[__MatrixMan__]

This came up while I was playing ShadowRun, a cyberpunk game where decks are wielded by spellcaster-type characters in a way that resembles how wands are used by Harry Potter characters (more or less).

There's something about the way that a laptop screen folds towards you (like it might be part of a maw that consumes you and traps you inside it), and about how the input and output surfaces are so close together that you have to hunch to use it, which makes laptops an unsatisfying form factor for a deck.

Imagine the scene in LOtR where Gandalf says "you shall not pass" to the Balrog. A good deck would fit into that scene without making Gandalf look like a dweeb.

[Macha]

There was all sorts of gameplay reasons also as to why they did it, but in shadowrun's 3e->4e transition they changed the whole decks and hacking from a hardwired matrix where people jack in to a basically... wifi/5g type affair. I always felt it lost part of the strange/cool factor in that move.

[falcolas]

If I think along the line of B5's technomages, Gandalf's staff is his cyberdeck. It has everything built into it, with a verbal and touch interface to access it. All he'd need is a small, highly directional speaker built into his cloak or hat, and he'd be set.

"You shall not pass!"

"Initializing scan. Acoustic scan of bridge indicates significant brittleness in materials. Initializing directional vibratory motivators to further destabilize bridge materials."

[anthk]

No, you are getting it wrong =)

If you thinkg about it, your command line prompt dispatches and parses "spells" to "tame"... daemons.

[intelVISA]

Is this why manpages resemble grimoires?

[anthk]

        man -Tpdf perlintro > perlintro.pdf

Kinda.