// SPECIALIZED ICE
I’ve decided to write up some examples for Specialized ICE for use in your Sprawl game.
I like to use these especially for creating a sense of consistency and branding in ICE, and being able to define clearly ahead of time what sorts of actions an ICE will take. Because of this, hackers can make much more informed decisions on how they’ll deal with the ICE, or which ICE to target in case of multiple being present in a scene.
Hope you like them! Don’t take their ‘rules’ too strictly and mod to your hearts content.
Great work, Rick!
There’s lots of inspiration for ICE like this from the Netrunner LCG too, for anyone who has that game handy.
Hmm is there supposed to be a link? It’s G+ fritzing?
Never mind. Got it.
Mostly good, but Whistleblower feels a little over the top for ICE… digging up dirt on an intruder and figuring out how to take advantage of it doesn’t sound like something common software would do.
At that point, I’d be thinking “AI”… something actually sentient. Black ICE can fry your brain, but with intelligence behind it, an AI can really mess up your life… just ask Case.
Simon Geard I could see that being the case in vanilla cyberpunk. Mostly I wanted to add something that interacted with Threats.
If it doesn’t work for your game’s tech level, I’d definitely not use it!
I even used to have an ICE called the Sculptor in there that could summon other ICE! In my home game Black ICE is so rare and dangerous, they’re usually hand-crafted, incredibly complex one-of-a-kind programs some tekhead spent years of his life developing. So I tend to make them almost sort of ‘baby AIs’.
Hope you can have fun with the rest!
Rick Sorgdrager
Fair enough… I guess we just have a different view of what ICE does. For me, the line would be that ICE is an threat but not a Threat – it’s a danger while you’re jacked in, but can’t do anything more once you escape.
If I want something that’ll follow them home – something that’ll pursue them beyond the borders of whatever network they found it in… that’s some kind of AI. Maybe not a full-on sentient, but at least, a sophisticated expert system of some form. Mind you, I guess that’s what your “baby AIs” are, right?