[X] My Assistant

[Udoshi]

Yeah, I just got spy games.

The equipment section is incredibly shitty.

I mean, seriously, was the format used in ALL the previous books just too good for the writers, or what?

I know you're all trying to distance yourselves from The Previous Management and That Book Called War, but, come on, Arsenal had some nice layout. It had good, consistent rules an tables(even if a few things for left off and had to be errata'd). THAT is the standard you should be shooting for.

However.
Whomever put Sensor types in with the drone descriptions: You are awesome. This needed to be done ages ago. Even if was only for a few sensors, its a good trend. Keep it up.

[Nath]

War! was 184 pages-long : 109 pages on Bogota, 11 on hotspots, and 57 on rules and equipment. Spy Games is 176 pages-long, with 82 pages on Denver, 16 pages on hotspots, 31 pages on espionage, 28 pages on equipment and 4 pages of adventures "hooks and seeds".

The first difference between War! and Spy Games is the lower number of mistakes and typos I was able to catch on the first reading. Good point. And it has a map of Denver. Another good point. I would dare to ask for several maps, with a zoom on each sector with the places of interests displayed.

Denver is a good setting, IMO. The whole thing works. Lots of NPC provided, lots of plots. It is not just four countries at each others' throats, next to ten AAA megacorporations at each others' throats. There are behind-the-scene dealings, secret agreements, cooperations and treasons going on with multiple objectives. Just what I like. Of course, this also makes it hard to give the big picture clearly. Maybe the authors went too far in some direction, especially with Ares Macrotechnology who now deals at the same time with the UCAS, the CAS, the Sioux and Aztechnology.

The three first hotspots, Austin, Brussels and Kansai, are good pick. I really hated the War! format for those. So the return to a more classical one is another good point. Kansai is slightly less interesting, but allows some general fluff on Japanese industrial espionage. An update on London is welcome after Sixth World Almanac (at the same time, I noticed the Conspiracy Theories summary on the website makes no mention of London). The spy angle may be a bit forced, to justify featuring London here. But I actually think that's the way to go with any themed-sourcebook if you want plots to move on. Actually, if I had to decide, I would have put Caracas in as the spy hotspot it should be, for the purpose of giving an update on the South America situation. The "military advisor" angle is played heavily on Nairobi (while pretty much ignored in the rest of the book). So, it should rather have been in War! (but then, it would have been covered with the War! hotspot format, so maybe it's not a bad thing it only showed up now).
I can't help thinking Tel-Aviv shouldn't be there. If the Israeli intelligence and security services were up to their reputation, no other agencies should be able to operate here, and it would not be a hotspot (at least not for the fun things that SR adventure should be made of). Nowadays, Beirut or Dubai are the hotspots, not Tel-Aviv or Tehran. In the Cold War, that was Vienna or Berlin, not Washington or Moscow.

The content of the Tradecraft, Counterintelligence and Extraplanar chapters is good, but I still don't get why they get divided that way, except because different authors wrote them. MI-5 and MI-6 is in one chapter, the Oversight Board is in another, GRU is only presented as a counterintelligence agency (as if military intelligence was not an issue), and psy ops as a CI activity. The Extraplanar Intelligence chapter is cut from the rest, but only three pages and half long (introduction short story and illustration included). The same problem goes on in the Spy Equipment chapter, which mix fluff and stats and plots. Searching for one particular piece of information is going to be a mess, even more so in the printed version. IMO, it would have been much much better to make one chapter on intelligence and counterintelligence methods, one chapter on agencies (and free spirits allied with them), one chapter on plots, one chapter on gear fluff and then gear stats and NPC stats. As far as I can tell it never was a problem to have different part of a same chapter written by different authors, with a change of voice.

The Spy Equipment chapter is... annoying. Save a few mistakes, the gear covers some needs of a spy-themed campaign. But Dr. Laura Cross memos just don't sound right to me. I barely saw the difference between the conspiracy theorist Plan 9 and the engineering scientists Dr. Cross parts, and the reason for the jump between one and the other. At some point I even expected a Jackpoint user would post to say Plan 9 probably forged those memos. At least that would explain the bogus details on Terahertz being right behind the visible spectrum "between waves and particles" or MGIC absorbing green spectrum "allowing for easy visibility under special lighting" (in common speak, something absorbing green spectrum is usually called "purple").

While not being only a Denver sourcebook, Spy Games is not a pure espionage sourcebook. Actually, the authors focused a lot on HUMINT and action : James Bond, Alias, Burn Notice, you pick your favorite. And I mean A LOT. SIGINT does not exist in this book. It is somewhat significant that the NSA only mention in the entire book is page 172, in the list of agencies. There is also no mention of reconnaissance satellites.

Part of the problem is, you cannot really draw a line between shadowrunners and spies. It's not like industrial espionage and deniability were of no concern to spies. Shadowrunners were the answer to the ethnic homogeneity of Japanese corporate intelligence services, the absence or relative weakness of "patriotism" among their employees, and the generalization of biometric border controls (compare to Mahmoud al-Mabhoud assassination in Dubai IRL, where Mossad likely burned two dozens of elite operatives whose biometrics are now known by every security services in the world). As far as Spy Games goes, the difference only lies in assets handling and costly hi-tech toys. Everything else spies do, the runners do as well, just on a different scale. A SIGINT chapter would have been carved out of Unwired for the most part (which would still have been better that, say, introducing a Terahertz radar that does the same thing than the Arsenal ultrawide band radar, with different rules).

The same thing goes for magic. The 3-pages chapter on "extraplanar intelligence" is just about free spirits involved in the Great Game. When you look at spells like Mind Probe or Influence, they should be "Great Game-breaker" just as they often are a game-breaker. Mental Manipulation Spells only get two passing mentions. If you asked me, rule-wise, field operatives should be recruited only among the people with the Magic Resistance quality and Exceptional Attribute (Willpower) just because of this. Well, in my game, the CIA would have something like three mages with Mind Probe, and they would become priority targets for every other agencies when their presence somewhere is known (and I would make sure my players know about this when they pick up their spells).

My main comment on Spy Games is about what the authors assume the reader knows. It happens all over the book, in almost every chapter. If you read things in order, you have to wait till page 55 to learn what that "treaty" you keep reading about actually is (as the author of the History of the FRFZ chapter consider that nothing that happened before the arrival of Ghostwalker is actually relevant). Okay, most people reading Spy Games should have read the SR corebook at some point and maybe remember about the Denver Treaty. But it's not like this is the only occurrence. Users' comment mention people like "Cuthbertson" or "Kasigi" before they are actually introduced. You're only told who these people are a few paragraphs later in the best case, but it can also be a dozen of pages. Sometime, you can guess : I understood that Sheba should be a country with Asmara as the capital, as I am not one of people who owns the Sixth World Almanac and remembers the entire map. I do know what the "CID" and "Lone Star's DPI" are and that calling MET 2000 a "little merc outfit" must probably be irony. I still don't know what "Sze Kau" and "zigs" are. And I have yet to check what type of vehicle the Lockheed Sparrow is to know what the Icarus is.
I admit this is somehow logical "in-context" as the Jackpoint users themselves know who/what those are and would post their comment when it is relevant, not only after one name or term have been covered in the download. But OOC, as a reader, I found this to be very annoying.

One odd subset of this issue is the History chapter. This chapter has three and half pages of text. There are exactly three dates given : "November 1" (the Crash), "2070" (Calcutta Olympics) and "2072" (Denver Olympics). No date is given for the arrival of Ghostwalker, the actual year of the Crash, the technomancers crisis and the tempo connection. If you don't remember them, you'll have to search another book.

I'll comment some specific points later.

[Nath]

To start, I don't know if it's intentional, but the wordplay on the Denver Olympics and "Spy Games" had me rolling on the floor.

Spy Games, page 12
The Big Ten, naturally, favor the move, but the UCAS is loathe to give up currency control, especially since it is one of the few ways they have of affecting their economy that is outside the reach of the corps.

Anyone reading the news in the past few month would know that big financial players certainly are able to affect the European economy through their currency.

Spy Games, page 28
(University of Denver students) picketed the Olympic games in protest of megacorp strip-mining practices (a.k.a. Mitsuhama’s plundering of Tsimhian).

As far as the book went, Mitsuhama left Tsimshian in 2064. So the protest would be something like a decade late. Note this can be retconed with Mitsuhama having returned to Tsimshian (under Salish-Shidhe control) at some point since, or by one major trial taking place in Tsimshian around the same time than the Olympics in Denver, with several Tsimshan and MCT officials involved in the mining operations charged.

Spy Games, page 29
This Chinatown meeting place has been a runner hub for years, but it’s also Mafia territory, so be careful.

A Mafia-controlled club in Chinatown, what a strange idea... The story about the Mafia taking over the place is told later in the book.

Spy Games, page 30
the Hub has evolved into a city within a city, where diplomatic embassies are granted the same extraterritorial rights as corporations.

Just kidding, right ? Right ?

Spy Games, page 40
Supposedly, it was a visit to UnlimiTech that caused Roger Soaring Owl to leave Knight Errant, so it is possible that the office it recently set up in the UCAS half of the Hub was placed there solely to interact with the paranormal population of the Hub.

I read Threats 2 and Corporate Guide, so I know what UnlimiTech is doing ad why Soaring-Owl left (or so I think). But to people who do no, this sentence absolutely makes no sense.

Spy Games, page 41
Aztechnology board member Domingo Chavez has not taken the loss of Los Angeles and the ejection of Aztechnology from the PCC well (...)

Nobody took the time to remind people that may not know that this Aztechnology board member is not (as far as we know) related to the Denver Mafia Chavez family.

Spy Games, page 43
Horizon Internal Intelligence, for instance, is using the fact that it is far closer to the negotiations than Aegis Cognito to compete with it in selling intelligence about the treaty negotiations, especially the PCC’s positions, to European powers.

So, Horizon Internal Intelligence is selling to outside, European powers ? As a side note, Horizon Internal Intelligence does not appear in the final agencies list, page 173.

Spy Games, page 49
> If Ghostwalker puts himself on the wrong side of the upcoming dragon divide, it’ll become a lot easier for them.
> Frosty

Tease.

Spy Games, page 61
> Castle is spending CAS’s share of Council revenue on his drug habit.
> Haze

> Council members don’t have access to the income tax and VAT revenue. If the CAS share is being drained from the coffers, it’s someone in the sector comptroller’s offi ce or at the Administrative Branch.
> Mr. Bonds

The sole fact that Haze comment is taken seriously by a guy like Mr. Bonds makes me wanna laugh. Income tax and VAT in a city the size of Denver would represent several hundreds millions of dollars a year nowadays. Just spending a day of tax on drugs would result in a death by overdose, whatever the drug is.

Spy Games, page 64
if Aztlan could get their old smuggling pipelines back, it wouldn’t bode well for the war down south.

Aztechnology is the fourth world biggest megacorporation and a major in the defense and food industries, and Aztlan has a population of 168 millions. If they need a "smuggling pipeline" from Denver to fight a war, then someone is doing something fuckingly wrong somewhere.

[Nath]

Comments continued.

Spy Games, page 56
> In one of the lesser-known laws, Ghostwalker has actually banned espionage. He doesn’t want anyone digging into his business, so he decided to go as broad as possible to give him the excuse to punish spies whenever he could. [...]
> Cosmo

> And yet that law doesn’t appear to apply to Ghostwalker’s own network of spies, does it? A bit of a double standard, no?
> Kia

IRL, almost every country in the world has a law banning espionage. In the US, the Espionage Act prohibits "unauthorized possession" of any information that "could be used to the advantage of a foreign nation". And all those countries also have intelligence services that can work because the law authorizes them to do so.

Spy Games, page 124
HUMINT officers tend to focus on the assets if they are flipped, but the professional operatives who are recruited or “walk-in” volunteers are run by counterintelligence-simply because they have to control someone volunteering for treason.

This is just a call for help. I'm not a native English speaker and no matter how many times I read this sentence, I still don't understand what it means.

Spy Games, page 125
One of the other ways runners are drawn into this field is through the use of social network analysis tools and countermeasures. Any twelve-year-old can download this software to track webs of contacts and power players.  There are also countermeasures that basically run those same algorithms and point out where to inject enough “clutter” variants to be discarded. Those countermeasures don’t really mean anything unless somebody goes out there and becomes a social variable. Guess who that usually ends up being? Deniable, freelance assets like us are sent to put people together or keep them apart, or hack into accounts and lay datatrails to manipulate the data set that these algorithms use to model networks.
This gets into some crazy territory because runners end up working seemingly random jobs just so that someone can protect or defeat some asset. The whole thing works the other way, too, where to “clarify” their analysis, agents will send runners to investigate or neutralize web nodes in order to get a better picture of how someone is connected to a foreign operative. So who knows if you end up whacking some salaryman, a mafioso, or another runner all because some guy you never knew about had spoken to them, and a Truth Dancer is trying to prove he’s an asset for the Information Secretariat?

What did it say in the previous chapter, "if you're firing a gun, you're doing it wrong" ? And now we're talking about shooting people in the face so an analyst somewhere can get a clearer graph in the Powerpoint he is going to show to his boss ?

Spy Games, page 126
It’s not “true” espionage, but President McMulkin’s campaign successfully used these tactics to push his name recognition all the way to the Manor House despite him being the ultimate dark horse. (...)

No. This is not "true" espionage and this is not espionage at all. There is a difference between political communication and psy ops at large, and there's another difference between psy ops at large and espionage. Obviously, someone wanted to give an update to the CAS political scene and explain the Technocrat mistake in Sixth World Almanac. As I said about London above, it is okay by me to play an angle to develop something not directly related to a sourcebook central theme. But in this case, that's stretched too thin. At least, I would have McMulkin campaign manager being a former CAS Army psy ops specialist or something.

Spy Games, page 126
Let’s look at Mogadishu.
Using the stable base of Somaliland, one of its neighboring Ethiomalian territories to the north, NeoNET has been trying to develop the city as its African capital since it’s close to Nairobi and other sites but isolated enough to dominate.

Compare to Somalia as described in War!, which boasts no mention of NeoNET and NeoNET plan at all.

Spy Games, page 129
Knight Errant has numerous counterintelligence contracts that could go bottom-up if there are breaches. Michel Laguiller, a former Seraph in Manhattan, is running deep-cover espionage against KE to determine if Soaring-Owl has been talking.

So, Laguiller is spying one Knight Errant to learn if Soaring-Owl, who left KE, has been talking (about KE trade secrets I guess). So, by doing so, Laguiller is going to know if Soaring-Owl has been talking only when KE itself get wind of it. Which will be also the moment when KE will take steps to prevent those leaks from having any effect. Doesn't seem such a smart move.

Spy Games, page 130
Because one of their main enemies runs the Russian Matrix, and they are as scared as anyone in CI of the dangers of the Resonance Realms to uncover buried secrets, the GRU has gone back to the true classics of tradecraft. Business is done with hard copies, standalone computers or isolated networks, and a lot of face-to-face interactions.

IMO, considering what hackers and technomancers can do, fluff-wise and rule-wise, isolated networks and face-to-face interactions should be the norm in any corporations, intelligence services or organizations that value a bit of secrecy.

[hobgoblin]

This is just a call for help. I'm not a native English speaker and no matter how many times I read this sentence, I still don't understand what it means.

Best guess from another non-native:

Flipped, a bureaucrat that have been convinced to spy on their own nation or similar.

walk-in, someone that shows up with classified info. As they where not approached they could be trying to pass off false info as the real thing.

Hell, i think there is a real life example from WW2 where a British agent supposedly worked for the Germans as a double agent. But in reality he was still working for British intelligence. So the Germans thought they where dealing with a British agent that was spying on the British for the Germans, while he was actually feeding the Germans false data on behalf of British intelligence.

And during the cold war i think there was at least a couple of Russians that presented themselves to the British and US agencies and where questioned and held in isolation until their claims could be verified via independent sources. If one do not, then one get events like the the wedding that got bombed in Afghanistan because someone claimed it was a Taliban gathering. Later it was found that the source was a rival clan to the one that got bombed...

[hobgoblin]

Tease.

Well she is learning from the best...

[Nath]

Spy Games, page 124
HUMINT officers tend to focus on the assets if they are flipped, but the professional operatives who are recruited or “walk-in” volunteers are run by counterintelligence simply because they have to control someone volunteering for treason.

Best guess from another non-native:

Flipped, a bureaucrat that have been convinced to spy on their own nation or similar.

walk-in, someone that shows up with classified info. As they where not approached they could be trying to pass off false info as the real thing.

No, I knew what a walk-in is (it is actually explained in the paragraph that follows the sentence I quoted). I understand the first part of the sentence this way : handlers ("HUMINT officers") usually focus on what their contacts ("assets") can provide to their new master when they are flipped (rather than stealing documents from their employer for instance). My problem rather lies in the second part : "the professional operatives who are recruited or “walk-in” volunteers are run by counterintelligence simply because they have to control someone volunteering for treason." What is the meaning of the verb "run by" here and what kind of control does that give ?

[hobgoblin]

supposedly every agent has a handler of some kind that they report to. I guess counterintelligence do the handling of volunteers as they are better equipped to spot double agents and such.

Btw, i suspect counterintel have some of the most paranoid and twisted minds of their nation...

[Fatum]

Just kidding, right ? Right ?

Aren't embassies everywhere considered to be part of the soil of the nation they represent?

Tease.

IEs are back, aren't you glad?

The sole fact that Haze comment is taken seriously by a guy like Mr. Bonds makes me wanna laugh. Income tax and VAT in a city the size of Denver would represent several hundreds millions of dollars a year nowadays. Just spending a day of tax on drugs would result in a death by overdose, whatever the drug is.

How do you know, maybe he's into sniffing shed dragon scales or whatever?

[Bira]

Well the quirkines of this particular poster is pretty clearly mentioned near the beginning of both gear chapters he 's narrating(or go narrating in the case of Attitude.)

Yes, but did it have to translate into a confusing chapter layout? This would have been fine in a novel, but not in something that's supposed to be used as reference. Answering "Where can I found out about weird conspiracies in this book?" with "In the gear chapter!" is a little counter-intuitive. Of course, not owning the book, I don't know how extensive that section is - it might have been meant simply as filler joke. If it was meant to be used by a gaming group, though, it should be in its own section.

Um, there's a big (If non-updated) list of who the Shadowtalkers are and their personal quirks available on the website. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

"You must read the website to grok this book" is not really any better than "you must know the metaplot". It's a picket fence marking the material as "Insiders Only", which is kinda silly for RPG books, the Nineties notwithstanding.

[Fatum]

"You must read the website to grok this book" is not really any better than "you must know the metaplot". It's a picket fence marking the material as "Insiders Only", which is kinda silly for RPG books, the Nineties notwithstanding.

I imagine that's more ok on the RPG market, where there's a high percentage of returning customers (who are likely to know said metaplot)...

[CanRay]

Shadowrun has been around for over 20-years real time, AND 20-years game time. Metaplot kinda gets very thick...

[Nath]

Spy Games, page 30
the Hub has evolved into a city within a city, where diplomatic embassies are granted the same extraterritorial rights as corporations.

Just kidding, right ? Right ?

Aren't embassies everywhere considered to be part of the soil of the nation they represent?

Hell yes. Embassies of every country, in every capital, have been extraterritorial ever since the 1961 Vienna Convention. Diplomatic extraterritoriality did inspire the corporate extraterritoriality in the first place.

Okay, there are actually parts of corporate extraterritorial rights that the diplomatic missions don't have per the Vienna Convention. But somehow, I kinda doubt the Denver embassies have shop retailing and land mining operations going on in Denver Hub.

[Mäx]

Answering "Where can I found out about weird conspiracies in this book?" with "In the gear chapter!" is a little counter-intuitive. Of course, not owning the book, I don't know how extensive that section is

It's less then 2 pages and some of it is about gear.
So it's most definitely filler(well possibly a little build up towards Conspiracy Theories), but i find it to be very characterful filler.

[Tycho]

the biggest bullshit I have read so far is:

Face
This brings us to changing your face. After a fight, skintoned creams and liquid Band-Aids help prevent you from looking like you just got out of a boxing ring. For camouflage, masks are fine if passers-by don’t look too close and if you’re skilled enough to put it on right. Nanopaste is okay, but it’s not flattering on me. I tend to go with high-end makeup, like Zoë’s Amber House line. It’s subtle with coloring, plus it can change ethnicity with a fine touch. I like to be subtle, since it’s easier to get by guards with AR-enabled optics. Add colored contacts, maybe holographic headgear to change hair if you don’t have cybernetic ruthenium inserts. There are also wigs available.

so /dev/grrl prefers MakeUp to Nannopaste Masks, which can change your complete face in an instant instead of haven to put makeup on for a while...

But I guess that is the quality you get if you let a teenage girl write about camouflage.

cya
Tycho

[hermit]

Nanopaste are "unfavorable" for her, so yes. Why she gets to write about pro equipment all the time, though, beats me.

[Mäx]

Why she gets to write about pro equipment all the time, though, beats me.

All the time?
I'm pretty sure that the Attitude has the only gear chapter written by her.

[hermit]

Attitude, Spy Games ... her and Plan 9. I don't really see why none of the less unprofessional and freakish shadowtalkers get to write equipment. I really would prefer a return to Arsenal-ish formating for items, and especially, those tables. Because the way it's currently done is less than ideal.

[CanRay]

Nanopaste are "unfavorable" for her, so yes. Why she gets to write about pro equipment all the time, though, beats me.

I sometimes wonder why she gets to write about ANYTHING, really. But, then again, she is on the JackPoint for a reason. Modern Fashion and Pop Culture if nothing else. After all, look at the bands shown in Attitude, obviously written by someone that doesn't know who the "Up and Comers" are, and is really over-enthused that some old bands are back or still going.

[hobgoblin]

Fastjack allows her in for a reason, most likely for insider info at some corp or other.

Nothing like keeping a kid around, and then get them riled up enough that they blabber about something that they maybe should not have.

[CanRay]

Actually, considering the group she's with, she's probably a good enough hacker on her own (Certainly good enough to hack days off from her high school classes.). The main issue a lot of folks have is that she seems to be so ignorant of the Shadows and it's history. Which, considering her majorly misinformed education she got as a Corporate Kid, is not exactly something that's hard to understand why. It does, however, make her appear like an idiot when she doesn't know how/why/when something happened and has to ask the "Old Folks" (Some of whom are only in their 20s) what is obvious to folks who have followed Shadowrun for years.

The flipside is that this allows for metagaming information to be given out to new players as well.

I think the other issue people have is the "Girly" image she has which goes against so much of what Shadowrun appears to be. After all, it's supposed to be synthleather, mirrorshades and razorblades cyberpunk. Not rainbow-farting unicorns and sundresses. That said, hey, it's her personal style, and might put a lot of Mr. Johnsons at ease by dealing with someone that "Is almost normal" rather than the usual scum (s)he's had to deal with for so many years.

I still say hand her over to me and I'll rough up those rounded edges of hers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[Patrick Goodman]

re: /dev/grrl

Fastjack allows her in for a reason, most likely for insider info at some corp or other.

If we ever figure out why, we'll tell you. Some of us are none too happy with her being around, either.

[hermit]

I sometimes wonder why she gets to write about ANYTHING, really.

YES. I wonder that, too.

Actually, considering the group she's with, she's probably a good enough hacker on her own (Certainly good enough to hack days off from her high school classes.). The main issue a lot of folks have is that she seems to be so ignorant of the Shadows and it's history.

Jackpoint =/= ShadowSEA. ShadowSEA is open to any 4chan.2070 hack who can fight their way in. JackPoint is FastJack's elitarian littlen node on the net, which he founded because ShadowSEA is too unwashed for elite runners like the Jackpointers. Except for /dev/.

My main issue with her, though, isn't her being there. FastJack can invite anyone he wants, and if he takes /dev/ under his wing, so be it. What galls me is that she gets to write the sections of the last two Deep Shadows books that SHOULD have been left to people who know their shit, not some brat who can hack a node (big deal in SR4) and considers herself a shadowrunner. A brat with few connections save FastJack and her highschool buddies, a brat with little to zero combat experience, essentially a corp kid who likes to slum it for the lulz and thrillz. Now, perfectly fine as a shadowtalker, but petrfectly shit for an informed voice on the latest in runner-related technology. See "I don't like nanopaste BECAUSE IT MAKES ME LOOK FAT" for proof. And frankly, neither is Plan 9 suited to write about serious running.

The current writers should really use characters who have a reason to write something for their in-book voices, not randomly selected characters or characters where they purposely have a bad voice describing very important things like equipment.

And damnit, learn how to format a book so it does make sense as a gaming ressource as well as work as a book on it's own. It's not fucking rocket science. It's been done by dozens of authors before you. And please, tables instead of copypasting sidebars. Because that is total crap.

If we ever figure out why, we'll tell you. Some of us are none too happy with her being around, either.

Well, her being there isn't the problem, it's how she's being used.

[hobgoblin]

Actually, considering the group she's with, she's probably a good enough hacker on her own (Certainly good enough to hack days off from her high school classes.). The main issue a lot of folks have is that she seems to be so ignorant of the Shadows and it's history. Which, considering her majorly misinformed education she got as a Corporate Kid, is not exactly something that's hard to understand why. It does, however, make her appear like an idiot when she doesn't know how/why/when something happened and has to ask the "Old Folks" (Some of whom are only in their 20s) what is obvious to folks who have followed Shadowrun for years.

must be getting Slamm-o riled to no end (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

The flipside is that this allows for metagaming information to be given out to new players as well.

indeed.

I still say hand her over to me and I'll rough up those rounded edges of hers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

Hell, say when and where and lets make it a party (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

[Mäx]

A brat with few connections save FastJack and her highschool buddies, a brat with little to zero combat experience, essentially a corp kid who likes to slum it for the lulz and thrillz. Now, perfectly fine as a shadowtalker, but petrfectly shit for an informed voice on the latest in runner-related technology.

She is an informed voice on the latest in fashion, which makes sense.
Attitudes gear section isn't in any way "latest in runner-related technology".
In Spy Games gear section she has exactly one sidebar and thats pretty much on the same subject as Attitudes gear chapter.
Can't really figure out why her personal reference for face changing matters to you, when she did still mention the other options.