Riggersofts

A thought came to me the other day. No, it didn't hurt. That thought was for what I'll call riggersofts. (Please note that these are in fact covered by Rigger2. However, I thought of the idea first, and I leave this available as my take on the situation.)

Computer skill is an Active skill. However, in Virtual Realities 2.0 it is stated that a decker with an Encephalon, who slots a Computer skillsoft, does not need any form of Skillwires to use this in the Matrix.

I see a parallel between the decker's use in the Matrix of his computer skill, whether slotted or learnt, and a rigger's use when rigged of his vehicle skill, whether slotted or learnt. Thus, it makes sense that a rigger equipped with an Encephalon may use vehicle skill chips without skillwires, despite the fact that vehicle skills are normally active skills.

This is because the Encephalon can translate data and instructions directly from the skillchip and transmit it to the rigger's Vehicle Control Rig, thus eliminating the need for any actions on the part of the rigger's physical body.

If GMs in the lowest powered games feel that this is unbalancing, they can rule that to use this feature specially-encoded skillchips, or riggersofts, must be used. These chips would be specially-encoded to interface with a Vehicle Control Rig and would indeed be useless without one, as they contain only electronic data for the VCR, and no information for the physical body.

The use of these skillsofts is probably incompatible with use of the rigger's Control Pool, but they provide one major advantage; evening up the demands on the rigger.

To be considered a "good" rigger, a character needs high skills in just about every type of vehicle, plus Build/Repair skills and Electronics skills. All such skills are General skills, requiring a large Karma outlay. In this, the rigger is similar to the magical character in being a Karma Black Hole. The mage, though, gets to use his or her skills/spells/initiate grades that they've paid so much Karma for, on just about every run. The rigger, however, except in extraordinary games, rarely gets to use any skill other than his or her Car skill. Thus the poor poor rigger has a large Karma outlay for minimal use. The availability of riggersofts, or the ability to use ordinary vehicle skillsofts without skillwires, goes some way towards balancing this problem.

Lady Jestyr