Cute.

Actually, you're not citing a "rule of game design" so much as a design preference. Kind of like a guide on where to put various elements of a web page.

I agree, though, that it's a Good Thing to have a unified system of doing stuff. But replacing your Attribute with your Program Rating is still following the system in SR4. Just like replacing an Attribute with a Pilot Rating. Or replacing a Skill Rating with an ActiveSoft Rating. Abstraction is, I believe, also in the Game Mechanics 101 syllabus.

Let me do a quick search-and-replace ...

Sorry Garrowolf, you reasoning doesn't work because you DO have attributes in the Matrix. They just change. I wouldn't mind that concept in the astral but I don't think that it is neccesary.

Your "Matrix Attributes" are your program Ratings. They're just very specific to each task.

Er ... you just described a skill. Either that, or martial arts is also an Attribute, along with skiing, archery, american football, basketball, getting a job, math, etc.

A TRS-80 makes it more challenging to hack? So you're saying that the machine is important?

Oh.

Not exactly. In the Matrix, you don't have time to analyze and calculate, especially at combat speeds. Which logical ports are vulnerable right now? What commands has the IC just sent, and which of my processes are susceptible to them? What part of my commlink's state were put there by me, and which are induced by an attack? All at three times per second. The programs keep track of all this at high speeds, which is why it's their ratings that are most important (not all-important necessarily, just most important). Being the one with the best-designed program is the one that wins, and that's handled in design-time, not run-time.

Sure, the intelligence helps, but it's not the hacker's intelligence that makes the run. Why couldn't Case just make a run on Tessier-Ashpool, if he didn't actually need the military-grade IC breaker program? Why did Hiro Protagonist code so long on the boat on his way across the Pacific if all he needed to do was jack in and hack?

For that matter, you strike me as a person with an above-average Logic, Garowolf. Why did you use a web browser and a forum interface to post your message, when you could have just built the data stream out of text and sent it to the TCP/IP stack? Or, for that matter, why bother with the TCP/IP stack when you (or even your hacker friend) could have just accessed your NIC directly and sent the whole thing as bits after encoding it all in your head? I can tell you why I didn't.

It's faster.

Scads faster. Even if I had a BCI (a modern scientific term for something that the cyberpunk genre named first as DNI), I'd still want the programs to do my bidding, because binary encoding is slow and annoying. I'd much rather make some high-level, abstract decisions and have my program(s) handle it for me, like software is designed to do. I'm fairly certain that when a fighter pilot, for example, fires a missile at a target, he's not using his Agility or his Logic to make that happen (in fact, the rules already cover this with Sensor + Gunnery, but nobody's railing against that).

At any rate, though, a game is about what you and your friends think is fun, so if you want to include pistachios in your game, go nuts. I would suggest that any house rule you introduce consider another item from the Game Mechanics 101 curriculum: the KISS principle.

But hey, it's your game.

You know, I thought exactly the same way when I first read through the rulebook. I was thinking, "they've got this perfectly good system for spells, why don't they just apply that to hacking?"

But as I read through them more, I realized that this was actually deliberate. Hacking and magic are two completely different things at the core, with two completely different numina, if you will. They should have a different feel, and so a different mechanic.

Sorry, I didn't see it before. Maybe I can help.

If you want to be smoother with the Matrix stuff, and you hate having to figure out which program to use for what, I don't think what's been stated before will be helpful. The RAW is already Program + Skill; I'm not sure how adding the Attribute in there makes it any more simple.

As far as the player side goes, I've found that letting the player deal with most of the details of his or her own commlink works fine.

For GMing, I find that it's really easy to pick a rating for the whole node (usually 2 or 3 for most systems, 4-5 for most corp sites and 6-7 for megacorps and military), and just set every program to that rating. Then I toss a die and use the table on page 223 of your hymnal to see what happens if the hacker is detected.

For example, let's say my hacker wants to bust into a parking ramp system so his team can park their van for free. It's in a mediocre part of town, not like downtown Seattle or anything, so I decide the place has a Rating 3 node, with Analyze 3. I toss the die and it comes up 2, which means Attack IC, so the IC and its Attack program have ratings of 3. Viola!

If a run calls for a more detailed system, I design it ahead of time, along with one or more security hackers, etc. But usually I just pick a rating and go.

I've also found it extremely helpful to have extra tools, such as the hacker cards or the cheat sheets on my Shadowrun Resources page. Check 'em out; they might just help.

My issue is that having all the hacking utilities doesn't make you an effective hacker. In SR it does, and since the utilities are so trivial to obtain you need to change that if you want a certain feel. Otherwise you have a world in which a 9 year old kiddiescripter gets 7 dice, while a professional shadowrunner gets 9 dice.

The threshold approach would work, or limit the amount of attribute dice used to the program level. I'd be tempted to use twice skill with the program as th threshold, but I have no idea how effectively that would work.

If only that were so.

Case in point. True story.

I teach Computer Science at a high school of 2000+ students. One of my students wants to be a hacker, and he has some sk33lz. I told him the best way to become a hacker is to learn how things work, because otherwise, you're a script kiddie and not worthy. So he studied up on many things, and discovered many nifty exploits for the network that the school uses. However, he never used them except in a controlled environment, and is conscientious about the line between White Hat and Black Hat hacking, so it's been cool.

However, today he showed me a simple little program he wrote, complete with user-friendly GUI and a number of nifty features, that just about anybody could use to apply the exploits that he's learned about. He has no intention of releasing this program, but if he were to pass it around to any student that was capable of navigating a Web forum, that student would be able to exploit the same security holes that he can.

That's just with the program and their own knowledge of how to use applications. Meathead McGee and Cutiepie Jailbait are just as capable of, say, shutting down other computers remotely or hijacking their screen as our aspiring hacker is.

Needless to say, I patted my young padawan on the head and told him that if I ever saw anything like deployment he would be doomed in many unimaginable ways. But the fact is, it's more about your software than your wetware.

In our game, the face is the hacker. And yeah, he pretty much sleazes whatever he wants.

Ok, for the sake of argument if we accept that what makes a hacker good is the logic/training (attributes) the hacker has, I would suggest that the application of all that comes when you're writing programs, not working right on the node. So you roll attribute+skill to write a program, but program+skill to use the program.

So Meathead McGee is piggybacking off of your student's attribute+skill roll to *code* the program, and must use the program rating+*his skill at using computer programs* to use it properly. If he can't find the "OK" button, the program could be the kewlest in teh world, but it would do nothing.

I think what I'm suggesting is that the skullsweat happens before the hack, and the hacker's activity during the hit is mostly about picking the right programs and keeping them running well. If the programs suck, you aren't going to be able to make up for that on the fly with Logic alone.

my $0.02

There was one in SOTA: 2064 IIRC, but I don't have a copy with me (I was looking through the selection at the local gaming store and read it there), but I think it was like every so many game months, the rating of your programs dropped by one to reflect the improving technology, forcing you to upgrade or get behind on SOTA.

I'll buy that.

Um ... wouldn't "how well the hacker can use it" better describe a skill than an attribute?

I mean, if we were talking about missiles than programs being the tool, and Agility rather than Logic, and a street samurai rather than a hacker, and then said "It's not about how good the missile's Sensor Rating is, but about how well the sam can use it," would that make sense? Would an increase in the sam's ability to get a lock on targets with a missile increase his ability to do flips or swing a sword?

By the same token, would an increase in a hacker's ability to use programs also increase her ability to repair a pistol or stabilize a bleeding teammate? More importantly, is it impossible to advance ability in one without also advancing the others? I put forth that if the answer to either question is "no," then Logic should not be used for using programs.

At some point in this thread (or a similar one), somebody was arguing that the hacking system should reflect themes and concepts already established in the cyberpunk genre. I believe that a system that removes ratings from programs would invalidate the "military grade" distinction in Neuromancer and the Sprawl Trilogy and many other cyberpunk works in which one party's software is better than another's, not to mention the entire concept of program versions and improvements.

I can totally get behind that sentiment. I can see bumping up either or both the cost and the availability of hacking programs; if it was me making the decision, I'd make the availability at least (Rating x 3).

That's great, if it works for you. This is Dumpshock, though, and therefore I am required to voice my dissent. =i)

I actually only have two objections to your system. First, it forces hackers to be more dedicated hackers, and makes hacker/sam, hacker/rigger, hacker/face, hacker/whatever combinations less viable. Second, it's an exception to the something + something mechanic; what, for example, is the skill rating of IC, or a sprite? Sure, it's easy to say "its Rating, duh," but then you've added yet another exception to the rules.

It just occurred to me that I could have gotten more mystical forum points if I'd replied to all of these posts separately. Ah, well.

Seems a bit silly that just because someone discovered a new way to stop bullets means that your armor suddently weakens, and you have to buy the better products to get the same thing. Maybe if something in an opposing field advanced (say advancement in weaponry) the ratings drop. Though the alternative, where SOTA just allowed newer things with higher ratings having the equipment would be all that matters after years of play where the new SOTA medkit can completly heal all wounds while being used by Gumby, the 1 logic troll.

Dissent is what makes the forum go round:)

Yes, that is a very valid point, that by placing more importance on Logic for hacking, that there is a push towards a more dedicated hacker. Granted, while we only have one character in my group that hacks, he is also a good shooter...and even looking at the other characters, none of them have horrid Logics, they just choose not to hack. But, point well taken.

Now I would add that with training rules (I'm assuming that not everyone really uses those), Logic is important, as it allows you to train skills better (at least giving you more dice for the test). So, most of my players have already put a little more importance in Logic anyways, because it helps them train. So, maybe that is why none of my players have really voiced concern in my change...

I do want to rebut your "something + something" mechanic, as it doesn't change that. You are now doing an Attribute + Skill, basically like every other test is done in SR4, instead of doing Skill + Program. If you are referring to the cap, that's really no different than Magic and Force. Force x 2 is the cap for Magic, so the same concept works for Matrix, except that Rating x 2 is a bit high, IMO. I had considered doing Rating x 2 and adding an "overcasting" mechanic when in the Matrix, but we just decided to instead cap matrix tests at Rating + 1.

Now, in this campaign, we also use the suggested optional rules focusing more on skills, so we have a skill cap in place or Skill + 1. So, with those two combined in our game, it all really does flow consistently. Again, I think because we are already using skill caps, capping matrix by rating doesn't seem like an exception...

And yeah, skill ratings for IC or sprites, just its Rating. I don't think that is an exception though, as that rating is used already...

And really, the more and more I run this game, the more nebulous the NPC stats and whatnot become. Most of the time, I just make notes on the pools that I will be using against the players and go from there...