The Shadowrun Situation

[Nath]

If you want to do Matrix-gives-bonuses, it makes me think of the end of Snow Crash, where Hiro Protagonist is attacking the Raft with a concrete tactical advantage because he's also got his computer and broad scanning/detection sweep going so he's got a map of the ship in his HUD, and pretty much total awareness of everyone around him, thanks to the radar and infrared and all that.

The problem is, it's difficult to strip PC from the situational awareness and instant communication channels they got from not really being in the middle of a firefight, but sitting around a table, with chips and soda, a plan drawn for them by the Hand of God, and every action resolved separately and sequentially.

Otherwise, yes, that would be what a hacker role in combat should be about.

[Stahlseele]

We have stuff like that, it's called a TacNet . .

[name_here]

If you want to do Matrix-gives-bonuses, it makes me think of the end of Snow Crash, where Hiro Protagonist is attacking the Raft with a concrete tactical advantage because he's also got his computer and broad scanning/detection sweep going so he's got a map of the ship in his HUD, and pretty much total awareness of everyone around him, thanks to the radar and infrared and all that.

The problem is, it's difficult to strip PC from the situational awareness and instant communication channels they got from not really being in the middle of a firefight, but sitting around a table, with chips and soda, a plan drawn for them by the Hand of God, and every action resolved separately and sequentially.

Otherwise, yes, that would be what a hacker role in combat should be about.

There's ways of mechanically modelling that, though. Granted, trying to slot them into shadowrun is probably a huge nightmare.

1. Leadership bonus, everyone in the net can recieve extra dice.
2. Visual relay, measure concealment and line of sight from most conveniently-located person, knock <dice> off of range penalties if <condition>
3. Combo bonuses, if two people target the same guy the second person gets a bonus
4. Eliminate defense penalties from various conditions. Since this is for 5e, make some defense penalties up if need be.

I'd also make Wi-Fi activity a binary state, and declare that anyone who hacks one implant remotely can send signals through that implant, into your brain, and then into other implants, so people can choose between having a broad array of bonuses to many thing and being hack-proof. This would, of course, only work if combat bonuses from wi-fi mode on guns and shit required a neural interface. Maybe slap +2 dice onto equipment if you're controlling it with your mind.

[Stahlseele]

hmm . .
ok, everybody has the ability to use astral perception.
if they do, they can see through smoke and darkness better than they normally would. and they can see the emotional state of other people which helps them with social combat.
and they can see life as glowy stuff, so they can see people trying to hide a bit easier . . but they open themselves up to attacks from spirits and mana spells . .
so they can decide to go full mundane and not use astral perception, but they lose out on all that stuff . .

wonder if they'll announce something like that next . .

[Username17]

Remember though that if you try to get people to turn hacking on with shiny and expensive bonuses from TacNets, that people who don't or can't afford those shiny gadgets still don't have any incentive at all to allow themselves to be hacked. You could potentially make TacNet bonuses so awesome that high rolling superspies seriously consider allowing incoming hacking attempts, but street level Shadowrunners won't have that incentive. And there's still nothing for the Hacker character to do against enemy street gangs or monsters in the woods.

A big problem with the carrot model is that the Street Samurai and Mage can do things to every possible mission and runner group, making them meaningful additions to the runner team or the security team they are opposing every time. With the carrot model, you're trying to create a space for the Hacker to act by giving positive incentives for all the actors on both sides to turn something on that can be hacked. But team Runner sometimes includes poor street kids (and is sometimes exclusively formed of poor street kids), and team security is sometimes composed of hell hounds or insect spirits who don't even wear pants.

The carrot model has to function at levels of equidedness that range from James Bond Superspy to Naked Forest Monster for both teams. And that is a very tall order.

-Username17

[Rawbeard]

This kinda shows how superfluous the hacker as an active team member is. If you don't add shit for him to do artificially, he has nothing to do and/or contribute. Hackers play their own game even more than mages. Just admitting it and moving on would be better than this shit is now. Just focus on drone riggers that can "hack" shit in their off hours and/or during legwork.

Being analy penetrated by a carrot does not make me like hackers more, or chosing to get idiotic bonuses like "uh, you can turn on chem seals as a simple action, awesome, and nobody ever wuld want to hack that, don't be silly, that tradeoff is great!" is just retarded. Criminals will chose the "non-hackable" option. Hackable is for civilians.

I wish they would finally make GitS style brainhacking a thing. That shit can make a hacker worthwhile. Well, it is a thing, but everyone pretends like it isn't. So stupid.

[Lokathor]

If there was someone with a wireless chemseal-suit trying to fight me while in an area that required a chemseal-suit, I would TOTALLY go after their suit.

[Stahlseele]

damn straight, and on the way out disable wifi so they can't put it back on fast . . .

[Username17]

This kinda shows how superfluos the hacker as an active team member is. If you don't add shit for him to do artificially, he has nothing to do and/or contribute. Hackers play they own game even more than mages. Just admitting it and moving on would be better than this shit is now.

Well, that's true for Mages too. Real world specops teams do not take "sorcerers" along for the ride, because their shit doesn't work in the real world. Even Earthdawn style sorcerers would be a god damn joke in the modern world. You want to spend 30 seconds throwing a "somewhat damaging" electrical blast at a target 20 yards away? Go fuck yourself, a semiautomatic pistol can empty its clip in that time and goes farther. And that's not even a particularly impressive weapon by modern standards.

Mages have had their abilities tweaked up, way up so that they have the ability to do things that are meaningful on a Shadowrun mission. Hackers need that kind of overhaul as well, because like "combat magic", "combat hacking" is not something that actually exists. But while the mouth breather contingent seems perfectly happy to make shit up for the magicians to do, they cover themselves in feces and roll around in the aisles whenever anyone suggests making something up for the hackers to do. Because unlike "casting powerful magics in less time than it takes to say the name of the spell", that would be "unrealistic".

Just focus on drone riggers that can "hack" shit in their off hours and/or during legwork.

That would actually be a real possibility. You could abandon "combat hacking" altogether, and stop worrying about IC and Armor Programs and all that shit and just put "Hackers" on full time drone piloting and signal jamming duty during action scenes. That would be a huge departure for Shadowrun, but you could certainly do a science fiction mission system that way.

I wish they would finally make GitS style brainhacking a thing. That shit can make a hacker worthwhile. Well, it is a thing, but everyone pretends like it isn't. So stupid.

The thing is: that shit exists in Shadowrun and has existed in Shadowrun for a long time. Noone seems to flip their shit that Psychotrope and Brainscan were books that got written. Black IC was in the very first big blue book in 1989. "Ultra Violet Nodes" have been able to suck non-datajacked people into Tron-style Matrix Nightmare Worlds against their will since the Renraku Arcology Shutdown if not before.

But the mouthbreather contingent seems OK with this only as long as it remains a GM tool exclusively. Having actual players be able to use this technology in any way causes incredible amounts of butthurt and pushback.

-Username17

[Nath]

Real world specops team do actually take people with the skills to establish transmission links, shut down alarms and open doors along for the ride (stealing cars would also comes in hand for a blackops team, which is closer to what runners do).

Obviously, being the person in charge of calling the Johnson to report and properly encrypt the communication isn't going to be very exciting for the player ("Wooot, look at me, I'm doing frequency hopping!").

Maybe you could have the hacker "fight" against alarms alongside the actual fight to prevent security reinforcement or police patrols to join.

[Username17]

Real world specops team do actually take people with the skills to establish transmission links, shut down alarms and open doors along for the ride (stealing cars would also comes in hand for a blackops team, which is closer to what runners do).

Obviously, being the person in charge of calling the Johnson to report and properly encrypt the communication isn't going to be very exciting for the player ("Wooot, look at me, I'm doing frequency hopping!").

Maybe you could have the hacker "fight" against alarms alongside the actual fight to prevent security reinforcement or police patrols to join.

As long as the game has 3 second combat rounds, no alarm response time that is even remotely realistic is going to make fuck all difference. Smash and Grab simply happens too fast in the Shadowrun engine to have backup or reprisals happen in anything like real time.

Erasing fingerprints matters for purposes of not getting a strike team sent to your house. But not tripping an alarm really doesn't matter for shit when even a 5 minute response time gives the Street Samurai in excess of three hundred complex actions before help arrives. That's a whole separate issue: if you wanted to make a "corporate security jenga" minigame for the Hacker to be a star in, you'd need to increase the amount of real time that was passing in-game to the point where enemy reinforcements could show up before all the shouting was over.

-Username17

[Rawbeard]

People tend to get stupid with combat rounds. I had police showing up within a couple of rounds after alarm was triggered. Yeah. Future cops be fast, yo!

There is much stupid to clean up in SR. And they just keep adding more stupid instead. Rigt now I don't even know if that pisses me off, or not.

[Dragon Instincts]

This kinda shows how superfluous the hacker as an active team member is. If you don't add shit for him to do artificially, he has nothing to do and/or contribute. Hackers play their own game even more than mages. Just admitting it and moving on would be better than this shit is now. Just focus on drone riggers that can "hack" shit in their off hours and/or during legwork.

Exactly, hackers and mages provide superior support for shadowrunner teams. The hacker is the one who provides intel in advance and in real time. He provides the forged documents the team needs. He is the one who disables the automated security and he cleans up the mess when the team gets noticed by sensors or whatever. Further, he can kill everybody over the matrix just by using his black hammer even when his target is running on cold sim because of the damage overflow rules.
I could go on what the mage can do with spells and spirits, but that's not the point. The point is: Why do these archetypes need to be that awesome in combat? They are already good at their own jobs. As if everything in Shadowrun is about combat. Does that mean that the street sam, a pure combat char, needs to be a killer in the matrix and in astral space too? It would be fair, because apparently everybody seeks to invade his very own domain.

On another note:
I still don't see why you would open yourself up to the matrix even if being connected to your equipment provides boni. You could still connect via cable and datajack or skinlink. Or you could just tone your wireless signal range down to 0, which means 3 meters in SR4. Did they even consider these options? I guess not.

I wish they would finally make GitS style brainhacking a thing. That shit can make a hacker worthwhile. Well, it is a thing, but everyone pretends like it isn't. So stupid.

The thing is: that shit exists in Shadowrun and has existed in Shadowrun for a long time. Noone seems to flip their shit that Psychotrope and Brainscan were books that got written. Black IC was in the very first big blue book in 1989. "Ultra Violet Nodes" have been able to suck non-datajacked people into Tron-style Matrix Nightmare Worlds against their will since the Renraku Arcology Shutdown if not before.

But the mouthbreather contingent seems OK with this only as long as it remains a GM tool exclusively. Having actual players be able to use this technology in any way causes incredible amounts of butthurt and pushback.

This! I never understood why this theme is so underutilised in SR. Everybody uses DNI. It reads your thoughts and turns them into input for your computer. And in return it inserts thoughts into your fucking brain when your computer answers your request. Link that computer to a sim mosule and you can even insert realistic sensory and emotional content. How the fuck is brainhacking, whether passive mind reading or active insertion of thoughts, not all over the place?
The fun thing is: The really bad "brainwashing" stuff like Black ICE, PAB Units and the Psychotropic Program Option exists in RAW. The basic undermining of the Brain-Computer-Interface to capture or fake DNI signals gets barely mentioned, despite the fact that every sniffer program can insert false traffic.

[Whatever]

The point is: Why do these archetypes need to be that awesome in combat?

I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess "because that's what people do at the table"? But I've never played SR, so who knows. Maybe the whole game is planning, and you handwave the actual ops. But I doubt it.

[Username17]

I still don't see why you would open yourself up to the matrix even if being connected to your equipment provides boni. You could still connect via cable and datajack or skinlink. Or you could just tone your wireless signal range down to 0, which means 3 meters in SR4. Did they even consider these options? I guess not.

Depends a lot on how much topology and topography matter in the scheme they come up with. Certainly in SR4, you can set up a "Mother May I?" scheme where matrix traffic is routed through an arbitrarily large number of devices, and hacking down to devices you actually care about would take dozens or hundreds of actions if it was possible at all (which due to Ouroboros Permissions, it is not). So unless they massively handwave the topology, their carrot model still isn't going to make Hacking work. People will be left with several options, one of which is "Have cake and eat it too", and then they'll all take that one.

That's not set in stone, it's entirely possible that they'll do something to retransmitters that will prevent players from putting their devices in a Matryoshka Doll formation and make hacking programs open ended enough that they can't be banned outright with Ouroboros Permissions. But I'm not holding my breath, and I would bet ten bucks that even if they do fix those things, that you'll still be able to give the giant middle finger to enemy hackers by turning your antenna power down and simply refusing to listen to security spiders who are outside of arm's reach.

There is much stupid to clean up in SR. And they just keep adding more stupid instead.

When you're designing a new Matrix system, you're designing it from scratch. Ground up, because there are a lot more Matrix systems than editions, and none of them work. In order to do that, you have to think several moves ahead for several actors with different motivations and different resource sets. Now some of them are very easy: civilians use Commlinks because it lets them use TwitOnMyFace while at work and on the bus, and they use Commlinks that have security holes because that is how they are sold in stores, and NeoNET sells them that way because they want to collect personal information from Game Slave 2 users and also want to send intrusive advertisements to them. Done. But the other people are way more complicated, because Runners can and will modify their hardware so the endstate is never going to have reduced functionality because someone else wants it to be that way for whatever reason.

The sad reality is that Bull can't think even one step ahead, so waiting for him to come up with a Nash Equilibrium where Runners and Security Spiders both have weaknesses that the other can attack is going to take a really long time. Considering that I gave him the short version six actual fucking years ago and he hasn't fully processed it yet, I'm thinking that he will probably die of old age before he actually solves this particular multidimensional lemma. And that isn't even including the time needed to plug in some functional game mechanics for that. I mean, just the logic puzzle of how the incentives are supposed to fit is seemingly beyond his comprehension.

-Username17

[Dragon Instincts]

The point is: Why do these archetypes need to be that awesome in combat?

I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess "because that's what people do at the table"? But I've never played SR, so who knows. Maybe the whole game is planning, and you handwave the actual ops. But I doubt it.

It depends how "Pink Mohawk" your game is. You can play a game where you shoot your way through, which is fun but unrealistic. Or you can take the more realistic way where a run&gun gameplay inside an arcology in downtown is pure suicide. In such a game it's more about not getting caught and combat is your last resort.
I admit, I do favour the last type at my table, so my opinion may be biased.

Another thing: the hacker in Shadowrun falls into two categories: The first one is the "combat hacker" who is physically with the team. Most of the time, he is build as a hybrid with physical augmentations anyway so he can already fight and doesn't need any buffs for combat (imho). The same goes for the face.
The second hacker is the couch potato who hacks from the other side of the world. He is mostly useless in a fight (obviously). But that's the downside of him being safe in his bunker. The other downside is that he becomes useless if the team happens to be inside an area without access to the greater matrix (like a facility with a seperated lokal area network).

[Username17]

The point is: Why do these archetypes need to be that awesome in combat?

Because Shadowrun doesn't have a class structure and doesn't forbid characters from taking skills and equipment associated with other archetypes. If being a "Hacker" isn't meaningful in combat time, characters won't be "Hackers" during combat time. They'll be Street Samurai, Mages, or Riggers instead.

If Hacking doesn't come with combat viable actions to perform, than "Hacker" isn't a primary archetype anymore. Full stop. It's going to be relegated to a secondary skill like "Face", "Medic", "Demolitions Expert", or "Locksmith". That's fine as far as it goes - but it's a seriously major change to Shadowrun in particular to advocate for Dodger to not be a member of the team.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

It's also because of the stakes involved. Trying to minimize the chances of getting the worst possible outcome in any single exchange is always going to be attractive in any contest where "worst outcome" actually means "stone dead."

[name_here]

You could fuse together hacking other people's tacnets and enhancing your own into running off a single skill, so hackers can increase the margin of superiority of having a tacnet over not having one.

Exactly, hackers and mages provide superior support for shadowrunner teams. The hacker is the one who provides intel in advance and in real time. He provides the forged documents the team needs. He is the one who disables the automated security and he cleans up the mess when the team gets noticed by sensors or whatever. Further, he can kill everybody over the matrix just by using his black hammer even when his target is running on cold sim because of the damage overflow rules.

This actually doesn't fix Frank's specific objection. It's totally possible for places or groups to just not have any matrix access. Modern high-security systems are flat-out physically disconnected from the internet, and the really serious ones are surrounded by Faraday cages. You can't remotely hack those. Further, sometimes people go up against purely supernatural groups that plain don't have tech at all.

[Cochise]

That's fine as far as it goes - but it's a seriously major change to Shadowrun in particular to advocate for Dodger to not be a member of the team.

-Username17

Maybe it's just me, but the way I saw it: Dodger never was a member of the team and "the team" itself didn't exist in the first place.

[kzt]

Real world specops team do actually take people with the skills to establish transmission links, shut down alarms and open doors along for the ride (stealing cars would also comes in hand for a blackops team, which is closer to what runners do).

Obviously, being the person in charge of calling the Johnson to report and properly encrypt the communication isn't going to be very exciting for the player ("Wooot, look at me, I'm doing frequency hopping!").

Maybe you could have the hacker "fight" against alarms alongside the actual fight to prevent security reinforcement or police patrols to join.

The comm, demo or medic specialist on a SF team also carries an automatic weapon, grenades, etc and is expected to be a serious ass-kicker in a fight in addition to doing their job when needed. That model also works

[kzt]

Modern high-security systems are flat-out physically disconnected from the internet, and the really serious ones are surrounded by Faraday cages. You can't remotely hack those. Further, sometimes people go up against purely supernatural groups that plain don't have tech at all.

It's worse then that, you can't actually hack a modern security system in the SR way, where you attack an authentication sensor. The decision logic isn't located there, all that you have at the door is the equivalent of a barcode reader that sends the barcode over a RS-422 serial link. You have to get access to the control module, which is oddly enough is usually located inside the protected space and covered with at least one camera.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Make the "Hacker" a combined cyber-magic archetype, and add magic mind control and illusions to the character's suite of powers, then let an Internet <-> Brain connection give you better defenses against the magical stuff (on a level of, like, "normally you can't resist this at all").

(Really fancy stuff would have high resistance to everything)

[Ancient History]

Hackers in SR1-3 had a high level of granularity (programming programs, building cyberdecks) married to a relatively high level of abstraction when it came to actual hacking - that is, a lot of the stuff that we would recognize as hacking nowadays (denial of service attacks, for example) was absent or glossed over, and the actual actions hackers could take was fairly high level "tell it to do this then roll your program rating" kinda stuff.

One of the problems we had with SR4 (and Unwired did not help) was trying to lower the level of abstraction on the action end while increasing it on the granularity end, which vastly complicated the whole Matrix business. So where in SR2 and SR3 you'd maybe focus on programming new hacker programs in your downtime or affording the latest improvement to your cyberdeck, in SR4 you have a much more simple, universal commlink with only two ratings. On the other hand, SR4's actions using those commlinks became an impossible mire of real-world hacking/electronic warfare analogues that nobody could honestly play even if they wanted to.

I think ideally you want a happy medium: a relatively simple piece of hardware (commlink, cyberdeck, what have you) and a relatively high level abstract method of using it. Ideally, you'd probably have it parallel spellcasting a bit, in that you don't want to have a program just to wipe your virtual ass, but you do want to have programs for kicking IC ass. And then once you have a working, simplified ruleset you can add a bit of granularity to please the players who like the nitty-gritty of program options and commlink add-ons without making an intolerable slog of the whole thing.

Even then, you're going to be faced with the online/offline problem. For a hacker to pull their weight as a hacker in physical combat without bringing a gun to the gunfight, they need to be able to do stuff like keep the alarms from going off so the police don't show up, and shutting down the opponent's guns, vehicle, cyberware, and other equipment. For that to happen, you need:

1) To de-incentivize turning equipment off - Mostly this involves the default state for all regular equipment being on, and disabling wireless access should be an additional cost/non-standard option. This involves a vast amount of handwaving, but not unjustified handwaving: there are very good reasons why you might want to be able to track guns online, and have little reports sent off when they fire, and be able to shut them down remotely. That doesn't mean all those functions are apparent to the users, or even the cops - maybe that's just how Ares gets its consumer feedback data, Big Brother style.

2) Make few people realize that hackers can mess with their stuff. This is more of a conceptual leap, but imagine if you lived in a world exactly like today, but every single item you own was a passive or active component in a massive pervasive network around you - and for the most part you'd never know because all of that data is passing back and forth several levels removed from you asking Mr. Coffee to make an espresso. People today worry about hackers stealing their identity, not getting caffeine poisoning because some script kiddy decided to fuck with their java.

And that's just stuff in general. That's everyday life hackers-with-superhacking-powers kind of approach. That doesn't cover corporate cores or secure facilities or any of that, which should have special precautions and be more of a challenge to shadowrunners.

I think you can have solid, non-stupid Matrix rules. Just...not gonna happen under current management.

[kzt]

lots of good stuff
And then once you have a working, simplified ruleset you can add a bit of granularity to please the players who like the nitty-gritty of program options and commlink add-ons without making an intolerable slog of the whole thing.

The whole idea of cybercombat is stupid. It's time for it to just go away.

Even then, you're going to be faced with the online/offline problem. For a hacker to pull their weight as a hacker in physical combat without bringing a gun to the gunfight, they need to be able to do stuff like keep the alarms from going off so the police don't show up, and shutting down the opponent's guns, vehicle, cyberware, and other equipment.

How does really matter if someone calls the cops or not? Why should I worry about the cops possibly showing up some 300 combat turns from how? I certainly won't be there then.

1) To de-incentivize turning equipment off - Mostly this involves the default state for all regular equipment being on, and disabling wireless access should be an additional cost/non-standard option. This involves a vast amount of handwaving, but not unjustified handwaving: there are very good reasons why you might want to be able to track guns online, and have little reports sent off when they fire, and be able to shut them down remotely. That doesn't mean all those functions are apparent to the users, or even the cops - maybe that's just how Ares gets its consumer feedback data, Big Brother style.

So the fact that KE shows up at the house to arrest every runner an hour after the run due to the pervasive tracking of every device and weapon won't have any negative influence on the game? It won't make players possibly take any steps (likely involving diagonal cutters and power drills) to keep this from happening? At which point you are back to the start.