Have you ever looked at how the matrix worked in old Shadowrun? I mean really old, first edition Shadowrun? Because it’s fascinating in the most awkward 80s kind of pre-www way possible.
Not that it actually is unrealistic, as I should know and as people have pointed out to me quickly.
You see, the matrix rules for Shadowrun came at a time when the World Wide Web, that thing which most of you will think about when I say “The Internet” did not yet exist. Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW in 1989, the same year that Shadowrun 1e was published (and the setting had it’s first publications even before that). The Internet is of course older. Usenet was around for a decade already, and Arpanet was established in 1969. Those were three decades for people who were interested to learn how this whole global information highway thing actually works. Of course the whole model was based on that, and not on a new invention from Europe of all places.
But the problem was that this whole description did not really fit with what people thought about the internet during the 90s. The internet WAS the www, and so later editions had to dial down on the whole model of a network that was thoroughly local in structure, even if it allowed for access to computers globally.
The whole matrix in the sixth world was structured into local telecommunication grids (LTGs), regional telecommunication grids (RTGs), and so on. And servers were more like fortresses than anything you willingly would let anyone on. The early descriptions of company presences on the matrix are devoid of most things that involve outsiders accessing information on them. In effect giving the idea that anyone who ever would want something on a company network was either authorized, or a bad actor.
Which all is not actually so far from the truth, but it doesn’t fit with how people experienced the internet at all.
Clik here to view.
But there was the idea of a Tron like virtual space, fighting against attack programs and barriers, which enticed people. Of course the way this was treated was very much informed by DnD: every single host you might want to hack into was basically a mini-dungeon the decker (the SR-term for hackers) had to hack into to find the information or controls they might be interesting in.
By the way one of the big complaints about Shadowrun in the first few editions was that the use of decking skills ground the whole game to a halt, leaving the rest of the team nothing to do while the decker and the GM were off on their own little dungeon crawl. That is the reason why later on, with the advent of wireless matrix in 4th edition, all of a sudden everything became hackable and you had to be physically close to do stuff. Now there was a reason why’d you want the decker to come along on the run.
Anyway, the reason why I was mentioning it were these parts I found in the SR1 rulebook. Because how do you know where the company even has their local host you might want to hack?
Not so easy it turns out.
So, to even hack something you need the LTG access code. This is supposed to be an unlisted phone number basically that allows access to the computer system, and at least Silver Angel treats it that way, (one of the big clues the PCs can find is the LTG code for the research institute they want to rob), but the later Seattle Sourcebook just gives the LTG number for every single entry. And as the sourcebook is technically completely player accessible (it’s a BBS post after all), this all becomes a bit of a moot point.
But in this system the LTG code becomes a treasure you need to acquire. You have to get it from somewhere, as even just searching for it might raise an alert on the target. Which also is in Silver Angel, the fixer warns the PCs that they better keep quiet about it, because otherwise Mitsuhama gets spooked and that would endanger the success of both their mission and the parallel mission running on the other side of the planet.
But notice how this thing sees looking into a phone book multiple million pages long as some hard and arduous task. Remember search engines did not exist yet when this was written, at least not in this form. Even when they started to appear they started out as curated archives (I remember adding my first little homepage to yahoo and other places hoping for it to be found), before Google actually started to have an actually useful search algorithm and a usable website.
Anyway, how are you supposed to deal with the whole amount of LTG numbers you are supposed to have the players access. Oh, look at this:
The GM is supposed to have their own list of LTGs to use when a player wants to hack into an LTG.
But notice that this is not public, the players are supposed to keep their own phone books.
Basically making this into… a huge mess of paperwork and note taking that adds nearly nothing to the game.
No wonder they got rid of that part soon enough. I am prepping stuff for 3rd edition right now, and this particular idea is just not present anymore.
But ok, I do have to admit it does have a bit of an old school allure. Like treasure maps in DnD games, the LTG code is something that not everyone has in that model. First the characters have to hunt down the code, then they have to break in like that. It kind of evokes some old school cyberpunk charm that nobody even thinks about nowadays. I guess it would be a plot token that might be useful in other scenarios as well, but I also think it would get old pretty quickly. And… I don’t think I have seen that particular need to find the actual code in other adventures. In later scenarios this mostly is glossed over I think, but Silver Angel was the first one to be published (with the GM screen). I guess it is assumed that you still are doing this stuff somehow, but they really dial back on this part of the game.