From:	scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject:	SR4: matrix -- first impression
Date:	Mon, 31 Oct 2005 12:47:03 -0500

On Oct 31, 2005, at 10:36, Bira wrote:

> On 10/31/05, Max Noel <maxnoel_fr@*****.fr> wrote:
>>
>> On 31 Oct 2005, at 11:34, Bira wrote:
>>
>>> Most of the novels or movies about this stuff don't get
>>> it right, and the good ones are usually those who don't even try to.
>>
>> I beg to differ. I consider Sneakers (starring Robert Redford, Dan
>> Aykroyd, Sidney Poitier et al.) to be the finest Shadowrun-ish movie
>> ever created. <...>
>
> I don't remember that one, tough I may have seen it under a different
> name. But do note the "usually" in my original text :). There are
> movies that manage to be more or less realistic, but I can't see one
> that is not a documentary and spends any time talking about what a
> buffer overflow is.
>
> My favorite "Shadowrunnish" movie, by the way, is Ronin, in which
> there's no hacking to speak of, other than some vague stuff about
> tracking the McGuffin.
>

Both Sneakers and Ronin are great SR movies. Also something like
Payback seems a good fit. It all depends on how you play. I thought
Sneakers was really good about how they dealt with the tech, except the
device they were after proved to be too magical. I can understand the
mathematical aspects of it, but not the fact that it can read all
communications protocols -- which is what they were making it do.

>
>>
>> Similar stuff could be said about Cryptonomicon, my favorite
>> cyberpunk novel (or to a lesser extent about Snow Crash).
>
> I haven't read much Neal Stephenson (he never did spark my interest),
> but you don't have to wander too far to see a succesful novel without
> realistic computing: Neuromancer and it's sequels, which is what
> nearly all cyberpunk RPGs tried to copy. SR4 itself bears greater
> resemblance to the Virtual Light trilogy, which isn't all that
> realistic either.
>

I appreciate Neal Stephenson's writing more than I do William Gibson.
However, Neuromancer was a great book. I think the rest of his work
basically went downhill after that. Stephenson's Snow Crash and
Cryptonomicon are two books I would highly recommend to people who want
to deal with computer stories since they are realistic/possible. His
other works are cool to say the least - but not necessarily computer
related (e.g., Zodiac, Baroque Cycle).


>>
>> Even if Matrix 1.0 and the 2065 crash had come to be, I fail to see
>> how the world would embrace the insecure mess that is Matrix 2.0. I
>> just can't believe that the corps and military (I work as an outside
>> contractor for the French navy, and I can tell you these people *are*
>> paranoid about computer security) would devise, let alone use
>> (pervasively!), something whose sole design goal was to be an even
>> worse kind of Swiss cheese than Windows Me. Even if the sources and
>> papers to RSA, AES and every other encryption algorithm were lost in
>> the 2029 crash, I find it laughable that in 40 years nobody managed
>> to achieve anything better than ROT13. <...>
>
> The cryptography thing has been a problem of all editions of the game,
> not just of SR4. The time needed to crack encryption, with or without
> wires, was never more than a few combat turns. IMHO, this is easy
> enough to fix: just scrap all the rules for breaking encryption
> quickly and have fun with all the old-fashioned spy games and social
> engineering that it will take to obtain a key.
>
> The way I see it, those rules are there for those people who don't
> want to bother with realistic crypto, and who want to concentrate on
> other areas of the game.

We have learned that for anything related to crypto we just forget
reality and play in the game rules. This tends to be the same for
computer, rigger, weapons and magic as well. When the players know
what cosecant squared antennas are for, how to build modern computer
networks, build modern communication networks, etc. trying to justify
the rules in the SR world seem quite silly. We have learned that we
need to just play the game, as that is what it is. However, SR4 is no
longer our game it seems. It is another beast entirely. More silly in
some aspects. Accepting older SR (meaning 2 or 3) took a grain of
salt. SR4 seems to need an iceberg of salt (ironic isn't it that an
iceberg contains fresh water ice).

--
·𐑕𐑒𐑪𐑑
·𐑣𐑺𐑦𐑕𐑩𐑯 Scott
Harrison