Kruger. Stop the argumentative and bigoted comments regarding ADD.

Feel free to discuss your dislike of certain people's playstyles without resorting to your personal bigoted and provocative commentary on a set of mental and social developmental handicaps.

So you're saying my tinfoil hat will be back in fashion?

Hooray! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Do aluminum foil hats actually block brain waves?

Testing was inconclusive - turns out half the ones wearing the hats weren't transmitting brainwaves in the first place.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Wait, they went out of fashion? Crap...

Sort of in line with the discussion, Tron and The Matrix. Old VR movie vs. a New(ish) VR movie. Easy to draw comparisons with Old Matrix and New Matrix.

I'd go so far as to say you are flat out ignoring all of the rules and fluff for matrix security in fourth edition.

Anything remotely secure is not connected to the Matrix, or if it is, it is through a series of choke-points of escalating difficulty. Even if you don't flat-out need to be on site, being on site (and having the various muscle and magic guys to cover you) has enormous advantages.

Stuff that is really, really, really secure? It isn't wireless AT ALL.

To ad with-the datasearch rules mention this somewhat. Not all information is on the Matrix---secure information can be wireless, vanishing (timed burst transmission), hard copy, or availbe only by talking to the right people.

Also, skillsofts, emo-softs and such have their limits.

Two words that fundamentally changed the nature of the Matrix and how the game plays: Dataline Tap.

Ok, so please show anything in Unwired 2.0 that treat about Wired security ? 99.99% of every rules and fluff of SR4 is about Unwired security. People with just the rulebook are showed that everything is wifi directed.

In Unwired 2.0, on the node example there is only 2 of them that use optic-fiber connection : The Orbital Bank and The Hyper Secured base. Note that 3 of the 4 Nodes of the Secret Aztlan Base are accessible from Matrix only one from site, so "It isn't wireless AT ALL." ?, please.

So even the game designer accept that security doesnt rely heavily on wired system, thoses are definitely last ressort. Also thoses description forget about all the other nodes in the area (vehicules, personnal commlinks and such).

Oh, as I said, it's a feeling! Feelings don't tend to incorporate all the facts, they selectively pick some to create themselves. Naturally games I play in are adjusted according to feelings - and incorporate wired networks extensively. So it's all good, in my games.

Do you allow Deckers to continue to use the item that was their bread and butter for 35 years before Crash 2.0? The Dataline Tap?

It's hilarious how in 5 years all of a sudden the "ultra secure, unbreakable systems" are all wired when "hackers" have been dealing with that for decades. Did all the wired data transfer become magically unbreakable when someone flipped the switch to "wireless"? I can't find a reference in the book saying so. In fact it goes out of its way to say that the backbone and structure is the same meaning the tried and true method of Dataline Tapping should still work. Fuck your wireless inhibiting paint and Faraday cages.

Funny enough, wireless being so easy and efficient actually made the hacker LESS willing to physically go on site in 4th edition. Also the removal of the I/O stat, bandwidth, and Active/Storage Memory all contributed to the hacker never having to leave the van now. If you were trying to wirelessly hack into a Red-Hard system and you knew you couldn't fit all the programs you need on your deck and the bandwidth on the wireless connection would be shit you suddenly had to face the very real options of either 1) going on site, or 2) potentially getting facerolled by the ice (which were actually scary back then).

ICE is still scary.
It just needs to be multiples of them.
3-4 Agents against 1 Hacker is a bad day for the hacker, unless he has bully boys with him.

lol
only needed 1 to be a threat back in the day! and if you killed it you got weaker or else triggered another one to attack you.
That plus grey ice and greater could destroy your multi-million nuyen deck. Deckers must be having a hard time adjusting to the 2070's where if you can't avoid the trace you can just throw away your commlink and get another one just as good in a week.

This brings up another point -- Cybercombat. The removal of maneuvers made it bland as hell. Or did they add them back in in Unwired?

The more I think about it the more they ruined the Matrix part of the game for those of us who actually understood it and played with it. It's a crying shame. It was actually more powerful, engaging, and fun to play a Decker than it was to be a Mage. Now Mages rule all in SR4.

Yeah.. cybercombat is a snorefest.

They simplified it in weird ways, and made it hard in other weird ways, made everyone a decker.

A friend and I are working on improvements to increase the flavor and individuality of hackers. So you can actually have hackers in a group who specialize in different things.

redoing the scultupting and topography of systems.
We do need to bring back ICE that destroys the commlink and not just the user (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
And it would be nice if the SOTA commlinks were /expensive/ again. Instead of barely 20k?

Heh, they always ruled. Actually, if you extrapolate from the number of PC mages to NPC mages, and use magical security, a lot of magic is a lot weaker now. Especially being stealthy as a mage is hard, since you tend to stick out like a sore thumb on the astral. Manatech? Mage shackles? Previously it was fricken impossible to imprison a mage without keeping him on drugs 24h a day. Yes, FAB isn't exactly new. It was also a very crappy mechanic. Sort of the Too-awesesome-to-use superscare for any mage. But... magic is really old topic, and I guess not for this thread.

Well... IMHO the trade of on the matrix side in SR4 is an understandable one: They wanted to make things more accessible. They wanted more matrix action to happen AT the table. The result is a dumbed down design, surely, but, whatever people like Kruger and maybe you say, the matrix was NOT present on MANY game tables in earlier editions. I haven't ever seen a PC decker in all the years of SR3.

So, what I suggest is, just put the complexity back in. If you want it. I mean it's still all there, in older rulebooks. It can't be that hard to come up with useable SR4 rules for a lot of stuff. This is one of the core concept of RPGs - YOUR group, YOUR game. I'm pretty certain you didn't find a lot of matrix action in SR1-3 during convention play, and really conventions are the ONLY place where you need to stick excessively to RAW. Anywhere else the rules are debatable.

Oh, I know it wasn't common. But I completely deny your claim that the new system is more accessible and streamlined. It has just as many dice rolls and just as many weird little rules to remember while giving the GM and Player LESS options. SR4 hacking is on rails but the track is just as long as it ever was in SR3. At least in SR3 you could hit the railway switch and take a different track.

And I'm talking about BBB compared to BBB in the above statement. SR3 pulls even farther ahead when you add in Unwired and Matrix.

You are also incorrect about Mages. Mages are quantifiably more powerful in SR4. Being able to cast at the highest power level without having to learn/earn the right to do so. All traditions being able to summon and bind. No domains anymore. Being able to use magic to boost performance in AR. Bigger base dice pools. Vastly improved Shapechange. Counterspelling that doesn't reduce your ability to cast. I'm sure I can find more.

What they lost: "free" spell points, shamans can't summon as many varieties of spirits anymore (most were the same but different domains so you could actually access them -- most people just used 5 tops anyway). Free Magic when initiating (but the mechanic is so different it is hard to track). Better Watcher spirits. Probably missed a couple.

I miss the domains, too. In fact, I just recently discovered that they weren't there (must of missed it when initially reading the core book, heh), but I've been running them for the past 2 or 3 years. Think I'm still gonna do it, at least for the elementally/naturey spirits.

Cheops, that's not refuting, that's denying. Refuting is actually proving that the SR4 matrix isn't more streamlined. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Edited just for you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I'm just glad you didn't use 'refudiate'!

Hey, I'm a business man. Just the fact that I know some big words like that should be impressive enough. Let alone whether I am using them correctly! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Ah, note that while I said the tradeoff was understandable, I never said they succeeded in doing anything at all (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) .

As to mages:

What they lost: A crapton of successes at piddly force. So that is balanced out by being able to use Force 12. Oh, but they still lost the crapton of successes. In SR3 I could be INVISIBLE to EVERYTHING on the material plane with Force 1 simply by rolling all my spell pool with my casting dice against a piddly threshhold. In SR4 it's already hard to be invisible to drones at all, with their upped OR of 5! And spending edge isn't equivalent to the pool!
In SR3 I could fly really really fast, enough to never want to walk again, at force 3. I could also technically levitate a 16 ton truck with enough attempts.
In SR6 a stunbolt cast at F6D was easily equivalent to the modern day F11. In SR3 the Shatter equivalent at F1D was easily superior to the modern equivalent at F11 - because you still need to fill 20 boxes of condition monitor - post beating OR - on a lot of objects, maybe more.

You didn't even have small dice pools. 6 casting + 10 spell pool meant any buff cast with a ton of successes at chargen into a piddly F1 sustaining focus.

Granted, SR4 introduced new problems, and made counterspelling rather easier, but I tend to repeat that while mages rule all sorts of combat, they don't rule stealth any more. Or maybe I'm just too stupid to do it right.

It does, optical taps are in Unwired. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

There's very little in terms of tech that didn't survive the 3-to-4 transition, it feels like. (Except, of course, the good bits of Rigger 3)

There are even tapper drones, handy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)