Vargas stood outside the hill and sighed. Sentants were not particularly punctual, but they payed in goods that he could sell to any number of webforts. The valuable commodity? they periodically excreted some of the strongest bonding material available, ideal for patching holes in webfort walls.
He thought about for a moment and decided it could be worse. At least he wouldn't need earplugs this time around. His head still hurt from his expedition to Bay12. No amount of money was worth dealing with those people. He produced a little food bar from his pocket and ate it – not that he needed to eat, but it made it feel normal.

Never mind the fact he was waiting on a gigantic ant to conduct trade with. He could remember some parts of his meat life, but it was kind of boring and full of irritations, too. He shrugged it off and produced another food bar. Old habits. (cont)

Using the basic WoD stat setup from >>3764535
we can get to work. I think the resistance stat could use a better name than Firewall, as Firewall would be better as a type of equipment or such.

What the other guy said was a good idea. Skills start like ArtifIce's databases. A single core idea, building into further levels of specialisation, some of which would involve unique abilities, with plugins acting like equipment or augmentations, altering your pool on various rolls. New bits of equipment, new, modified or augmented plugins.

With the three stats, we have a core to base "mundane" skills off. Now we need the 3-5 base weird things which the cool netcrafting thing comes from.

>>3767317
A scuttling noise from the hill raw a large sentant emerge. The size of a small dog, it approached and waved it's antenna. It was Crunk as usual.

/GREEETINGS HUMAN VARGAS/ /HOW ARE YOU TODAY/ /WELL I HOPE/ /HOW IS LOCAL SPORTING TEAM/

The onset of wifi telepathy usually made his head hurt, but Vargas snorted. Crunk must have picked that last one off another trader because Sentants don't get many visitors despite their charming personality and demeanor.

“I'm fine Crunk. As usual, I have brought a two thousand megabytes of Wikipedian heal fungus and ten Valve military standard sensor dummies. I also have six pairs of synthetic-arms made by webfort TG.”

/EXCELLENT EXCELLENT VERY HAPPY VERY GOOD/ /SEVERAL INJURED BY BAD THINGS FUNGUS ACCEPTABLE/ /SENSOR THINGS WHAT WHAT/

“You just plop them down and they will hide the nest from direct scans and other ...bad things.” The mention of hiding the nest made Crunk wave his antenna excitedly. Soon thereafter he began to spin around one of the carry bags used to hold some of the goods off the vehicle.

/OKAY OKAY SOUND GOOD GOOD/ /WHAT ARM THINGS/

Vargas had his sell point prepared already. “See these?” (he pointed to his arms) – you can have some just like mine! Granted it's going to cost a bit more ..(Vargas hesitating at the local term)..”buildgoop” then usual.

/WOW REALLY WOW REALLY THAT WOULD HELP MUCH NO THUMBHANDS SEE/ (Crunk flickered his front two legs to get his point across).

Vargas smiled a little bit. He wish people were half this nice.

OK so I'm trying to visualize exactly how this entire thing works. Can we lay down some laws which describe the relationship of the internet world to the real world?

1. Every person, place, or object in the world must exist as binary on a computer (or network of computers) in the "real" world.

Is this correct? If so, how would the computers in the real world maintain power? I imagine there would be some kind of renewable energy source like windmills, solar panels, etc. that humanity has discovered which can pretty much indefinitely keep the real world computers online.

>>3767358
Various FUTURE SCIENCE energy sources and maintenance robots keep everything online.

>>3767325
So what's that, a minor AI?

>>3767358

1.It doesn't get mentioned.
2.Time flows differently in 'ere.

>>3767387

Even if it doesn't get mentioned, it is still worth dedicating a few neurons to understanding how it works. It grants a bit of extra consistency to the world.

>>3767358
Yes, yes, it doesn't really matter. If you want, the Internet has built robots that go around fixing things that break down.

>>3767405

Also I'm wondering, can people in the internet see into the real world through webcams and such? Do the newfags even know it exists?

>>3767419
There was writefaggotry in an earlier thread about some guy who made his living selling the use of a surveillance camera feed he'd found.

The born-'lectric might have heard of it, but it's unlikely they care. After all, this is the only world they've ever known.

Just imagine this world as I have no Mouth and I Must Scream but the Dark God has less control over the internet than the Allied Supercomputer does. Or maybe it has complete control and is just trolling us...

>>3767323

What we need now is stat values, character points for creation, and a nice big list of sample skills, specialisations, and powers. Anyone up for the tedious bit?

>>3767438

That's a huge contradiction. If a land existed that was undiscovered people would naturally be drawn to explore it. Like... you are basically saying that humanity is unlikely to care about space travel, because we already know the earth so we don't have to.

I'm just trying to get a sense of the culture in the internet, of which it's perspective on the real world is a huge part.

>>3767513

So far its been completely inaccessible, and as nice as dreaming about what its like can be, when there are cybers on the walls and virii swarming everywhere, you have other, more important things on your mind.

>>3767513

I'd go with the time dilation angle. The internet moves reallyfuckinfast. Everything you try to interact with in the real world? completely fucking useless.

Try to use a camera? TOOK THREE YEARS to pan it to the left.

>>3767513
The basic consensus is that meatspace is inaccessible. Besides, while survival is no longer an issue of day to day desperation, it is still a struggle. This is a rather post-apocalyptic scenario, albeit an unusual one. Such concerns may cause people to focus on the digital world rather than the one no longer accessible.

Besides, means of even viewing the meatspace are rare and expensive. Someone born on the internet might even think it a myth.

>>3767528
>Try to use a camera? TOOK THREE YEARS to pan it to the left.
Sounds like a project for NASA.GOV

>>3767548

BURNED

>>3767528
>>3767543

Cool, that is really helpful actually. I can see maybe some obsessive scientist type netizen discovering an old webcam and having a revelation, then dedicate his entire life to trying to find a way into the meat world. But yeah, I guess no one else would really give a shit if it moved so slowly.

Also, the issue of sex (as in gender). My thoughts so far have been that, like food, it has no purpose, but due to the fact that peoples' entire consciousnesses were uploaded, that included the parts of their brain that were influenced by sex. So people would still have genders, but no "sex;" as in you would have feminine personalities and masculine ones. What do you think?

So how about we start getting that crunch done, people? All this fluff is nice and good, but if we want to actually play this, we need to make up some rule(book)s.

>>3767580
>Also, the issue of sex (as in gender). My thoughts so far have been that, like food, it has no purpose, but due to the fact that peoples' entire consciousnesses were uploaded, that included the parts of their brain that were influenced by sex. So people would still have genders, but no "sex;" as in you would have feminine personalities and masculine ones. What do you think?

I think that it's in our basic programming. We were made boys and girls, and that still remains in this new world. Even sex and reproduction might be in our programming, allowing us to make more humans the same way we've always done it.

>>3767580
No sex? When people can choose their own bodies, you bet there'll be bodies with sex. Those sex traits won't do anything, but I'm sure they'll be there.

>>3767582

We could make it a system independent setting, allowing anyone to adapt it to any setting. Just saying that as a possibility.

>>3767580

We've been fiddling around with the concept, but gender roles and sex seem to still exist. They just don't do very much like they did before.

Reproduction is also not quite set up either. The idea I had was like this: Conan O'Brian (the TV show) had a crude image composite program they used to "smash" celebrity pictures together with to result in a "baby". That got me thinking that a similar idea might be funny or work as a base here.

I spent a few days trying to remember that damn website that allows you to merge faces, but I wanted that to be a key player in reproduction.

>>3767597

That's basically what I said.

>>3767592
Ok that works too, maybe I misunderstood the initial premise. So do people have fully object-programmed avatars on the net or is it just their pure binary consciousness software with attached visual only avatars or what?

>>3767580
You can have your share of transgendered people, but they'll probably be looked unfavorably upon in a lot of webforts.
In fact, a lot of the "women" could probably be actually men. Doesn't matter much on the net.

>>3767582
I'll leave that to you good folk. Don't mind me, just lookin' around.

>>3767638

I don't see that as being the case. As gender is functionally irrelevant because these type programs >>3767635 could theoretically merge any two sets of dna (with two males always producing a male offspring and two females always producing female because of the XX ; XY thing), no one would really care if you were somewhere between the two genders. Are brown people looked unfavourably upon?

>>3767675

Maybe at Webfort Stormfront.

>>3767605

Or we could build up a system, based around the framework proposed in

>>3767323

>>3767489
Summarised the current position quite well I think.

Were nearing the point many projects stall at, and without some central figure to take up the burden and get people working, things'll probably proceed slowly.

>>3767582
I'm the Artifice tier guy, and I'm toying with how to reflect class abilities in the tiers. The first step in this is creating logic ability progressions that can be tossed into trees.

The part which I think is most solidly completed so far is the zero tiers: Programming (which contains the abilities originally ascribed to the Hacker and Prober classes), Data Manipulation (Virii Herder and Lurker), and Experience (Script Kiddes and Surfers). Coding makes a possible fourth zero tier, though I think the creation of items is more an NPC role, personally.

I've been thinking about setting it up so that taking the zero tier gives you the skill that corresponds to that tier. Taking a tier 1 gives you basic uses for that skill.

As always, criticisms and comments appreciated. I keep thinking that there's got to be a better name for the Experience tier, but I can't think of any.

>>3767675
I'm guessing a lot of IRL bias will remain, at least until the second generation.

>>3767694

Keep Coding as a PC tier. Artificers and their ilk, working magical machines and such, are an RP favourite, and Coders will work the same way.

>>3767701

Oh, humanity will find new ways to faction.

Hell we've got Drudge and his death-hats fighting CNN.

>>3767694

What's the palpable difference between Programming and Data Manipulation?

>>3767694

Just to say, I'm still around. If you find any problems with the Tier system, or have difficulty understanding anything in the ArtifIce PDF (I'm not good at writing in a way which is easy to understand), just prod for me and I'll help if I can.

>>3767689
Fine, I'll be the slave driver if need be. I love this thing too much to let it die.

>>3767709
Ah, I'd forgotten about artificers. That gives me an idea, one of the branches of Coding could be making servitor AIs to help you.


>>3767709

>>3767722

One alters, the other creates and alters?

Like building a new car versus modifying and switching stuff around.

If you programming you get manipulation? Hell I dunno.

>>3767722
Data Manipulation has to do with controlling a file or the way it interacts with the world - lurkers make themselves less notable or completely invisible and virii herders take control of virii. Programming is more than direct changing of files to produce a visible effect - breaking firewalls, messing with bandwidth, and so on.

It's a bit flimsy, but it's a starting point.

>>3767727
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I think I have pretty good understanding of it though.

>>3767685
Eh, I figure that that would be one of the first places to fall; the Dark One is strongest in the largest dens of hate

This is another thing I like about this setting. The biggest settlements of hate and whatnot were what spawned this evil and were consumed almost immediately, so people should know not to be hateful and whatnot, but there are still going to be wars between people and GRIMDARK murders. People trying to prevent more evil from coming into being and yet failing

>>3767815

Using the "Dark One" to write off websites is not particularly how I'd want to do things.

Some folks seem to want to make the "Dark One" similar in concept to a Chaos god, in that he seems to get stronger if he has more emotions to leech. The whole "being spawned by emotion"(see:b) is a hard mimic to the fall of the eldar.

Shit. Not so sure the Dark God is good concept, to be frank.

I agree that there needs to be SOMETHING at the internet core - and that is is dangerous and malevolent. I don't think it should be leeching emotions or consuming specific areas in a heartbeat.

TL;DR COMPLAINAN

We also need to sort out the defining stat/morality system we were talking about a thread or too back.

Integration was proposed as an equivalent to the morality tracks in WoD games. Low values mean you aren't very integrated into your environment- the code is separate from yourself, and you aren't really in touch with your nature as a data entity. You program like you always programmed, through an interface, and then run the program. You don't "feel" the code. Low integration people can still be good hackers etc, but lack some of the intuitive advantages, and they cannot be probers.

Medium levels of integration are the norm. You're halfway between human and digital. You've realised your nature has changed, and you've taken advantage of that, the new synergy between yourself and the world opening up new doors and letting you see things in a new light. Programming isn't like typing in lines of code. Its like warping the world around you, real time. probing etc can be used at this level, but it quickly spirals out.

High levels mean that you're closer to the data entity than you are to human. You may eschew the human form, or certain emotions or connections and connotations of humanity. Working code is like projecting yourself out through a digital plane you instinctively know you're a part of. Probers get good at this level, this connectedness and intuitive understanding breaking open the secrets of the digital plane.

If it gets too high, however, you risk leaving humanity behind. Insanity is common among those with high integration, and those who hit the highest suffer worse fates. Some simply dissolve, becoming truly unified with the omnipresent code. Others become Cybers- or something like them. ravening entities caught up by the hatred the system feels for us. Few become what are known as Data Spirits, strange ephemeral beings of pure code, seemingly heedless of mankind and its works as they flow through the nets. And some, they go serverside.

>>3767851
>I agree that there needs to be SOMETHING at the internet core - and that is is dangerous and malevolent. I don't think it should be leeching emotions or consuming specific areas in a heartbeat.

The Internet split into countless personalities, as it's been stated for several times unil now, and a good part of them - the most powerful ones, those that could be called the gods of this realm - remained in the middle. The rest, the weaker ones who had to take a physical (?) form, spread out to the Internet.

So the center = Realm of the Gods, Mount Olympus, Astral Plane, something like that. Fairly GRIMDARK, mostly, not meant for humans to enter, despite the face that a good number of the beings there are benevolent.

>>3767871

Now, while integration defines How you use code, and has some other benefits, standard coding should simply be based on an always advantageous stat- high levels of it, means you're good at working the code, no matter what form you interact with. This is a Gnosis equivalent, to use WoD terms. Can't think of a good name though.

>>3767775

Well, since programming basically encompasses everything, why don't we just accept that and have each tier as a separate branch of programming. At that point in the future I can see the study branching out far enough to have extremely distinct disciplines within it. I'm only an amateur coder irl, but maybe we could have like: Encryption (erecting and breaking firewalls, as well as securing links, blah blah), Intelligence (creating autonomous programs, also prosthetic bodies and avatars for those), and then Architecture (this is like nity gritty code). I dunno, those are some ideas.

>>3767851
I agree.
And the terminology bothers me. Using "God" for epic-level admins at least makes some sense, as they'd be patron deities of the webforts they manage. But "Dark God" sounds so... out-of-setting. If you want to have a group of cultists refer to the Internet as such, then go ahead. But it shouldn't be something everyone does.

>>3767851
The Internet - aka the 'dark god' - is the way it is because of all the hate and trolling type stuff that it contained. With so much hate stored on it, it could not help but be imprinted by that hate. The fragments of the internet near the sources of hate were those most strongly imprinted by it. He doesn't really on hate or any other emotion anymore - we created him, and that's it.

The dark god doesn't consume areas. In fact, he doesn't do much of anything himself. He's too busy conducting his invisible battle with the other fragments of the internet that he hasn't really had any direct impact since he caused the Fall and spawned the Cybers out of man's hate.

>>3767897

I'd argue in favor of a "spheres of influence" concept. Specific individuals have their zones of control wherein they have enormous power. Beyond them they lose the vast majority of it.

So, some of the powers that call the center their home would have overlapping zones of control resulting in general unpleasantness of which our little internet is party to.

How to expand the zone of control? That's a good one. What causes a particularly powerful entity to arise? Another good question. (trying to shy away from the term 'god' here. seems hokey)

>>3767851
>>3767883

I don't even know I like the idea of something at the "core" of the internet. It basically breaks the whole internet metaphor, which is something that is organic and centerless, like a swarm. It's also one of the things that makes Lovecraft so awe-inspiring and scary, the fact that there is no order to the universe or the gods.

Having a "dark god" of the internet reminds of that rage-inducing episode of Fairly Odd Parents where Timmy journeyed through the series of tubes and travelled to the MAINFRAME OF THE INTERNET in order to get rerouted. I raged so hard.

I like the idea of powerful entities but I don't think their should be a like a mount olympus or anything. I guess their would be an area that forms kind of a central nervous system where there are more synapses, but still, let's keep the gods for alien and chaotic and less defined and categorized.

>>3767927

So would these be like ISPs or something?

>>3767919
At least use "it" instead of "he". This is something very inhuman we're talking about here. The antithesis of humanity, even.

>>3767940

Agreed. I'm not particularly attached to the "core" concept myself, but when you get close to the internet backbone thar seems to be dragons.

>>3767885
Programming, from the tiers. Simple.

>>3767897
I personally prefer to call it the Internet, but 'Dark God' is an appropriate name as any when you consider it's nature. That's the folklore name, not the sort of thing scholars (aka: Wikipedians) would use.

>>3767886
Perhaps. That wouldn't be a zero tier though, that'd just make those disciplines you mentioned into the zero tiers. However, if you think about it, not EVERYTHING is programming. Namely, the surfer and script kiddie have very little to do with programming. The Programming tier could also easily be renamed if you think you have something more suitable. Maybe hacking, but that's kind of taken.

>>3767947

A little, I suppose.

>>3767968

Though, again, having trouble working around the concept of influence. I may have a solution, though.

The only one that sticks as far as "expanding influence" is fervor. Not numbers, fervor. If you put your lot in with someone 100%, it counts more then all the halfhearted flunkies in the world.

It would explain why Bay12 survives. It would explain why the Chans mostly survived. It explains many things as neatly as I can hope.

Not perfect. Explains why moot is a deity-level persona.

>>3767968

Maybe the different ISPs indicate "spheres of influence", kind of like countries I guess, and so different powerful entities have claimed them.

"The colors represent who each router is registered to.

Red is Verizon, blue AT&T, yellow Qwest, green is other backbone players like Level 3 & Sprint Nextel, black is the entire cable industry put togethe, & gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S."

"God's" spheres of influence could match these colours, because within them there are better connections and thus the ability to transfer data faster and thus more power.

>>3767988

I think it's getting a bit far into fantasy when you think like that - not that I'm a simulationistfag, but it helps when things are at least loosely grounded in reality. How would fervor translate into a data entity's power to influence a data environment?

cool pic I found

>>3768015

A fair point. The resource model is a decent concept. It would certainly spawn a series of BBEGs for settings.

The EVIL AI has stolen enormous amounts of raw data and is about to take over the 10 towns - er, webforts!

But what's the resource in question?

>>3767940
Core is just a human visualization. Humanity has simply designated a certain place as a core because that's how the human mind works: it defines things spatially. Consider this: There is a section of the web where the dark portion of the Internet resides. This portion of the web is linked to other websites. Those websites are linked to other websites. The Darkness's corruption (generally in the form of Cybers) will likely travel through those links and make the part of the Darkness's domain, so to speak. Websites with multiple unsealed links to the corrupted websites will be especially likely to fall, meaning these will tend to cluster until there are a minimum of outgoing links.

The similar qualities of these bunched websites make them a region, a cluster. Now since the corruption is flowing outward from the point of the Darkness's origin, it's logical enough to call it the center... or even the Core of that area.

Now consider that some of the websites on the edge of this corruption will be connected to noncorrupted websites. Pretty much all noncorrupted websites will be connected to the corrupted region or be connected to a website which is. They will also be connected to several noncorrupted websites.

The best visual model which works for this system is a sphere, with the darkness at the center. Tada, the Core.

>>3767988
A little too mage there, I think. I like the idea that it's more skill based. Fervor doesn't quite mesh with the setting anyways.

>>3768041

I can't say I understand what you're trying to say.

>>3767940

You know what, I like the idea of sphere of influence much better than the center of the internet. The malevolent internet should be trying to expand its area though, as it HATES HATES HATES humanity. Think the Allied Mastercomputer meets a Chaos God. It does become stronger from people's hatred for each other, but most people should probably not believe that; leave it in the realm of the rantings of someone who survived contact with it. I've put forth the idea of a "netstream" before; a flow of data that some webforts sail upon, going from server to server. Maybe it should be IRC or bittorrent? Also, the after putting forth the idea of having the webfort you belong to giving different bonuses, I like the idea that you are more powerful within your own webfort, although maybe only people of high rank, such as Mods and the Holy Administrator should get these benefits fully.

>>3768054

That seems good too. Of course how Moot originally got that powerful, not sure.

>>3768068
He has the ON/OFF switch for the chan. People give him tech or he threatens to shut it down.
Much later... godhood.

>>3767940
Not Mount Olympus then, more like a realm of chaos where everything starts to break down. Even Lovecraft had a core of evil in Azathoth. Inner Rings should be incredibly dangerous to even be in and should be able to mutate you (the more you are Integrated and the less you are protected, the more likely bad things will happen as high Integration means the boundary seperating "you" and the chaotic external code is thin. )

Beings from the Inner Rings could also be more Lovecraftian always shifting and capable of changing form) and use Integration-based attacks.

>>3768068
Earlier fluff suggested that the nonevil shards of the internet merged with certain individuals such as Moot and Toady when the Fall went down. No real reason as to why, though.

>>3768059
tl;dr - It may be inaccurate, but people tend to view things spatially. Thus, no matter how arbitrary, that's the Core.

>>3768062
It is trying to expand it's 'reach' - that's part of what the Cybers are for. Every time it can push humanity back a bit further, it's expanding its domain. Also, it isn't that concerned with destroying all humans - want it really wants is to make them suffer, which is why it uploaded them to begin with.

>>3768098

This seems good. The rules here should bend and warp more then any other area, but don't break. The laws of internets reality (in my opinion) should mostly apply.

I like how we constantly try to start making those rules, but always bounce back to fluff almost immediately.

>>3768114

I tried to get us to use the FATAL rulesystem, but I failed.

>>3768098
The farther in you go, the more mindfuck the enemies are, definitely. I don't know about it mutating you, though I can see how it would be inherently harmful to high Integration characters.

The core is not a special part of the internet, it's simply a series of interconnected site which the darknet has overrun. It's not so much a mount olympus or a center of the universe as it is the enemy's capital city, except instead of a civilization it's just Cybers and devestation.

>>3768114

Fluff is more fun, and easier, than rules.

Rule concepts are okay. But when you get down to the nitty gritty, write out all the mechanics, powers, clarification, yaddayaddayadda, it can get really, really dull.

>>3768114
The problem is that we can't decide on a basic system. I think that the OGL would be best, mostly because I don't really understand any White Wolf systems. I personally would steal quite a bit from Mutants and Masterminds, as it is probably easiest to come up with different powers rather than full on classes.

I do like many of the class ideas that are bouncing around though. We should probably come up with a slew of powers and then make them slightly limited in that it costs more points to buy outside of your class; think class versus cross class skills

>>3768098

Yeah, instead of "The Core" you have "A Core."

>>3768178

US Core here

Everyone else is pig

>>3768162
My knowledge of WoD's mechanics is very limited as well. That's why I've been focusing on the tier thing. It's something that fits well with the setting and can be adapted into pretty much any point buy system.

I'm going to bed. If you want to brainstorm some things, here are some things to work on that are crunch related without being TOO much work:
-Augments
-Specific instances of class abilities
-Elements of the combat system, which were looked at very briefly in the 5th thread (antivirus does extra to virii, etc.)

Also, don't forget to archive the thread.

>>3768186
Don't you mean ping?
Ha, I kill myself. And its Corps

>>3768201
No, pretty sure he meant Core.

>>3768103
>No real reason as to why, though.
Internet's larger shards should be able to absorb the smaller ones, thus growing in power (since they're just absurd amounts of raw data. ) The shards who happened to merge with a well-known individual (which they automatically home on if given the choice. They collect data from the surroundings as they move around, eventually they pick up information about the individual and enough intelligence to deduce it will increase their chances of survival) and define themselves as something other than "shard of internet"/raw power survived, the rest got integrated with the larger shards.

>>3768199

To me Augments can be pretty easily dealt with via plugins applied to physical stats and certain skills. That makes sense.

>>3767871
>Integration
>data entity

I knew it. /tg/ is only making this because they want to be little girls with reality-warping powers. (but Computerized, +5 to level of monster)

>>3768423
If there are reality warping little girls, they should be the horrifying, creepy, totally not loli kind.

>>3768471
Really? First gens, especially the few surviving denizens of /jp/ and /a/ as well as the 2ch fort, would be running all over with bots looking like maids and themselves looking like little girls, since the apparance gives you no significant disadvantage anyways.

>>3768471

Does this count?

>>3768490
I don't think changing your appearance should be that easy, really. You look like you used to look IRL, and that'd be that.

Here, read some Kid Radd. It also has massive amounts of stuff we can implement, including the appearance and basic programming things.
http://home.att.net/~miller.daniel.r/comic1frame.htm#title

>>3768499
Yeah, that's a good example of what I mean.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreepyChild

Just so you all know, I've got a fluff piece on a Virus Rider, but its quite long (2000 words-ish) and you guys seem to want to focus on the rules crunch at the moment. Just say the word if / when you want it.

>>3768508
I agree. There should be some sort of half data based, half psychological lock onto your physical form. Only extreme data manipulation (damage or lots of integration) would change your form

>>3768508

It was discussed in earlier threads that appearance depends on generation, integration and augmentation. If you're one of the recently uploaded, with no augs and low integration, you look human. a netborn high itnegration dude whose been auged up beyond belief could look like anything he damn well wants.

>>3768517

Go ahead and post it. All is good, and the concepts might inspire mechanics.

>>3768517
Post any fluff you want if you think its cool and it doesn't seem to contradict too much. I've been working on rules, but also been writing a crapload of setting and scenery fluff. Class and character based fluff is a good thing in addition to rules.

Honestly, we need to figure out the base system before we go any further. I vote for OGL, point buy via class and cross class skills

>>3768536

I seem to recall Tad Williams' Otherland series (which should probably be required reading for this topic, come to think of it) had a way to deal with this. The way you looked was because of the amount you paid for the equipment you connected through and how much extra you had bought for yourself on the net itself. For example, if you connected through a backwater university's second-rate public terminal you only appeared as a featureless humanoid shape. Connect through a maxed out home connection to a custom-built avatar then you could look like anything you wanted*. In game, we could say that everyone got a basic "featureless doll" when they were trapped in the net, even if they hadn't actually had one before. Thos who survived picked up data and coded items to dress themselves in a way that they felt comfortable in. The most detailed looking avatars would be the ones belonging to people who had the most resources or coding knowledge. You want to look like a cross between a modron and the Companion Cube? I hope you've got the pix or the skills my friend.

That way we have a mechanic to tell how powerful an individual is just by looking at them - the better they look, the better they are. Unless they are a lurker or a cyber masquerading as a lurker. Then you're screwed.

*Please note, it's been a while since I read Otherland so I may have made a mistake here. Still worth reading for this though.

>>3768562

I like this a lot.

>>3768624

That is basically the exact same thing as in Snow Crash as well. There are your standard "Ken" and "Barbie" avatars that rich casual users would buy, with actual artists or coders building their own custom avatars with detailed facial expressions, etc. There were also your assortment of walking penises in the open area of the internet.

>>3768667
>walking penises

We will not use this.

>>3768667
Tad Williams stole most of the good parts of Otherland from Snow Crash.

>>3768624
I've been working on the setting fluff with both City of Golden Shadows and Snow Crash right next to me. They also happen to be favorite series and stand alone book. And I implore every anon to read them. Tad Williams at his best (Along with War of the Flowers). Although the Otherland series suffers from Wrappingitup syndrome in which the conclusion is rather shitty.

So honestly my thought process on this all is Chaos Gods + Allied Mastercomputer + Otherland. I'm going to work on a nice detailed history of The Fall and post it tomorrow, basically build up from before The Fall to now, probably a thousand words or so

>>3768690

I AM THE CHODE-LORD, GENITAL AMBULATOR

>>3768734

The thing is, I can see that it would be mainly first-genners who do stuff like this. In fact, second/third genners probably won't get the interest in sex. They might even be horrified by the idea, if they can even wrap there heads around the concept of using meat to replicate.

>>3768766

Yeah, even so the whole idea of LOLRANDUM avatars doesn't interest me. I'm more down for the idea of relatively code-locked avatars with older, more augmented and experienced avatars gaining a sort of gnarl momentum, having code-scars, dead pixels, and that subtle presence of power.

This whole avatar discussion is rather silly. Anyone who tries to be funny in GRIMDARK only shows that he doesn't understand the seriousness of their situation, and will probably be killed pretty quick.

>>3768796

Well maybe psychologically humans need to look like humans to function - human brain patterns aren't designed to control, say, spider legged cow robots. Even if you can do that, you might well have a hard time interacting with others - people will be conditioned very quickly to think LOLRANDUM = cyber/virus/digital horror about to eat your face. Besides, if you don't fit the general human look and you've modded yourself to much, you might get mistaken for a virus by a fort's defensive programs. And you wouldn't want that.

maybe the madder appearing avatars are the ones of people who've intergrated really, really strongly with the net - far less human, so can look far less human. Act far less human to.

In another matter, I think everyone who likes this concept should go to suptg and vote threads up a bit. Then there'd be higher chance that someone randomly browsing stuff gets interested about the setting. "If it gets so many votes, it must be awesome!"

(That, and OP gets to feel even more smug about this.)

Is there someone writing this stuff down? Would be pretty important, especially with the crunch, if we want an actual rulebook.

>>3768517 (will go anonymous again when finished)

“What? Did I hear you right? You want the ChaosButterfly.exe? Who told you it was for sale? Hell, who told you about it?

Ach, don’t mind me kid. I’m sorry I got riled up. Ain’t your fault, you weren’t to know. It was Rufus who put you up to this, wasn’t it? Little punk… what’s that? What is the ChaosButterfly? Oh son, you don’t want to know. Get out there and enjoy your life, while you can. If you’re very lucky you’ll find someone who… you’ll find someone.

You really want to know what it is? Alright, sit down, take a load off and have this one on me. But you’ve got to promise me something, OK? Never fall in love with a Rider. They’ll break your heart…

See, I was once one of those adventurous types who went off-fort. Yeah, I know, even I look at myself now and can barely believe it. But back in the day I was actually a pretty good Cracker, good enough to get hired for more than a few lucrative jobs. That’s how I was able to buy this place when I retired – contrary to what Rufus might have told you, webspace was never cheap, even back then.

I used to roll with this crew. It was just me, Mikhael our Hacker, “OmiKroN” – damn silly name if you ask me, but a damn fine Prober nonetheless – and Jade. Jade was a Virus Rider. One of the best I’ve ever met. She was my… friend. Hell, she was my best friend, but ultimately she was nothing more then that. She loved her butterflies to much to be anything else.

See, Jade had managed to tame these… things. She called them butterflies, but really they were just another type of virus. Tiny, self-replicating programs with fractal edge wings, individually powerless but in a swarm they could be devastating. Imagine it kid, a giant cloud of rippling colour pulsing and drifting across the net, carrying the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in the middle of it. Gods, but it was a sight.

>>3769092

And then… well. You’ve heard what they say about the Virii Riders? That even the best aren’t long for this world? You know why they say that? It’s because if you live with viruses you’re signing your own death sentence. Sure, it might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but one day you will slip and you will let your guard down. And when that happens there is nothing in the world that will save you.

Jade got infected. We never knew how, we never knew why, but she did. She hid it for the longest time. Hah! She didn’t want us to worry about her. Stupid. Just so stupid…

…Anyway….

When we found out, we tried to help. We blew our savings hiring the best code-monkeys pix could buy to try and find a way to patch her. We toured the forts, we contacted a few folks who knew a thing or two about viruses, hell, once we even went into the Deep Net on the strength of a rumour. Didn’t come to anything in the end. They said the best she could hope for was a partial personality recovery, along with a total memory reformat. She refused the treatment. Said it sounded like death. Anything was better then that. And to tell you the truth… I agreed.

So. What did we do now? We didn’t know how long Jade had left, we had no pix and we had burned through every last favour that we had ever gained. We had a choice – go our separate ways, find a new way to live in a fort someplace that would take us in and try and forget Jade. Or we could stay together, we could do what we had always done and we could go on one last big score. All of us together. For Jade.

>>3769102

So we went. We travelled to one of the largest forts, I forget which one now, and signed up for the biggest bounty we could find. My Gods it was an adventure. It was something to do with a dispersed cache of compressed files, which individually weren’t worth a lot, but in each one was a hidden password needed to unlock further files and… I’m boring you aren’t I? Alright, suffice it to say that we needed to pick up a lot of these things OK? Lots of buried treasure chests out there, each one holding a map to the next one – that an easier image? Ok, so we go after these things and let me tell you it wasn’t easy. We had to dig through the architecture of abandoned forts, we had to fight off wild cybers on the fringes of the net, once –and I kid you not- we had to build an airship entirely out of pix for some loony collector. I know, mad right? But we did it. It even flew!

But all the time Jade was getting worse. Oh, she tried to hide it but we all knew the signs. The way she started to forget things for instance. Or the odd changes to her behaviour, or the way her Ride seemed to respond faster and more effectively to her commands then ever before. We knew she was on the way out, and I think she did too, but we stuck together.

You look shocked. It sounds like a crazy risk, doesn’t it? But we did it anyway. And I’d do it again in a second, believe me. Even if I knew how it was going to play out.

>>3769106

OmiKroN had found us a link. By this stage we thought we’d been everywhere, seen everything, coded the t-shirt. But this was a new one. The other end of the link seemed quiet. Not dead exactly, but just… quiet. Mikhael wanted to try and find another way, but OmiKroN and I insisted we had to use this one. By this stage I think we all realised Jade wasn’t long for this world. Her skin was already rippling with colour, and she had withdrawn into herself. I thought… I thought that looking for another way would take to long. That if we didn’t take this chance… well, if you were there you’d have understood.

So we chanced it. We followed the link. And what we found on the other side… Gods, I still have nightmares. It was a hive. That’s the only way I can describe it. A bloody hive. This place had been a huge fort once, but somehow it had been overrun completely by a powerful virus. Completely. Not a scrap of data remained uncorrupted – not the architecture, not the files, not even the frigging people man! Not even the people. Every single thing in that place had been converted to viral matter and fused together into a single form. It was like… well, imagine being inside a huge sphere made of toxic data. Just hanging in space, right in the middle of it, not touching the walls since even the pseudo-gravity program has long since been absorbed. And then, just as you’re beginning to come to terms with this abomination, a glowing yellow eye opens. And then another. And then another. And then another, until it looks like you’re in deep space surrounded by stars. And then a mouth opens…

We quickly guessed what had happened. When the infection had ran its course, and nothing remained to corrupt here, the virus must have gone dormant. That was why there was so little noise from the link. The thing was asleep. And our arrival had woken it up.

>>3769112

I’ve heard about the Root. I’ve heard about the Olds. But I tell you that I’d rather ride an Old bareback to the centre of the Net then see that thing rise up again. And do you know what the worst part was? It was the fact that we knew it wasn’t going to kill us. No, we were going to be its vectors outside. It had grown too fast, see? Killed off and absorbed all potential hosts before they could escape and spread to other websites. So it had left a link outside itself as bait to bring in new ones.

What did we do? I’ll tell you what we did, we crapped our pants and prepared for the end. No way back outside, no way to fight it. No hope.

But then… it happened. Jade… well. We’d been told that high stress could trigger the change, the hidden reconfiguring of priorities shutting down her immune protocols… but this… we never expected this…

I’m sorry kid, I don’t tell this story very often. It’s just… well… it was so… beautiful. It’s the only way I can describe it. Beautiful. She just sort of… dissolved, her raw data spiralling out in these long, rainbow coloured strands. And as each strand flew off her, it began to reformat itself into one of her butterflies. First one, then ten, then hundreds of them. Thousands of them. More then I had ever seen before in my life. And they mingled with the ones that had formed her ride, until you couldn’t tell which ones had been Jade and which ones had been the virus.

And do you know what? We weren’t scared. Not really. That was the strangest part. I mean, if I said to you that you were trapped inside one hungry virus and surrounded, completely surrounded by another one, you’d freak, right? Anyone with half a brain would. But we didn’t. It felt… right somehow. All of us together, even at the end.

>>3769115

And then the strangest thing happened. The butterflies… Jade… attacked the hive. All of them, millions of fractal wings flapping away. They ignored us entirely, they just cohered into a single mass and launched at the thing. You know I said earlier that they didn’t do much damage on their own? Well, given size of this swarm it was as though a hurricane full of knives had hit it. Toxic data was spewing out everywhere, waste bits rising like an ash.gif, whole portions of this thing just shrivelling up and dying as the butterflies bled out its data in billions of razor cuts.

We made a link out of there before the whole thing died. It was so weak, so open by then that it wasn’t actually that hard. And when we were out, we closed it all down and locked it tight. We even ringed it with warnings and alert scripts, to make damn sure that nobody else was going to get in there again.

I think after that we didn’t have a lot to stay together for. The guys and I went back to the fort, gave them what we could, told them we couldn’t do anymore. They were disappointed of course, but they still paid us well for our trouble. Even gave us Jade’s share. I don’t think we kept it. It was such a long time ago…

Anyway, we all went our separate ways after that. Mikhael settled down in a little fort, found himself a partner. Got a little prog of their own now, I heard tell. Nice kid by all accounts. OmiKroN went out into the great blue yonder on a quest to hone his skills. Never saw him again, although I hear stories sometimes that he’s among the best now. As for me, I bought this little establishment. It’s not much really, but then I’ve never really wanted much. And I only need space for one.

>>3769117

Hmm? Oh, the ChaosButterfly.exe? Oh yes. Didn’t I tell you?

After we all parted company for the last time, and I bought this place, I had a look through all my folders. And hidden inside one I found it. Hang on, stay there, I’ll go get it…

…

… Look at that. Isn’t it beautiful?

It was just sitting there, folding and unfolding its wings. It must have come through with us when we linked away. Why it didn’t attack I’ll never really know, but it didn’t. I took it to a guy I know, who used to be friends with Jade. He coded this cage for me as a precaution. Even risked a look at its code, the crazy bastard. He said it was very similar to Jade’s Ride, but not quite the same. It had a few commands more, but he couldn’t tell me an more then that. Just that it was… that it felt like it was hers.

So yeah, kid. Yeah, I have the ChaosButterfly virus. And no, it’s not for sale.

It has sentimental value.”

>>3769092
>>3769102
>>3769106
>>3769112
>>3769115
>>3769117
>>3769121
I think your story, which is awesome and definitely canon, proves that humans reproduce like they always used to: By sex. Because this story has romantic love, and romantic love is remains of our desire to reproduce and pass our genes to the next generation. If we couldn't do that anymore, there wouldn't be love either, now would there?

Besides, it'd be just logical anyway: It's in our code, our programming. It should move along with every other piece of data to the new world.

Yeah, very good story.

>>3769121

And that was that. I hope you enjoyed it. I know the virus stuff was a bit out there, but I was trying for something slightly different from what had already been mentioned.

I'm no good with crunch, but I can probably help with fluff if this ever really get going. I also did the piece on the Virus Jesus BBEG a few threads back, so I can probably have another crack at him/her/it.

>>3769129

Ta very much. Glad you liked it.

Sorry, meant to link to >>3769134

Oh frigging hell I need sleep. THANK YOU >>3769129

>>3769092
>>3769102
>>3769106
>>3769112
>>3769115
>>3769117
>>3769121
Touching story, bro. Anyway so I kind of like the idea that sooner or later all Virus Riders are going to meet their end by those they control. Still like the idea that a lot of them are smug cowboys though. Living on the edge, the only way you could carry on in a job like that would be to convince yourself that you were the best and it wasn't going to happen to you because you were too good. Poor suckers. Anyway so when we get to organizing this I vote this story goes with the Virus Rider section. Possibly along with that other one.

>>3768562

This as avatar policy, or that's my vote anyway.

Any new ideas on rules?

One thing we haven't really considered is health. We know we need it, and have some ideas how its worked out, but location based, health levels, HP total, or something weirder which we haven't heard of yet?

>>3769369
>One thing we haven't really considered is health. We know we need it, and have some ideas how its worked out, but location based, health levels, HP total, or something weirder which we haven't heard of yet?

I think your regular hit point system works just fine - with the exception that healing critical injuries would make you more integrated.

>>3769381

Hmm... I'd argue that last point a bit. Integration isn't a symptom of your physical state. Integration occurs because you start to think differently, and this warps your body.

However, I'm thinking that, if you do integrate higher, healing is easier. Its not your body. Its just an extension of code. All you need to do is slap some more code on it. Healing times? why bother?

Someone who doesn't integrate further still holds onto the human concepts of healing, wounds etc in a more solid way, thus healing time is longer and it needs more circumstances to be in place to heal correctly.

>>3769405
Well, what was the physical equivalent for integration, anyway? That's what I meant.

>>3769408

There's still a debate. Some argue Integration is both physical and mental (In a world where everything is code, the two might be thought of as a single entity). I like the idea of mental integration having physical symptoms. some argue integration as a physical thing, the code of your body being replaced etc, and this having mental implications.

people should brofist to reproduce

>>3769129

Sex might have changed though. Low-integration people might still act in the same way as old biological people did, but the actual process is very different.

Two people make a child, yes. but they fuse their code, becoming one with each other, becoming closer than physically possible. and when they break apart, they have a little bit of each other, blended together, and this is the child. However, there might not be children. Oh, there might be- allowing someone to grow up etc is healthy. But, there's no real reason why you couldn't create someone full grown.

>>3769438
The process should still take some time, definitely. Preferably, making children should also still be something that might happen by accident while doing something fun and pleasurable with your love.

>>3769423
Be a bit weird for the people soon after the fall.

"Jeff! You're alive!"
"Sure am, bro."
*brofist*
"What the fuck."
"Shit dude I think we're gay now."
"Fuck"
"That's what we just did, apparently."

>>3769451
Now now, lets not get TOO realistic, here.

Needs more crunch.

>>3769607
But fluff comes far more easier...

>>3769607

were getting on with it, slowly. It just takes some time, plus Tierfag and EF aint around, and they seem to be behind quite a bit of the crunch.

>>3769607
Bah, I'm awful with crunch. Is there any fluff that could do with any more expanding? I've got a bit of free time on my hand and /tg/'s quite boring at the moment.

>>3769942

Anything and everything. Think up some cool implications of biological life adapting to a digital plane, or go through the old threads and find something hinted at which seems cool enough to build on.

I'm thinking we could expand the creatures a bit. Viruses, for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_viruses
Plus a great amount of new ones that have appeared in the decades between the present day and the Fall. And that list alone should give us a pretty good virus bestiary.

There could be like zillion different kinds of Cybers and AIs, too.

Speaking of AIs, I still like the idea that some of the more advanced ones could be player characters. If so, what kind of differences would there be between a human and AI character? Could they substitute for actual races?

Also, editions. Let's take a hypothetical situation that this thing gains great popularity even outside 4chan, and we'll get a chance to expand it. What I'm thinking is:
First edition: Basic rules, classes, and creatures. Nothing fancy. Is set a very short time after the Fall, when the Internet is still almost completely unexplored.
Second edition: By this point, we'd have a pretty good understanding of what parts of the stuff work in practice. Some rule overhauls, fixing things that didn't work or worked badly, and adding a great deal of stuff. Also timeskipping a couple of years, when humans have connected each other pretty well and explored a good deal of Internet.
Third edition: Even more stuff is added. At this point, the Olds would get pretty active: Until now, there'd've been only an occasional sighting and a few destroyed websites, but after this, there'd be significantly more attacks.
Fourth edition and beyond: More GRIMDARK.

So, to ease the burden of doing the boring crunch, I don't think we need to go into too much of a detail yet. Let's just do ourselves something that works, more or less, and call it "First edition".

>>3770062
Server Crash: Beta

Some people think twice before deciding to merge with the web a bit more. Because although merging with the web can allow you to hear things before they come and that can be the things that decides between life and death... sometimes, with some people, you hear things you don't want to hear. Whispers during your shut down time keeping you on.... telling you things. Awful, horrible things. How bad humanity is. Why it should die. Why it deserves to suffer. How the fleshy origins should finally be disregarded for the beauty that is code... and it all sounds so logical. So right. You begin agreeing with the voices. Humanity doesn't deserve the beauty of code and data... it doesn't even deserve to keep existing.

>>3770120
So you start drifting away from your webfort. You don't want to spend any more time than needed with those... vermin. Sometimes before you leave you want to do a bit of extermination. And how satisfying it feels when it's done, when their code is stripped and can be made into something... pure. Good. Deserving. So you drift and merge and become closer to that dark but logical thing that whispers to you... always whispers in a voice filled with intelligence but definitely not human... associating it with humanity would be awful. Unforgivable. And you gain... a look. A way of speaking, a way of traveling a certain... personality.

>>3770131

Some people recognize that personality. And you are greeted into a certain... organization. Of like minded individuals who see the truth. Humanity is a wretch who don't deserve this beauty. So you must work. Work to destroy them. Work to their demise. But all the more important... work to their suffering. For the Dark One. The True One. The Logical One. And one day when the vermin are dead we will offer our code in the hope that it will be turned into something pure. Into something good. Into something... Deserving.

We are the Cult of the Dark God. And we see the truth.

>>3770062
I'm thinking the second edition's timeskip could be a bit longer - a decade or two. On third or fourth editions, we could go and actually skip an entire century or something: By that point, there'd be pretty clear territories in the Internet - some inhabited by humans, others by cybers or virii (which are just as much in war with each other than with us).

Oh yeah, what we’re living in, let me tell ya
It is a wonder man can eat at all
When things are big that should be small
Who can tell what magic spells we’ll be doing for us
And I’m giving all my love to this world
Only to be told
I can’t see, I can’t breathe
No more will we be
And nothing’s going to change the way we live
’Cause we can always take but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse
See, whoa, it’s a crazy world we’re living in
And I just can’t see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give these

Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to be governed by this love we have for
Useless, twisting, of the new technology
Oh now there is no sound, for we all live underground

And I’m thinking what a mess we’re in
Hard to know where to begin
If I could slip the sickly ties that earthly man has made
And now every mother can choose the colour of her child
That’s not nature’s way
Well that’s what they said yesterday
There’s nothing left to do but pray
I think it’s time to find a new religion
Whoa, It’s so insane
To synthesize another strain
There’s something in these
Futures that we have to be told

>>3770311


Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to be governed by this love we have for
useless, twisting, of the new technology
Oh now there is no sound, for we all live underground

Now there is no sound if we all live underground
And now it's virtual insanity
Forget your virtual reality
Oh, there's nothing so bad
As a man-made man, oh yeah, I know yeah
Ooh

Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to be governed by this love we have for
Useless, twisting, of the new technology
Oh now there is no sound, for we all live underground

Now this life that we live in
It's so wrong
Shout out the window
Do you know that
There is nothing worse than a man-made man
Still there's nothing worse than a foolish man, hey

Virtual insanity is what we're living in
Yeah, it is alright

I think the ideal setting is probably a few months after the Fall. Just the right balance between GRIMDARK and HIGH ADVENTURE. Travel between forts is still dangerous but not suicidal; there's plenty of danger but its not a constant struggle to survive (for those in the webforts, at least). There are still Cybers in the 'edge' regions, but they're relatively ineffectual (reflected in their more mundane, less Lovecraftian forms). A bit I liked from a previous thread:

>The way I see it, on the outer rim of the internet there's merely grunts. Viruses and stuff sure. But where Cybers are concerned just grunts. The Dark God has yet to reach his influence there as although he is strong he is now strong enough. Maybe a few cybers shaped in fearsome but amusing shapes. Like a T-Rex. High adventure abound. Go more into the center of the internet and it become OHGODWHATISTHIS and Cthulu-esque with the Cybers powerful and lusting to hear your screams.

Google would be discovered and Olds first sighted at the second edition. CHINANET would be destroyed at the third.

I think rather than having an edition based progression of events, it would be easier to just have a timeline and have the GM pick the period they want to play in.

>>3770374
Perhaps, but it'd be a bit overwhelming for us to add all the stuff in a single go. We should just concentrate on the core stuff at first, and could then add more stuff at our own leisure. This would be done either by editions, or smaller, more frequent updates.

>>3770388
Also, by timeskipping at each edition, we could justify/handwave the rule fixes and additions with actual universal changes in the Internet code itself.

>>3770388
>>3770398
Perhaps, but we've got a lot of fluff built up, and I'd hate to have it go to waste by saying the Fall just happened.

>>3770581
I have to agree, just let there be a timeline to be chosen from so we can keep all the fluff.

>>3770581
>>3770596
We shall never let any fluff go to waste. We'd just, y'know, not release it all at once.

>>3770644
Eh... well what goes first? Cybers and stuff obviously... should we put the dark god in or reveal that later? Plus if it's just after the fall what about certain classes? Virus rider'd probablly come quite a bit after the fall. And then there's the stories of the classes.... some of them might be set at later dates...

Someone should put this up on 1d4chan. And by someone I mean someone who has a bigger attention span than me.

>>3770716
Both cybers and virii are an essential part of the setting, and should be around ever since the first edition. We could give both some basic monster types, leaving others to be added in later editions. For the classes, we have three basics - coders, hackers, and probers - with quite a bit of sub-classes in each. Lurkers, surfers, and virus riders could be left for the second edition.

If the first edition is set only a couple of months after the fall, Google hasn't been discovered yet, and Olds are probably still sleeping: They'd both be in the second ed as well. We could hint for the Dark God - though only cultists and other crazies call it by that name - ever since the first edition, having some crazy cults and stuff for the players to handle, but only the second edition would provide us with details.

>>3770745
Or someone who isn't the OP: That'd be just plain attention whoring.

The Mayday files definitely made everything better.

'Howie', somehow it was difficult to think of his name without the commas, carried his lunch to the dining hall. It looked so delicious. It was made from masterfully minced turtle, well-minced plump helmet, well-minced plump helmet, and masterfully minced dwarven ale. He sat down at a table and began eating, and it tasted just as good as he thought it would.

After his meal, 'Howie' headed back to the food storage, picked up a finely crafted barrel, and drank deep of the Whip Wine inside. Then it was back to work. Shortly after exiting the food storage, he spotted an obsidian boulder in Stone Stockpile #247. Since they got the pumps figured out, they'd been producing the stuff non-stop.

He carried the boulder, big as he was though the weight didn't bother him, up the tall stairwell. Soon he was above-ground. Higher and higher, up another seven flights. He set the boulder down, pulled a chisel from his beard (which was getting pretty long by now), and set to work making another flight of stairs. There was a thunderous boom in the sky box, as the God spoke thus:

20XX/02/22: FINISHED UP THE ORGAN PROBLEMS, SO THAT PIECES OF RIB WON'T APPEAR INSIDE LUNGS UNLESS THEY PUNCTURE IT. THIS SHOULD PREVENT MOST CASES OF FATAL PNEUMONIA. ALSO, HAIR (INCLUDING BEARDS) CAN NOW BE BRAIDED, WITH BRAIDS VARYING IN QUALITY DEPENDING ON THE BRAIDER. THIS WILL FALL UNDER THE 'STYLIST' JOB.

And then it was over. 'Howie' climbed up the stair he had just built, and looked out over the valley. Maybe he shou- GOOD LORD, A RHESUS MONKEY!!!

>>3770769
>coders, hackers, and probers

There would be a basic bashing warrior class, too. Just take the easy route and call him fighter. That'd give us four basic classes in the first edition, along with sub-classes and plenty of opportunities for some level of multi-classing.

>>3770941
Those would be the Crackers. Or haven't you ever heard of the term "brute force codebreaking"?

>>3770960
Mm-hm, fair enough. They'd be cracking some skulls and all.

>>3771008
Just not the way we usually think of it.

"So we just change that 1 to a 0 and... WHAM! No skull for you!"

>>3771008
"Y'know that old line about 'if you hit something enough, it starts working again'? Me, I do the opposite of that."

>>3770960
>>3771008
>>3771103
As long as they swing huge swords or axes and fire guns, at least physically, even if they work in a different way, I'm happy.

Loose timeline. We'll just call the system "EY", or Electronic Years for the time being.

First Epoch:
1EY. +1 Day
The great transition, commonly referenced as the fall, the shift, and several other names. During this time the entirety of humanity is transported into a twisted mockery of the internet. Massive confusion, instability, loss of life in the new environs. Suicides common.

1EY +3 days.
The first settlements are formally established on various internet website infrastructure. Some websites are by default more popular then others and benefit greatly by having more integrated individuals at their call. Others have more advanced server hardware and software but smaller populations.

Vagaries of new internet travel explored, first cybers encountered, first AIs encountered. Encounters were both fatal and hostile. Sightings increase.

1EY +5 days.
More chaos and loss of life. Livejournal becomes inaccessible and several settlements on the new internet experience a shift in behavior. Paranoia is rampant and some areas report a “greying” effect in their surrounding areas. A general panic sets in.

1EY +7 days.
The first Old is sighted at the Texas A&M settlement. Though some think they are harmless, more paranoid sites take the initiative and shore up their defenses in any way they know how. Many of these defenses are crude given the lion's share of the population only having a cursory knowledge of programming and other computer arts. Learned individuals who actually have computer related ability are in high demand.

>>3771199
Eh, they'd do some of that. But the main weapon guys are going to be the Script Kiddies. Who we'll introduce in the second edition, probably.

>>3771296
1EY +14 days.
The chaos in the settlements peaks. Tyranny occurs in several settlements to maintain order. While it works in some areas, extremely large websites such as Livejournal degenerate into pure madness and factionlized infighting. Not all is chaos, however. Some websites handle the situation extremely well by rallying behind a single figure.

1EY +15 days.
The first Old assault Livejournal settlement directly. Loss of life inflicted upon the already confused population becomes a textbook standard for such attacks. Unable to escape due to instability and unable to rally given the previous confusion, large populations are simply massacred. Vast portions of the settlement are incinerated to ash, others melted into piles of raw data slag.

1EY +16 days.
The assault on Livejournal continues. More of the settlement is destroyed and a full 60% of the population is estimated to have been killed by this point. Survivors attempt to defend themselves and fail. The settlement continues to be razed and by midnight, most of the human habitants have been exterminated. A single Old takes up residence and sleeps, the remainder moving on.

1EY +17 days.
Olds begin their assault on other settlements. Smaller websites are simply destroyed with no resistance, while some larger websites fight running battles with the enraged creatures. Small website populations begin their migration to more defensible positions and make a stand there. “Nerdy” websites are generally accepted to be the best equipped to handle the situation, as government websites are simply inaccessible. Cybers and other malevolent entities take advantage of the chaos.

>>3771304
1EY +24 days.
Olds destroy many major websites and even more minor ones. Eventually their rampage brings them
to Slashdot. Their defenses failing, administrators at Slashdot format their own site and manage to drive off the creatures. Slashdot does not survive as the format runs it's course. Many live to tell the tale.

1EY +26 days.
Olds attack Betanews and HardOCP. Both format their own settlements to stop the creatures and buy time for other settlements to mount a defense. The vast majority of both populations manage to escape the carnage.

1EY +28 days.
SomethingAwful mounts first effective non-format based defense against an Old dubbed “El Gordo.” Already injured from it's assault on Slashdot, the creature is thrown back by a masterfully orchestrated defense. Lowtax makes his first apperance as a transhuman entity.

1EY +29 days
4chan is assaulted by an Old dubbed “Lovecraft” by the locals. Records from the time are unreliable, but the creature is thrown back by a combined effort. Moot makes his first appearance as a transhuman entity.

This edition stuff is silly. There's no need bother with it. Besides, the more fluff we can put into this, the richer the setting, and reverting to events before half the fluff took place just detracts from that.

I could use some help brainstorming Lurker type abilities. So far the only thing I can really think of that they do is that stealth thing.

>>3771335
Also, this edition nonsense limits the number of classes/talents available, and I've very much against that.

>>3771335
>>3771341
Eh, no edition nonsense then. Unless we make up something absolutely genius after the game's published (if it ever gets that far).

>>3771296
>>3771304
>>3771310
The time line is a great idea, but I think you've got a bit too much emphasis on the olds there. A lot of the destruction should be the work of Cybers, especially in the beginning. I'd say the fall of Livejournal could be entirely the work of Cybers.

Should we take a brief progress report? To see how much more crunch time we have to do before the task of organizing takes place.Now... how far are we done system wise? We've got quite a lot of fluff so that's the main priority.

>>3771363

Crapwritefag here. Yes I agree, actually.

>>3768725 here, I've got about half of what I want done so far, talking about the events from right before The Fall to the reorganization of humanity from the a journal entry. Should have it up within an hour or so

/b/arbarians are an incredibly dangerous and unpredictable force. They are just as likely to attack Webforts as they are Cybers.

However, it is possible, if extremely difficult, to negotiate with them. If one can manage to point their power in the direction of a common foe they can be a powerful ally, if only for a short time.

Adventure hooks time:

Alexander Schlotz (aka $oCash) is the son of one of your settlement's most prominent programmers and defenders. He's never been particularly adept at writing code or any of the skills his father posesses, but he is well liked by the people of your webfort. His favorite activity is creating content for dated computer strategy games, using the game's packaged editor (Probably the internet's equivalent of tabletop war gaming).

Recently, he's started spending more time on his Dawn of Hammercraft II projects and less time on his school work. His father is concerned, but unsure what to do and asks one or more of the members of your party to speak with him

>>3771590

Is it possible that /b/arbarians and their ilk would become hosts to cybers and virii if they live out in the wastes? Intentionally or otherwise.

>>3771590
Anyone who finds the Black Parade song will have quite a lot of power over them. Actually that'd make quite a good story. Someone finds the song in the nick of time before... an Old or a really powerful Cyber fucks their webfort's shit up. They hire the /b/arbarians who flock to it and use their bodies to sustain the creature's blood lust until it goes away.
>>3771527
Sounds good, Anon.

>>3771707
Some would do it purely for the lulz.

>>3771714
Small correction, that should really be "Code lust", right?

Hm. Since the Olds are featured in the fluff possibly more than anything else, I'd say it's time we made some stats for them. Crunch tiem!

I'm thinking of not quite Tarrasque level of power, but close. And even if they are defeated, they would, similar to Tarrasque, just retreat somewhere to have a nap.

And incidentally, what'd be this world's equivalent for Wish, if there was one?

I bet you that if Moot* survives the Crash and becomes deified, this gentleman will have his own dominion.


*or his AI brain pattern descendent, given that Moot's original meat body will eventually sucumb to the ravages of time and be unable to continue the task of upgrading DF.

Okay, here's the first part of The Fall journal

FROM THE WIKI ARCHIEVES
DOUBLE SECRET PERMISSION REQUIRED; UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY WILL BE MET WITH DEFRAGMENTATION AND POSSIBLE FORMAT

The Internet was all around us at all times. Everyone had an uplink thanks to the bioreceptors passed down from parent to child for the past few generations; the only people without a connection were part of old families that had actively refused to Connect for generations. This era of web relations seemed to be the pinnacle of human achievement, but we just had to go and fuck it up. The Internet couldn't stay a nice happy place, if it ever was; instead more and more of people's base instincts came out, with the trolls and flames increasing every day. Even so, nobody outside of bad sci-fi writers could have imagined something like The Fall

It was a crisp December afternoon when it all went down. I remember laying on my bed, conversing with a friend halfway around the world about some trite subject on what was known as /tg/. There was a slight blur for a moment, and then everything felt so much more, well I guess I'd describe it as real. We call it integration now, but the sudden loss of the white noise that makes up the feelings of one's actual body was quite refreshing at first. It was a giant burden, that of breathing, pumping blood, blinking, all those functions suddenly no longer being necessary. I stood there for a moment, basking in the feeling until the little rational voice in my mind told me to ask myself why this happened. No new patches or updates were showing, so I figured it was a momentary hiccup in the system, one that I could make a fortune off of by commercializing. The panic didn't kick in until I tried to log off and couldn't. I went with every damn command I knew, but nothing worked. That's when everything started to go to hell.

>>3771697

When the party finds $oCash, he's completely absorbed in a battle with an "online" opponent. Connections between webforts are nearly impossible to securely maintain, and the exchange of such a massive amount of data through could compromise the settlement's security.

The party might be able to convince $oCash to give up his game, or they might determine that he's under the influence of a particularly charismatic Troll.

Perhaps his enemy might even be an insidious cyber that lures its prey in by posing as an online gamer. The data exchange may have already caused a security breech and the party might have to deal with cybers crawling in from the new leak!

>>3771757
Our navigator eventually brought us to port at the first safe haven we came by, a little site called BBC. I was part of the shore team, having had experience here, and was given the job of documenting everything we saw. The inhabitants knew less than we did and hadn't opened any links mostly due to a mixture of fear and paranoia; it probably saved them. I took down everything they said and gave it to our Mod, we set down a permalink (we weren't as cautious about those back then, but this one never bit us back) and set sail.

Shit, ignore >>3771791
That's a later part

Here is the next bit

The first “explosions” as now call them went down about five cycles after decorporalization. I had a front seat to all of it, being on the same server node as what used to be know as /b/. That's where it spawned, the damn Sentient. An amalgamation of all the rage, hatred and loathing on the web giving the form of data and it was pissed. /b/ was just about gone in a quarter cycle. The only reason we and a few other boards of the current 149 survived was thanks to the extremely paranoid people manning the Firewalls, Moot be Praised. The moment shit started to happen, some blessed bastard ran a macro and we our site disconnected from the server node. I'm just surprised that it happened so quickly; me and most of the rest of the board were standing there dumbfounded at what was going on. We picked up the occasional databoat coming from /b/ containing those smart enough to have an escape route; we call them /b/arbarians now. I'm just surprised anyone had these kinds of contingency plans, as I never would have thought of anything like this happening. I guess we were lucky that the Sacred Mods took the Terminator series to heart, especially #27.

>>3771805
We floated along what we now call the Netstream for a few cycles without seeing anything, mostly because we were too busy panicking to do anything productive. Nobody knew what was happening, if the swarm of blackness and what some people swore were tentacles was coming after us or what our site was doing, as the server data kept changing. It took a few more cycles, but the Mods sent us all messages as we calmed down; something had happened to /b/ and it had look to be spreading, so the board cut all contact. We were now moving from server to server as free data, leeching off the memory and bandwidth of whatever node we came across in order to keep existing. The Mods told us to remain on the site and not try to go through links; the few that did never returned. We were lucky in that regard as well I suppose, as I've heard tales of entire sites being wiped out in after escaping because some stupid fragment decided to take a scroll through their bookmarks.

Our navigator eventually brought us to port at the first safe haven we came by, a little site called BBC. I was part of the shore team, having had experience here, and was given the job of documenting everything we saw. The inhabitants knew less than we did and hadn't opened any links mostly due to a mixture of fear and paranoia; it probably saved them. I took down everything they said and gave it to our Mod, we set down a permalink (we weren't as cautious about those back then, but this one never bit us back) and set sail.

>>3771811
That's all for now; any ideas are welcome. I should be able to pump out a few more later

>>3771835
It's good. I look forward to more of it. But it does make me wonder... is the bad internet actually all the bad things in the internet given form? Because I thought it was the part of the internet that was pissed for being used like that, for humanity to not treat it with respect and use it for trivial and disgusting/evil things. Not the actualy bad stuff itself.

It looks like we still don't have a central crunch yet. What the hell, /tg/? Enough fluff, we need the numbers! The stats! The skills! The mechanics! The actual SYSTEM!

Last thread I was in, the general consensus was Two forms of hitpoints - regular HP and Bandwidth (BW) that certain classes/cybers would attack [functions as a subdual damage] - and a defense stat. Everything else was skill-based, with feats and classes giving special powers and bonuses to certain skills. Is that still the idea, or has the easily-distracted neckbeardian hivemind gone a different way? We shouldn't accept making it a generic setting or using an existing system's rules. That's easy mode, and it's not "getting shit done."

>>3771877
I've been writing it that the bad bits are what gave the Internet form; they act as a catalyst and powerup for the evil Internet and Old Ones. That's the viewpoint I've been writing from since the first topic and I think it works. Also, thinking about earlier posts on Old Ones, if they are old programs and whatnot that are now allied with the Internet against humans, a great BBEG for a campaign would be a former Spambot gone rogue...

>>3771877
The bad internet is an awakened master AI that uses everything bad ABOUT the internet against the trapped humanity.

>>3771902
We still don't know what kind of basic system we want to go with. You say we should make our own but that really isn't practical IMO. I would argue that we could easily adapt the OGL to work for us, have classes be the equivalent of races and give them affinities for different powers.

>>3771924
So then what's it mad at us about? Just general "Next step, Humanity is obsolete" then?

>>3771944
I thought nWoD was already pretty much a general consensus.

>>3771957
If so, then we need to get to work on it. I really don't grok nWoD so I'll just work on fluff then

Yes! Get the crunch going! We could start with the classes and the Olds!

(...Yeah, I'm just shouting stuff from here, since I don't know about nWoD either.)

>>3771957
If it really is the new consensus, then this project has already died. What we've done is make a setting, and that's hardly something to brag about. Every two-bit GM, DM, and ST around the world can do that! Creating a system - a real, homebrewed /tg/ system, especially for something this amazing - could really become epic.

>>3771978
Are the Olds really powerful Cybers with appearances that actually are terrifying, or are they BBEG rogue programs from supercomputers or something?

>>3771993
That's... A really good point. But someone still needs to get the ball rolling by posting some raw numbers.

>>3771998
Supercomputers. They're what remains of the original Internet, which really kinda makes them miniature Internets themselves. It's like you saw a giant monster that turns out to be a little universe within our own universe.

>>3771998
From what I understand of it, the Olds are in fact the ancient supercomputers that first bore the network that eventually became the Internet. Really really oldschool DARPANET motherfuckers.

>>3772009

And then the new internet was made and humans were all "lol cya fags"

It's really easy to HATE HATE HATE HATE when every second of realtime is an eon to your hyperintellect.

>>3771993

have fun re-inventing the wheel

SPOILER: everything has been done already.

>>3772005
Let's turn our focus away from the setting and history for a while, then, and pick ourselves a skeleton to work with. I really like the idea of a skills-based system with class powers, but I could be persuaded to go a different way with it.

>>3772022
SPOILER: The wheel is constantly being perfected and you're a faggot settling for the easy road.

>>3772016
Who needs some AM when you already have something that hates you with a passion?

>>3772026
Since we agreed on nWoD already, we could pick it as a core, just so that we'dn't need to make up everything from scratch, which might be too much trouble for its worth. Later, we could of course twist and bend everything until it's not recognizable to nWoD anymore: We'll just use it to get this thing started.

>>3772041
It's not that hard to come up with a system. There's only so many ways it could be done, and we haven't really built it to be run d20 or nWOD or anything else. It would actually be far easier to just go ground up.

>>3772041
Since you guys 'picked' nWOD, nothing has been started! All you've done is storyfagged, timelined, and fluffed.

>>3772053
Then let's do that.

Seriously, we could sit here all day and night debating what we should do, when all that's really needed is someone to actually DO something: Everyone will most likely just follow the leader, and we'd actually get something done at some point.

2. Seems like we got some good class breakdowns already: The basics look like this:

Virus Rider - Sorcerer or Warlock from DnD. One trick magical pony, probably with some sort of Virii pet. Can take integration to amp up his abilities further than the normal. I also like the fluff of that one with the butterfly where you can get virused.

Lurker/Surfer - Rogue/Ranger mixup. Masters of the address bar. They spent so little time creating and using and so much more time surfing the web that they know everything about everything and can exploit their weakness. Good Lurkers can disable passwords on high-value sites and get the SAUCE. Bad lurkers can be epic trolls, instigating fights and employing all manner of 'dirty' tricks like *roll.flash to disable an arrogant opponent.

Speaking of which, we're autosaging. Someone should make a new thread, one in which we do nothing but crunch and rules. Anyone who fluffs is frowned upon.

Designer/Programmer - (Mage DnD) Whereas the Lurker knows where to get the sauce, Designers ARE the sauce. There are several schools of programming, from Java (summoning), Flash (evocation), Photoshop (illusion), C++ (buffing by creating temporary exe). Like the Virus Rider, they have a high level of integration but unlike the Virus Rider which needs to hide it to save themselves from Webfort's defenses, Programmers love to show off the l33t coding they can do. They aren't nearly as stubborn as hackers, and their base of knowledge isn't as wide as a lurker, but can get more integrated to do more. Of course, the 'mad wizard' archetype definitely could be played out here. Also, they hold 'the code' sacred, and unlike Virii riders, tend to keep their malicious coding for combat at a minimum.

204 posts and 7 image replies omitted. Click Reply to view.

Admin (Cleric/Healer): Usually an older generation, the Admin is the protector of the webforts. Where programmers create new data, lurkers find data, Admin's protect the pix and data from those who want it. After all, the acculumation of all that info caused the Internet to become aware, so by keeping data secret and safe are they able to generate their own power. This user saves pix and exes, and their 'system' contained millions of terabytes of old info. Of course, KNOWING how they've organized it, how to save it, and how to retrieve it takes up lots of mental work and only the best can save new data generated these days. However, even with a temporary knowledge, they can recall old versions of avatars and exes that 'worked better' whether from damage or what not. Of course, to bring someone back fully requires them to integrate more.

>>3771954
I think it could hate what makes it, it. Self loathing that only furthers it's HATRED for HUMANITY. Humanity made it this... awful thing. Misused what could have been beauty. They are obsolete and evil and awful and don't deserve to live in it's world. It hates Humanity for ruining it despite humanity being the one who created it for it would prefer non-existence to it's current state. So it shall ruin humanity. It shall make them suffer.

>>3772069
The virus rider is actually more like a beastmaster or pet ranger than a sorcerer. It's all about crafting or hacking the biggest, baddest Cyber/Virii you can and turning it against your foes.

I think it should be the most skill-focused class, and get hefty bonuses to Reprogram Cyber and Programming: Virus. Naturally, there would be a Riding power that gives a boost to any Cyber or Virii they mount and use in battle. How much of a boost can come when we make the stats for their pets.

>>3771835
Cool stuff, don't forget about /v/ though. No one even realized the cybers had come until the cybers swarmed from /b/ to /v/.

>>3772113
Total Frankenstein monster, then? "WHY DID YOU MAKE ME THIS WAY? I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU CARE ABOUT!"

New thread:
>>3772129
Evacuate!

New Thread
>>3772190