Dark Conspiracy is using the current edition of Traveller as the core of its game engine, which means we do not have to start from a completely blank slate and have a set of mechanics that we already understand very well. So, we can tweak and fiddle to 'bend' them to fit Dark Conspiracy (rather than the other way round). Oh, and just to make clear, you won't need the Traveller Core Rulebook for Dark Conspiracy - it will be completely self-contained and stand alone.
So, computers...
When we began, we originally ported the computer rules over from Traveller and... that is not really how computers work in today's world.
The first thing we did was break computers away from the Electronics skill and made it its own thing. We then gave it the specialities of Coding, Hardware and Operation, meaning characters can specialise in specific areas of computing while retaining a measure of competence across the board - so, your network specialist can still act as a script kiddie when he goes online.
For computers themselves, we started with the premise that just about any computer, even a tablet or phone, can pretty much do whatever you want. So, ranking computers, per se, is not really a thing any more. Instead we broke them into phone, tablet, laptop, desktop and 'gaming rig' (power user's machine - do the kids still say that?). There is still a use for 'supercomputers' and distributed computing, but that is not something the players are really going to be buying.
So, all of these devices can do just about everything you need to do on a computer, with the Referee still able to step in and say 'yeah, if you want that done in less than a week, get the gaming rig.'
The big difference is this - if you want to do something of higher than Routine difficulty on a tablet, you suffer DM-1. On a phone, it is DM-2, as we are running with the assumption that characters are not Gen Z and work is just way easier with a proper keyboard and mouse. So, want to quickly hack into a wi-fi (especially Virginmedia, but I digress...), then it is no problem on a tablet. You want to construct a big relational database and start running analyses on it, drop your phone and get a laptop if you insist on doing it in the field.
So, computers...
When we began, we originally ported the computer rules over from Traveller and... that is not really how computers work in today's world.
The first thing we did was break computers away from the Electronics skill and made it its own thing. We then gave it the specialities of Coding, Hardware and Operation, meaning characters can specialise in specific areas of computing while retaining a measure of competence across the board - so, your network specialist can still act as a script kiddie when he goes online.
For computers themselves, we started with the premise that just about any computer, even a tablet or phone, can pretty much do whatever you want. So, ranking computers, per se, is not really a thing any more. Instead we broke them into phone, tablet, laptop, desktop and 'gaming rig' (power user's machine - do the kids still say that?). There is still a use for 'supercomputers' and distributed computing, but that is not something the players are really going to be buying.
So, all of these devices can do just about everything you need to do on a computer, with the Referee still able to step in and say 'yeah, if you want that done in less than a week, get the gaming rig.'
The big difference is this - if you want to do something of higher than Routine difficulty on a tablet, you suffer DM-1. On a phone, it is DM-2, as we are running with the assumption that characters are not Gen Z and work is just way easier with a proper keyboard and mouse. So, want to quickly hack into a wi-fi (especially Virginmedia, but I digress...), then it is no problem on a tablet. You want to construct a big relational database and start running analyses on it, drop your phone and get a laptop if you insist on doing it in the field.
Add to that, we are rapidly reaching a point where there will be nowhere in the world where you won't have access, and I think I may assume that Referees are aware enough that in those circumstances where this is not true, they have the fiat to make life difficult.
