So I've been playing SR4 lately, and come to the conclusion that overall, I don't like the linear power progression it provides. I want to return to SR3. However there are some components form the new edition that has exited me, notably hacking and extended tests.

How would you go about converting the hacking rules to SR3?I have played SR3 for years, but NEVER read the rigging rules, as I have heard how horridly the rigger is removed from actual game play, so keep that in mind.

Future more, how would you convert the extended tests. SR3 have you divide a base time, but I never really liked it. I like the concept of making skill tests a number of times until you reach a certain threshold. This could be done by setting some TN and making skill tests until you have sufficient successes. I'm thinking, for instance, Opening a MagLock:

TN: Rating/2, Threshold successes: Rating*2.

Future more, one of the concepts I really despise in SR3 is open tests. Its too random. Any ideas as how you could convert this to something else?

Your system for extended tests is almost exactly what I would use. The problem is that its all but imposable to fail (rule of one vary rare in SR3).

I also disliked open tests, there are 2 options I see to get rid of them.

Replace with opposed test eg stealth now becomes stealth TN int + wound modifiers opposed buy int TN quickness + visibility & wound modifiers. Compare successes.

Or set a fixed TN and compare successes, probably varying the TN based on conditions similarly to gunfire. EG stealth target 4+wounds opposed buy int target 4+wounds+visability modifiers.

With either option you need to decide what the effect of ruthenium and camouflage clothing will do. You could ether have it provide extra dice or call it a visibility modifier.

Edward

one problem with rerolling your skill a number of times until you get the required number of successes is that it can become really, really tedious in non-combat situations. for instance, making vehicle repairs could easily require 10-20 rolls, depending on how you divide things up. that said, it does a) some drama to tasks performed during combat, and b) the ability to pick up where you left off easily.

Two words: Drone Rigger.

I am sorry, I meant Decking rules; Im qutie familliar with the rigging rules. Pure veichle combat is pretty math heavy and slow tho.

Meh. I boiled straight up "I ram you, you ram me" vehicle "combat" down to modified driving tests. This is because the situation rarely comes up in my games, and the regular rules are a bit much, IMO.

The decking rules are quite simple once you get over the "I've always heard that they're hard and take the decker out of the game/ create pizza time for everyone else." To me, the key is making sure that the player running a decker understands the rules. The rules are easy enough, and once the player knows what's expected, the decking scenes are just another awesome facet of the game.

And this is coming from a recently reformed "Oh, they're hard" GM. After actually looking at them, and seeing how they're supposed to work (and not how everyone says they work), we've almost always got a PC decker in the team, and they're almost always just as involved as any other character.

Word of advice: have several hosts of various difficulties and such ready to go at all times. This keeps you from having to create them on the fly (which, although possible, still bogs the game down for me, and I dislike doing it). If you can find them, look for Wordman's character sheets. They include a sheet on which you can design four hosts per page. Write them up and jot down notes such as security rating and nastiness of IC at the top. The next time the decker goes "I find a jackpoint and logon to host", you just smile and pull out the "Red-10, super nasty" you've been waiting to use and say "roll 'em".

The key is balancing the game from the perspective of "okay, I need to make sure that all of my players get a chance to be useful". Once you get the hang of that, the only hard part is staying a step ahead of the clever bastards.

Like was already stated, it is a skill test vs system rating with program modifiers to TN. The host makes its test vs detection factor and amasses 'hits' that trigger ice.

This was all being explained and shown how it actually, finally, after about 4 or 5 revisions, made decking pretty simple. No more pizza time than the mage doing his thing. However, toward the end of the examples, I think Synner, who was extolling its virtues, started working on SR$. A huge draw for SR$ is the supposed ease of the hacking rules, so the more convoluted everyone still believes the SR3 decking rules are, the better for SR$.

I would think with all the new things you can hack, and all th countermeasures and increased security everywhere, and having to constantly spoof and burn your tracks, that hacking is going to be far more involved and a time consuming headache in SR$ than decking ever wanted to be in SR3. I also think there is an awful lot of things they say hacking can do, but are handwaving away the way all these records getting generated (Big Brother is watching) makes shadowrunning obsolete.

I compare it to the astral trail that got left all over by constantly sustaining a magic effect. It could be erased, but many times was not because it disappeared in a short time and few people could trace it if they got there quick enough. Since everyone can hack to some degree, and since this trail is getting recorded in more places than can be erased, I'm sure the trackers are going to be thoroughly trained in following your data trail.

I keep hearing spoof it for an answer. Ok. Imagine a trail is being followed and disappears. Oh darn, that's it. Wrong. Another trail just started from nowhere, or if you are copying another ID, you are still leaving tracks and so are they. The tracker backtracks the one, verifies the ID as real, tracks both trails (because they are not going anywhere except a big data dump for some corp to gather intel on everyone) eventually the legit ID gets used and your spoof is known to be fake. Yeah spoof it again and again anf that will confuse it to much to follow? No, it will make it easier to see which of the two trails they are following is fake even sooner.

If there is some way to avoid this (not hand waving) or if I am missing something, I would like to know. To me there are too many things picking up your signal to ever hope to keep up erasing them. While you erase one record of your passing, you are leaving 6 more. And trying to operate without broadcasting falls to Example 3 on page 210, where that is suspicious behavior all by itself, kind of like automatically detecting you are driving without a driver's license. Yes, there are ultra secure areas that you are not supposed to run your link, but in public is not one of them.

The decking rules have a few ugly corner cases (multiple simultaneous illegitimate deckers in a system, host-has-tally vs. icon-has-tally, etc.), but the core is really very simple. It just requires preparation—you wouldn't take a GM and player unfamiliar with the Ranged Combat rules, throw them into ranged combat without scribbling down important weapon stats, intrinsic modifiers, and opposition stats beforehand, and expect it all to run smoothly, why do you expect it of the Decking rules? The only difference is that more people will be sufficiently familiar with the ranged combat rules to do it on-the-fly.

If you're looking for a way to simplify SR3 decking, though, I'll dig up the link to the SR3R decking thread. If you combine a bunch of the programs and operations, you eliminate a lot of the bookkeeping that prevents the entire Decking operation from being held in mind at once.

~J

It’s not the decking rules that take the Decker out of the game. It’s the nature of decking. If the Decker wants to deck something nobody can go with him, everybody else has to sit around waiting.

Edward

yeah. if you slap AR functionality into the SR3 rules, you'll do okay, i think. decking just becomes another set of actions you can perform.

For the most part you should be able to splice in pretty much the whole of SR4 rigging and decking including most of the dicing mechanic outside of Initiative. There are several different variations of dicing mechanics in SR3 already anyway, including fixed TN stuff. SR4 isn't that foreign to it at all.

bottom line, you gave 4th ed a serious try and don't like it.

welcome back from the Dark side.

Thank God people are starting to speak out about the decking rules not actually being complicated. When I was first learning SR3 the decking rules were the first ones I actually understood; I actually got lost learning magic, ranged vs. melee combat, and still don't understand SR3 rigging.

For Kag's SR3R rules I suggest you start reading here and continue to the end of the thread. There's a lot of good stuff there to clarify and improve on the existing SR3 rules; I especially like the idea of having sec tally be carried globally by a security-linked subsystem rather than individual users.

I still think there are too many programs for truly easy use--even SR4 is riding the bleeding edge of too many programs to be intuitive. The best choice IMO would be to simply have five Operational Utilities corresponding to ACIFS ratings, with specialist progs being available rather like specializations re available for skills.

Thanks for finding that Eyeless, been meaning to reread/ copy that.