Talinz and Crime 2: Support (Part 2)

Specialist Cybercrime Attachments

Within more well equipped countries, Specialist Cybercrime Attachments (SCAs) are the norm. These are individuals that generally reside within national hubs of police departments and are then assigned out to work as attachments to investigations with extensive technological elements. Within the national departments, individuals might have their own specialisations. Though all are experts in computer science; that alone is such a wide and varied field that one operative is incapable of being suited to all tasks. An SCA worker might be a specialist in cryptography, Talinz programming, electronic warfare, or another related discipline.

The addition of an SCA operative to an investigation is often a source of friction to a working police department. The new operative is often unacquainted with the particular department’s work culture, and frequently these individuals are stereotyped as being unwilling to learn, especially owing to their very temporary residence in each department. In addition, high-profile cybercrime cases have a tendency of granting media overexposure to the specialist operative, leading to ire from some investigators who may do much of the case’s actual legwork.

Nevertheless, these individuals are often invaluable assets to the case at hand. While some cases may merely require the aid of an SCA operative agent remotely from the assigned department, often in longer term or white collar cases, all SCA operatives are given extensive training in order to be capable of being dropped into the field with a firearm response team if the deactivation and extraction of data from Talinz units, rapid data recovery, or entering a protected computer network locally is required. Despite this, it should be noted that in countries which restrict firearms to specialist firearms squads, SCA operatives are not likely to be equipped with any weaponry.

Before an insertion, most SCA operatives are likely to prepare software for the raid. Much of this is bespoke, written using what is known about the target system, exploiting backdoors that are likely to be specific to it. Whilst minor modifications may have to be made in the moment, the actual act of hacking together a useful security program can take hours or even days, and so is almost never done on the spot. When trying to break through a system’s security protocols, these operatives often have their hands full. The squads assigned to work with them sometimes consider these individuals to be ‘dead-weights’, as although they extract necessary data and perform a valuable service, they also do little to support the team in a live-fire situation, with the exception of putting others in danger.

The Mad Hatter Program

Recently, a number of governments have joined an international initiative known as the Mad Hatter Program. Countries without enough Specialist Cybercrime Attachments are loaned individuals convicted of cybercrime offenses, services they provide in exchange for a decrease in their custodial sentence. Typically, this is a decrease of six months for every ten the individual was sentenced, per assignment they perform for the program.

Whilst taking part, individuals are under constant supervision, and are forced to wear a collar that prevents unauthorised interaction with electrical items within a small radius of the wearer. Such a device records the GPS coordinates of the individual, allowing the police to quickly locate and detain a potential escapee. Escapes are rare, though a member of the program having their collar deactivated by an accomplice, and using this as an opportunity to disappear, is not unknown. Well performing members of the program are often offered jobs with their home country’s SCA after they serve their sentence, and when compared to the heavily extended sentences levied against those that escape the program if they are caught, cooperation is heavily incentivised.

Members of the program are generally treated with suspicion and disdain by members of the police force they are pushed towards interacting with, though most members of the program are minor offenders who are likely to be released after the completion of only a few operations. Members of the program tend to be assigned to less dangerous missions than members of the SCA, as this decreases the chances of a betrayal and escape ending badly for the supporting firearms squad. This, if anything, increases the disdain these individuals receive from enforcement authorities, as they are frequently seen as taking the ‘easy’ tasks – when really they are just taking the less lethal. Some countries choose to invert this methodology, instead arguing that such individuals are more ‘expendable’ than their highly trained operatives. This practise is considered distasteful by many of the participant countries in the Mad Hatter program.

  

The Flaws in Fourth

So, with fifth edition D&D on the way, it being the biggest name in our little hobby, I thought it was only fair to wave a fond farewell to fourth with a bit of a retrospective. I’m not normally one to do ‘xyz could have been done better’ opinion posts, especially since I hardly think I am in a position to dole out advice as a critic.

But these things keep on coming up in conversation, so I thought I might as well get it all down on paper.

For a start, I love D&D4. I think it’s an absolutely great RPG. It is and will probably continue to be my favourite iteration of the D&D brand name. It scratches a lot of itches that a lot of other RPGs just don’t manage for me. I love the grid-based tactical combat, I love the party roles, I love the balanced designs of the classes and the way that progressive customisation works in each tier, from theme through to epic destiny. I enjoy the looser, more freeform out of combat options, and I like that in skill challenges they tried to tabulate and reinforce what good GMs have been doing for years. I think the second Dungeon Master’s Guide is one of the best supplements for new GM advice D&D has ever put out.

Due to the relatively short lifespan of D&D fourth edition (2008-2012, taking Menzobarranzan to be the last hardcover 4^th edition release, compared to the 5 year lifespan of 3.5 alone), the fierce competition from Pathfinder, and the noticeably ‘retro’ design aesthetic of the coming 5^th edition, it has come under some attack as an edition that ‘failed’. Whilst it should be noted that fourth edition still made a very large amount of money compared to most RPG systems out there, it has certainly lost its dominant position in the market. So I wanted to spend a short time covering some of the bits and bobs that appeared to me to be missteps during the edition’s lifespan.

1. The OGL and the GSL

Well…. This isn’t 4^th edition’s fault, as it happened during its predecessor, 3.5. The OGL – the Open Gaming License – made it easy for third party publishers to work with and publish for the system. It added a great deal of vitality and variation to 3.5. Ultimately, however, it ended up in Pathfinder, effectively a slightly rebalanced 3.5, which severed the prospective customer base. I have little doubt that had Pathfinder never launched, some that switched to it would have moved on to the ‘New D&D’ in time, with the split being more similar to the 2^nd/3^rd release.

But there was one other licensing problem. The 4^th edition Game System License was notably quite restrictive. Clearly the intention here was to prevent a 4^th edition Pathfinder equivalent from occurring, splitting the player base again come the inevitable 5^th edition. The GSL is remarkably restrictive, and made the production of 4^th edition content quite difficult. The otherwise wonderful character builder software that Wizards provided also refused to support modification, meaning third party content could never be added to an individual’s system. With this, a lot of third party content makers made the move to Pathfinder, whereas they may have been more inclined to support an edition that was, in turn, more willing to support them.

2. Adventure Support

Towards the end of its lifespan, 4^th edition got some brilliant adventure books. Undermountain is great, and the Shadowfell and Menzobarrenzen books do some wonderful things with helping DMs create really evocative environments for players to adventure in. These are most notably location books, not adventures, however.

4^th edition had pretty poor adventure support. Keep on the Shadowfell, as an introductory adventure to D&D, lacked both Dungeons AND Dragons. Flippancy aside, a lot of effort was placed on the combat side of those early adventures, which led to a lot of them feeling like a bit of a slog from meatsack to meatsack, with few interesting NPC interactions and non-combat opportunities written in. This probably contributed fairly heavily to the often-perceived notion that 4^th ed “isn’t an RPG”, which I hear quite regularly. Combat is great in 4^th, but the focus placed on it in those early adventures makes it feel like it can be little else.

D&D editions are often defined by their iconic adventures. Every player remembers their first delve into the Tomb of Horrors, or when they found the Temple of Elemental Evil, or the Keep on the Borderlands. In third edition we returned to the Temple, and we found the Forges of Fury. I think fourth, sadly, lacked any modules of that kind of calibre throughout its lifespan. 

3. Presentation

Fourth got a lot of stick for being ‘video-gamey’. Powers are the oft-ridiculed part of the core experience of the edition. The concept of a fighter possessing once every encounter or once every day resources, however, is not actually a new one. Stunning Fist, for example, is a 3.5 Fighter core feat that gives the fighter a 1/day move for every 4 fighter levels. As a progression of the Tome of Battle classes of 3.5, the Fighter, to me, felt like a natural progression of some of the best elements of 3.5 design.

The real problem with powers, I feel, was in their presentation. The codified power boxes can often easily be expressed in a sentence format, and whilst this might make them slightly less clear to read, it makes them feel less ‘gamey’. I once ran a game for a group of die hard 3.5 fans and, in changing the formatting of 4^th edition powers - and not telling them they were playing 4^th edition - managed to resolve a number of their grievances with the system (At will Manoeuvres were changed to ‘Fighter’s Manoeuvres’, with the wording of say, the ‘Tide of Iron’ power changed to ‘On your turn, you may make a special combat manoeuvre against your target’s AC. On a hit…’ etc.).

The other criticism powers get is that it is almost always preferable to use your powers rather than a dumb cool thing with the environment of the fight. It was a problem I experienced, and one I remedied by including hidden terrain ‘powers’, roughly equivalent to an encounter power, to reward the inventive player. This was later codified in the DMG2, but I think a trick was missed in not including them from the start. They would certainly have helped to alleviate a lot of concerns with the system, and it surely must have been flagged in playtesting.

4. Essentials and the core brand change

When I start this section, I want to make clear: Essentials wasn’t the problem, but rather the marketing. D&D Essentials came out roughly half way through 4^th edition’s lifespan, in late 2010. Within it, it presented a number of simpler classes, and a different format for class features and character growth. While not all these classes are to my taste, they aren’t the problem.

Calling the brand Essentials, and presenting a lot of the new ideas as the ‘new core fighter’, ‘new core wizard’, and so on left a sour taste in the mouth of a number of players, who were worried that Essentials would be D&D 4.5. The presentation of the new Essentials classes as ‘introductory’ or ‘alternative’ builds would have probably garnered more support for the line from the existing player base. Heck, harkening back to the old division of D&D would have been preferable, by calling it ‘Basic 4th’.

The second problem was that once Essentials came out, older classes were left by the wayside as ‘complete’, only receiving support in Dragon. The first two years of 4^th edition relied heavily on the ‘Power’ books – expanding classes with a new build and some new powers that those already in a campaign could easily bolt into their character. Later Essentials and Players Options kits instead focused on introducing new builds that did not interact as heavily with older builds. It presents a number of cool new concepts to play with, but little for the player already in the campaign, with the exception of a page or so of feats. The two non-Psionic classes in the third Players Handbook, the Seeker and the Runepriest, suffer from a severe lack of support, as they only have one book and a few dragon articles to their name. The former, especially, has a number of problems as a class, such that it really needs additional content to adequately fulfil its combat role as well as other controllers.

So as we wave in 5^th edition, and I carry on playing and running 4^th because I enjoy it, I wanted to look back at some of the things I felt it did wrong, because I love it very dearly. The designers put their heart and soul into a game that was, if nothing else, unique among its kind. And it is fun. And I think that is the highest reward that can be given.

Talinz and Crime 2: Support (Part 1)

Police work in the current situation is a demanding and often thankless task. While petty crime has changed little, and carries with it many of the same struggles as the modern day, cybercrime is on the increase, and organised crime has revolutionised its command structures to make use of robotic personnel. To combat these changes, alterations to existing police structures were required, and two specialist divisions have risen to prominence in many nations. In addition, a new section of Interpol specifically dedicated to Talinz related crime has proven key in combatting international threats in an ever more connected world.

The Talinz Corruption and Misuse Bureau

In the wake of the Avogadro Incident, the two officers that lead the investigation, Gaston Lambert – a French Interpol agent – and Sara Abbasov – a local Azerbaijani expert – put forth a joint proposal to Interpol. To employ a number of new, specialist agents to deal with international incidents of Talinz related crime.  This division would co-opt members from the existing white-collar, computer and smuggling crime divisions, to track all angles of potential disturbance, from corruption at the company level to the distribution of illicit modules.

Aiding in managing this huge amount of data is ARTHUR, an unintelligent supercomputer network. Cyber-crime divisions across the world report to the gigantic database automatically, all related criminal records and files being uploaded and provided to all other terminals. Some claim sharing all this information with other governments is too great an infringement of personal privacy, others regard the decision as necessary to track the global nature of these crimes, when a file on the internet can be as dangerous as a bullet in a gun.

One of the major roles currently of the Talinz Corruption and Misuse Bureau is the issuing and distribution of ‘Grey Notices’, an Interpol Notice informing relevant countries that police have sufficient evidence to assume that an individual that may be crossing borders is robotic in nature, and thereby an illegal Talinz unit. The receiver of the Grey Notice has full control over their response to such a warrant, and the effort that is placed in capturing such a Talinz unit varies remarkably from country to country. In common parlance of liberated Talinz communities, however, the Grey Notice has gained a level of infamy akin to the Black Spot.

Most police officers will rarely meet an agent from the Talinz Corruption and Misuse Bureau in person, as a majority of interactions with regular law-enforcement personnel occurs through a secure network, allowing agents to observe moving data and provide remote assistance from the ARTHUR Institute in Lyon. However, response teams and individual agents are regularly dispatched to deal with crimes of significantly large magnitude to support local law enforcement. In this capacity, they often act as specialists in a law enforcement team that lacks them, or lacks those of a high enough proficiency to tackle to current threat. 

Talinz Heavy Support

When dealing with Talinz units, some police departments have taken the ruling that there is no overkill. As a unit can lose all limbs and still function, provided there is no damage to the central processing unit, armed response teams have taken to using electromagnetic weaponry to deal with these threats. Most criminal syndicates move the hard drive processing unit to an unexpected and frequently random part of the body to prevent incapacitation of the unit by a simple firing drill. In response to public outcry at rising officer fatality rates, many police departments set up specialist Talinz Heavy Support units. Beyond an armed response team, these units are generally only called in under very specific circumstances, and are often unavailable to officers fighting in more urban areas.

The main reason for this is that heavy support is a grav tank. Most police departments share one between districts. Most police departments only need one. Most never use them.

Large and bulky, grav tanks were an innovation early in the Talinz War, using tilt-rotor technology to navigate uneven surfaces and ‘fly’ though they cannot achieve a lift beyond a few cm, due to the weight of the machine. However, these heavily armed units are often equipped with powerful ion cannons. Provided the police department is fine with shutting out all electrical communication in a mile cubed of the incident area for around 2 or 3 hours, and informs all potential aircraft to plot a route above or around the shot-site, such weaponry can prove remarkably effective. To counter such methods, many criminal syndicates have started to supplement Talinz units with humans carrying night vision goggles, to be deployed when the lights go out.