As I'm sure you lovely people all know by now, I've been waaaay out of the loop for a long while. Thanks to Ancient History (man of a million answers) I've caught up with a fair amount of the major plot arcs from my previous time, but there were always a few niggling little weirdnesses that I never found out about.So, a random question on a minor mystery:

Back in the Shadowtech sourcebook, there's a poster called The Smiling Bandit (he appeared, I think, in a later sourcebook as well, but I can't remember which one). Although we were, by then, familiar with the high level Matrix movers and shakers blanking out their time/date stamps, Bandit had actually made his display text - which, as one comment in the book says, would technically be impossible since it would mean hacking the basic core code of the Matrix (not being a computer hacker myself I'm not planning to dispute this in any way - a SR universe character made the comment "in-game" and was not disputed by the resident experts, therefore I accept it as a SR universe situation).

Did we ever find out who The Smiling Bandit was? Or how he altered his time/date stamp? The trite answer would be that he was an early otaku, but even that doesn't really hold water.

It's not a major universe-shaking plot element AFAIK, I just wondered Cos, you know, if nobody has used the guy, I have a few ideas...

Look in Target:Matrix Answers within You'll find.........

IIRC, he's appeared in a couple other books after that. Let's leave it at a point in which has a status near to which Fastjack has acquired... Smiling's best, we all know that, though!

Oh, bollocks to that. I'm tired of immortal elves having given humanity everything they had. I'm glad the current plot bent is moving much more toward the 'We did this without your immortal/draconic ass giving us any help, thanks.'

Bandit does happen to take the cake.

Note: If all of his time/date stamps (including access logs) are changed, then it's a very high-level program cracking codes and changing everything as he goes. If it's just Shadowland, then he's just cracked Shadowland and done something that has no effect on it (otherwise, you know Cap'n would be all over his ass).

it could easily be a simple script that he uploads every time he logs onto a host he intends to make posts on.

The Bandit appears in several books, usually whenever the subject turns to genetech or bioware. For instance I think he makes several posts in the Genetech chapter of SOTA63.

Like Shockwave said there is a small file on him (and people like Fastjack or SilveryK) in the much under-rated Target: Matrix

I always assumed that the Smiling Bandit was Harlequin's Matrix handle.

I like how Harley even appears in the Genesis shadowrun game.

Dashifen: Yup. "Ha! Fraggin' Ha!" Always good for the spontaneous comment that throws all of those not in the know off... ("The word 'Pest' comes to mind...")

WRonin: Really? Been a while since I played it... I should see if I can dig it up (assuming I still have it laying around).

decking with maps simple? i recall reading the rules and wondering how many actions ice got. atleast now they are defined as either proactive or reactive. and makeing those damn maps could take ages. now you can roll up a host on the fly

as for those elfs, they may be immortal but they are not bulletproof

and about the timestamps, if data is stored like it is today then you could go back and edit the stamp after the fact. but it seems that what bandit and the others do is to insert a stream of data into their icon and this suppress or alter the timestamp. basicly we dont know enough about how this icon system works. some say it inserts a prosess into the host that basicly is the icon and this interacts with the host. its kinda like a mobil rootkit.

another guess that i have come to think of lately is the talk of autonomous agents (small bits of code that "lives" on the net) in real life. what if this have come into being in pre crash matrix. then someone hooks the asist system into this so that the "agent" become human controlled rather then autonomous. the asist then convert the agent i/o into sensory i/o for the human brain to work with. this can explain the number of deaths in the early years. the brain was not able to cope with the raw data and alien sensory feeds of the early years. then by grabbing the computer mavricks from jails and uni envoriments you get the same kind of people that started the personal computer, unix and internet revolution. these then go to town on the tech, and twist into then unthinkable directions, createing the original cyberdecks.

the problem with the cyberdeck tho is the comment that it was able to bypass all kinds of existing security. this however must include the firewall. the most basic and therefor allso the most effective. but look at the explosion of connections today that use port 80 (the standard port for http traffic, basicly the web). all kinds of software mask themselfs as basic web traffic today. what if this is what the deck does. mask itself as other traffic, therefor the host cant just kill off the connection as it cant realy tell what is icon traffic and what is other traffic. just look at how simple it is to kill of a tortise user compared to a deck user. the tortise user to me is the old style dumb terminal or pc.

then the only option is to try to kill the icon. problem then is that most likely the icon isnt one prosess but many, maybe even shutting down and starting up again so as to confuse. then the only solution is to insert faulty signals into the ipc traffic that makes up the icon, and this is what i guess the IC and attack util do. over time this can constrict the icon so much that the host can lock onto it and remove it or the deck itself crashes as its part of the io group.

but all this is theory as this is a game we are talking about, not real world.

Thanks for the links, Fortune

Oh, and hobgoblin?

Well, it does say 'virtually.' So if a ludicrously creative PC tried to kill Harley, I'd allow it a slight chance of working.
Otherwise no.

This is the sort of thing that annoys me about Shadowrun, and the Immortal Elf plotline in specific.

NPCs should not get 'special rules'. Ever.

All in my opinion, but nevertheless. It just leads to the GM Pet NPC syndrome or the 'YOU WILL DO MY BEAUTIFUL PLOT' railroad.

The amount of time it would take to ascribe all the spells, skills, and abilities of an immortal wouldn't be worth it since it would amount to the same result. The only real question is why such beings interact with the PCs at all. Only because it can be fun for them. If your players don't like their characters in situations they can't control is another issue.

None, if they netherwalk out of the target area first.

~J

I'll second what Dr. Funk said.

I think a good GM can use IEs, Dragons and Megacorps in a game to good effect.

I think a poor GM can make life miserable for his players, even without using IEs, Dragons and Megacorps. When he does use them, it may just be easier to notice that his GM skills need improvement.

Detect missile, or a friendly spirit in the area, or the fact that unless the missile is traveling ~1 meter/second the ruthenium will be doing a little of jack and a little of shit, or something like the Adept Combat Sense/Sixth Sense, or informants from your attempt to get the sub in the first place, or underlings with a good set of sensors nearby, or any of a thousand other things…

~J

I asked nicely.

Oh well, there are always contacts. Powerful people have powerful enemies. If you look hard enough, you can find someone who is both willing and able to kill the annoying Immortal. The thing about being the most powerful person on the block is that there's always someone more pwoerful two streets over.


....and Thor Shots.

In the Sega game you are out to avenge your brothers death. to do this you have to follow the leads which leads you to Harlequin. He tells you that Ito has info you get it and sooner or later you find out one of Harlequin's old spirits got free named thon. He needs to destroy artifacts to get his power that keeps him alive. You go poking around in some caves in the indian lands south east of the sinsearach. (go south cross bridge enter lower cave) once in you go south to the wall go east follow to a door going south. next go west till you find the wall go south to a door go through door. now go west across the whole room go through next west door. again go west throughthis room to the other side to get to another west side door go through. in this room is a raku strike team kill them save the feathered serpent tell the truth dragon will help you at end of game enemy. Once you have talked to everyone and hit all the matrix systems of the corps, ito's, gates underground, city hall, and lone star you have all the info you need get your group go see Harlequin he'll tell you to get ready do so if you have not. then see Harlequin again say yes he goes to the sinsearach they chant to help you out you attack the spirit the dragon pops in you go out blast the entry to the cave you were in and you win. at this point Harlequin says you did good aww thanks. and that is why you want the dragon and why Harlequin is not there him self you need the dragon and he has to chant with the elders.

Oh yeah just beat the game for the millionth time last week thus the reason I know all the answers at this time.

I never said that it would be easy finding one, but it would probably be easier than taking on a statless chracter. If Push comes to shove, join the Blood Mag eGestalt and conspire to bring the Horrors over early. I'm sure some Named monstronsity would like to play with an IE.

On a less suicidal level, you could make a list of things that your IE enemy has done that would anger certain Great Dragons.

If you can really act at that level, go for it. Why not just nuke the earth into oblivion, though? You’d wipe out their magic at the same time you were wiping them out.

There are ways you can kill IEs. IEs have been killed. They’re just not reasonable for a plausible runner group.

~J

You don't have to opperate at that level so much as know where to find people who do. An post to Shadowlands describing the IE current activities and whereabouts might be enough to set about his downfall. .

Also keep in mind that even knowing IEs exist would be unlikely, barring metagaming. Still, considering how quickly an IE can make his or her whereabouts his or her former whereabouts…

~J

I got a good one for you. A relatively easy one, all things considered.

Lure an IE into a mana-warp heavy zone, like Mexico City. Lure elf into warp. Hammer with everything you've got. Elf's spooky magic powers? Probably pretty worthless.

Remember - foveae & warps scare even IEs.

Edit: correlary. Fight IE in space. Which is much harder.

Assuming it can be lured in. They didn't survive this long by falling for typical bait. They have millenia on you, they have litteraly seen every trick (probably pioneered a few) in the book.

Nice rant, but it sounds like it's the GMs fault and not the books. Read one of the run books, they have a few options sketched out, but primarily are based on the assumption that the PCs will stick around and try to get it all done. They typically don't cover you turning tail and running, because that suddenly puts you outside the scope of the run book, and into the massive undefined region that GMs are supposed to make convincing.

Not to mention that it does mention in places that, hey, it's your game. You can award more money and karma if that's typical of your group.

One run that one of my GMs did was purely combat-oriented (clear an Ant Hive in Chicago. Ugh. I kill all ants to this day). He awarded us a "low" amount of karma at 8 points each.

In the run books, the typical award for one section of the book is... 3?

We never finished our campaign, but I can guarantee that we had at least 40 karma under our belts in about four games. Most of the time we get it in three.

If you haven't actually read the adventure yourself, how can you make any such claims of GM infallibility and condemn the module out-of-hand?

Yeah, I'll have to read Harlequin. I've read Harlequin's Back, and I'm not too upset about it (just kinda). My big gripe is with the first Harlequin, but again, the only thing I can see that our GM could have done differently would be say that Harlequin did it himself, in which case I'd still be pissed at the fact that Harlequin was manipulating us all the way through the adventure and we've basically been told that there's absolutely nothing that we can ever do about it. Actually, scratch that. What picks me is that there's absolutely nothing we can ever HOPE to do about it. It's just sort of "that's it, game over, this is the hand of FASA telling you to just walk away and never come back"

Luckily, from what I'm picking up in Harlequin's back, it should be possible to create another adventure including Harlequin from scratch and kind of right some wrongs and make the whole character seem less oppressing and more human with the emotional hooks included in Harlequin's back that our group never really found much out about, whereas I'd always kind of assumed that would not be possible. We just need to tell the GMs in our group to steer clear of any published material including IEs from now on, which I don't think will be a problem, because we all pretty much feel right now that IEs have no more place in our campaign and shall now be relegated to the status of Dunkelzahn (i.e., our group will always disregard what FASA or FanPro has to say on the matter)

ANd to clarify, I've read HB, it's the first Harlequin where I've supposedly made a claim of "GM infallibility." I make the claim now until I've read Harlequin and seen otherwise. I'm willing to give my friends the benefit of the doubt before the writers of Harlequin. Nothing against them, I've just never met them, and I don't want to go around accusing my GM of shoddy GMing on a public board unless I have proof.
But even if that end scene could have gone differently, and I was supposed to have the option of just walking away, I'm fairly certain that as written Harlequin would still have gotten away with making my group do a lot of stuff it wouldn't normally do and then screwed them out of compensation. Don't get me wrong, the adventure itself compensated us, because we still dream about the karma we got on that run when most guys are dreaming of girls. But that karma isn't coming from Harlequin the elf, it's coming from Harlequin the adventure, which still makes Harlequin the elf a bastard, and we hate him. Having read Harlequin's Back, if our characters knew the things I've read in that book, maybe they wouldn't hate him quite so much, but that wouldn't change the fact that as a force, he's forced the characters to do a lot of things they normally wouldn't do.

There is no difference between an Immortal and Megacorporation. Can they be destroyed? Of course. Can the PCs do it alone? Not well enough that stats would help or change the methods.

Perfectly ok for the characters to hate, loathe, and abhor him.

~J

CBB: IIRC, there's a spot that says "There is always the chance that the characters will refuse to do this. If that happens, move on and do something else."

That's how it always is with any game. If your GM used Harlequin as a railroading technique to get you to play the game, then it's his fault, not the book's.