Hope everything is okay at home. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

The summoner at this point is almost dead, and will certainly die in the next few minutes from trauma and blood loss. (he is already in overflow, and has taken more damage from blood loss during the 5 minutes that have gone by while people are reacting to Grease and Jack is taking care of the older victim).

I think it doesn't make a lot of sense that a device somehow becomes more secure and less manipulable if its owner is dead. Maybe it is just an issue with requiring the Spoof Command action. Is there some reason Overkill couldn't direct connect to the commlinks, hack MARKs, and use a Control Device action to shut the wireless off?

I get that you don't want us pilfering everything that isn't nailed down. I don't think we have that intention either (although the van is a tasty target since every shadowrunner team known to man has a van). With all of the security RFID tags, it's probably too difficult to steal the van in any event. Plus it may have been used in the commission of the murder of an LS officer, so it's probably a bad idea to drive around in it for long unless we got someone to paint a bitchin' wizard and dragon mural on the side of it.

I'm not really concerned with you stealing everything not nailed down (you've certainly shown no such tendencies) - I'm trying to get a handle on how the rules work, and then see if that is problem. I think that the way I've outlined it above is how the rules work (hard to say as they are so vague).

If you make it a control device action, then Overkill would not even need to directly connect to the commlinks, he could hack a MARK onto them wirelessly and then use Control Device to shut off the wireless.

Having said that, here is my question (and this is much more vague, as it has to do with the intent of the world). Should it be easy to shut the wireless off on an item if you aren't the owner? Wouldn't it make sense to make it so that if you aren't the owner, and you steal a commlink from someone, that you then can't access it without also being able to be traced by the owner of the commlink?

If something is owned by a corporation, do you want your employees to have the ability to shut off the wireless, or do you want it to be sort of hardwired on, so that if someone steals it, you can find it, without them easily being able to conceal it?

ETA - Also, think about the implications of that with Riggers. Grease has the Fly Spy up in the air. He sends a message to the drone to patrol the area. Some decker uses Hack on the Fly to put a mark on it, then Control Device to shut off the wireless. Now the Fly Spy will patrol the area until it runs out of fuel or someone shoots it down, since with its wireless off, Grease can't actually control it (he can't Jump into it, can't use Control Device, and can't Send Message to it).

And there is nothing he can do about it, short of somehow flying up there and connecting to the Fly Spy via a cable.

ETA#2 - Since the internet is so terrible at communicating intent or inflection, please know that I am only having a conversation, and am not wed to anything I've already written. I'm not having an argument, only a conversation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

ETA#3 - I prefer this to dragons and wizards on the side of a van... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

LOL, I'm dying over Krieger's van... and yeah, totally on board with this as a discussion.

To the topic at hand:


That depends. While I read your example of the iPhone, I don't use a password on my phone, so anyone who gets their hands on it could turn the wireless off if they knew where to navigate in the settings screen. I would guess it would probably be basic security in the 6th world to have some kind of password protection for commlinks (fancier people paying for the biometric readers listed in the BBB), but cracking a password like that seems like something that aligns directly with a decker's raison d'etre.

If you don't have physical control over the device, it definitely shouldn't be easy to shut off the wireless of a device, but I also don't think it is. In order to Control Device or Spoof Command, you have to be able to apply illegal MARKs to a device, which requires a deck. They're generally prohibitively expensive if you aren't specced as a decker (with the exception of the deck you introduced, but that deck is definitely not all that capable). No one on our team, save Overkill, has that capability.

WRT Corps, I imagine the spider keeps track of wireless devices and to whom they are assigned. I think it would be a quick visit from the security suits if your corporate property were to be turned off against corporate protocol. Alternately, it could be treated as requiring an illegal MARK similar to the above about password protection. It's still something I think a decker should be able to do, whether the owner is alive or unMARKable. The unMARKable thing also bothers me. There should always be a way to MARK an owner, whether that is MARKing the spider of a host (who is listed in the book as the owner of all files and devices connected to a Host) or the Host itself if there isn't a spider.


The book does say that deckers are a rigger's worst nightmare, that's why you invest in a solid RCC to make a protective PAN. One thing to note is that, if a decker did that, Grease would definitely know when the icon disappears from his PAN. I figure the pilot program on the drone would have it land when it runs out of fuel (just like the book says that a flying drone will safely land if it is hit with a reboot action) rather than flying to its doom.

@Overkill: How many bullets did you use to finish off Truck and the summoner? I need to update the ammo tracker. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

As a huge Rush fan, I've always loved Krieger's fascination with the band (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)



Ok, you've convinced me (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

So we'll let you shut the wireless off with either a Spoof Command or a Control Device.

@Grease - if anything happens to your drones, blame Jack (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

So, in a nutshell.

For the commlinks, the best thing to do would be to shut all of them off (i.e. power them down) for now, and then later turn them back on, and have Overkill use Hack on the Fly to put a Mark on them, and then Control Device to shut off the wireless (assuming you want to get any information from them. If you don't want any info from them, then you can just leave them shut off, but then again, if that were the case, no need to take them).

For the cars, basically there isn't really anything you can do to steal them without someone being able to track them down. You can certainly take them (for the Americar you won't even have to do anything as it is already started, just get in and drive).

For the van, you will need to put marks on it to then use Control Device to turn it on, and then you can drive it away. (if it is locked, you'll have to unlock it, of course).

Does that make sense?

ETA - not to put pressure on you, but remember that many of the group got actions where they could not take any offensive actions, but they could have communicated that they were under attack via a DNI. Not saying they necessarily did, just something you may want to worry about.

I'm not sure I agree with this concept. I think drones in particular are always "wireless on"; otherwise, what Lobo described could happen too easily. Granted, an enemy hacker can take temporary control of a drone, but they should have to take additional actions (data spike it until it's smoking, gain enough marks to control device, force reboot to have it fall to the ground etc.).

VEHICLES, on the other hand, are different. I think it depends on what type of vehicle it is. Agree that if it's a company car, it's got wireless on all the time, since it's essentially a drone. But personal vehicles (in particular shadowrun vehicles, where presumably you'd want to creep around a city without broadcasting your location) should have the option to turn wireless off. Vehicles and drones are for the most part running silently, though, as that just makes good sense from a security standpoint. Additionally, turning off the wireless on a vehicle doesn't necessarily remove control; it still has the physical controls, or in the case of a rigged vehicle, the direct input.

ETA: "EXIT VAN LEFT" is my favorite.
ETA2: I guess my main point is that on drones, there's almost never a case where you'd intend to turn the wireless off, since that's how you control the darn thing; it wouldn't be built into the device. ALSO, an effective way to negate wireless are the jamming rules, which I think would serve the same purpose as what Jack was describing (but require an active usage on the part of the jammer). In point of fact, I'm going to read up on the jamming stuff to determine if we can't take one of these vehicles.

X, Y, ZED!!!!

As far as the drones, I'm still not totally certain how that is supposed to work. CGL came up with the bizarre distinction between a wireless bonus and wireless functionality (e.g. the infamous jammer/commlink ruling), so I'm not sure if they intended for a decker to be able to two-shot a drone using Hack on the Fly and Control Device, but who knows judging by the book, they probably didn't really think it through). Obviously, I don't think you should change anything if DrZ has a problem with it (drones are already pretty well screwed in 5E as it is).

Having had lunch to think over it all, I think my only real problem is lack of specificity concerning owners and ownership. If Grease is running around with his RCC and a decker hacks a mark onto his RCC persona, the decker can spoof commands to the drones. If Grease is shot dead the next second, the decker would lose that capability since the persona would presumably disappear. That doesn't seem right, either from a mechanics perspective or from a "How Does the Matrix Know Grease Is Dead?" perspective.

ETA: I think DrZ has a good point. Drones, by their nature, may not have a wireless off function. That's heading for some serious SkyNet level shit, LOL...

Well, how does this factor in with IC knocking you out while the bad guys (i.e. the cops) run a trace and figure out your physical location? If you're unconscious and link-locked, presumably your drones and whatnot are still online?

Link-locking seems to be a special circumstance where the connection is jammed open. To the point at hand though, if the situation occurred (decker MARKs Grease's RCC/Grease gets killed), I would presume his drones are still flying around doing whatever he told them to do with no problem. But I don't know if the decker would be able to control them anymore using Spoof Command as his MARK on the owner (which seems to necessitate a persona over a device) would disappear with the persona icon (unless link-locked, which may leave the persona up).

I don't really know. I don't think anyone really knows.

They still do have to take an additional action - they have to use either Control Device or Spoof Command. So, for instance, the Decker could, as you describe, use one action to Hack on the Fly to put a mark (or marks, should they take the penalty) on the Drone, and then use Control Device to fly it into the ground and crash it, OR they could use Hack on the Fly to put a mark/marks on it and then use Control Device to shut the wireless off. It is still the same number of actions.

(on a separate note, if all they want to do is Brick the device, they don't even have to put a Mark on it - Overkill's character could easily deal enough Matrix damage to brick one of your drones without marking it.)



I'm not sure if there is supposed to be a distinction between vehicles and drones per the RAW. Vehicles are essentially drones that are designed to carry people. In fact, here is the quote from the book:

Drones are unmanned vehicles intended to be used remotely
by riggers or run autonomously. Of course, any
vehicle or other machine with a rigger interface can be
run remotely by riggers or autonomously, but drones
tend to be cheaper, more specialized to their function,
and don’t need to pay for parking. Still, the rules for
drones apply to any remotely controlled or rigged device,
but between us chummers let’s just say “drone”
because it’s shorter.

So, I'm thinking that if you can shut the wireless off on a vehicle, you can shut it off on a drone. Also, from the perspective of "company" vehicles as opposed to "personal"vehicles - they aren't mechanically different - i.e. the Ford Americar that Renraku purchases doesn't have a different mechanical way of shutting the wireless off than the Ford Americar Bob Smith buys from his local Ford dealer.



Jamming is weird with regards to how they have ruled. The way it has been ruled, if I have a Rating 2 Commlink, and a smartlink (which is a device rating of 2) and someone hits me with a Rating 6 jammer, I immediately loose any wireless bonus that I get from the smartlink, however, both are still connected to the Matrix, and both still can perform any action that does not say "Wireless Bonus". So, for instance, I can still use my commlink to send messages (although I will take a -6 dice pool penalty).

So if you hit the van with a Rating 6 jammer, then it can still be traced, just with 6 points of noise. And if the person trying to track it has Signal Scrub and a wireless Datajack, he can negate 3 points of that.

Neil Peart stands alone. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)




The Matrix knows, God help us, the Matrix always knows....

Seriously though, I think the idea is that with a Spoof Command, you are hijacking the signal from the owner and using it to send commands to the device.

If that owner is killed, or shuts down his commlink/deck and so you lose all marks on the owner's persona, then you can't hijack that signal anymore. The drones, on the other hand, would still be connected to the Matrix, and so you could Hack them to put a Mark on them, and then use Control Device to control them directly.

With regards to link-locking, if Grease were link-locked, then his persona is still on the Matrix, and therefore he could continue to be Spoofed.

I would argue some of these points.

There is a distinction when you consider physical condition monitors. Vehicles get 12 plus 1/2 Body and drone get 6 plus 1/2 Body. So, they do make a mechanical distinction between the two in some cases.


I don't think there is anything really specific about it in the book, but does it really make sense that drones would have a wireless OFF option? Even looking at what you quoted:

One of the scenarios requires active wireless ON, the other would require wireless ON to update orders or give new orders. It also seems like it could be abused to make deckers useless against a drone. Grease could give his drones a command to patrol an area and land at a certain location at a certain point in time and shut down, thus allowing him to turn the wireless back ON. This would make the drone not only immune to hacking, but also make it impossible to spot with a Matrix Perception test.

I kind of think some things aren't designed to have a wireless OFF function. Drones would be one. In the interest of bringing this back to the conversation at hand, I think commlinks would be another. Most data is actually stored in a cloud/mesh environment rather than on the commlink itself, so I personally think a commlink should either be powered ON or OFF without the capability to turn OFF its wireless. An easy way to explain it would be that a commlink is wholly dependent on wireless access to store data, which would cover some of the functions that might not natively require wireless access (telephone, music player, etc).

I think my issue with this part of the rules is that you cannot ever spoof a commlink (other than weird corner cases). A commlink is normally a device. In order to spoof a command to the device, you have to MARK the owner's persona. But in order to MARK the owner's persona (assuming they aren't a decker/rigger/TM with alternate means of forming a persona), the commlink device icon no longer exists.

It's probably really niche and doesn't really add to the discussion. It's just something that has always bothered me. I don't understand why the device icon is subsumed when a persona is formed...

**************************************

OK, so for the game, Overkill just killed Truck and the summoner. We need to ditch the bodies in the lake somewhere and see if we can't hack the van to get access to both vehicles. I would say we drive the vehicles out of the Arsenal and ditch them either near here or in the Barrens where one of the gangs will take care of it for us in a matter of days. We leave the commlinks off for now until we figure out what's going on with the girl and our captive. We may not really need to dig into the commlinks if the blond guy talks.

You make some good points, does everyone else agree with this interpretation? I'm willing to go along with this if others are.

So drones and commlinks can never be wireless off, unless they are also physically off. That means that if your commlink is on, you can be found via a Matrix Perception test, assuming they know your number (or some other piece of information).

My only explanation would be (and I think I'm okay with not being able to Spoof a commlink or deck) is that since it is the device that you are using to access the Matrix, it is the device generating that signal that the decker would hijack by using the Spoof command, so there is no incoming signal to hijack, it is the source of that signal.

Be that as it may - back to the story:

I think being spotted is fine as long as:

1) You can still Run Silent.
2) Actually tracking you down still requires a Trace Icon action and the commensurate hacking of MARKs.

Personally, I kind of figure Shadowrunners keep any operational commlinks turned off most of the time other than runs and turn off their personal commlinks whenever they do biz... and never the twain shall meet.

Man this matrix stuff is making me go crazy.. So many things make no sense at all. Wireless is a very strange beast, and not a really interesting concept considering its mind-blowingly useless complexity. Ownership is so badly thought out that it's just depressing. To change ownership, just take out whatever hardware identifies ownership, and put a new piece there instead. If it's the whole electronics of the thing, fine use mechanics and hardware as necessary, buy the right parts and replace the electronics. Hell wipe out the thing with a strong enough magnet for ****'s sake. My point is, there has to be a physical way to do many of these things illegally without logging on to the matrix for hours otherwise it makes NO sense whatsoever. I'm not saying our game has to be this way, just that the rules make me wanna commit violence. And can I just say that a Faraday cage is becoming the prime tool of any techy dude with illegal intentions or just with a concern for security/anonymity? I'm really not a fan of a lot of the rules you guys have been talking about.


I don't care. I think that none of it makes any sense but do what you feel is best. If you want to check your own personal files in peace, without matrix access (I guess you can sort of explain that one away by saying all data exists only on the matrix, but that's very stupid if you ask me), get to your Faraday cage right away. If you want to test out some repairs on your own special drone without alerting anyone who knows what kind of icon to look for on a matrix perception test to find it immediately, better do it inside your Faraday cage.

Cra-zi-ness.

----------

Anyway, back to the game. We shouldn't leave the commlinks behind. Hack them and turn them all off, check for RFID tags on them thoroughly (shouldn't be hard it's a small volume) and remove/erase all of them, and we can leave with the links and mess around with them later. They have a decent reselling value at least, I presume. Plus they might have very valuable information for us, whether blondie talks or not.

The Americar, Amy would be interested in keeping for herself, but then only if that's actually doable without being tracked easily.

Yes to both points (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

@Chrome - I hear you with regards to the Matrix rules. The funny part is that these rules are actually better than what I'm used to, the rules for 3e were even worse.

When I GM'd in 3e, I would not allow any of my players to have a decker character, I just had an NPC decker, and it was easier all around. I think the rules for 5e are actually usable, despite their flaws.

One of my biggest gripes with the 5e rules? They just aren't complete - there are huge holes in how stuff actually works in the world.

How expensive is a Faraday Cage, how expensive is a Host? How does one set either up? I could go on, but it doesn't help (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

We'll just have to wait for the Matrix book.

I apologize to everyone for the long posts on how the Matrix works, I am mostly asking the questions because I do want to have a consistent framework for you guys to be able to refer to, and I don't want you to feel like I pulled a "gotcha" on you when either someone tracks you down or you are unable to do something because you didn't know how the rules worked.

With regards to the commlinks, using a tag eraser would burn out the commlink, however, given the size of the commlink, it is unlikely any RFID tags would be on it.

Either vehicle is going to be problematic to hold on to, or at least you can, but then there is the real possibility that you get visited in the wee hours by some unpleasant people.

That being said, I'm all for continuing on with the adventure (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

1) Someone has to do something (or not) with the bodies
2) Someone has to shut off all the commlinks and bring them (or leave them, either way is fine with me)
3) You guys have to decide whether to take one car or both, or just drag unconscious blondie with you for a mile and carry the girl.

I just did! I figured it takes about 5-6 minutes. We also need to figure out a way to restrain the living guy. I could probably clobber him a bit to keep him unconscious, but that's not a long term solution. Anyone have any restraints?

Should be pretty easy.


I think we take the vehicles. It would help sell the story of "something happened, but not sure exactly what..."

ETA: When Amy assensed, did she assense the sacrificial offering? Would be good to know if she is Awakened.

Just made a quick post about taking at least the van. Maybe there might be something inside there to tie him up? If wishes were fishes..

Duh... they tied up the sacrifice victims. There should still be some bindings we can use. Jack only cut the bindings of the living hostage, he merely untied the dead victim. Those should work.

I think Amy did assense the living victim, if not, now's a good time (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

About the cars. There might be people who specialize in reclaiming "lost" vehicles and other ware, no? Could our fixer, a fence, or some other contact make us meet with someone who'd give a few grands in exchange for cars they know how to "remodel", even we don't know how? The answer might be no, but it's worth asking. Is car stealing/wiping/wireless offing/etc. completely out, or just beyond our characters reach, or what?

After assessing the current victim, Amy detects that she is magically active although her magic is less than Amy's.

For right now, I'm going to say that trafficking in stolen vehicles is beyond your current reach. There may be dedicated crime rings that handle such issues, but none that your characters have contacts with. It is possible that you may be able to get that information from a contact of a contact, but that will take time.

Couple other things.

1) Jack - eww - gross - but effective (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

2) In order to take the van, Overkill will have to bypass the lock (Hack on the fly to put a mark on the van, then Control Device to open the lock, and then another Control Device to start the van, after which it can be driven either manually or remotely or however you choose.

Hack on the Fly
16d6.hits(5)=7 - reduced to 6 by limit

Resist (Device Rating x2 due to direct Connection)
6d6.hits (5)=0

Overkill easily puts a Mark on the van

Now to open the lock
EW+Intuition=9d6
9d6.hits(5)=2

Resist (Device Rating x2 due to direct Connection)
6d6.hits (5)=0 (apparently it is really crappy van)

So the lock pops open.

He can start the van as well:
EW+Intuition=9d6
9d6.hits(5)=4.

Resist (Device Rating x2 due to direct Connection)
6d6.hits (5)=0 - now it is just embarrassing itself - 18 dice and 0 hits (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)