I wasn't planning to do it to MY organic commlink

Dashifen, I would love to oblige on any of these. I have my own character, he's 550BP though so that's way overpowered. I'll use the stock character if that helps.

As I understand the rules, I'm going to try to explain how technomancers work in relation to todays society...

Commlink is your cell-phone/pda device. This devices requires a commcode to connect to a service provider in order to get an IP address to access the Matrix, receive e-mail and receive calls.

Technomancer posseses an organic wi-fi modem. The TM doesn't actually have a commcode, or any other form of identity outside of their living persona. They access the Matrix by leaching IP addresses off of nodes and accessing the network for free. As long as they are within range of an access point, they can hack it, optain an IP address and go on their merry way. Hence TM's can't receive calls, they don't have an e-mail or voice mail inbox (outside of the equivalent of webmail) and make calls much how you make a voice-over IP call today.

Though you can hack the devices a TM controls (IE steal a drone from them from Spoofing the signal, assuming ID and subscribing the dron to yourself.) you can't actually hack the TM themselves.
You can however attack their persona and crash their icon, which would effectively render them unconcious as their Matrix and Meatbox damage boxes are the same.

I'm mostly ready to go, I just want Aku to describe the M.O. of his character a little to me --- like how do the two commlinks work in tandem. What are his normal program load outs (if any) etc. Also, do you prefer that we put this character on overwatch or a data-steal? Data-steal seems like it might be more interesting for this character since it may involve more danger and, with your character's prowess on the matrix (6 in all programs, tricked out commlinks, specialty for fighting IC, etc.) I can probably try to be a little more creative with the opposition.

My load outs would always be based on need, but would always be carrying stealth and spoof on the backdoor special.

The caliban is, as the excel sheet says, the public commlink, it has a second fake sin (which i forgot when i was making this character by the looks of things) or could also be the sin from the SIN'er flaw, if your character had that. It is used for legitmate purposes only. That doesnt mean that it can't be used in hacking activities, as many vital programs are under "common use" and therefore legal to own and operate, so generally, i'd snope through public areas with the caliban, doing what i can within legal bounds and not arrousing suspicion, and then do the actual hacking with the Back Door Special, which has an entirely different code, and so there would likely be no link between the two.

But that is the extent really of the connection. The first one serves as the hello, yes, i'm here commlink, the other does the hacking. I beleive the spirit of the rules dictate thattheir devices are wireless, i DON'T beleive the skinlink is the workaround that people here on DS make it out to be.

As for what we do,i dont really mind either way, i think the data steal is a more viable option simply because it offers more opportunity to do more things, but perhaps we'd be better off, as the book did, with smaller examples of more every day life, its up to you.

Hey Peeps, Lets keep this thread on track. It is a walkthrough thread for HACKING. Keep the extraneous babble of TM and Hacking TMs out. Let Dash run this thread so that we can all see what he is doing? Huh?

Actually, Magus, I want the other side digressions as necessary. This is an Idiot's Guide to the Matrix 2.0, which includes Technomancers and hacking Technomancers. When Aku and I get our tutorials running, we'll be using colors to let people know what's going so that the conversations that don't directly apply to the tutorial will be easily distiguishable from the actual tutorial information.

I don't claim to be an authority on the Matrix 2.0 stuff, either, so I hope that other GMs and players will chime with criticisms or alternate methods as we go along. For example, if I think something is a Data Search + Scan test (what I use for locating devices) while someone else likes Data Search + Browse, they should chime in and explain why. The nature of the Matrix 2.0 beast leaves much up to the discresion of the GM, which is part of what I like.

Now, I'm almost ready to go, but I need to get some real work done today. I'll be back circa 1 or 2pm (central time) to post information about the data steal and the hosts that Aku will be up against.

Point

For a Techno, severing their wireless connection with the outside world is, what, the Techno-pseudo-magicky equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going "LA-LA-LA I'M NOT LISTENING"??? Hmmm, probably best not to think about too much.

Okay, I'm going to get this party started. Since this is primarily a tutorial thread, I'm going to gloss over all of the in-game details like legwork, money, friends, contacts, co-runners and what not to get right to the hot-n-heavy matrix action. Hopefully no one minds the railroading that has to happen to get us to this point, but if people really want to see people role play legwork, I suggest reading one of the forum games in Welcome to the Shadows.

Also, I'll be editing the beginning of this thread to include links to the posts that begin any specific scenario (like this one) so if you ever want to jump right from the beginning of the thread to a specific scenario you will be able to do so.

I should have stated this before, but I didn't. Since the RAW for SR4 does not include any cybercombat modifiers at all, I've usually decided that the applicable Melee Combat and Defense Modifiers (in the combat chapter, pages 148 and 151 respectively) apply to cybercombat in order to make things a little more interesting. However, since this is a tutorial, I'll forgo this house rule and stick to what's written. Incidentally, if anyone can show me where it says what modifiers apply to cybercombat, I'd appreciate it.

It's a rainy day in Seattle. Well, it's always rainy in Seattle, but that doesn't bother our intrepid protagonist, Aku. Aku has been hired to break into a corporate network and grab as much paydata as possible. The corporation is an advertising organization, and some preliminary legwork seems to indicate that Horizon is behind the run. Perhaps looking for an easy way to steal customers from the competition? What ever the reason, it doesn't matter to our protagonist, he's just in it for the cashy money.

Investigating the network via contacts and matrix searches has indicated that others who've tried to hack them have encountered some extremely stiff resistance in a node that appears to be a relatively classic chokepoint. Aku has been able to determine that there are IC programs active and ready in the chokepoint, but the existence of a security hacker is unknown. Apparently, there is another, less-secure node past the chokepoint, but if anyone's hacked that one, Aku didn't have the time to track them down.

We pick up with our amnesiac hero testing the advertising corp's defenses....


@Aku:
Let me know how you want to break in to the system. Don't be shy on the mechanical explanations, either. Also let me know if you're going to shoot for security or administrative access to the chokepoint. After you tell me which one you're going to hack for, I'll tell the audience what the higher levels of access provide a hacker for this tutorial. Note that administrative access in my games does not allow you to turn off IC programs. Also, while I assume you'll be doing this via VR, let me know if you're not and, if so, are you in hot or cold sim?

@Everyone:
During a normal game, the GM wouldn't be giving any of this information away for free, but since this is a tutorial and I want to help you all get inside my head () I'm going to let you in on all the gory secrets of the host's setup, defenses, and the rational for those defenses.

The chokepoint is set up as a kill zone to trap and detain/eliminate threats to the corporation's system. In addition, the system is without any wireless communication capabilities at all. Instead, in order to access the system, you have to have a wired connection. How does Aku have that connection? I don't know, nor do I think it's important for the purposes of this tutorial. If you need a hook, assume that he's got friends who helped him get into the building and he's stashed himself in an office while they watch for security guards.

The attributes for the host are 6/6/0/6 (System, Response, Signal, Firewall). It's running the following programs:

• Analyze 5
• Data Bomb 4
• Encrypt 5
• Agent 5 (three times)

The encryption and the data bomb are used to secure the other network hidden behind this chokepoint. The data traffic in and out of that other network through the chokepoint is encrypted for security and the data bomb protects the virtual connections from one system to the other. For this run, the encryption may not matter because it'll be more important to determine where the traffic is going rather than what that traffic is, but it makes sense that a security conscious organization would encrypt their traffic regardless. The analyze program is available and set to run scans of the system and also helps to detect intrusion.

There are three types of IC agents in the system: an attacker, a tracker, and a hybrid of the two:

• Attacker: Blackout 5, Armor 5, Analyze 5, Attack 5, Stealth 5
• Tracker: Exploit 5, Stealth 5, Analyze 5, Attack 5, Track 5
• Hybrid: Exploit 5, Stealth 5, Attack 5, Armor 5, Track 5

The MO of the host is this: if the intruder gets in, the tracker and the attacker are both set to try and detect new icons logging onto the system. Lacking the Analyze program, the Hybrid is there to act as back-up for one or the other as necessary. Notice that the IC is all running Stealth, so their icons will not be apparent at first glance when logging on. A Perception test will be necessary to see them.

If an intruder is detected, the IC will immediately inform the host which will go into active alert mode. this increases the firewall of the host by 4 (see p. 222) and will also notify the corporation's matrix security. They'll dispatch a hacker to investigate who will arrive in the node in 4d6 combat turns. This gives the security a response time of between 12 seconds and a minute which could be an eternity in the speed of the matrix.

The Attacker is armed with Blackout and will attempt to render an intruder unconscious while the tracker attempts to determine his/her physical location. If successful, the IC will inform security of that location and then begin to go ape in the intruder's node copying information and crashing programs willy-nilly. The hybrid is a passive IC agent which will wait and see what happens to the other two before attempting to fill in the gaps as necessary. It will also work to deal with Agents that the intruder brings with him/her when infiltrating.

If the attacker IC is dropped in combat and the hybrid agent is unavailable, then the system will attempt to terminate the connection with the hacker. If security has yet to be notified at this point, then the host will do so as well.

'Course, none of this may matter if Aku is able to avoid detection.....


Now, usually I don't write all that out ... well, the IC are three of my standard IC agents that I use. I'll write up more about the other host if or when we get to it. I've made this host harder than I usually do in a real game, which could come back to be a problem for Aku, but then again he's a better built character than the Technomancer that plays in my RL game. Lacking a lot of practice with SR4 due to its young lifespan so far, I've had some trouble balancing opposition. Let's see how I did this time. As always, comments, questions or concerns are appreciated

Here is how I see it.
1) Technomancers have a PERSONA, not a comlink. the statment about organic commlink is the book is an analogy to help those struggling with the idea. The have the stats of a commlink (system, response, firewall, and signal) so that they may function within the matrix as PERSONA. It is called a Living Persona after all, not a Living Commlink.
2) Technomancers are like a wire tap. when you patch into a cable, the current brings you to whatever node the cable was leading to. Now that the Matrix is wireless, they catch a wi-fi current and ride it to the nearest node. Whenever they jack out, or reboot, to reentre they just catch the nearest wi-fi current and follow where it leads, then go to where ever they wish from there.
3) when a technomancer "suscribes to a device" what they do is keep a copy of their Living Persona in said device, just like accessing multiple nodes.
4) Technomancers are unhackable.
I think I covered everything.

True. Actually, that might be better, then at least you could communicate with the network while inside the building in a wireless fashion. WiFi blocking paint/wallpaper/building materials easily block such a low signal from the outside, and the employees on the inside get the added benefit of sitting down at their desks with a "laptop" and not needing any wires. Either way works for me and is, ultimately, unimportant for this situation.

BTW, I tossed an email to Rob Boyle (info@shadowrunrpg.com) just now asking if TMs are supposed to be considered nodes or if they're supposed to be immune to hacking.

Good call. Hopefully, they'll get the new FAQ up soon.

It's strange; I don't think I've ever seen a game's forums have so little official presence. I'm not sure whether that's better or worse, though, than the opposite choice. Also, I guess these are unofficial boards, but there's an awful lot of traffic here for no one at FanPro to be paying attention.

They pay attention, they're just largely busy, probably. Plus, I think it's to our benefit to work out such things anyway. Then they can sit back and watch our solutions and work them into future printings and or errata. Just like any good GM lets the players write a certain percentage of any run through their paranoia

Gotcha.

I do wonder if "Are technomancers nodes?" is the wrong question. It seems perhaps likely to lead to a "yeah, sort of" answer that won't be really helpful. What we're really looking to answer is "Can technomancers be hacked?"

the programs of a agent is contained within the agent. therefor its only one program (pr agent).

allso, those agents will not be running all the time right?

i allso wonder why encrypt and data bomb is loaded. from what i understand you only need to run them to set up the data bomb or the encryption...

the programs loaded into a agent reduce the agents own response...

the agent in turn may reduce the response on whatever node its running on

think of the agent as a virtual node if you will...

in the end its not so much about computing resources but about how effective the os/agent can amanage multiple tasks. overload it with tasks and the whole system (virtual or real) suffers.

a agent is a single task, but is managing its own set of sub-tasks...

the "it's" in the payload section on page 228 is refering to the agent, not the node. yes the agent have a response derived from the node its currently on, but that response is independent of the nodes response...

I'm not familiar at _all_ with the new 2.0 rules, but I have to say that a lot of the stuff about agents is, well.

It's in the same category as watcher spirits. It's possible to break the whatever with them by summoning them en masse. I just figure that both sides make a gentleman's agreement to actually not do it.

However, I could see that as being the flavor behind the mechanics of actually crashing a system, or whatnot. Just uploading enough agents until the universe explodes.

in the end, its another case of the rules being vague...

off topic RE: official pressence, dont forget that Fanpro, iirc is technically a 1 employee show, with everything beoing done freelance, the question of "Does fanpro read these boards" is a rather loaded question, and very yes or no, but do the free lancers, most definately, theres quite a few and for the most part of well accustomed to taking constructive critcism. Now on top the topic at hand...

denote action specific questions. i.e. something i'm not sure Dash explained

denotes crunchy rules bits, such as what i'm rolling for certain actions

denotes semi questions or clarifications, that off the top of my head i'm not sure of and think others might be confused by as well
denotes personal opinion, skip if desired

I'm working in Hot sim VR making my init 6+3+1 with 3 IP's. for an initative of 10.

As far as i'm concerned, a load of 5 programs is much to weak, and so i'm pretty much always going to be working with 6-11, lossing the +1 init due to running in hot sim, but i think the extra IP's are more worth it than the extra +1 anyways.

For this run, my Persona and agents will be using a "futuristic soldier" motif, that is either available or would have been created by me prior to entering the node. I am the robotic commander, and my agents are all soldiers in the army, described in their own sections.

As i said above, stealth and spoof are defaults, and for this mission, i'll also take the following:
Am i aware of the factoids of the @everyone portion above? or am i just aware of ic in general?

Analyze-I need to know when the IC and hackers are coming at me, 'nuff said

Armor-At the least, i know that there is some sort of ic in the system, along with a possible sec hacker

Biofeedback Filter- Even though i may not know that theres Black IC on the host, i wouldnt risk my brain to it, so it's there, it could probably almost be a default as well.

Unfortunately, this got removed as a hardware function as it was in SR3 and now counts as payload

Exploit Kinda a given, dontcha think?

Here's an oddity. Nowhere can i see does it state "when" the complex action has to take place for loading programs, nor does it say if EACH program takes an complex, or if it's possible to do "packages". I would imagine you could do packages, as we can do similar things with Windows now (set up multiple accounts, and only set up certain programs for certain accounts) Nor does it say how programs running off of your persona work; it states that agents loaded onto a node must have the programs active, so does that imply that agents running directly from your persona have immediate access to all of the programs you cary? For now, i think i'm going to fill the rest of my slots with agents for various uses

Agent 1 "Battlecat"- Attack, Armor, stealth. The Battlecat is a bipedal mechwarrior agent whose main purpose is combat, but is able to stealth around to deceive it's targets.

Agent 2- "Boomer the debomber"Analyze, defuse, stealth. Boomer is one of the few humanoid agents left in my arsenel, resembling a small goblin from mytho's, who goes around blowing up bombs, perhaps tricking enemies into thinking he failed even if he succeeded.

Agent 3&4="Spyman"Analyze, edit, stealth and Decrpyt, exploit, and stealth. Even though it's two seperate agents, "Spyman" always works as a team, complimenting each other's skills, like a superhero tandem.

Agent 5- "Fido" Browse, sniffer, stealth Fido is a robotic dog, who does my datamining and traffic watch.

And thats my initial load out for this run.

Once we're in the building, since this is an onsight run, i'll hack on the fly. rolling Hacking (5)+ exploit(6) vs. Firewall (6). Each roll takes 1 ip to complete, and the server gets to roll an Analyze+firewall Vs my stealth 6 to detect me.



Since i have no intention of staying on this node for very long, i see no reason to risk giving my self higher level access for now. Also, had i been offsite, i would've probed the node instead, it takes an interval of 1 hour, but the host only gets one shot to detect you, when you actually break in. Unfortunately, being on site i wouldnt be comfortable sitting around for a couple of hours trying to crack into their system.


Lemme know if those are readable, it's kinda hard for me but meh, my eyes suck

Running more than 6 programs, as you've noted, drops Response by 1, but System is limited by Response, so your System has dropped to 5 as well. This further limits your program ratingsto no more than 5.

indeed. you should add in a reality filter to get your response back up to 6

I'm wondering what has what level of defenses? I mean, what would have black IC, what would have what ratings?
I assume that anything owned by an AAA corp is going to have level 6 black IC on everything (can IC rating go beyond 6?). but what about your average smalltime buiness? How about your average Johnston's commlink? What about a newstation? a highschool's system?

black ice would probably not show up on anything but the very high security systems. non-lethal and even more so lethal force is not a good idea on pulbic, high traffic systems.

its like making it a shooting offence to open a "staff only" door...

its realy hard to say that a company will use rating X while a joe wageslave would use a rating Y. maybe joe have a interest in electronics (much like the geeks of today buying high end mobile phones with lots of features not because they need them but because they are "cool"), and the company node is just a promotion server?

most joe's would probably walk around with a meta link or CMT clip running vector zim (alltho some bozo would probably get one running redcap nix alltho its a but to hot for his comlink).

johnsons? damn hard to tell. it realy depends on who he is working for and so on...

office nodes will probably be custom products. just enough signal to cover the office (or maybe a bit more if they dont feel like/cant afford having a chokepoint node), response enough to run the security software the resident corp hacker feels is needed, as high a firewall as they can afford, and system to match the response.

so to set the node ratings you have to think like a corp. the security people would want the hottest stuff they can get. the accounting will want the cheapest they can get. in the end it will be a compromise unless the exec cuts thru and decide that the extra expense will be worth it given what they do at that place...

problem is again that the rules do not say clearly that a effective drop in response from running more then system rating in programs allso affect the system rating.

it only states that system is limited by response. it could be that said rule is only effective on the initial setup...

again its so vague and without an example that i dont know what way to interpet it. but to me the death spiral looks like overkill, nothing something a person would deliberatly put into the game. its just not worth it to have a mechanic like that in there.

while i was interested in this thread at the start, im starting to think that the wireless matrix rules as they stand are two open for interpetation and that we need to have them more defined before we continue on this thread.

no, because you just lost 1 from running more programs, so your response goes down. your response is the limit for your system, which drops that to 5 also. because your system is 5, all your other programs also lower to 4, and you are now limited to 10 programs running before a slowdown... but you have 11 programs running, which drops your response *again*, which drops your system, which drops all your other programs.

thus, you are at 4 response, system, and therefore your programs are all capped at 4.

swap something out for a reality filter is my advice =P that would bring you up to 5 if it works....

it's a viscious circle my friend =P

Jeez. I'm beginning to think that we ought to restart the thread and just use the hacker in the book for the first example, so that everybody'll be on the same page.

i dont think that would help as its not the hacker thats the problem, its the rules that can be interpeted atleast 2 ways...

i dont think it's in the spirit of the rules, that thats how it works, and i also think that it's strongly implied in the rules that the only effect of the loss of response, is the loss of the initative.

[quoite= sr4 p.212]
so if you're running 20 programs with a system of 5, your response will be reduced by 2. [/quote]

Now, i realize this isnt "conculsive", however, i think if they wanted it to work in a cycle, they would state what everyone around here does, about how it then reduces the response again, making the new cap 8, and oops, you're still over than so you go down again. It's just not intelligent gameplay to have it work like that, and i think some very important words were cut during editing.

Lets try an example like this, with realworld stuff. Think back to when you had a program crash in XP (if you use it), but kept trying to do other stuff. You were capable of even starting other programs, even though your cpu cycles were at 100%, but everything was HELLA slow, your response was decreased, until you got the crashed program to clos out. Programs didnt become "less", just slower, which is what response represents, imo.

bingo, think of it this way:

when system becomes overloaded it have to eat up more response to managing the diffrent programs. therefor the comlink/node have less response to spend on the persona.

this can allso work for explaining agents and ice. with more internal "programs" they have to spend more time managing them and less time fighing, resulting in a drop of their internal response (that happens to be based on the response of whatever node they are currently active on).

its kinda like why people turn of their real time virus scans (or compleatly kill the program) to get better performance in games.