Using the Psi rules as High Tech Effects

[Ataraxzy]

It occurred to me that the Psionics rules, once denuded of interpretation as magical mental powers do a great job of serving as infoverse manipulation rules:

Only two interpretations need be made: What 'distance' means and what Psi points mean.

Just map 'Distance' to 'Openness' and 'Temporal distance' in most cases.

• Openness: Public data would be Personal, all the way up to Hardened military and habitat life support systems; which would be Continental. With your average citizen being Close and the onboard neural interface systems of TL15 battle armor being Distant.
• Temporal distance: Current data? Personal. Last hour? Short. Last month? Long. Last year? Continental.

Psi points, on the other hand, measure Friction, or how much noise/bandwidth and general ruffian-like info-destructiveness you can accomplish before your pan-web access starts to degrade, whether from internal heating, standard routing overload protection protocols, ICE or whatever; when you run out of psi strength, your access has been degraded to the point where you're going to have to experience some combination of your eButler running some Reputation Repair protocols and habitat Routing system's overload protocols timing out and the ICE you awakened to stop pounding your firewalls. (i.e. your points recover).

Telepathy? That's just a hack into another person's web implants/portable computer. So, it might be a quick interrogation of the victim's eButler or a rapid access of the systems brought online by the victim's volitional-enhancement aids.

• Life Detection: scan for the presence of Web links. Filter by some slice of data that excludes non-sentients.
• Telempathy: Hack the victim's eButler, force-download a Stim program and run it.
• Read Surface Thoughts: interrogate the victim's eButler with an code-injection hack.
• Send Thoughts: You need an explanation for this?
• Probe: A massively invasive hack of the victim's neural/web interface allowing direct imaging.
• Assault: Send a Hunter/Killer into the victim's interface, watch their brains melt.
• Shield: an eButler can shut off pan-web access, but at the expense of any information that might be gained through it.

Clairvoyance? The eyes of the Panopticon look in BOTH directions. You can get a video/audio feed from just about anywhere.

• Sense: "Bob (the eButler), using the habitat's sensor data, give me an estimate of the next room: the CEO's office of Final Solutions, LLC."
• Tactical Awareness: "Bob, link with the rest of the team and start a threat map based off of our combined feeds."
• Clairvoyance: "Bob, consolidate all video feeds available outside the Temple of Resolute Humaniti."
• Clairaudience: "Bob, quick, hack into the pub's sensorium and get me an audio feed that captures the table in the NW corner!"
• Clairsentience: "Give me all sensory data related to that NW corner table from the past 6 hours."

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

I'm assuming that "eButler" is a muse?

 

[Ataraxzy]

I'm assuming that "eButler" is a muse?

Yup, though people unfamiliar with Eclipse Phase might not get that and the first draft of the post used 'Muse'. eButler pretty much nails the job description without requiring people to figure out an unfamiliar term.

Good eye!.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

I'm assuming that "eButler" is a muse?

Yup, though people unfamiliar with Eclipse Phase might not get that and the first draft of the post used 'Muse'. eButler pretty much nails the job description without requiring people to figure out an unfamiliar term.

It's also used as a term in the real world by companies devising 'Siri' style digital assistants.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

if the World was like the Matrix, all this would apply, if everyone was software, you could just hack into people's minds and all those psionic abilities would have perfectly logical explainations.

It occurred to me that the Psionics rules, once denuded of interpretation as magical mental powers do a great job of serving as infoverse manipulation rules:

Only two interpretations need be made: What 'distance' means and what Psi points mean.

Just map 'Distance' to 'Openness' and 'Temporal distance' in most cases.

• Openness: Public data would be Personal, all the way up to Hardened military and habitat life support systems; which would be Continental. With your average citizen being Close and the onboard neural interface systems of TL15 battle armor being Distant.
• Temporal distance: Current data? Personal. Last hour? Short. Last month? Long. Last year? Continental.

Psi points, on the other hand, measure Friction, or how much noise/bandwidth and general ruffian-like info-destructiveness you can accomplish before your pan-web access starts to degrade, whether from internal heating, standard routing overload protection protocols, ICE or whatever; when you run out of psi strength, your access has been degraded to the point where you're going to have to experience some combination of your eButler running some Reputation Repair protocols and habitat Routing system's overload protocols timing out and the ICE you awakened to stop pounding your firewalls. (i.e. your points recover).

Telepathy? That's just a hack into another person's web implants/portable computer. So, it might be a quick interrogation of the victim's eButler or a rapid access of the systems brought online by the victim's volitional-enhancement aids.

• Life Detection: scan for the presence of Web links. Filter by some slice of data that excludes non-sentients.
• Telempathy: Hack the victim's eButler, force-download a Stim program and run it.
• Read Surface Thoughts: interrogate the victim's eButler with an code-injection hack.
• Send Thoughts: You need an explanation for this?
• Probe: A massively invasive hack of the victim's neural/web interface allowing direct imaging.
• Assault: Send a Hunter/Killer into the victim's interface, watch their brains melt.
• Shield: an eButler can shut off pan-web access, but at the expense of any information that might be gained through it.

Clairvoyance? The eyes of the Panopticon look in BOTH directions. You can get a video/audio feed from just about anywhere.

• Sense: "Bob (the eButler), using the habitat's sensor data, give me an estimate of the next room: the CEO's office of Final Solutions, LLC."
• Tactical Awareness: "Bob, link with the rest of the team and start a threat map based off of our combined feeds."
• Clairvoyance: "Bob, consolidate all video feeds available outside the Temple of Resolute Humaniti."
• Clairaudience: "Bob, quick, hack into the pub's sensorium and get me an audio feed that captures the table in the NW corner!"
• Clairsentience: "Give me all sensory data related to that NW corner table from the past 6 hours."

 

[Ataraxzy]

if the World was like the Matrix, all this would apply, if everyone was software, you could just hack into people's minds and all those psionic abilities would have perfectly logical explainations.

Well, why wouldn't they apply? What we're doing here is explicitly not modeling the particular actions "Ok, I hack into Router X788-CB, lemme roll Int+Comp...11, great! Now I want to see if Big Bubba has a netlink connected to that Router? No? Well, now I hack into Router G112-A1..."

Instead, the rules here apply to the EFFECTS of character desires.

In an analogous situation, we don't require modeling of body posture, aim point, sight alignment, breathing, sling type and trigger pull method when a character wants to 'shoot a gun and whack someone'. Here, we're abstracting away all of that at a largely equivalent level: let the Player and the GM come up with an explanation that fits ITU, the effect of Life Detection is that you get a sense of the approximate locations of people within the geographical area.

Remember, there's an absolute separation between game RULES and the story that accompanies those rules. Sure, rules are generally written with a story already in mind, but there's no rule that says you have to keep to it, so repurpose rules to keep your GMing overhead low.