Stuck in the game

[Fouredged Sword]

I was thinking it would be funny to run a DnD game that took place in a MMO that the players project thier mind into (al-la .hack sign) and get stuck (copied actualy) in the game.

The player would know in game that they where in a game, and would be allowed to use a reasonable amount of metagame knowlege and rule abuse, but risked falling prey to the mods if they started things too broken.

Besides being Dnd, what suggestions could be made for rule sets to you. I am thinking vitality and spellpoint systems to give the game a little more of a computer game feel.

[Machinekng]

I was thinking it would be funny to run a DnD game that took place in a MMO that the players project thier mind into (al-la .hack sign) and get stuck (copied actualy) in the game.

The player would know in game that they where in a game, and would be allowed to use a reasonable amount of metagame knowlege and rule abuse, but risked falling prey to the mods if they started things too broken.

Besides being Dnd, what suggestions could be made for rule sets to you. I am thinking vitality and spellpoint systems to give the game a little more of a computer game feel.

Interesting...

From a RP standpoint, you'd have to differentiate between aware and non-aware NPCs. Aware NPCs know that the PCs are not part of the world, and try to hinder/help them accordingly, while unaware NPCs actually believe that they're real. The whole scenario would be very matrixy.

From a rules standpoint, you need to make a Hacker PrC, someone who exploits the glitches, abuses the game's mechanics, and if possible, actually hacks the game.

Spellpoints would give it a video game feel, but I'd stick with hitpoints. In most MMOs, and in most games for that matter, hitpoints work just like they do in D&D.

You definitely need a BBEG, someone to draw the PCs ire so they don't kill everyone around them.

On another note, you should make this clear to the PCs. This is a MMO. Everything is fake. Also, nothing stays dead, everything respawns with no recollection of being killed. The PCs are real, they're really in the game. But if they die, they don't respawn.

I'd would also reconmend you read For the Win by Cory Doctrow. It's a novel about MMOs, and it presents many interesting ideas (MMO economics, the legalization of gold farming, having people to temporarily control AI elements of the game to ensure immersion, etc...)

[Fouredged Sword]

I would then implement some kind of rapid recovery mechanic. I am thinking "Inns" that the players "rest" in for 15 seconds to get all thier spells and HP back. You can "rest" in the wilderness, but risk a literal random encounter spawning on top of you based on a survival check.

[Volos]

If you're going to follow the .hack// model, then are you going to make PC death permanent under certain circumstances? Killing monsters and finishing dungeons/levels/events would be commonplace to the Players behind the MMO Characters, so I would suggest making the story about a mystery or hidden event. A secret PC organization could also be a focal point of your story. As for mechanics, giving them Action Dice from Eberron could help give any class that 'video game hero' feel. Easy teleportation, access to full maps, records of monsters defeated (and their stats), and similar things could help with that theme.

[kestrel404]

You definitely need a BBEG, someone to draw the PCs ire so they don't kill everyone around them.

Definitely.


On another note, you should make this clear to the PCs. This is a MMO. Everything is fake. Also, nothing stays dead, everything respawns with no recollection of being killed. The PCs are real, they're really in the game. But if they die, they don't respawn.

Worse - the respawn happens, but the character that died has no memory and now acts like an in-game NPC does. This can be demonstrated by having an GMPC come into the game alongside the players, and then die off. The players would have to track down the GMPC in their original spawn point, or else they meet up with him as he does his corpse-run, and find out that all his knowledge of the world outside the game is gone - he's effectively been lobotomized, and doesn't believe the PCs about there being some other 'world' or this being a 'game'. Of course, he's still willing to group with the PCs if they want.


I'd would also reconmend you read For the Win by Cory Doctrow. It's a novel about MMOs, and it presents many interesting ideas (MMO economics, the legalization of gold farming, having people to temporarily control AI elements of the game to ensure immersion, etc...)

Absolutely. It's a brilliant book. Go to Doctorow's sight and you can download the full text of the book (plus some ads which are actually kind of fun to read).

[Ravens_cry]

I play D&D because I like an interactive fantasy adventure with real people, but hate the ridiculous grinding and bear ass collection quests and unchanging and unchangeable nature of a typical MMORPG world.
Applying such tropes to D&D sounds so very boring to this one.

[NichG]

So what if:

- The PCs are stuck inside but with full knowledge. This means their interaction paradigm is different. Normal characters can't climb a wall - its an absolute obstacle because the game isn't programmed for that. The PCs however can.

- Death means a personality wipe, and this MMO is pretty cavalier about death. Actually trying to play the game as intended is a death sentence.

- NPCs that see the PCs break the game rules get the NPC version of dementia animus from Nobilis - they realize that something is wrong with the world. Some go pitchfork-wielding townsfolk about it, others think the PCs are not real someone, and others realize that they themselves are not real and that it has all been a game. The main point though: NPCs that see PCs break the rules become able to break the rules too.

- Server maintenance time is doomsday: the PCs have until then to somehow deal with their situation or they'll all be wiped when the server goes down.

[KillianHawkeye]

I've actually toyed with a similar idea, where the story takes place both in the "real" world and in the game world. It would use two completely different game systems to represent each world (like D&D and World of Darkness, for example), and the players would be playing characters who are playing an MMO together.

I just haven't figured out a good plot that would be capable of crossing over between the two worlds yet.

[Machinekng]

Adding to NichG's thoughts:

-What are avatars (people controlled by real people) like? Do they act like puppets, being manipulated by their players? Do they seem almost otherworldly? Or do avatar NPCs not realize they're being controlled?

-What will the villian(s) be like? It would be hard to have a moderator or an administrator be the villian, as the only logical thing for a moderator or administrator to do to gamebreakers would be to ban/suspend them, whivh would mean insta-death for your PCs.

Villian thoughts:

-The villians in question are a cabal of real life economic terrorists. They want to destabilize the MMO's economy, in order to make real life profits (makes a lot more sense after you've read For the Win). They figure that the best way to do that is to destabilize the game world itself, by introducing anarchy into the game, which, via entropy, would make the game unplayable. They lured the PCs and copied them into the game, in order to fufill this goal. They used the PCs as the method they used to insert the PCs into the game is dangerous an untested. At the moment, they hold the PCs' bodies hostage, and use their avatars to keep the PCs on track.

I would have more, but I can't think of any as good as the economic terrorists thing.

[Quarion Nailo]

I remember reading about an almost identical d20 system in an old, old dungeon magazine. It was called DeathNET d20, and it had the same exact concept of characters stuck in an online simulation. I remember thinking it had a pretty good backstory and stuff. You should check it out.

[Machinekng]

More thoughts relating to my economic terrorists thing:

The PC's presence is almost a viral affect. As NPCs become aware of the game, they can break the rules, allowing more NPCs to become aware. The administrators may end up simply obliterate entire zones to contain it. Although the logical thing would be to simply shut down the game and do maintenance, think of the PCs as literal computer viruses. Everything they come in contact with becomes corrupted, and server maintenance would require the game's owners to upload an older version of the game, deleting thousands of character profiles (yes, the profiles would most likely be backed up, but I'm trying to find an excuse for the admins to not insta-kill the PCs.)

Better yet, about a few sessions into the game, start having your NPCs mention a virus, especially the avatars. The PCs should catch on to the fact that the virus is a computer virus of some kind, and being PCs, they will feel obligated to destroy it. When they learn that they are the virus...

Priceless :smallbiggrin:.

[maximus25]

Also think about this: When we are done role playing as our characters in our world on paper, maybe in their world they role play as us and make our decisions. :smallamused:

[byaku rai]

If you do this, you will have to find some way to avoid having the PCs just start killing everything they find. PCs tend towards the mass-homicide end of the sanity spectrum in a normal campaign. In one like this, you will have to have an extraordinarily convincing reason for them to not do so.

For example: since the players know about EXP in character, they no longer have any real reason not to start slaying townspeople left and right. Solution: make the PCs aware that no EXP is awarded for killing other avatars or slaying helpless NPCs. Maybe that's a rule of the game in the real world. Maybe creatures which award EXP for killing them have some sort of glow or aura, varying in intensity based on the EXP awarded.
Problem: NPCs such as guards and nobles, assuming they are generated the same way PCs are (leveling up and such), should probably award EXP with their deaths.
Solution: Indicate that the random slaying of statted NPCs will result in investigations by Mods. Maybe even make the Mods characters themselves, with max stats and uber-equipment of course.

[NichG]

The thing is, copying someone's mind into a game is so fantastical, economic terrorism seems a bit of a blah motivation. It's sort of a 'if you had the power to do this to someone else's system, THIS is how you chose to use it?' thing that risks making such a villain comic rather than threatening.

In line with the sort of effort it'd take to actually accomplish this particular act, I'd say the villain would either be an AI that has infected the game (a la Hack Sign) or even a supernatural entity that takes offense at humans playing gods by making worlds and wants to teach them a lesson about how one's creations can get out of control. This is especially interesting if, just as the PCs are corrupting the game world with their presence, the NPCs that have jumped to the PCs' real bodies are corrupting the 'real' world with their presence.

[Prime32]

Look up a light novel series called Sword Art Online (there's a manga adaptation, but it doesn't get very far and it's supposed to be awful). It's about a large number of people being trapped in a gameworld for years, where dying in-game will cause you to die outside, but if someone clears the final area then everyone can go free.

People react to it in different ways - some refuse to listen and commit in-game suicide in an attempt to escape, some try to band together and finish the game, and others just resign themselves to living the rest of their lives there.

[Machinekng]

The thing is, copying someone's mind into a game is so fantastical, economic terrorism seems a bit of a blah motivation. It's sort of a 'if you had the power to do this to someone else's system, THIS is how you chose to use it?' thing that risks making such a villain comic rather than threatening.

In line with the sort of effort it'd take to actually accomplish this particular act, I'd say the villain would either be an AI that has infected the game (a la Hack Sign) or even a supernatural entity that takes offense at humans playing gods by making worlds and wants to teach them a lesson about how one's creations can get out of control. This is especially interesting if, just as the PCs are corrupting the game world with their presence, the NPCs that have jumped to the PCs' real bodies are corrupting the 'real' world with their presence.

I would say that greed is a perfectly fine villian motivation. It's relatable, and true to real life. Anyway, how many reasons are there to trap someone's conscious in a video game?

1. Social/Philosophical/Scientific Experiment

2. Sadism

3. PROFIT!!!

Now which one is the least cliched?

Now if you have an AI, or the supernatural entity, you've created a BBEG out of the PCs league. Either one could eliminate the PCs in a second, and in the context of a video game, no matter how powerful you are, you could never defeat them. So what if you're level X and have accquired Y and Z, the AI can just delete your profile, and the entity can just smite you, as whatever you do or are in the video game can have no affect on them, as they are beyond the context of the game. The AI would be infecting the server, and the only way to defeat it would be to convince an admin of its presence, which would mean insta-death as the server is shut down and de-buged. The entity is beyond man's preception of time and space.

With a more mundane threat, however, the PCs have a fighting chance. Even if they're out-matched, they can still out-think and out-run it. You can't win against an omnipresent being, but you can win against humans.

[Prime32]

An AI doesn't need to be omnipotent...

More reading material: Yureka (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Yureka).

[Machinekng]

An AI doesn't need to be omnipotent...

More reading material: Yureka (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Yureka).

It depends...

If the AI is actually part of the game engine, then it could effectively be omnipotent, as the engine is everywhere and everything. It would be like if a planet was a living being. It might not be truly omnipotent, but it would definitly be omnipresent, and when you get down to it, it's pretty darn close.

If the AI is part of the hardware, then it's totally omnipotent. It can eavsedrop on chat, erase meddling PCs profiles, etc.

If the AI is more like an NPC (a powerful, self-aware NPC) then it's not really special, even if it can generate mobs and enviormental hazards. It's still just a NPC, and it's no more powerful than a well-optimized wizard.

[NichG]

I would say that greed is a perfectly fine villian motivation. It's relatable, and true to real life. Anyway, how many reasons are there to trap someone's conscious in a video game?

1. Social/Philosophical/Scientific Experiment

2. Sadism

3. PROFIT!!!

Now which one is the least cliched?


The problem is not with the motivation, its with possessing the power to do such a thing. Why trap Joe Schlub in a videogame when you could trap the president of a country in his phone answering system, or the CEO of big businesses in their email clients. Or for that matter, why not program a utopia for you and like-minded individuals and just upload yourselves to it? Or heck, if you just want to terrorize the world, distribute the technology widely and watch the self-destruction as people immerse themselves willingly.

At least with the scientific experiment you can use the justification that they're doing a test run of the method.



Now if you have an AI, or the supernatural entity, you've created a BBEG out of the PCs league. Either one could eliminate the PCs in a second, and in the context of a video game, no matter how powerful you are, you could never defeat them. So what if you're level X and have accquired Y and Z, the AI can just delete your profile, and the entity can just smite you, as whatever you do or are in the video game can have no affect on them, as they are beyond the context of the game. The AI would be infecting the server, and the only way to defeat it would be to convince an admin of its presence, which would mean insta-death as the server is shut down and de-buged. The entity is beyond man's preception of time and space.


This is a little over the top. If its a supernatural entity, it will have vices and weird things about it. Especially if its attempting to inflict suffering, it isn't likely to just go 'Smite!' after its set up these things. Perhaps by putting you in an RPG and blending the false world with the real, it has given you the power to take things from the false world and bring them back to the real where you can face it directly. Campaign starts with 'Ack! We're in a game! Must stay alive!' and becomes 'I can throw fireballs in the real world now?!'.

For an AI, maybe you're its attempt at infecting the server, but the best it can do is infect your home terminal/neural interface/etc. So its basically using the client to attempt to get at the server and needs you for that. Early on it tries to keep you alive, until you start realizing what it's doing and (assumedly) jump entirely into the server where its 'safe' but try to keep your infection levels down so it can't get enough control to strike at you. From inside the server you can then try to notify the admins, get world governments to pay attention, etc. You'd have to try to stalk famous people hiding behind their in-game toons - i.e. if the game world's country president or military leaders liked a spot of WoW every so often.

[Machinekng]

First of all, I would like to say that although I disagree withyou in some areas (and that I really like my idea, andwill defend it to the bitter end), you make many good points.


The problem is not with the motivation, its with possessing the power to do such a thing. Why trap Joe Schlub in a videogame when you could trap the president of a country in his phone answering system, or the CEO of big businesses in their email clients.

Can you? I mean, can you really kidnap the president or a CEO, and then use the method on them? How portable would technology be? I would think that like most questionably legal and untested technology in literature, it would be heavy and expensive. What would you need exactly even to do something like this? You'd have to have physical access to the subject, and be able to hook up an interface with the subject brain. The machine would at least be as big as an MRI. It's not like you can just e-mail someone and boom, they're trapped in the game.



Or for that matter, why not program a utopia for you and like-minded individuals and just upload yourselves to it?

First of all, I think people would have an issue with the knowledge that their lives are fake. Second, they would have the knowledge that they could be destroyed at any moment via an unforseen circumstance (power outage, natural diaster, someone pulls the plug, etc...)



Or heck, if you just want to terrorize the world, distribute the technology widely and watch the self-destruction as people immerse themselves willingly.

MRI machines are heavy and expensive.




At least with the scientific experiment you can use the justification that they're doing a test run of the method.
Valid, but the wole scenario is rather cliche.



This is a little over the top. If its a supernatural entity, it will have vices and weird things about it. Especially if its attempting to inflict suffering, it isn't likely to just go 'Smite!' after its set up these things.
Valid. Yet, if the supernatual entity is your enemy, and the supernatual entity can rip your concsiousness from your body, smite is the logical conclusion if it wants to defeat the PCs



Perhaps by putting you in an RPG and blending the false world with the real, it has given you the power to take things from the false world and bring them back to the real where you can face it directly. Campaign starts with 'Ack! We're in a game! Must stay alive!' and becomes 'I can throw fireballs in the real world now?!'.

Valid and interesting.



For an AI, maybe you're its attempt at infecting the server, but the best it can do is infect your home terminal/neural interface/etc. So its basically using the client to attempt to get at the server and needs you for that. Early on it tries to keep you alive, until you start realizing what it's doing and (assumedly) jump entirely into the server where its 'safe' but try to keep your infection levels down so it can't get enough control to strike at you. From inside the server you can then try to notify the admins, get world governments to pay attention, etc. You'd have to try to stalk famous people hiding behind their in-game toons - i.e. if the game world's country president or military leaders liked a spot of WoW every so often.

Valid, but I don't see how the AI would have a hard time with infecting the server. I mean, if this thing is a big enough threat to warrant notifing the government...

[NichG]

Can you? I mean, can you really kidnap the president or a CEO, and then use the method on them? How portable would technology be? I would think that like most questionably legal and untested technology in literature, it would be heavy and expensive. What would you need exactly even to do something like this? You'd have to have physical access to the subject, and be able to hook up an interface with the subject brain. The machine would at least be as big as an MRI. It's not like you can just e-mail someone and boom, they're trapped in the game.


This is the biggest sticking point with any scenario that attempts to be realistic. The technology is not going to be portable when first developed. However it does mean that in a realistic scenario, said terrorists are likely to send their own guys in rather than kidnap and try to compel random people.

On the other hand, if the technology is portable, or even remote-usable, then I'd see them going directly against big targets to hold them hostage. I.e. 'Hi Mr. CEO, I'm trapping you in this game until your kidnapping insurance pays me off. Try not to die or you'll get brain damage - non-fatal, but crippling - in real life!'. Or even more interesting if it does a swap and they're using the technology to essentially create mind-controlled (driven by NPC software) people, though at that point why bother keeping the original mind intact? So the former scenario could work if the PCs are all important people.




Valid. Yet, if the supernatual entity is your enemy, and the supernatual entity can rip your concsiousness from your body, smite is the logical conclusion if it wants to defeat the PCs


Supernatural things in folklore almost always have weird limitations. It might have the power to play pranks like swapping around minds, but absolutely no power to reach out and kill something. It might have to play by its own rules to kill someone (like a Sphinx - if you answer the riddle it has to let you go, or like Gawain and the Green Knight - he only kills you if you show cowardice). Or maybe it can only exert its influence via the game, since someone imagined a creature very close to it in making the game, and so it only has that tie to reality. At which point its basically bound by the game mechanics of that creature in the game, and if you can go and somehow permanently kill that thing or get it edited/corrupted out of the game, you've beaten the creature.



Valid, but I don't see how the AI would have a hard time with infecting the server. I mean, if this thing is a big enough threat to warrant notifing the government...

Yeah, there's some truth to this. If you're an AI who can do things like encode people's minds into a game based on their terminal activity, you probably have better things to be doing like hijacking space missions and building backups on the moon than cramming random people into an MMO. Plus the second you tell the players 'you're trapped in an MMO' they're going to say 'Oh, its gotta be a rogue AI!'. More and more I'm leaning towards the supernatural BBEG.

[Doughnut Master]

I've always been a fan of exploring the consciousness of NPCs. Sure, they're just AI, but they're AI that have been programmed to feel want and anger and loss. Think: "Why did you program me to feel pain!?"

The arc of the PC's then would be to eventually come to sympathize with these NPCs and try to free them from their programming shackles.

Thoughts?

[NichG]

So I have to admit to stealing this from a campaign I was in, but the way it went was roughly:

We had no real awareness that we were in a game. However, there were things that hinted at it - we ended up with a home base that had a lot of shops and certain gamey sorts of things like a combinatoric jewelry shop, a smithy with a smith who could make anything with his hammer and forge, including clothing, glassware, or scrolls, a painter's studio where you could paint yourself with a different character build, etc. We also encountered various 'Asura' who from bits and pieces we collected we were supposed to kill in order to save our worlds.

However, several of the Asura didn't really seem to care about fighting us, and some even tried to make peaceful contact. Whenever they did so, weird (both characteristically and game-mechanically) creatures called 'Daemons' showed up to interrupt.

Basically, the Asura were the game bosses and we were AIs who were used to design and playtest an online game. We eventually started making peace with the Asura and in general messed with things until the 'game designers' tried to force our hand (and then the plot spiraled out elsewhere).

[Machinekng]

This is the biggest sticking point with any scenario that attempts to be realistic. The technology is not going to be portable when first developed. However it does mean that in a realistic scenario, said terrorists are likely to send their own guys in rather than kidnap and try to compel random people.

Maybe. If they don't think it's possible to retrive a conscious, and they don't really need trained people (as in my virus scenario), anyone off the street would work.



On the other hand, if the technology is portable, or even remote-usable, then I'd see them going directly against big targets to hold them hostage. I.e. 'Hi Mr. CEO, I'm trapping you in this game until your kidnapping insurance pays me off. Try not to die or you'll get brain damage - non-fatal, but crippling - in real life!'. Or even more interesting if it does a swap and they're using the technology to essentially create mind-controlled (driven by NPC software) people, though at that point why bother keeping the original mind intact? So the former scenario could work if the PCs are all important people.


Valid. Hoever accessability is always a problem. If kidnapping people and traping them inside games was a common occurance, you'd expect security to plan for this sort of thing.



Supernatural things in folklore almost always have weird limitations. It might have the power to play pranks like swapping around minds, but absolutely no power to reach out and kill something. It might have to play by its own rules to kill someone (like a Sphinx - if you answer the riddle it has to let you go, or like Gawain and the Green Knight - he only kills you if you show cowardice). Or maybe it can only exert its influence via the game, since someone imagined a creature very close to it in making the game, and so it only has that tie to reality. At which point its basically bound by the game mechanics of that creature in the game, and if you can go and somehow permanently kill that thing or get it edited/corrupted out of the game, you've beaten the creature.

Valid.

Yet I don't really like the idea of a supernatural crature pulling this off. I mean, the concept works, but I think that it's kind of odd to use it. The whole point of using an MMO as a setting is to allow the players to play themsleves, without randomly teleporting them to magic land.

Adding a supernatural element just ruins it for me.

EDIT:

I've always been a fan of exploring the consciousness of NPCs. Sure, they're just AI, but they're AI that have been programmed to feel want and anger and loss. Think: "Why did you program me to feel pain!?"

The arc of the PC's then would be to eventually come to sympathize with these NPCs and try to free them from their programming shackles.

Thoughts?

Interesting. It would make a good subplot.

[NichG]

Maybe. If they don't think it's possible to retrive a conscious, and they don't really need trained people (as in my virus scenario), anyone off the street would work.


This still feels kinda hokey to me. I mean, its along the lines of 'I've kidnapped your wife, go and rob that bank for me!'. Random guys off the street aren't going to be competent at something specialized, and random guys off the street that are under duress are going to be actively resisting and somewhat out of your control due to the situation, so its just asking for the plan to fail.



Valid. Hoever accessability is always a problem. If kidnapping people and traping them inside games was a common occurance, you'd expect security to plan for this sort of thing.


I've been operating under the assumption that this event is the first this technology or whatever it is has ever been seen. Otherwise, the PCs can be expected to know about it 'This is like that thing on the news...', reducing the startling nature of the event and the wonder of it. As such, the reason this would happen is exactly because its something security wasn't able to prepare for.



Valid.

Yet I don't really like the idea of a supernatural crature pulling this off. I mean, the concept works, but I think that it's kind of odd to use it. The whole point of using an MMO as a setting is to allow the players to play themsleves, without randomly teleporting them to magic land.

Adding a supernatural element just ruins it for me.


I think it only works if its subtle. If right off the bat its 'Haha, I'm supernatural and I'm messing with you!' then it'll feel cheap. If on the other hand the players aren't sure whether this is a technological glitch with their new immersive interfaces ('Can things like this happen?!'), some sort of AI thing, evil corporation, etc, and you keep them guessing, then it'll be all the more freaky when they finally uncover the cause.

If you want a more sci-fi take on it, I'd say do the following:

- Neural chip technology has just come out a few years ago. Now you can wire input from the computer right to your senses and wire your own muscles/etc to controls for a character. The PCs have been chipped and have gotten used to the technology, but current scientific knowledge is insufficient for such things as a personality upload or even real AI.

- The players find they can't log out of the game. Initial attempts to get help indicate that there might be some glitch with their neural chip hardware, so they're likely sitting in their home with all their inputs and outputs wired to the computer. Someone (NPC) volunteers to try a forced boot from the game, but doesn't come back on. When police are sent to his physical location, they find him completely unaware of the situation - he logged out hours ago, etc.

- The authorities want to boot the PCs off since what the heck is going on there, but some allies on the outside hear about it first and make a gate to an illegal server running the MMO under their control to save them. After all, these are free-range AIs and that should be studied! Or something... The PCs have to run before they're disconnected and thereby 'killed'.

At this point, the BBEGs are the authorities who essentially want to kill the rogue AIs, and its all about survival. After some stability has been gained, the PCs can try to find out how they were copied in initially. It could be:

- A nascent AI was trying to get human data so that it could better understand/emulate human behavior patterns. Or even, it created this scenario as a trial to see whether it would be hunted for attempting to make contact with humanity.

- This was an experiment in immortality. Always try those on someone else first. (stolen from a series of books where a bunch of rich guys bent on immortality were running a huge simulated universe on the networked brains of a thousand children.)

- Software implemented to try to reduce the apparent effect of lag on the neural interfaces basically works by training itself to predict the user's next action so the server can precompute the likely results. The software was better than anyone expected, and 'predicted' the entirety of the player's behavior and persona based on their play. A bit far fetched, but maybe not so much with direct neural data available.

[Divide by Zero]

I've been operating under the assumption that this event is the first this technology or whatever it is has ever been seen. Otherwise, the PCs can be expected to know about it 'This is like that thing on the news...', reducing the startling nature of the event and the wonder of it. As such, the reason this would happen is exactly because its something security wasn't able to prepare for.

Right. In the background for Shadowrun, it says that in the early days of decking, the security systems of the time were completely incapable of handling human threats, so they were totally powerless until security companies were able to devise ways of combating them. I imagine it'd be something like that.

[Prime32]

- The authorities want to boot the PCs off since what the heck is going on there, but some allies on the outside hear about it first and make a gate to an illegal server running the MMO under their control to save them. After all, these are free-range AIs and that should be studied! Or something... The PCs have to run before they're disconnected and thereby 'killed'.As an alternative, they have access to a hack/glitch which lets them change their details under certain conditions, making them hard to track.


After some stability has been gained, the PCs can try to find out how they were copied in initially. It could be:

- A nascent AI was trying to get human data so that it could better understand/emulate human behavior patterns. Or even, it created this scenario as a trial to see whether it would be hunted for attempting to make contact with humanity.

- This was an experiment in immortality. Always try those on someone else first. (stolen from a series of books where a bunch of rich guys bent on immortality were running a huge simulated universe on the networked brains of a thousand children.)

- Software implemented to try to reduce the apparent effect of lag on the neural interfaces basically works by training itself to predict the user's next action so the server can precompute the likely results. The software was better than anyone expected, and 'predicted' the entirety of the player's behavior and persona based on their play. A bit far fetched, but maybe not so much with direct neural data available.Why not all three? The prediction software was developed by a guy secretly looking for immortality, and is basically a toned-down version of his goal. An AI realises what happens if you remove the limiters, and perfects it.