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SilverClawShift
2009-03-19, 08:47 PM
So first a little background info.

My groups DM has taken a little hiatus from gaming, which he does every now and then (DMing is hard work). Since I'm the second most experienced DM in the group, I'm gonna cover for him until he comes back. I'm not quite as fluid of a storyteller as he is, but I'm not a slouch, so I think my group will be okay.
Which gets me closer to my point. We're going to be playing a game of Shadowrun, but I'm mulling over what will be the main focus of the world we're playing in (not to mention the central vein in the plot), and I've hit a little bit of a roadblock.

See, one of the central elements of this world is that there is a Matrix-like virtual reality that part of the population is hooked up to. The thing is, this Matrix is something you opt in to. See, computing power in this world is far, far below the computing NEEDS, and it's immpossible to make powerful enough computer hardware to keep up with what certain corporation (or individuals) want to do.
Enter the human brain.
The human brain is capable of outperforming any computer on the market in raw potential (side note: ignore wether that is actually true in erality or not, it's true in this game). but using the human brain to its maximum potential is not a simple process. For starters, there's the simple blunt difficulty of CONNECTING a human brain to mechanical hardware. Then there's the issues of overriding memory, motor control, ect, ect... being linked up to a machine is an expensive and dangerous process, and not something most people would be willing to go through with.
Except the world kind of sucks. The global population is multiple times greater than what society can realistically support. Food shortages, job shortages, housing shortages... reality blows.
But if you donate your brain to a major corporation, you can wave goodbye to your miserable existance. They'll put you through a safe, but irreversible procedure to permanently hook you up into a virtual world populated by other brain-donors, a world that's much much better than the one you're looking at now.
They'll give you the bare minimum necesary to keep your body alive (though it will wither away to a useless husk), but you won't notice. You'll be in a world where things are better, where there's food and water and everything else you need.
Sometimes your world will just grow pitch black, and you simply won't know anything for a while, while the corporate mainframe uses youre skull to do some hardcore number crunching... but you won't really notice that either. Your life expectancy will drop by 20 years, but you won't age in the system, so you won't notice that either.
Yeah it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than what you've got now right?
Also, there are more than one of these Matrixes. Basically every major company and government has at least one mainframe full of HPU (human processing units). In fact, as the world gets worse and worse, more and more people are starting to opt for a virtual reality as an escape, and it's becoming an epidemic in some areas.

But the permanent way isn't the only route into a matrix. There are procedures you can have done, black market hardware you can have installed, ect, ect, that will let you 'hack' your way into one of these matrixes. While a hacked entry is something you can turn on and off, and might seem preferable, it is also inherently more risky.
A company or government matrix will have security systems at the very least, but even if there WERE no security systems, the nature of a matrix itself is hostile to non-permanent installations. If you're hacked into a matrix, the system itself will naturally try to work around you being there, seeing you as a 'hiccup' glitch to be repaired.
That's unavoidable, and it's part of why a Matrix rig is normally a permanent lifestyle choice in the first place.
So going into a matrix is really really stupid... but then, you want those juicy corporate secrets don't you? And your employer got you a LOT of goodies for taking this job on... so sit down, strap in, and hope your programs let you dodge the agents.

So that's the theme of the game. There's the normal Shadowrun world full of street sams, riggers, hackers, mages, trolls, ghouls, ect... but there are also HPU mainframes full of poor souls who had no better alternative in their life.
Each Mainframe can be a different world, with different rules and details as necessary. That'll let me explore different possibilities, and if our normal DM comes back and picks up where I leave off, it's an easy way to explain why his theoretical "japanese government matrix" is so much cooler than anything I came up with :-p

Also, an important note is that none of the Matrix worlds are utopias. The way they work is by forming off of the subconcious and "collective expectations" of the people hooked into it. The more people in a matrix, the more real the world seems, but the more unpredictable the results.
All a system operator can do from the outside is try to tweak it by introducing programs (like "agents") and other system variations. Most corps will try to make the world as nice as possible, but also have it pretty low on their list of priorities (depending on how shady they are, it might not BE a priority), seeing as how it's a one way street that people can't report back from.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure if this whole idea is.... retarded. I'm not a good self-critic, I tend to just assume anything I make is "wtf" worthy, so I can't tell if this will actually be a fun idea or not.
What do you all think?

Also, if you think it's a half decent idea, anyone got any good concepts to build off of for jobs and such in the game?
One thing I've thought of is that while in a matrix, an espionage job evolves into something bigger when one of the people hooked in begs the hackers to give a message to their family in the real world.
Or viruses that change the behavior of people in the system making them more dangerous.
Or viruses evolving in the system to infect the human brain, and then leaking out into the real world through hackers coming in and out...

Any thoughts?

Wafflecart
2009-03-19, 09:31 PM
Ever hear of a book series called "Pendragon"? If not I suggest you seek it out, it's good, and one of them has essentially what you just said (at least what I read of it).

Kyeudo
2009-03-19, 10:19 PM
Makes sense to me.

kjones
2009-03-19, 11:19 PM
That sounds pretty awesome. Could you go into a little more detail about black-market Matrix connections? Why, exactly, would you want to do that?

Can you network matrices together? Can people from one Matrix go into another?

Randel
2009-03-20, 03:40 AM
A few ideas:

HPU Outsourcing- Okay, technically while a human brain might have some usable computing power that a computer might tap into, one thing you might explore is the sheer durability and adaptability of the human brain. For example a person might invent a cheap robot body consisting of an arm and a camera for an eye that can do menial tasks, but programming it to do stuff like wash dishes or pick strawberries would take a lot of beta-testing and work.

Enter the HPU outsourcing strategy.

Just take your cheap robot body, park it where you need it, plug it into the internet and then ask a corporation to get one of their 'online workers' to control the things limbs to do the task. The brain in the system should be able to easily adapt to a simple task much faster then it would take to program an AI to do it and with good enough internet connections and sufficient 'video game reflexes' then a single brain could handle multiple robots doing similar tasks.

Think about how easy it is to play Tetris for long hours and how hard it is to take out the trash or clean your room, the difference is that a human body wants to conserve energy and relax. If you're controlling a robot then you don't tire out and can do it just for the challenge (Note that even if this doesn't work normally then someone in the system could do stuff to keep 'scores' and such to see how good a job a brain is doing.)

In the business world, the HPUs work would basically be a mix between cheap oversees labor and temps. While in the Matrix world they would still have jobs to do, probably receiving lots of raw data and then processing them to send them back to the people who sent it to them. In the Matrix, their 'jobs' would almost be considered games. Have some remotely pilot automated transport trucks from city to city. Others could sift through medical data to search for spots that might look like tumors or diseases. Animation, video games, and other forms of entertainment could be increased by having HPUs work within a fully digital environment to create art works.

A digital actress might be an HPU plugged into the mainframe of some big movie-making company. They barely have to pay her anything aside for the nutrients they feed her or the digital environment for her in-matrix mansions and penthouse suites.

World of Warcraft might be the same gamer trap that it is today... but even more so now that the monsters are being controlled by full-time HPUs who can adapt for various strategies players may make.


Life as an HPU - Given the previous concept, various HPUs might have radically different ways of viewing the world. Many of them don't have to 'sleep' like normal people or at least require only a fraction of a normal persons sleep cycle. Speed is also variable since they can work at literally the speed of thought.

Some might view the world almost entirely as if they were sitting at a computer monitor, without a sense of smell or touch (since putting up a 3D environment would cost money and computing). Others could get the matrix-like environment though not necessarily with photo-realistic accuracy. Different 'worlds' have different levels of sophistication some almost cartoonish in appearance while others have obvious polygon counts in their objects and few are fully photo realistic.

Some HPUs might actively embrace a non-human existence, not really walking as people walking around in a virtual environment and might manifest as invisible watchers who make sure that the environment runs smoothly. The models for the buildings, pictures for the skies, and skins for the virtual inhabitants could all be crafted by HPU artists. The 'Agents' could likely be HPUs tasked with maintaining the place and reporting to their higher-ups in the real world. Some quirks in the system might be more visible to the Agent inhabitants... like how a room will 'cease to exist' when nobody is in it, and how the sky and horizon line are all cardboard cutouts to give the illusion of space.

Agents could literally exist in multiple places at once, perhaps existing primarily as a security guard watching a bank of computer monitors, each monitor hooked to a 'body' who just walks around until it spots something and then the Agent can cycle through its different bodies to get a closer look at something. The possession trick from the movies wouldn't be a big deal since the Agents just have multiple spare bodies to begin with. Though if you want to get interesting then make it so that some virtual objects can act as doorways for Agents... like security cameras in a virtual mall all hook up to an Agent viewing screen and an Agent can just step through the monitor and out of the camera to deal with intruders. Similar things for mirrors, windows, or pictures.


In MMORPGs, the various NPCs or monsters could infact be HPUs walking around and enjoying the quality scenery (maybe the HPUs who had been working in mundane data-processing jobs got some vacation time and wanted to try out the MMOs with higher quality graphics, tactile interface and flavor senses). While slaying an ogre controlled by an HPU will not kill the HPU, it might hurt like heck or do something anoying like make them lose in-game gold coins or bits of their vacation time or something. PvP games, adventures, and prizefighting could take on a whole new level of intensity when there are people who pretty much live in the game (though stuff like gold-farming would get worse as well).


Crimminals might wind up getting plugged into the Matrix as well. If the death penalty is considered unethical, why not keep the killer alive in a virtual environment where they simply can't hurt anyone? Then shove them into an MMO where people can take shots at them or put them into a never ending series of sadistic reality shows for the jaded viewing public?


Hacking into the Matrix - Okay, now that I've managed to bring World of Warcraft into the whole hypothetical Matrixeque equation... it would seem fairly obvious that some people might try hacking into it to experience the world from the inside. Add the idea off tactile and other senses working in the virtual environment... and the fact that some less that less scrupulous developers might make MMOs with less tasteful content and you could get plenty of 'dreamheads' wanting to get hooked into the Matrix for fun.

Corruption could take an interesting turn depending on how money or resources work in the virtual world. If a hard-working HPU can get the digital dollars to buy a virtual beach house... or space ship. Agents might take bribes for special treatment and sensitive transactions might be made by hooking up through different virtual worlds and chatting in code. Crime bosses who had been found guilty and been sentenced to digital incarceration might find a way to still work from the inside. Corrupt prison programmers might give him a backdoor to chat with his allies in a gaming grid or let an outside HPU sneak inside and take his place in the reality show for a few hours while the boss is elsewhere.

SilverClawShift
2009-03-22, 08:05 PM
Sorry it took so long to reply, I gotta focus my freetime on keeping ahead of the monkeys I've been tasked with babysitting at the gaming table :smalltongue:


That sounds pretty awesome. Could you go into a little more detail about black-market Matrix connections? Why, exactly, would you want to do that?

You would want to do that for the same reasons anyone becomes a shadowrunner. Being dangerous/valuable means that people will pay you money to do things for them.
When a series of human brains is your CPU and Hard Drive, your companys information (passwords, blueprints, genetic maps, plans for super weapons...) will all be tucked away in some random citizens frontal lobe.

The only two ways to get to that information are to load up an assault rifle, blast through the lobby security, fight your way to the Matrix operators terminal, hack into the system from the outside, and hope you don't kill a bunch of innocent saps when you crack their minds security for the information. Messy, and has the potential of calling down the Lonestars on you very quickly (not to mention, pretty much gauranteed to call attention to the fact that the info was stolen).

OR

You pay some alley doc 300 credits to do a wi-fi job on the top of your spinal column, sneak close enough to hack into the matrix, and hope the local operator, moderators, agents, and security systems don't manage to break YOUR brains security and end your sorry existance. Then you have to track down the person who has the chunk of information you need, find them, and get to the digits stored in a memory they didn't know they had.

Obviously, neither path is very pretty... but this is Shadowrun :smalltongue:


Can you network matrices together? Can people from one Matrix go into another?

That's something I'm still kicking around in my head? But I'm thinking "yes", just for the possibilities it opens up.

Obviously any government or corporation is going to have their personal matrix seperate from the worlds connections... but there's only so much one can do to protect a system and still have it accessible. hackers can find a way in wirelessly, which means Matrix Citizens can find a way OUT wirelessly (in theory).
But a matrix is a solid chunk of simulated reality. A solid chunk of simulated reality surrounded by a churning MESS of ones and zeroes... a wireless static storm of digital information. your actual neurons can handle that much information, your personality can't.

So yes... you can matrix hop in theory... but it requires venturing out into the static to do so.
And thhere are things in the static we didn't put there... :smallamused:

Yes, I'm implying that the wireless signals bouncing all around us conceal eldritch lovecraftian horrors we'd prefer not to imagine. Information best left unprocessed.

SilverClawShift
2009-03-22, 08:16 PM
Enter the HPU outsourcing strategy.


It's a very interesting idea, but it neglects something I want to make a big point out of, and that's the social and legal barrier between worlds.
See, in the real world, people plugged into a matrix simply aren't people anymore. They've become objects. Sure, there's still a mind running around in some new crapsack world they all invented for themselves, but none of it matters. Operators only try to keep the world nice as a SELLING POINT to get more people to sign up.

There is no digital actress HPU who's famous in the real world, because as far as the real world is concerned, she's just a computer chip with a heartbeat. There's no sense pretending these people are still around, because they're basically legally dead.
They get to live out a vaguely pleasant coma instead of starving to death in an alley, but they're not there to have a conversation with.

And no, that's not very nice. In fact, it's downright diabolical and cold, but that's how society is operating.

HPUs don't even retain most legal rights. They're protected from trauma or torture under the same laws that prevent animal cruelty, but they're things, not people.



Crimminals might wind up getting plugged into the Matrix as well.


Now that's an interesting idea. I think this world will definately have at least one "prison system".

But a matrix is made up of the collective subconcious of the users attached, manipulated only slightly by human operators to give it form and a semblence of structure...

A matrix populated by nothing but life-sentence criminals and ruthless murderers? Who went in knowing this was a one way street?

Man oh man, that's not a virtual world you want to jump into.

I think I'll railroad the players into that one at some point... :smallamused:

Randel
2009-03-22, 09:28 PM
Oh, one more idea on the prison-system of HPUs. In China, and to a lesser extent elsewhere... there is the danger of people being killed to harvest their organs.

Kidneys, hearts, livers... these all can be sold on the black market for a big profit and in some places the ability to profit from someones death can someone a bit quicker to start rounding up those political dissenters or other unwanted members of society.

So, what if in addition to the 'normal' group of people who were kindly given the offer to donate their brain to science to live in a cyberworld ... that really is only nice because the administrators want to give the illusion to sell people into volunteering...

What if some of those HPUs are people who got grabbed off the street by mobsters and their brains are just one of the organs that got harvested from them? What happens if the HPU that was installed is a blackmarket one imported from some other country that is even more crapsack than the nightmare dystopian the players are in right now? Imagine trying to get information from a Matrix that is half populated by homicidal murder-rapists and half populated by more or less innocent victims who were harvested by mobsters... and likeky can't speak your language?

Oh, and just another thought, I made it a point to never register myself as an organ donor after I saw a documentary explaining how the state is required to give medical attention to criminals in prison, even if they are on death row. So its likely that if an inmate needs an organ transplant then they will get one... using taxpayers money... which means that they can afford to get one even when honest citizens might not be able to.

So never register as an organ donor when your brain is considered a transplantable organ... or wait, maybe you should if crimminals can get free 'brain transplants' using state money. Darn, dying in an accident only to get my brain transplanted into the body of a serial-killer... would that be a good thing or a bad thing? And there is the risk of getting installed in a sucky matrix world... or doctors being too quick to pronounce me legally dead so they can harvest my brain...

Yeah, probably should just play it safe and not be an organ donor.

MeklorIlavator
2009-03-22, 09:51 PM
Well, the problem with a brain transplant is that the brain isn't like a kidney. Getting someone else's kidney won't change who you are, but getting a brain would. In fact, you'd essentially be the other person.