02-11-2010, 11:33 AM | #31 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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02-11-2010, 11:40 AM | #32 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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The MIB organization will systematically wipe out any records that may be generated by their activities, but that isn't part of Zeroed.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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02-11-2010, 11:51 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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02-11-2010, 12:31 PM | #34 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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It was game mechanically, the 20 pt version of the Secret disadvantage. You just got cheated out of the extra points.
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...().0...0() .../..........\ -/......O.....\- ...VVVVVVV ..^^^^^^^ A clock running two hours slow has the correct time zero times a day. |
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02-11-2010, 12:37 PM | #35 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
Do realize that Zeroed isn't meant to be an initial condition that wears off the first time somebody takes your picture. It assumes maintenance, and some off-screen means of achieving that. You're Zeroed now and, a few weeks later when your picture shows up again, you're still Zeroed because whatever means made you Zeroed in the first place nuked the records. That's how it works.
Those whose worlds don't assume forces powerful enough to wipe out arbitrarily secure records shouldn't use Zeroed. Neither should gamers who just want to be mysterious Man With No Name types. If you're simply somebody who starts play with no identity and gradually builds up a permanent record, you're not Zeroed. You have something more akin to Zeroed as a one-use advantage (1/5 cost, 2 points, like Favor), if not just a perk. Zeroed is for people who work for the MIBs . . . or have a backdoor into SkyNet . . . or possess supernatural abilities that completely transmute them every sunset . . . or serve Oblivius, God of Nothingness. It's an active trait. It isn't just an Unusual Background.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
02-11-2010, 12:40 PM | #36 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
I just thought up a very mundane and real world application of zeroed:
If you have wealth <or even if you do not> and have zeroed; your wealth will not be taxed since there is no record of you having received that money. Thus even in its default state it becomes the classic 'has a Swiss bank account' advantage used often by both rich CEOs and criminal masterminds. |
02-11-2010, 12:52 PM | #37 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
Except of course that every single character would have those things happen to them if they were found out and caught, and the Zero'd characters were a lot harder to find out.
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02-11-2010, 12:53 PM | #38 | |
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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He actually gives a couple of good examples in that book, too. Mona is zeroed because no one ever entered her into the system in the first place. She has no birth record, no government ID, and hates interacting with suits (and probably government workers of all pay grades. She pays cash for everything, or gets it through her boyfriend. When they travel, they do it by car, bus, or train. OTOH, there is Molly. Molly probably had her identity wiped from the system at some point. She interacts with bureaucracy through temporary fake ID's (none of the robust enough to be GURPS Alternate Identity, which IIRC negates Zeroed). Running her face or fingerprints through the system turns up nothing, and none of her IDs will stand up to too much scrutiny, but they'll pass for a while. She maintains her Zeroed status by mostly working through cutouts, cash, and numbered accounts. If she's thoroughly investigated, the authorities will have to try and figure out what aliases and temporary identities she's used in the past to try and pin anything on her. That's really what it takes to stay Zeroed, at least in a cyberpunk context. The zeroed character has to avoid doing anything that will create a record attached to their permanent ID. That means either paying cash and staying off the grid, or using a lot of blinds, cutouts, and fake documents.
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An ongoing narrative of philosophy, psychology, and semiotics: Et in Arcadia Ego "To an Irishman, a serious matter is a joke, and a joke is a serious matter." |
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02-11-2010, 01:02 PM | #39 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
That was the problem: In the Cyberworld dictatrorship, you could be compelled to give your fingerprints for scan without being charged hirst. SOP was to arrest anyone who didn't show up as a person on file and turn him over to the NERRC (Gestapo) post haste. REad the text of it in the book.
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...().0...0() .../..........\ -/......O.....\- ...VVVVVVV ..^^^^^^^ A clock running two hours slow has the correct time zero times a day. |
02-11-2010, 01:36 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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Usually all they would do is check the card's onboard memory. Mr. Zero would of course have a fake card with an onboard memory that said he was nobody special, or perhaps somebody very special as in "Get out of my way" special. Sometimes they'd check with the network, at which point Mr. Zero either has a card that can do something called a "double shuffle" or Mr. Zero has had a hacker put a file in the national data banks which will automatically pass inspection without an intensive investigation of the kind that says "You are already going to jail". The advantage Mr. Zero has over someone who already has an identity, is that someone who already has an identity can't just plant a fake ID in the databanks and have it pass, because a network check will then turn up two different identities attached to that thumbprint. That being said, if having no identity is a crime, then that crime is a Secret. You'd get it as well as your Zero'd advantage. |
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krommpost, zeroed |
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