Every once in a while I see a post along the lines of "Uh oh! Sounds like Cybergenerations! We can't have that!" Usually in reference to SR4's new Matrix stuff.

I have a somewhat basic understanding of what Cybergenerations is, but not enough to recognize how the (very small) amounts of information about SR4 Matrix parallel it, or why this is a Very Bad Thing. Can someone spell it out for me, and perhaps for someone else like me who's curious, how the two are similar? In what ways? How was this or that element of Cybergen a problem?

There have been several comments to the effect that what little information we have so far on Matrix 2.0 reminds some people of another product called Cybergeneration. The general consensus seems to be that for SR4 to turn out to be another Cybergeneration would be a bad thing.

Being not familiar with Cybergeneration, I was wondering if I could get educated on a few points:

What specifically was so horrid about Cybergeneration? Was it only the VR-overlaid-onto-meatspace elements, or was that just one part of a gestalt of suckiness?

What was it about Cybergeneration's VR-Overlay that makes any other RPG that tries to add VR-Overlay elements run the risk of turning into a Cybergeneration clone. I would think, for instance, that if Cybergeneration's VR-Overlay was widespread and generalized, another RPG could differentiate itself by having a system that was more focused and specialized, and so on.

Even if SR4 is risking becoming a Cybergeneration clone, isn't it time that SR's artificial sensory technology become untethered from 80's technology assumptions?

Personally, I'm excited about the announcement, because I've been throwing in houserules on how Deckers & Riggers can make effective use of their ASIST-based technologies without going drooling & comatose for quite some time now, and to me, the announcement sounds like finally the system is catching up to the same concepts I've already been working with. However, not everyone's happy, and I'd like to learn more as to why.

depends on what you want to play. if you want to play Shadowrun, a world where high technology meets magic, then the base assumptions of the technology ought to be updated now and again to account for tech advances in the real world. if you want to play Shadowrun, a world where the future of the 80s meets magic, then the base assumptions don't need to be changed.

i prefer playing the first one. others prefer the second.

FYI: I merged the two threads that were on the same topic and deleted all of the posts discussing which one to close and which to leave open. Seemed like the most reasonable thing to do.

cool.

Originally from the other thread:

I'm game.

For the most part, it's the virtual world overlay on top of the real world. There was a specific role for handing the Virtuality called Wizards, who where V-hackers who used sensornets, advanced proximity sensors, to manipulate V-space. Because of their youth, Wizards and other PCs (Cybergen had teenagers as characters) used wireless trodes instead of having cyber installed. Also because of this, most of the effects Wizards performed also used holographic projectors to display programs into V-space. It was never fully explained how these programs could harm people, but I think they could through feedback through the trodes.

At the time, it was a rather ridiculed idea, but as we enter the post-cyberpunk era in literature and the portability of the wireless age in our world, it's become more likely than a VR suit in every home. The current specualtion nowadays is not the full-immersion of cyberspace but a enhanced reality, with custom skins to suit the individual. Data can be displayed in a HUD (most common speculation; DIOITMK and GITS:SAC uses this heavily) or we just simply know it (I've heard GITS: Innocence touches on this, when Batou and Togusa start firing off relevant quotes to each other, but realize that, without the cyberbrains, they wouldn't have know the quotes because of their educational background).

I guess it'll have to come down to the base assumptions of what SR4's Matrix 2.0 can and can't do, and that'll have to wait for some more tidbits from the developers.

I've read cybergeneration, but not Virtual Front, which I gather expands and potentially even explains their VR ideas. I have VF at home so I may make an effort to take a look at it and see if it makes anything of the concept.

Cybergen as a whole I didn't think was too bad - pretty different, pretty anime, but not by its own lights a terrible idea.

The VR stuff scares me as an SR player first because Cyberpunk adopted a real world geography for the net and Cybergen took that one step further by suggesting that everyone, for reasons of convenience, stayed jacked into the net all the time and had an overlay of it on their goggles. So if you break into the corp, you break into the corp's system, and if there's a computer controlled crane over there you just go "astral" over to it and control it except that it's guarded by a virtual monster which you have to kill first. Tres dungeons and dragons, and just not a very persuasive implementation of the net - seemed to try to remove the conceptual problems of the net as another space not overlayed on normal space.

Cybergen added to that approach by trying to drag everyone into the dungeon all the time, so you didn't really hack at all, you just had to deal with an additional layer of reality, which could threaten everyone because they wore their goggles, "because it was convenient" even though it meant they could be threatened by ice. And you shot the ice with code guns, unless you were a decking enabled "wizard" who could cast spells on them. Basically it added a layer of magic and spirits to the game under the fairly dubious justification that "this is what the internet now looks like" - I thought that was a silly idea and a waste of IT's potential in a game without magic, in a game with magic it would be truly terrible.

I'm in no way opposed to wireless internet, and I think interacting with system near you, whether you call it rigging or decking, is a good element to add to the world, my concern is that it's (maybe) going to be achieved by a lazy geographical equivalence model in the guise of "streamlining", when, IMO the only way to add wireless networks et al is to recognise that they do complicate things a little and decide to use them anyway.

Hope that helps - the Cybergen argument is a basis for concluding that SR4 matrix will suck, but I believe it's grounds for concern.

Cybergen wouldn't have been too bad a system by itself. The problem was that it was touted as the official future of Cyberpunk:2020 (at the time, I'm not sure what the new CP:2020 edition has done). It was a super-cool Rage Against The Machine teen rebel revolution crossed with the X-Men sort of theme/game, that still insisted on incorporating several of CP:2020's gritty, dirty, mean characters as major NPC's/mentors, just to make sure we couldn't forget what setting was being bent over. This whole new generation of teenagers was growing up with strange powers, and it was up to them to change the world !!!1111 lol omg!!111

I think Cybergeneration is a lot of why so many of us had (and continue to have) the reflex-action fear/loathing of SURGE, and other anime-esque influences in Shadowrun. I don't want another perfectly cool cyberpunk-flavored game to get more teen bubbly Magical Girl anime style. What Cybergeneration did to CP:2020 would be like Shadowrun 4th Edition just being a Big Eyes, Small Mouth game. There's nothing innately wrong with BESM, but it's not Shadowrun, y'know?

I think SURGE, if handled properly, could work out in favor of SR's themes and styles. But that's a different issue. (And yeah, I can see how the way YotC handled it was far from "properly.")

Anyway, as long as SR doesn't force us into the conceit that people are always jacked in, no matter what, then Matrix 2.0 should work fine. I have to imagine that defensive manuever umber one is just to disable your wireless connection, the price being that in order to reconnect, you've got an uphill battle unless you're far away from where the trouble started.

i think that was the worst part of SURGE. the basic concept--high mana levels cause a second wave of UGE--was really, really cool.

I have absolutely zero idea what the artwork will be like for SR4, but I don't think you need to worry about it becoming a "Big Eyes, Small Mouth" game. I've seen nothing that really indicates that at all. And I can definitely say that System Failure will be very, very far from that idea.

Besides, if that's what you want, Ex Machina is a better bet

EDIT - Damnit...now I want to go find those old scans of the japanese Shadowrun manga/insert...

So I think the consensus is: We're generally cool about having the majority of the general populace (including the PCs) jacked into the overlay 24/7, so long as being jacked into the overlay puts you no more at risk from getting brainburned than using a non-VR tortise as your jackpoint under the old system did?

Yes and no - I think the overlay has some interesting applications, and I've got no conceptual problem with it, but I still object to the idea that the overlay is the matrix - and I suspect that will make my views irreconcilable with the approach taken by SR4. You can hack the matrix overlay by tampering with the wireless transmissions - that's fine - but the idea that that is also the mechanism by which security door controls or sensitive data are piped around, just doesn't sit right with me - and the adoption of a high-level metaphor for the role of software in the overlay - "the code ninja slashes at you while you try to shoot it with your code gun, meaning while real bullets wiz past you as your teammates do battle with the meat guards" - is rather worse. I can see how it excites some people, I just wouldn't have thought those people would be SR vets.

Hopefully I'm wrong about some of the detail, but those are my projected peeves:

1) Why are you still jacked in?
2) the system of wireless announcements is also the global computer network.
3) reality filtering out the hacking elements and making it an overlayed dungeon crawl.

lacemaker's got it right.

I think the Augmented Reality and the Matrix should have a relationship similar to the World Wide Web and the Internet (respectively) today: one should be an application of the other, an application which can interface with some of the functions of its "carrier" but which does not have all the functionality of it.

I suppose I never really thought of it that way. If Matrix space ends up being directly analogous to physical space, someone is getting stabbed.

~J

i think your #2 is based in a lack of understanding in regards to what the WMI could be capable of. it's quite a bit more than a system of wireless announcements--it's carrying all of the intarwebs around in your head. you can check your email while riding home on the bus, you can edit your family pictures homepage, you can watch stock prices and buy or sell as you see fit in realtime, you can download music if your current playlist is stale, you can chat with a friend riding on another bus. when in public, you can set your "approachable" status--if you're looking to meet new people at the club, set your status to "hi!", if you're here for biz, set your status to "fuck off".

how can you have all that, and not have it be the global computer network?

Because the computer network handles all the maintainance, data shuffeling, and OS' running that augmented reality? It's like having permanently open copies of MSN, Outlook, Word and that MS HTML program running in your head, access to all other applications ... but not the WINXP folder, let alone task manager. It's a good reason to install a decent firewall into your head. And brain hacking will still be a fact of daily life. Just imagine what a psychotrpoic ice of 5 years on can do to fuck up people really good ...

nah, you'd have to be carrying the computer around with you. basically, i'm imagining a pocsec with WMI access, which you yourself can access via datajack or trodes. if you're talking about other computers directly accessing and running programs in your brain as you walk down the street? yeah, that's insane.

I think there's still a clear distinction, and based on what has been done in cyberpunk and cybergen it can be summarised as follows: "great, we've broken into the secure Ares lab, I can see their research data floating everywhere, I'll grab it and take a look", or "where are you n the Matrix?" "Corner of main street and Harris street, just across the road from the newsagent"

Wireless would have a great many applications, your ideas are good ones, and similar to a few I've thrown out before- I'm on record as wanting to advance It in SR and expand its role, so I don't have a problem with any of that - my concern is that the handy geographical metaphor becomes the Matrix - which just in convincing, nor is it a good move in terms of the role the matrix ought to play IMO.

Of course, if the only way you could interact with Matrix:Reloaded was by walking up to the corresponding physical location, that would take the biggest change the internet brought about down ... the ability to communicate with people on the other side of the planet instantaneously.

Just imagine that, if I wanted to look at my Malay friend's home page, I'd have to take a flight to Kuala Lumpur. STUPID.

i agree, i don't think the geographical metaphor should necessarily become the Matrix. but, given the security risks inherent in WMI, i don't think it's unreasonable for some security arrangements to require physical presence.

basically, my mental picture is GitS, possibly minus the brainhacking (i'm not really for or against brainhacking in SR). you've got web browsers that pop up in your field of vision, and you can do a lot of hacking stuff in the VR overlay--but you are by no means limited to only hacking what you can see through the VR overlay.

Ah, but I do project my presence to different "locations around even today's basic internet.

Where am I now - I'm in a dumpshock chatroom, but I can flick over to a basketball chatroom and I'm sitting on my law firm's server, as are people all over the country and in Hong Kong and England. I'm virtually present in a number of virtual locations - all of which are completely independent of my phsyical location and the fact that I might be sitting in the middle of a Wifi hotspot or receiving wap advertisting based on my physical location.

The idea that wirelessness destroys the difference betwene matrix geography and real world geography is just a lazy shorthand that does indeed streamline and simplify, but at too great a cost IMO.

At a cost far too great for a purely meta gaming related gain.

Those are some pretty wild speculations.

If anything, I think that FAQ byte might be more to hackers having mental predisposition to cracking the 'trix or such as in Cybergeneration, not digital fire balls (or even simsense overload). Though, I was thinking that hackers would simply use computers and skillz with perhaps an arsenal of agents and frames loaded onto the 'trix.

As to the geographical overlay, there are aspects I expect to see such as an employee walking into a cold office and calling up a virtual dashboard to turn up the thermostat. However, one should still be able to affect the temperature if they entered the host from a different point in the 'trix by hacking. Other geographical cues such as advertisements floating in front of stores and RFID flavored food. Perhaps if you have a special hack for your mobile you can see a Yakuza icon floating above their joytoys as you cruise the strip.

But I also expect multiple remote feed usage and not a lazy (very much agree with Lacemaker on this) all or nothing geographical 'trix.

You're honestly saying that hermit's conclusions weren't wild and silly?

Anway...

Interesting piece in the Economist's TQ on the use of mobile phone readable 3d barcodes to encode timetables, web addresses, shipment information on products and public places - automate the recognition process and have it appear in a HUD overlay and you have some of the effects we've been talking about a lot sooner than 2060.

I wonder if that will compete with RFID or the various Bluetooth incarnations. Seems almost clunky to have a scanner compared to the others, though it does impart a level of security. I'd think that's something vehicles could incorporate much more smoothly.

Good point - the scanner approach locks down the location of the information in your field of vision very effectively - with the corresponding disadvatage that you have to have a clear view of the code in order to access the "hyperlinked" content - you're probably right that RFID makes a lot more sense long term, as the price and size falls.

I think the most wild assumption there is that someone would actually try to visit Yanni's homepage in 2070.

~J

I just deleted a few posts in this thread that were off-topic and were about to cause this thread to be closed. I hate doing that, but I felt like the content of this thread was worthwhile if the momentary dramatic interlude could be removed from the conversation. That said, if I even have to look funny at this thread again, it's getting closed.

If you want to discuss this, post in the Bug Report forum.

n/m

I see that it might work on two levels like the old cyberspace in shadowrun. There will be some simple wireless stuff that everybody does like checking email and stock quotes while on the train. For that you only need some inexpensive ware like a datajack, imagelink, and pocket secretary.

If you really want to shuffle data around you'll have to have some essence unfriendly and expensive gear. Somewhat similar to the massively expensive cyberdeck or essence unfriendly VCR. These allow you to manipulate and store large amounts of data and create or alter things in the new "cyberspace". There is probably a limited number of people who would have this stuff.

1) Your friendly neighborhood shadowrunner/hacker
2) High level research scientists who manipulate large amounts of data everyday
3) Security-types who need make prevent group #1 from stealing group #2 or the data they create.

Sounds like good ole' fashioned shadowrun to me!!!!

Gridrunners, Netrunners, morphing nanite infested street sams.

OH BOY

Gonna grab my Gibson Battle Gear and my kendachi mono pair and wade in!!!

Actually, I don't think that the info packadges will still be visible in the way they previously were. Imagine being in a bus full of people, two of them connected to webs, three downloading music, a couple more playing games... what a terrible chaos to the vision! It would be full of different objects every moment and every place! I'd think that info packadges will probably be only visible to the ones reciving and sending, plus those that may have tampered with the line.

Stung by Crimsondude's criticism of my insufficient post length (that's certainly the first time I've been criticised for not being verbose enough) I'm going to read Virtual Front over Easter and get back with a summary, just be way of resurecting the title of this thread. I'd love to see summaries of some of the other AR models people have been throwing around, none of which I've ever encountered.

I think the "seeing information flows" thing is an example of the strangeness of bolting internet georgraphy onto a model of wireless access. As I see it, your AR Rig just jacks into the net and receives realtime cues about what you're looking at (whether through RFID or visual tags, or just smart image recognition) and overlays useful supplemental information (when it's working how you want it to) somewhere on your field of vision. And of course all your usual channels of communication are open at the same time, so you can be communicating, automatically raiding databases to figure out what you're looking at etc etc. I'm probably missing a few other additions to the model, but at its basic level it in no way resembles what we've come to think of as being jacked into the matrix. It sounds like a lot of fun, and hacking it sounds even better, but it's not a replacement for decking at that level. The argument seems to be that everything goes wireless, so by physically walking into someone's space you're automatically receiving their data (subject to encryption etc etc) - and that, as a matter of convenience, deckers (sorry, hackers) would program their AR rigs to translate that information into visual signals - in which case I neither see what the fuss is about nor think it's that exciting a development - the AR stuff doesn't really do much to the basic model of decking beyond cutting the strings - which is fine, even if it removes a fun strategic wrinkle.

I guess I'm struggling to see the interaction between AR and decking, except at that trivial level, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the Cybergen handwaving approach that just announces that AR is the net.

I'm thinking out loud here, but am I missing anything?

I think the trival cutting of the stings with bonuses of streamlined rules is more to the right of it. I'm not sure I agree that walking into someone's personal space will make it any easier to hack (sorry, deck) their connection and datafeeds than to do it from the bus station ten kilometers away as long as you know what you're looking for. I hoping this is more an end to the persona model of decking, where one can only be "active" in one host at one time, and allows for hacking of mulitple hosts with the switch of a thought.

Of course sometimes being in the correct geographical location might be convenient, or even necessary. I for one wouldn't expect Ares to put all their secret research data on the matrix, I'd expect it to be one (or more) server at some secure location disconnected from the net, so if you want them you gotta get there.
If they HAD to be on the net there woudl be a quite few layers of of dedicated firewalls between them and the net so that again getting to the location of the servers and just connecting directly to them would be a better idea.


Oh and please let serious hacking take some time, I'm sick of seeing all computer security and encryption being thought of as little more than a minor hindrance, hacking a well set up server shoudl take days if not months (of course unless you happen to have the password you punched out one of the techs at the location )

I don't see the WMI as anything but a good thing for enhancing the possibilities available via technology in Shadowrun, insofar as information availability and more realistic rendering of future technologies go. The idea of brainhacking is something that should really be considered drastic, likewise the idea of there being a tied-down physicality to objects in the Matrix. I'll address the brainhacking issue first.

The WMI, and the idea of full-strength ASIST signals indistinguishable from physical reality being overlaid on one's senses at all times, assumes that the world will suddenly decide (or decide over the course of a few years, which is virtually instantaneous as far as basic multi-cultural/national technology adoptions go) that they want to be wired that way at all times. I imagine the lion's share of users will have minor, utilitarian means of interfacing with the Matrix 2.0, methods that leave open zero potential of things like realistic technosensory illusion, direct alteration of brainwave patterns, and other such "brainhacking" activities. The only characters likely to endeavor to the degree of immersion that would subject them to such potential danger are people who are involved in the danger, i.e. deckers(hackers seems too current-era for me, but I'll switch when the time comes. Can't stand people who still call adepts "physical adepts"). I don't see average citizens, or even non-technical individuals, risking digital attack on their perceptions and wetware. To get involved in that game, you're going to have to be one of the players.

As far as tied-down physicality goes, data can travel anywhere at the speed of light. Your online page is located on a server, or distributed series of nodes, at some physical location. Does this demand that all visual representation of your digital demesnes need be placed, physically, on the hardware that runs and stores it? Sure, you'll have to go halfway across the world to view a certain site or document... if its creator determines, for instance, that it's only going to appear hovering over a speciifc patch of grass in a park in Vancouver. That doesn't seem like it'd be a particularly wise choice if you wanted widespread access, but as it stands, there's nothing saying a character couldn't simply bring that data to them, wherever they might happen to be. It's not like Matrix 2.0 will run out of electrons trying to ferry all this data about to pseudo-physical locations. Sure, my website might be best viewed at 1024x768, 40 feet tall, on the side of a major building in Seattle. I'm sure, however, that there'll be nothing stopping one from viewing it in a virtual window in their own home, on the monorail, or even on (gasp) a conventional display.

The second factor that I think really negates the idea of a cumbersome physicality to Matrix interactions is that there will likely be two types of interaction. Augmented reality ("shallow immersion" was the term I coined in a brief discussion I had about the WMI concept a few months ago) will be very much like the Astral, with data overlaying and interacting with, but not replacing or actually altering, the physical world. Full virtual reality ("deep immersion" in those conversations) would be analogous to Matrix 1.0's complete overwriting of spatial, relational, and metaphorical values of reality based upon the parameters of the system. I think it's best to consider this roughly analogous to the metaplanes; places that are real and yet seperate from the physical world. I think there's a good place for both types of information interchange (and information warfare) in Shadowrun, with the former being something that the WMI will make much more possible and prevalent.

But regardless of how ingrained the digital becomes, with the tangible, I don't imagine any sane system designer, implementer, or user would be very ready to accept a system where a random nutjob with good computer background can conjure up a "fireball" of deadly IC that could render people checking their stock quotes via a floating DNI-controlled browser into babbling vegetables, programmed killers, or simply corpses. The possibility should be there, for fun factor and plot potential, but it should be very difficult outside of certain specific and highly uncommon circumstances.

Think of it this way:

Would you post on the Dumpshock forums if, through some technosorcery, it operated under a system wherein I really could induce your display to shoot flame and light you on fire, when the urge to burn you struck me (and, boy, it does strike often sometimes)? I wouldn't.

Wow. Good post.