How modern are your modern games?

[Derren]

Just wondering.
When you run a modern or future game, how much of the real world technology and possibilities do you include in your game or do you leave out things for the sake of the game?
What I am mainly talking about are profiling techniques like facial recognition and DNA tests but also other modern "joys" like citizen and tax registers, etc.

 

[Nagol]

I'm currently running an modern-day investigative game using a modified Conspiracy-X system. The PCs have access to all sorts of modern tech -- with all the joys of delay, false results, and inconclusive/garbled evidence thaty comes from a messy world.

What they don't have is access to the "magi-tech" seen on TV shows like NCIS where running a photoshop filter adds information to a photograpgh, autopsy and biochemical analyses are ready in a day, and overhead satellite photos can be turned to read a license plate.

They do have fingerprinting in a few hours, DNA analysis in a week or two unless they manage to jump the queue and get the results in a couple of hours, access to telephone carrier records, access to governmental databases (job history, income, criminal, property ownership, travel, biometric data), as well as typical modern day tech like google, wikipedia, cell phones, et al.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I keep things pretty much as is. We might gloss over doing taxes but we dont eliminate things because we feel it is bad for play (new tech just creates more interesting possibilities).

 

[timASW]

My most recent modern style game was played in a world where Hitler and the U.S. got nukes at the same time. The Nazi's blasted Moscow and a couple of good russian targets, and then traded a few with us over the atlantic, before the war ground to a halt because all the world economies collapsed.

So it was still the current year 2006(at the time) but the world hadnt progressed as much due to the slow economies and massive infrastructure damage to all the major nations of the world. We were pretty much stuck in the early 80's technology.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Anybody pony up to have one of those brick-sized cell phones?

 

[Bedrockgames]

They do have fingerprinting in a few hours, DNA analysis in a week or two unless they manage to jump the queue and get the results in a couple of hours, access to telephone carrier records, access to governmental databases (job history, income, criminal, property ownership, travel, biometric data), as well as typical modern day tech like google, wikipedia, cell phones, et al.

If you haven't already, the FBI handbook of Forensic Services is a great free resource for these sorts of campaigns: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/handbook-of-forensic-services-pdf/at_download/file

if you don't like reading PDFs they sell it on amazon as well,

 

[Bagpuss]

Anybody pony up to have one of those brick-sized cell phones?

My Dad did he also had one of those portable Compaq PCs that looked like a suitcase.

 

[DanotheSlender]

My Dad did he also had one of those portable Compaq PCs that looked like a suitcase.

I have an uncle that is in the tech biz and in one of his warehouses he has like 6 of the brick phones, 2-3 of those suitcase computers and an old 70's stand up tape drive like you see in old nasa footage and old sci-fi films. He claims they all still work, but they are rarely if ever turned on, as ther consume lots of power.

As to the actual thread, we once did a time travel d&d campaign, this was back in 87-88, used all current for the time tech, magic items were dormant and spells were weakened greatly, if they worked at all. Gm decided we were in a time of null magic and only artifact level items would work as normal. Made it heck on us to find a way back to our proper time. of course while we were in the future we aquired a few interesting items...like my .44 magnum, course i eventually ran out of bullets, sadly it was before we ran across a rather nasty dragon of the huge ancient red magic using variety...but it did work nicely on land sharks and other big high armor critters.

 

[Shades of Green]

My usual problem in running 'proper' ultra-modern information-age games (including the latest edition of Shadowrun) is the information overload - everything is hackable, everything is googleable, everyone has a cellphone with a camera. This makes investigation games much more difficult than in other ages. Fun for players, difficult for GMs.

I prefer either fantasy, earlier modern (say, anything set before the mid-late 1990's) or the kinds of sci-fi that have safeguards against the information overload (Traveller is a prime example of this with one-week-per-parsec travel times and communications limited to the speed of travel).

 

[Bedrockgames]

My usual problem in running 'proper' ultra-modern information-age games (including the latest edition of Shadowrun) is the information overload - everything is hackable, everything is googleable, everyone has a cellphone with a camera. This makes investigation games much more difficult than in other ages. Fun for players, difficult for GMs.

).[/QUOTE]

how do you find this more difficult to run as a GM?