Effect of Temporary Zeroed?

[JCurwen3]

I was wondering what the effects of getting Zeroed temporarily would be. Namely, if you're (most likely, beneficially) Afflicted with it, or if you have a switchable version.

It's been stated by Kromm that regular Zeroed represents having an ongoing force (a government, secret society, super-hacking database scrubbers, or something outright paranormal) that is keeping the PC "clean", barring active attempts on the PC's part to develop documentation and paper trails and muck it up.

So what happens when you have it for, say a few minutes? Does it merely block attempts to identify you or get your records while you have it, or does it give you a one-off clean slate starting at that moment?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I was wondering what the effects of getting Zeroed temporarily would be. Namely, if you're (most likely, beneficially) Afflicted with it, or if you have a switchable version.

Actually I think switchable isn't needed for Zero'ed. If the Zero tries to leave a record, then that record will remain as long as the Zero wants. That's why the Zero can have temporary identities.

As for transient Zeroed I'd rule that it makes information searches on the character impossible for the duration of the effect, and ensures that the character doesn't leave any records while under the influence but it doesn't do any permanent damage to records dating before the use of the Affliction.

[the_matrix_walker]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

but it doesn't do any permanent damage to records dating before the use of the Affliction.

If you want old records affected, add Time Spanning!!

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

As for transient Zeroed I'd rule that it makes information searches on the character impossible for the duration of the effect.

That would be my ruling too now that I finally have managed to cut through the misleading and outright wrong stuff about it in Basic. The actually advantageous form of Zeroed prevents anybody from finding out anything about you you don't want them to from a particular information source. Even in the default source case, something like "online records", Zeroed doesn't have to do anything at all to any physical records, it just has to block access to them and return whatever you've set up to support your current cover story instead.