See title... ^_^

For those who already got it.. is unwired good?

Can you tell us some spoilers?

Well for one thing they revealed....2e41,xvZDfriasf[Z[vksdfk2=22z[dvZDkfti2rt,zx [gkasfksg <<<Data Corrupted Link disconnected........>>>

WMS

The much promised Electronic Warfare clarifications/additions/rules etc are not immediately obvious.

WMS

Got this morning, been reading it on and off all day. My impression so far is that it's a lot fluffier than the equivalents of previous editions (Virtual Realities, Matrix, etc); for something that's supposed to be a core rules supplement, a lot of the info seems to be buried in random paragraphs or sidebars, and there a lot of "here's an optional rule" sidebars, and a lot of the crunch seems kind of more broad than deep, if that makes sense. It's kind of too early to say, needs a deeper read through and maybe some playtesting, but I think the people who were hoping for a complete rules rewrite or elucidation will be disappointed. (And the people who want the rules to have some kind of real world veracity/logic are pretty much SOL.)

Boy, they sure are pushing the whole TMs = magicians angle, though.

That is semi-accurate. There is certainly a lot of fluff - more than Augmentation & Arsenal easily, and probably more than Street Magic (haven't gone over that one in a while). This is not necessarily a bad thing, as there is still an acceptable level of crunch. The problem comes from the fluff & crunch not being clearly separated. Fluff is sharing the same paragraphs as the crunch in many cases, making things unclear in some cases, & difficult to find in others.

First time reading the brain-washing section I got how it works, but am still unclear on the exact game mechanics. A second read-through may clear it up, but that shouldn't be necessary to begin with.

Personally I've never read something that I understood implicitly after a once over in a Shadowrun book.

But rules and fluff aside, I'm curious on how big the "new toys" style segments are, as they seem universally appealing to RAW adherents as those of us who use the various matrix alternative rulings and house rules.

So, is there a satisfying amount of new tricks and toys for us to sink our teeth into?

Technomancers got the most love, although I'm not sure the sum total of streams (traditions), paragons (totems), widgets, the new Echoes and some of the random rules tweaks will be enough to bring them up to parity with other characters (at least from chargen) or make TMs less "expensive" - they're neat, pretty well done, and I think at the very least there's potential for some pretty powerful if one-dimensional builds. There's less Hacker-specific stuff, but the overall rules expansions for stuff like Botnets, spoofing Lifestyle, etc, seem fairly well thought out, if again a little fluffy/broad. Lots of rules for random net related stuff that'll be useful for everyone (spoofing Lifestyles, how TMs do simrigs/simsense/skillwires, coordinated attacks/hacks, etc).

Definitely worth getting if you're pro-RAW, I'd say. And to be fair, I'm very pro-fluff, personally; it's just I think the kind of people who were looking for either more detailed rules, or greater clarity of existing rules, will be a bit disappointed. Like, specifically the sort of people who are like "zomg I need to know exactly what is happening at all times during a Matrix OP, and the explanation must be plausible given real world logic and technology!" - I think they'd be better served by just using Frank's rules or something, because while there are some clarifications and also a lot of new rules for doing new things, they're mostly in the style of the RAW.

Just downloaded. No time to read so I just flipped through, but my initial impression:

Art = Awesome.

Teal Deer: Welcome to Dumpshock.

Thank you!

And yeah, the art is amazing. Easily the best of 4E so far, IMO.

Basic artwork review, by chapter. 1 to 10 scale, 1 = crap, 10 = excelent

10 - Matrix Overview (should have had this guy do the entire book)
2 - The Matrix User
5 - The Idiot's Guide to the Matrix
5 - Matrix Topology
7 - System Security
3 - Hacker's Handbook
4 - Software
5 - Technomancers
7 - Sprites
7 - Matrix Phenomena
4 - Simsense and Skillware
5 - Matrix Gear

So your rating of the whole book on average was a 5.3 and if you take out the overview it would be a 4.9. This book you would say is just O.K. then?

I did not rate the book, but the artwork in it. And I would not average the ratings I gave because, as I understand it, the art was commissioned by chapter, and I do not believe in averaging the quality of seperate artist's works - it just doesn't make sense.

I have not yet read enough of the book to make a judgment on the fluff/crunch beyond my first post.

I think it's a similar level of fluff to Aug or SM. Arsenal definately has the most crunch, but that's hard to avoid when you're introducing that many new vehicles, drones, modifications, etc. Aug was pretty crunchy at the end of the book, too, with respect to the new healing/damaging rules, etc.

The book that Unwired most reminds me of, at the moment, is the SR4 core rulebook. Just like the core book, this one does intermix fluff and crunch, like others have said. Interestingly, the chapter it reminds me of the most is the Awakened world and the Wireless world where the authors had to start out introducing the setting and information about the concepts and could eventually find their way into the actual rules.

I know I personally based the structure of the Simsense chapter in Unwired after the structure I'd used for the Astral Space and the Metaplanes chapter of Street Magic. So you should see similarities there as far as how much fluff there is and how the ideas are presented with a mix of background and mechanics.

I'm more than willing to answer any questions about Programmable ASIST Biofeedback. It should actually be much simpler, mechanically, than its third edition incarnation. In 4E, the reprogramming test is a straight-up Extended Test with a table of Threshold modifiers. In 3E, this was the mechanic for reprogramming:



One of my main goals with PAB was to make it mechanically streamlined. So if it's unclear at all, definitely ask.

and thats not surprising at all, given that unwired expands on the wireless world chapter. basically, it has to build up a mental image of how stuff work, and how people use and interact with the matrix. as seen, this isnt easy. just look at the number of confusing interpretations about how AR behaves on this forum. all those are supposed to be (atleast in theory) clarified by this new book.

for some, thats into tech, it can be easy to grasp the concepts (but they often disagree at the crunch bits of the rules). but for someone thats not into it, trying to wrap ones head around it all can be impressive. its similar to taking someone from some 100 years back and presenting them with a live tv.

watch a couple of episodes of ghost in the shell: stand alone complex. see newspapers and other printed material based around barcodes rather then text. why is this? because so large a percentage of the population now have "implanted comlinks" (cyberbrain in the show) that its easy to do inline optical scanning and translation.

I'm only about 1/3 way through the book but so far, I like what I have read. A few of my thoughts, going chapter by chapter of what I've read so far.

• Matrix Overview
  Similar to chapters in Augmentation and Street Magic, it basically talks about the role of wireless Matrix in every day life and how it affects culture, crime, the economy etc...
• The Matrix User
  This contains suggestions on how to make hackers and technomancers. Before reading this chapter, it hadn't occurred to me how useful the adept power Eidetic Sense Memory could be in the Matrix. There are new Qualities, none of them are "must haves" for a matrix character. New lifestyle, "Full Immersion", is in this section. The "Tweaking the Rules" section is here as well.
  Sample Tweaks:
  -The common house rule of Skill + Logic capped by program rating
  -Limiting AR initiative passes to 1
  -Resonance loss, similar to Magic loss
  -changing the BP cost of Complex Forms to be just like magical spells
  -increasing the length of intervals on decryption tests
  -reintroduced Security Tally
• Idiot's Guide to the Matrix
  A fluffy chapter, written by a school teacher for children. Between this chapter and the next (Matrix Topology), I got a much better sense on how the matrix works.
• Matrix Topology
  This chapter starts with a section on nodes. Peripheral (a toaster, your socks, your AR glasses), Standard (commlinks and regular computers) and Nexi (servers). A Nexus has matrix stats similar to commlinks (response, system, firewall) - however they can log far more users and run far more programs before seeing response degradation. They clarify matrix layout, commcodes and access IDs, sculpting, PANs and subscriptions. Things like transferring files and surfing the web don't require you to subscribe to another node. Slaving is a dedicated connection between two nodes (say a gun and commlink) and works how I had originally imagined subscription lists worked.
• System Securty
  They go over everything from security, encryption, alerts. They give costs for wireless paint and wallpaper as well as Faraday cages. They explain how passkeys work. Yes, you can hack a system without it's passkey but if you stick around, your chances of being detected are a lot higher, unless you edit the Access Logs. There is a sidebar that states how in 2065, a mathematical breakthrough has made encryption much easier to break. There is sample IC, sample security hackers, sample systems. The last page of this chapter is an example of a security response to a hacker intrusion - it doesn't go pass by pass and is more of an overview but I found it helpful.
• Hacker Handbook and Software chapters
  I've read these chapters but am still processing the contents.

For others that have the book, I have a question regarding the solution to Agent Smith on page 110.



I'm not understanding the exact wording here. If I can spoof an agent's access ID while it's uploading, shouldn't I be able to upload multiple copies of an agent, each with it's own separate spoofed ID? Or is this saying that once an agent is uploaded, it is no longer considered spoofed?

OK, here's some Spoilers...

Hacker House and MagicNET are still around.

Slamm-0 still hasn't gotten a date with NetCat.

FastJack proves he's an old Perv.

Wouldn't that be Crash 3.0? The complete destruction of the Matrix because you can't do anything secure anymore? No chance to transfer money, because you can't trust it? No online shopping? etc.

Er ... it was supposed to go pass by pass. Lemme see ... no, it's still as it was originally written. I mean, yeah, it doesn't say "Combat Turn 1, IP 3:" or anything like that, but the intention was to make it evident where the phases were. If that didn't happen, sorry.

Incidentally, at one point there was supposed to be another example of the same scenario from the intruder's perspective in the Hacker's Handbook chapter. I'm not sure what happened to it, though.

well, there was a option to tweak the decryption times. apply that and be happy i guess

but yes, if thats not a copout, i dont know what is

i have a feeling that we will be seeing multiple threads on the subject for years to come...

sounds similar to what was done as the opening of VR2.0. looking forward to reading it, as the piece in vr2.0 was one of the best (outside of the pure shadowtalk opening between harlequin and a third party at christmas eve).

It was probably just me. That being said, it was a good example and very helpful.

I do have a few questions about it. When Jin succeeded in her Perception test to see the Kitsune get shut down, does she automatically see the Hacker as well? Since the hacker was running the Stealth program, how does that affect the threshold for Jin's Perception test? Would it be possible to see the Kitsune get shut down and not see the Hacker? When she turns on the Active Alert, does she specify the Hacker as the intruder? If she hadn't seen the Hacker, could she still trigger an Active Alert, without having seen a target? Also, could the Hacker, having admin privleges, have activated an Alert against Jin? Would the activated IC then attack Jin?

thanks and great work by the way!

It would be possible with a distributed web-of-trust-style system overseeing currency transactions. That would require an attacker to compromise multiple systems to interrupt a transaction.

In this case, no. In general, I believe, not necessarily. Each hit on the Matrix Perception Test gives one piece of information for which you're looking, and "is there an extra icon in this node" is a valid bit of information to seek, to me at least. Jin spots the hacker because he tries to shut down the Juhseung Saja; that was explicit at one point, but either I took it out or it was edited out (if it was me, sorry).


If Jin wanted information about the hacker, it would act as the opposition in an Opposed Test, per page 217 in your hymnal.


This was my intent in the example, to show that you don't need a specific target to activate an alert. That's why the node doesn't get a +4 bonus when opposing the attempt to unload the IC, the alert wasn't called specifically against the hacker's icon. This one was definitely my fault -- I should have made that more clear, sorry.


Muhuhuhahahahahahaha! Er ... I mean yes, that's a clever tactic. Although, nothing says "somebody's in my node" like having it initiate an alert against you. On the other hand, IC could be programmed with a whitelist of icons not to attack. I suppose it's possible for a node to be also given a whitelist, but then an attacker could simply add himself to that list ... and so on.


Thanks! I hope it's useful.

Unwired contains numerous advanced encryption options as well as guidelines for "dramatic encryption." The Andrews Algorhythm (aka the "Heinrich Maneuver") is meant to provide some context (for those that require it) for the rebalancing of the cryptography armsrace in favor of the decrypter. Note that there numerous other data protection methods available (from IC to access logs to other tricks) that complement encryption as a defense, and the introduction of the Heinrich Maneuver did not change any of that. And, no we have no intention of breaking out full-blown quantum encryption in SR quite yet.

Thanks! Your answers were very helpful. I do have one more question about this example.

The hacker was able deactivate the Kitsune without a roll. Why did he need to roll to try to unload the Juhseung Saja? Is it because the system is on alert, even though the alert wasn't directed against the hacker?

re: Encryption: while I didn't find the encryption rules in the BBB "t3h borken" per se, they did generally tend to make it a rather minor challenge, forcing a GM to handwave plot relevant instances more than even I think he should need to.
That said, the new advanced encryption rules, while not completely overhauling the system, look gorgeous!
I have no idea how they relate to any form of real en-/decryption technology, and I don't really care. They provide a set of very pretty options and frameworks for working encryption into a plot in a meaningful way and that is always a good thing!
/fanboi

I think I got this from Dumpshock but I have always just used increasing Intervals on my Encryption tests.

For example:

Roll #1 - 1 combat turn
Roll #2 - 1 minute
Roll #3 - 1 hour
Roll #4 - 1 day
Roll #5 - 1 month
Roll #6 - 1 year

It keeps low grade encryrption easy to break but can make high grade stuff take a long time.

Well, not to mention that it's not nearly as cool as people once thought it was.

That was my intent.


I like it. I wish I'd thought of it, although it probably wouldn't have made it into my work; there seems to be a deliberate aversion to exponents and logarithms in Shadowrun development, at least as I perceive it.

There now is quite a number of Programs of every kind out there in total - and to perform certain tests, you need them.

Unfortunately, they either degrade each (second for common use) month in the case of cracked/self written/free Programs (taking at least a week per program to patch them) - or lower the Data Search Threshold against you per Program in the case of legal Programs.

Technically, if strictly enforced, it makes it suicidal to run legit software and futile to use self written software, leaving hackers with only the option to regularily buy cracked software or cracked patches.


Oh, and of course, the Skillwire Expert System is basically useless - the DIMAP option does the same, in software.

You did a very good job. The similarity was obvious (in a good way). Also, props to whom ever decided that having a picture of a hacker getting analyzed on page 61 and that same hacker getting alerted to the analysis on page 67. That was a very cool moment.

I have gone over it again, and now only have one remaining question. To reprogram, you must make a Psychology + PAB Unit Rating extended test.

Is Psychology a knowledge skill? Specialization of Medicine? A new active skill? A knowledge skill makes the most sense to me, but from what I have read, it is unclear.

Psychology is a specialization of the skill Knowledge: Tom Cruise.

Sorry, couldn't help myself. Psychology should probably be a knowledge skill, while Psychiatry would be a specialization of Medicine.

Psychology would be a Knowledge skill, yah.

Don't forget that the "Registration" Program option means that the item of software doesn't degrade. I suspect most hackers will have Registered Common-Use programs and use patches on their illegal programs.

Cheers
CC

Does anything stop someone from just buying an R4 agent and suddenly being a pretty good hacker yet?

Actually, that would be the 'suicidal' part. Hackers can only safely work with non-registered software.

Nope, there is no such restriction in Unwired, though the Agent Competency sidebar addresses the advantages and limitations of agent software compared to hackers and technomancers.

A "pretty good hacker" has more than 8 dice and an edge of 0.

Sure, that is why a R4 agent has a DP of 10 because of the R6 programs That compares favorably with the characters in the main book if I remember correctly

Just curious, any description or coverage of security rigging in the book?

With a sweep of his...

Hat

Yes. There's a whole chapter on security systems and tricks for spiders.

And presumably, after chargen you can upgrade your comlink to response 6, and buy an Agent 6. (Autosofts are limited to 4, but after repeatedly looking at the BBB I can not see anywhere that Agents or Pilots are limited to 4 other than availability.)
At which point you up your 9 dice starting agent to 12? A 12 die pool is more than sufficient for a lot of tasks.

Joel

I finally realized where the names of the characters in the intro to one of the chapters came from ... Aaron: I saw what you did there

Also .... Poor Puck; he always gets himself in over his head. 'Course, he does always seem to come out of it again.........

How about 5 Agents all with 8 dice?


Speaking of, does Unwired give hackastacking/mr. Smithing/ZERG RUSHing it's much needed nerfing, so that we have some reason to say no other than "i'm the GM and I don't like that".

You want a spoiler? Do you? DO YOU REALLY?

Jack.

B.

Nimble.

not so much a nerfing as a set of rules to work it into the rules. from what i understand, each agent now have a accessid of its own, that cant be changed while its running. and multiple agents with the same accessid cant enter a node at the same time. the hacker can still sit down and craft a collection of agents with different accessids, but this will take time.