God do I feel bad for taking the first shot at brain hacking in the other thread. At least the argument, for the most part, is still civil except for a few angry posts. So perhaps this is a good time to try and sum up the two (or maybe more) sides. What's really silly is that half these arguments don't really have anything to do with brain hacking. What we're really discussing is the role of the hacker and how GMs deal with hackers.

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Argument 1: Hackers need more to do. This really isn't the way we want to say it. What we really mean is that hackers need more to do simultaneously with the rest of the crew and without stepping aside with the GM and slowing the game down. When a hacker is doing his thing, trying to take over turrets, hack comm links/cyberware, and grabbing paydata, bullets are flying. As quick as hackers are (3+ IP in hot sim), it still takes too long to complete their assigned task in comparison to how quickly even the most violent firefight lasts. Plus, while they're in hot sim, they need the rest of the team to protect them. It's simply not fair to either side.

Counter Argument: Hackers can destroy your life. They can affect your credit, fuck with your money, screw up your cyberware, and even make petty pranks at your expense by taking out personal ads with your phone number asking for trannies who want to meet other trannies (the raunchier calls, the more likely the call back). They can hack cameras to hide your way. They can hack turrets and drones to fight along side you. They can find valuable paydata that will make the entire group money.

REALITY: Even with all that to do, the problem of keeping the hacker with the rest of the group and not having the GM step outside to deal with stuff remains. This is the fundamental flaw. Sure, hacking on the fly and utilizing IPs to sync the game can help a little, but the problem is that it's hard for a GM to keep track of everything at once. This is as much a flaw with GM preparation and GM knowledge as it is with game mechanics.

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Argument 2: Closed networks, sneaker nets, and air gaps are lame. It's not as though, given argument 1, hackers can succeed very quickly, so why make it even harder. Plus, with these issues, hackers essentially become the protected member of the team. What's the job? Get the paydata. That means breaking in, keeping the hacker alive, standing around while he hacks and saving his ass (or at least the data) on the way out. Plus, it's a cheap and easy solution to prevent the hacker from being able to do his thing.

Counter Argument: Closed networks, sneaker nets and air gaps create a team dynamic. A team is supposed to have people who do different things. If your team doesn't want to do paydata runs or doesn't want to deal with network dynamics, don't take those kinds of jobs. Don't even bother with a hacker. It's not that hard to keep to courier runs, security runs, B&E runs, and wetwork, among others. Hackers are a liability by nature, and if you don't like it, don't take them on.

REALITY: Closed networks, sneaker nets and air gaps are a reality. When the Internet was first being established in the 80s, the Bell worm that cause massive crashes utilized the infastructre to take the entire net down. What was the first reaction of networks? Pull off the Internet. Go back to being Intranets. Yes, it's costly and difficult to maintain, but if there's a threat, this is what people do. When you're used to working with the Matrix on, shutting it off is going to force you to adjust to everything on the fly and without the data you had with it on.

There is also nothing cheap nor easy about closed networks, sneaker nets and air gaps. The time and effort it takes to upgrade hardware, software, and maintain physical security is almost as costly, if not more, as paying extra for better matrix security. Limiting a piece of data to a single location makes likelihood of irretrievable data loss that much higher. Not to mention how much money those workers are being offered every day to slip that piece of data out of that closed network.

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Argument 3: Hackers just aren't hackers anymore. Most of the time, hackers can't truly be specialized. Unlike a mage, who may have no experience firing a gun, a hacker has to cut his skills down and round his character because he won't survive otherwise. When you actually do get a munchkin or min/max hacker, suddenly the rest of the team is supporting his ass.

Counter Argument: If you want to play a class or archetype in the traditional sense, Shadowrun simply may not be the game for you. Min/max and munchkin characters shouldn't be played. They're there to test game mechanics. Besides, a character isn't supposed to be his/her stats. That's why they're characters and not baseball cards. In Shadowrun, it's not hard to balance a character. You just have to choose what's more important: kicking ass at one thing or having a really playable character.

REALITY: As it's been pointed out, Shadowrun archetypes are there for a reason. Of course, classes aren't there for a reason as well. Truly, this is a case by case basis. If you want a min/maxed character, bully for you, but consider what your team wants. Shadowrun is group game and everyone's opinion matters. You may not want to share that key bit of your background, but checking in with the other players as to what sort of character they need can make a huge difference. Maybe your game is better off without a hacker or with an NPC hacker on the team to speed things up. That way, your team still gets the data, but no silly rolling. The GM just runs the show.

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Argument 4: The technology must be that advanced. Seeing how quickly technology is advancing right now, it's pretty easy to extrapolate that in 50 years, our understanding of the brain will be infinitely better. I don't think anyone can argue against that statement. If that's true, technology interfacing with brains is also a given. And if we're able to connect tech to brains, what's to stop people from doing it against your will?

Counter Argument: Even at the rate technology is advancing, the likelihood of direct brain transmissions is low. If it were possible, some corp would already have brainwashed everyone and we'd be living in a corporately run dystopia with a few privileged CEOs being the only ones left thinking for themselves.

REALITY: Both of those arguments are good ones, and both take things to an extreme. We're reaching a point in time where the growth of computing power is actually slowing down. It may not seem like it, but we've reached the Uncanny Valley for VR, and Moore's Law is reaching an unforeseen plateau. Plus, while our knowledge and computing power will continue to grow, there's no evidence that it'll make us able to directly and wirelessly connect to the brain.

Currently, cybereyes are in their infancy, with only a few pinpoints of light visible when they're on. Cyberears for the deaf are known as Cochlear Implants and have been in trials and use since the late 90s. The fact is that we already can replace parts of the body rather easily and connecting to the brain is around the corner. Whether in 63 years, we;ll be able to hack a brain wirelessly... well it's not a given either way.

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Argument 5: (and the root of this thread) The Nash Equilibrium. Welcome to the manga Deathnote transposed to an ethereal form. The Nash Equilibrium is, in essence, the art of second guessing and an quickly progressing arms race. If you do A, your opponent will match and surpass you with B, which will cause you to develop C and so on. Which brings us to Frank's conclusion:

The difference in "world" between what has been presented in Shadowrun fluff and what I'm talking about is that "jacking out" does not stop a hacker who has physical line of sight to you. You can't save your drones by "jacking them out", you can't save yourself by "jacking them out".

Jacking out to give yourself complete immunity to Matrix threats has always been problematic. If Closed Circuit Cameras are unhackable, then Hackers can't keep you off the cameras. And if they can't do that, what's the point? If simply running everything in tortoise mode makes you immune to the consequences of IC, it doesn't really matter what penalties it is associated with, because you'll do everything you are allowed to do... eventually.

Hence: no jacking out. All the stuff about BTL that affects your brain from outside your body - that's actually in the setting and has been for some time (BTL decks don't require datajacks, and the Psychotrope novel happened). Between that and no jacking out (which is really implied by the BTL deck anyway) the "brainhacking" is a logical requirement.

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If you can successfully extrapolate a world where the Nash Equilibrium is people running around doing exciting and interesting things in and out of combat situations with their Hacking while simultaneously allowing people to jack out their brains and their equipment - more power to you. But honestly, I can't. And I'm not interested in trying.

What I've seen so far is a bunch of people either making the argument that:

The world as presented has a lot to hack, so it doesn't matter if people can designate things as unhackable with little or no effort. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that most of these hackable objects are hackable in downtime and have no combat applications at all (resulting in a Hacker who wanders off and plays Smash Bros as soon as the leg-work phase is over), that doesn't address the end stage Equilibrium at all. Sure the D&D world has manticores in dungeons, but what do they eat?

People are bad at risk assessment and often Nash Equilibrium is not reached. I find any argument predicated on the assmption that Lofwyr is bad at threat assessment to be inherently unpalatable. Your mileage may vary.

-Frank

First things first: Wikipedia on Game Theory (link name changed)

This is the most simple form. Joe Average gets to be player A. The bad hacker gets to be player B. Now both get to choose strategys.
Player A has the option of not participating in "The Matrix" or investing different amounts of time, changes of behaviour and money into security. Depending on security concerns, the positive value of matrix use is subject to change. Plus it has to compensate security costs.
Player B does not really exist as a single entity. Player B is a model of society. There are different chances for virtual attacks and each has a different amount of damage, all of those AS PERCIEVED by Player A. Real chances are inconsequential for makeing a game decision.

If you want to model an easy game for starters, you are looking at someone that knows he is RIGHT NOW under attack. What does 15 minutes without the matrix cost? In that situation, turning the matrix off might be an option for most wageslaves. Security is already less likely to turn off tactical communications and sensor feeds, as "I shoot anything that moves" works against hackers, too. But denial of net access is certainly a "game win" for the hacker.

Next game, we don´t know about the attack. Stealth has worked so far. It is every other day-day. Player A partakes in society, he does have net access. His investments allow him to FEEL save regarding certain types of attack. Identity theft is possible (if done by Pros), but AR spamming and script kiddie attacks are effectivly blocked or at least noticed early enough to take active measures. In fact, the few hundred bucks for a fairly good comlink (giving quite an amount of status within the peer group) would have the same chances of keeping out attackers as mediore corp hosts. As Joe does not believe he will be attacked by pros, he will believe secure from any potential attack, assigning low percentages or low damage figures (depending on the kind of attack), making "matrix use" strategies very dominant over "no net access" strategies.

If you want to punish anyone without net access in the simple scenario, I propose going the other route and actually making the AR more useful. AR can give boni to almost any action. Hand out a "tactical orientation program" that benefits dodge tests. Hand out a "threat analysis" program that collects the same kind of information a "observe in detail" action might.

You're missing Three: Whats the cool thing to do in the matrix again? You have to make something awesome.

What?

(Intrestingly, brainhacking actually does that)

if you want to consider that as being separate from the first condition, go ahead and make it a third one. regardless, while brainhacking can be interesting, it's not necessary in order for hacking to be awesome. hacking, by itself, has always been awesome in concept. all that's lacking is the proper execution in terms of setting and game mechanics.

see my edited post, above, for more in-depth explanation of my point. as for bandwidth, I/O, space restrictions, hosts, UV, and decks, you'll notice they are all tied together by one common thread: the book says they've changed. nothing in the book says that trode nets have changed, except that you can now apply them in the form of nanopaste.

i'm not pulling anything out of my ass at all. it's a logical extension of the brainhacking technology as it's been presented. dragons and generals do not have even the tiniest fraction of the power that a lone hacker would have, given the type of brainhacking technology that's being discussed. and as far as bloodzilla goes, that's a loophole that may or may not be fixed. there's no way to close the destroy-all-life loophole that comes part and parcel with brainhacking as it's being discussed.

The model of computing he is proposing is so ubitious that if the 3rd world has guns they also have computers, because the gun is a computer. So is everything else they can actually get.

If they don't have guns or computers you could pretty much kill them with whatever, say wiz up a NEW version of ebola hybridised with the common cold and unleash it in africa. Or just shoot them.

Secondly, in the rules that franks layed down, isn't brainhacking actually quite complex?

Wait, what? Frank is arguing for brainhacking? I thought he was the one who brought in Bayes-Nash equilibria, which is what would kill any technology that permitted brainhacking deader than the dodo.

~J

And now for an question I'd like answered - how much should program rating cost? Are the values for gear in the basic book pretty much okay/

mfb, I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse or not. A commlink can sed information to any number of nodes simultaneously, but actually hacking into a specific network is an action. No matter how many networks (or brains) you can reach with your signal range, the target you choose to hack into on a round by round basis is still just the one target you choose to hack into that action.

Ok, lots of good things exchanged in here. Some not so good too (and I'm not judging the point of views). Keep calm and civilized, please. We don't want another interesting Matrix discussion to fall down into a clash of beliefs.

@Seven-7: I'm talking for myself, but maybe that's what other posters mean. I don't say that tech doesn't allow brain hacking. Of course DNI is some kind of brain hacking. But there are main 2 ways of 'brain hacking' to consider :
1) The one that's possible with the core rules and GM approval: Hijacking the victim's DNI to have it send dangerous feedback (you can't do it by hacking the commlink because the SimModule is filtering the data, and if it isn't modded it doesn't allow too dangerous feedbacks). This is most likely difficult, because the DNI's signal is restricted (when it's not just wired to the commlink) so you have to use some tricks to access the DNI.
2) The one that Frank's rules promote: a hacker can manipulate EM waves which can somehow directly affect the brain, even if there's no DNI.

So in the first case, we don't discuss the possibility of brain hacking (with GM approval, of course). We just refuse the possibility to do it without the DNI (trodes or datajack).
According to the 1st situation, you can't hack someone's brain if that person isn't using a DNI. And even if he is, it's complicated to do and not a usual case of hacking.

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About the other points, I also think that hackers have already plenty to do. Besides, the relatively low cost of hacking allows a hacking character to do things beside hacking, like shooting people in the face for example. So a hacker doesn't have to be useless in combat situations. And even if you really want the hacker to use his hacking skills in combat situations, there are ways to do it by interacting with tech rather than brains. Granted, the actual hacking system is a bit cumbersome for these.
Let's consider a simple street gunfight. The hacker wants to shut down the public lightning system to give an edge to his low-light vision equipped friends. Using the core rules, he'd have to exploit the node, probably with admin access, which might be long to do, or at least, take too many rolls. (Or maybe he can just spoof a turn off request, which'll be shorter). And that's just a very easy hacking. If the hacker wants to hack the commlink of someone to send fake data to his image link to disorient him, it'll be much more complicated.
Personally, I resolve these "simple hacking situations" with an extended logic+hacking test. The Interval is 1 IP and the threshold depends on the device's security and the hacking's complexity.
Sure, it'd be nice to have more adapted rules for this kind of hacking, and Frank's rules (using programs as spells) might be a solution. But it's not the scope of this discussion, I might discuss it further in Frank's original thread.

Finally, the jack-out has to stay there. Come on, it's a staple of Cyberpunk's books and movies. "Just one more second... there it is! *Jacks out before the big bad IC destroys everything". Just like you can leave astral space to avoid getting killed by projecting mages.

Your aim is not to zero the probability of loss, it's to maximize your benefits.

It turns out that the optimal situation is a situation which involves a probability of hacking. You then opt for a minimax strategy: you minimize the possible losses while maximizing your possible benefits.

For example (the win amount takes the cost into account):
* Without computer : win 0, lose 0
* With computer and without security : win 550, lose 550
With computers and low security : win 500, lose 450
With computers and middle security : win 400 lose 200
With computer and ultra high security : win 100 loose 50

Turns out the best thing to do is to use computers with only medium security. The no risk situation leads to a no gain situation.

Yes, maybe reward is a better term than benefits.

But you forgot to factor in the risk.
(1-P(BrainHacking))*Benefits(Matrix)-P(Brain Hacking)*Damage(Brain Hacking) = reward
The probability of brain hacking is the perceived probability.

Just like today: there's a risk of brain cancer (and brain cancer is a gigantic negative reward, for me at least) but people are still using mobile phones.

People think that living near high voltage power lines cause cancer too. The link between cancer and mobile phone usage is hardly proven.

However there is a clear link between mobile phone use while driving, and people persist in doing that which might be a better perspective.

On the flipside, the brainhacking thing is probably closer to say, viruses today.

The bad guys have them, like it or not you HAVE to act.

It seems like that if you make a character that rules cyberspace at the expense of the physical world, you are deciding up front that your character will be bad at one thing (shooting, fistfights) to be great at something else (hacking). As opposed to say a character who is pretty good at both. It still seems to me that brain hacking allows a character who rules cyberspace to rule the physical world as well. At that point, it seems like the game would become "Hackers and A Mage".

If hackers can hack unconnected brains and the only way to defend yourself is to hook up to the matrix, aren't people either completely vulnerable to hackers or protected by the stuff in the game that the hacker is designed to break?

Why not go the other way and say that a sammie can use his Pistols skill in the Matrix? Give him gloves and goggles and one of those old Nintendo Duck Hunt guns, and let him run around shooting IC.

Also, in regards to brainhacking, what is the Armor Rating of a tinfoil hat? If brainhacking were possible, wouldn't someone develop a helmet that blocks brainwaves? A cyberskull? Nanopaste WiFi blocking paint? And once thats done, aren't we right back where we started-- people choosing to be immune to hackers?

Only if the IC is actually running on your brain, the meat itself. If it's running on anything else, and you can hack a brain that has no hardware it wasn't born with, you can still do that directly—unless the "anything else" is also providing some kind of physical shielding, in which case you can just use that without the network connection.

~J