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Posted by: Androcomputus Jul 11 2010, 05:19 PM

I was talking to my players and brought up the key problem with hackers from this thread http://a. A solution that we thought of was to have everyone take some gear that allows them to hack into the matrix.

While they are not throwing 20 dice, they do get to perform basic functions. In addition, this encourages team work as the team hacker can create back doors, weaken security, and help the party through the matrix to the point where they are successful. By treating the matrix as another battleground of a combat encounter, everyone gets to be in the spot light. Mechanically, once the team hacker has crippled the net security, throwing a few dice or using an agent basically gives the team more actions on the net. Instead of 3 to 5 IP you have about 6 to 11 IPs...

Just like the Street Sams and Adepts, who dominate combat while everyone sits on their hands, support the non-combat people. What I plan on this to do is give those non-combat characters a weapon capable of full-auto or drones. This allows the other players to participate in something and contribute even though they are not throwing 20 dice...

What do you guys think of this?

Posted by: Wasabi Jul 11 2010, 05:22 PM

My players hangups with the Matrix have always been pacing. If you can go around the table giving everyone an action (init order if in rounds, if noncombat then just literally around the table) so that gets them more interested. If players want to be matrix-goons, let em but not all players are willing to do it ya know?

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 11 2010, 05:38 PM

I thought everyone *did* have some gear that lets them hack. You don't need much.

Posted by: Androcomputus Jul 11 2010, 05:54 PM

My group and I are new to the game so we brought modified sample characters... So I understand that this is pretty common?

Posted by: Ascalaphus Jul 11 2010, 05:55 PM

The big issue is if someone who's already inside a node can help others get past the firewall. Having a bunch of teammates in AR to soak up IC attacks could be useful while the hacker does the real work.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 11 2010, 06:00 PM

Multiple attackers definitely distracts defenders and resources. It's also less stealthy, just like in meatspace. I think this is a fun way to play. Hack the Gibson!

Posted by: Androcomputus Jul 11 2010, 06:01 PM

That is what I was thinking, in addition after the hacker breaks in and weakens security, they could break into other less sensitive areas without having to rely on the hacker to do everything. Again, so he can focus on more important things.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jul 11 2010, 06:03 PM

glad i am not the only one with that movie tattooed to the brain.

Posted by: Ascalaphus Jul 11 2010, 07:08 PM

It's a good example of how to make hacking fun at the low, low price of realism.

Posted by: Lanlaorn Jul 11 2010, 07:17 PM

More like scarred for life, that movie is an embarrassment to anyone who's even touched a computer.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jul 11 2010, 07:23 PM

funny thing is, such elements like the cookie monster "virus" are based on real life stuff. The presentation is just way more graphical so that the non-geeks have eyecandy on hand. Basically the same as explosions in a action movie.

Posted by: Androcomputus Jul 12 2010, 12:14 AM

Looked up the Phrase, "Hack the Gibson"... I love it... I was Born in the 90s but I am making sure that I use it at the Table.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 12 2010, 12:16 AM

See also 'Burning Chrome'. Required knowledge.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Jul 12 2010, 02:21 AM

There are tools that disable a Firewall... The Sapper Trojan is a good example (page 124, Unwired)...

Keep the Faith

Posted by: Lanlaorn Jul 12 2010, 02:41 AM

The works of William Gibson are excellent but just because a bad movie references him with one line doesn't make it a good movie lol.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 12 2010, 02:43 AM

Psh. It's a *classically* bad movie. That's a whole other kind of good.

Posted by: Martin_DeVries_Institute Jul 12 2010, 04:42 AM

Yes. Hackers (and Johnny Mnemonic, while we're tangentially on the subject) are horrible, horrible movies. But they are horrible in an awesome way.

Posted by: Lanlaorn Jul 12 2010, 05:34 AM

Johnny Mnemonic is such a shame, too. The premise is great and they just tacked on a retarded plot. I mean who in their right mind replaces everyone's favorite mirrorshade razorgirl with that terrible character, ugh.

Posted by: Simon Kerimov Jul 12 2010, 05:38 AM

"I keep telling the goons, 'Look guys, you yutz around in AR all the time, right? We built the goddamn Matrix like the goddamn physical world because people fracking remember it. You are always in the goddamn Matrix, and if you don't know it, that makes you utterly batfracked. Keep your goddamn comm-channels shut, or put a fracking Agent into it. The Black Hat in your party had better not have to carry your goddamn weight in the goddamn Matrix or you are all goddamn dead! On the bounce, soldier!' occasionally they actually hear me. You can tell which ones do, since they aren't dead."

//Physical Actions can be Matrix Actions with AR. If the meat and the magic in the party aren't helping the matrix, the designated hacker isn't making good enough use of his people resources.

Posted by: Martin_DeVries_Institute Jul 12 2010, 05:52 AM

Not that I want to jump to that movie's defense, but that wasn't entirely their fault. The rights to Molly were owned by another company, because one company bought Neuromancer (and the rights to all of its characters, including Molly) years before Johnny Mnemonic was sold. JM's makers had to replace her. (Fifteen years later and we still haven't seen Neuromancer onscreen...)

OTOH we did end up with Henry Rollins, Ice-T, and Dolph "I'm secretly a genius" Lundgren. And Takeshi Kitano! So maybe it was a worthy tradeoff?

Posted by: Mäx Jul 12 2010, 08:51 AM

Only those that take think ment as entertaiment way too seriously.
Hackers is a hella good movie and in many ways pretty realistic just a whole lot more graphic becouse who in their right mind would want to watch a command rompt for half a movie.

Posted by: Lanlaorn Jul 12 2010, 01:13 PM

I just don't understand the need for people to defend stupid movies. At least you didn't tell me to "turn off my brain". And it's funny because if the camera work was shoddy and the special effects terrible no one says to "turn off your eyes", but yet we're somehow supposed to forgive idiotic plots and dialogue?

Look, the unrealistic hacking was the least of that movie's problems. The terrible acting, dialogue and primitive story were the biggest offenders, I've seen more depth in children's television. Every time the villain opens his mouth in that movie, it's cringeworthy. While I agree that Hackers eventually crosses the suck event horizon into "So Bad It's Hilarious" territory, it is by no stretch of the imagination a "hella good movie".

Posted by: hobgoblin Jul 12 2010, 02:07 PM

heh, i always considered the overly dramatic villain a planned element.

basically a case of the guy taking himself way to seriously thanks to landing a job as head of the IT department.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 12 2010, 03:08 PM

If you can't enjoy that kind of movie, it's your loss.

Posted by: Lanlaorn Jul 12 2010, 03:18 PM

Well I can enjoy them, like I said "So Bad It's Hilarious", it's just I can't take seriously any defense of them.

If you really want to see me rant we can talk about the Starship Troopers movie. Talk about plot and character butchery. Those dumb motherfuckers didn't even make a good "dumb action movie", and seriously, cutting the powered armor? Madness. Heinlein is probably still spinning in his grave.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 12 2010, 03:22 PM

But, if you can enjoy it, you can defend it. As in, 'I enjoy it, period.'

Posted by: Lanlaorn Jul 12 2010, 03:28 PM

Well I'm not sure anyone who says it's good is praising it's accidental comedy, but that's fair enough.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 12 2010, 03:32 PM

Back to the thread, you should also get creative with what the 'non-hackers' are helping with. Think like a con-artist team (Leverage, Hustle, etc.): stealthy one, tanky one, overwatch, distraction–everything that a normal runner group would use in reality. For example, anyone with a commlink can log into the public 'area' and just kind of watch security responses, when a public account even exists. At the risk of turning the game into Matrixrun, this sounds really fun to me (cuz I'm always alone in the Matrix. ).

Posted by: SkepticInc Jul 12 2010, 03:47 PM

This movie made me cry. Literally. The Ghost of Heinlein came to me while I was watching and asked me to put him out of his misery. Like any honorable soul I had to build a device that would let a ghost commit suicide and then stood honor guard for him while he used it. The moment before his ghost disappeared into oblivion, he finally smiled again.

Posted by: Androcomputus Jul 12 2010, 07:32 PM

The idea of having people grab their com-links and join he team dedicated hacker in the matrix for part of the run came from the typical combat.

combat monsters doing the heavy lifting while non combat specialist support the combat monster by laying suppressive fire, lobbing grenades, and generally making sure that the combat monster does not get swarmed by the enemies' superior amount of actions.

Hacking wise, what would they be equipped with, what kind of actions are the equivalent to "laying suppressive fire, lobbing grenades, and generally making sure that the matrix monster does not get swarmed by the enemies' superior amount of actions."

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 12 2010, 07:34 PM

Exactly, sounds great, as long as that's what your players want. If they want to really fill those Matrix rolls, they'll need a bit of equipping, of course. Luckily, LOG doesn't matter, and skill only matters a little.

Posted by: tete Jul 12 2010, 09:42 PM

I disagree, I think its the closest Hollywood ever actually came to using real terms. Ping Pong virus, Rabbit in the System, they also co-mingled Intel and Mac chips(Pentium with RISC) but they actually used the terms. While a few films may be more realistic (maybe) they dont use real world terms.



I just like to point out that the best acting was done by the singers...


Back on Topic
As strange as this sounds if your going to have group hacking (which is awesome) provided everyone is involved you could break out a 1e system map. It would actually be fun to do as a group.

Posted by: biccat Jul 13 2010, 12:13 AM

Well, to quote http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1898, "[t]here is a reason movies never portray hacking realistically."

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Jul 13 2010, 12:24 AM

Doubt it... Starship Troopers actually made the estate some money... Though I can't vouch for the 2nd and 3rd ones...

Keep the Faith

Posted by: yukami Jul 13 2010, 02:15 AM

if the GM or the team hacker doesn't have something worthwhile to hack during the 9 or so seconds it takes to mow somebody down, then one or both of you aren't being creative enough XD likewise, street same could check their pockets to make sure they didn't drop anything while hacky-mchackerson opens a door. SR4 by its nature seems designed to run on multiple levels simulataneously - it's part of achieving the game's full potential, as far as i am concerned

also, hackers is a great movie. penn jillette, angelina jolie (topless!), awesome soundtrack, macs, and everytime you find some hole in the plot/setting/writing, said hole is just oozing style! what's not to love ^_^

Posted by: hobgoblin Jul 13 2010, 05:00 PM

funny thing is, a modern day intel chip have internal RISC microcode, but a x86 translator for backwards-compatibility.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jul 13 2010, 05:03 PM

depends on what release version you get hold of. Iirc, the scene was shortened for the video/TV release.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 13 2010, 07:45 PM

I always assumed that RISC machine was a custom job, neither a Mac nor a PC.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jul 13 2010, 09:20 PM

heh, its more about the number of specialized commands in the CPUs instruction set. Back when they where slow and expensive (relative to today at least), companies used to add specialized instructions for various multi-step math operations so that they could be done in one cycle or there about (if the programmer and/or compiler made use of them) rather then multiple.

but as the hardware picked up speed, and it was found that these specialized instructions was rarely used, the idea of stripping the instructions back to basics came about.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 13 2010, 09:22 PM

I know what RISC is. I meant that, while Macs of the time were RISC and PCs were CISC, the laptop in the movie was some Linux-style thing.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jul 13 2010, 10:43 PM

i dont think linux was much of a topic back then.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Jul 14 2010, 03:02 AM

That's why I said '-style'. That is, a custom system. The easiest thing would be whatever historically appropriate UNIX. BSD? Whichever, it's just command lines.

Posted by: deek Jul 14 2010, 03:06 PM

I think it is a good call to get the whole party in the matrix when the hacker is doing his thing (assuming they other characters are available). I think that would solve the majority of matrix slow-down problems in the campaigns I have run.

The downsides are that some players may have no desire to learn any matrix stuff and choose to opt out, yet still be bored. I could also see that some may feel it unfair to force them to put resources towards more matrix stuff during chargen. Now, if you outline this before chargen and maybe even give some bonus skill/software/equipment to get everyone at a base matrix competency level.

I think its a good idea and if you can get the players to all buy in and when its time to hack everyone just gets used to using matrix actions and helping out, its should actually be fun!

Posted by: SkepticInc Jul 14 2010, 03:15 PM

AR is part of the Matrix, and a sufficiently wired grunt has almost as many passes as the hacker does. Since AR is sculpted to overlay the real world, there is no reason you can't have your combat monsters doing things in the middle of combat that are Matrix related.

Here is a little scenario:

Alice the hacker is trying to get into Eve corporations security network in the middle of a fight. She has 4 Matrix passes.

Bob the street sam has 3 physical passes. One of his jobs in combat is to attach a Signal 1 retrans unit on any opposing forces that he can manage, so that Alice can start hacking cyberware. Since he can also take shots better than Alice, Bob is responsible for getting to AROs' physical tags and hitting them with the tag eraser to remove evidence that they were ever there (even if people see your face, if there is not recording of it in a world where everything is recorded, it never happened).

I'm sure GM's are much more clever than I am at coming up with requirements for Matrix actions that need a meat body to get somewhere to do some hacking.

Posted by: deek Jul 14 2010, 06:07 PM

That's a good example of marrying objectives that combine meat and matrix IPs.

Most of the time I've seen a hacker need to do something in the matrix, the rest of the part was able to wait in the meat world, whether that was during a car ride, sitting in their apartment or waiting at the front door of the building. Its THOSE time that having the whole group involved, when otherwise they'd have the option of waiting, that would be nice to get everyone in the matrix and do stuff.

Posted by: Emy Jul 14 2010, 06:09 PM

I'd slap a skinlink on the retrans unit as well, for if Bob manages to get it on the enemy's skin or weapons. Just in case, for example, the enemy has a skinlinked, smartlinked Ares Alpha with the wireless turned off.

Posted by: SkepticInc Jul 14 2010, 08:21 PM

I do like finding ways for Meat/Magic/Matrix to all be engaged at the same time, all the time, for exactly the reasons this thread was started. I either use split objectives so Meat people that don't want to play with the Matrix don't have to, or I suggest they get Agents with a similar Persona to the runner so they can be present and have the excuse to offer advice. Getting others involved in Magic is a down right bitch though. The second time you drug your party with Deepweed or use the Astral Gate Spirit Power on them, they just start kicking you in the face. So what I'm forced to do is to have the runners targets use more Manatech than actual Magic, so the Meat and Matrix parts of the team can go after the glow moss alarms, or the Leeches on the walls, or things like that. Magic is currently my weak point. Sadness.