[X] My Assistant

[DireRadiant]

The 3rd through 6th group is where most runners will fall.

Having AR is like everyone uses and interacts with computers today even if they know nothing about IT. There is a state full of businesses who are really going to care when I mess up some system they are using to do their business. They may think they don't care about IT, and don't need it, but the moment it's gone, they don't know any other way of doing it.

3 though 6 only think they aren't using the Matrix. Show them differently. Work at it. It's the GM's job to show them the 6th world and all the wonders in it. Up to the challenge?

[BlueMax]

ah yes, biowire, acceleration and all that?

Indeed. Big Troll with an axe. Backed up by drones slaved to his mind...

BlueMax

[deek]

Bringing all the characters into AR is certainly a good idea, but it doesn't help the fact that once the "hacker" says that he wants to hack the active node of some patrol drone, that everything comes to a halt. Assuming a Firewall 3 and a security account, that's a threshold of 6. In response, say I'm rolling 6 dice against the hacker's 5 Stealth. I can usually count on two rolls from the hacker and two rolls from me...and there's a good chance that I'll hit his Stealth score, so now there is an Alert. Do we start cybercombat with IC? Is a spider alerted? Does the node try to disconnect the hacker? Maybe the IC just starts a trace?

Now the hacker is rolling a perception test to figure out if an Alert was raised and dealing with whatever else is in the node.

Even saying there was no Alert, the hacker may still need a Browse to find those stored video files, and Edit test to erase or edit the file and then another Edit to remove his prints from the Access Log.

I still don't see how the other 3 players at my table are going to be interested in the process... They are interested if the drone starts targeting and shooting them, or if the hacker erased the video and they are now safe, but the in-between stuff? AR or not, what do they care?

[Tricen]

That's the problem that I am experiencing with my PCs. I have been able to mitigate the problem a bit by not asking for rolls of simple things or not asking for rolls if they could simply "buy it". Works very well for perception tests, I've found. Not that I'm a wiz a the matrix rules yet, but I'm getting there.

[Mäx]

I still don't see how the other 3 players at my table are going to be interested in the process... They are interested if the drone starts targeting and shooting them, or if the hacker erased the video and they are now safe, but the in-between stuff? AR or not, what do they care?

Well that's an attitude problem on their part and there's no way to fix that whit game rules.

[Malachi]

I still don't see how the other 3 players at my table are going to be interested in the process... They are interested if the drone starts targeting and shooting them, or if the hacker erased the video and they are now safe, but the in-between stuff? AR or not, what do they care?

Are they interested to see if the patrolling Spirit noticed the Mage when he did his Astral recon of the target facility? Do they care when the group's Covert Ops specialist makes his Infiltration rolls to see if one of the guards spots him which would blow the whole plan? Are they interested to see if the Street Sam can shoot that guard with one shot from his Silenced weapon to take him out before he discovers the bomb the group planted?

If there's no consequence of failure in what the Hacker is doing (if triggering an Alert won't really have any consequences) then don't go into so much detail. If there is a risk with failure, maybe you need to emphasize it more or in a different way to your group. Ranged combat has way more rolls than Hacking does but no one appears to consider it a "time sink" even if its just the group combat specialist doing some solo combat with the BBEG or something.

[deek]

Max, I agree, that is a player attitude issue. I won't say its a problem, as no one complains or is ruining the game because of it, but as the GM, I don't like my players feeling like they can disengage because there is a "hack".

Malachi, I see what you are getting at, but the case is that the players do care about the end result (did the spirit notice the mage, did the covert ops sneak by, did the sammy drop the guard with one shot, did the hacker delete the video from the drone), just not the steps in between. If it takes 2 minutes, they disengage and talk to one another. If it takes 10 minutes, they go up for a smoke. If it takes 10 seconds, they get ready to talk about something else...

There have been times where the hacker wanted to spoof say, 5 random guys' comms in a crowd to hide his own comm (by setting them to all the same Access ID) and there wasn't any major consequence for failure, so I just had him roll a single spoof, gave him a threshold and told him the result based on his roll. But other times, what may be a simple hack (like the patrol drone video erasure example I gave above) may have a consequence if he rolls really bad, gets engaged in cybercombat, throws an alert and causes a couple more drones or a squad car to arrive on the scene.

I'm certainly open to believing that its poor judgment on my part making a "simple hack" into more than what it should be. Tricen's suggestion of buying hits may help alleviate the issue some, but seeing that I feel really comfortable with the matrix rules, its just hard for me to say, no you don't have to hack on the fly, make a perception, browse for the data, edit the feed, edit to clean up your Access Log, just give me one roll and its done.

To me, that is like telling the sammy, don't worry about shooting the mook, him resisting damage, dodging his bullet and resisting damage just give me one roll and its done...

[Malachi]

Malachi, I see what you are getting at, but the case is that the players do care about the end result (did the spirit notice the mage, did the covert ops sneak by, did the sammy drop the guard with one shot, did the hacker delete the video from the drone), just not the steps in between. If it takes 2 minutes, they disengage and talk to one another. If it takes 10 minutes, they go up for a smoke. If it takes 10 seconds, they get ready to talk about something else...

Do they get this distracted by any mechanic that takes that long to resolve, not just Matrix stuff?

To me, that is like telling the sammy, don't worry about shooting the mook, him resisting damage, dodging his bullet and resisting damage just give me one roll and its done...

Yeah, I agree... you don't want to "streamline" someone's roll to the point where they feel like their actions are marginalized. At the same time, there will be times in a run where one character or another is going to have some "spotlight" time and the other players just have to deal. If they are losing interest and talking to each other every time any action takes 2 minutes, then I suppose that's just their attention span. If they just lose focus when its Matrix stuff, but they all wait with baited breath while the Sammie engages in a 30 minute solo hand-to-hand fight, then it might be time for one of the sit-down meta-game talks.

[deek]

Do they get distracted by any mechanic? Not that I recall. I know in our last campaign, any time the mage had a few summoning rolls or astrally projected and did some scouting, the rest of the players would get distracted. The more I think about my situation, the more I feel its more the players than anything else.

But even with that being said, if there was a way to speed up matrix actions, I'd certainly be interested. Just going by RAW, each hack, even the simplest, has a series of tests that segregates the hacker from the rest of the group and I just can't seem to get around that.

I did talk to some of the players yesterday and told them that unlike our DnD game, where we basically try and stay together to minimize the DM having to work solo with some of us doing separate thing, that I'm shifting my mindset to focus more on "spotlighting" players throughout the session and balance it that way. There's just really no way around it...

[Zaranthan]

Do they get distracted by any mechanic? Not that I recall. I know in our last campaign, any time the mage had a few summoning rolls or astrally projected and did some scouting, the rest of the players would get distracted. The more I think about my situation, the more I feel its more the players than anything else.

Sounds like the distraction isn't really the issue, then. If they're just bored when they don't get to throw bones, then they'll just have to learn to deal. If THEY'RE distracting YOU when you're trying to give somebody spotlight time, then you should probably have a discussion about what they can do that doesn't disrupt the game when it's not their turn, and establish a procedure for getting their attention back when the soliloquy is over.

But even with that being said, if there was a way to speed up matrix actions, I'd certainly be interested. Just going by RAW, each hack, even the simplest, has a series of tests that segregates the hacker from the rest of the group and I just can't seem to get around that.

Well, your security design can go a long way here. Hacking a maglock shouldn't require beating a trace IC while making a Browse(12) test. Exploit vs. device rating, load Command, simple action, move on. If the facility is so high-security that such measures WOULD be reasonable, then there should be an equal number of challenges in the meat world to overcome. The prototype they're collecting is actually being tested at the moment, so maybe the face has to do some fast-talking to distract the researchers, or the sammy can create a diversion that chases them out of the lab.

I did talk to some of the players yesterday and told them that unlike our DnD game, where we basically try and stay together to minimize the DM having to work solo with some of us doing separate thing, that I'm shifting my mindset to focus more on "spotlighting" players throughout the session and balance it that way. There's just really no way around it...

Transitioning out of D&D is pretty tough. The flow is so different, it actually discourages doing anything like what SR is basically built upon. When you're wandering around forests and caves, strength in numbers is the only thing keeping the party alive. When you're a bunch of career criminals with families living in a city, your secrets are the only thing keeping you alive.