From: | davek@***.lonestar.org (David Kettler) |
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Subject: | Alternative Decker's Utilities System |
Date: | Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:20:20 +0000 |
Make buyable utilities max out at rating 3 or so. These represent canned
'script-kiddie'-esque utilities that are really only effective against systems that don't
keep their security up to date. All other utilities must be written by the decker
himself/herself. Writing utilities should involve a combination of time and karma, sort
of analogous to learning spells. The karma represents the knowledge and experience
necessary to write a decent utility. Of course, for any utilites the decker writes he/she
can make as many backup copies as he/she wants. This means that even if a decker loses
his/her deck they'll only be out the cost of the hardware, not the software. This also
means that in theory a decker could give everyone a copy of his/her rating 8 attack
program or whatever, but in practice decker's jealously guard any utilities they write
themselves because ultimately they are based on security exploits and if everyone gets a
copy then the corps will learn how to defend against the utility and it will lose its
effectiveness (some sort of SOTA-like system?).
For character creation some variation on a spell point-like system could be used to
determine starting utilities.
Anyway, this was just a thought but I like the idea. It seems somehow much truer to my
stereotype of what deckers out to be like. Even when they're not decking they'll likely
spend a lot of time fiddling with their home-grown utilities to try to make them more
effective, etc.
--
Dave Kettler
davek@***.lonestar.org
http://davek.freeshell.org/
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org