The Shadowrun Situation

[Korwin]

There's a big big difference between data mining an adventure for 'ideas' and running a 'module'.

And it's not elitist.

A GM who only runs modules, and doesn't let you do anything not covered in the module isn't really a good GM.

A Gm that uses Harlequin's Trilogy to come up with a plot of his own.. is.

But is it an practical difference? If there are no module, you cant mine it.
And besides, I suppose its an sliding scale between mining and running...

[TheFlatline]

"why don't we just cut our losses and run?"

If the answer of "Then we won't get paid" isn't sufficent, shouldn't you just let them cut their losses and run?

That's more or less what happened. I didn't railroad them on that point.

The other side was offering to pay them too. More in fact I think. And if they didn't want to deal, they'd get shot to hell and back. I forgot the specifics. But it was basically "either I'm professional, get shot to hell, and make a little money that I spend on patching myself up, or I make a lot more money, don't get shot up, and work on my professional reputation".

The adventure as written made the assumption that the PCs were willing to get shot to hell and back and spend their hard-earned credits on medical care. I don't fault the players at all. Working on protecting their reputation is a lot healthier and safer than getting blown to the hereafter for a pittance of money.

[Spike]

Just a point of interest.

I live not too far from Snohomish, to the point where I not entirely unseriously suggested dropping in on the trials earlier last year just to be an eyewitness for the web geek crowd.

At the local half price books they have a dozen each, brand spanking new, fresh off the presses, copies of that corporate sourcebook and the criminal one (Damn my bad memory for names!).

Which, I believe, generally indicates someone was unloading some stock that was unsellable for one reason or another.

[Fucks]

If you could decide how SR5 would like look: would you keep Technomancers in the setting?

[Username17]

If you could decide how SR5 would like look: would you keep Technomancers in the setting?

Of course. They've never been my favorite, but they've been in there for several editions. Rules can and should change, but retconning stories and people's characters out of the game is not acceptable.

-Username17

[sabs]

I would want technomancers to do one of two things.

1. Blantantly become magical. Just admit that they're magical, and get on with it. Then all their assbuggery powers/abilities don't need to make sense. They're magical, have a day.

2. get rid of sprites, deep resonance, initiating, the more mystical echos. Bring them back in line with Hackers in terms of capabilities. (scale from 1-6, not 1-24). Make echo purchasing more like Adept powers, or adept powers with a karma cost. I really hate the bionode/wireless antena crap..but I can deal with it.

[spasheridan]

I like the idea of a world of the physical, a world of the magical, and a world of the digital. I don't want to call technomancers magical because then you might get weird cross-over physical-mage-hacker-techno Night-one immortal elves with delta-grade bioware. Total BS. And I promise you some kid somewhere just jizzed over this idea.

[sabs]

Well yes, I would really prefer option #2. Right now we have basically option 1, but with a slight nudge-nudge-wink-wink it's not magic.

[Murtak]

I would want technomancers to do one of two things.

1. Blantantly become magical. Just admit that they're magical, and get on with it. Then all their assbuggery powers/abilities don't need to make sense. They're magical, have a day.

You do realize that the defining characteristic of Shadowrun magic is that magic makes sense, right?

As for me, I'd not miss technomancers if they were gone, but really, all they need is coherent rules.

[sabs]

You clearly have not read any of the latest source materiel.

I would say that the defining characteristic of Shadowrun Magic is that magic USED to make sense.

[kzt]

If you could decide how SR5 would like look: would you keep Technomancers in the setting?

No. If the only explanation for something technical is "it's magic!" it dies.

[tzor]

No. If the only explanation for something technical is "it's magic!" it dies.

But you can't run any real sci fi (far future) systems without that argument. Even Star Trek falls completely. (Warp drive, transporters.) The old Traveller system where every jump takes the exact (more or less) same time no matter the distance never holds together without a magical hand wave. The real definition for "it's magic" is "I have no idea HOW it works, it just does."

[kzt]

Provide me a hand-waving but reasonably convincing explanation as to how a human being's brain can naturally send and receive gigabit data rates at gigahertz frequencies that any computer can work with. Remember that gigahertz frequencies are the range that microwave ovens use to cook food. ...

[Spike]

Actually, I have a 'loosely based on real life theoretical physics' explanation for the 'always one week' jump drive phenomenon in traveller that holds up pretty good. In short: One week corresponds to the 'thickness' of space as it is folded. The size of the fold (Distance in real space) is utterly inconsequent, as you are still only going through two 'layers' of space every single time.

Of course, I also extrapolated that as part of why there has been zero increase in jump fuel efficiency in the thousand or so years Jump drives have been used, though it really doesn't account for why you need more fuel for longer jumps (the hydrogen is used to expand the 'tunnel' like a ballon, allowing the ship to enter..., neatly explaining why fuel use is a function of a ship's volume, not mass...)

But, sidetrack.

[tzor]

Provide me a hand-waving but reasonably convincing explanation as to how a human being's brain can naturally send and receive gigabit data rates at gigahertz frequencies that any computer can work with. Remember that gigahertz frequencies are the range that microwave ovens use to cook food. ...

There is the BORG option. You use a two way transporter to relay chemical information from every important neuron interface to the central processing unit.

And microwaves "cook" food because the frequency is "just right" for H2O stimulation.

[duo31]

keep otaku, treat them as people who have had their brains re-written to function as computers. they may need periodic software updates. in exchange for removing the middleware ie decks/pdas they get an extra init pass or something, can create code on the fly, but get fucked harder by IC, or open themselves to being brain hacked ala Ghost in the Shell / the ends. sprites/bots having a personality are a consequence of otaku being lazy and copying some of their own brain code to make a sprite/bot. think cognizance crystal. consequence of re-writing your brain is that you can't ever use magic. kinda like having 0 essence, but not fatal.

moving towards a GitS like setting seems like a logical evolution of the brain interface technology that already exists.

[kzt]

And microwaves "cook" food because the frequency is "just right" for H2O stimulation.

Sure. Which means that a person who continually emits several watts of 2.4 GHz RF from their brain will "cook" their brain.

[duo31]

Provide me a hand-waving but reasonably convincing explanation as to how a human being's brain can naturally send and receive gigabit data rates at gigahertz frequencies that any computer can work with.

external transmitters and body shielding. technomancers still require datajacks, and a wireless transmitter?

genetic mutation/manipulation?

nanotechnolgy?

all 3 could fit into a coherent shadowrun, but all require some form of technological assistance.

[Username17]

And microwaves "cook" food because the frequency is "just right" for H2O stimulation.

Sure. Which means that a person who continually emits several watts of 2.4 GHz RF from their brain will "cook" their brain.

That is not actually how frequency works.

It means that the energy could be absorbed by water molecules. It doesn't necessarily mean the brain would cook. Actually, brains are pretty resistant to microwaves.

Not, of course, that the Hz of a computer cycle are directly comparable to the Hz of a photon wave. Those aren't even the same thing. Basically, your gotcha is such physics nonsense that I can't even answer your question.

-Username17

[Manxome]

Not, of course, that the Hz of a computer cycle are directly comparable to the Hz of a photon wave.

And neither of them has anything (directly) to do with data bandwidth. Sending and receiving 1 GB/sec does not imply anything at all about the Hz of your computer processor or the Hz of the photons carrying the signal (even assuming you are using photons)--either or both could be enormously larger or smaller than 1 GHz.

[Surgo]

Provide me a hand-waving but reasonably convincing explanation as to how a human being's brain can naturally send and receive gigabit data rates at gigahertz frequencies that any computer can work with. Remember that gigahertz frequencies are the range that microwave ovens use to cook food. ...

Pretty much any kind of signal modulation at all. Basically -- what Frank and Manxome said.

[kzt]

Not, of course, that the Hz of a computer cycle are directly comparable to the Hz of a photon wave. Those aren't even the same thing. Basically, your gotcha is such physics nonsense that I can't even answer your question.

SR4 postulates that the wireless computer connections used by everyone is a broadband wirless mesh, and the technomancer participates in this. "The neural pathways and brain chemistry of technomancers are such that they can send, receive, and interpret wireless signals, giving them instant access to the wireless Matrix".

The frequency of a signal is directly related to how much data it can carry. You can do clever compression to make it carry more one bit per cycle, possible quite a few more, but you are simply not going to be transmitting an HD video signal on the 60 Hz hum of an AC circuit (or 50 Hz in Europe). Given that bandwidth of SR4 is high enough that it takes essentially no time to transmit enormous data sets, this suggests a fairly high bandwidth, as in many gigabits per second. So you are not going to be doing this on AM radio either, you are probably going to have to be in the high megahertz to gigahertz range. AKA microwaves.

So a technomancer clearly needs to be able to send and receive signals in the microwave band, as that's where computers he wants to talk to live.

The most common frequencies today used for wireless networking is, oddly enough, the exact same as what microwave ovens transmit.

So yeah, it's magic. And it pisses me off and I would evict them.

[Surgo]

The frequency of a signal is directly related to how much data it can carry.

This is not true at all. With a massive signal to noise ratio you could send HD data over 60 Hz baseband, you'd just need:

(1080*1920*24*24) = 60*lg(1 + S/N) [Nyquist channel capacity]

Solving for S/N, the ratio is 2^19,906,560 - 1. Is that hard to obtain? Um, yeah, that's a practically noiseless system. But can such a system be sent on 60 Hz? Totally.

Besides, your statement becomes even more nonsensical when you take modulation into account. Almost every signal we send is modulated up to some high frequency, making the correlation between frequency and data capacity almost zero.

edit: A couple more things

Given that bandwidth of SR4 is high enough that it takes essentially no time to transmit enormous data sets, this suggests a fairly high bandwidth, as in many gigabits per second. So you are not going to be doing this on AM radio either, you are probably going to have to be in the high megahertz to gigahertz range. AKA microwaves.

When you're talking about actual signal processing, you really can't use the term "bandwidth" twice like that. The colloquial usage (as in, bits/second), is not the signal usage, which is how wide the transmission frequency band is. What this sentence should read is:
"Given that gross bitrate of SR4 is high enough...this suggests a fairly high symbol rate, as in many gigabits per second."

That doesn't necessarily correlate to high bandwidth or even a high symbol rate -- you can just pump the crap out of signal power, or find some clever way to reduce noise power. It doesn't correlate to gigahertz bandwidth either, because you could just modulate it up the frequency spectrum arbitrarily high.

[kzt]

In a theoretical world where there is one device that wants to send data to one other device, inside a anechoic chamber inside a Faraday cage, that might be true. But as you'll have thousands of devices that are sending data at an given moment within a 1 km radius I don't think that 0.5 GHz bandwidth or 50,000 watt transmitters inside technomancer brains are reasonable assumptions.

[Surgo]

The point is, the problem is not intractable. Maybe they use time-division multiplexing as modern day cable modems do (not obeying your timeslots would be what's known as "jamming"). Maybe some researchers hit upon a totally crazy noise-shaping technique. Whatever. Plus, even if microwaves impacted human brains badly and you needed a band 2.4 Ghz wide, you could just modulate it up to a higher carrier.