Half of my table is either tech dorks on the level of senior network engineer for PayPal and a supervisor for Cybercom-USN, or the other half military vets with multiple combat deployments/decades of tactical experience, and none of us beat each other up over details too badly. Immersion in any fictional/fantastical genre requires buy in by the participants.

It's not a matter of "beating up", it's a matter of "Oh, how does that work?" and wanting more details, more information, more specific.

In the Imperial era, I just play it as if they have everything we have and more, but regulated like today's China. Mostly it's because I have zero interest in trying to frame the boundaries on the issue...they are completely nebulous and there are a lot of them...it just interferes with the story. The last thing I need is to derail a session because the technician wants to "hack" something and we get into a debate about what's "real" in the Star Wars universe.

"Sadly" our gaming group of old consisted of a very technology and science savvy bunch -- if I wanted to mention anything about genetics, for example, I'd have to spend hours and hours doing research, because one of them has masters in botany and entomology. If anything might ever come up regarding computers and networking, I had to put a ton of work before the campaign started establishing how everything worked, because one of them was a programmer and network administrator.

I come by my obsession with hardcore worldbuilding at least in part through far too many session-derailing arguments... and that's also why I sit here and cringe at the "just wing it" or "it's all just set-dressing to serve the narrative" comments that are sometimes made here.

Between my own deep-seated desire for verisimilitude and all those years gaming with those guys, the fake storefronts of a western movie set town, with nothing but some 2x4 bracing behind them, will never be enough.

I went through something like this when a very computer savvy player played a slicer (okay, actually this was Shadowrun and he was playing a decker, but same thing) and he wanted to insert a back door login so he could access a computer system easily in the future. I had him roll for it and he failed, but then he asked how he failed when he could just [insert technobabble here that explained how easy it would be in today's world but it all went completely over my head]. I just said that these computer systems were so different and that one of the things they apparently did when they built this computer code was to make sure that couldn't happen again. That whatever you have to do now is established by the rules, and it doesn't necessarily matter what the player knows about current technology today. At least... in this instance. "Okay, let's move on and we'll talk about it after the session."

It's always awesome trying to have an adult discussion and having someone drop a stupid video link into it like a purposefully loud fart at the dinner table. I'm not even going to bother clicking on whatever that is.

Half of my table is either tech dorks on the level of senior network engineer for PayPal and a supervisor for Cybercom-USN, or the other half military vets with multiple combat deployments/decades of tactical experience, and none of us beat each other up over details too badly. Immersion in any fictional/fantastical genre requires buy in by the participants.

It's not a matter of "beating up", it's a matter of "Oh, how does that work?" and wanting more details, more information, more specifics...

Sounds like you enjoy that, so I'm not being critical. (If you don't, then you shouldn't do it.)

I don't enjoy that unless it's necessary. If it is necessary I can usually do it on the fly, made easier by defaulting to "real world". I think I'm objecting to your suggestion that without that level of detail waiting at your fingertips, the universe and the game immersion lacks substance.

I went through something like this when a very computer savvy player played a slicer (okay, actually this was Shadowrun and he was playing a decker, but same thing) and he wanted to insert a back door login so he could access a computer system easily in the future. I had him roll for it and he failed, but then he asked how he failed when he could just [insert technobabble here that explained how easy it would be in today's world but it all went completely over my head]. I just said that these computer systems were so different and that one of the things they apparently did when they built this computer code was to make sure that couldn't happen again. That whatever you have to do now is established by the rules, and it doesn't necessarily matter what the player knows about current technology today. At least... in this instance. "Okay, let's move on and we'll talk about it after the session."

On the topic of Shadowrun and failing hacking rolls, I still use a generic response when someone fails slicing/hacking:

"You have triggered a tertiary redundant failsafe that was buried in an undetected subsystem. It has locked you out of this terminal."

Anybody who is going to argue with you when faced with language like that is trying to take you down a rabbit hole. Resist!

Even today, physical security, air-gapped computers and hard-wired networking (even to the point of machine address-level restrictions on specific ports on switches) are all aspects of high-level security. While wireless/wi-fi and near field transmission technologies are shown to be present in the SW universe, for truly secure and secret information, physical access is still paramount. I've always played games such that secure and specific functionality was, intentionally, restricted to physical access in certain areas. Combine that with software level restrictions and pass-codes (that can be sliced past once access is secured), and the computer environment is similar to that reflected in the movies and other canon material.

Half of my table is either tech dorks on the level of senior network engineer for PayPal and a supervisor for Cybercom-USN, or the other half military vets with multiple combat deployments/decades of tactical experience, and none of us beat each other up over details too badly. Immersion in any fictional/fantastical genre requires buy in by the participants.

It's not a matter of "beating up", it's a matter of "Oh, how does that work?" and wanting more details, more information, more specifics...

Sounds like you enjoy that, so I'm not being critical. (If you don't, then you shouldn't do it.)

I don't enjoy that unless it's necessary. If it is necessary I can usually do it on the fly, made easier by defaulting to "real world". I think I'm objecting to your suggestion that without that level of detail waiting at your fingertips, the universe and the game immersion lacks substance.

Part of the problem was that falling back on the real world didn't work as well when one of the players knows a lot more about the real-world subject than you do, and you don't want to sound like a bad episode of NCIS or CSI... and you don't want to establish bad precedent in the campaign... or resort to meaningless technobabble that's transparently BS to anyone with a clue.

I had him roll for it and he failed, but then he asked how he failed when he could just [insert technobabble here that explained how easy it would be in today's world but it all went completely over my head].

Easy: there was a security routine in place that he missed that prevented his backdoor thingy from being installed. You can always default to some system interference or the routines of an opposing slicer, even if that opposing slicer isn't always present.

Edit: that's what I get for walking away from a half-typed post...ninja'd!

Part of the problem was that falling back on the real world didn't work as well when one of the players knows a lot more about the real-world subject than you do, and you don't want to sound like a bad episode of NCIS or CSI... and you don't want to establish bad precedent in the campaign... or resort to meaningless technobabble that's transparently BS to anyone with a clue.

Right, but you don't *have* to have an answer...any more than you have to have an answer if the player rips off a Jawa's cloak and asks "What do they really look like?!"

Verisimilitude and immersion will vary from group to group, but if you need to get a PHD just to keep your players engaged I feel sorry for you. It's space fantasy. Any explanation should be whatever you want it to be whether it makes sense in the real world or not. It is enough that I take the time to create the adventures that my players play in. I do not have the time to appease some computer tech's own ideals of how things work. If so, then he can run the game and inject such real world explanations in his game. I can always check my phone for messages while he goes on about such things.

Part of the problem was that falling back on the real world didn't work as well when one of the players knows a lot more about the real-world subject than you do, and you don't want to sound like a bad episode of NCIS or CSI... and you don't want to establish bad precedent in the campaign... or resort to meaningless technobabble that's transparently BS to anyone with a clue.

Right, but you don't *have* to have an answer...any more than you have to have an answer if the player rips off a Jawa's cloak and asks "What do they really look like?!"

It doesn't help that I'm a perfectionist, I'm never really happy with my own work, no matter how much I put into it, there's always something that could be "better". I always feel like I do need an answer, an explanation, a detail, for whatever they ask about.

I've liked the theory that others have posted that sure, they're perfectly capable of doing Wi-Fi or the equivalent super tech version. Unfortunately hackers have become so skilled that wireless just isn't safe anymore. If you want your data super secure you have to hard wire it.

To a degree that's true today. I work for a major school district and we hate Wi-Fi. We've finally put it in the schools, but we try and segregate it from the main networks as much as possible, and admin machines are usually wired.

If you want to hack a super science research lab, or Imperial garrison, you probably have to plug in. That said, if you're just trying to hack somebodies datapad or home PC you might be able to do it over the air. Datapads by necessity are wifi.

One of the reasons you see analog data transmissions in the OT is because the Rebellion is an underground military insurgency. The only "secure" way to get information from A to B is in person.

I read somewhere once where someone asked if we will ever have data transmission faster than physical delivery. The example was if you the biggest hard drive currently on the market, fill it up with data and then began transferring that data from LA to New York - and then at the same time, take a similar hard drive full of the same data, hand it off to a courier and have him catch a flight from LA to NY. Which one would get the data there fastest.

The blog then broke down transmission rates for the past 2 decades, compared to drive sizes. Even with faster transmission, bigger drives with more data meant that the curve stayed more or less the same. The courier, on the other hand was still more efficient - and they projected that the courier would remain so for some while to come.

So yeah, the Death Star plans might have been able to be beamed across the galaxy, but it was probably faster and safer to have Leia do it by hand.

I read somewhere once where someone asked if we will ever have data transmission faster than physical delivery. The example was if you the biggest hard drive currently on the market, fill it up with data and then began transferring that data from LA to New York - and then at the same time, take a similar hard drive full of the same data, hand it off to a courier and have him catch a flight from LA to NY. Which one would get the data there fastest.

The blog then broke down transmission rates for the past 2 decades, compared to drive sizes. Even with faster transmission, bigger drives with more data meant that the curve stayed more or less the same. The courier, on the other hand was still more efficient - and they projected that the courier would remain so for some while to come.

So yeah, the Death Star plans might have been able to be beamed across the galaxy, but it was probably faster and safer to have Leia do it by hand.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes barreling down the highway.

A lot of organizations still manually move and store backup tapes offsite rather then upload them into the cloud. More secure, and it's harder to interrupt the guy in a truck.

Due to a prior discussion here I came up with the following document when trying to answer such questions for my campaign. I tried to bring together all of the communication and data gear available in FFG Star Wars together with what was being discussed by posters in an old thread into something that was consistent and made sense when compared to what we've seen on screen:

InfoTech

Due to a prior discussion here I came up with the following document when trying to answer such questions for my campaign. I tried to bring together all of the communication and data gear available in FFG Star Wars together with what was being discussed by posters in an old thread into something that was consistent and made sense when compared to what we've seen on screen:

InfoTech

*yoink* /stolen

Really good stuff guys, lots of great insight. Let me throw this out for fun and perhaps to pin down one reason to have the matter settled in your game.

A PC is waiting for a ride at, lets say a Chandrila spaceport. He is having a drink when he wonders how the pod races turned out on Tatooine two days before. (Purposefully this inquiry is not security sensitive so Im addressing only the technology end, not legalities)

A. He moves to a table with a computer terminal, pays an access fee and logs on to the Holonet Sports and Entertainment database. Flips through a few pages and comes to the results he is looking for, posted by the Hutt's techies after the races.

B. He moves to a table with a computer terminal, pays an access fee and logs on to the system/planetary database. He sees that the most recent Imperial update is 3 days old so it wont have the results he is looking for yet. A banner informs him the next update is scheduled for that evening so he can check back later.

C. As there is no way to access such information directly, he makes a call or stops by the local news service and pays for the query. The clerk behind the desk tells him he can request the results via Holonet transfer for 10 credits and get a response in under a minute, or use a subspace carrier message for half that price but it will take a few hours for the response to arrive.

Thoughts?

Really good stuff guys, lots of great insight. Let me throw this out for fun and perhaps to pin down one reason to have the matter settled in your game.

A PC is waiting for a ride at, lets say a Chandrila spaceport. He is having a drink when he wonders how the pod races turned out on Tatooine two days before. (Purposefully this inquiry is not security sensitive so Im addressing only the technology end, not legalities)

A. He moves to a table with a computer terminal, pays an access fee and logs on to the Holonet Sports and Entertainment database. Flips through a few pages and comes to the results he is looking for, posted by the Hutt's techies after the races.

B. He moves to a table with a computer terminal, pays an access fee and logs on to the system/planetary database. He sees that the most recent Imperial update is 3 days old so it wont have the results he is looking for yet. A banner informs him the next update is scheduled for that evening so he can check back later.

C. As there is no way to access such information directly, he makes a call or stops by the local news service and pays for the query. The clerk behind the desk tells him he can request the results via Holonet transfer for 10 credits and get a response in under a minute, or use a subspace carrier message for half that price but it will take a few hours for the response to arrive.

Thoughts?

Given the realities of interstellar data movement, especially in the Imperial Era, the latter two options are far more likely.

If anything might ever come up regarding computers and networking, I had to put a ton of work before the campaign started establishing how everything worked, because one of them was a programmer and network administrator.

I’ve been a professional Unix/network/system administrator longer than many people on this forum have been alive.

My first job after college was to work in a classified environment in the basement of the Pentagon, where I had a Top Secret/SCI clearance and I was read onto multiple compartments.

I’ve gotten to a point where I ignore most of the aspects of Star Wars that would disagree with what my own personal experience would be in this field — it’s a movie setting, and most things in movies don’t make a whole lot of sense if you look too closely at them.

There comes a point where you have to be able to shut off those parts of your brain, otherwise you’re just not going to have any fun at all.

A lot of organizations still manually move and store backup tapes offsite rather then upload them into the cloud. More secure, and it's harder to interrupt the guy in a truck.

It’s also easier to get those tapes to “accidentally” fall off the back of the truck. Just ask Iron Mountain.

Thoughts?

Yes.

Seriously, all three of those options make sense from a Star Wars technical perspective.

So, what makes more sense for your story? What makes sense for the particular planet that you’re on today?

So long as the answer to this question doesn’t violate the laws of the Star Wars universe as you have laid it out so far, I would stick to finding out what makes the most sense from the perspective of your story and not worry about the rest.

A PC is waiting for a ride at, lets say a Chandrila spaceport. He is having a drink when he wonders how the pod races turned out on Tatooine two days before. (Purposefully this inquiry is not security sensitive so Im addressing only the technology end, not legalities)

I'd go with A. Chandrila's not a backwater.

For Exhibit A, I offer the TCW episode Lethal Trackdown, where Castus makes a call from Florum (a pirate backwater) to some dive on Coruscant, a real-time two way holographic conversation. If they could do that in the Republic era, they could certainly do it in the Imperial era; and if they could handle such mundane conversations, surely sports results, hosted by major media corporations who have a vested interest in getting the results out, would be even easier to get.

For Exhibit B...well, I don't have an exact exhibit, but if there is any betting on sports in the galaxy, you can be sure the results will widely available. Even if the Empire doesn't make it available, the Hutts will build their own shadow network of transceivers, the better to either collect on betting results, or leverage the ability to know the results before everybody else. A good chunk of the lifeblood of their businesses will depend on it. Watch the movie "The Sting" for a lesson in how timing is everything.

If anything might ever come up regarding computers and networking, I had to put a ton of work before the campaign started establishing how everything worked, because one of them was a programmer and network administrator.

I’ve been a professional Unix/network/system administrator longer than many people on this forum have been alive.

My first job after college was to work in a classified environment in the basement of the Pentagon, where I had a Top Secret/SCI clearance and I was read onto multiple compartments.

I’ve gotten to a point where I ignore most of the aspects of Star Wars that would disagree with what my own personal experience would be in this field — it’s a movie setting, and most things in movies don’t make a whole lot of sense if you look too closely at them.

There comes a point where you have to be able to shut off those parts of your brain, otherwise you’re just not going to have any fun at all.

That part of my brain doesn't turn off. Ever. It's hardwired to "on".

I think you are missing an important part. The Holonet is like the Internet in china at this point in time. It is very very tightly controlled by the empire.