I was reading though the technomancy rules. There's been little need really because not one of my players have ever even considered playing a technomancer.

My observations
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1) The technomancer starts weaker than the hacker or equal if you factor in all the bells and whistles they maybe come out about even.
2) If anything the hacker gets stronger faster than the technomancer at first until the hacker meets that big old rating 6 ceiling.
3) With very limited cyberware, bioware, and considerable skill requirements Technomancers are weak in the physical world.

How do technomancers feature in your game?

Aside from mechanical reasons, the few SR players I know (including myself) aren't very fond of the flavor or concept of technomancers.

played to few games to say when it comes to popularity but i dont have a problem with the concept...

I don't like the concept and it seems that none of the others players in my group did. So no technomancers at all.

I'm a technomancer!

Emo has come up with super-special houserules just for people like me, because he feels that they get a raw deal. Basically, they are treated much like mages with their spells: the ratings of a TM's Complex Forms are equal to his or her Resonance, and they only cost 3 BPs or 5 karma each. Plus, in order to accommodate those who were otaku before the Crash, he allows TMs to have up to 2 points of Essence loss at character creation. I didn't take this last opportunity, though, because my character was never an otaku and was too young to get implanted cyberware in 2064 (the Crash began the day before her 14th birthday.)

I love the concept, but I tried playing one and it was boring. There's no room for physical world anything if a TM is a capable Cracker. FanGirl and Emo's ideas sound hyper-awesome, but my GM only takes rules away, he never adds them.
It was obnoxious playing next to a Mage that had the same essence restrictions on 'ware, but could spend an extra few BP to have some serious combat ability with spells. So I switched to a cybered Hacker, which is ten times the fun because you can make a character like that's more Jack-of-most-trades-and-master-at-Hacking. There was BP left over to shoot a gun effectively, and be a halfway decent Face and have a 2 in Athletics and Stealth. Way more fun than my Infirm TM.

At first, I was not interested in them in the least. I think that they seemed like a poor concept of a character type. But the more that I start to think about them the cooler they seem.

Not this anime, techno-magic brain lazer, spiky hair crap. But thinking about it as a guy who's brain unconciously picks up on and manipulates signals, making it like having a 6th sense that he may not even know is related to being in the matrix. I've been writing some super short stories to try and illustrate that angle, I'm thinking about positng here in a thread. I think that they're described so breifly and poorly in the BBB that there's not much to go on about how they work, or what their about.

When I play SR4 again, my next character will be a Technomancer.

I think Technomancers were intentionally given a slightly raw deal to keep them rare. My perception is, if you want to play a good hacker, you should play a hacker. Technomancers are reserved for people who really want to delve into the differences and the RPing, not for people who want to be "teh 1337 h4XX0rz"
I guess I'm using the, "it's not a bug, it's a feature" defense, but when something seems weird I try to assume it's supposed to be that way and figure out why, first.

Expect technomancers to get a gargantuan boost in Unwired. There's just no way they could have squeezed a lot of stuff into the core book to cover them, so they opted to give enough that you could play one, but it's mostly just a teaser. At least that's my assumption, I could be totally off base.

I'd say that's about as likely as an upgrade to give hackers a 4th pass in VR. (i.e. I consider it pretty damn likely)

hopefully, they'll get a massive shot of fluff in Unwired. as it stands, there's not much to go on.

actually, what i hope is that all the technomancers catch on fire and die in Unwired, followed by a mysterious resurgence of otakuism. but that's just me.

Somehow I doubt that will happen, if only because you want it.

I think that technomancers are more powerful in ar and vr than regular hackers (though the adept with enhanced skills in computer areas will beat them to a pulp) to begin with and outstrip them the stronger they get. In RL though they suck. I had to make my tm a dwarf just to keep from being autokilled by everything.

gotta wait for threats 3

Glayvin: Technomancers are not a culture. They aren't predisposed to answer those questions any differently then they would have if they were normal people or hackers. they tend to gather together, but any group with such major similarities and the ability to communicate with each other nearly instantly is going to eventually gather together in groups.

I have made them very rare in my campaign world and haven't yet allowed the class for players to build. Granted, no one has really had an interest to play one, so that has not been an issue as of yet.

I've always loved the flavor behind Technomancers/Otaku. Honestly though I think alot of you might be underestimating the power of sprites. As dangerous as spirits are in the material/astral realms, sprites can be just as, if not even more a threat in the matrix and indirectly in the material.

I'm honestly considering making one and giving them minor bio/cyber. Anyone know if modified attributes from 'ware count towards the TMs persona?

What I meant was that questions like how they get along with otaku, what they think baout the Deep Resonance, etc. cannot be answered because each technomancer is an individual. While it might be that a majority of technomancers hold a certain view (not unlike majorities in a country holding a certain religion) it would not be safe to assume that any technomancer you happen to meet will hold those same views.

I know they don't because they don't. In my games they will group up but won't necessarily organize into "tribes." There appears to be nothing at all in their rules that would indicate they should all share the same mindset on enough levels to form a large tribe. Several smaller groups, sure, but even the word tribe seems to be the opposite of technomancy. It brings images of technologically unadvanced or "back to nature" culture, not psychics whose astral plane is the matrix. YMMV

Well, except the need to be around similar people. Which explains damned near every other organization. Why not technomancers?

i'm not saying they have tribes. what i'm saying is that nobody knows if they have tribes or not--or if they have secret handshakes, whether or not corporations hire them, how technomancy affects their outlook on life, whether or not most of them know they're technomancers, anything. the only thing we have is a translation of a german newsletter that says "oh by the way technomancers are really rare".

Geekakke: I see "forming tribes" as different from "needing to be around people." Besides, not everyone needs (or even wants) to be around similar people.

mfb: I get what you're saying, hence my "In my game" and "YMMV".

i just wonder about all the TM players who are going to discover, when Unwired comes out, that they've been playing horrible mutant freak TMs that don't fit into TM culture at all.

of course, if i get my wish, that won't be a problem!

They don't exist in my campaign, at least not as a choice for PCs (I might make them part of a plot in the future). I'm not a huge fan of their flavor, but more importantly the hacking rules are complicated enough without them.

Maybe when Unwired comes out and hacking makes more sense

I don't know if Matrix denizens' cultures will be all that different but there are a few major points that need to be considered.

Being constantly connected to the matrix means that any information is likely to be at your finger tips. I know if I have a question about something I go online and search for an answer. Technomancers and anybody else who kept their brains plugged to the matrix would likely be know it alls. If effectively had Wikipedia in my head I would never get confused about certain subjects during a conversation. If someone starts talking about something I haven't ever heard of a few mental clicks or the purchase of a knowsoft and suddenly an expert.

Being connected to other people all over the globe constantly means that there are likely not as many cultural boundaries in the Matrix as there are in real life. Ideas and contagious behavior would spread like wildfire through out the world. Individuality would fade a bit as our brains are no longer so buffered from the minds of others. Although such things would only affect those online most of the time it would definetly affect technos.

From my interpretation of the Technomancer rules, they don't seem as good as hackers. Sure Sprites can do some very wiggy things, but you lose out through, not having 'ware without reducing your resonance, getting knocked out in the meat if someone crashes your persona (linked with taking penalties for your meat actions if you are injured in the matrix, and not being able to heal matrix damage with a medic program like anyone else can), the necessity of spending karma to increase your own special skill group, increasing resonance and improving complex forms (while a hacker ca just spend nuyen to improve both their deck and their programs).

For these reasons I've actually tried to discourage technomancer PCs, but I also have a lack of players actually interested in playing hackers, and when I suggest that the matrix rules are not that hard to grasp and y'know the group could REALLY do with a hacker type, all they want to do is play wiggy technomancers.

I never really got very into Otaku in SR3, so I'm not reallly sure what the factions and tribes you refer to are. The rarity of technomancers is suggested in the flavour text by describing them as rumours, so I don't figure there are that many about and as a consequence they are likely to stick together. Probably online though, I doubt they all go down to Hairy Al's Bar and neck a couple of cold ones.

what does a TM do if the system is wired/hardwired/old school? kinda weak IMO.

EDIT: i meant wired, not wireless, d'oh.

If it is wireless the technomancer can hack it as easily as anyone.

If it is hardwired then they need to use 'trodes wired up to a jackpoint, or just get a commlink and wire it up to the jackpoint and go through that.

Effectively if you want to hack a wired system, plug in a node with wireless turned on and go through that.

I just fast read through SR4 and I like the idea of a techmancer cause they got some nice + over a normal hacker (if I interpreted it right)

no need for a comlink => no need for a normal login? => no extensive tracking possible, cause they don't have a fixed ip?

threading seems pretty nice... no need to learn all the complexe forms.. just thread em on the fly or improve your comp.forms to levels unreachable for normal hackers!

Our GM is slowly easing us into the SR4 world. The first rule for the changeover was, "No Hackers/Technomancers." He didn't want to deal with it...Oh well.

I think we are missing out on a lot of the SR4 flavor for not using it, but we'll see if we integrate them later.

I think the new hacking rules are easy to implement in the game.. no more need to scrap hacking pcs and only use npcs ^.^

Did you run a game with new rules? They're really complex and there are too few examples in the BBB to help a GM.

naw I just read through em.. but I think it's easier than 3ed

There are a number of things that need to be cleared up, which is one of the reasons that I am impatient for Unwired to come out. I'd actually like a hacker in my game, but I'm instead inundated with street sam types.

I don't think there's much point doing a side by side comparison of hackers and technomancers as mechanically they work in exactly the same way.

A technomancer's persona ratings are derived from his/her attributes while a hackers are derived from their comlink and OS. TMs can generate any program on the fly with threading in addition to their inate complex forms (which mimic programs as far as the rules are concerned). Hackers are restricted to the programs they actually own or have written.

Any differences between the way TMs and hackers do stuff is fluff, not mechanical. As always there is an exception. Only TMs can summon sprites, which are like spirits in the computer, and are the only reason to even play a TM IMO!

The kinds of things I'd like canon examples of are hacking cyberwear, hacking drones, intercepting wireless traffic, the consequences of being hacked (ie the extent to which being hacked actually interferes with your day) and that sort of stuff. Basically I just want to know what limits a hacker faces.

We are feeling our way through combat hacking. One guy is a fan of Ghost in the Shell:2nd Gig and likes the idea of hacking opponents' gear. We use concepts similar to Booklord's "Wireless Rulings" to keep things running smoothly. Not exactly the same, but close enough.

It works out pretty well. He uses a handful of micro drones to be the eyes & ears of the party and tends to whistle up a Sprite to either run the drones or act as an electronic provocateur. He's decent at data hacks and a good time is had by all.

I suspect the GM might be happy that he isn't a net-diver type of hacker and instead prefers to target things that he has line of sight on.

I think one of the major sources of fun (and by fun, I mean chaos and death) that can come with a Technomancer is the permutations of their relationship with the old-school Otaku.

The Otaku might be completely subsumed by the Technomancer culture (whatever that happens to be), or the Otaku might have some sort of self-identity still. They might be bitter and aging men who loathe the Technomancers for their ability to connect even more deeply to the Machine than they can (cyberware, remember?). Or they might be mad prophets among the Technomancers, babbling about AIs and the Deep Resonance and Dissonance in a world that wants to forget them.

Or, quite possibly, the Otaku still exist. In the worst slums in the world there still might be tribe of child-Technomancers who come together for security and pay homage to yet stranger things in the Matrix than we have encountered before.

There are enough differences to set the hackers and technomancers apart from each other. There's far more there than just "fluff."

For one, I imagine the hacker vs. technomancer dichotomy as being something akin to a sam vs. an adept. The first needs MONEY to improve themselves at their trade, and the second needs karma, and LOTS OF IT. A hacker can drop some cred and upgrade their comm or buy a program, but a technomancer has to improve themselves internally, and that takes longer and works on a far more scarce resource.

However, technomancers have an edge that hackers do not.... Technomancers run all of their Complex Forms at once with no slow-down to their Response attribute. A hacker that has a commlink with straight 6's loses a point of Response if he runs 6 programs. A technomancer has no need to ever switch and swap out programs because they are always going. And if they don't have a program, they can always thread it, unlike hackers, who are just shit out of luck.

However, hackers are much more free to branch off into other things and diversify, while a technomancer is pretty much stuck being a technomancer... Again, it's more of that sam vs. adept stuff. A sam can get 'ware and implants to help them do other things. Adepts pretty much have to focus, and lose their special attribute (Magic) if they try to gain power the easy way, via implantation. It's the same thing with the technomancers.