I'm sorry, did I miss the part of the FAQ where the 'default' roll for hacking without a program was defined?

The FAQ states:
"In most circumstances, you will be using Computer/Hacking + program rating. In cases where a program would apply, but isn't available, the character must default."

and then proceeds to list a bunch of examples of what you can do with skill + attribute. Now, I am a perfectly able reader, and know that the examples given below do not specifically reference defaulting without programs.

But hey, if they did, I wouldn't have needed that question mark in my post, now would I?

Skill + Attribute pools, however, are the only pools mentioned other than Program + Skill pools... so when I'm looking for a possible explanation of what a 'default' roll is for hacking, Skill + Attribute is kind of high on my list of suspects.

I don't dislike magic. I don't dislike elves that doesn't mean I'm ever going to play one when I'm not sitting in the GM chair but I don't hate either. I really really like the setting magic. I like Dragons, I like Immortal elves, I like the idea of the 4th 5th and 6th world. I like shedim spirits. I like shooting shape shifters watching them get up, terrifying my character and shooting them again and again and again. I like doing that to elves too but they don't get up and frankly there is no such thing as a scary keeb.

I hate... Hate, did you hear me I said HATE. the idea that SR will become more "magicy" (I hope I never see that word again.) I hate the idea because it's true. Shadowrun will become more magic oriented. But not because it needs distinct identity. Let me explain why magic orientation will over run the game until it has no cyberpunk identity at all.

Shadow run rules (I refer you to my sig about rules) are designed to arbitrate three universes. The Physical, the Virtual, and the metaphysical twinkness we dub the astral. In the case of the first two universes shadowrun rules arbitrate THE actual and real rules that people live with. I'm talking about gravity. I'm talking about electromagnetism. In the third case shadowrun rules arbitrate NOTHING. That's right, the astral plane and metaphysics don't exist. The shadow run rules attempt to arbitrate the infinite and wacky realm of the imagination unbounded by any common reference or limitation.

When you develop a game you are making rules. You're not making rules to establish the possible and the probable. You're making rules to establish the degree of IMPROBABILITY and the IMPOSSIBLE. Asking what am I capable of what can I do in this setting is the domain of the player.
The developer/writer ought to be asking "Why can't this be done. Why shouldn't this happen? Why not?" then the developer/writer uses rules to provide answers to those questions.

Here's an example: Have you ever heard of the proposal someone made for a piece of gear called 'Cyber Wings? They were little piezioelectric feathers that extrude out of the arms of a character. When the character flapped his arms real hard making a Agility + pilot exotic vehicle (3) test he could fly at his racial running speed.

No you haven't heard of cyber wings because no one who plays shadowrun is that f'ing stupid. Intuitively you know that no one shaped like a human who weighs 150 pounds cannot fly by flapping his arms regardless of the inclusion of cool words like piezioelectric. Further, you probably know that people too dumb to play shadowrun have allready tried failed and died in RL. Everyone knows that gravity works.

So, have you ever heard of levitation? Of course! You play shadowrun. Levitation is cool. Every fifth character you play can levitate. Gravity doesn't work. Why not? (psst. there is no answer)

The point is that development of cyberware and the matrix is naturally limited by common F'ing sense engendered in the writers by human experience and scientific knowledge. There is no such thing as common sense when the mind of a writer starts meandering around magic. That's why it's called Fantasy. That's why magic rules are a bunch of nonsensical crap. The fact is that there is a deeper core mechanic that applies to parts of the system like cyberware this core mechanic is called real life and there's no way it can intrude on magic development. Magic development will go on in unchecked and unlimited TWINKNESS because even when a writer with discretion and common sense asks the question; "why not?" there is no answer that doesn't have to be made of whole cloth.

The upshot is that cyber development is just harder than magic development. I think you're right. Augmentation may hold it off a while but the cyberpunk element of any fantasy setting is DOOMED eventually. That is unless people work really hard to develop this part of OUR game, and work even harder to understand that there have to be limitations in the development of magic.

Frank I was unkind to you before and for that I am sincerely sorry. But if you're comairing the liability of being a mage to the liability of having cyber ware this just doesn't wash.

In any give square kilometer of any given sprawl. What would you say the dencity of astral patrolling spirits and mages would be? Now compare that to the density of MAD and cyber scanners in the same area.
"glowing like a nuclear light bulb?" to who? Not the lonestar beat cop. Not the guard watching the scanner in the local bank. Not to my Sammie.

Would you say that there's no way that your mage can avoid looking like a nuclear light bulb short of having the magic physically cut out of him?

Does your mage need another character to subvert the astral perception of every (by which I mean those rare few) astral perceiving opponents he encounters daily?

How many items of your mage's STAPLE GEAR is absolutely illegal for which no permit--fake or otherwise--is available?

I'm not saying that a mage doesn't have to roleplay around astral perception. I'm saying specificly that astral perception and astral tracking are NOT NEARLY as big a liability or nor do they require as much tactical roleplay and resorces as a single "Forbiden" piece of cyber. At least your mage can turn off the spirits and spells when he goes to the airport.

I'm taking that personally because I feel I deserve it. I certainly don't deserve it because it's true of my game play as a player or a GM.

OK I'm trying to be calm here. I wasn't going to mention that. But it just fucking HACKS ME OFF THAT THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT IN CYBER TEC *EVER* IS A GOD DAMNED MAGICAL DEVELOPEMENT! W. T. F. ?

Edit]: OH christ. You were'nt talking about hatchetman's cybermancy were you? I'm so sorry Frank. I didn't see "augmentation" I thought you were refering to the hatchet man post in Cybertechnology.
Edit again]: also the red haze in my vision due to a mistaken impression that Frank was talking about cybermancy completely obscured Cheops' post directly below Frank's which said what I said above more politely in 500 fewer words. This is why I shouldn't be allowed to use a keyboard

You do know that even "Forbidden" items are only forbidden to private citizens, right? If you have a corp sec. fake SIN you're good to go. There's no gear, staple or otherwise, in the basic book that is absolutely illegal and for which no permits can b obtained.

There's just equipment that requires you to be registered as security/military personel before a licence can be obtained. Anybody with a SIN can legally purchase an AK-97, but only someone who is listed as Swiss Military (or whatever) can legally own a White Knight.

While we're at it, Combat Spells are not legal to even know unless you're security or military. So really, an average Mage character is probably unable to divest themselves of their contraband - it's in their brain. They can't even have it cut out - they just have 8F materials grafted to their very being.

I'm with you on the whole "Cybersamurai are capped right now and Mages aren't!" I hear you and I agree that's an unfortunate state of affairs. I'm even with you on the "OMG! CYBERLIMB CAPACITIES ARE TOTALLY FUXXORED!!11" because, well, they are. But both for starting and experienced characters the cyber assassin is pretty capable of asserting themselves.

Yeah, the guy with the big metal arm is not well served by the world of 2070. But a character with some subtle ware can sucessfully impersonate a civillian bystander when viewed through magical, matrix, and physical observation. It's a very important niche, and it isn't because they can overpower a spirit or outshoot a drone (although they can do that). Wired Reflexes are shit in SR4, but a character can get by with Synaptic Boosters and some Sense Ware just fine and be plenty capable in combat and extremely useful in other places.

The fact that there's more magic in the world of 2070 than there was in the world of 2050 means that Magic is no longer safe to use. Using magic is like using unsilenced firearms - sometimes it's appropriate, but sometimes it just brings the heat down.

Oh dear. I assume you're talking about cybermancy, right? Essence is an entirely magical problem. Cyberware installation is an entirely medical problem. Cybermancy requires medical advances (to keep the user alive) and magical advances (to keep the user alive). But really, what difference does it make? Player characters don't generally perform cybermantic operations on each other, so who cares what actually goes into making it?

Shadowrun is the game where man mets Magic and Machine. Cybermancy is filling some man with Magic and Machine. What's the problem?

-Frank

You use only logic.

is one of the funniest things, in context, I've ever read. Nice timing. =)

indirectly, by it limiting how high the pilot rating can be.

i could have sworn i posted something about this earlier but it does not help a drone to have high response if the pilot programming is a dumb as a doorstop. it will just do dumb stuff faster.

but a smarter pilot needs to take into account more data, and therefor need higher response to manage all that data within a useful amount of time.

a rigger do not have this problem. so at that point response becomes a issue of how soon after a command is given will it actually happen. the last think you need when going max speed down a crowded street, is a 100+ ms delay between command and action...

In either case the Pilot is still at the very least required to properly interpret the proper course of action to follow, as well as it's use in figguring out when a drone that is simply given commands (as opposed to directly controled) is able to properly follow that sequence of commands, and ontop of it, how well it's able to compensate when that chain of commands falls appart due to the unexpected.

Either way I do agree it's kinda odd what they did with piloting as it doesnt seem to play half the role it -should- anymore?

Welcome to the realm of houserules. Seriously. I had 23 pages of house rules for SR3, and I've got 8 at the moment for SR4. Yeah, magic can get uber fast if - IF - the GM doesn't keep a tight reign on magikers which is exactly why most of magical issues you brought up with the FAQ is already contradicted by my house rules. Cause I've got no problem with my rulings contradicting the RAW, as long as they are consistant. For instance, the reaction enhancer not compatible with wired flexes thing? Already contradicted. Nuff said.

See, I agree with you to an extent - cyber monkeys are pretty damn hard to upgrade after character creation, while magikers have nowhere to go but up. But there are ways to control that, especially if one reintroduces Magic loss rules from the older editions. Believe me, when those magikers are scared to even breath for fear of loosing a precious, precious magic point, things start to get more balanced. When their afraid to cast a single spell for fear their astral sig will get tagged by the opposition, when they're afraid to send a spirit on remote service for the same reason, then things get to looking better. IMO all that fear is a very good thing - paranoia is part of the essence of cyberpunk.

In my house rules - it involves holistic medicine

Not in my game.

Already done (house rules again)

Cyberlimbs do not have separate Body ratings, and come calibrated to the same Agility and Strength as the character in which they are implanted. Cybertorsos and cyberskulls do not have separate Agility ratings, and come calibrated to the same Body and Strength as the character in which they are implanted.

Agreed on the soul selling. How are you running cyberpsychosis btw? I was thinking of making it a negative quality.

Which is why ye olde house rules contradict that, Serbitar style.

Not in my game, but then again in my game TMs don't have an inherent signal rating unless they have a datajack either. Then again that could change with Emergence*. Thankfully, none of my players care about TMs, so in play changes won't be an issue.

* If TMs turn out to be some magic-based developement, I'm going to be so pissed.

Agreed 100%. It's been said that they are not, but I cannot see any way in which this isn't so. That is why they do not exist in my game.

Actually, I think this was more true of SR3 than SR4. I think the designers have done a very good job of reigning in the magic by making it rarer in setting material, making it a more sinister unknown and downplaying high-fantasy aspects. If you look at SR3 it was great dragons everywhere, magical cities appearing and all sorts. Read through Runner Havens and you've got a lot of corporate and criminal bickering and corruption. Of course magic is still there, but human nature seems to have made a come-back. I worry about this getting forsaken with Emergence which seems about to launch the metaplot for SR4, but right now, SR4 has less for you to worry about than previous editions with dragon presidents, cities taken over by giant bugs and immortal elves battling lovecraftian horrors.

-K.

A good option to turn karma into cash was hinted at in Street Magic: Sell your karma to a free spirit. Some of them are very resourceful.

Yes, but how many street sam would reallisticly have contact with a free spirit? It would make much more sense to run across a deal or some other mundain explanation.

Example: Sam is wandering back to wherever he lives and runs across a supply truck that is being attacked by some rioters or something. The one rioter that is running his way falls to the ground after twisting his ankle and the Sam looks down to see whatever he needed bounce to his feet.

I know this wouldn't make much sense for Bioware, but you could work around somehow and make it work. Thats the job of the GM anyways.

Example: Player saves the life of some girl who happens to be the daughter of a mafia head. The mob offers anything as reward, due to the situation the player saved her from, and agrees to get the bioware, though due to the expense of it, the player owes a slight favor. Bam, player gets the bioware and a storyline is opened about the mob's daughter.

But the development of cyberware and the matrix doesn't have to be naturally limited by common sense, experience or scientific knowledge or not. There should be no reason at all to limit cyberware and the matrix. Physics works the way the writers decide in their game. If they decide that gravity works by having subatomic particles do the macarena, then that is what it does, matter what RL tells us. SR science doesn't need to be limited by RL science, unless so stated in the rules. To take the "flap your wings and fly" example, there is no reason not to have wings that can allow you to fly. Free. Your. Mind.

maybe im just to used to the SR3 way, but i just do not have a problem with mechanical elegance taking a back seat on this subject.

Didn't see that til after I posted

IMO, the "real" portions of the game making some (highly vague and extremely stretched in cases) from of RL sense is one of the draws of SR. The farther you get from that, the less vermilisitude the setting maintains.

I hate to just keep posting "agreed" after Nightmare's posts, but, ah... me too. We do need some realism in our tech as it's something that we're familiar with. Example: I used to be a C programmer and I know quite a bit about computers. Everytime I see a movie that features "Hacking" my suspension of disbelief goes out of the window. Seen The Net with Sandra Bullock? Where a web-design company has infiltrated a little link into the bottom of all web-pages that you can click on to hack the company's system? Or Jurassic Park with the line that will be burned into my brain till the day I die: "It's a UNIX system! I know this!"

I have a friend who is a doctor and who has the same problem when Hollywood does injury or hospitals.

If a magician wants to levitate, that's one thing. If they want to screw up the more blatant laws of physics, then that's going to produce the same disengaging that happens whenever we see violations of things we know about.

Khadim's Law #4: The more dragons you have in your game, the harder you have to work to maintain realism everywhere else.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I see you are not as familiar with UNIX as you thing

as that is a real UNIX GUI.

Pal. I spent nearly two years developing software on a HP Unix 11 platform. The fact that they used the ugliest filesystem navigator in the history of computers ( Midnight Commander is prettier! ) did not fool me. The reason that the line caused such tremendous derision is the implication that the character can suddenly crack the system because "I know UNIX". I mean how does that work? "Hey - Sed and Awk are installed so getting admin privileges will be easy."

Now if the character said: "It's Windows 98" then her relief would be a bit more believable.

That's why our PCs pretended to be security contractors. Actually, we were security contractors, but we made a lot more money from our off-the-books clients than we did from our legitimate customers. But it sure made getting our steel lynxes, keycard copiers and anti-vehicular rockets a lot easier.

Right. When does that happen in SR4?

THe Fencing rate in SR4 is 30%. Orichalcum is worth 50,000 a unit, and the raw materials cost 44,000 to get your test. If you have a Dicepool of 24, you'll average getting the highet possible result - 5 units of Orichalcum. That retails for 250,000 , which means that the Alchemist's cut is about 75 grand. That's a take home profit of 31,000 a month.

But seriously, who the fuck has an Enchanting dicepool of 24? You need a dicepool of 18 to even break even on the startup costs. You need a dicepool of 21 to show real profit, where is that coming from?

I could see someone spending Edge every month to make their Orichalcum progess better, or I suppose you could play Logistics and Dragons and find buyers yourself and sell directly to the public in units of 1 or 2 throughout the months and pull ahead with just a dicepool of 15. But that's still crazy crazy high and you actually are adventuring at that point (even thouh your adventures are now "keep the Holloweeners from jacking the orichalcum shipment before you get paid.").

I'm aware that in SR3 you could have a Magic Attribute high enough that your TN for making Orichalcum was 2 and you just made 5 units of Orichalcum every single month with your starting character Enchanting skill - but in SR4 that requires you to get 8 hits, which is the average result for someone with an Enchanting of 7 and a Magic of 17 - I just don't see people hitting that "sweet spot" terribly quickly under the current rules.

-Frank

Too right. Not to mention using it to exploit the 20% off discount on your conjuring/ritual materials, plus another 10-20% off if you happen to be in the right group. 4 units of the cheapest refined or 2 of the cheapest radicals only cost 400 as opposed to the 500 for 1 force of conjuring. The only difference is how efficiently the alchemist can make the materials.

As far as orichalcum goes, it was much easier in SR3, they made it slightly harder in this edition. However, you are forgeting that you don't have to purchase all the ingredients. Starting with refined you cut that cost to 22,000 and 11,000 if you start with raw. If you have refined then you need a second circulation which means you are only making orichalcum every two months.

Assume Magic 5, Enchancting 4, Survival 4, Intuition 5 (make it your drain stat)and Power Focus 2 (starting mage). That's 11 dice, or 3 successes for enchancting and 3 successes for location (default for 1 on gathering). You locate all 4 raw in 10.66 hours and gather in 2 hours. Since they are all the same category you can work with them all as 1 test. Raw to refined takes 1.3 days. You do the circulation to radicalize them and succeed (29.3 days). Do another circulation for orichalcum. You're expecting to succeed and get 1 unit of orichalcum. Throw you Edge in before you roll. That adds .55 successes at Edge 1 for a total of 4 (rounded up since I rounded down before). You get 2 units of orichalcum which you sell at 30,000.

Let's say you're living modestly at Middle, renting a shop (have to book by lunar months--28 days), and that you can borrow funds from your credit card at 18%. You rent comes to 10,000+4500. By the way you have to be SINner for this to work but since it's legit it doesn't matter. 2 month's interest on that is 3% or 435. You still have the shop for 26.7 days but you'll need another 2 months plus 2.5 months living expenses. That comes to 3000+12500. You deduct that plus interest from the 30,000 for a total of 14065. You use that to pay off you card and are left with a balance of 435 (the interest--funny huh?).

For the next two months the interest is 3% times 435. 13.05 nuyen. You expect exactly the same results on all your rolls so you produce another 30,000. This time your profit is 14051.95 and your credit card balance is 0. This time you could make the jump to high without losing money (your profit would be 1551.95) and you are now living the high life.

Note the only costs I have not worked into this feasability analysis is the transportation to and from talismonering sites, the cost of using those sites, and the temporal cost of finding you own raw materials. I have also not included the cost of the assayer's kit. Also I didn't include the cost of glitches or critical glitches since if you were running instead of enchanting either one of these could cost you your life.

A starting mage is fully self sufficient at starting character stats at the high lifestyle with minimal twinking within half a year. As mfb pointed out if you just become a gold miner you can probably make even more money. Don't mess with accountants and their numbers....bwahahahahahahahaha!

Personally, I didn't think it was any worse than Gibson's own swipe at Shadowrun, which is what spawned the comment. And, honestly, it was funny. It wasn't spiteful at all, and I only saw it as a good-natured joke. If they had said "Because William Gibson is a jackass" I would agree with you.

Agreed.

At this point, it's a known issue. Part of what I love about SR is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. The fact that they can poke fun at themselves and Gibson in the FAQ is great.

But many people have asked why the decker went away, to the point of complaining that the Hacker in the BBB isn't really a hacker.

Hell, I've houseruled Decks back in for my game, assuming it ever actually starts up. So that part is valid too.

I think i'm about to die from happiness

Brilliant! Except...

4 Hits only gets you 1 unit of Orichalcum. You consume the materials with 3 hits, but you get Orichalcum equal to the net hits - the number of hits you get in excess of the threshold.

So your economic model is brilliant. Perfectly excuted and if you could squeeze an extra 3 dice out of the character's Enchanting test you'd be on your way to having a full time job.

Very much like how a Hacker with Computer 5 and Artisan 4 could proabbaly make a pretty good living as a graphic designer if there wasn't some pressing reason for him to be running the shadows instead.

-Frank

Which is what it comes down to. A character without a reason to be in the shadows fundementally lacks the verisimilitude right from the start that is suppositly being sought. It's the same thing as "I take 1 million resources in chargen and buy a permanent lifestyle. Whoot, I win!"

@Cheops

My mind boggles at a SR game in which the players decide that's a good idea. Why weren't you playing Parker Brother's Monopoly instead?

Could you please favour me with a recap in a sentence or two? I fear I don't have the stomach nor the time to sift through the 7+ pages of posts. Thanks.

Enough to buy a permanent Lifestyle. Preferably one on Boardwalk.

With a hotel.

That's a good point. I allways have to pay for fake SINs and the licences to go with my gear. I have a hard time understanding how that works, since I have to be a registered employee of an entity which is leagaly licened to have and use 12F gear in whatever jurisdiction I travel to, but it usually gets me a pass for normal everyday situations.

I'm aware though that this means that the GM (who was usually me) has the player by the shorthairs in that situation. The player takes the chance of getting his fake SIN flagged every time he walks down the street in a B or better neighborhood with a high dencity of MAD and cyber scanners.

I've never encountered a similar dencity of brain scanners that snoop for which spells a character knows. Maybe that's a problem with the setting. I should probably house rule it.

This is another setting issue. Magic is becomeing more common It's allready realatively accepted by the genral public. Mages don't even face the level of stigma that Orks do. I have a suspicion that in Emergence TM's will come along and pretty much remove the spotlight of paranoia from mages completely. People with cyberlimbs and dermal plating will still face social interaction mods. Fine it's the players choice and in my experience it makes for a compelling character. The funny thing about that is that there is no Cost and availability listing in my book for natural replacement limbs. (I'm not justifying borgs as runners by saying that they're compelling. We need borgs as a GM device and scenery.)

I allready appologized for that. It was a stupid thing for me to bring up, and I wouldn't have if I hadn't miss read your comment about Hatchetman. Thanks by the way for that little preview of Augmentation if that's what it was. I am aware that I am childishly emotional when it comes to cyberware and implant tec that stopped me from making my point about cybermancy. That is, If one can develop cybermancy why cant one develope an essence breakthrough or at least a better understanding of how essence limits cyberware instalation. If they're sticking to the modification of the nervous system for bioelectric powersources put a person's aura out of phase idea, how about a piece of gear, nanites, bioware, better damned batteries, that can be used to offset essence drain?

Initial posts: Reaction enhancers aren't compatible with wired reflexes. Whine, mutter, boo!

OneTrikPony: Designers hate cyberpunk. Magic is too uber. Lots of capital letters. Declares FAQ-induced constipation.

More posts: Agents fixed. Ooo - hacking stuff!

Synner: Promises sweets for everyone.

OneTrikPony: Suggestive comments towards Synner. Sphincter presumably working again.

Others: Debate on nature of drones and rigging.

Knasser: Insightful and witty post.

AR vs. VR topic re-appears like a Marvel villain that will not die in yet another thread.

Gibson sucks.

No he doesn't.

Yes he does.

No he really doesn't.

He might or might not suck but he's highly unlikely to give a shit we think so.

Microsoft SR game sucks.

Yes it does.

Lorechaser: Quantum.

Debate about mages making more money through alchemy.

====

There you go.

-K.