Social Engineering in the 2070s, How do you handle it in your games? Options

[Captain K]

I'm playing a Face-type character for the first time in a long while, and I'm curious how the concepts of social engineering have been handled in other games.


The only specific rules question I can think of is: what components would be necessary to convincingly spoof an e-mail or phone call? It seems that since at this point everything is Matrix-based, you'd need someone to perform the obligatory Matrix actions to create a convincing electronic footprint, and then whoever was doing the typing (or talking) would need to roll Con. For a straight-up impersonation phone call I'm guessing you'd need a Voice Modulator with the Secondary Pattern function, and if there was a video component to the connection you'd want to use a latex mask (or the bioware equivalent) and the Disguise skill.

Am I missing anything here? The only thing I'm not really sure of is how sophisticated the Secondary Pattern implant has to be to fool metahuman ears--the BBB makes it clear that fooling a voice recognition system comes down to an opposed test, but it doesn't mention trying to fool a metahuman listener. On the one hand, I'm imagining that even a Rating 1 Secondary Pattern would be enough to fool a flesh-and-blood listener, but on the other hand that doesn't seem terribly sporting from a rules balance sense. Maybe you'd roll Con or Disguise + the Pattern implant's rating vs. the target's Perception roll? I'm not really sure.


I've just spent a good hour or so browsing wikis on phreaking and social engineering, so this topic is on my mind. I'm hoping some of you folks have handled various aspects of social engineering and phreaking in your games, and how much fun has resulted. If I had more specific questions to ask, I'd ask them, but maybe some discussion will bring more interesting topics to light.