What is it like to have a sic chip?

Sic chips provide immediate, easy access (When the network is functioning for you) to, as I understand it, the entire dome. What is this like?

How are we supposed to perceive this information? How does a character get it, how do they focus in on what they need to hear, what is the ambient chatter of tens of millions of voices like?

This came up on newbie->xooc chat and as far as we can tell there's no concrete answer for how players should interact with sic in the larger scheme of things. Are there any overarching rules all characters should follow, is it an extremely subjective experience and pretty much any interpretation works, etc?

By LilMenace at Aug 10, 2023 5:53 PM

I have always believed that all I see on SIC is all the chatter my character is receiving. Helps with immersion. Whether this is filtered by algorithm or it's just all I can process in the sea of millions using SIC is a good question though. Personally, I like to think the former because it's easier to roleplay.

I don't think there has to be a strict interpretation or clarification because it works fine without it, but if there are issues with how SIC is used, clarification would help.

That said, the 'good morning' issue that to my knowledge spurred this discussion seems less about how people use SIC and more about theme. It's rarely a good morning in Withmore for most and I can understand how the chirpy nature of it, for lack of a better term, can be seen as a bit odd in context. I'd imagine most in Red sector are waking up to audible violence.

By SoftAndWet at Aug 10, 2023 6:22 PM

To respond to the 'good morning' thing that SoftAndWet mentioned, I feel like people saying or doing unthemely things with SIC can mostly be policed IC rather than be OOCly complained about. That being said, just because nobody cares, doesn't mean your character knows that or cares that nobody cares.

I find people saying 'good morning' on SIC pretty eye-roll-worthy, I'm sure plenty of people do, but I don't know if it's worth the OOC shouts and discussion that it's being lent. Have some NPCs on SIC tell them to shove their good morning where the sun doesn't shine.

Attributing too much importance to the concept of a massive population tends towards stagnation rather than roleplay. I have seen the 'millions and millions' talking point be used repeatedly to shut down rolepay rather than foster it, and I think while it is an important thematic aspect, it can do a lot of harm when it's used to enforce apathy.

By batko at Aug 10, 2023 6:31 PM

Here's an example of why I think how it should work actually matters. The discussion about how sic works boomed out of the good morning thing sure, but it's not really about the good morning comment, at least for me. That just got enough people on the same page to actually talk about, what is sic like.

For example, a crime is committed, some information is dumped on sic, but nothing to accurately identify folks. Let's say their clothing was mentioned, and it's relatively generic.

Even though it's a huge city, and that's information that doesn't particularly relate to me, if what I hear on sic is the ONLY thing I hear, then that information takes much more priority in my head, when really it shouldn't be something I pursue, unless someone I know mentions being involved, etc?

This matters a LOT for small-worlding, which is something that we are explicitly pushed to avoid. Please do not use the discussion about "Good morning" to disregard the larger issues of how sic actually works.

By LilMenace at Aug 10, 2023 6:36 PM

Big agree on the many ways to police that specific problem ICly, batko. Though in fairness I can't speak as to whether there may have been attempts to do this already.

As for how to interpret SIC, LilMenace, there is a quote from Slither in a somewhat related conversation on languages and accent on SIC:

"This is one of those things where everyone has their own interpretation and we have not nailed something down because we leave it up to each persons imagination how they represent / visualize the SIC in their heads and their characters heads.

Don't scratch the walls too hard on this one."

If no further admin clarifications come from this conversation and you still have doubts or questions, I think you should feel safe to interpret things how you please within reason. I'd argue there is plenty of justification for a variety of ways to roleplay it, and that flexibility adds flavor. Maybe someone has tons of chatter bleeding in and that bothers them, maybe someone has a more focused mind and only picks up on little things. Someone could feel that the mention of a crime is just another plip on an already full radar, another could feel 'this is my time to shine' and hop off the sofa. A personal rule of mine is that if there is an the absence of a specific interpretation, I'm probably fine making my own.

By SoftAndWet at Aug 10, 2023 7:10 PM

The main thing, as I see it, is for players not to treat SIC as a group chat or Discord channel, and using texting-specific idiosyncrasies or behaviors that blur IC and OOC channels. There is in-universe backings for it (SIC is pure thought) but really the principle is for players not to treat the game as a chat room, with their friends who are other players.

By 0x1mm at Aug 11, 2023 12:22 PM

Using SIC as an OOC text based chatroom is something I personally think we should all avoid. I am sure we all slip sometimes but it never hurts for us to all be reminded to keep it more IC.

ICly using SIC as the Sindome Cyberpunk thought based cyber-chatroom found in Withmore seems pretty reasonable to me. It's what it is in my mind. Why do we only 'hear' a small portion 92 million people on SIC and only 'see' small portion of the 92 million chums on the IC who list? Who knows and it's fine if it's not explicitly explained? But last I was told (and this changes from time to time), this IS what my PC 'hears'/'sees'.

If 'mornings' and 'hellos' are question of general theme, I can also agree to this. I am not a fan of the overly cheery, peace and love tone I frequently see on SIC. I think we should all review 'help theme' and see if our characters might need slight attitude adjustments. I have done this twice since Mench's shout.

At the same time, I feel that the current PC/NPC ecosystem discourages grittier, darker, messier and sleazier tones on SIC. It is my opinion that plenty of powerful PCs discourage anything but cheery, safe, love peace and community talk on SIC. This can range from Judges jumping very quickly on any 'inappropriate' SIC talk (which is, in my opinion, the more themely talk) to mangers and big shots setting the tone - which a lot of PCs end up trying to imitate.

People learn by example. ICly (and OOCly) they look at those with authority and power and emulate what they see. After all, if they have success like this, then it's probably the way to go. I've also seen some PCs come in trying to be edgier and get smashed. It's a tough balance. Do you help theme by picking the fight and flexing your power or by letting them talk themely shit? I can see both paths.

My last comment is that, if staff feels that players are not playing their characters in a themely manner, it's probably not as 'self evident' or 'obvious' to us as one might assume. I think it will take more than the occasional OOC shout to help us players understand. I think it's going to take a different approach to help some of us see what you see.

By Grey0 at Aug 11, 2023 4:18 PM

I've personally never experienced the feeling that SIC was being treated as anything it shouldn't be (except when people accidentally use it for OOC stuff). Though, I think it would be best if it were assumed that not all 92 million people in the dome can see and respond to everything on SIC. I'm not really sure on what the best explanation for it would be, maybe something like the SIC network has groups or something that each new person is put into randomly and all of our PCs just happen to be in the same SIC group? Not sure.

I also wanted to respond to some of the stuff Grey0 brought up about theme, but I don't really agree with the whole idea that every single PC should try to perfectly embody the game's theme. I think there are ways that we can portray the themes of hopelessness, despair, classism, etc. without having to make every single character dark and gritty. In real life, there's people with extremely different personalities all over. What's wrong with playing a character who's an optimist? Someone who despite all of the bad shit around them, still manages to hold hope that good things will happen. Yes, not everyone should be a cheery, optimistic person, but in real life there would be some, right? I feel like there should be a mix of different personalities, and having characters who's personalities don't perfectly conform to the theme shouldn't be a weird thing.

At the same time, I think it's perfectly themely for those pessimistic or darker characters to react harshly to the more optimistic ones, or even take advantage of them. People being kind and nice to each other shouldn't be the norm, but it also shouldn't be completely discouraged OOCly in my opinion. Also, it doesn't really make sense to me to act like every PC is impoverished and living in shitty conditions when in reality a lot of the mixer PCs are very wealthy, and can afford plenty of luxuries, or some are just lucky and rarely experience hard times.

By Emily at Aug 11, 2023 5:44 PM

Theme, capital T, is always a bit of a debate and subject of interpretation and the world being Dark and Gritty™ doesn't mean everyone is, or that everyone needs to be responding to it. That said, I find it is best to think of it in terms of the new player experience. Many new players who are less familiar with such immersive roleplaying games have a tendency to slip into 'chat room' mode when first communicating on SIC.


D30o2pQC>> morning everyone
D30o2pQC>> im new

This is normal, and the process for them getting acclimated to the environment is seeing how other people communicate and mirroring them (because they have enough on their plates without adding to it with help SIC and help theme). So not everyone is responsible for carrying theme on their backs at all times, but to some degree everyone's gestalt efforts creates an immersive environment that guides new players intuitively towards thematic storytelling through their normal actions until they're adapting themselves without even thinking about it.


D30o2pQC>> Fuck, this coffin wrecked my back.
D30o2pQC>> Don't want to sleep here longer than I have to, where's that greeter at?

By 0x1mm at Aug 11, 2023 6:00 PM

Emily:

I have heard at least three opinions from different staff members. And, last I knew, staff generally chooses not to explicitly define how how this particular aspect of SIC does work ICly. My favorite suggestion from staff so far was that: 'algorithms' decide ont he fly who is connected to who. That what we see and hear on SIC and the SIC who list is what our characters see as everyone sees a small subset of SIC based on these algorithms. A little like what social media does today.

0x1mm:

I do not understand what is meant by 'chat mode'. Would you be willing to explain this concept? Beyond accepting that SIC is thoughts and not text, I don't follow and this seems to be core to some people's take on how SIC should be seen ICly and why saying hello or good morning is a bad thing.

By Grey0 at Sep 1, 2023 5:25 AM

Chat room mode. How people now communicate by typing or texting in a chat room/group/server of a bunch of their friends.

There is an option to satirized modern communication this way as well. Novelist Iain Banks kind of famously depicts his hyperintelligent god-like AIs as communicating with one another via very silly office-like short emails. I think that sort of thing has to be a deliberate and overt developer choice in a game like Sindome though, where you usually want players to understand that they're going to be interacting with XOOC and CMSG somewhat differently.

By 0x1mm at Sep 1, 2023 1:04 PM

Huh... I think I'm still having a hard time grasping this in general. Sounds like it's a more general phenomenon though so maybe a google search will help me.

I also don't see how saying hello or good morning is chat room mode by itself. For example, in Germany it is often expected and considered good manners to greet the room when you enter public places like a doctor's office waiting room. Has been long before chat rooms existed.

Thank you very much for trying to explain. Hopefully my search will give me more insight to this as I am unable to see what the issue is currently aside from some finding it too bright and cheery for a dark and gritty cyberpunk theme.

By Grey0 at Sep 1, 2023 1:09 PM

Think of it this way: If Sindome wasn't a roleplaying game, and instead a mechanics only MUD where socialization between players was explicitly between players playing a game together, how would they communicate? As though they were informally communicating in a small group of acquaintances and friends, all with the same shared interest. Something like XOOC, or IRC for the greyhairs. Hence, chat room.

Given it is a roleplaying game where characters are distinct from players and the setting is meant to be distinct and distant from the present, and especially to be narrative (ie. deliberately telling a story through acting), it makes sense that mass social communication between 90 million people of every stripe wouldn't be indistinguishable from the above. It also may be desirable for there to be a difference even if it wasn't realistic, to help players better understand the division between OOC actions and communication, and IC actions and communication.

I don't really have a strong opinion on the whole 'good morning' thing, but when people say 'good morning' on public SIC (rather than personal keys), they are in effect saying 'I'm available for roleplay' to all the possible players they may know and more. The intent is purposeful, but the means is not necessarily (or not always) sensitive to the setting and medium because it's very much in the style of small group communication between acquaintances -- which is of course what is actually happening, the idea is just to pretend like it isn't. Which is why I make an example above of ways to communicate similar purposes but with different trappings, because again characters are telling stories through their roleplay.

By 0x1mm at Sep 1, 2023 1:55 PM

I follow you a LOT better now. Thank you for taking the time to elaborate. I generally prefer more dark and gritty and less love and peace, especially in public venues, but I also do not hold strong feelings about the SIC hellos and good mornings.

My two thoughts are:

1.

Why the assumption that all 90+ million people on SIC can hear each other all at once? I've had some staff suggest this and others suggest other explanations. Most recently I heard staff say that they choose to leave this ambiguous. That is what I took away from my interactions with staff at least. I can't speak for them or anyone else.

Has it been decided that the 90+ million people are all hearing each other at once? Is how our characters should be perceiving SIC? If so, maybe adding some ambient messages about the noise of SIC would help let players know that their characters are perceiving SIC this way. Like the ambient population levels we have for rooms.

2.

While I am sure that some players hop on and say hello or good morning as a meta way of saying they are available for RP, I am hesitant to assume the intentions of other players. At least based on the information I have available to me. Maybe some just think it's something fitting to their PC or think it makes sense based on cultural norms we might know about.

By Grey0 at Sep 1, 2023 3:46 PM

As a not-so-helpful addition to the thread at this point, I highly suggest this be brought up as a Town Hall topic so that everyone can pitch in and maybe even get a modern staff perspective on it. I've been following the thread closely and think it's very interesting, but don't have anything else to add at this very moment.

By batko at Sep 1, 2023 3:50 PM

Withmore citizens both experience and don't experience everything on SIC, as the plot requires. When for instance, an NPC is spoken of on SIC, they would have the option to respond or react, depending on GM interest or willingness, but by the same token something said about an NPC is not necessarily automatically known to them and might be missed, ignored, or forgotten.

This is true of players also. Players might notice something on SIC feedback that they choose not to notice as their characters, or equally have their characters decide to ignore. Likewise a player might miss feedback on SIC that their character would have the ability to notice or remember, but did not because their player has not.

'How loud is SIC' is to my mind a similar question to 'how busy are the streets' in terms of discussions about small world and theme. It's possible to make analogies and say well it's like so-and-so real world location so act accordingly, but the best practices I've found are to treat it in whatever way best enables the story to move forward.

If something is lost by not engaging with it, engage. If something is halted by interrupting it, don't engage (or at least try to Yes, and...). Those are only personal rules of thumb to me though and not ones I always follow, really there is a lot of room for players to have different personal interpretations I think as long as they're not being too meta-aware.

By 0x1mm at Sep 1, 2023 4:30 PM

SIC is a gigantic party, and everyone is invited. They're all in one massive dome together, but just because they're at the same party doesn't mean they're talking to everyone at the same time unless they're specifically pausing to speak to the entire party as a whole. But just because you're at the party, it doesn't mean that the announcement made is about you, or even anything you care about, so you can just choose to ignore it.

There are hundreds of conversations of all topics, types, shapes and forms, the constant and connected thought of millions of people shorn down into relevancy. The only reason you 'hear' what you hear is because either because it's relevant to you in some way, or you just happened to hear it at that time.

Imagine a group of people are talking at this big party. There are millions of these groups out there, but you're near this one. Why do you engage? Because you overheard something that either interests you, or you know one of the people talking in the group. You can choose to engage or not engage, and sometimes staying quiet and just listening is the best option, but what you hear is just what you hear, because you're near just one of these many, many groups of people at this massive, massive party. Some person in the dome, may hear something else entirely different over SIC.

The playerbase, as well as some of the NPC base, are in this group, 'this' group. Sure, you can yell out an announcement to the whole party (the entire city), but it doesn't mean they're going to hear you or care, no matter who you are.

I hope I'm making sense and not just making it more complicated.

By AdamBlue9000 at Sep 1, 2023 4:38 PM

Though to be clear, I'm not describing any official design document on SIC, just how it ends up working in practice. There have been sometimes explicit 'rules' about how SIC functioned, but they are a bit bendy in practice: ie. English text is meant as a stand-in for universal cognitive language, so specifics languages are not technically possible but are used sometimes for flavor, ditto accents.

By 0x1mm at Sep 1, 2023 4:42 PM

Again, I am seeing people put forth their idea of how SIC works as justifications. For this to be a reason to tell players they are using SIC 'wrong' would require these opinions to be the game's truth per staff. So far, I have yet to hear of a staff endorsed 'truth' regarding how SIC is to be perceived by characters ICly.

While I respect various people's ideas on how they think SIC should be perceived ICly, I am not a fan of players trying to police other players because they are not seeing the game world how they see it. How they prefer it. The only ones who can do that in my mind is staff and even that is hit and miss as sometimes there are differences of opinion even among staff members.

If staff decides to come to a common conclusion on how SIC works and communicate it clearly to players, then that is how it is and I think it's fine for players help other players understand staff's vision of how SIC is to be perceived ICly. But pushing your own view when, to the best on my knowledge, staff is choosing not to define it seems iffy. Personally, I will listen and appreciate your views and maybe even incorporate some to how I choose to play my PCs but that is all.

And if we want to talk about how it ends up working in practice, then in practice my character gets the people on 'who' that I see written on my screen and they hear on SIC what I see printed on my screen. Anything beyond that is a player's interpretation on how SIC should be perceived by their PC. I respect the views of other players and am not trying to change anyone's vision. I am simply saying that not every player has to go along with your interpretation.

Mostly I am trying to understand how SIC should be perceived by characters ICly. Even if that official statement is that they choose to keep it ambiguous which is saying something a lot and of itself. However, I think that Batko is right. I'm unlikely to get an official statement here. Probably better for the townhall.

I have had a great time reading about the various views though. I especially appreciate the effort 0x1mm put into helping me understand what they meant by 'chat room mode', especially as I was unable to find much about it in the few hours I poked about online. Importantly, I want to say that I will certainly respect the bit that staff has chosen to solidify: stop saying 'hello', 'good morning' on SIC and the like when your character wakes up and the like.

Thanks everyone and have fun RPing!

By Grey0 at Sep 2, 2023 3:56 AM

If you're looking for precisely defined rules to govern social interactions and experiences in Sindome, you're likely to be left wanting. SIC has deliberately not been exactly defined, both out of the difficulty of resolving a multitude of interpretations and because SIC itself is internally inconsistent: It conveys only non-specific language directly to the brain; except when it doesn't with loan phrases, accents, and ASCII art, all of which were popular enough to simply become part and parcel of it despite how it's notionally implemented. This is where the phrase don't scratch the walls comes in.

SIC does broadcast to everyone though. This is very apparent once call-outs come into play and anyone complaining another character shouldn't have heard their insult or confession because of the algorithms or smallworlding is not going to see much satisfaction, because to the extent that smallworlding protections exist at all, they have very rarely applied to SIC and do so only with particular activities that will be unknown to most players. Likewise any complaints that someone should not have been noticed on the wholist, or not have their echo key use noticed, or that their catastrophic missics should be invisible in the noise, are likewise not going to have much luck complaining.

By 0x1mm at Sep 2, 2023 11:06 AM

The way it was described to me by my greeter ic was and my understanding from reading the help file is that you can go out of signal. the further you are away from someone at a certain point you can no longer "hear" them. this is the way(and afaik) the game way of explaining how to deal with over 7 million peoples thoughts in your head.

as far as an OOC chatroom we already have one its called ooc which should be used sparingly. correct me if im wrong but is cc only seen by the person your sending it to? if thats the came then you could with both party consent used that for ooc discussions.

By markboston38 at Sep 3, 2023 2:27 PM

'ccom' or 'cc' and all SIC commands are not to be used for OOC communications as they are direct thought messages to another character. But you are not the only one that might be able to see them. Also, staff do monitor sic coms and phones iirc so they aren't misused like how you describe.

By robotdogfighter at Sep 3, 2023 9:08 PM

not that i would do that i was just asking for clarification on rules. i want to stay IC as much as possibly i think thats the fun of this game. otherwise i playing an online version of cyberpunk2077.

By markboston38 at Sep 4, 2023 10:30 AM

-	QueenZombean	2m
-	BitLittle	3m
a	Mench	5h	Doing a bit of everything.
-	Komira	2m
And 11 more hiding and/or disguised

What is it like to have a sic chip? How do it be?

What is it like to have a sic chip?
How do it be?