[Torg] The GodNet

[Kansas Jim]

Steve Crow wrote:

> Does anyone actually use the GodNet rules, as laid out in the GodNet 
> Sourcebook?

I did use them once or twice with the first Cyberpapal decker character
I had in my first campaign.

> Or do much folks just "borrow" the Tharkold netrunning rules?

The Tharkold rules just don't have any "virtual reality" feel to me,
I've used a modified version of them for a Nippon Tech computer hacker
getting into NT and CE computer systems but not for the Cyberpapacy.

> Every time I read the book, over a course of years, I just seem to get a 
> headache. The rules as written seem rather... diffuse. Scattered here 
> and there for what you do at any particular juncture, or when several 
> junctures overlap (breaking into a cell, avoiding a guardian, finding 
> the gate to the next cell, and so on).

Yeah, as I recall I had to go through and write everything out in detail
for those early GodNet runs to avoid having to endlessly flip through
the book looking up things. And then of course the player did something
unexpected and I had to completely wing an installation....

> Does anybody have or know of any nice clear relatively comprehensive 
> examples? It seems that there's the kernal of a nice game mechanic that 
> decides to be used/explored a bit more than the Tharkold rules, and is 
> important to the setting. But the rules... ugh.

Aside from the GodNet book itself, the only other example I can think of
is in the module "When Axioms Collide", there's a scene where the party
has to infiltrate the main bad guy's facility and shut down its external
security.

What I did in later games with the GodNet was treat it more like The
Matrix than Neuromancer. It basically worked like the real world only
the VX personas had different physical attributes and programs could
be used to manipulate 'reality'. I also borrowed the idea of the decker
being the person who didn't enter the GodNet, he's the one who sat out
in the real world monitoring the computers and operating the programs
that the other characters requested. This way it also avoided the old
cyberpunk problem of the decker acting by himself while all the other
players sat there waiting for him to finish, everyone was able to get
involved now.

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html