I don't miss the decks *that* much ... far cooler to whip out a laptop and go to work than to see someone's thumbs a-flappin' on a CelPhone, but, I can deal since most of them go "Dump and Slump" anyway.

No, what I miss is th term Decker. It was so ... neutral. Just someone who uses a Deck a lot. Street Deckers, Corporate Deckers, Security Deckers, Elven Deckers ... it was a really neutral term that was also completely expressive.

But hacker?

Hacker has too much baggage.

Hard to say "Security Hacker" and not have it mean exactly the opposite of what you meant. "Corporate Hacker"'s almost as bad.

*sniffle*

So long, Decker. We knew ye well.

For the record those are called "spiders" now. Likely for that reason.

But yeah I miss the term too. I kinda wished they'd come up with something more origional and unique.

Call them a 'linker or something. (Trix runner ?)

There still should be some legacy systems that require old time Deckers. Throw some of those in to add some spice. Have some NPC deckers.

tweak

I just refuse to use t he term "Hacker". When I say "Decker" everyone knows what I'm talking about, so why bother?

I just use the terminology change In Game. Like having my character(s), or especially NPCs slip and use the old term ... either without realizing or quickly covering it up. It can add a bit to social situations sometimes.

I think it's a little silly that such a term would go out of vogue so quickly, myself.

I mean only a year or two ago people were still using Decker almost exclusively. It's become a household word, having long ago overtaken the term Hacker in popularity... and has done so for around 30-40 years prior to that.

Yet just because the designers decided they wanted to go another route mechanically, the term suddenly shrivels up and dies? And worse, is replaced by another term that's even older, more archaic, and loaded with negative connotation right from the get-go?

Doesn't make much sense to me. I can see cliques of elitists mocking people who still use the term Decker, but for most of the people around the world I don't see it changing soon if at all. Let alone after only a handful of months!

The Last game I was in was the only SR4 I've played so far and 2 of us at the table were bringing in new 4th ed versions of our oldschool characters. In the game things like the term decker and having a datajack (since you don't really need one anymore for day-to-day life) came to symbolize the old school. Even the guy that was playing a brand new character got into it by making his character a little more new school and sometimes he would be completely unable to relate to the rest of us when we'd start talking about the way thing's used to be done.

Hey, my group will have a decker, again. One player got himself a replica of a Fairlight Excalibur-case. He´s going to install a comlink array inside.

I'm with Cain on this one, as far as I'm concerned the term Hacker simply doesn't exist.

...Ryu you beat me to the punch. It is a cool idea though.

The pre-SR4 version of my character Violet built the equivalent of a souped up Kraftwerk in the case of what was basically the 2062 version of a Kid's Leapfrog computer.

I feel your pain. My issue is my first character was an Elven Decker, and over a few years he became my signature character and was pretty damn powerful. So much so that he had the time (since he was effectively retired with some nuyen and karma to spare) that he designed, coded, and built his own in-head deck with all the trimmings. Now after the crash, he's carrying around the most powerful in-head calculator the SR universe has ever seen.

I pretty much ruled him MIA during the crash 2.0, he wouldn't have lasted long trying to adapt to the new Matrix with his preCrash ego and rep.

The terminology change from deck to comlink was rather unnecessary. A comlink is little more than a miniaturized, simplified, wireless-capable cyberdeck.