(Shadowrun) Perfect Crime Matrix Rules [WIP]

[Username17]

This all seems to say that shadowrun has a bad system for what it wants to do.

Is it better to rip out all the mechanics, and replace them with something much lighter?

All the mechanics? No.

Consider the complaint that the herpderp gallery keeps making: if you standardize hacking action results, it will be like magic. And that's supposed to be bad, despite the fact that most everyone involved agrees that the magic rules work and the matrix rules don't.

No one seriously suggests that magical attack options should be procedurally generated by the potential target's birth sign and the feng shui of the building you're in. It's not that that would be "magical feeling" it's that it would be obviously impractical to actually do that at the table. But for some reason, when you bring up the possibility of a hacking minigame, people keep trying to run it exactly like that in proposed models. It's obviously unworkable, but you got mouth breathers like Cyberzombie whining that it has to be that way. Because otherwise dogs and cats will live together or something.

Your options to hack a dude simply can't be dependent on what cyberware and gear he has, because that's obviously insane. But the end result of that line of reasoning is that if hackers can create their diversions regardless of what gear their targets have, then by necessity hackers can also create diversions or whatever it is they do to targets who have no ware in their heads at all. And that makes people squeal like raped parrots. Brain hacking is an absolutely necessary concession, because otherwise hacking has enemy device defined options, and that's clearly unworkable.

-Username17

[Ice9]

There's a difference between "brain hacking needs to be possible" and "brain hacking should be the default". I mean, you know how you could also give the hacker more options in combat? Let them do "physics hacking" to make their gun attacks far more effective. Hey, let's do that - it's even simpler and more universal than brain hacking!

You mention spells, but spells are not all universally equal against all targets. At a given point, some spells with be effective, others ineffective, others impossible. You can do the same thing with hacking, and it doesn't have to be that complex. Define some broad categories of gear. Have hacks that work against those categories. Done.

But I would say that if your combat hacker solution results in the hacker ignoring someone's cyberarm and hacking their brain instead, then it isn't actually a combat decker, it's a combat brain-hacker who does computer hacking on the side. And I'm not even against brain-hacking! But the current primacy of it is like a mage who spends most of the time stabbing people with his athame and rarely casts spells.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Your options to hack a dude simply can't be dependent on what cyberware and gear he has, because that's obviously insane. But the end result of that line of reasoning is that if hackers can create their diversions regardless of what gear their targets have, then by necessity hackers can also create diversions or whatever it is they do to targets who have no ware in their heads at all. And that makes people squeal like raped parrots. Brain hacking is an absolutely necessary concession, because otherwise hacking has enemy device defined options, and that's clearly unworkable.

-Username17

How the fuck is it insane? In the current game strong enemies (and PC's) either magic up or cyber up. Magic people already do a great job at fucking up magic, so why not just make them less good at fucking up cybers. With zero fucking ass pull "lulz I hackz your brain" you just made hackers a crucial part of a team (and yes, hacking needs to be made waay simpler. Just have three levels of "disable cyberware", low, medium, high). And its not like people can just "turn off" their arm or magically stop using their gun. There are relatively few pieces of modern tech that are merely the analog version enhanced with digital shit. It either functions with digital or it doesn't. A gun that only fires when the person who owns it has it wired in can't just be turned off. A smartgun that relies on digital aiming probably isn't going to work offline. When you turn off that piece of cybertech, IT FUCKING HURTS! A guy's major organs or legs just stopped working. His gun just stopped shooting and won't work, he's completely and totally fucked. That's a powerful tool. Plus, certain enemies already require you to use magic against them, so why not have enemies that are immune to magic and thus require you to use cyber? Keep gun as the universal language, as it blends the two, but make debuffs more situational depending on the enemy type.

Perfect crime edition is basically a modified 4th edition and lets be blunt, Magicrun got real old really fucking fast. So its not just hackers that need to be buffed, mages and adepts need more counters. So no, brain hacking is not a necessary concession. Making magic a little weaker and disabling cybertech stronger is.

And no, merging the mage and hacker classes is not a good idea. If I want to play fucking Savage Worlds (not that there is anything wrong with that) I will play fucking Savage Worlds. When I sit down to chuck tons of d6, I want to play Shadowrun. I want to play a hacker, not a wannabe mage. And its not like you can't make the classes viable. Its just that you need to tweak the whole set, not just the hacker.

Seriously Frank, at least try and consider what other people are saying before continuing your rant. For all your bitching about Cyberzombie, you've basically spent the past three threads bashing the same strawman and ignoring what everyone else is posting. Its fucking annoying.

[Cyberzombie]

Consider the complaint that the herpderp gallery keeps making: if you standardize hacking action results, it will be like magic. And that's supposed to be bad, despite the fact that most everyone involved agrees that the magic rules work and the matrix rules don't.

You seriously should apply for a job at Fox news, you'd be great at it. You'll ignore any facts that don't agree with your point, aren't afraid to misrepresent anything and spin unrelated things to seemingly back up your point and you can continue speaking in arrogant condescending tones regardless of how many times you've been shown to be wrong (not that you'd ever admit to being wrong). Fox News could really use someone with your skill set.

But getting back to the debate... It's true that hacking has a lot of problems. The reason hacking doesn't work is because it's a slow clunky minigame where the hacker is exploring an entirely different Matrix dungeon that takes 10x the rolls it should and is way more complex than it needs to be. It's a total pain in the ass waiting for the hacker to do his mission. That's why groups don't want to play with hackers.

I've never heard anyone make the argument that the big problem with SR hacking is that a hacker's kill score isn't competitive with the street samurai. And furthermore, even if you do go ahead and hand hackers their brain lasers, it still won't fix all the problems with actual hacking. Getting anything done in the Matrix will still take forever, and hackers will still be banned at most tables. All your idea does is let the hacker use his computer skill in place of his gun skill, and presumably get a powerful attack that rivals a mage's manabolt. You've fixed none of the inherent problems with hacking and are selling this idea to us as though it'll somehow make everything better.

The amount of spin you're tossing out here is astounding. Sometimes I wonder if you're just trolling.

[Nath]

Basically you need a hacking effects list which is irrespective of what actual devices people actually have. Because generating the effects from the available items is completely impractical in an actual game. Also virtually impossible to balance. But the fact that it's simply procedurally unachievable is more than enough reason to discount it as a possibility.

But there are more levels of abstraction available to us.

In a firefight, which we likely use as the reference for combat, we already have several levels of such abstraction. When a character shoots at a target, he/she's doing little more than pointing the barrel and pulling the trigger to wound or kill him. But there are a lot more detailed ballistics and anatomy actually involved. The exact level of abstraction a character makes depend on his skill level. At its most basic, well, bullets hurt. Then, from the player point of view, there's an extra level of abstraction with a resistance roll and the condition monitors. So, when you're playing a street samurai, you don't have to say specifically which bone or aorta you're aiming, which would certainly be as tedious as listing networked devices, and it's not what the character is actually doing either.

So I can imagine a combat hacking program that allows similar abstraction. The user designates an individual or a vehicle, and the program will automatically list all possible devices inside or in close proximity to the target, identify their nature, and attack the ones who are most susceptible to have crippling effect, or attack them all at once. And the result would be abstracted as stun or physical damages or temporary incapacitation.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that, to make sense, such technique should only allow to affect targets that are either drones or vehicles, have cyberware, or are currently using an imaging or audio device.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that, to make sense, such technique should only allow to affect targets that are either drones or vehicles, have cyberware, or are currently using an imaging or audio device.

Considering that cyberware is incredibly common, this isn't really that big of a weak point. Not to mention, if you made hacking too good you kind of invalidate the need for street sammies or the rest of the party. Making hackers gods of the tabletop is a bad idea because they still have their legwork powers, which already make them important to the group. People are underestimating how important those powers can be, especially if you want the whole group to feel included during most of the game. As for generic hacking, you could just use the success system. Normal hits give a generic debuff to cyber folks, while a "targeted shot" could knock out their arms, or maybe blind them, if you don't want to kill fools. This could give hackers a lot of added flexibility.

And Frank, I think one of your old posts best summarizes what I wanted to do with my cyber/magic/normal triangle.

So the basic setup could be something like "punk defenses protect against punk attacks, but are weak to hacking attacks; hacking defenses protect against hacking attacks, but are weak to magic attacks; and magic defenses defend against magic attacks but are weak to punk attacks." But it can't be "magic is the only thing that can stand against magic, so if you aren't a magician you should invest in mouthwash and kneepads." Th point is that whether you are bringing the fantasy, the cyber, or the punk, you should run rampant over opponents who don't have relevant defenses.

[Username17]

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that, to make sense, such technique should only allow to affect targets that are either drones or vehicles, have cyberware, or are currently using an imaging or audio device.

Why wouldn't it "make sense" to attack someone by remotely detonating their airburst grenades or having their biomonitor electroshock their heart?

The thing is that you can make a post hoc rationalization for pretty much anything at all. A distraction could be something as simple as just having their nineties era flip phone turn on and start making a piercingly loud noise. Electronic things don't even have to have computer chips in them to be plausibly messed with using waves at a distance.

The point is that getting into the minutiae of what specific devices can be made to do with hacking is way too complicated and also probably broken. Activating all of someone's airburst grenades in their pockets is probably more powerful than you want a hack attack to be, and spending an entire hacking action to make someone spend a free action dropping a piece of equipment and a simple action drawing a new one is too weak. Getting into arguments about what specific items can be made to do is way too much detail for a combat action, and reciting off every single piece of modern equipment in the vicinity including light fixtures and soda machines is too much exposition to give between one player's actions and another's.

Which is why brain hacking is so important. We can make post hoc rationalizations about how we're using distraction effects on the dogs by having the nearby soda machine emit a high frequency noise that causes doggy pain, but we don't want to have that conversation. We don't want to get into an argument about whether the lamp posts in the park can be made to strobe sufficiently to distract the naked men. People being naked can just plain not be a defense at all, and then all that garbage can be done away with and hackers can take their turns in a reasonable amount of time and produce game balanced effects when they do it.

-Username17

[Cyberzombie]

The point is that getting into the minutiae of what specific devices can be made to do with hacking is way too complicated and also probably broken. Activating all of someone's airburst grenades in their pockets is probably more powerful than you want a hack attack to be, and spending an entire hacking action to make someone spend a free action dropping a piece of equipment and a simple action drawing a new one is too weak. Getting into arguments about what specific items can be made to do is way too much detail for a combat action, and reciting off every single piece of modern equipment in the vicinity including light fixtures and soda machines is too much exposition to give between one player's actions and another's.

I see, so it'd take a lot of time and work to write a real hacking system, so the solution to the problem is to eliminate the entire list of possible of actions and just replace it with BRAIN LASER!

Sorry Frank, but no thanks. Your solution may work in the same way that 4E works, but I just don't find it a very interesting game to play. As a hacker, I want to be able to do creative stuff with technology. I realize that it takes a lot more design work to set up an actual hacking system rather than just giving the hacker a 4E at-will attack and calling it a day, but I think the payout is definitely worth it.

[Username17]

Sorry Frank, but no thanks. Your solution may work in the same way that 4E works, but I just don't find it a very interesting game to play. As a hacker, I want to be able to do creative stuff with technology. I realize that it takes a lot more design work to set up an actual hacking system rather than just giving the hacker a 4E at-will attack and calling it a day, but I think the payout is definitely worth it.

It's not "more design work," it's a fucking intractable amount of work at the table. If your hacking options are defined by the devices around you, then you have to work out those options every time you take an action because the devices around you will change dynamically. In a Shadowrun world there are conservatively hundreds and potentially thousands of devices in range. Creating an option space for the player every round isn't something that can be done. It's not that the outputs would necessarily be over or under powered, it's just fucking impossible to actually deliver that.

Now if you want the "flavor" of using technological devices around you in creative ways to generate effects, by all means tell players that they should come up with elaborate post hoc explanations for how technology is being used. Because listing out all the things you could potentially interact with a priori every fucking action is a total non-starter.

Don't get me wrong: it is also a fucking impossibly absurd design challenge to create specific hack effects for every device that shake out to a nash equilibrium where all the devices are used and there are still hack effects worth using. I am openly contemptuous of peoples' claims that they are skillful enough designers to do that, because no one is skillful enough to do that. It's an intensely huge undertaking and the balance point where something is used even though it's worth hacking is not only narrow, it's dynamic - moving pro- and con- with the prevalence of hackers in the game. But actually playing with such a system is fucking impossible even if you waved your fairy design wand and made it mathematically balanced. Even if we were playing Shadowrun Horror and only had fucking three item cards each, it would still be a frickin nightmare to list out hacking options on a round by round basis. In the actual Shadowrun RPG, where people carry dozens of hackable items each and the environment is full of cars and building alarms and bystanders with commlinks and street lights and soda machines and fountains and microwave ovens and shit - it's simply absurd.

Give people a list of effects they can achieve, and let them rant about wireless refrigerator controls or whatever the fuck, and move on with your life. It's like Star Trek, you decide what you're going to do and then you make up some technobabble to justify it. Coming up with all possible technobabble and then deciding which you are going to do is fucking impossible.

-Username17

[Ice9]

I feel like there's a pretty big middle ground between "detailed effects of every single device" and "fuck it, only brain hacking". If you have a fixed set of possible effects, and those effects have various requirements, in terms of what gear the target has to be using, then you're not any worse, complexity-wise, than a D&D Sorcerer.

The Sorcerer has a bunch of spells. But at a given time, only some of them will be useful. Charm Monster doesn't work on mindless stuff. Scorching Ray doesn't work on fire-immune creatures. Black Tentacles won't work if the enemy can't be grappled. Sunburst would technically "work" on a single BBEG, but it's an anti-army spell and you wouldn't likely use it that way. So from your big list, you can quickly cut it down to a few options and pick one.

Same deal with the Decker. They can have options that only work if, for example, the opposition is using guns, without needing a separate option for every single variety of gun.

[Cyberzombie]

I feel like there's a pretty big middle ground between "detailed effects of every single device" and "fuck it, only brain hacking". If you have a fixed set of possible effects, and those effects have various requirements, in terms of what gear the target has to be using, then you're not any worse, complexity-wise, than a D&D Sorcerer.

This.

The majority of devices uses are pretty obvious if you hack them. You get to tell the device instructions that are within its normal operating parameters. So hack the lights, you can tell them to go on or off. Hack a drink vending machine and you could get it to dispense drinks. Not exactly rocket science there.

This isn't Mage the Ascension where you've got to worry about people doing crazy physics defying things with computer hacking. While there are lots of potential devices to hack, most of them are simply distractions at best, and require no further elaboration. They're the hacker equivalent of throwing a rock to get the guard to look the other way.

The majority of things you'll need rules for is unsurprisingly going to be cyberware, AR goggles, smartguns and other similar personal devices. And if you replace a lot of the complex matrix actions section with some basic guidelines as to what happens when you hack stuff (you could even assign a category code for a lot of cyberware as to how much you can screw with the guy's body).

[Username17]

I feel like there's a pretty big middle ground between "detailed effects of every single device" and "fuck it, only brain hacking".

It's not "only brain hacking" it's that you can't check the target's equipment before determining what hacks are available. And if you don't check what equipment your target has before deciding what hack effects you want, then you'll end up doing post hoc explanations of how your hacks work on fucking naked people from time to time. So your technobabble has to include brain hacking so that you don't get a divide by zero error.

If you have a fixed set of possible effects, and those effects have various requirements, in terms of what gear the target has to be using, then you're not any worse, complexity-wise, than a D&D Sorcerer.

Yes. Yes you are. Oh my fucking god you are suggesting something so much fucking worse than a D&D Sorcerer. You're talking about a D&D Sorcerer who had to ask the DM whether each and every enemy had amulets of natural armor or stat boosting items or rings of deflection or magic weapons before they were allowed to choose their spell action.

But of course, we can't even get that far, because when you tried to demonstrate such a "short list" the first entry you suggested was "shut off cyberware," an effect you can't even describe without going line item through every fucking piece of cyberware in every book. Which means your "short list" is actually like an order of magnitude longer than the entire equipment list for the entire game.

The Sorcerer has a bunch of spells. But at a given time, only some of them will be useful. Charm Monster doesn't work on mindless stuff. Scorching Ray doesn't work on fire-immune creatures. Black Tentacles won't work if the enemy can't be grappled. Sunburst would technically "work" on a single BBEG, but it's an anti-army spell and you wouldn't likely use it that way. So from your big list, you can quickly cut it down to a few options and pick one.

This is completely disingenuous. We'll start with how you cast a spell and if the target has a special immunity the spell fails. Which is disappointing but very importantly doesn't hold the game up while you ask hypothetical "Mother May I?" questions about every fucking spell on your list before you find out what spells you're allowed to cast.

The game needs to move forward. And having one player required to play seven rounds of "Go Fish" before he's allowed to choose which action he's going to take is fucking unacceptable. This isn't a fucking computer game where all the unavailable options are grayed out automatically. You have to fucking ask about each one. And that is bullshit.

Same deal with the Decker. They can have options that only work if, for example, the opposition is using guns, without needing a separate option for every single variety of gun.

No.

-Username17

[Nath]

Which is why brain hacking is so important.

Or any other similar solution. Hackers could just as well make their comlink casts electronic bolts at their targets using the electronic warfare skill.

[Ice9]

It's not "only brain hacking" it's that you can't check the target's equipment before determining what hacks are available.

"You can't check if the target is undead or a construct before casting Finger of Death."


There are dozens of immunities and other conditions that affect whether you'd want to cast a given spell in D&D. And yet, people manage to play Sorcerers all the time, without the game collapsing. And actually, a SR decker is in an easier position than a D&D Sorcerer, because he knows what stuff is available, he doesn't have to guess.

[Username17]

Which is why brain hacking is so important.

Or any other similar solution. Hackers could just as well make their comlink casts electronic bolts at their targets using the electronic warfare skill.

Sure. Or make hologram fields. Or very high pitched squeals. It's not really super important. The point is simply that "He hasn't got a [Type of Device], it doesn't make sense for you to be able to use that kind of hack attack" is just not a conversation you should ever have in the middle of combat because it fucking takes too long. So your combat hacks need to have built in technobabble for why they work on enemies who don't have any devices at all.

Out of combat hacks, the ones that are equivalent to ritual sorcery, can go ahead and be device dependent. It's not important, because setting up a non-combat hack can go ahead and involve the other players. But in combat hacks have to take place on your turn. They simply cannot wait for the GM to look up every single enemy's full equipment list on the big hack allowances chart to tell the player which enemies they can use incapacitating attacks on before they decide what action to take. They cannot wait for that, because the other players have fucking shit to do.

-Username17

[TheNotoriousAMP]

It's not "only brain hacking" it's that you can't check the target's equipment before determining what hacks are available.

"You can't check if the target is undead or a construct before casting Finger of Death."


There are dozens of immunities and other conditions that affect whether you'd want to cast a given spell in D&D. And yet, people manage to play Sorcerers all the time, without the game collapsing. And actually, a SR decker is in an easier position than a D&D Sorcerer, because he knows what stuff is available, he doesn't have to guess.

Very much this. Why not just give the hacker a passive scan ability at the beginning of each round? You already tell players if the enemy is a troll or a shotgun wielding orc. Just say "x amount of enemies pour into the room, (to the hacker) they have these cyber implants". The hacker can then choose "normal disruption" for a generic debuff or a "focused shot" which can knock out a specific leg or arm, depending on how tough the enemy is.

[Lokathor]

It's not "only brain hacking" it's that you can't check the target's equipment before determining what hacks are available.

"You can't check if the target is undead or a construct before casting Finger of Death."

But you actually can't do that. If you ask the GM for the creature's type they're not supposed to just tell you. You have to make a guess, then hope there's not an illusion in effect or something. The GM just says if the monster falls over or not, they're under no obligation to tell you why if the target shrugs it off, just that they do.

So, fine, device hacking would work playably if a failed hack attack wasted your turn like that and had the game move on.

[Ice9]

The vast majority of the time, it's apparent whether a given enemy is undead. And there are Knowledge rolls as well.

In any case, the Sorcerer often does have a choice of several enemies and several different spells. I know it's been claimed that such a level of choice would literally kill players with complexity, but astoundingly, it doesn't.

[Cyberzombie]

The way I see it you're going to have four general combat hack types:

Sensory disruption: Stun/blind the guy by screwing with his cybereyes, smartgoggles, etc by either ruining the display or hitting him with very loud startling noises.

Bodily attack: If the guy has wired reflexes or any similar cyberware that hooks into his neural system, you should be able to run damaging attacks on him. This can be as simple as using the basic Black Hammer attack program. You can flag which cyberware opens you to this sort of attack. Generally any kind of bodily control stuff, like wired reflexes, skillwires, and so on.

Weapon Jamming: Smart guns don't fire.

TacNet hack: This isn't great in a direct fire fight but is useful for misleading reinforcements, luring enemies into an ambush and so forth.

Now, it's pretty easy for a DM to tell you which of those four are available. You don't need to give them a list of every individual piece of cyberware the guy has.

For more specific hacks, like hacking a cyberarm to strangle the guy, either you'd have to know the arm was there or you'd have to do a little digging. But chances are in combat you'll resort to one of the base options if you're actually being shot at.

[RadiantPhoenix]

hologram fields.

What mechanical and/or fluff changes would be most appropriate to add to make this not (almost) useless against astral perception?

Astral holograms? Nerfing astral perception?

[TheNotoriousAMP]

For more specific hacks, like hacking a cyberarm to strangle the guy, either you'd have to know the arm was there or you'd have to do a little digging. But chances are in combat you'll resort to one of the base options if you're actually being shot at.

The specific hacks in my view should be part of the hacker's off the table toolkit. They should be based on legwork research and tailored to the individual mission and its goals. It's an interesting way to add options for hackers to prove their worth while planning a run.

[silva]

This all seems to say that shadowrun has a bad system for what it wants to do.

Is it better to rip out all the mechanics, and replace them with something much lighter?

Yes, I believe so. What exactly those new lightish mechanics are I dont know.

(Leverage RPG does everyting related to the Heist genre better than Shadowrun ever did and in a lighter way - perhaps one could steal some ideas from it )

[Parthenon]

Notorious, can you shut the fuck up about your love of the legwork. Your position has gradually changed over time:
[*]It's not bad that hackers are too complicated to use in combat because they are useful at legwork
[*]Hackers should be worse at combat because they are good at legwork
[*]Hackers should require legwork for each and every hack they intend to do and should plan ahead for each and every enemy

What next? Hacking should be impossible during combat and hacking can only be done during planning a run?

[TheFlatline]

Before making arguments like this, I advise you actually read the source material you're using pictures from. What you think is going on in that picture is far from the truth of how the game actually works.

Does Cyberzombie... like... *know* about AH and Frank? Like know know?

[TheFlatline]

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that, to make sense, such technique should only allow to affect targets that are either drones or vehicles, have cyberware, or are currently using an imaging or audio device.

Considering that cyberware is incredibly common

Except for anyone who cares about... you know... essence. Like any magic user.