The Idiot's Guide To The Matrix Thread, Support for the Matrix-challenged Options

[Kurukami]

(First thought upon seeing the names "Roller" and "Tinkerbell" -- "Uh huh. Cyclops. Storm. So what do they call you? 'Wheels'?" :D )

"Jolly Roger copies, Hook. Magic is up and running. First and second lines of cameras negated, the outer wall is down in the designated area, and the pressure pads under the lawn have been countered. Working on the last group of cameras near the target building's entrance now." With a mental command, she sent the voicecomm off in a burst transmission to Hook's commset.

Cheng spent a moment to doublecheck the slave-code she generated, keeping the loops on the surveillance equipment running, before turning to the final bank of camera monitor icons. So far, the system has been surprisingly acquiescent to her less-than-SOTA utility. Other deckers might egotistically think they had conquered the system with their 'leet mad skillz, but fortunately Cheng didn't suffer beneath that particular taint of testosterone poisoning. The success she'd encountered made her somewhat suspicious, particularly given the ferocity of the host's earlier defenses -- but time was short, and risking another Analyze Security at this point in time seemed likely to draw more attention down on her head.

She tried to ignore the prickling sensation of enemies nearby, and concetrated on the delicate manipulation of the last group of cameras.

Last bank of cameras, and then Cheng is on to keeping an eye on the human factor. She prepares for (hopefully the last) Edit Slave operation to loop the inputs on the cameras. As before, I'll roll her seven Decking dice and four dice from the Hacking Pool.

The result: 15, 11, 10, 10, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 2, 2. Somewhere in the vicinity of four successes -- if the host can counter that, well, I'll be fragged anyways... :]

Cheng breathed a sigh of relief as the probes delicately tweaked the external building sensors into the illusory belief that all was well. The pulses of data flowed smoothly under her manipulations, displaying little sign of an alert or host-generated code-counter. She slowly withdrew the probes from the icon, began to relax...

... and then garish orange lights flickered to life around the security room, throwing everything into even more disturbing and menacing shadows. In the virtual distance, a klaxon began to sound. Oh, frag. Frag, frag, frag... 愿一千个行星的月亮被阻塞我的驴子!

She whipped her head around, trying to figure out where she'd slipped up. Over to one side, a pair of figures phased in through the host's walls, moving towards her in a mutually supporting attack pattern, and she quickly reinitialized her Attack utility. She fired off a quick burst-transmission warning to her other teammates as the opposing icons closed in, warning them that things were getting complicated on her side...

Continued below, Synner...

[zephir]

Thank God for this thread!
I have a game coming up in 2 days, with one of my players wanting to play a decker (...I guess the team was f...ed one time too many by an incompetent one.) Now I was poring (sp?) over SR3 and Matrix trying to understand, that is, until I began to read this thread...whew!

[gknoy]

[Kurukami]

You're quite welcome. I, myself, was somewhat confused by the Matrix rules as well until a short while before I started contributing to this thread. I'd played a decker/rigger in a game previously, and though I'd done decently and enjoyed it I was still a bit shaky on some of the rules. The concrete challenge presented here allowed me to firm up my grasp of the rules a lot.

The rules are definitely such that, until you've actually played with them a bit, they can be a bit intimidating. Once you've got the elements down and you've practiced with them, though, they're overall pretty straightforward. Overall, I've had a lot of fun with this thread.

As for balancing "combat usefulness"... well, my character in this thread, Cheng, was a decker/rigger. She could hack into hosts, but she also commanded a small team of well-armed drones. In a pinch, she knows how to handle a pistol, and she knows a bit about aikido, which actually turned out to be quite useful in one melee. Mostly, she tries to play it smart -- in one corridor combat, she quickly ducked back behind a corner and fired shots at various targets while the sammies in the party were standing in the opening loosing bursts or trying to close to melee distance.

She had her weaknesses, of course... girl couldn't be stealthy to save her life. :D

Other archetypes I've seen used include:

* the covert ops/electronics specialist decker, the person who sneaks in, hotwires maglocks and jacks into the corp system from within all their nasty defenses
* the samurai decker, who has a computer of 6 but otherwise has lots of high combat skills (hard to buy both lots of cyber and a solid deck, tho')
* the face decker/information specialist, with a high Charisma and mad social skills. Remember, Etiquette lets you do searches for data via the Matrix as well as serving you in tracking down someone in the Sprawl that can fill your needs.

Decker's one of the archetypes that can usually be combined pretty easily with another. The primary need is Computer: 6 -- beyond that, most things are negotiable. But if at all possible, get a solid deck... the 'tech your using is the great equalizer.

[Synner]

Thanks for the praise. Satcong and Kurukami have been incredibly helpful. When I set out I hoped to achieve two main goals with this thread:
a) help newbies to overcome their initial "shock and awe" response to the new ruleset by dismystifying its complexity.
b) show people that the Matrix is both simple and interesting by focusing not just on the rolls/Tests but the whole decking experience.
Your posts make it look like we're on the right track to accomplish both.

Note - Unlike the previous sample run I am reserving specific information on the actual rolls, IC, Security Tally and surprises I have in store for this run from the thread on purpose. This allows us to show how a normal GM would regulate the information the decker actually has to work with as well as making Kurukami's strategic thinking all the more important and closer to what players will actually be experiencing in their games.

When we are finished I will go back and edit in all the relevant rolls as well as a register of the Security Tally and the other secret rolls I have made. I will also add a full description of the Chokepoint host and YCAP host in the current run to the Hosts'R'Us.

Finally if all goes according to plan I am thinking of editing these sample runs into an article or series of article(s) to submit to TSS.

[Synner]

Matrix Overwatch Walkthrough
Back to the run...

Cheng digs into the last set of cameras, tweaking the lines of data into new configurations inside the virtual console with her Spoof-sticks. Rearranging the HoloLISP lines seems like child's play this time round.

The host rolls to Opposed part of the System Test. Rolling its Security Value's 10 dice the host gets 2 successes which reduces Cheng's net successes to 2. This is more than enough to complete the Edit Slave operation (SR3 page 216). However... it also raises her Security Tally by 2 steps which spells trouble.

Garish orange lights turn on around the security room, throwing everything into even more disturbing and menacing shadows. Nice bit of trigger iconography there--- is all Cheng has time to think before two Icons phase through a wall and into view. Frag!

The biggest is a cyber onidaemon decked out in ornate hightech samurai armor and a laser katana glowing brightly in one clawed hand while the second looks looks like a chrome hunting hawk with red-laser dots for eyes.

Kurukami you're going to have to go back and edit the last bit of the previous post... and yes, its a fair assumption that the host has gone into Passive Alert (the effects of which are detailed in SR3 page 211 - ie. all subsystem ratings get a 2 point boost).

[Kurukami]

The post above has been updated, Synner.

As the host's security icons close in, Cheng lets the acceleration code of her deck shift her consciousness into high gear and prepares for combat.

For Initiative, I roll 6, 4, 3, 2. Added to my Matrix Reaction, that'll give me a score of 29. Things are about to get interesting...

[gknoy]

This is more exciting (and nerve-wracking) to watch than a train full of elite ninjas barrelling on a collision course with another train chock-full of rabid cyber death-monkeys. I'm not sure I even want to imagine the stress that Kurukami's dealin' with right now, hehe ... the "Oh frag, frag, frag frag frag" was possibly the catchphrase of this session for me. ;)

[Kurukami]

Heh. As an aside -- I threw in the Chinese characters straight from Babelfish's English-Chinese translator. The original phrase, in English, was "may the moons of a thousand planets be jammed up my ass". (Thanks be to Joss Whedon's Firefly for the inspiration on that one.)

And just out of curiosity, I snagged the kanji and threw them back into Babelfish for Chinese-English translation. The result? "Is willing 1,000 planets the moon to block I the donkey."

I find myself obliquely reminded of those old "operator" games that I played in the days of my youth. :wobble:

[Synner]

So here we go...
Unbenownst to Cheng, she is facing a cluster of Party IC. In SR3 Party IC has changed a little from it's previous incarnation in that it is now an IC Programming Option (Party Cluster, Matrix page 86). What it means in effect is that several separate IC coordinate their attacks (though suffering a +1 modifier for volume over finesse) but are also harder to hit because they are coordinated (+1 per piece of IC in a Party Cluster which remains even if one IC is crashed). The limitation is that their total Ratings are capped at Security Value x2 (in this case 20).

The newly-arrived IC roll their initiative (SR3 page 223: Orange = 3D6 + IC Rating) the Yamatetsu Oni-Do Blaster_8.0 rolls 23 and the M-Raptor v7 rolls 21.

The Oni-Do moves his laser katana into a defensive posture and the chromed hawk rises closer to the virtual ceiling of the security room, metallic talons extending menacingly.

[Kurukami]

What I wouldn't give for that wheel-lock Attack utility right now, Cheng grumbled to herself, thinking of the scrambled, useless pulses of code now taking up space on her storage chips. Juggling the code-strings to keep the monitored operations running as she prepared for battle was distracting, but it would be far easier to keep them running than try to restart them with a passive alert in the host. With sword in one hand and incense-stick in the other, she briefly sketched an identification query and flung it towards the falcon-icon. The oni, from what her sensors had been able to determine as it phased in, was almost certainly Blaster... but the falcon could be virtually anything, from more Tar IC to Erosion to Scout or anything in between.

First, of course, Cheng wants to keep those monitored operations running to keep things in the clear for the approaching team, so she does so.

Now, as for the combat... with a Free Action, she'll attempt an Analyze Icon operation on the falcon-IC. With the system on passive alert, that could be tough, but the TN is lowered by both her Analyze utility (6) and her Sensors rating (5) -- dropping the overall TN by 11. Additionally, it's a Control test, so she gets an extra die to roll for the test. Given that there're two pieces of IC about to jump her, she'll need all the Hacking Pool she can get.

So. I get to roll eight dice (Decking specialization plus bonus from being a Cracker), and the result is: 11, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Given what I've deduced before (about the Control rating on this host being either 14 or 15), that could be anywhere from one to four successes. ( I'm desperately hoping for four. :D )

And what I do next depends greatly on what precisely that falcon-IC is.

You're up, Synner.

[Synner]

Here we go...

Time seems to slow for an impossibly long extended second, as the Analyze smoke wraps around the falcon and then coils into the pictogram for a Y-Line M-Raptor v7 Trace IC... Cheng is almost about to change focus back to her adversaries when the smoke coils again and adds Trap Killer 5 pictograms before dissipating its component pixels in the garish orange lighting of the Passive Alert.

The host rolled it's Security Value (10) and got no successes against Cheng's DF, leaving the decker with four net successes on its Analyze Icon test. This number is more than enough to give just about any information available about the Icon including the fact that the Trace IC is actually trapped with Killer.

On a side note, Party IC is not at all uncommon when the Security Tally hits the teens in an Orange Host, so beware. Cybercombat can be particularly lethal as we have shown. Also note that a Tar IC (programmed against Offensive Utilities) in a Party Cluster is a nasty security tactic that can really spoil a decker's day.

[Kurukami]

Heh. Aheh. Aheh. *looks nervous* Well, now I'm damned glad I decided to ID that IC ahead of time... that'll be a nasty one to defeat.

On the other hand, I did successfully run two Redirect Datatrail operations waaaaaay back on page 6, which will raise the TN for the Trace IC to hit me, and therefore start the trace, by 2. Additionally, I've got my Camo-4 utility up and running, which will increase the time it needs to trace me even if it succeeds in going against my Evasion rating (which I seem to recall is how the Trace IC works, given that I don't have my SR3 book with me).

I'll post more later, once I have the opportunity to look up exactly what trap IC, and specifically Killer IC, does.

[Synner]

The hawk's laser red eyes lock on to Cheng's icon across the room, its wings beating hard in a virtual breeze. Talons like razors gleam in silent menace catching the light from the Oni-Do IC's neon-laser katana. The Oni-Do grits its protruding fangs and slits its glowing red eyes, the IC-core code running possible responses to Cheng's next moves.

[Squirtduck]

More of a fluff question, but would a cyberdeck/terminal be able to recognize the common programming languages of our time, such as C, Basic, etc., without needing to download additional info?

[Kurukami]

Hard to say, really. It might be able to program in them, given that it is a computing platform, but my suspicion is that it would need the proper compilers and development environments to work properly. And, of course, you need to have the compiled object code for the program to work.

Out of curiosity, why do you ask?

[Squirtduck]

Oh, just because I finished my final for my first semester of C++ programming...:)

The myriad of canon Matrix languages kinda scares me, but in truth, it is probably the same amount of programming languages we have today...

[Adam]

The number of programming languages listed in published Shadowrun products is far, far fewer than the number and variations of languages that are used today. :-)

[Kurukami]

[gknoy]

And then there's all the things that have niche markets, like Oberon (think object oriented Pascal ;)), Matlab, INTERCAL, BF :wobble:...

Basically, for any major language, there are often several smaller, more specialized "research" languages (*ahem*Oberon - my old compilers prof would KILL me for saying that, but I still prefer Java ;)) that are based on and derived from it.

Not to start a code war (hehe), but I'll admit that I like the way they mention HoloLisp as a common Matrix development language - Lisp has a long and prestigious history for hackers, hehe, and was initially developed as an AI research language; not only that, it's really good for fast development (well, if you're a good Lisp programmer), and allows you to build some really powerful stuff much more easily than Java, C++, or even Perl (*Gasp*, Blasphemy! :)). Let me add the caveat that I am no longer a good Lisp coder in any sense of the word. But I wish I were...

[Kurukami]

Anyways, to drift back towards the main topic of the thread... :)

The Blaster IC is the immediate problem, Cheng decides, as it can directly damage her... if she can eliminate it, that may well make it easier to evade the Trace before it can get a lock on her datatrail. Unfortunately, the cloud of code-addresses thrown out by the partied IC is giving the runesword Attack utility's targetting protocols fits of contradictory logic, promising to make otherwise easy strikes vastly more difficult.

On the positive side, her reaction time as boosted by the hardware in her deck was somewhat better than that of the host's IC, and she would able to attempt to get in the first blow and try for a quick fade. In a fraction of a second, she went from motionless guard position to a sprinting lunge towards the oni-IC, hoping to draw a slashing blow through its torso and disable the opposing code before either of her foes could react.

The primary attraction of party IC, for the defending host, is that it gets to toss out a cloud of individual IC-guardians that work together all at once. With that rapidly shifting group of targets, a decker attempting to attack one has a much more difficult time -- increasing her TN to hit the opposition by the number of IC elements in the part. Thus, where Cheng's TN to hit a legitimate icon in this host was normally 5, while going against this party IC cluster her TN will be 2 more -- 7.

Effectively, that means she's got to hit a 6 due to the vagaries of the game mechanics, but regardless moving the TN from 5 to 6 will most likely halve her successes.

Utilizing her Attack-6S program, Cheng springs forward and tries to attack the Blaster-IC. She wants to try to take it out as quickly as possible, but must as always balance the need to hide her presence here with the need to eliminate opponents. Thus, she'll add only three dice from her Hacking pool to the utility's six attack dice, keeping one available to stop the tally-jump which might result from its death and another for general-purpose use. I roll the 9 dice, and get: 14, 10, 10, 8, 5, 5, 4, 4, 1. Four successes, which stage the damage up into the deadly range -- but as the Blaster is rating 8, it'll roll 8 dice against my Attack rating of 6 to attempt to reduce the damage.

If I'm lucky, it'll take at least a Serious wound, which might increase my chances to survive and stall for time. What I wouldn't give for a Slow utility right about now...

As she streaks past the oni-icon with her passing strike, her free hand flicks a Cloaking smoke-capsule at the virtual ground and tries to blend her digital-signature into the background dataflow. With any luck at all, the chaff thrown up by her attack will allow her to evade the immediate attentions of the IC, and try to poise herself for a sneak attack from a better position.

Since an attack is a Simple action, Cheng's second Simple action (regardless of whether or not the attack succeeds) is to attempt to Evade Detection. As with any combat maneuver, this matches her Evasion rating (6) against the host's Security rating (10), as modified by the rating of Cheng's Cloak utility. Thus, I'll roll six dice against a TN of 5 to attempt to temporarily escape the notice of whatever IC might remain after Cheng's lunging strike, and the host will roll ten dice against a TN of 6. At the moment, I really don't want to expend another Hacking Pool die, as I may need it later on this round, so I'll just let the baseline six dice roll in my attempt. I roll, and get: 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 1. Three successes, which might just allow me to evade my opponents for a brief moment and allow me to set up for a more effective attack in the near future.

Your move, Synner...

[hobgoblin]

[gknoy]

[hobgoblin]

you can manipulate a compiled program by editing the memory that they are stored in. but a script is a passive file read by a second program and changes to thescript will not have affect unless you restart the reading prosess. alltho maybe the same edit memoy trick can work here to if you find where in memory the interpeter is reading from.

then there is allso the question if SR computers are qantum based, if so im thinking that all bets are off :)

sure a script is nice for research when you dont have to worry about speed but when every nanosecond counts a compiled program will have the upper hand no matter what. just look at java, its a hybrid in that its compiled to a bytecode that needs to be interpeted for the os and cpu its running on at the moment. its speed while better over the years still are lower then native code like C...

then there is allso the black box mentality of corporations, they dont want you to know how the stuff they are selling you works. they are selling you a package, you just deploy it...

forget open source, forget open research communitys, this is corporate war. there is a reason why shadowrunning is a growth area...

allso, i think even hololisp is a compiled language, its just the name thats a trowback to older times. corporations and goverments do that all the time to give something a air of age, wisdom and stability...

[meus]

Hey ppl,

Nice thread you have going here. Keep up the good work :)

While reading the thread there is one issue that i would like to comment on. It concerns the situation where the decker used Etiquette: Matrix to learn something from a situation or something (cant remeber now and i am too lazy to look back), you probably remeber it.

What about complementary skill rolls here? You can combine a relevant knowledge skill with the practical inforamtion you know about it. (Etiquette Matrix).

What do you guys think of that?

I wonder how the decker will do against this new IC, and if his friends will manage their run :)