I'm running into problems with running for the Technomancer in my group. The Technomancer seems to take up a ton of gameplay time compared to the rest of the group. When he's in the Matrix searching for info or cracking into a place, there is basically nothing the other players can do except for sit around and wait till he's done. Last gaming session the others basically had to wait an hour of REAL time for him to do something. But in gametime, it only took a few minutes. It just seems too time consuming.

Secondly, it seems like some things are too easy too do in the Matrix. Data Search rolls don't seem like a matter of skill, they seem like a matter of time. Just keep rolling until you get the proper amount of successes and the GM has to tell you the info.

How can you effectively GM for a Technomancer without leaving the group out? It just seems to time-consuming and wasteful to me to even deal with.

Look in my SGM and my SGP in my sig for ways how to deal with the matrix, open ended tests and such things.

Some hints: Restrict open ended tests to skill+1 rolls. Make matrix runs short, just a few standard dice rolls (if the stuff is not really important), try to generalize things.

you could also have other runners 'hitch a ride', similar to last eidtions hitcher jacks. Have him keep them updated so they can make decisions as a group.

Ok, this first line is my opinion, but if your technomancer is doing the matrix junk himself, then he is either playing gimp or spent alot of BP on CFs.
Personally, I play my TM as a sprite master. If I need to crack into a node, I just make a crack sprite and have it do the work while I hang out in the real world. I do the same for if I need some other task done, like data searches, decrypting, editing, yada yada.

If your player starts doing that, then you can just take into account that the sprite has 2x its rating in dice for any roll and just fudge the rolls. If he wants to crack into a node, have his sprite take 3-6 seconds and tell him if there was an alarm triggered or not. If he is smart and has his sprite create an account profile in the node's registry, the TM could just log on as normal after that and then do whatever he can with his account clearance.
Personally, I always go for a Admin level account so I have full power over the system and whatnot. It also lets most actions be legal instead of hacking and you dont have to roll them for the most part.

The best part about using Sprites to do the work for you is that the TM can continue talking or whatever in the meat world and no one would be the wiser. Just have a 3 second pause in the TM talking and there you go, sprite created and sent to do whatever. The only problem with that is, if the TM takes damage from compiling a sprite, it has meat effects that people might pick up on. Stun damage = wincing and instant headache, maybe with some heavy breathing. Physical damage - hasnt come up, but I'm guessing bleeding of the nose, eyes and mouth in severe cases.

Oh well, thats my 2

Bad idea. Hackers could use rating 6 agents on rating 6 comlinks and make themself mostly useless (and TMs, too, as agents have unlimited services).

Sprites for TMs are broken at the moment, as the registering of sprites does not take any resources except time. Spirits on the other hand, cost money.

Thus, most TMs, underpowered as they are, rely on pure sprite power. Two broken rule mechanisms that fix each other, but that does not make it good.

If your GM has you running up against rating 6 commlinks with rating 6 sprites on it, something is wrong, unless you are in a high end game.

As for the sprites being broken, they work as it is. Not costing anything make sense if you think about the fact of, how is something in the physical realm going to effect the digital realm like that? OK, I have this pile of X at my feet that I need to register a sprite. OK, now I'm full VR in a virtual setting and the Pile of X is just sitting there at my feet. I dont see it doing anything to help or hurt me in the act of registering the sprite.
Its not like a sprite is a tangeble thing, like a spirit is. Plus you can bind up to a rank 12 spirit (I salute you if you have the balls to do so), but you max out at 8 for Sprites. (I have no idea why 8 instead of 12)

Yeah, TMs use sprites for the most part because it plays to their strenghts and protects their weaknesses. (The fact that their health bars are the same and that they need an assload of karma to play a TM just like a hacker)
One thing that Sprites have over agents is the fact that they dont reduce response on the node they are on. And if destroyed, they can be compiled again in just 1 IP. I'm pretty sure Agents are scrapped or something. (Havent read too much into them since I dont use them)

Searching for info : Consider it the same way you consider the face when he's searching for info on the streets. Do you play every encounter ? Do yo describe everyone he's talking to, do you role play entire conversations ? No, you just roll Charisma+Etiquette and give some info depending on the number of hits. It's the same for the Technomancer looking for info on the Matrix, if you don't want to spend time doing this just have him roll Logic + Data Search (or Data Search + Browse if searching specifically on the Matrix) and decide what he finds out depending on his successes.

Cracking into a place : If it's not vital, thrilling or interesting, just have him roll Logic + Hacking. If it is, make the matrix run interesting : describe the nodes as you'll describe a building during a B&E, play the hackers and the ICEs as you'll play guards and drones. If you do it right, the players will listen to you as they listen to what happens to the rigger when he's on the highway, chased by the Lone Star and 3 gangs.
If you want the other player to interact, you can have them go with the technomancer, or even have them play the sprites.

If the other players do something in the same time, split your time between each one of them. This way, they'll have time to think about their next move while you're busy with another player. If the other players don't do anything, find them something to do : be it planning or just some roleplay (the discussion they had this morning before the meeting, while they were waiting for the technomancer (who was late) to come)
For example, the team is working on a way to break inside a factory. The technomancer is trying to break into the matrix system of the factory. You consider this matrix system to be too important to play this just by rolling a Logic+Hacking test, so you decide to play the entire scene. Let the other player discuss the plan while you deal with the technomancer.

Every kind of character has his own parts : the face does the negociation, the mage goes in the astral plane, the streetsam plays 2/3 of the combat scenes, the hackers goes in the matrix. The solutions are the same each time : resolve it quickly with some rolls, make it interesting so that the other players are interested and listen to what happens, split your time between each player.

For extended test, you can limit the number of rolls you allow for a test : maybe the information cannot be found, no matter how hard you search, maybe the technomancer isn't good enough to find it, maybe he just get frustrated and gives up after 5 hours, maybe he has to wait for people to answer on the BBS he asked... You're the GM, you don't have to blindly follow the rules.

Agreed. My sprites are of very little use when I'm looking down the barrel of your Pred IV. Yes, I know I could have a machine sprite hack your commlink to gain access to your smartlink and eject your clip, or mess with the targeting, but when it comes down to it, you pull hte trigger, I die.

@draconis:

A spirit can only kill you, which would be very obviously murder.
A sprite/agent/hacker can convince your wife that you cheated her, fire you, take away all your money, put you on a ciminal list, print in the local newspaper that you do it with goats, send in the bug hunters 10 times a day, deliver 100kg of apheshit to your flat, drive you over with a car, control your comlink and cyberware, whatch you through the cameras and sensors of your own house. ando so on . . .

With RAW the agents do not care about what programm they use. And a rating 6 agent is definately not stupid but a highly developed expert program (though still a programe and not sentient).

Give IC auto reality filter in their home system (upping the rating by one) and there you go.

Id very much like to hear your ideas for TMs.

For sure, rating 6 agents aren't basic stupid programs, but they still are programs and act the way they are programmed to (I don't think agent can learn (at least for now... ), or they'd be AI). So most security system will be upgraded several time a day to counteract new agents. So, if you don't update yourself (or get updates for) your agent before sending it to attack a node, he'll likely fail while a hacker will still be able to adapt himself to new situations.

For TMs :

First of all, TM lack a lot of description (I guess we'll have to wait Emergeance to get a good idea of what they really are), so GM and TM players have to agree on how they see TM. I know some GM who simply let TM out of their universe, but I think there's a lot that can be done if you work hard enough to make something out of the idea.

This whole roleplay aspect is important when dealing with TM, even on the rule aspect, because it will change the way the TM players will interact with the Matrix and it is what will really make them different from hackers.

For sure even with complex form and threading, at chargen a TM won't be as poweful as a maxed hacker (except that a hacker risks addiction if he abuse of his hot sim +2 dice pool due modifier). But that also prevents the hackers from being totally useless, so one should be cautious when trying to tweak rules.

My take on the whole issue is that you don't consider nor play a hacker the same way as a TM. A TM is at home in the Matrix, he will instinctively feel what hackers will take some time figuring out. A TM will always be aware of what's happening in the Matrix whereas a hacker will have, at least, to glance at some AR display. When hacking a node, a TM will understand things faster, be more aware of his surrondings and things like that. It's mostly roleplay, but that may affect some rolls or what the GM tells the player.
You don't consider the same way a specops infiltrating with a ruthenium polymer vest and a mage using an invisbility spell ? Then don't consider the same way a hacker and a TM.

While a chargen TM may not be as powerful as one could hope, they have access to very powerful sprites. Sprites are the exact Matrix equivalent of spirits : powerful, extremely dangerous when you don't have you own TM/Mage to go against them but also a good way to get the attention of your opponent. Don't forget that TM are rare, strange and well sought after by megacorps. In the Matrix, a TM won't be conspicuous, a sprite will. And if a corp security system report sighting a sprite somewhere, you can be sure that you'll have a lot of people looking for the TM behind this. So sprites are quite like assault choppers : you're quite sure they'll solve your problem but if you want to live long you won't use them all the time.

One thing to note, Blade, is that sprites arnt wearing glowing neon signs that say "I'm a sprite and not an agent." They have a resonance tag on them that shows that they are a sprite and to which TM they belong, but TMs are the only ones that can see and feel the resonance.
When I summon my sprite it could look like a purple dragon, but I could program my agent to look the same way.

Sure, but their behaviour and efficiency may tag them as "strange and extremely powerful agents needing further investigation". Especially if you use them against a corp node.

PS : Hey South Korea ! I'll spend 4 months there starting march 2007 (but in P'ohang not Kunsan).

Of course, there aren't rules for everything. There aren't rules to explain that shooting someone in the knee will prevent him from walking. Per RAW someone can survive a shot in the head at point-blank range with a heavy pistol. That's why there's a GM.

Your way to handle things is to houserule, the way I like to do it is to find some explanation that doesn't contradict the rules. It's not written that most nodes have protections against agents, it's not written that they don't, but it sure is written that an agent can exceed rating 4.

Ok, your point is balancing. But do you also want to balance technical tools and mage powers ? You can balance them, up to a level but then you'll have to admit that there are completely different things and can't be compared.

What I think we really miss is access to special complex forms for technomancers. Sure guns and combat spells do almost the same thing just like a technomancer's attack complex form and a hacker's attack program do the same thing, but a mage's shapechange power isn't something a mundane can do easily and that's what makes a mage so special.

For now, we don't have anything (except sprites) making TM different from hackers, so they may look like underpowered hackers. But roleplaying their affinity with the Matrix (and consquently giving some modifiers in some situations) can help considering them differently.

I get your point, but hacking is something very rules heavy. Especially when you do not want to take 1 hour for every hacking run but just "roll it out". (Which will be about 90% of all hacks in game, at least if your TM or hacker behaves like one)

90% of the time you want to just roll and see whether you could hack the commlink of this guard over there to get his dutiy times, just hack this camera over there to loop it, or just hack this shops website through the matrix to get the stored camera data of the in store camera. And there it comes down to simple number crunshing.

I think no GM with an active hacker/TM can afford to roleplay every single hack, instead of just (mabye) 10%.

Yeah there still a young archtype. I want to try one out I think there more of support players as of right now until people toy with them. Let the Hacker do al the dirty data work but when you need to sneek around or have extra eyes out the technomancer might be the one person who can help get the job done.

Ok, then try to live in the SR4 world without a comlink (you can buy things only in the barrens, you are not able to communicate in a world where everybody can communicate almost telepathically, you can not get the information everybody can get in seconds, you can not open your car, or house without a fallback device, you can not use public transport . . .). Have fun. There is a bare minimum of technology everybody has to have in a highly developed technological and wireless world with sensors and RFID everywhere.

The only thing that can protect you from a hacker is another hacker.

You can "insulate" yourself for hours, maybe days, but not your whole life. If you want to do this, you have to live in a cave.

And even a wired device is not unhackable by a technomancer. He could always hack a wireless commlink, then physically link it to the device.

These quotes show the standard in SR4 world. Somebody who does not conform to standards has to go great lengths to work around them.

It can be done, but it is neither easy, nor comfortable, nor are there only small drawbacks. Examples what you can not do are given in the quotes.

Most important point: When you are non-standard you attract attention. Runners should never attract too much attention.

The Technomancer is supposed to be a super hacker of some kind but the rules made them too hard to deal with as stated. I ended up rewriting all of the Matrix rules in order to fix them and several other issues I had. In the broadest strokes it looks the same and from a prose perpective it is similar but the logic of it is different.

I have two technomancers in my game now. One is an NPC that I retired when someone made a PC. They are powerful and balenced with the rest of the group when using my rules changes.

The problem is in the execution. I usually try and step back and figure out what they are trying to say, what they want it to look like or work out at as and then create a system that does that. Sometimes just changing one or two rules doesn't fix the problem - it patches it.

Maybe that's what Emergence and Unwired are going to fix, because you aren't alone.

I mean, Runner Havens already posited a new ability (as far as I can tell) that they can upload their memories to external media/Matrix memory.

TM's are competitive. Especially in a game where the PC's self-regulate themselves. A no-holds bared min-maxing competition might favor hackers (though I'm not convinced). But in a game where people just make runners (competent pro's, just not maxed everything) TM's are right in there.

Threading makes a huge difference. Hacking on the fly is much safer with 9 stealth than with 6. I'd have to check the rules but is 9 even the max or is threading not really a skill bonus?

IIRC, Threading does not increase the skill, just the CF, and the CFs have no caps on them, except the whole cannot thread above Res X 2. Even then, you have to have a sprite sustain it or else the TM takes a -2 dice hit to every test, which makes registered sprites important if you go that route.
Personally, I just use unregistered sprites compiled at rank 6 to perform all the tasks I need, which is equivalent of creating a super hacker on the spot. I only have certain CFs that my TM needs to operate basic stuff on the Matrix, like stealth, armor, ECCM, Command and Scan. Saves on BP and I can still thread what I need at the time if I dont want to or cant create a sprite.

I don't understand how anyone can say that "by the rules" agents can do just about anything a sprite can. Or worse, that agents can do anything a hacker can. Do you allow agents to make decisions? Do you allow drones to make decisions? This is were cold rules lawyery can't cut it. We know that agents and drones are not sentient. They can't handle anything that's unpredicted. Hell, a drone can't even protect itself when attacked unless commanded to, if it doesn't have a special autosoft for it. Sprites on the other hand are actually living beings. That's in the rules, right? But it's irrelivant to you because both roll the same amount of dice on tests? Does that mean that you never throw in any surprises when you GM? Hackers never have to make decisions on the fly? Because any time a hacker would have to make a desicion to be able to proceed, an agent would have hit a wall. There wouldn't even be a test.

i would compromise between Konsaki and mintcar's extremes. agents and drones are not sentient; therefore, they can't automatically make reasonable decisions, especially regarding self-preservation. however, that doesn't make agents and drones stupid; they've got very complex decision-making trees. they should be able to roll their rating in order to act effectively in situations where they have no specific instructions.

Come on, agents don't have instincts. They're even further from having instincts then they are from having abstract thought. (Because instincts are closely related to feelings. Can an agent feel scared or happy? If they can't know fear, they can't have instincts. And if they can feel scared, that would sort of make them alive, wouldn't it?)

They do have complex programing, however, so I would allow a rating roll for some unexpected situations. But only if the situation is generally in line with the agent's purpose. And even then, the action it takes will always be the least creative solution imaginable. The point is that agents will be at a disadvantage compaired to a sprite when left to themselves, no matter how high the rating.

there's no reason an agent or drone should be completely helpless in the face of unexpected challenges. their solutions might not be creative, but anything keeping the agent/drone from completing its assigned task can be handled with, at minumum, a fight or flight response, which is very simple to program. heck, the bad guys in many video games can handle that.

Judging from the descriptions, I choose to see them as sentient entities. I think their lack of the sapience power is due to them having a different type of stats then physical beings. They don't share powers with beasts, so it's not that surprising they don't have the creature power sapience. The fact that there's no equivilent of that power among the sprite powers is an oversight, I think. But that's just an opinion.