[Shadowrun 5] On the playability of Matrix

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:59 pm

The other fun catastrophe is that AIs can apparently (haven't read it, just inferring from Dumpshock) change ownership of devices in combat time. Ownership is a super powerful stick, and this breaks the one safeguard in the matrix in half. So while this probably doesn't actually happen fast enough to be effective in compared to shooting dudes, it is possible to take all your gear away and make it non-functional permanently from just a matrix connection.

Also, while TMs get terrible short shrift in this book it is confirmed that there's a technomancer book in development: a freelancer is panning for suggestions on Dumpshock. She's already ruled out fixing fading values, so what the fuck ever. That said, we're probably going to see some sort of PAN and skinlink patch for them.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:09 pm

pragma wrote:The other fun catastrophe is that AIs can apparently (haven't read it, just inferring from Dumpshock) change ownership of devices in combat time. Ownership is a super powerful stick, and this breaks the one safeguard in the matrix in half. So while this probably doesn't actually happen fast enough to be effective in compared to shooting dudes, it is possible to take all your gear away and make it non-functional permanently from just a matrix connection.

Ironically, this makes AIs the masters of GTARun, and makes shadowrunning a terrible job for them.

pragma wrote:Also, while TMs get terrible short shrift in this book it is confirmed that there's a technomancer book in development: a freelancer is panning for suggestions on Dumpshock. She's already ruled out fixing fading values, so what the fuck ever. That said, we're probably going to see some sort of PAN and skinlink patch for them.

Doubtful. Skinlink is already an echo in the Data Trails, and PAN... Oh boy. There's an echo that allows you to use your technomancer powers while using the cyberdeck. Which makes you a shitty hacker knock-off, but does technically solve the "can't defend teammates" problem.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:30 pm

Longes, thanks for the info. Doesnt it clarify or revise any current rule ?

deaddmwalking wrote:You say that like that's a bad thing.

Lol

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:41 pm

silva wrote:Longes, thanks for the info. Doesnt it clarify or revise any current rule ?

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 7:01 pm

Longes wrote:
While we weren’t looking, GOD created something …
new. Something entirely new. Some of us have started
calling it the Foundation. Frankly, none of us truly know
what this is, and we certainly don’t have a full understanding
of how it works. The Foundation, in my watery
analogy, would be the sand underneath the water. The
Foundation connects every single island out there—every
single host. It’s like the underlying infrastructure. If a host
is a lightbulb, the Foundation is the power grid. When we
log into the Matrix, we log into a grid. That’s fine. That is
not what I’m talking about. The Foundation is underneath
the grid. All hosts are made from the Foundation. If a host
is a cyberarm, the Foundation is the chrome.
Unfortunately, that’s about as clear as I can be. We just
don’t understand it. Now, I know plenty of hackers out
there that simply won’t stand for something they don’t
understand. So yes, I also know plenty of crusaders that
have gone out and performed, at great risk and peril,
raids against GOD servers. I know a few individuals, who
shall remain nameless, that have kidnapped, tortured,
and interrogated GOD-affiliated Matrix engineers to get
to the bottom of this. What emerges from this is chillingly
disturbing: It would appear nobody understands the Foundation.
Even the masters of the Matrix, the powers-thatbe
that supposedly control things, don’t seem to exactly
know what’s going on. Nobody wants to appear ignorant,
so they all pretend they know, but nobody ever goes into
detail. Best we can tell is that the Foundation is the raw
power of all combined devices in the world.
Matrix is literally magic now.
/goes to froth at the mouth/

Makes sense though really from a meta standpoint. SR devs haven't known what the f*ck to do with technology for a while now. Magic gets all the lovin so why not say fuck it tech is the new magic.

silva · Post by **silva** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 8:56 pm

Flatline wrote:Makes sense though really from a meta standpoint. SR devs haven't known what the f*ck to do with technology for a while now. Magic gets all the lovin so why not say fuck it tech is the new magic.

This.

The Matrix fluff was always "magical" to begin with. Adding another layer of magic is like just adding one more piece of shit above a huge pile of shit.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:02 pm

I'm sorry, did I miss something? Are you saying the matrix is now literally magic, i.e. mana powered, because nothing in that writeup indicates that to me.

What it sounds like is some kind of singularity/ skynet situation where there has evolved a global AI or nest of AIs that is only pretending to be the internet we know and love, while doing mysterious things out of sight of human users. Honestly, that's not a terrible premise.

silva · Post by **silva** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:08 pm

Orion, its pretty much that.

I find it pretty tolerable. But then I understand people around here is butthurted about 5e matrix as a whole so any slight weird thing is treated with applomb and shock! and oh the horror! etc.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:04 pm

Orion wrote:I'm sorry, did I miss something? Are you saying the matrix is now literally magic, i.e. mana powered, because nothing in that writeup indicates that to me.

What it sounds like is some kind of singularity/ skynet situation where there has evolved a global AI or nest of AIs that is only pretending to be the internet we know and love, while doing mysterious things out of sight of human users. Honestly, that's not a terrible premise.

Errr. It's literally magic, but not Magic magic. The new matrix is built in the last five years by GOD upon a series of Ultraviolet nodes which form a dreamscape (???) and no one knows how it works. Not even the people who built it and who maintain it. The last part is what makes it magic.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:10 pm

TIL Silva doesn't know what "aplomb" means.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:21 pm

Longes wrote: Errr. It's literally magic, but not Magic magic. The new matrix is built in the last five years by GOD upon a series of Ultraviolet nodes which form a dreamscape (???) and no one knows how it works. Not even the people who built it and who maintain it. The last part is what makes it magic.

That's actually a fairly standard Singularity plot element, where a self-improving system develops to the point where humans cannot understand how it works.

silva · Post by **silva** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:29 pm

What Name_here said.

And yeah, I may have what applomb mean.

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 12:39 am

It's an OK plot hook, but I think the presentation is pretty terrible. I agree that Orion's interpretation suitably cyberpunky, but giving some hints that AIs are involved in shadowchat would help to satisfy me more.

As it stands, the plot development just looks like metaplanes for technomancers. And technomancers have been called "a form of pattern magic" (whatever that is) somewhere in the shadowchat. Further, because the TMs use magic rules it is easy to infer that anything they interact with is magical.

So, "the matrix and the manashpere are converging!" is an interpretation that's easy to come to given the above. And that plot strikes me as pretty lame, though that's a matter of taste.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 6:10 am

pragma wrote:As it stands, the plot development just looks like metaplanes for technomancers. And technomancers have been called "a form of pattern magic" (whatever that is) somewhere in the shadowchat. Further, because the TMs use magic rules it is easy to infer that anything they interact with is magical.

No, it's actually yet another case of "technomancers can't into plot". Because technomancers already have metaplanes (Resonance Realms), and those are not it. Hell, if they said that current Matrix is built on Resonance - I'd be happier. But the dev team hates technomancers, and doesn't know what to do with them, so technomancers just hang around sad and useless, like a third dick on a dickwolf.

vagrant · Post by **vagrant** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 10:29 am

I dunno Longes, I could find a use for an extraneous third dick on a dickwolf.

Speaking on the Matrix, the magic comes from the fact that there is no longer any sort of understandable base for the Matrix (now that would seem to imply that hackers can no longer hack because THE MATRIX IS UNKNOWABLE WOOAHWOOAH), but since the dev team gives exactly the same amount of fucks to metaplot as they do to mechanics (none), it just becomes an insult to the system itself.

I can see someone trying to do a 'Neuromancer'-style Matrix thing, in which a pair of AIs hit Singularity and become the Matrix (like in Count Zero), but this isn't it.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:59 pm

Third dick? I thought dickwolves already had 6 dicks.

EDIT: 5 dicks.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:39 am

So, appearantly, the nice Freelancer that came to dumpshock to ask "SR5 Technomancer feedback thread, For an upcoming book! Wow!" was canned by CGL.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:43 am

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=41162
This?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:48 am

Eeyup.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Thu Aug 06, 2015 8:24 pm

Is there a reason? I didn't pay much attention to the thread as I hate the concept of technomancers and I think she essentially said she couldn't fix the actual underlying game reasons that they suck.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Aug 06, 2015 8:45 pm

nobody knows.
appearantly NDA bullshit again.

Antariuk · Post by **Antariuk** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 11:49 am

Ok, so I finally got into Shadowrun (yeah!), but the group decided to ditch SR's rules and just use the fluff and the universe. So now I am reading sourcebooks like a maniac, and I have some problems figuring out how the matrix is supposed to work - not in terms of SR-rules, but in terms of concept. Since I can't just stick with Frank's The Ends because everyone wants the 5E timeline in the game, I now have to figure out how stuff like GOD and demiGODs work into things, and the 5E Core Rulebook is sort of a mess in that regard.
Can someone here explain to me how that shit is supposed to work, topologically or as a sequence beginning with your handheld device and ending with GOD, as if I were a 3-year old? Please?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:20 pm

Well. Here's a rough idea of how 5E Matrix works.

At the bottom there is a magic layer of dreamspace. No one knows how it works, but it connects all nodes and allows deckers to get around the defenses via the peyote sequences. Then there are nodes, which are basically servers. Nodes are united by a Matrix Grid. Each Grid has a demiGOD, which gives you strikes when you do naughty things and nukes you from orbit for getting N strikes. All Grids are connected somehow, so being on different grids is just a minor dicepool penalty. You can also connect directly into a device's USB port via your datajack. Or you can suck dick if you are a technomancer. GOD are the creators of Matrix and corporate-less matrix men in black. Basically GOD are a bunch of Fastjacks who will wreck your shit if you cross them.
Oh, and then there's Resonance and technomancers or something, but the development team hates them so don't bother.

TL;DR:

vagrant · Post by **vagrant** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:40 pm

The SR5 matrix is a convoluted piece of shit. To put a point on it, the way it works in concept is...garbled, to say the least. More or less, an upgrade to the matrix made it works more like telecom grids than the adhoc wireless of SR4, but the underlying concept is more or less magic. Not out-of-universe magic - in-universe, the SR5 Matrix has some sort of substrate that is (seperate from Resonance? Who the fuck knows?) literally 'a wizard-did-it.' Additionally, GOD - Grid Overwatch Division - went from being mid-rate Matrix police for the Corporate Court to literal Matrix GOD, and no matter where you are, they'll find you, even if you're on some corporate darknet. DemiGODs are local versions of the same.

But really, none of that matters, because they threw out whatever internal consistency the Matrix had (which admittedly, wasn't much) in favour of bullshit. So basically if you treat the Matrix like Neo, that is totally a perfectly valid interpretation of the clusterfuck that is the SR5 matrix.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:56 pm

Shadowrun matrix never had much consistence or plausibility to begin with, and 5th edition only worsens it. If internal consistence and coherence is something you value, perhaps Shadowrun is not the right game for you.