Here come the Hackers, New Group with Techno-crazies Options

[DamienKnight]

My DC Online league has decided to start an iTabletop game of Shadowrun, and I am running it. One player is a decent Hacker, and another is a Technomancer. In all the years of SR I have played I have really only done Drone Riggers, and havent had a serious hacker play under me yet. One player has a few usefully decked out drones, the other is a cybered up char with a nice deck and hacking skills. I am not so worried about the cyber character... he will have plenty to do once the bullets start flying, but not so sure about the Technomancer. I really want to provide the full SR experience for him, but I am not sure what all Technomancers (or hackers for that matter) are good for.

I know they can hack comlinks (all of my players are constantly trying to hack each others phones, so we know the rules for that), but I am more concerned with the Technomancer saying, 'Yeah, I wanna break into the target building's system and take control of the cameras...' etc. I am going to be doing something new as a GM.

So here are my questions:

What useful things can Hackers do besides hacking phones and drones?

Does anyone have a sample system setup with nodes/IC I could use for my first go?

How feasible is it for a hacker to participate in an infiltration run via the matrix, and work side by side with the runners without interrupting game play?

I recall when I first played SR (back in 2nd edition) when the hacker of the group wanted to do something it would often mean the rest of the group had to sit and twiddle their thumbs while the GM soloed the hacker through their matrix junk for an hour. I really want to avoid that.

Also, what does a technomancer need to be good at his job? I am trying to help the player create a good technomancer and want to make sure I did not miss anything.

[bustedkarma]

Why ever send them into the meat world? Couple ideas...

Run the game in Matrix and AR, and use the drones to interact with the physical world.

Possibly encourage your TM to pick up some dronomancer style skills, so they can work together online, and also both participate in the game where physical interaction is required.

Have them each roll an additional "Operations" character. Your 2 Matrix focused characters could support the 2 "Regular" characters before and during runs.

[Bigity]

Yea, but that assumes the two players (one hacker, one otaku) are the only players.

[DamienKnight]

Yea, but that assumes the two players (one hacker, one otaku) are the only players.

Should've clarified that. There is a Mystic Adept, Technomancer, Combat Mage and Cybered Hacker. Potentially another mage or cybered character also.

[Hound]

Well, the simplest scenario for the ability to take control of cameras would be: Building has a central node which controls basically everything, and gives different abilities to different user accounts (i.e. public account can look at information, security account can open doors/view cameras, administrator account can edit node/open secret doors etc.)

Now, more secure or complex places may have many nodes, sometimes chained together such that you have to hack one just to get access to the other one (thus allowing them to only have one bitchin' awesome node that protects the others, or perhaps to force a hacker to move through multiple levels of security to get to the good stuff.) or perhaps it could have two or more separate nodes/networks, perhaps with different levels of visibility (i.e. one public network that handles all of the office mail and basic stuff, a secure network that opens the doors and such, and a secret network that keeps track of the underground human-experimenting-facility.)

As far as I know, for network configurations, you don't really need to get super fancy with it. Also, Unwired has a whole chapter on Matrix Topology. I've only skimmed it, but presumably it would be useful. Or you could check out this weird little game that a friend of mine showed me, it's based on SR3, and I don't know how closely the programmer was trying to mimic actual Shadowrun topology, but it helped me, so here you go: http://www10.caro.net/dsi/decker/

As to the part about how to make Hacking cool but not super time consuming.... I don't know lol. It seems like a bit of bad design, as it takes forever and generally involves only one person. So for that part, I'll be interested too if anyone has any solutions (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Run the Hackers and non Hackers concurrently. It has always worked for us, and takes very little in the way of divided time at all. Of course, it works best if the characters are all together, or at least linked together such that communication is flawless and uninterrupted. Unfortunately, it is pretty easy to interrupt communications.

[Sengir]

Does anyone have a sample system setup with nodes/IC I could use for my first go?

CODE

Gateway<=>Main<=>Security(Cameras)
            ^
           II
            V
      Admin(Paydata)

Device ratings depending on your liking (as an advice, let device ratings go from 1-10), a Snooper IC (Analyze) in the Gateway and another one occasionally loaded to patrol the other nodes, if an intruder is found load Combat IC (Shield, Attack)

Also, what does a technomancer need to be good at his job? I am trying to help the player create a good technomancer and want to make sure I did not miss anything.

The standard stuff (Exploit, Stealth, and Analyze to the max) plus threading is a sure way to go. And remember, any matrix damage goes straight to your normal monitors...

[Fatum]

Actually, with mesh networks and all the complex topologies are mostly thing of the past (yeah, metagamingly speaking, it's a way to limit the time a hacker needs to slice through a system). So a good topology would be a single node with some decent-rated IC (like that thing with Analyse from Unwired).

[Stalag]

Does anyone have a sample system setup with nodes/IC I could use for my first go?

I found this to be very helpful: Sample Matrix Sites