Here's why deckers are now and will always be stupid.

A janitor is not a broomer.

A mechanic is not a wrencher.

A street sam is not a gunner or a blader.

A mage is not a speller.

You have a profession that is typified and defined not by what they use but what they do, of course they were never taken seriously as an archietype, you take a guy and make him about his gear.

The trodes vs jacks debate is completely separate from that shift.

By the way, decks were introduced because the guys writing at the time were copying from Gibson, who like him or hate him wrote all of his stuff while coked out fo his mind and knew nada about actual computers other then they were big and bulky and sat on a desk or in huge complexes., but he'd stole the concept of virtual reality form someone. else and ran with it. I know there were people as early as 82 who alreayd knew that the portability and processing power of computers was going to increase exponentially, they just knew that certain hurdles needed to be crossed.

Meh, if I wanted reality I'd be taking Computer Forensics with my buddy. I play Shadowrun. If I'm already taking the leap that less than 1% of the population conquered the continent or that FUCKING MAGIC is real then it isn't really that far a leap to cyberdecks.

Much like programming in 4th Edition, Building a Deck could be reduced to no real time if you were skilled enough. And some tables I used to play at allowed the building in Chargen, if you had those skills. I only ever played One Decker in previous editions (built probably a dozen or so), because of the time it took to play them. I like them, no doubt, they were just tedious.

Programming in 4e can be reduced to no time? Isn't the time interval for that like 1-3 months? Even with a programming nexus, and rushing the job, you're looking at 1 month intervals for system/firewall, and week intervals for everything else (at least your hacking/common use programs. If you want a tacsoft, IC, or Autosofts programmed by yourself, then it's a 1.5 month intervals). If you're looking for rating 6 programs, that's threshold 12 and even the best coder is going to take 2 intervals to manage it... so you're looking at like 4 months for your OS, 4 months for your common use programs, and 8 months for your hacking programs, well over a year to code a full software suite, even while rushing the job in an expensive programming environment. Doing things normally, you're looking at almost 5 years. By the time you finish your code, it's already outdated and degrading (since all programs degrade unless someone is writing patches for it, but since you made the program you have to patch it yourself...) so keeping those programs all up to date is eating up more of your time and slowing down future programming....

Yeah, programming in SR4 sucks. I find it hard to believe that building a deck was anywhere near that bad

LurkerOutThere, you're just being silly there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) A gunner is a thing. A swordsman is a thing; spearman, axeman, bowman. A guitarist. Riggers use control rig. And so on.

Only by cheating, Seerow, but yes. ;D

No Cheating involved at all... Just use the rules.

Rushing the Job Halves the Time Interval.
A Programming Environment Halves the Time Interval.
Edge Expenditure can (optionally) Halve the Time Interval.

So, you can Divide any Programing times by 8. Assuming you want to take the risk of having errors in your Programming (1's and 2's count towards Glitches thanks to Russhing the job). Or don't rush the job and Divide Programming times by 4.

I believe that Yerameyahu is referring to the Use of a Spirit to use Guard on the Programmer (Can't remember of the top of my Head if a Sprite can provide the same benefit) while he is programming, to eliminate the risk of a Glitch. And though this is shameless powergaming, it is allowable by the rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

You can cheat *using* the rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Okay I wasn't aware of the option for edge to halve the interval, which still makes it take a full 6 months to program your own set of programs, and still takes about 2 months to program any IC you want. At least with all of that you can generally manage doing program options in a few days, rather than a month, but still the point remains that programming has the longest time intervals of any test that I'm aware of, and the only thing that uniquely affects it is the programming environment.

I guess... Neraph does it often enough. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Does take time, but nothing insurmountable at that point. Patching programs is not all that difficult either, using those options, Since all you need is 1-3 net Hits, and you will get that in a Single roll, most likely. Of course, the easiest way to track that is to just roll the "cost" into your lifestyle and move along, but *shrug*. Or just get a Sleep Regulator to have more hours in the day, then break down the intervals into Hours (40 Hours/Week) and move along.

Yet a truck driver is a trucker.

A rifleman is a rifleman.

A cameraman is a cameraman.

And so on, we can go on and on showing how certain jobs are named after the main tools of said job, or how a job isn't named after the main tools. This proves nothing either way.

Like every other archetype isn't about their gear or the Awakened equivalent. Maybe a straight face isn't, but only maybe.

Decking was a term coined from the popular cyberpunk genre when Shadowrun was created, street samurai taken from the rampant Japanese culture love/hate thing going on back then in the US.

I thought he was being ironic since, after all, a programmer is a person who uses programs to write programs, getting you on both sides of the task.

(Note that mechanic is derived from machines, although, oddly enough, janitor comes from "arched passage"*)

*http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=janitor

In effect, in editions 1 through 3, you had two kinds of Matrix access devices: tortoises and decks. A Tortoise is a low-end, low-stat devide that will not let you do hot sim, true hacking programs, and leaves a data trail a mile wide. think of it as a standard commlink. A deck is a modded tortoise that can do hot sim (according to the previous Matrix books, that is the one difference to tell tortoises from decks) and that can run all kinds of programs and have high-end stats. Think of it as a military commlink that comes with built-in hot sim. Of course, there were crap decks that would "only" equal about a mid-level Core Book commlink, and you could buy the tortoise from hell and slug through the Matrix real fast leaving behind an immense data trail, but generally, that's it.

Now, decks and tortoises were one-of-a-kind devices, more or less. You had to generate your own CPUs for them (which then hardcoded the OS), though you could buy prepacked memory and whatnot as add-on parts. Think of that as an Apple II type device (or any Apple computer except for the PowerPC, including the iPhone, really). A Commlink is more like a Windows/Linux PC - all parts are interchangable and whatnot, though complete packages are sold.

For a Deck, I'd cluster commlinks of appropriate quality (4 through 8 ) and give it a Firewall between 6 and 10. That should be enough to scare the hell out of uppity scripkiddies and most annoying Technos.

Merged.

But you're not going to share, are you? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Shadowrun 4 is not as wireless as you might think. Somewhere in the core rules it is even mentioned that wireless connections are still not as common as wired ones, simply because the latter are more secure.

And re-introducing decks isn't that big of an issue either. Just limit actual commlinks and think of raw commlinks as decks.
I'd restrict Matrix-IPs for example (like a maximum of 2 or 3 for commlinks and the total of 5 for decks) and the capability regarding use of utilities.


What I kinda disliked about 3rd edition deckers is that it's kinda hard (though certainly not impossible) to make them decent at hacking and still useful in other fields. And it's kind of disappointing to have 70% of what defines your character to be reduced to a mere gimmick should your group happen to mostly neglect the matrix stuff.

Anyway decks and programs were absurdly expensive (because of shadowrun's pointless balancing attempts) and the matrix was way too complex.
I think the 4th edition matrix is a great step to a better and faster matrix experience though it could surely use some more streamlining here and a little more flavour there.

I don't miss the decks as much as I miss the Mage not being a good decker without some sacrifice.

I don't have actual nostalgia, since I started in SR4 and began reading backwards from there. But I'm just offended by the idea that if a smartphone hacktoy has some Stat X, that I can't get something laptop-sized with Stat > X.

Yeah, yeah, you can do some of that with Clustering, but that's a bit of a pity fuck.

Eh, it makes sense to me. Technology has progressed to the point where bigger is not necessarily better, and processing power doesn't get increased from a direct increase in size.

I can understand the want for a more expensive/better cpu option for a hacker, but I wouldn't necessarily want it to be something that's very clunky and obvious to lug around. That sort of thing just screams "I'm a hacker!" in a game where that's not the sort of thing you want to broadcast. Also if high grade 'links are made more expensive I either money cap needs to be raised/removed, or programs need to be made FAR cheaper, or both.

Not Clustering, Nexi. A low-end nexus would give you additional Processor Limit, though not better Matrix Attributes. But neither will Clustering.

I have no idea how it happened. I posted it and suddenly it split when I refreshed the page.

Know why the Combat Decker was an Ork in SR3?
Because Hardening wasn't only internal, but also available for the casing.
Making it into a Shild with which you could bash in heads too!
Try and do that with one of them comlinks todays "hackers" use . .

Ow. Stop it. You're annoying me. Really. Stop. Now! I have an Uzi.

So?
What are you going to do with that?
If you throw it now, you will get hit as well!