Electric Ghosts

Just beyond the boundaries of the physical world, touching it and interlaced with it, acting upon and acted upon by it, lies another realm.

No, I'm not talking about some mystical world of hoo-doo, some spiritual realm reached via trances, drug-overdoses or other psychological alterations, full of spirits and beings of power and other mysterious entities and energies.

I'm talking about the world of electronics: the electric hum that underlies everyday life in the modern world, the things that run your car, your computer, your light switches, even your smoke detector and refrigerator; the informational highway that zips along the phone lines from country to country, computer to computer, interlacing the world, whirring along in the middle of the night whether you are awake or not, populated by men and women, a cat or two, and occasionally a clever parrot.

I'm talking about current, amperage and resistance…transistors, capacitors and circuits…I'm talking electronics…electrons…their world, their existence, their reality. Our reality.

Banking, commerce, research, defense, informational gluttony, technological comfort…endless streams of data internal and external: living, breathing, ever-present machines…the background hum of electricity and spreading electro-magnetic fields. A modern wonderland that has banished out primitive fears and superstitions within its embrace.

We used to think that when the lights went out, the ghosts appeared. No, no…we had it all wrong. When the lights come on is when the ghosts come out to play.

Imagine waking up one day and discovering, realizing, that all the data you are working with, all the code you hack, all the buzzing equipment, isn't clean; it isn't pristine and white the way you've been taught technology is, it doesn't obey the rules of logic the way you were shown it does, it isn't a glorious tool and it definitely isn't inanimate.

Machines gather ghosts, and sorcerers can call them out.

All sorcerous rituals utilize technology and electricity in some fashion, whether it be specially designed programs incorporating specific numerical sequences or text, or which send specially coded data, tuning a radio to just the right station, or sequence of stations, posting the right messages on Usenet, or transmitting a series of radio waves at certain frequencies to reach into the grid and touch the electric ghost.

The hours taken to do so are usually bonded in some fashion with classical occult ritual and necessity; thus the sorcerer also delves into knowledge of true names, celestial alignments, power runes, magical numbers and so forth.

Sometimes, an occult-seeming ritual is all sorcery requires, though the presence of various electronic equipment used as props pays homage to the sorcerous necessity for electricity.

Sorcery, despite its technological medium, is essentially horrifyingly alien and classically occult.

Somehow, unexplainably, the spirits of the dead began to speak through the electronic highway, on telephones, through car radios, sometimes televisions or fluorescent lights, and most frequently, computers. Not every dead person, mind you, but a few, maybe more than a few. Somehow, the dead just appear, they're just there, a free-floating mind inside the electrical network that supports modern society. And they aren't alone.

I have text on five sorcerous rituals: Establishment, which allows one to find the sleeping ghosts within a machine; Banishment, which forces the ghosts out of a machine, and destroys both in the process; Binding, which gives real life to ghosts; Containment, which traps a ghost in a specific electrical system; and Punishment, which drains the power from a ghosted system.

As for ghost/demon types, I haven't detailed them yet, however, Parasites play a rather interesting role. Ghost-derived technology...traditional "sorcerous" powers at the price of Humanity.

And also as yet undetailed, the Grid. A virtual wonderland underlying the entire electrical grid...with the right ghost, or the right ghost-tech, you can plug in...and you can plug others in...permanently.

I'm also thinking of altering some of the fundamental mechanic procedures as well; like Humanity's role in summoning or banishment; however, Humanity deals with other fun things...I might utilize it as a measure of "machine vs. flesh."

A ghost's Stamina is the measure of its physical presence; reduce that to 0 and the ghost dissapates...reduce a virtual presence (a sorcerer in the Grid) to a Stamina of 0 and you have a corpse on the other end.

I plan on trying to make the game scalable to any technological period, after the electronic revolution, of course. So, one could run an EG game in the modern day, or in the near-future, or in the far future (Traveler meets Sorcerer). But all that won't come until well after I've gotten the basic conceptual and mechanical issues down. I'm also trying to stay away from presenting a game-world paradigm..."X is happening; X is the reason for Y" and so forth, so I can let players answer that in their own games.

Feel free to respond.

RON EDWARDS:
Now for some comments on "Electric Ghosts"

There is a series of excellent stories by Fritz Leiber about this stuff, including one in which a pistol is a sorcerer's familiar, one in which electricity comes to "git" a guy who's offended it, and another in which a werewolf is a greasy, scungy junk-yard dog type of creature.

I'm also reminded of "The Satisfaction of Black Mariah," one of many not-entirely-successful attempts by Howard Chaykin to turn his adolescent urge to shock into a readable comics story. The title character is a demon/cyber car who kills android hookers ... she eventually ends up getting thoroughly humped (via her gas tank) by a humanoid demon ... and sundry other events.

> All sorcerous rituals utilize technology and electricity in some fashion, ... > Sorcery, despite its technological medium, is essentially horrifyingly alien and classically occult.

Sounds to me as if the Sorcerer rules will handle these ideas just fine.

> I have text on five sorcerous rituals: Establishment, which allows one to find the sleeping ghosts within a machine; Banishment, which forces the ghosts out of a machine, and destroys both in the process; Binding, which gives real life to ghosts; Containment, which traps a ghost in a specific electrical system; and Punishment, which drains the power from a ghosted system.

So basically we've renamed "Contact" as Establishment. Sounds good.

> As for ghost/demon types, I haven't detailed them yet, however, Parasites > play a rather interesting role. Ghost-derived technology...traditional > "sorcerous" powers at the price of Humanity.

Possessors ... taking over a living body, or partnering with it.

Parasites ... inhabiting a living body but not controlling it, more like "infusing" it. This seems like it'd do real well if the definition of "living body" were expanded to include certain sorts of machines.

Passers ... walking around autonomously (doesn't fit, not on immediate consideration).

Inconspicuous ... catch-all category, perhaps too general for the present purpose?

Objects ... now that seems ready-made for this setting, although I've noticed most people have a hard time role-playing and GMing this sort of demon (tendency is to treat them like "magic items").

> And also as yet undetailed, the Grid. A virtual wonderland underlying the entire electrical grid...with the right ghost, or the right ghost-tech, you can plug in...and you can plug others in...permanently.

Has anyone else found this concept to be ultimately sterile? I read Neuromancer when it first came out in book form and thought it was amazing, brilliant, a new kind of SF, etc ... and over the next few years it all wore off on me. Every cyberpunk book and story just re-hashed it or older stuff, and I now wonder if this whole "Tron" thing is just a single-note concept -- you can use it in a story, sounding that single note, and you can beat it real hard and sound the note many times or very loud ... but that's all you can do with it.

My reaction to the whole Grid thing is to keep it as mysterious and ultimately unknowable as the "demon realms" in a more traditional Sorcerer game.

> I'm also thinking of altering some of the fundamental mechanic procedures as well; like Humanity's role in summoning or banishment; however, Humanity deals with other fun things...I might utilize it as a measure of "machine vs. flesh."

Which is fine, especially as it creates a bit of a loop -- Humanity as a game mechanic was derived from the 1st edition of the RPG Cyberpunk anyway. Walter Jon Williams' book Hardwired presents a much more coherent picture of what such a mechanic might be like than the RPG rules, however.

> I plan on trying to make the game scalable to any technological period, after the electronic revolution, of course.

Heh ... and one wonders about stages of said revolution, too .... the TV takes on whole new meaning here ...

RAVEN:
>demon/cyber car who kills android hookers ... she eventually ends up getting thoroughly humped (via her gas tank) by a humanoid demon ... and sundry other events.

That's...very strange.

>So basically we've renamed "Contact" as Establishment. Sounds good.

Actually, it sort of replaces "Contact" *and "Summoning"...there was too much overlap for both to still be viable. The reasoning is that since ghosts are "just" electrical energy guided by a mind, it isn't so much that it can be summoned because once awake it can already go wherever it wants in the grid.

The two worlds are inseperable...the electrical "world", the grid, is simply a part of our world, no need to bring a ghost across barriers from the "ghost realm" or "demon realm" into our world. It's there, it's conscious, it wants to stay awake.

>Possessors ... taking over a living body, or partnering with it.

Hrm...you just gave me an idea for Possessors. I think I can use the cool material I developed that I wasn't sure fit before!

"I saw static in his eyes...I backed away, that wasn't Assistant Program Director Skinny. He...it, the thing inside him...smiled at me and I could smell the ozone in the air. I glanced at his desk and it confirmed my realization: electrodes and dark glasses were wired to the machine, and I recognized the Sanskrit inscription -- -- 'Just the man I've been looking for,' the thing inhabiting Skinny said, breaking my concentration and staring at me with white, static-filled eyes."

>Parasites ... inhabiting a living body but not controlling it, more like "infusing" it. This seems like it'd do real well if the definition of "living body" were expanded to include certain sorts of machines.

Indeed, I was thinking "cybernetic implants," "nanites" and so forth (nanites might also make a decent possessor).

I'm not certain what you mean by "certain sorts of machines", could you expand?

>Passers ... walking around autonomously (doesn't fit, not on immediate consideration).

Not really. I thought about it as well, and it boils down to a possessor...though one might consider androids or cyborgs or robots as certain types of Passers (and it fits one of the theme questions..."Where does man end and machine begin?"), though some only in certain future technological eras.

I'm really struggling with the idea of AI...there's already ghosts in the machine...is AI bringing them out, or does it bring a whole new depth to the scenario...are you creating a mind for something that already has one, creating machines inhabited by Posessors?

>Inconspicuous ... catch-all category, perhaps too general for the present purpose?

Yep; I thought through this myself and concluded that ALL demons are inconspicuous if you have no Lore.

>Objects ... now that seems ready-made for this setting, although I've noticed most people have a hard time role-playing and GMing this sort of demon (tendency is to treat them like "magic items").

The way around this, I've found, is that when your Objects talk back to you, you don't view them so much as tools or magic items. Especially when you keep in mind that every Object is a ghost, and every ghost wants *something, even if they can't or don't communicate verbally (After all, when your laptop starts e-mailing you...).

Part of the theme underlying 'Electric Ghosts' is that everything familiar around you...really isn't. Everytime you use your computer, open your fridge, turn on your lights, something is watching that you can't see. Your tools...aren't.

In the end, who's the tool? Who's the user?

>Has anyone else found this concept to be ultimately sterile? I read Neuromancer when it first came out in book form and thought it was amazing, brilliant, a new kind of SF, etc ... and over the next few years it all wore off on me. Every cyberpunk book and story just re-hashed it or older stuff, and I now wonder if this whole "Tron" thing is just a single-note concept -- you can use it in a story, sounding that single note, and you can beat it real hard and sound the note many times or very loud ... but that's all you can do with it.

Every story that has ever been written, has been written before. There's really nothing more in literature than Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Creature, Man vs. Himself...the point is the details and the Grid is really nothing more than a means to an end, another piece of technology, another environment, another creature. The story, after all, is about the man.

Maybe no one has bothered to look at the 'Net anyway except the way they were shown. Rather like the old, "Knight slays the Dragon", that's one note as well, but you can do things with it, lots of things with it, you just have to change the music a bit.

>My reaction to the whole Grid thing is to keep it as mysterious and ultimately unknowable as the "demon realms" in a more traditional Sorcerer game.

Nah, I have something else planned for the Grid. You'll see a bit of the Neuromancer/Cyberpunk-style 'web, but there will be a mix of something else to keep it fresh; remember the catchline for 'Electic Ghosts': "Sorcery, despite its technological medium, is essentially horrifyingly alien and classically occult."

>Walter Jon Williams' book Hardwired presents a much more coherent picture of what such a mechanic might be like than the RPG rules, however.

I'll have to see if I can find it.

>Heh ... and one wonders about stages of said revolution, too .... the TV takes on whole new meaning here ...

"Nick at Nite", anyone?

RON EDWARDS:
Still on the whole cyber-sorcerer thing.

Regarding Establishment: > Actually, it sort of replaces "Contact" *and "Summoning"...there was too much overlap for both to still be viable.

That works. I can think of a lot of situations where the two rituals are pretty much the same thing.

> >Parasites .... > Indeed, I was thinking "cybernetic implants," "nanites" and so forth (nanites might also make a decent possessor).

Ah good, that works too.

> I'm not certain what you mean by "certain sorts of machines", could you expand?

Well, I was thinking of a given mechanical object being a "body," and the demon-thing being a parasite on IT (no human body involved). So that one might have a car or whatever that, when all is said and done, is still just a hunk of material -- but it DOES harbor a parasite, an entity that lives within it and bestows certain abilities to it.

>though one might consider androids or cyborgs or robots as certain types of Passers (and it fits one of the theme questions..."Where does man end and machine begin?"), though some only in certain future technological eras.

That's true, but I think that issue makes far more sense in a wholly material (non-magical) setting -- that's why I wrote a whole new game for it when I got interested (The Human Machine).

> I'm really struggling with the idea of AI...there's already ghosts in the machine...is AI bringing them out, or does it bring a whole new depth to the scenario...are you creating a mind for something that already has one, creating machines inhabited by Posessors?

I think AI is a big dead end, both scientifically and narratively. It's turned out to be wholly useless in modeling actual behavior, and the notion that computer networks and so on are harboring some new "mind" a la Neuromancer is dead in the water. The 80s are over; let's move on.

> Part of the theme underlying 'Electric Ghosts' is that everything familiar around you...really isn't. Everytime you use your computer, open your fridge, turn on your lights, something is watching that you can't see. Your tools...aren't. > In the end, who's the tool? Who's the user?

Excellent. This should be right up front for all to see.

I'm looking forward to seeing your Grid stuff, in hopes of being pleasantly surprised.

RAN HARDIN:
> I think AI is a big dead end, both scientifically and narratively. It's turned out to be wholly useless in modeling actual behavior, and the notion that computer networks and so on are harboring some new "mind" a la Neuromancer is dead in the water. The 80s are over; let's move on.

Have to disagree, here. I can't remember the name of the project, but there is a group that has gone back to analog processing to create AI bugs -- as in insects -- that can traverse unfamiliar territory, react to threats, and sport amazingly complex behavior. No, they don't act *human,* but the idea of non-human AI seems a rich one to mine... hmm, Philip K. Dick comes to mind, but I can't remember the name of the story. Anyway, I think the AI concept is a little more substantial than the sort of superintelligence concept from "way back" in the 80's.

RAVEN:
>Well, I was thinking of a given mechanical object being a "body," and the demon-thing being a parasite on IT (no human body involved). So that one might have a car or whatever that, when all is said and done, is still just a hunk of material -- but it DOES harbor a parasite, an entity that lives within it and bestows certain abilities to it.

Hrm, interesting idea. I hadn't thought of it, but cliche "the haunted radio" idea might work here...plug it into any car and you have yourself a possessed vehicle. (insert Knight-Rider theme song here)

>That's true, but I think that issue makes far more sense in a wholly material (non-magical) setting -- that's why I wrote a whole new game for it when I got interested (The Human Machine).

Perhaps it might, then again, I'm trying to confuse and break down barriers. After all, what's to seperate magick from technology when you really get right down to it? There's the whole "Sufficiently advanced technology..." quip, and, in EG, there's the realization sorcerers have that technology only *really works for you when you perform these bizzare, illogical actions...magic.

There isn't just a ghost IN the machine...the ghost IS the machine...or maybe the machine is the ghost...you don't know, you can't tell. As well, you've got to wonder about the ghosts...how is it human spirits are trapped inside the machine? Are they even human spirits? If not, what are they?

RAVEN:
>I think AI is a big dead end, both scientifically and narratively. It's turned out to be wholly useless in modeling actual behavior, and the notion that computer networks and so on are harboring some new "mind" a la Neuromancer is dead in the water. The 80s are over; let's move on.

Whoa, you're treading on "sacred" territory for me.

I happen to be a rather big AI buff, and think it holds quite a bit of potential for advancement, especially scientifically. Once we reach the point of creating an intelligence (I hesitate to call them "Artificial", since any intelligence really shouldn't be construted as "not real"...intelligence is intelligence, manufactured or not (thus "MI" might be a better term)), it means we have reached an important point in our knowledge about the still more-or-less mysterious basic workings of the human mind/brain.

Perhaps in "the 80's" folks went overboard and thought we could manage to do it with the tech. level available then, but I see that merely as having been youthful overenthusiasm masking lack of real knowledge of the complexity and details necessary to accomplish the undertaking. Now, with a firmer understanding of the complexity of the task, we've managed to model very basic human emotional stimuli responses on a machine, through a robotic face; certainly nowhere close to a scientific "dead-end". The possibilities in the field are still very rich.

In fact, should we reach the point where we can model an intelligence on a computer, we are that much closer to storing our personalities and intelligence on whatever media we happen to use at that point...IMO, a step up in evolution for the species, and a step towards immortality.

(and, BTW, I only just read Neuromancer two weeks ago)

But that's my two cents for the list, and I won't speak of it again, lest we become embroiled in an endless, off-topic discussion.

>Excellent. This should be right up front for all to see.

I'll work it into the opening section.

>I'm looking forward to seeing your Grid stuff, in hopes of being pleasantly surprised.

And I hope you are pleasantly surprised! Your comments helped move it into a new direction; I was already stretching the bounds, but it reminded me of the tech/occult mix I was striving for.