Our group was recently running the plot hook idea from Emergence where the group is supposed to escort Frederick Gunn (a budding new technomancer who is "going public") out of Los Angeles.

During the confrontation at Tedescu's, the team's own Technomancer found Horizon corp agent Marilyn Barr (also a Technomancer) when she was drugging Mr. Gunn. During the attempt at escape, since everyone was "showing" their AR due to the heavily developed AR environ at Tedescu's - the group's technomancer asked if he could attack Marilyn AR-to-AR. . .

My question is this: since neither Technomancer was meshed, do they use their virtual persona to 'establish' their own personal AR presence and thus become vulnerable to other Resonance beings who can see them when they are showing? This would seem that 2 technomancers could 'duke it out' in Augmented Reality, risking their real lives via virtual personas, almost like any hacker can hack in AR (though a standard hacker would not be vulnerable, obviously).

Existing RAW covers less IPs/Response/Init, probing attack rather than brute force hack, etc... so you can use programs, etc. So if a technomancer uses attack on another technomancer in AR... what do you fellas think?

Gives a whole new perspective to those "Matrix Shooter" AR games...

That's what I've always done.

The way I run it is that the technomancers have to be in (accessing) the same node in order to hit one another. Two technomancers in the same room don't necessarily have access to one another, because it is my reading of the rules (they're not explicit on this point) that a technomancer is not a node, just a persona. So if the technomancer isn't actually accessing a node, they're safe from Matrix-based attacks, much the same way a hacker's persona cannot be attacked if his commlink isn't connected to the Matrix (unless you hack his PAN, but that's a different thing).

So in your games, Technomancers can't act as their own PAN, Aaron?

Sort of, Dash. In my games, they still subscribe stuff, like a normal commlink would, to give the technomancer access and control over them; it seems to me that it's a persona that subscribes stuff (page 212 of your hymnal). If a PC technomancer in my game is using, say, smartlink goggles that a hacker wanted to muck around with, then whereas the attacker would normally go after our hero's PAN, he would have to try to hack the goggles directly, which would probably mean he would have to be closer.

This is what I use in my games. I'm not speaking for anyone or anything else.

Interesting. Do you allow TM's to get hacked?

I think I do it the same way Aaron and Dash both do...let's try to explain using everyone else's verbiage.

TMs count as a Node, and function as their own PAN. This effectively means that it is possible to hack the organic commlink, in the same way that you would hack a regular commlink.

Cybercombat though requires both users to be in the same node. If each TM is active in her own node, then they aren't in a communal node and would be unable to attack each other.

That said, if both log in to the virtual lobby of an office building to pull up active directories, then it'd be possible for them to engage in matrix combat and subject their own bodies to physical harm. Without "meshing" into the communal node, one TM would need to hack the other TMs brain or organic commlink before they could engage in cybercombat.

Make sense?

I tend to agree to BishopMcQ... And somehow it feels simply wrong that a technomancers brain can be "hacked". I don't know any rules concerning this, but it simply feels wrong to me...

Irian--Only the commlink parts of the brain can get hacked, a hacker can't pilfer memories or anything else. A divergent take on the matter could be to have the organic link be able to be hacked, but the system would effectively report back gibberish. (Imagine how well Windows would respond if instead of sending back lines of code, all it got was streams of color and visual data.) This means that TMs would effectively have unhackable commlinks except by other TMs, but they would still be susceptible to cybercombat etc.

What BishopMcQ said. I missed the part where the original poster said that one TM didn't jump into the other TM's node.

Thanks for all the responses folks, good food for thought.

A couple of points came up, one that reminded me that in the RAW - Technomancers have NO form of organic storage...

So, There is no "data space" to "host" a "node" so to speak.

Now, as for hacking a Technomancer's Brain, I seem to remember two of the Shadowrun Missions adventures involving a free Machine Sprite named "Taske" who supposedly hitchhiked into a gal who just 'awakened' as a Technomancer.

I didn't like that idea personally... didn't sit right because of the "no storage concept".

Aaron - I agree with the fact that Technomancers can link/subscribe devices, usually for mine the only thing to hack would be my actual physical comlink that I use for appearances (and storage).

Bishop - If 2 Technomancers were in "Public AR Mode" in a common area as your aforementioned AR-equipped Lobby, I guess that means you think they'd be able to engage in cybercombat? Or only if they meshed with the node in VR?

I have a lot of ideas on Technomancers, though I'll probably start a "Redo the TM thread" since this main topic is a bit limited in scope.

Thank everyone again for participating in the thread.

<<<As far as I can tell, a sprite tags along with a technomancer's persona. At least, that's where they're sitting when a technomancer compiles one. I reckon they don't really need storage, seeing as they appear to be some kind of Resonance construct.>>>

Resonance construct / being, I agree... Though, I have always ruled that the Technomancer has to have some medium that holds/embodies Resonance (i.e. a Matrix connection) to compile them from. Doesn't matter if it's a small backwater node somewhere, but he needs to feel 'something' that represents this deep connectivity with all things that IMHO the Resonance implies.

<<<As to the stuff with Taske, don't forget that the (probably) last adventure with Taske was completed months before Unwired was even started, and at least one of the authors involved was making guesses as to how free sprites worked.>>>

I liked the idea of Taske, just not the implementation. What it inspired within me was hope that when I am playing instead of running - that the GM would have some fun with my Sprites, even if they joke at my expense in front of the team or somesuch, rather than just treating them like soulless Agents.

i feel i should point out that technomancers not having any storage and therefore no node is rubbish to me.

computers need storage. period. you can't make a computer work without it. be it in the form of cards with holes punched in them or an optical chip, it must be there. if you decide that a TM has no living node because the node would need storage, then you should also think that the TM cannot do anything, because there is no storage to hold all the instructions for how to exploit a system, crash an icon, or whatever. heck, there's no storage there to tell the technomancer what the matrix looks like or anything like that. a persona requires storage, too... obviously TMs have those =P

clearly, whatever it is that technomancers do, they've found a way around this problem. if you just don't want technomancers to have a node, that's no problem... just be aware that lack of storage is not a good enough explanation for it on it's own.

That sounds about right to me, Jaid. The hymnal seems to describe complex forms not as programs, but as techniques that technomancers learn to use to intuitively manipulate the Matrix.

Although you're a bit off on the need for storage, I think. If I had, say, an Ethernet cable with a terminator connected to an Internet gateway, a magnet, and an inhuman amount of very precise control over my hand, I could make it appear to any other computer on the Internet that I was a computer, simply by generating the appropriate traffic. Conversely, if I had another magnet with low mass and delicate balance, I could detect information sent back to me along the same cable. Anybody else trying to access my setup, let's say to hack it, would have some serious issues.

Aaron said <<The hymnal seems to describe complex forms not as programs, but as techniques that technomancers learn to use to intuitively manipulate the Matrix.>>

I agree on that one as well. The Forms have been described as learned techniques even from Channels back in the Otaku days. I also relate the Complex Forms to encoded-n-burned ROM chips that the Technomancer learns to 'slot' - like the old school cyberdecks. It's a lot easier (and IMHO consistent with brain chemistry/activity) to use learning techniques to burn patterns in different parts of the mind. A golfer's swing, an attorney's integrative knowledge of precedent and procedure, etc... Once the CF is learned, it can be expanded (just like improving a skill irl). But it's still just like a fixed ROM, not a dynamic storage area that can flop files in and out, or where exterior processes can run.

To Jaid, I can say I agree only in that computers do need storage - and for a technomancer to DO something, he has to be involved with something that has storage (i.e. a device or node). The Technomancer, however, has none on his own - though I have ideas for that I'm going to put in my new big post on how they should flesh out the Technomancer in Unwired.

Jaid asks <<why should a TM be restricted to (for example) threading complex forms only when they are in a node? or compiling/registering sprites? >>

First, let's handle the sprites since that's the easy one. I would say that technomancers can only deal with sprites in a node for the same reason that a mage needs to be in an area that he can connect with astral space to handle spirits.

Follow this RAW path:

Sprites have been referred to as "Resonance Beings" (p237 mainbook).
Resonance realms are said to be "hidden within the Matrix" (p238 mainbook, emphasis added is mine)
Technomancers "create semi-autonomous entities out of the fabric of the Matrix" (p234 mainbook)
Technomancers "maintain a mental link with their sprites as long as they remain online." (p235 mainbook, emphasis added is mine) [though Technomancers can go 'offline', sprites IMHO cannot]

Technomancers don't create Sprites from within their own minds, any more than a mage could summon a spirit from within his own essence while in an absolute mana void. In this new 4th edition the Matrix is essentially the Technomancer's equivalent of a Astral Space to a Mage.

Threading, hmm. In the 3 short paragraphs that Threading is defined, nothing specific is mentioned. I would still (perhaps house-) rule that complex forms are techniques (as mentioned in a prior post) designed to deal with the machine world that Technomancers are so in touch with - and without a frame of reference it would be meaningless. Completely subjective to me, the feeling of the Threading concept is of the frantic straining and improvisation to use every resource at hand to juggle, multitask, and attack the same problem from multiple angles.

As far as Threading is concerned, I like what the wikipedia - Multithreadingsays about it: