02-10-2010, 08:17 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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And even if you now have an entry somewhere that can't be eradicated, they still can't necessarily connect it up with anything. They still only have the information that you have given them. Nothing else. If you are careless and obvious then you'll eventually build up a substantial new presence in people's records, but that's the same as killing your ally or using your Extra Life, or ruining your Good Reputation. |
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02-10-2010, 08:20 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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02-10-2010, 08:57 PM | #13 |
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
Zeroed works very well for characters that can change their appearance and other biometrics in a modern setting. If you can alter your face, voice, fingerprints, etc at will, then it doesn't matter how many times one of your identities gets into a database - you can always use another one and there'll be nothing linking the two together.
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02-10-2010, 09:05 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
From what I've seen in Shadowrun, Zeroed there is worth about -10 points, and it's taken primarily as a show of manliness. Keeping yourself from getting assigned a criminal SIN is at least as hard as keeping your crimes from being assigned to your regular SIN. Getting blanked does let you buy off any Dependents, but if your family is some random gang from the Barrens, that's not a big deal in the first place.
And once one source has assigned something, everybody has it. It's promptly available via Equifax, Google, etc. This is a setting where "high network security" means "we added a lot of firewalls and such, but we weren't crazy enough to actually disconnect it". The main difficulty in getting blanked all over again is finding all the databases that duplicate the information, not a matter of how many details are in that record. I don't think that's particularly different for most cyberpunk settings. There's a vast difference between a character who once hired a skilled hacker to blank them, and someone who can effectively re-blank themselves on command, though. It's like the difference between Alternate Form and Morph. Zeroed is supposed to be the Alternate Form version, so if the Morph version should cost 10 points, that's the wrong cost for Zeroed.
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02-10-2010, 09:22 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
Zeroed is a very temporary advantage for people who don't have preternatural means of maintaining it, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is a very real social advantage <at times> to have no viable record if you ALSO have a dependent who you don't want to be endangered by your activities. No enemy who encounters you the first time will know about your disadvantages, or weaknesses, any special allergies you might have, or any special tricks you have up your sleeve to defend yourself. That is very useful, if temporary, but when it naturally expires the GM should instruct you to reinvest those points, not simply take them away for the advantage working like it is supposed to (say by rolling it into several alternate identities).
However consider a more useful (in a supernatural setting) COSMIC variant of Zeroed where you CANNOT be recorded or those records have a strange tendency to become corrupt or go missing, memories of you fade after you have been encountered, and there are no concrete records of your species specific racial weaknesses (basically by making the ability cosmic no non-cosmic method of removing the zeroed advantage will work, so the natural conclusion for that is that the PC in question always maintains the benefits of being zeroed for whatever reason). For ~30 points that's a very cool feature to stick on some sort of subterfuge based magical creature or monster template. Even in a realistic setting a government agent with a particularly adept team behind him/her might be able to justify the cosmic variant of zeroed due to a particularly active team who scrub government databases and newspapers to prevent any information about the PC from getting out. |
02-10-2010, 09:33 PM | #16 |
Petitioner: Word of IN Filk
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Longmont, CO
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
Leave us not forget Men in Black, one of the ultimate examples of Zeroed in action:
"From now on you'll have no identifying marks of any kind. You'll not stand out in any way. Your entire image is crafted to leave no lasting memory with anyone you encounter. You're a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu and dismissed just as quickly. You don't exist; you were never even born. Anonymity is your name. Silence your native tongue. You're no longer part of the System. You're above the System. Over it. Beyond it. We're "them." We're "they." We are the Men in Black. " -- Agent K
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“It's not railroading if you offer the PCs tickets and they stampede to the box office, waving their money. Metaphorically speaking” --Elizabeth McCoy, In Nomine Line Editor Author: "What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger" |
02-10-2010, 09:38 PM | #17 |
Petitioner: Word of IN Filk
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Longmont, CO
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
Good point. And to address one of the other concerns, there's still a number of states that recognize common-law marriage -- no formal license, just living together for a number of years and identifying yourself as husband and wife.
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“It's not railroading if you offer the PCs tickets and they stampede to the box office, waving their money. Metaphorically speaking” --Elizabeth McCoy, In Nomine Line Editor Author: "What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger" |
02-10-2010, 10:05 PM | #18 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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02-10-2010, 11:45 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
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Does anyone know of other pre-RPG uses of the concept? And as Refplace points out, it wasn't about not being in the database, it was about having the ability to alter your own records in the database easily. Which would just be a manifestation of Contacts or Patron or some other advantage. *Actually a fixup of three stories if I recall correctly. The first was published in 1969. ** The idea is also in the Woody Allen movie Sleeper but not consistently applied. Of course, as it is a farcical comedy, this doesn't hurt the movie in my opinion. |
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02-11-2010, 12:07 AM | #20 | ||||||
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: GMT-5
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Re: The cost of Zeroed
You bring up some good issues.
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I guess what it boils down to is first, How easy is it to stay Zeroed? Do you need other advantages (Patron, hacker Contact, whatever) or will the Zeroed alone keep you covered and for how long? Of course it's all up to what the GM feels is good for the game world. But what, if anything, was the original intention? and second, Do the benefits of Zeroed out weigh the hastles by 10 points? If the authorities expect me to have a history and I have none, they will suspect me and likely be a problem to me as soon as they find out I have no history. A new question that may be off topic (as it doesn't directly regard "cost") is, what exactly are the game mechanics for the resistant to supernatural detection that Zeroed offers? Are you immune? Is there only an effect if some kind of name magic rules are being used? Last edited by Edges; 02-11-2010 at 12:11 AM. |
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krommpost, zeroed |
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