I don't insist on it being the "One Truth".

Then you might want to have rephrased your sentences where you say, at the top of this page, that the communications system are "NOT WiFi" and Star Wars is "NOT an Information Society". Those are statements of supposed fact, not opinion.

They are indeed statements of fact. And as twice stated explicitly, I am writing a reply from GM to our player who is trying to impose their assumptions about technology onto the Star Wars setting. The post you quote above about "NOT an Information Society" begins at the very first line with:

"I explain things to players who expect it to be as follows:"

Ah, I wasn't quoting that post (bottom of page 1), I never saw it. I was referring to the next one (top of page 2), which yes, I then took out of context (a context I wasn't aware of). So, sorry for the confusion. It was the absolute certainty that captured my attention.

I must say, the whole "WiFi" parsing precision seems disingenuous to the purpose of the conversation. The mechanics are entirely irrelevant to the function as it relates to being able to establish remote communications, especially in the context of how this all relates to an RPG.

R2D2 can't connect wirelessly to control the trash compactor for the reason I gave above: because of security protocols, this is almost impossible to do anyway, almost all hacking requires being on the inside. It's not necessary to explain it as an artifact of the absence of wireless communications in the SW universe.

Now who is saying what is and isn't? The argument above is a logical fallacy, namely absence of evidence being taken as evidence of absence. Ironic given the imprecation of such being the main charge you are levelling at me.

Fine, with greater precision: "R2D2 might not have been able to..." etc.

(Also...it's " moot ," not "mute.")

"It's a "Moo" point. It's like a cow's opinion. It doesn't matter. It's Moo."

Not sure who said it, but as someone here said, 'the HoloNet is only good for Imperial propaganda and pictures of cats'.

I describe it as being like the internet of the early 90's, on a very slow dial-up connection...

This from someone who has never owned an I-phone and who finds using a computery thing instead of rolling physical dice to be an anathema. All that nonsense is banned from my table - I want my players' attention fixed on me.

I said it

So far in Star Wars: Rebels, the Holonet is just an imperial controlled/mandated news source that occasionally gets scrambled by dissidents to broadcast a pirate message about the naughtiness of the empire. That sounds exactly how I want my Holonet to behave in the GCW era.

Why did no one try to establish some kind of rebel holonet to avoid the Empire's naughtiness?

Who says they didn't? They did still manage to coordinate interstellar forces, and you can't exactly do that with shuttles. Any organization operating across star systems would have a vested interest in ensuring their own lines of communication weren't compromised...any of the Hutts, Pykes, Black Sun, Corporate Sector, Corellia, etc might have financed a network of some kind and leased bandwidth. And

The media simply doesn't go into it...it's not important to the stories. It's only important to us when we want to flesh out the minutia of living in that world.

Hey, here's a good question: do you think the Star Wars universe has BitCoin? *ducks and runs away...*

I suspect the Rebel Alliance did what the Banking Clan did namely equipping some of their ships with extensive long range communications gear allowing them to bypass the Holonet. They might have even used some of the same ships to do it because serving as a long range comm hub that bypassed the Holonet was one of the original purposes of the Banking Clan's Munificent -class Star Frigates and in the EU some of those survived to join the Alliance fleet while others went pirate with many of those probably working for larger Underworld groups like the Hutts and Black Sun.

Who says they didn't?

The media simply doesn't go into it...it's not important to the stories. It's only important to us when we want to flesh out the minutia of living in that world.

No game books mentioned it in the past? I was expecting that someone would point out something. I don't mean to be a meanie-pants but "Who says they didn't?" isn't giving me happy feelings. My dad is a walking wookiepedia but if I go to my him, I'm in for at least an hour of Star Wars talk. Please don't make that happen to me...

We know the Alliance had some long range comm stations that they had built, with Generis being the primary one for much of the Outer Rim. Other then that and stories about it being reasonably easy to access the Holonet without Imperial knowledge or permission and the fact that not every Alliance ship had long range comm gear I don't remember much being said about Alliance communications

What do you think credits are? They are a digital currency.

Ships have an engine signature. So while they are moving the engine gives off something that identifies it.

THAT'S straight from a Star Trek movie (Star Trek IV?). It's the one with the cloaked, rogue Klingon ship and they alter a torpedo to home in on the exhaust from the cloaked ship's engines. Wrong genre, sorry.

Nope! Right genre Transponder codes were used to identify a ship. I would recommend reading up on the Bearau of Ships & Services (BoSS)—lots of great adventure hooks therein.

Ah! You said "the engine gives off something". Of course each ship gives off a Transponder Code. I see that those come from the engine, as well. In Star Trek the engines gave off fumes that were traceable. In both cases, the "engine gives off something". Touche.

Who says they didn't?

The media simply doesn't go into it...it's not important to the stories. It's only important to us when we want to flesh out the minutia of living in that world.

No game books mentioned it in the past? I was expecting that someone would point out something. I don't mean to be a meanie-pants but "Who says they didn't?" isn't giving me happy feelings. My dad is a walking wookiepedia but if I go to my him, I'm in for at least an hour of Star Wars talk. Please don't make that happen to me...

lol. All I meant was that it's a big black void in the lore. If you want to run a game where the rebels had their own network, there's really no reason to say they couldn't have it.

Any suggestions for how to distinguish the Holonet and such things in gameplay from what we are familiar with on our smartphones & computers?

Easy - the holonet is CRAZY expensive. Unless you have the backing of a major government, real time calls across the galaxy is beyond the pocket book of the average PC.

There, problem solved.

Any suggestions for how to distinguish the Holonet and such things in gameplay from what we are familiar with on our smartphones & computers?

Easy - the holonet is CRAZY expensive. Unless you have the backing of a major government, real time calls across the galaxy is beyond the pocket book of the average PC.

There, problem solved.

Why did no one try to establish some kind of rebel holonet to avoid the Empire's naughtiness?

The CIS used to have their shadowfeeds using hijacked transponders and a fair bit of hacking power, (like entire teams).

But all they did really was run lots of propoganda through it as well to most of their allied planets and a few other unfortunates just trying to watch Hutt Ball in peace.

Why did no one try to establish some kind of rebel holonet to avoid the Empire's naughtiness?

Most likely because the Holonet requires a lot of really really expensive satellites. They instead hack the holonet and broadcast what they want over the news. We see this in Rebels.

Why did no one try to establish some kind of rebel holonet to avoid the Empire's naughtiness?

That's an interesting question. I also especially like referring to all the evils and crimes of Palpatine and his state as "naughtiness".

A rebel "holonet" would need to remain secret and secure and be portable / flexible. I think those would be the critical design goals. None of those things lend themselves well to centralized management and control. Instead you want decentralization and the ability to quickly add or remove parts of the net as new groups join or existing ones are compromised. Trust is also a major issue.

Maybe they run it more like a "sneaker net". I.e. they're passing information around physically - either on some sort of disc / memory block, or loading it into droids (which seems to be a preferred method). Such an approach would be much slower in spreading information than the Holonet. But also much more secure and safe. People would get captured, and some information would be lost, but the channel of communication would end with their capture - it wouldn't remain open.

Read up on how spies in the cold war passed information. Moscow protocols is a good place to look. A lot of using dead drops so neither party knows the who the other person is.

Ships have an engine signature. So while they are moving the engine gives off something that identifies it.

THAT'S straight from a Star Trek movie (Star Trek IV?). It's the one with the cloaked, rogue Klingon ship and they alter a torpedo to home in on the exhaust from the cloaked ship's engines. Wrong genre, sorry.

Nope! Right genre Transponder codes were used to identify a ship. I would recommend reading up on the Bearau of Ships & Services (BoSS)—lots of great adventure hooks therein.

Ah! You said "the engine gives off something". Of course each ship gives off a Transponder Code. I see that those come from the engine, as well. In Star Trek the engines gave off fumes that were traceable. In both cases, the "engine gives off something". Touche.

The engines do give off something that is how the transponder codes work. The modulate the engines energy signature and are built into the engine so as to be very very difficult to remove or change.

The CIS used to have their shadowfeeds using hijacked transponders and a fair bit of hacking power, (like entire teams).

Actually they had the Munificent Class frigate and the Banking Clan as such which had the necessary equipment to run a separate holonet and/or hack the existing holonet to broadcast propaganda.

So theoretically it's possible, but requires a LOT of infrastructure and/or (as mentioned before) VERY deep pockets.

Probably the Rebellion has a couple of these ships left over and uses them to distribute propaganda or slice into imperial feeds but only to a very limited amount.

I wonder if the trend of expecting to find things electronically is generational? Myself and my players grew up in the eighties and nineties during the Internet's infancy, back when it was considered less reliable than analog sources. None of us think to Google anything when we're playing a game, let alone a Star Wars game. Are your players younger than that, or are they just caught up by the advances in technology?

Oh, we're all Gen-X'ers, not Millennials. We have the same '80's & '90's experiences, but we're pretty astute when it comes to the influences technology has on us as players. I even find myself thinking that finding the Empire's secret base can be as simple as rolling a great computer check. .....then I slap myself. Some things just aren't out there to be had.

Millennials definitely have grown up their whole lives with wifi and internet access everywhere they go. Heaven forbid they ever needed to use a dictionary or a phone book! (Sorry Millennials!) They also have no idea what it's like to live in a dictatorship or Cold War scenario because the schools just don't teach that stuff anymore. A previous post made that point, as well. Our group can relate some Empire activities to living behind the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, or living in Cuba. No problem there.

First, I am a Millennial and born the 80's and I remember how you had to do research prior to the "All Powerful" Internet. Millennials were born from 1980 to 2000. Those born in the First Decade did not grow up their whole lives with Wifi and Internet Access. It wasn't till after 2000 when 41% of the households in the US had both a home computer and internet. So your statement really shows how ignorant you are of any generation let alone Millennials.

I am not sorry to inform you, but Generation X in the US doesn't know what it like to live in a Dictatorship any better than Millinnials. As for your Cold War Scenario that and relating to Empire Activities. Generation X and Millenials in the US are on the same level. Being that Star Wars has as much to do with historical references of the 30's and 40's as it does to the 70's and 80's.

Just because you can't program your VCR doesn't mean someone younger than you does not know or understand the past.

Now I will take on the Topic for the Thread.

The Holonet is a combination of 80's-90's internet and Television. Which is a collection of networks and broadcasting systems. You have smaller individual Holonet's that serve Sectors and Planets. Which would be smaller interconnected local networks of varying sizes. Then you have the Larger General Holonet which is Regulated/Controlled by the Empire. You can consider the information broadcasts similar to National ABC Programing and Local ABC Programing. As for information research it would be related to the Databank which could be available on the General Holonet or only on the smaller ones.

You can also look at it from the prospective that for research the Holonet is like using a Electronic Card Catalog. They electronically can find where to go to get access to the Databank. They might be able to access some of the information, but likely they will have to gain access to that network Directly. Even in our world today there are systems that are on a closed network and you would need to directly connect to gain any type of access.

As for Wireless Communication / Wifi - Having the ability to connect and gain access to most networks with out being physically in that location is possible, but would require more than just connecting to the Holonet. Equipment could be used to transmit the data, but that would require having it installed at a physical access point with direct connection to the Network. So allowing players to slice a computer system from their ship is an option if they are able to setup a way to connect to that network directly. Just going through the Holonet is often not an option unless you are trying to slice the station/planet wide news feed.

Why did no one try to establish some kind of rebel holonet to avoid the Empire's naughtiness?

I can give a couple of educated guesses:

Guess 1: The Holonet is a very, very expensive operation that requires equipment the Rebellion can't afford.

Guess 2: Holonet broadcasts put out a very powerful signal that the Empire could easily trace. Therefore it's safer and more cost effective to hijack the "airwaves" to send out counter-propaganda. If you're watching SW: Rebels, there's an example of this in the episode "Empire Day".

Star Wars doesn't make sense in a lot of ways if you think about it too hard or dig too far down into the way things "work".

Whether it's the plot or the setting itself at a certain point it doesn't hold together well. (This is true of most if not all creations like Star Wars - take comics for instance).

If I had players pushing this angle I'd simply state that this is not the way the Star Wars setting works. The internet as we know it simply doesn't exist. There are networks but you have to access computers physically connected to them ("Yes, you can get into the military base network to find out where the McGuffin is being held, but you cant do it remotely").

Anything important enough to know by making a knowledge check or hacking into a computer database is going to require more effort than just easy remote access or looking it up online. That's the way interesting stories work.

I'd let the layers make use of the things we see in the movies and make simple short inferences from them but not construct vast systems we don't see in the movies.

The death star plans were beamed to Leia but she copied the plans to R2. So beaming information works. But is the technology limited to really short range? Or was the person beaming them in a situation where they could only beam it a short distance? Or were the plans beamed a long way to Leia? Playing with this idea is left up to GMs and players. There's something there in the setting and there's utility in it.

The basic principle is that technology is a PLOT device.

It's supposed to create story. Players and GMs can be creative in how it can be cleverly applied but the point is to create more or interesting story and not sidestep story or find some "loophole" that allows for overly powerful effects (taking out star destroyers from you laptop at StarWarsBucks).

The death star plans were beamed to Leia but she copied the plans to R2. So beaming information works. But is the technology limited to really short range? Or was the person beaming them in a situation where they could only beam it a short distance? Or were the plans beamed a long way to Leia? Playing with this idea is left up to GMs and players. There's something there in the setting and there's utility in it.

Good point. And the whole adventure started because the beaming of those plans was traceable, so the Empire found Leia. Whereas if they had been taken physically to her, the whole mess could have been avoided

And let's not forget the tracking beacon on the Millenium Falcon. That was galaxy-spanning wireless technology!

Could be that wireless tech exists, but is traceable and sets off intrusion alarms and such. Like the tech in Star Wars is advanced to the degree of making wireless access obsolete for any practical, story-impacting purposes. "It's just not worth the risk," unless there is no other option.

The death star plans were beamed to Leia but she copied the plans to R2.

I honestly don't remember that in the movie. I suspect this is from some non-canon source?

And let's not forget the tracking beacon on the Millenium Falcon. That was galaxy-spanning wireless technology!

A tracking beacon is no more illustrative of hacking or wireless networking than any real world radio device that gives off a signal so it can be located. Such things predate the Internet. Sputnik did this and you could hardly log into a user account on that!

The death star plans were beamed to Leia but she copied the plans to R2.

I honestly don't remember that in the movie. I suspect this is from some non-canon source?

Directly from script:

VADER: Where are those transmissions you intercepted?

*Vader lifts the Rebel off his feet by his throat.*

VADER: What have you done with those plans?

And let's not forget the tracking beacon on the Millenium Falcon. That was galaxy-spanning wireless technology!

A tracking beacon is no more illustrative of hacking or wireless networking than any real world radio device that gives off a signal so it can be located. Such things predate the Internet. Sputnik did this and you could hardly log into a user account on that!

First, I'm not arguing for space-Google. I'm just giving examples of the kinds of wireless communication that exists in the Star Wars universe. I was addressing Jedi Ronin's post directly, not the OP. Simple wireless communication and data transmission is a far cry in functionality from cell networks and Amazon.

Second, "hacking" does not imply "user accounts." A hacker worth his salt will be able to function in the absence of such "user-level" interfaces. So of course sputnik did not have user accounts...but that doesn't mean that it didn't have functions.

Third, I'm not sure sputnik is a good example of Star Wars technology, since it was launched in 1957 and was incredibly unsophisticated even by 1970's standards. It also communicated via radio waves, not in a near-instantaneous faster-than-light manner in which these Star Wars devices operate. It also only really had two functions: transmitting radio data and monitoring temperature.

The death star plans were beamed to Leia but she copied the plans to R2.

I honestly don't remember that in the movie. I suspect this is from some non-canon source?

It's in A New Hope.

Vader questions Captain Antilles about transmissions he intercepted.

He confronts Leia about transmissions being beamed to the ship by rebel spies.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/quotes

I think I first noticed re-watching it this year so it's only taken me most of my life pay attention to that detail. =)

The death star plans were beamed to Leia but she copied the plans to R2. So beaming information works. But is the technology limited to really short range? Or was the person beaming them in a situation where they could only beam it a short distance? Or were the plans beamed a long way to Leia? Playing with this idea is left up to GMs and players. There's something there in the setting and there's utility in it.

Good point. And the whole adventure started because the beaming of those plans was traceable, so the Empire found Leia. Whereas if they had been taken physically to her, the whole mess could have been avoided

And let's not forget the tracking beacon on the Millenium Falcon. That was galaxy-spanning wireless technology!

Could be that wireless tech exists, but is traceable and sets off intrusion alarms and such. Like the tech in Star Wars is advanced to the degree of making wireless access obsolete for any practical, story-impacting purposes. "It's just not worth the risk," unless there is no other option.

Good point about it being traceable. So even if something is as simple as beaming the information to who you want to get it there can be significant story implications, setbacks, complications etc.

Not that every use of technology or using a computer to do something of importance needs to drip with plot development but it shouldn't be a means of completely site-stepping important parts of the story.