Hacking Options

[grahariel]

I just finished GMing my first session of SR. Now, this is a new campaign since the first one fell through when two of the players left. I've got two new players, and one of them is playing a technomancer. And I seem to be having the same trouble here as I did in the previous campaign and that's getting bogged down with hacking. Does anyone have any tips on making the hacking much faster or any house rules that they use to streamline the hacking for technomancers and hackers?

[Seth]

One thing I do is work out in advance how good the hacker is at "hacking on the fly". There is a difficulty that they can do easily without breaking into a sweat, a difficulty they might be a ble to do , and a difficulty that they cannot easily do.

So if they can easily do it, just take them outside, and tell them whats in the system (prehaps getting them to make a roll or two one hacking + exploit or computer + analyse to make them feel good). If its a system that they will have trouble with, then you can play it out. But since you are in charge of the game, you have put this in to give them a fun period: prehaps one session in three. If its a hard system tell them, and if they do go in, change the theme music to Chopin's requiem and blast them to bits. In other words if they are just going to hack it, don't bother rolling all the die just some sort of "how well you get the data now that you have hacked it".

I too am interested in how other people streamline the hacking

[ShadowPavement]

I never use matrix topography and all that stuff. I just run hackers in real time with the rest of the team and I use THIS set of actions. It's just a summary of the matrix actions from the BBB that I found online with a bunch of other compiled hacking rules

It's all you really need for the most part, unless your doing matrix combat, and has worked great for our group.

[grahariel]

Is the 2nd page supposed to be blank?

[Blade]

Play it just like you'd play the face's social skills or the infiltrator infiltration skills:

- If the system is easy enough for him to get inside, don't bother with dice rolling.
- If you're in a hurry or aren't really interested in the details, just have him do a single roll (logic+hacking or hacking+exploit, you can do an opposition test against System+Firewall) and tell him what he gets.
- If it's something important and you want to play right, play it right. Just like you'd have the infiltrator roll for opening the lock, getting inside undetected, finding whatever he's looking for, opening the lock to get it, take it without raising an alarm and getting back out without getting caught, have the hacker/TM roll for his actions. But, just like you'd describe what happens to the infiltrator and make the scene interesting (even to the other players), describe what happens to the hacker/TM.

[DMiller]

We created a "Quick Hacking" chart that we use. The hacker makes 1 roll, the GM rolls once for the system and then you compare the results to see what happens. If you'd like I can send you a copy (it's an excel spreadsheet). PM me your email and I'll send it along.

-D

P.S.
We don't use it all the time, but for the quick hack stuff (not major plot items) it works well. It is biased towards the hacker.

[raben-aas]

For simplified Hacking, try this:
http://www.land-of-kain.de/shadowrun/sr4/sr4_hacker.html

I never used it (yet), but it reads OK.

[XavTango]

I too have been thinking of ways to simplify Hacking at the table and to make it run smoothly (and quickly). I like to treat my hackers like the other PCs and give them their shot during combat or whatever and adjudicate on the fly so I need some easy to implement rules to go with.

[deek]

For simplified Hacking, try this:
http://www.land-of-kain.de/shadowrun/sr4/sr4_hacker.html

I never used it (yet), but it reads OK.

Never seen this before. I read it and it does look good for what it says, a character that hacks "on the side". Since there is a lot of stuff removed, this will only work well if your TM/hacker is okay with not being able to customize every last bit of his hardware and software. I think that it would work well at my table, as all my players, even the hacker, just want to get through the hack, not spend a lot of time in the spotlight.

[ShadowPavement]

Is the 2nd page supposed to be blank?

Yeah, It's supposed to be blank. Sorry about that. I should have gotten rid of it before converting to PDF.

I just add those actions on to the big list of actions to do for the round like in combat. That way the hacker is on par with the other charachters and doens't need his own mini-game to do stuff.

[ShadowPavement]

For simplified Hacking, try this:
http://www.land-of-kain.de/shadowrun/sr4/sr4_hacker.html

Ooooo...I like that!

[Ryu]

You can use the device rating table to figure out thresholds and dicepools on the fly. Usually only the hacking test will be relevant, so Hacking+Exploit vs. Firewall+Analyse would be the ideal single test IMO. Proper TMs will thread Stealth and succeed without being detected most of the time, so that player can have fun without holding the rest of the group up.