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It's interesting that he references GURPS given that it was created by Steve Jackson Games, who were also raided by a Federal Agency and had their computers tak
by scandox 10y ago
It's interesting that he references GURPS given that it was created by Steve Jackson Games, who were also raided by a Federal Agency and had their computers taken away without cause (Secret Service, I think). It is covered in Bruce Sterling's excellent The Hacker Crackdown http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
- evgen 10y agoYes, it was by the Secret Service and yes they were overly excessive in what they grabbed (e.g. everything plugged into an electrical socket that was not involved in food production), but even Loyd would probably admit by now that it was not entirely without cause...
- scandox 10y agoYes perhaps it is better to use a term like "heavy handed". Current situation seems so much more adversarial and frightening than what Sterling describes.
- pmoriarty 10y agoYeah, these days you're lucky if you don't have an armored vehicle crash through the wall of your house and you or your family don't get "accidentally" shot during a police raid.
- mcv 10y agoThere was of course a reason why the Secret Service raided them, but that doesn't mean it was a good reason. At the time, everybody was shocked and the courts sided with Steve Jackson, but with the past 15 years, I can imagine people are now more used to this kind of invasive, ill-justified raids by law enforcement organizations, and more willing to accept this as normal behaviour.
- evgen 10y agoIt was a good reason even if they were incorrect regarding their suspicions, and they did not have either the proper paperwork to enter the premises or the legal authority to remove what they did. As someone personally involved in the whole affair I can assure you that it was considered excessive and the Secret Service rightly deserved losing that case.
- aetherson 10y agoWhat was the cause?
- evgen 10y agoLoyd was a bit of a hacker (</understatement>) and was working with SJG to write a cyberpunk GURPS module. As a part of operation sun devil the secret service raided a bunch of hackers, including Loyd. When they found the material related to the game and asked about it he mentioned that he was writing a game for this company down the road. The agents headed over, basically broke in, and seized a ton of gear including an Amiga that was running a BBS and also held a bunch of printing files and markup for the game. The story was later changed to them thinking that the BBS might have had a backdoor to a hacker board, but this was complete BS and the collection of what was seized showed that the agents on the scene had no idea what they were doing.
- mcguire 10y agoYou missed the part about GURPS Cyberpunk being a "hacker manual". Ah, Operation Sundevil.
- e12e 10y agoIt's a great source book, despite (because?) they had to redo almost all the work from memory. The foreword is a nice bonus that adds nicely to the theme. The GURPS ruleset is interesting - but I much prefer variants on White Wolf's Storyteller system. But the sourcebooks were great. Next to GURPS Cyberpunk, there's the wildly dark and entertaining "Cthulupunk" that merges one part of a mix of Gibson, Sterling and Vinge with one part Lovecraft. It can be challenging to keep players alive (or at least animate) through a session, though.