Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#41

Post by headsoup » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

sombremesa wrote: post #14

headsoup wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't

It is - compare the internet to the AppStore or the Play Store. The internet could've easily been something like that - a walled garden accessible only through proprietary clients, where you could only publish content through prescribed channels. Sure, people would've created open alternatives, but just like is the case with the AppStore alternatives today, those alternatives would languish for want of an audience.

I was only responding in kind to the above poster who provided no context for their answer...

And context does matter, because in some places the internet is basically Facebook, which is certainly not open

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#42

Post by JoeDaDude » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

rv-de wrote: post #34

hajile wrote: post #10

GURPS Cyberpunk is still available as a PDF and interestingly, is still the best generic cyberpunk toolkit ever printed. http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-classic-cyberpunk

Seems interesting. Why can't I find it on boardgamegeek.com?

The game, or one like it, is on RPG Geek: https://rpggeek.com/rpgfamily/335/cyberpunk

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#43

Post by zaarn » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

tstrimple wrote: post #36

yoklov wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GURPS is way to crunchy (numbers focused) for me, personally, but I'm seconding the Sprawl recommendation. Hack The Planet is another great modern cyberpunk RPG, based on the Forged in the Dark rule set.

I like my RPGs crunchy enough to not be a barrier to role playing or abstract enough to not be a barrier to role playing. I feel like I've never been limited in what I can do or what I can create in GURPS. Games like D&D are the worst of both worlds for me. Not abstract enough to do what you want, and not crunchy enough to have rules for all you want to do. To me D&D is more like playing a board game than a role play…

You could look into Pathfinder, it's very crunchy with lots of options so it should fit.

On the other hand, how you experience D&D depends heavily on the GM. If social solutions to problems are not rewarded, players may feel like playing a board game. Same for GMs that railroad the story too much.

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#44

Post by zaarn » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

looper8 wrote: post #13

unkulunkulu wrote: post #4

> After a gradual dawning of awareness, he asks the computer, “Is this a game… or is it real?” With the aplomb of a delusional college student wandering the steam tunnels, imaginary sword in hand, the computer replies, “What’s the difference?” Hmmm, I have never met this perspective. An AI might be limited in perceiving reality in addition to being much stronger intellectually. A dangerous mix I would say. Imagine “S…

A binary AI would probably have to settle for an either/or situation. The result and therefore difference between a choice of reality and game, when picking from the core duality, will always be either reality or a game. A quantum AI would be able to view both equally (and be able to grasp all the intermediate states (that we call stable)) and therefore not be able to distinguish between what we call "real" and what…

I don't quite understand why a "binary AI" wouldn't be able to give you a probability on how much it thinks it's in reality (ie, an intermediate state).

I don't think quantum AI has that much more advantages either and the human brain doesn't really qualify as "quantum" either in my books.

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#45

Post by StanislavPetrov » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 9:45 AM UTC

rv-de wrote: post #34

hajile wrote: post #10

GURPS Cyberpunk is still available as a PDF and interestingly, is still the best generic cyberpunk toolkit ever printed. http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-classic-cyberpunk

Seems interesting. Why can't I find it on boardgamegeek.com?

Its sold directly from Steve Jackson, who is still in business and still making (very good) games.

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#46

Post by StanislavPetrov » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #38

More revisionist history from millenials who weren't there to know that things like GURPS and Legion of Doom and other things mentioned in this article were unknown at the time, even to other "hackers" and BBSs and usenet. Journalists decided to write about them and hail them as heros years later, changing what was pop culture to the cyberpunk world of those days to whatever they see as nostalgic and romantic and int…

As an older person deeply involved in the BBS communities of the 1980s and someone who played both Car Wars and GURPS I can tell you that these things were very well known among many of us.

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#47

Post by StanislavPetrov » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 9:52 AM UTC

>This misunderstanding arose only five months after TSR obtained widespread notoriety in a similar confusion surrounding the disappearance of college student James Dallas Egbert III in East Lansing, Michigan. A private detective hired to find Egbert had learned that the young man played TSR’s role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons—at the time virtually unknown to mainstream America—and hypothesized that Egbert had come to believe the game was real. Famously, this led to calls for a search of the college steam tunnels, where presumably Egbert would be found wandering in a deluded stupor, questing for monsters and treasure.

Tom Hanks starred in a 1982 made for TV movie called, "Mazes and Monsters" that used virtually this exact plot. In the 80s there was a massive hysteria about Dungeons & Dragons being linked to "devil worship" and other madness (yes really). It was so bad that TSR pulled Demons and Devils from the (then) new edition of the Monster Manual (and related books) in an attempt to quell the furor.

Spoiler: In the movie the character played by Hanks actually does go crazy and end up lost in the tunnels. He is eventually found but he has forever lost his mind, driven insane by the evil game.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/

Re: Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015)

#48

Post by Accujack » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #38

More revisionist history from millenials who weren't there to know that things like GURPS and Legion of Doom and other things mentioned in this article were unknown at the time, even to other "hackers" and BBSs and usenet. Journalists decided to write about them and hail them as heros years later, changing what was pop culture to the cyberpunk world of those days to whatever they see as nostalgic and romantic and int…

No. Maybe they were unknown to you, but not some of us. I first heard about the Phrack raids a week or so afterward, when certain of my peers in college began destroying floppies in a fit of paranoia.

_Free_The_Atlanta_Three_