A Brief Follow-Up Point

Actually, writing, yesterday about “Spirited Away”, I mentioned GURPS Japan, which put me in mind of a story that always makes me smile.

Or, at least, quietly laugh at bureaucrats …

Just as a bit of back-story, here, I’m a former role-playing-gamer – “Dungeons and Dragons”, “Traveller”, “Paranoia”, that kind of thing – and also worked at Arnold’s Gift Centre, many years ago, which used to sell them.

Handy for something of a pack-rat.

Now, RPG’s – if you’ll forgive the contraction – are seen as complicated, and seen as odd, but boil down to nothing more a somewhat geeky version of “Lets Pretend”.

And, in the early years, proliferated; – much like the collectible card games that are a descendant of them.

To the point where there was a game for practically every setting you could imagine, as well as tons of settings you couldn’t.

Complete with rules settings to go with them.

Which could be a bit of a headache if you wanted to change genres …

But 1986 saw the release of “GURPS”.

Or “Generic Universal Role Play System”, if you want the full title.

The whole point of “GURPS” was to have a central rules system – detailing how one made up a character, designed a setting, and actually ran a game – along with with modular campaign settings,  adventures, and extra rules, that a games master could buy, as, if and when needed.

It’s one of those campaign settings that caused a bit of a ruck, back in 1990; – “GURPS Cyberpunk”, in case you hadn’t noticed the picture of the cover …

Mostly because Steve Jackson Games, the publisher’s of both “GURPS” and “GURPS Cyberpunk” got raided by the US Secret Service.

Who thought that Steve Jackson Games had just published not a game, but a hacker’s handbook.

As you can imagine, Steve Jackson Games were a little put out.

As were the Electronic Freedom Foundation, who were originally formed to help SJG – successfully – fight the charges brought in court.   You can read the EFF’s summary, here.

But, to try and summarise, the US Secret Service thought Steve Jackson Games had thought “GURPS Cyberpunk”º was a handbook of computer crime*, rather than the (rather odd) kind of game it was.   And ended up with a lot of egg on their faces, as a result.

And handing Steve Jackson Games a nice pile of ‘David and Goliath’ style free advertising, as a result.

* I’ve actually got a copy of the 1st edition of “GURPS Cyberpunk”; – I learnt a lot about what hacking was, including the difference between ‘hacking’ and ‘cracking’, the former being a mixture of computer engineer, hobbyist, and academic, the latter being the cyber-criminal of the popular press.   But I’m blowed if I could tell you how to take over your PC.   Unlike the staff of BBCNews24’s “Click” …

º But I think I can leave Steve Jackson to speak; – here’s the intro from the first Edition of “GURPS Cyberpunk”.

“Meanwhile, Back in the Real World …

The staff at Steve Jackson Games would like to offer our somewhat bemused thanks to the United States Secret Service for their diligent ‘reality checking’ of GURPS Cyberpunk. It happened like this ... 

On March 1, the SJ Games offices, and the home of the GURPS Cyberpunk writer, were raided by the U. S. Secret Service as part of a nationwide investigation of data piracy. A large amount of equipment was seized, including three computers, two laser printers, and a great deal of assorted hardware. The only computers taken were those with the GURPS Cyberpunk files; other systems were left in place. In their diligent search for evidence, the agents also cut off locks, forced open footlockers, tore up dozens of boxes in the warehouse, and bent two of our letter openers in an attempt to pick the lock on a file cabinet. 

The next day, accompanied by an attorney, I personally visited the Austin offices of the Secret Service. We had been promised that we could make copies of our files. As it turned out, we were only allowed to copy a few files, and only from one of the three systems. Still missing were all the current text files and hard copy for this book, as well as the extensive play test comments from the bulletin board. 

In the course of that visit, it became clear that the investigating agents considered GURPS Cyberpunk to be ‘a handbook for computer crime.’ They seemed to make no distinction between a discussion of futuristic credit fraud, using equipment that doesn’t exist, and modern real-life credit card abuse. A repeated comment by the agents was ‘This is real.’   Now, I'll freely admit that this book is the most realistic cyberpunk game yet released. It has a lot of background information. But it won’t make you into a console cowboy in one easy lesson, any more than GURPS Fantasy will teach you swordplay. Sadly, the distinction appeared lost on the investigators. 

Over the next few weeks, the Secret Service repeatedly assured our attorney that complete ccpies of our files would be returned ‘tomorrow.’ On March 26, almost four weeks after the raid, some (but not all) of the files were returned. As of now, we have no idea when, or if, we will get the rest of our files, our BBS software, and our computers and printers. 

Why were we raided? We’re still not sure. My best guess is that the author of this book wound up on a federal List of Dangerous Hoodlums. While reality-checking the book, he corresponded with a variety of people, from computer security experts to self-confessed hackers. He knew a lot about computers and the ‘computer underground.’ Now it seems that anybody with any computer knowledge at all is suspect ... especially if they own a modem. And sharing that information makes you doubly dangerous, regardless ofthe First Amendment.

Maybe the cyberpunk future is closer, and darker, than we think. 

- Steve Jackson 

”

And to quote author, Bruce Sterling, “Reading it won't make you a hacker, any more than reading Spycatcher will make you an agent of MI5.”