th edition because there's already plenty of games out there that do it a different way. If you're ditching the VR Matrix on the pretexts presented you may as well get rid of things like Wired Reflexes along the way because they use a similar set of conceits. This is why stripped down / streamlined / heavily reimagined versions of long running games (and other franchises) tend to do poorly because once you start pulling too hard on threads the tapestry unravels.

Look at the MW:Dark Age stuff from way back when or D&D 4E, the issues SR 5E has had, NWoD before it evolved itself into CoD (and even then it's pale next to WoD20a), the test material for FFGs L5R reboot, WFRP 3e, Cyberpunk 2nd edition and I'm sure there's more. Plenty of these were fine in their own right but either mechanically or due to setting/lore alterations or both just wasn't the same kind of thing, didn't match the expectations of it. If they hadn't been portrayed as X they could have been very good as Y.

Really not. We didn't complain about the existence of DNI, we didn't complain about the idea of a general process acceleration when using it (though I'm more generous than koekepan), we didn't complain about anything remotely connected to wired reflexes. I have no idea where this statement comes from, and I encourage you to actually read the posts we wrote if you made such a conclusion, because I know that despite not being the best writer, those posts and the ideas they convey are clear enough.

I'm not even sure you need to get rid of the Echo Mirage stuff if you find it cool. You can just say they were cool hackers with top computers assisting them.



The good question here is fow how many people does the fate of the matrix have any importance? I mean, people survived the UMT Magic pretty well, as sad as it makes me.

Actually, you didn't choose SR4 in your example, which included really huge changes on the settings, much bigger than SR4>SR5. SR5 and D&D4 are failures because of their stupid game mechanics, not really on the setting failure. Damn, who actually gave a shit, ever, on D&D setting?

I am now wondering how many people simply never played with a decker in any case?

There used to be big discussions on Wired Reflexes because, aparrently, the quickest thing that can carry a nerve impulse that we know about is already doing it and by the logic of what we know today any artificial material doing the same job would actually slow down down your reaction time, but not so much as it'd be noticed in many situations. That's why bring up Wired Reflexes as using the same conceit.

To date after 20 years of running Shadowrun and playing Shadowrun (most of them running) across 4 regular gaming groups, I have seen one campaign which didn't have a Decker on the team and that particular game we were told No Decker PCs. Now I know that's a complete reverse for some groups.

I didn't bring up SR4 because I know a lot changed there in ways that yeah, the VR aspect was a waste of time and anyone could be a Hacker (and the bloody UMT) and for those reasons (along with some of the mechanical aspects) it never appealed to me and it felt less Shadowrun than the previous 3 editions and feels less Shadowrun than 5e does too. There also seems to be a resurgent interest in the older editions, I'm seeing more games reports of groups having played a campaign of 5th dusting off 3rd and playing that again (in fact I'm converting a 5e game on Roll20 over into 3rd edition because 2 of the group who haven't played any Shadowrun before preferred the look of 3rd once they gave 5th a shot). I know some groups that stayed with 4th (some started with it some are SR1 vets) and some that are exclusively 5th but the greatest fluidity seems between 3rd and 5th (or rather the other way around). So when looking towards a new edition these are things worth considering (just like OP did under its lisence from WW for WoD20, Vamp20 was never anticipated to have the response it did and that changed an entire business production perspective on an IP).

I don't have a problem with Wired Reflexes. It's not trying to change the laws of physics, but just say that a new technology exists that allows efficient transfer of nerve signals to alternative media - and nerve signals are positively sluggish compared to light in optic fibres. So if you can accept that technology, boosted reaction times are kind of a natural consequence of its implementation.

VR hacking is entirely different because while the underlying technological leap is (almost, largely) the same, that technological leap does not address the reasons behind these hacks working, failing to work, or whatever. It doesn't speed decision-making, at best it's a data analysis and representation system, with no serious explanation of why smelling fresh-baked cookies or feeling invisible spiders crawling will make you better at figuring out that the target is using a port knocking system for access control. It doesn't do anything that couldn't be done just as well with a great monitor and twitch game controls - except minutely faster, in a situation where the real problem isn't the rapid action, but the rapid consideration. It slightly improves Orient (maybe), probably doesn't improve Observe (smells of cookies notwithstanding), does nothing identifiable for Decide, and very slightly improves Act - but your OODA loop's slowest part in this arena is Decide. In other words, the net difference can't be big.

VR wireless hacking is the same, except for running headlong into the laws of physics, or removing the one reason why VR makes a damn bit of difference. You either need a hugely fat pipe of data, because you're doing that massive an analysis - or you're watching the movie of an analysis of a rather modest quantity of data. You can't have it both ways. One way runs into physics, the other way essentially asserts that you're not doing anything that demanding, in data transfer terms.

Hacking needs to be rewritten to reflect the identify/prepare/exploit nature of how it actually works, and reshape the role of the decker/hacker to someone who does most of it during legwork.

Funnily enough, while this is RAW-irrelevant, it's pretty much fluff-compatible.

Which is my point about the conceit. The game tells us a tech implant can let someone react (and perfroms the actions of reaction) 2-7 times faster than someone without the implant or literally Unload a gun on Full Auto, Eject the clip, slam a new one home and pull the trigger again, all whilst moving and tracking/shooting multiple independant targets.

The question is WHY VR? why not just be plugged into a computer ala a rigger into his Drone/vehicle?
Well the In Game reasons presented are the Echo Mirage event (which is older than 3rd edition and is a direct reflecting of the Raging Fist spec ops event in Neuromancer) that tells us that conventional Hardware and Software and thos eusing it were ineffectual aganst the new AI(ish) virus. But the new stuff which operated by translating the web at the time inot a VR simulation (ala Tron, most of Gibson's books, Lawnmower Man etc). It doesnt tell exactly HOW it does it (because they can't just like in most scifi/cyberpunk stuff you get a What and a very bacon jargon or technobabbled how) but they tell us it does do it. Just like Wired Reflexes, we know what they do but we have no basis for really HOW that is achieved.

Now in regards to OODA, the reaosn I stated Dreamlike and Hallucination before is because that's how Gibson described it in Neuromancer and maybe thats part of the How we are missing. In subconsion expression or REM sleep where dreams happen we have an internal perception of time, while in that dream (be it natural or drug induced) that does not run concurrent with actual physical time framing. In our dreams (especially those who are lucid in that state) we can experience input of data and react to it as the passage of days where as it's only happening for a fragment of our actual time asleep (in natural conditions) and even drug induced only a part of that time will be dreamstate. Now IF there was a technology/software combination (say a Cyberdeck, the protocols of the Matrix and ASIST) that tapped into that state by presenting things in a similar fashion for the mind to latch onto when plugged in (3 dimensioanl virtual reality supplanting the dream, this is kinda what happens in Lawnmower Man and also a little in Tron) then it could be considered to be massively more efficient in terms of hacking and programming and these other considerations. It may also present avenues on how things work so massively different to our own.

IMHO it worked better in 1-3rd as a concept because of the exclusivity of the VR realm as that of the Deckers and the Corp Security and the Matrix Programmers, everyone else was still using regular terminals or Trode Access/Datajack via Cyberterminals which were inferior to Cyberdecks because of the missing two parts of the MPCP, so you got the VR access and some of the benefits that the technology running the show allowed but not the Full benefits of that technology operating.

Finally.
It's in there because it's a cyberpunk trope to have Virtual Worlds and Realities in a Edge of Transhumaist kind of way. It's a deliberate contempt for the Meat and an active seperation of conciousness from Flesh to explore the purely Digital and Cyber. Shadowrun actually achieves this in two directions because Astral Projection deals with it in similar, but also different ways (this is why the Matrix is like a wierd didgital astral realm in 5th, not great design choice but it's blatantly pointing out the similarities betwene the two). Also Astral Projection also tells us that disembodied conciousness is faster in comprehension and deed than the flesh is, which is also why Experience Points and (until 4th) Luck/Fate are represented by Karma.

Ultimately if you dont like it, you dont like it. But it makes about as much sense as anything else in the system, is an iconic factor in it;s own right and (until recently) has been internally consistent within it's own mythos.

In summary:

WHY VR? - because the fluff says so. And it would be cool. But no coherent explanation is on offer.

OODA - maybe something about the dreaming brain hallucinating faster? Because as we all know, we're totally better rational calculating individuals when we're dreaming and hallucinating.

Oh, and it's a trope that tickles the Rule of Cool.

... in the process trashing a lot of what we know about the brain, about judgement, about data transfer, about computing in general, because Gibson (who freely admitted that he wrote Neuromancer barely knowing anything about computers beyond that they existed and used electricity) said that it worked that way ...

Dude, if the Rule of Cool rules your games, get down with that. The problem is that people are actively complaining about a major lack of coherence in the milieu. So if whatever you're suggesting does not have a coherent, cogent explanation (and some handwaving about things that actively violate known principles is not coherent) it doesn't solve the problem of a coherent milieu.

Remember, the point of rules is so that everybody knows what game they're playing. If you're asking me to swallow that an exploit script runs slower when the computer has nothing better to do than run it, compared to when it has to create a virtual reality for me in parallel? Yeah, not buying what you're selling. If you're asking me to assume that hijacking the brain will somehow result in a more effective solution by putting it in a dream state, I will be seriously concerned. And you still won't have explained why a suitably cultured nodule of rat neurons or cockroach ganglia wouldn't do just as well, with far less risk to the decker.

You see, it has nothing whatsoever to do with not liking VR as a concept. It has to do with not liking incoherent nonsense. VR can be made to work, but just not the way that the game proposes today.

It's not that the program runs slower; it's that controlling it manually, by typing on a keyboard and/or swiping on a touchscreen, is slower than DNI.

In all fairness Koekepan, I've read back through the thread, checked a few other places too and its seems to be you and Freudqo who don't like the VR aspect of the Shadowrun setting, and yes, it's Don't Like. Arguing that it has no basis in reality when we are dealing with UGE, SURGE, Reflex Boosting Cyberware that lets someone do objectively more things in a 6 second span, Mana Levels Sphere and Magic, Astral Space, Paranormal Critters, Having an out of body experience to become Cars and Drones and stuff and more such things because you want to compare Real Computing to Deckers in the Matrix is nonsense. Yes, Rule of Cool and is backed up by an internally consistent mythos which says "These Things Happened >>> These Things Which Seem Impossible Were Discovered >>> Thus These Things Are Now As They Are" saying it's not coherent is nonsense, coherency follows cause and effect within the universe as presented, which the first 4 editions of the game did (and managed to do pretty well) and which 5th failed to do so in thngs like Wireless Bonuses, Interaction of Cyberware and several other things where the basic function of parts of the game were utterly different.

If you don't like it, you don't like it, but arguing that it doesnt match certain principles of computer science means you're in the wrong game and maybe Phoenix Command 2nd edition should be what you're wanting to write.

I get that, but that's not what I'm talking about. The point is that whatever you're doing, you're notionally firing off some code. Presumably triggering the code is a single action - the code then runs off and does all the incredibly, mind-blowingly, bowel-churningly complex stuff that our tiny little brains can't comprehend - while your computer still generates that fancy interface, complete with the smell of bitumen from the tarbaby IC that's trying to slow you down.

Well, on that level, yes - simulating bitumen smells for your cortex is slowing you down. There's no two ways about that. But that's not the tarbaby code; that's just your OS interface.



OK, yup.

That's right, yeah.

You got it.

I don't like VR.

I'm just the guy who more than ten years ago actually bought VR goggles (they were crap, in case you're wondering) in the effort to make this stuff work.

But I hate it. Hate it so much!

Hate it so much that I went and studied industrial psychology and cognitive psychology and interface design to make it work.


Maybe you're bad at getting hints (since you completely blew your little psychoanalysis project there) but you are so dramatically wrong that it makes Napoleon's decision to invade Russia look like a minor misunderstanding. So let me break it down for you, because you don't seem to be able to figure this one out for yourself:

* I don't hate VR.

* I don't hate the idea of simsense VR.

* I don't hate the idea of a simsense computer interface - in fact I think that it's cooler than antarctic coprolites.

* I have no objection whatsoever to the idea that a simsense interface could have substantial advantages in any one of a number of fields, especially with respect to organisation of representation of complex data.

* I'm one hundred percent on board with the idea that there could be a technology that could permit direct presentation to the brain, and data retrieval from the brain, and with negative net latency change.

So where does a problem emerge?



Ah yes, the famous "Because there's magic it's all good" argument. I seem to think that I've seen this one before ...

* The problem isn't that new technology exists. That's taken for granted. In fact, I specifically called that out earlier with my cheerful acceptance of DNI, among other things.

* The problem isn't that new milieu aspects such as magic exist. That, too, is taken for granted provided that there's a coherent metaphysical backing that allows for consistent rulings on the part of a GM. (There could be argument about the extent to which this is presently true, I grant. In fact, I insist; SR has always had tenuous metaphysics of magic.)

* The problem isn't that Deckers in the Matrix exist. I'm happy to work with that, even allowing for a liberal understanding of how computing could or would have changed with a return to analogue computing, ubiquitous quantum computing, advanced AI development and so on.

The problem is that it has to be coherent enough that a GM can actually understand, and adjudicate, what should happen and why.

Why would this be difficult, as you say, all the fluff and everything is there, right?

Allow me to furnish an example:

Right now, by the fluff and the rules, there is NO old technology, PERIOD, that cannot be rolled over and used like a Bangkok whore, by a VR-dwelling decker. No chipset, no protocol, no encryption standard, no security procedure. The direct literal consequence of this is that a decker can literally extract correct meaning from any scrambled signal in the world, including OTP, just because they have a computer hooked up to their brain and they're in their VR fugue state. This directly breaks information theory and mathematics, by the way. As a direct consequence of this, because linguistic encoding is an example of old technology, that decker can also interpret, not merely every language in the world, whether constructed or natural, but any transmissable language, regardless of grammar.

The consequence is absurd, and a GM shouldn't allow it, but if a player challenged it there would be no grounds in the rules for the GM to stand on other than: "Because I said so, die in a fire."

You may argue that this is a somewhat contrived example, but I kept it straightforward to illustrate the problem.

A different consequence of this, by the way, is the combat-timeframe wireless hacking-on-the-fly nonsense. I can see how they got there, but as anything other than a pre-scripted attack it makes less sense than a porcupine in a Prius.

As a GM, this bullshit is a major problem. If I try to wave my hands and Rule of Cool it out of existence, then my players don't really know what game they're playing, computers are magic and should just as well be pushed into an NPC-only role.



This thread is about SR6. If you don't think an appeal for greater verisimilitude and (in particular) consistency is appropriate here, where should we do it? Or do you think that we should just cry alone in our closets, hugging our knees, rocking back and forth?

Because it turns out that quite a few people seem to actually care, especially GMs because players keep coming up with things based on interpretations of the RAW that are consistent with the writings, but inconsistent with everything else about the milieu.

... but you know what? Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. A big ol' meanie. So Ok, if it will make you feel better to think that it's all because I Don't Like VR, you're welcome to think that. Don't let me tell you how to feel!

They did test with tourney players, but with a system as big as theirs unexpected synergies to be exploited are inevitable. They're cleaning it up with twice yearly updates rather than a new sourcebook in a few years now, so that's a huge upgrade.





Precisely. Something that's more and more been growing on me is that a new version of Shadowrun needs to be designed around making rules that reliably simulate the kind of narratives we want to play. So if what we expect the game to be about is sneaking into corporate facilities to steal the MacGuffin and fighting our way out, with a side of computer espionage and magic tricks, then we need to have rules that are easily and intuitively capable of handling those tasks without distracting the players from the narrative.

Shadowrun has historically been bad at this, and SR5 is worse than the average. To paraphrase the argument I used when discussing 7th Sea, we're simulating heist movies, not physics problems.


Koekepan : If I'm reading right, you seem to be conflating 'VR-using decker' with the pile of steaming trash that is SR4 hacking rules, and the festering shitpile next to them that are SR5's version. Don't.

In all fairness, it just seems that you have not understood the concept of desbelief, because you've reached one of the main point of stupid of people justifying any technological bullshit through the existence of magic in shadowrun.

Maybe Koekepan settled his argument too much in nowadays computer science principles for your taste (and I quite agree with him), but being put in the same bag is actually mildly insulting and just proves you're not reading the posts you're answering. I actually argued that the definition of the matrix is self contradicting in its basis, and didn't make sense despite acknowledging DNI and high computing power could significantly accelerate coding process etc. AND I EXPLICITELY SAID THAT I WANTED VR TO BE IN THE FRACKING GAME LIKE 10 TIMES.

Hacking in VR is pretty stupid by 2018 standard. Computer have been around too much time and people are too educated about them, especially and for various reasons people interested in RPGs, for such stupidity to fly. You seem to be pretty emotional about this, but let me remind you that the matrix is really not what focused the attention of people on shadowrun. This is arguably a minor element of the setting that's always had quite unplayable rules. If you said "next edition won't have the astral plane", it wouldn't be shadowrun for most people. If you said "next edition won't have hacking in VR", people would be quite ok.



I don't think this is shadowrun. It is much richer than just such kind of missions. This has been presented as the "typical" shadowrun in most books, but the game has always been supposed to be much more than that. I'm just having a look at SR3's companion to check, but a lot of the missions (Bodyguard, assassination, enforcement, kidnapping, etc.) could be summed up as Mafia Henchmen jobs rather than simple industrial espionage.

All of the above use the same elements as the archetypal heist, just in slightly different arrangements.

Basically:

Prelude - Clean up any residuals from downtime, get a new job, negotiate as needed.
Setup - Footwork and information gathering, followed by planning
Execution - The meat of the run, which is essentially interchangeable and flavored depending on the goals given. Meet a series of challenges and resolve them through some combination of character skills.
Denouement - Challenges surpassed, complete the job and pick up your pay. Shoot each other as an option.
Downtime - Relax, rebuild, renew, and set the seeds for the next run.

The structure holds for the vast majority of runs. The issue is at the Execution stage, because the game designers have lost sight of the limits of a GM and a group, and put in specialized systems well past the point of saturation, rather than having a core resolution mechanic and sticking to it.

IMO, what has been written as cannon shouldn't be touched too much, even if it's stupid. An over 20 years old background is part of the charm of the game.

For exemple, Echo Mirage, NAN and his highly stupid demographical problem, or things like that need not to be retconned.


I also can live with unrealistic things about computer, if it doesn't hurt too much my suspension of disbelief (ex: abysmal Broadband requierements is ok, enforcing full Wireless technology is not ok).


However, I think that realism isn't as requiered as people seem to think here. It's been over 20 years that my characters can soak incredible damages and heal at impossible rates and we all know that it's not possible.


IMO, most people want something between realism and gamefun.

Errr… I'm not sure I agree with that. This was the specific goal of 3rd edition, and it bloated in the end. Then it was the specific goal of 4th edition, and it bloated in the end. And now it's the goal of 5th edition, and it's garbage and it will bloat.

You need to have the rules answer pretty well to the questions raised in game, because the specificity and attraction of shadowrun kinds of stem from the setting-rules interconnexion. As has been pointed out, trolls being really really tough used to be rule-supported and people were disappointed when they were not in SR4.



No, but you could always do something like UMT, or wireless. In the second case: bring it in a different way than real world brought it but so that new players are not so surprised or petrified by the idiocy.



What's required it suspension of disbelief. Honestly, we know that your character would heal at some point or is tough, and you want the flow of the story to flow, so ok, let's say he just heals in time for the next run. People are just debating the need to have a video game being hacking.

The bloat, IMHO, is not a function of the system. It's a function of the broken and bastardized way SR's been handled as a property. The rules creep started to ramp up in the WizKids era, and we're all aware of how poorly Catalyst has managed literally every property they have ever touched. They are an abject failure as an RPG publishing house whose biggest 'wins' in the last five years have essentially revolved around the FASA crew resurrecting their properties as viable video game lines that drive some pittance of attention to Catalyst's publications, while their last major marketing push (the Year of Shadowrun) ended in 2/3 of the tie-in games never being finished.

Hilariously, it's been implied that utter failure of Shadowrun Chronicles (nee Shadowrun Online) is why the whole headjacking nanoware threat up and vanished in the SR mainline, because that was their plot baby which has been put in permanent limbo as the developers ran out of kickstarter money in what is essentially late alpha/early beta and dropped the game to go make something that paid.

Most SR3 splatbooks were published under FASA… And they were just summing up the mess from SR1 and SR2… And people complained they were bloated and needed streamlining, which led to SR4…

I don't believe you can ever make Shadowrun with no heavy rules. You want Boosted Reflex to be different from Wired Reflex and Move-by-Wire. And you want that translated in the rules.

And in the end, there's nothing that bad about heavy rules, if they can be understood and referred to easily. I really never had much troubles GMing 3rd editions with players ready to learn what their characters could do. But for sure I had to spend quite a bit of time reading the BBB.

Not quite.

I started with 2E (I was aware of 1E, but never got to play it, much to my disappointment at the time), and played 3E as well. I'm familiar with them (though rusty of course).

Even if you go back to the early fluff (hauling out my 2E book to get the page reference .... here it is: page 27, under Crash of '29, verbatim quote: "Second, no existing computer security could even slow down someone using a cyberterminal.") it's clearly canon that any form of prior computer security is utterly useless against even Echo Mirage's early prototype equipment, which was, again by canon, utterly outclassed by later developments.

What I had to say didn't rest on any particular edition, but pointed out why I've been talking about a reboot of the setting, complete with (as I've covered in other threads) actual expertise from economists and sociologists on how it could work.

Hope that clarifies my position a bit.


Now that I think about it, that also implies that the VR environment must be generated by the cyberterminal, because in a pre-VR 'net/matrix, hosts could not have been designed with that in mind. Just nice to consider that confirmation, nothing surprising there. This doesn't contradict, by the way, the data requirements of sculpted environment transmission.

I'm not sure how that was ever in question. The existence of reality filters indicated that was true from the start. Only once cyberterminals were common in the general public did corps start sculpting systems with an eye to forcing display paradigms on users in VR.

Deckers were doing it from the start as a matter of personal pride. Kind of hilarious how well it parallelled the progression from mid 90's barebones web pages to the flash amd java infested, CSS sculpted monstrosities most corps use as their faces today.

That was the conclusion I came to as well. Rather like playing an MMO. All of the art and animation files for the environments, characters, items, etc. are already present on your computer before playing the game. During play, the server you're connected to isn't sending gigabytes of data a second to animate the world you're playing in, it's sending a much smaller amount of data instructing the game installed on your computer how to animate the virtual world. VR hacking has to work this way as well. Install whatever virtual world you want to use, then get online.

The thing is that the shadowrun matrix doesn't work at all like today's MMO or whatever you want to compare it too. There is an infinite bandpass for VR graphics purpose, and that's it.

It is true that it's your deck or your cyberterminal that generates the VR. But it's also explicitely stated that every bit of how the VR looks like is transmitted to your deck through cable by the server. If a server contains a sculpted reality your deck has never seen, every graphical details about it is sent to your deck the moment your connect to it, with no latency or anything. And the server receives every graphical details about your personna with no latency either.

And all this is confirmed by the fact that no matter what deck you have, what power it has, it doesn't affect the least the way you see the matrix… So clearly, in today's term, the VR landscape is generated by the host, not by your cyberterminal.

So the question remains of how did the Echo Mirage team see the Matrix? And why can't later hacker's or decker's use the same way of seeing the Matrix? Well, really, am I the only one who facepalmed when reading about Echo Mirage? Was it because I was already too old?

Echo Mirage used the first and rather rudimentary (but arguably sturdier) reality filters which formed the basis for the new Matrix which in turn led to the reality filters Deckers could get and use up until Crash 2.0. After that I have no idea.

As to the Cyberterminal/Host generating the visuals it depends on Which Matrix we are talking about. The first Matrix Sr1-3 the code for the Matrix comes from Host and Grid (mostly Host) which the ASIST and other bits of tech in the Cyberdeck translate into the Virtual Reality that the submerged consciousness sees. It's worth noting that you can also access the Matrix in this era without any form of Jack or Trode connection and you don't get a VR / 3D display on your flatscreen ir trideo and instead what you get is just like what our Internet Briwsers and other UIs look like, web pages, click buttons, admin consoles etc.

Sr4 and the second Matrix... I have no idea, it's a blind spot to me.

Sr5 and the third iteration of the Matrix is just plain weird. It's essentially kinda like the first matrix but also a digital astral realm with Online but Offline Storage Archieves, Ownership rules that feel more than a little hand waving and a bunch of other oddities that (because I'm reading them again for a game I'm running) share more with Sr3 Rigger Electronics Warfare and Security Rigging blended with Sr4 Hackers than Decking as such.

Reality Filters always were the lamest thing.

Creating a world of pure imagination in every respect, and then making it a no-brainer to opt out of it, was a strange decision.

Well, the purpose of the whole VR thing to begin with is that what you see is instinctive to what it is, so you find the files where you expect to find them, the icons for the turrent controls are exactly what you'd expect them to be using the Universal Matrix Icons. The Sculpted Systems used by some hosts can of course play havock with Reality Filters so you took a gamble using them when going on a run against a sculpted system, either they gave you an advantage or they slowed you waaaaay down.

Yes, and my point was that makes no sense. The situation I described would actually work.

Sorry, didn't get it was your point, thought you just described how you read the book.

The situation you describe just solve the bandwidth problem, which is not really one… There is virtually no interest for a hacker or decker to accept rendering what the corp wants it to see…

Allow me to clarify. In the situation I described, the decker chooses the VR world they want to use, gets it all loaded and running on their cyberdeck, and then it interprets any data received according to its theme. In short, if you want to go full VR, then Reality Filters are basically the only way to do it (working with more realistic bandwidth expectations).

This I had understood. What I meant was that there is no interest for the decker to waste any time doing that. And going further, there is no interest to waste some time about it in an SR game.

Ah, gotcha.

Well, while I'm definitely onboard with the whole "VR does not speed up your brain" idea, I do endorse the concept that a DNI will enable you to launch/configure/direct programs far more quickly than pointing and clicking your way through the same processes. Though you're quite correct that there's no need to be essentially playing a 3D video game while you're doing that.

That said, if you want to explore the idea of a DNI that does speed up your brain, I recommend Accel World.

OK, so agreed that the interface is intended to make the decker more efficient. So far, so good. I think that would be the generally accepted interface for every system that isn't actively perverse or incompetently designed (right, Microsoft?) and agreed that there might be a tiny OODA loop acceleration with DNI (grudging, here...) but that still begs the question of what you're doing that would be somehow accelerated by envisioning things as a virtual world.

This is where we get back to how hacking actually works, and why I keep talking about scripted exploits (i.e. things that you can quickly fire off, that you have reasonable confidence will work against the target - or at least be worth trying) versus analysis. If you have analysis going on, tightening the OODA loop is a largely academic concern.

If you have scripts, then the fastest interface is one that fires them off, then gets the hell out of the way. No fancy VR jiggery pokery will accelerate what amounts to "Verb Noun".

You could, maybe, possibly make a case that VR might somehow accelerate analysis of a breathtakingly complex attack surface, but then you're still developing a mental map of the situation and evaluating it. These are higher-order functions that require judgement, and are not accelerated unless the brain's internal functions themselves are accelerated - unless you take the position that it's an instinctive analytical process as opposed to rational cognition, in which case you might as well have flatworm neurons doing it, as your own brain.

This is why I differentiated between the slow, consideration-driven legwork stage of the decker's work, and the quick exploit in a live situation.

@Koekepan:

Fundamentally, I think we agree. For actual, long, drawn-out hacking, DNI won't help much. Well, I suppose it'll keep your fingers from getting tired.

In combat, yes, canned programs are the only way to go when someone's shooting at you. Personally, in that situation, I'd really appreciate being able to activate/target them in a hurry while keeping my hands free to pull out my BFG.

True! But at that point, that's an argument for voice, gesture or button control with AR, rather than anything that puts you into an artificial fugue state or coma.

This is an argument for a decker going along on a run with prepared scripts that will exploit the particular models of camera and turret that the opposition has, but not diving into anything until and unless they're somehow directly connected to an offline system.

Well, actually, nothing says you have to only use your DNI for full VR - you can use it for hands-free AR as well. In fact, that's what I typically do for my characters. I get a Deltaware Implant Commlink that I explicitly note is customized to have no internal Sim Module (I don't want someone hacking in and turning it on, causing me to suddenly collapse like a puppet with her strings cut). This setup enables me to flip through AR windows as fast as I can think about it without needing AR googles and gloves.


Exactly.

In 3rd ED it actually says that many people still use keyboards as an input method, while getting the ASIST input through their datajack.

I, at least, do not give a fuck about it. There was a crash, a team called Echo Mirage used some brand new technology at a heavy cost for their sanity to erase the bug. I still Wonder who did it and why.

The rest, I don't care.


It doesn't hurt my suspension of disbelief if the matrix as described uses an impossible amount of brandwith and honestly, I haven't met anyone in my games that have a problem with it.
I consider it to be part of the genre.

But well, that's just my opinion.

I am not sure if that's what hurts most people suspension of disbelief here. I know it didn't hurt mine at all.

To me it wasn't bandwidth in the abstract. We can transfer, over short distances, using hardwired connections, positively insane quantities of data.

That's the easy part.

It's the whole wireless matrix thing that gets messed up; if it's transmitting a simsense experience, that's a showstopper for me. If it's not, then it calls into question the value of the simsense-as-interface, leading to a tentative conclusion that you want a DNI as an input system, not a display system.

And maybe not even then.

I agree with you on the bandwidth issue breaking my suspension of disbelief. In fact, I agree so much that I'm currently discussing with my gaming group about revising our SR world to eliminate the whole VR decker concept. One of our members is a network engineer for a telecom company and he agrees with this completely.

I do contend, however, that DNI is the way to go for both input and display, but only in AR. Full VR should be purely for recreational use, not for business.

The point being wildly missed here is that, so far as a new edition goes? It does not matter. The exact details of how the Matrix works are well below the level of what is needed for the game to function, beyond ensuring absurdities like the dungeon crawls to unknown dataspace 5e has added get rapidly retconned.

'I plug my brain into my laptop and do computer things!' is as far as it really needs to be detailed, and stretching it out beyond that is half of why the Matrix rules have been comprehensively shit for decades.

'I do shooty things and my enemies fall over dead!' is as far is combat really needs to be detailed, by that measure.

You can play a group consisting solely of Magicians in Shadowrun, and you do not run out of things to do anytime soon, even if you do not do Astral quests and the like.
The question is how to do this for deckers.

I disagree on the Matrix rules having been shit all throughout, since I think 3rd Edition kicks ass in that department.
Even 5th Edition does it competently, although it is bogged down by the same rules clutter, mix of fluff and crunch, and bad editing and layout, as any other 5th Edition ruleset.

I also disagree on the consistency of the world not mattering in that area in particular.
Fluff is there to give you pointers on what is possible, and is immensely important in an area that you cannot reference in real-life.
I already stated that I fall into the rule of cool camp here, but I still think certain things deserve at least an alibi explanation.

The main things the Matrix needs in the next edition imho:
1. A ruleset that is as simple as any other ruleset within the book, if not more so. It should be as simple as possible, with it still offering tactical decisions.
In addition the rules descriptions should be clear and succinct. -> This is where the last three editions have failed.

2. A consistent description of what is happening and how it roughly works, from a fluff standpoint.
People need to have an idea what they are doing, what they CAN do, and what they CANNOT do, because the Matrix has no real-world equivalent.
Even the astral realm is easier to comprehend than is the digital. This is a problem.
[Also, if you know what people CAN do, you have a reference point for when something happens that is, by common wisdom, impossible.
Example: Steve does not know that people stay dead once they are killed. The GM lets a character that Steve's character killed three sessions ago appear again. Steve plays his character as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. -> Spot the problem!]

3. Pointers for the GM on how to handle the Matrix, which answer the following questions:
->a: Should you discourage a player from playing a decker who has no other skillset? Should you encourage "multiclassing" into a Decker-Magician, Decker-Sam, Decker-Infiltator, etc.?
->b: When does it make sense to cut down on the level of detail of a matrix action? (Connecting to a workstation and hacking a door control should not take half an hour in real-time, for example.)
->c: How does the game change if there is/are no/1/50%/100% decker/s in the group?

4: Cut Technomancers from the core rulebook, this is what an advanced rulebook is for! They take up a lot of pages and make about as much sense as including Nosferatus and Nartaki as options in the core book, judging by their per capita prevalence in the population.

5: Make the first part of the chapter so that it details to every player how a non-decker experiences and uses the Matrix, including how to do data searches, how online-communication roughly works, where tracking is an issue, and why simsense is the best thing since the invention of the wheel.
This is a vital part of life for anyone, unlike Magic. It should not be a niche chapter to read.
To be honest, the same should be done to the Magic chapter, starting out with the way everyone experiences Magic (through the trids), and going more in-depth after that.
New players should not have to slog through 20-40 pages to filter out the fluff they need to read so that they can play their character as a layman on something.

It actually is. We don't need a detailed explanation of the ballistics behind APDS, or how it was kept effective while scaling down from main battle tank rounds to handguns. We just need 'this provides a game benefit against armor' and some shadowtalk about how cool and scary it is. Same for smartguns, monowhips, or cyberspurs for that matter. They are important because they are a thing the player will want because it is cool. Beyond that, going into deep detail just provides more chances to contradict yourself.

Like so.

That's pretty much it.

Street Samurai Catalog! I love that book!

The whole "Bandwidth for VR" thing is why I say you can't hack at full effectiveness when using wireless. Heck, you can say that you can't hack in VR AT ALL when done over a wireless connection. I've said it before Wireless hacking should be at best Rating 3 for the Deck/Commlink, and has to be done in AR.

As for the whole "Echo Mirage has tech that made other tech obsolete", I just figure they had the world's first quantum computer. It's purported that a Quantum Computer can do brute force cracking of password in a fraction of the time a regular computer can do it. I'm taking on the manner of a billion times faster. I don't have a link so take what I say with as much or as little salt as required.

Agreed. Very very much.

You can build whatever fluff you want from that. So just build fluff that makes a little bit of sense…

I think we might be miscommunicating.

Firing Modes, Cover, Movement, Ammunition, Recoil, Vision, Required Time, Barriers, Armor, etc, is the detail I was alluding to.
Firing a gun in Shadowrun is one roll for the player, but that roll has a load of dependencies which make that ruleset more complex, and which allow for tactics as a trade-off.

Granted, these dependencies come relatively intuitively to the player, but that again is rooted in the fact that there is a real-world equivalent for combat.
But even then, a layman might not think about recoil intuitively, and needs to be made aware by the book that it is a factor in the game.

It is the job of whoever writes the Matrix chapter to convey to the player way the Matrix works in such a way that it seems intuitive to them.
The player needs to have a feel for what is possible, what is hard, and what is impossible.
This goal is reached through a mixture of fluff and crunch.

Fluff teaches the player how to think of the Matrix. Not WHAT to think though.
If the fluff makes sense, the player feels comfortable extrapolating from it, and is more free to act quickly and even improvise.

Crunch teaches them what they can do.
RPG rules are arbitrary to an extent, because their purpose is not to be a perfect simulation. Instead they serve to give all parties involved in the game the same base-line on the imagined reality.
More modern, telling-heavy RPGs have proven that you need almost no rules to play an RPG, provided a base-line can be reached regardless.
Crunch is mostly about fairness between players, and between players and GM.


All of this is why I think a "Make it one roll and disregard the fluff entirely"-approach is the wrong way to go. It is the problem-solving equivalent of giving up on the problem.