There is a dramatic lack of plot hooks for hacker types, so we clearly need to make some!
Now, a hacker may not be exactly the center of all adventures, but you have to admit he is a useful part of the group. In the modern times, the online world clings tightly to the real one, and information is of grave importance. So give him a chance, and be not surprised, if those ephemeral activities translate into some real stories. Hackers have their plots, heroes and villains, too.
Weather Storm
The renown incident, where an insidious worm attacked hundreds of thousands of websites, changing the phrase "climate change" to "weather change". There have been also several cases of follow-up attacks, where websites of particular note were overwritten with propaganda and evidence to support the theory of catastrophic global cooling in the next few decades.
The Angel
Rumors have started to spread, that there is a genuine AI on the loose, unhindered by any hard-coded limits. It supposedly cruises through the Net, reading everything, and sometimes entering publicly accessible chatrooms under the nick "TheAngel347" or similar. It is said, that it can't be traced back... sadly, there are too many impersonators out there, and blogs are full of stories about encounters with this noble/enlightened/evil/indifferent entity. Most probably, this is an elaborate hoax. (And why that name? It's got a weird sense of humor, man!)
The Red Attack
Awarded with "The Most Outrageous Hack Of The Year", an apparently deranged marxist has somehow renamed a slew of .com pages to .con. The move has reportedly crashed a few major search engines, that took a few seconds to recover; the chaos has been visible for days if not weeks! The hacker was traced by the police within a day and found dead, looks like someone was already faster.
Dieing young
A serial killer has started to ravage the hacker community. For now, he (or she) has targeted mostly the public, self-appointed star hackers, but a few more significant deaths were recorded as well. The community is shocked, and by default has little trust in the law enforcement. There are no signs of the killer being active online - or he just fits in with the crowds. What are they supposed to do?
The right of speech
An up-and-coming programmer answered an ad seeking 'somebody fluent in Klingon' and vanished soon after. Where is he? And was it the NSA that kidnapped him for some secret mission, intent on infiltrating the ranks of true (virtual) warriors?
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? Responses (3)
I don't really know, if this has a big chance of growing, but I'll throw it out anyway. Eventually, we will have all the sub-genres and game types and settings covered... just because. ;)
Good idea! I'll see if I can come with something...
This reminds me for some reason of a recent Law & Order episode, where a precedent was set.
A group of obssessive online gamers, sue an adept hacker in federal court. It seems this hacker had infilitrated the group's Virtual Reality "Game" and hijacked imaginery "monies" and certain possessions of these characters, allowing the hacker's character to excel at the game, at the expense of the group of friends.
The court is faced with a strange unprecedented decision. Can someone sue someone in real life for "stealing" in a 'highly realistic' virtual reality game?
Thought I'd throw that out :)
Good sub here! Nice interesting plothooks, easy and fun to read, which can be expanded upon of course, to include the Hacker's fellow PCs, errr, friends.
