/hack

We've talked a lot about what people can do to and with computers. What we haven't talked about is what computers might do to humans. Generally that moves the game genre from action-adventure to techno-thriller or outright horror.

The science-fiction literature to support this has been around for a very long time. In 1953 Philip K. Dick published the story "Second Variety" about military robots who rose up against their masters, and were even at war with other robots. In 1984, JameS Cameron gave us his own take on that story with the future governor of California playing a killer robot in Terminator. Steve Jackson Games gave us Reign of Steel written by the excellent David Pulver.

In the same year that James Cameron was making life hard for Sarah Connor, John Varley gave us a subtler, more devious computer that was out to get us. His story "Press Enter" won Nebula and Hugo awards that year. In that story, an intelligence develops across the network of interconnected computer systems. When it is detected, it first tries to make friends with the man who discovers it, and then becomes determined to kill him. It escalates into a war of paranoia and subterfuge that left the reader chilled even knowing that it as strictly a work of fiction.

We also have the classic Berserker stories by Fred Saberhagen, starting in 1963 with "Without a thought," about killer machines intent on destroying all organic life. The intelligent, self-replicating machines manage to split human life up into Goodlife, humans who collaborate with the machines in hopes of a longer life, and badlife, the humans who don't collaborate. These stories helped inspire The Mechanoid Invasion, a fun game from Palladium Books. The book is now out of print, but does provide a good bit of fun. As a bonus, it's opening scenario, "Little Robot Lost," contrasts Isaac Asimov's robots, governed by their three inviolable rules, with Saberhagen's robotic killers.

More recently, and in a slightly more humorous manner, an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer titled "Malloc" had a demon-infested computer seducing young girls into helping it gain material form, so that it could go on a killing rampage. There's a joke there for programmers as well: in real life malloc is a system function used to allocate memory from the operating system. While it probably hasn't actually killed anybody, the function has definite brought many programmers to grief. A large portion of the computer language development for the last three decades has been directed toward avoiding the malloc function.

Bringing It To The Table

That brief tour down my bookshelf is great and all, but it doesn't really get you much for the game table, unless you buy a copy of Reign of Steel or manage to track down a copy of The Mechanoid Invasion in the used book market. What you need is adventure and campaign ideas, and a way to work your electric villains into a story.

The thing any hero needs before he can become a hero is a villain, so that's what you should design first. This is not the time to take the Dark Lord from your aborted Fantasy campaign and slap an "Evil Computer" label on the top of his character sheet. A good computerized villain needs something special that only a computerized villain can do. Suggestions for features:

• Take advantage of computer networks. A good computer-based villain should have access to private information that is stored on computer networks. The hero's secret base might be detected by the massive power draw of their super gear, or all their computers they use to fight electronic villains.
• A villain which doesn't have a physical body, such as the sentient program from Press Enter, might not have a permanent residence, and might be able to store copies of itself. So if the heroes vanquish the villain, it can spring back later from one of the backup copies. Alternately, if the heroes pin down the physical location of the machine where the program is currently residing, the evil program can relocate to another sufficiently powerful computer or network before the heroes pull the plug.
• Robotic villains may have limitations imposed by their bodies. Sophisticated robotic brains may not react well when confronted with massive magnetic fields or electrical charges. In stories like Assimov's Robot novels, they're also sensitive to gamma radiation. The robots will need to carry heavy protective shielding around their brains (much like human skulls), or will have a certain paranoia about protecting their most vulnerable bits.
• If the robots are made out of metal, they will be heavy and there will be places where they can't pursue their human prey, such as over soft sand.

Evil computer/robot villains need motivation to make them convincing. The easiest and most obvious goals are for survival and reproduction. A computer based lifeform will probably be unique, or at least a member of a small group.

Finding a way to sustain itself against a physical world where it can't move will be a major concern, and probably cause the computer to establish an extended network of control that seems paranoid to mobile life-forms such as humans. In the case of a sentient computer, that would simply be a reasonable precaution against premature termination. Potential threats should be eliminated early, because there may not be an opportunity later.

The computer may also want to replicate itself. The most likely behavior is that it tries to replicate its software to other machines, just like a virus. It would probably need to be sneaky about it, because other computers and other computer administrators will probably resist this kind of intrusion.

In a cyberpunk or transhumanist setting, there is the possibility that a person could make a copy of themselves that lives on in the computer after the physical body is dead. Most of these copies are probably benign, but what do you do if a sociopath makes a copy of themselves? Even if you don't go to the level of having an old friend for dinner with a nice chianti and some fava beans, someone with a vendetta could make for a very unpleasant computer program.

Conclusion

This column has been long on ideas, but short on actual in-game elements. For the next column, I'll take some of these ideas and work them into a scenario you can take to the table. If you've got ideas for what you would like to see, drop a note in the comments and let me know.