Stuff you don't use from Unwired as written, Changes, adjustments, replacements - house rules Options

[Fuchs]

What changes are you doing to Unwired for your campaign? Fluff and mechanics.

For fluff, I don't use the "internal commlinks are so last decade" in my P&P campaign. Apart from not using TMs there, it also doesn't fit my world's style where internal commlinks are hotter than external ones - especially commlinks clumsily operated with crutches like data gloves or even buttons. Not using DNI is "sooo last century" in my SR campaign.

Mechanically, I won't use the degradation rules. Too much effort for no added fun. I can always use warezsites and such in background fluff.

That's it so far, I haven't really digested the book yet.

[WearzManySkins]

TM's are not used in my games again the same reasons as Fuchs.

Software Degradation will not be used as RAW has stated, will digest it some and then make a house rule if any for such.

Internal and external commlinks are both used.

I will create some house ruled commlinks that have been designed with some the mods already built into them. Ie the Data Search Maximus one optimized for Data Searches.

Will have to finish out some EW/ECCM rules more to my tastes, since the "promised" revisions etc were not released in UnWired.

WMS

[FrankTrollman]

I intend to stick by my original statement. I will give the entire boo a careful readthrough at length, I will carefully map out the effects of this book in light of the rules in the basic book, and then I will endeavor to fully digest the effects of all of the rules taken together. Then I will play through a number of scenarios and develop several potential models for potential equilibrium results based on the rules and fluff presented.

And house rules (if any) that I make at that point will be in reference to my conclusions at that point. But my comprehensive Anatomy final is at the beginning of July, so I'm not really getting started on the project right now except in the most general sense.

-Frank

[crizh]

Software Degradation for Activesofts needs tweaking.

I imagine there will shortly be some comment about clustering.

[Cheops]

The only change I'm making to the book as yet, is that Agents' AIDs cannot be changed with a Spoof AID action and so must always be stripped of their original AID.

Edit: Actually I forgot about the Access Log load times. I may tweak that as well. I don't like that it takes ZOG 8 Combat Turns (!) before a hacker's activities show up in their logs. Might change it to work like some drugs, 12-System Combat turns, or something like that.

[Sombranox]

I'll be using a number of the tweaks from the book probably. The ones for vote with my players are:
-Hits on <prog> + <skill> rolls are capped by Logic
-AR Passes are limited to 1 per round (yes, this will cause a controversy, but I like hackers to jack in and tune out to really hack. No more cold hacking faster and safer than VR)
-Might use the Security Tally, but debatable as I hate bookkeeping
-Complex forms have the BP/Karma costs of spells and are treated as such. (an experiment to see how it goes. If it makes a technomancer too godlike with the changes, I may go back to the old expenses)


As to rules I won't be using.

Agreed on the bit about spoofing Agent access IDs unless on my third read through, I get something better out of that whole thing. I'm at a loss for why they fixed the agent smith problem then broke it again by allowing agent spoofing while loading.

I like the fluff of degrading programs but detest the bookkeeping of it. I'm still giving it a chance for now, but I'll probably end up handwaving it or adding some flat cost to lifestyle costs to represent it.

As to clusters, I don't see any particular problem with them yet, though I could potentially see issues with clustering a series of high end commlinks to make essentially a more portable nexus, but it'd be an expensive way to allow multiple personas to connect through it or one persona to run a lot of programs without a response degrade.

[crizh]

As to clusters, I don't see any particular problem with them yet, though I could potentially see issues with clustering a series of high end commlinks to make essentially a more portable nexus, but it'd be an expensive way to allow multiple personas to connect through it or one persona to run a lot of programs without a response degrade.

After the ridiculous argument I just had with Aaron about hidden nodes, I was thinking of slaving the groups comm-links to a cluster. Fifteen Response 4 devices would support a Program Count of 30. You could run four Agents in that with stacks of software and Autosofts and still have room to keep a whole bunch of your own programs and other juiciness on it.

I'm not sure whether the individual devices in the cluster have to be physically linked or if the cluster can operate wirelessly. If it can then there's a whole bunch of other hideous stuff you could pull with a bunch of 'relatively' inexpensive hardware.

[Sombranox]

After the ridiculous argument I just had with Aaron about hidden nodes, I was thinking of slaving the groups comm-links to a cluster. Fifteen Response 4 devices would support a Program Count of 30. You could run four Agents in that with stacks of software and Autosofts and still have room to keep a whole bunch of your own programs and other juiciness on it.

I'm not sure whether the individual devices in the cluster have to be physically linked or if the cluster can operate wirelessly. If it can then there's a whole bunch of other hideous stuff you could pull with a bunch of 'relatively' inexpensive hardware.

Err...hmm...damn. Yeah, okay. 30K for 15 response 4 modules is admittedly scary for the power it gives. I was thinking more of the 120K it would cost for 15 Response 6 so you can run your programs at full rating. Then again, you could get all your programs with optimization 2 and run them on the response 4 cluster just fine.

Okay, you've converted me. What the hell were they thinking with that?

P.S. What ridiculous argument with Aaron about hidden nodes?

[crizh]

P.S. What ridiculous argument with Aaron about hidden nodes?

The one where hidden nodes that only accepted traffic from ID's on their whitelist could be hacked without Spoof.

Now, with slaving, you must spoof the slaves or hack the master.

Good luk haking mai clustr ov doom!!1!

[Sombranox]

The one where hidden nodes that only accepted traffic from ID's on their whitelist could be hacked without Spoof.

Now, with slaving, you must spoof the slaves or hack the master.

Good luk haking mai clustr ov doom!!1!

I thought the only way to make a node accept traffic from a specific ID was to slave it? Then again, somewhere in Unwired I remember reading about being able to blacklist particular ID's, so I suppose the reverse of being able to whitelist and only listen to those works too.

[Cheops]

I thought the only way to make a node accept traffic from a specific ID was to slave it? Then again, somewhere in Unwired I remember reading about being able to blacklist particular ID's, so I suppose the reverse of being able to whitelist and only listen to those works too.

I think they are talking about the Unwired Family Circle of Trust. (or Web if you really hated that movie)

[Crank]

So far the only things I'm not going to use as written are degredation and Tacnets.

Specifically on Tacnets, this is one thing I don't like.

In order to be counted as a member of the tactical network (and to receive bonuses from it), each member must contribute a number of sensor channels equal to the tacsoft rating x 2.

In the RAW, in order to get a max bonus of +4, you will need 6 people providing 8 sensor channels each. If a seventh person wants to join the network, yet he only has 7 channels to provide, either he forgets it or the entire team will drop down to a rating 3 tacnet. Sorry, but realistically it doesn't make sense that even though more data is being fed into the tacnet, its effectiveness goes down.

To me the whole purpose of a tacnet is to aggregate and disseminate important data to everyone. If the data is there, its of value to everyone getting it, not just to those who are contributing some of their own.

So, my change will to be to give the bonus to every member of the tacnet, regardless of how much they contribute. However, I'll calculate the bonus based on total the number of channels and the number of contributing team members and compare it to the chart below. Maximum depending on the lowest tacnet rating of the team members, of course.

Rating ----- Minimum # Sensor channels ---- Minimum # contributing members
1 -------------- 6 ---------------------------------------- 3
2 -------------- 16 ---------------------------------------- 4
3 ------------- 30 -------------------------------------- 5
4 ------------- 48 --------------------------------------- 6

In this case a 10 person team contributing an average of 3 channels each, will have a rating 3 tacnet, not a rating 1 per RAW. The tacnet is dealing with the same amount of data as it would be from a 5 person team each contributing 6 channels, so it makes sense, at least to me. Thoughts/Suggestions?

[Sombranox]

@Crank: I love your change to the tacnet rules, though with only one addendum. I'd say that the bonus each person individually is limited to how many channels you contribute.

In other words, if you have a ten person team and all but two are contributing 3 channels to a rating 3 tacnet, with one of the two contributing 2 channels and the other contributing 4, the person who only contributes 2 channels is limited to a +2 bonus, even though everyone else is getting a +3 and the group meets the criteria for a rating 3 tacnet.

In my mind, the tacnet needs to have at least _some_ information coming directly from you in order to give you any kind of advice for what you should be doing. If you don't provide it any information from your position, it gives you no suggestions. If you feed it only a trickle of information, you get only partially helpful suggestions. If you feed it a good stream of info, you get good suggestions.

All in all though, your model works a lot better in my mind than the rules as is. I was trying to figure out how sports teams would really use tacnets (part of the fluff) since they'd have to outfit all of their players with a wide variety of sensors each to benefit in any real way. This way would let them spread just a few sensors across an entire team and get great benefit from them still.

Heh. And so does my list of house rules continue to grow ever more since Unwired. My players are going to start getting grumpy at me for all these new additions for them to vote on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Cheops]

Cool and simple fix Crank! <yoink!>

[Zaranthan]

Heh. And so does my list of house rules continue to grow ever more since Unwired. My players are going to start getting grumpy at me for all these new additions for them to vote on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

It's like you're really playing a roleplaying game! Seriously, almost everyone playing ANY sort of game (from Cancer 3.5 to WuShu) builds a rather comprehensive set of house rules. Whether they have a formal system in place for them is irrelevant. Every time a player says "how far away is he" and the GM says "close enough to charge," you've got a house rule. If your players get grumpy, they probably prefer a more RAW game. Which does actually happen (take, for example, myself).

[Sombranox]

It's like you're really playing a roleplaying game! Seriously, almost everyone playing ANY sort of game (from Cancer 3.5 to WuShu) builds a rather comprehensive set of house rules. Whether they have a formal system in place for them is irrelevant. Every time a player says "how far away is he" and the GM says "close enough to charge," you've got a house rule. If your players get grumpy, they probably prefer a more RAW game. Which does actually happen (take, for example, myself).

Most of my group is cool with house rules. I've just been bombarding them with them since Unwired. Long and short, I've been holding off on using any of the matrix rewrites floating around DS in hopes that unwired would come out with some fantastic magical solution to a lot of the problems with the matrix rules. While some things have definitely helped in the book, it's not been such a profound fix as I hoped and so I've just given in and started using a lot of the rule tweaks from the book itself (most of which started on DS anyways) and now, like a lot of people, am looking for houserules and patches to fix the new broken things introduced by Unwired.

But yeah, I've only ever seen one game try to stick to absolute RAW and it was annoying as hell by the end of the first session, so half the players left.