I'm going to be running a Shadowrun game for the first time in a matter of weeks, and I'm trying to get some planning done.

The first hickup is the team is lacking in hacking ability. By which I mean, nobody has any. It's a three man team consisting of two Street Samurai and a Mystic Adept. I've come up with a few scenarios that could work, and was hoping some of you fine gents could add to the list:

Protection: This could be protecting an individual, a parcel, or a facility. In the last case, the facility will have other personnel, including an NPC hacker.

Assassination: Hacking not necessary to geek somebody.

Anything else anybody can think of (without me having to give the a tag-along NPC Hacker) would be appreciated.

Or just do a conventional sort of mission impossible thing, where they beat the security camera by taking a photo of the hallway and taping it over the camera, sneak around, cut the power by smashing the transformers etc. You can beat door locks manually too.

Or are their no hardware skills to be seen either?

that or you could just give them three agents

I was under the impression that any place worth hitting would have better sensors than that. Though the smashing-transformers thing is noted.


None whatsoever. They have very little outside of Physical Active skills.


Also noted. Thanks!

What about an NPC hacker/decker that is the 4th member of the team that you ultimatly control but the other players can suggest what he/she should do?

That's kind of my last resort. I'd like to find as many ways to get around that as possible.

Thanks for the input, though!

Sensors I had in mind are things like laser trip wires, pressure sensors, IR cameras and motion detectors - which all have conventional beats, like mirrors traps to reroute the laser and googles so you can see the beam, not walking on the floor, putting a sheet of glass between you are the camera, and walking really slowly respectively.

Electrified fences require finding the power and cutting it, monowire requires great care or just resorting to a pole with some clay on the end, and a biometric scanner might require finding the guys hand and cutting it off.

You can also use social engineering attacks, say starting a fire or a security breach and then showing up dressed as firemen or a lonestar response team

Just thinking about things like that sequence in mission impossible 1 were they break into the CIA building by disguising themselves as firemen, setting off the alarm, poisoning the guys coffee, hiding in the building while the rest of the decoys leave and then crawling through the air vents, or entrapment were angelina jolie gets through the laser detectors.

they might need an NPC forger to buy credientials and stuff of, but that seems more reasonable

One of the street sam's could use skillwires for decent hacking. Just make sure they aren't going up against Megacorp HQs or anything too advanced for their skill.

They could have a contact who will hack for them, taking some of their money. He can always hack off location as well.

Movie anti-security tactics are so stupid. Security cams do not have their own light source. If you tape a picture over them, no light is getting inside, and the camera is just about as spoofed as if it were looking at a blank sheet of paper.

And for the record, Arsenal includes security measures which are 100% foolproof without the aid of a hacker, or at least SOME kind of electronic manipulation. Like you have thermal sensors which are set off by ANY change in the ambient temperature. And there are laser motion scanners which can detect a change in the environment within 1 milimeter. If the GM wants to, he can make a run impossible without hacker support.

But nothing says that shadowrunners have to do every job raiding corporate facilities. You could get sent on wetwork jobs to whack someone in broad daylight or slaughter someone's family in their lightly secured home. Or maybe a wealthy elf wants you to find and retrieve his daughter's rare and exotic pet Phase Kitty? Who knows?

Yeah, yeah, I know. Like the scene in entrapment where angelina works her way through the lasers is stupid because if it was me I'd just have a perfectly uniform 5 x 5 x 5 MM grid.

But the cinema of the thing calls for the 'stupid' solution

Incidently those methods are 100% foolproof even with a hacker, because you just cable everything security related up and then bury it in concrete and then cover it with the l33+ motion scanners who also watch each other. Completely impenetrable and unhackable without raising an alarm.

Then of course the players might have resort to the 'ram raid' approach to break and enter, which might not be a bad approach.

This all seems like it would work, though I don't think my particular group are...mentally gifted enough to think of such things, and me giving them these answers would just make the session boring.

Any ideas around this problem?



I really need to start watching more spy movies.



I will make this suggestion when they come over next. Thanks!



Well, I don't know about always, but I see what you mean.



Luckily for my group, I don't own Arsenal.



Exactly. Hence the thread.



This "ram raid" intrigues me.

Well, there are two approaches to getting a file on a computer server in a facility out of the facility and into the hands of the contact.

One is you cut a hole in perimeter fence, sneak past some guards, disable some security sensors, bypass the biometrics and maglock on a door, infiltrate through the facility from the floorplans you stole from the towns planning database etc. I imagine you know how that goes.

The other way is to steal a truck, burn out the RFID tags, load a get away car (that you also stole) in the back, crash it through the gates and into the facility, run in shooting all the way, relying on shock, awe and CS gas to keep the other guys heads down, grab the physical server, run back, throw everything in the car and disappear in a cloud of thermal smoke and burning rubber before the lone star response team shows up, make a break for the nearest lawless area, give the car to the nearest go go ganger (and by give, I mean leave unlocked with the engine running and the doors open) and disappear into the shadows. If you are particularly pink mohawk you can fill the rest of the semi trailer up with a mix of fertilizer and desiel and blow that up to cover your escape.

Approach B is higher risk, but also rather simpler for the people who prefer the uncomplicated boomfestia approach. And motion sensors are are pretty moot if you crash a truck into the building, then blow the door off its hinges. However, on the downside everyone is likely to be running around in an state of extreme pissed offness that you just drove a truck into their facility.

if the players try that and you don't mind so much, be generous with what heavy armour that can get, and what the local security force is(n't) like. If the players have assault rifes and military body armour, and the local security guards don't, it might actually work.

You can also mix it up a bit. Lone star response force might be a bit heavy duty for the players, but if its a street gangs still/chemical lab/whatever and they've been hired by a bigger player ie the triads/mafia/yakuza to disrupt the distribution network so they can move in, well, there you go. You can also work significant legwork into both approaches, because while one way to find out were things are is hacking, the other is to trick/seduce/bribe/drug someone who works there to tell you.

Is there no hacker because no one wants to play one or because the whole hacking mechanic is something you don't want to deal with?

First off, Angelina Jolie was not in Entrapment, it was Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Have you thought about giving the team an agent with a few hacking programs? That would give the runners some more control over the hacking without having to do it themselves. Its kind of a hybrid between an NPC and someone investing the karma for the skills. I mean, the agent could act very similar to an NPC, but a player would still be directing all the actions...something to think about...

Bugger. Its been a while. I stand corrected

Another option is to mix up the setting to somewhere more backwards. Say, sending them to china, to, say, recover ancient artificans that some warlord is digging/has dug up. Wireless coverage and deployment of technology is as patchy as you'd like it to be, so you can ease off in a realistic fashion on the matrix and technology.

Because nobody wants to be a hacker. I was the party hacker, but now I'm the GM. Nobody felt like filling that void, so for the sake of the players' enjoyment, I'm trying to work around this.

Personally, I love nothing more than a good hack. But my other team members feel otherwise.



I hadn't put much thought into that, but it raises a question for me: Exactly how autonomous (and as the game is abstract, don't take that "exactly" literally) is an Agent program? Can you give it directions as simple as "open that door"? Or do you have to lead it through the motions?

Smuggling through low-tech, high-threat country - such as most of the northern NAN. Sioux Wildcats with biodrones hunting the team across the feral badlands, while they try to hopscotch from Anglo reservations to bootlegger outposts...

I currently have no source of income, so I only have the main Shadowrun book (which I think I heard referred to as the BBB, though I know not what that stands for), so a good deal material, both fluff and crunch, I don't have. For instance...what's a biodrone?

If I understand correctly biodrones are bugs or animals that have been cybered to act as drones. They're harder to detect but... squishy.

If no one wants to fill in the role of hacker and you don't want to NPC I concur with the suggestion that the players have access to an NPC hacker that provides them with black box hacking solutions. I think agents basically follow the Pilot rating rules so an level 3 agent should be able to follow normal commands like "Back hack that camera and give us the location of the security rigger" or "Get this door open for us and close all other exits." What an agent probably can't do is "Creatively solve X problem so we don't get caught." Agents should be able to solve most "everyday" hacking problems but characters will have to recognize the limitation of being script kiddies. They throw an agent into a high end system, they're going to get a smoking commlink.

If you want to get really imaginative you could probably give them a TM sprite although I'm not very good with those rules so I don't know if they're necessarily better than agents. I'd imagine they're a more adaptable though as they're spirits of the Matrix and all.

If you want to avoid hacking all together a low tech campaign out in the boonies might be a good fix. If your not willing to spin a lot of house setting you could probably set it in some place like the Barrens where Matrix access is spotty or non existant. That's pretty limiting though and unless your players really wanted to play a "low tech" campagin I think you'd be better off giving them what I now dub:
"The Black Box of Medicore Hacking"

Take a look at the map on page 352 of SR4, it shows you the Native American Nations which make up most of North America. Give your team a GMC Bulldog loaded up with "hot tech" that has to be delivered from Vancouver to Saskatoon. The truck's got just enough off-road modification to get them across borders, and onto the back roads, but they'll be dodging warriors who rely more on ambush and hometurf than high-tech.

Use the Triad Posse as a good baseline for the better NAN forces - though not the best, like the Wildcats (Elite Cybered Shamans), who you'll have to build to match your team's level.

Biodrones - take your ordinary critter from page 291, add some cyberware - like chameleon dermal plating and wired reflexes, and maybe some shock fangs to make it interesting, then toss in a rigger who can control the biodrone like any other in his or her arsenal.

Question for everyone here... I know that this might sound lame, but what about having an agent residing in the commlink of one of the Street Sammys? Is that even possible. If so I know what I'm going to save my for.

Yes, you can. As long as it's on that node, it counts as one of your programs running, and may slow down your response at some point, but it's definitely doable.

Shadowrun: Outdoor Adventures! Perhaps a mage is going harvesting and needs some muscle to fend off paracritter attacks and/or claim-jumping. Hunting for bug spirits, vampires/ghouls, shedim, and other Things That Go Bump in the Night also can be done without hacking. Perhaps a gang needs the PCs to intercept or harass rival drug dealers... though that last would benefit from comlink hacking and/or EW sniffing. Most bodyguard or smuggling guard missions can be done without active hacking.

Perhaps a corp needs a briefcase taken from a rival corp's courier, while the courier is in transit; alternatively, a corp lost a courier and they want you to retrieve the briefcase. (This was starting adventure of the game I'm in. Mr. Johnson gave us info to pick up the signal from the briefcase's beacon transmitter, but it had been taken by a ghoul gang who went into storm drain tunnels... hmm, we hacked the server for the tunnel's utility sensors and maintenance bots, so your PCs will go in more "blind".)

Perhaps an NPC hacker is also the Johnson. Say he's got a chip full of paydata, and is planning to get paid in nice hardware so he wants a physical meet to trade his chip for the goods, and he wants the PCs to provide security for the meeting. If the PCs can't spot and stop the sniper, do they avenge him anyways?

Sounds like you could actually run in deadzones. Maybe a chernobyl type area where there's so much radiation and decay that it'll probably be a matrix deadzone most of the time, a lot of violence and stealth involved. And computer data will probably be kept on isolated underground servers for protection, so there might even be dungeon crawling!

And if you're worried about getting your team to go to a radiation filled area, have them all captured and dumped there, forced to work for a mysterious man, and left with no real way out. Also, radiation is bad, but your characters aren't going to be going for more than a year or two of game time anyway, so they don't have to worry about radiation deformities. Just pop some anti-rad and suck it up, you babies.

There are a million runs that don't require hacking ability. And endless games of "sneak into the compound and steel the X" get pretty dull. One of my (and my last groups') favourite runs was the one I titled "Oh no! There's a Force 7 Free Beast Spirit Loose in the Building." I wont go into the details of what it was about, but it required minimal hacking ability. (The hacker-samurai did actually play a strong role in the mission because he co-ordinated the movements of the team with AR and also hacked sensors in the building, but the entire game would have needed no adaptation to run without that).

Send them racing through the sewers to rescue a stolen child from ghouls (or bump it up to Scary Level with Wendigo); send them guarding trade goods in the NAN; run a siege game in which they have to defend a murder witness from a Yakuza storm at the targets suburban home; have them go under cover as Lone Star officers to get evidence on local police corruption (so going to do this one); have them hired to steal a priceless manuscript from a German troll nobleman; enter a sinister carnival to rescue an innocent; race against time to stop ruthless property developers from collapsing part of the ork underground so the land can be purchased for corp housing.

Lots and lots of ideas that need no hacking. Let us know what you decide to do, though. We like to know if our ideas are useful.

-Khadim.

Nice! I'm so going to do an "Excavation Run" on some old dead servers in an abandoned part of "Glow City."

Oh yes. Yes, this one is happening. Maybe not right out of the gate, as one of the players has expressed his desire for more social situations, and this sounds like an area that would have people with many...unique personalities that I'll have to prepare for. But it will happen. Thank you, Sir.



Well, that might take a bit of scaling to the team's abilities, since I'm fairly sure a Force 7 Spirit would down the group, but it is something to keep in mind.



I could see these working if I change the flavor a bit. Most of the PCs my friends play are often in the "what's in it for me?" mindset more than the "oh no, that poor child" mindset. I'm fairly sure they'd just let him die. But I can do something with this.

I'm sorry, when I saw that I was thinking more along the lines of you just hand-waving the rolls and such. My idea was supposed to get all the players involved in what the decker would be doing; a Group-PC if you would. I'm sorry for any confusion there.

I've been running a group who doesn't have a hacker at the moment (kind of same boat, I'm usually the hacker, and they don't want to touch it so much). So I've done a few runs where a hacker wasn't required, but could definatly make things go smoother. Coming up in the next run going to introduce a new contact (relation of someone they've helped out), who will be a hacker. She lives in New York, so anything on sight is out of the question, but she'll perform tasks for a minimal fee.

Result - Character don't have to use the matrix, they don't need to know the intricacies and rules, or even have the skills. But they will now have it open to THINK in the matrix. The dice rolls will mostly be hand waived unless they're wanting her to perform something complex. And since she's charging per task, they're not going to get a drone rigger/system spider. But she will perform small things. By not having a hacker at all it kind of turns off an entire aspect of shadowrun. I'd rather my runners not forget that it is there.

There are some runs that are really only fun without a hacker. For example:

"Find what happened to our isolated arctic research station. There's a two day window for drop off, then three days of storms, then you've got two more days for extraction before the winter moves in and you're trapped."

What's wrong with the research station? Who knows. Ancient zombie-inducing plauge dredged up from the ice. Free air or water spirit claiming that patch of the arctic as its own. Rogue Agent / baby AI controlling the facillity and its numerous drones (maybe even producing unheard of things with the nanoforge that keeps the base supplied if supplies are low.) Wendigo cult. Accidentally drilled into a hidden research base for a rival corp. New scary metacritter that lives under the ice and lays its eggs in sentient beings. Shedim infestation. Maybe something novel, like a Steralizer-oriented Toxic shaman with possession-based toxic spirits. Or, two or more of the above.

What I *do* know is that with a hacker, you'd be able to look over most of the facility in the security system, send drones to scout around, pull up detailed logs on what happened, etc. With just physical guys, you've got to creep around frozen corridors, risk going outside, have limited access to the base's logs, and other things that come much great personal risk and drama than just "sending the drone." Without a good hardware person, even maintaining heat and electricity could be a life-threatening challenge. Could be a lot of fun.

Which makes one wonder why they hired such an ill-suited team in the first place. Perhaps the employer wants the team to fail for some sinister reason? But really, in a logically consistent world there should be a reason for hiring the worst possible team for a job.

I like this idea. I should probably allow them to be out and about in the world before I send them somewhere like that, though, just so they can be well-equipped. Same goes for that radioactive fallout zone of a previous poster. It's something I'll definitely throw in, but I probably need to give a couple missions in less isolated areas first.



You are an evil, evil minded person. And I love it.

'Round here we just abbreviate that "GM".

Imagine the egg-possession critter, after it plants it's egg in a host, they get limited impulse control. One host suddenly "feels" he has to get the satcom up and running again, and so a Johnson is hired to send a team in, to fail. So the runners go in to this place and meet the guy. "Oh thank ghost you're here! There's something down there! It attacked us, I managed to get away with only a few cuts and bruises. There's a reactor in the basement, you've got to kill the thing! God, I feel so sick, I'm so hungry, Oh my stomach..."
And then when the runners least expect it the guy explodes into an evil baby tentacle monster.

Seeing as you're the GM, you can do whatever you want. Maybe the first Johnson your poor bast--players run into is a former researcher who wants to get back at his employers. He hands them a commlink, and tells them all they need to do get onto the premises, plug in the commlink for 10 seconds, then leave. As part of their payment, the Johnson will give them the commlink, which contains a copy of a very powerful prototype "Agent" that he stole on his way out the first time, and reprogrammed a little to act as a hackerbot.

...Note the quotes around "Agent." That little baby can be whatever you want it to be, from a freed Technomancer Sprite to one of those baby AIs in Emergence I've been hearing so much about lately. Sure, it'll be eager to help out, and all of that, for many a run even. But maybe it wants to experience life as a flesh-and-blood person, and, well, the cybered-out razorguy is half machine already, so why not let it/him/her take a ride-along once in awhile? Couldn't hurt, right? It'll even help out, enhance the sammie's 'ware a little, provide some extra bonuses. Then maybe it wants a little more.

And a little more.

And maybe, while you've been plugging it into other people's commlinks, building security systems, and all manner of things, it's been making copies.

And those copies have similar deals with sammies.

And it's a little miffed that you don't want to share your bodies.

After all, you're its first. You're special.

You were the beginning.

Oh, I did think of that, yes. There were plenty of reasons that came to mind. It could be benign -- try finding a hacker willing to a) brave the elements b) brave the lack of matrix connectivity and c) on short notice (there's a time crunch, after all.) Also, it could be . . . less benign. For instance, the last hacker could have gone insane from close contact with the AI / cabin fever / radiation interference from the auroras affecting his hot-sim and made him see things... and do things. Using the drones. Maybe the drones are still programed to follow his last orders too. Lastly, it could go straight into the downright malicious -- combine the evil egg-laying beastie with the hidden research center for a rival corp. The rival corp might need a cover to ensure the first corp's research center stays abandoned, so they hire the team expecting only one to make it out and spread the tale. They'll take precautions to make sure that happens, adding extra danger to the run. At least, if the beastie doesn't lay its eggs in the runners first.

At least, those are the first ideas off the top of my head.

Edit: Oh, almost forgot the most plausible. Corporate paranoia. With the research center computers in an unknown state of lockdown, they may have been afraid to send someone computer literate until they can send someone they trust (and who's death benefits they'd have to pay if they sent him too early.) The computers might house secrets worth more than the research center -- and (in the corp's eyes at least) certainly more than the lives of the runners.

The third is to come in with uniforms and a well thought out story (supported by forgeries) and back up the data center cleaning truck to the dock. A little invisibility and phantasm later you roll your cleaning gear back to the truck and roll away.

Wow, this board is on 24/7, isn't it? I had planned to reply to everybody individually, but me and my 2 hours of sleep are having trouble keeping up! Just know that I have read all of your posts, and I'll keep you posted as to what I use when, and how it goes.

We just finished up our first character creation session (we normally have two to make sure we have our backgrounds well thought out), and I thought I'd update you fine gents on what exactly I'm looking at to see if being more specific sparks anybody's creativity.

The first player (we'll call him Big T, should I need to reference him later), is going the route of a Crow tribe Troll warrior. His clan believes that the less spiritual nations are disrupting the balance between the physical and astral planes. A few free spirits have attacked his clan because of this "imbalance." He's been on this quest for a few years, losing a few body parts and getting a bit cybered to compensate, believing the sanctity of his body is nothing compared to his quest to restore the balance. So that's what we got for him so far.

The second player (Little T, Big T's little brother), who *said* he was playing a street samurai has changed his mind, and is now a face. He's an Adept with the majority of his powers going towards boosting his social skills. He's not exactly a walking target, but he probably is going to run from heavy combat. His back story (from the little he gave me) was that he spent a couple years impersonating a higher up in a corporation (he didn't specify which, probably one of the little ones) while his hacker contact is one of the head security advisors helped cover the lie. Apparently, the person he's impersonating found out something beyond his clearance, and had to be "removed," but he was highly respected, so they didn't want it to look like he was removed. (As a side note, the contact is higher up than the player, and while the contact knows what the guy knew to get geeked, the player does not. Nor do I, yet, but I'll think of something). Little T's character (I think) no longer works for the company, but I'm yet to find out why. This is something I'll get from him the next time we get together.

The third player had a schedule conflict (homework) and could not show, so I'll have to work out his stuff next time, maybe having another session beyond next for character creation.

Just as a quasi-update, pretty much EVERYBODY rerolled characters, but we still have no hacker. One of my player apparently got concerned and started this thread.