1) Using legal programs except for the perfectly legal decoy-commlink is suicide for the hacker because of the datatrail
2) A hacker must use cracked programs for the illegal commlink and/or illegal options.
3) Cracked programs degenerate
4) Degenerating programs are: hacking/malware programs, common programs with a rating (they are listed in Unwired on page109), autosofts, skillsofts (active, knowledge, lingua), operating systems, agents.
5) Software like tutorsoft, mapsoft or datasoft sensorsoft does not seem to degenerate
6) A hacker can use a crack network to get cracked patches and updates.
7) Patching its own system is not possible due to the time involved. Or you don´t have a hacker for the team because is will be patching 24/7

The archetype hacker in the BBB has the following programs and OS system:
(yes, I know that he has no exploit program and cannot hack anything, and yes, I know that an Unwired hacker would have more and higher programs => higher costs, even more rolls).

hacking programs - cracked patch availability roll - nuyen cost for cracked patch
Armor 4 - Avail 12 - 100Â¥
Attack 5 - 15 - 100Â¥
Biofeedback Filters 4 - Avail 12 - 100Â¥
Black Hammer 4 - Avail 12 - 100Â¥
Data Bomb 3 - Avail 9 - 100Â¥
Decrypt 3 - Avail 9 - 100Â¥
Spoof 4 - Avail 12 - 100Â¥
Stealth 5 - Avail 15 - 100Â¥
Track 4 - Avail 12 - 100Â¥

common programs:
Analyze 5 - Avail 5 - 10Â¥
Browse 5 - Avail 5 - 10Â¥
Command 5 - Avail 5 - 10Â¥
Edit 5 - Avail 5 - 10Â¥
Encrypt 5 - Avail 5 - 10Â¥
Scan 5 - Avail 5 - 10Â¥

OS programs:
System 5 - Avail 5 - 50Â¥
Firewall 5 - Avail 5 - 50Â¥

Total: at max you have to make 17 rolls (I assume that you can buy some successes for the common programs) and pay 1060Â¥ every two month (or 900Â¥ and 9 rolls every other month). And that is for a starting, non optimized hacker. An advanced hacker with a maxed commlink rating 6, skillsofts, agents, some mini/microdrones and one upgraded vehicles can easily double the neccessary rolls and costs each month.

---------------------

Is everything correct and truly intended by the authors?

If yes: why this complicated, time consuming system of bookkeeping? What is the game sense or purpose? Why not something simple yet elegant like "1% of your softwarecost each month"? Why do you have to roll a dozen time each month regardless of the possibility to trade dices for hits?

SYL

buy hits, don't roll. Figure time based on that. X hours per month.
Don't maintain all your own software. Have warez contacts. Trade them the patches you prgram for the patches they program.
You either code patches OR you pay nuyen to buy patches, not both. Simply add the nuyen cost of your regular patches to your lifestyle costs.

This isn't tremendous bookkeeping. A little up front math to figure x hours and y nuyen, and then you note it on your monthly lifestyle cost and get on with it.

However, the archetype Hacker has Registered programs so he doesn't worry about it. If he had pirated copies then he would have only paid 10% of cost for everything and would have more BPs for other things.

Also note that all that Registration does is add -1 to your Tracking threshold. This can easily be avoided by maintain a Proxy List through Mass Probes. This is VERY easy for a Hacker to set up and adds +4 to the Tracking threshold at a cost of -1 Response. So in exchange for using all programs at rating 4 instead of 5 you can use 4 registered programs without changing your Tracking threshold.

Note that you could also use a Geostationary Satellite Uplink at the cost of -Half Resonance and be 100% untrackable.

You still have to figure out every time you get a new program its cost and patch roll ... for a price ranging between 10¥ and some hundred ¥. I don´t see the sense for that kind of price range.

SOTA costs may be ok but needing to figure our 20+ rolls/prices for dozens of different programs and softs a normal hacker (or even a normal character or group) will accumulate during game play is simply cumbersome and unneccessary. Why not a simple "1% patch cost each month" or something like that?

SYL

Not according to Synner if I remember him correctly. And to be honest: a hacker using programs who try to validate his SIN every time he goes online or using the program? It sounds like a street samurai using his real SIN during a hit.

SYL

Incorrect. He only validates his SIN once, when he purchases the software, and only registers it at the Manufacturer's website. The penalty is that the registration makes it easier to Track the hacker who used Registered products. It is more aking to a Sam leaving a Death Card at every firefight he engages in. It is more along the lines of something recognizable that makes it easier for the Po-Po to find you after the crime. But that is defeated by a Hack + Spoof (2) test after the hack (unless you are being actively traced during the run).

Edit: Or one of the two methods I outlined above.

If you are saying that the archetype hacker uses registered programs, his datatrail treshold decreases by 17?

SYL

If he uses all 17 programs during his hack of a node yes. If he uses Exploit, Stealth, Edit, Browse for a simple datasteal that'd be -4. Or one Proxy Server and -1 Response. Note that those 4 programs are the only ones needed to create a backdoor, which you can then use to log on legally, do your stuff, and then leave again (after of corse erasing your access log entries). Slim chance of being tracked.

Surprise! They actually made different tactics for Hackers now and actually require some planning and forethought. OMFG!

BTW I think a Starting 400 BP TM can now have a 50/50 chance of hacking ZOG with nothing more than a Medkit and 6 Resonance + Stats. Still need to crunch the numbers and read the TM section.

You save 90% of the cost of software by buying cracked copies. You pay (10% divided by rating) of the original rating as upkeep. That is the same amount after 9*rating months. Cracking is economically more feasible if the product is expensive - check. That is cheaper than RAW for almost any campaign, and the remaining campaigns won´t care - check. The timeframes of individual patches don´t matter. Use one agent with browse, even that should sit idle for most of the month.

I as a GM will permit hacker chars to write and maintain one program of choice, and exchange that for access to all required patches. Or give them little side-jobs in their off-time fluff that pay the cost.

Any program that is not intended for use while hacking can be aquired legally - after all, any access log is under your control. And hackers are supposed to use illegal software.

Of course, if a GM really insists on that - for all that ugly accounting I have to do as a player, I want that Track modifier against every legal matrix user, be it Joe Target or Joe Security Hacker.

Granted. Everytime you can perceive your marks icon, and in most cases without even a chance of being detected. That is how it is.

Here's something else you can do while GMing.

While the hacker is doing the run he comes across the patch log for the system. He can easily get his patches from there, since the transfer takes 0 time. So this will take him maybe 1 second to find the patches and copy them. No different then street sammy stopping to pick up ammo clips.

BTW how often do you have your street sammys change out their guns so they are not traced? Otherwise Lone Star will eventually put together enough data from various runs, be able to track the weapon to the manufacturer -> dealer -> street dealer -> YOU. If you don't bother with that follow up, as well as every possible hair and skin sample on site, why are you making a big deal about them tracking the hacker? If he combats the spider/agent/IC and crashes it, its not likely to be tracking him and he'll have time to erase his logs.

These rules are fine, and easy to deal with... Yes bookkeeping if thats what you want, or you play the non-script-kiddie hacker who has some logic, and work around it.

Because software degeneration it is an automatic rule mechanism, happening every month regardless what the hacker is doing or not doing.

SYL

If their using Registered programs, you shouldn't worry any more about tracking them then you do anyone else on the team. After the job is done if they did just as good (usually better) as the rest of the team at covering their trail there is no problem.

As to patching... 10% of the price difference between ratings... So thats 10 per common program every other month.. and 50 per hacking program. (Assuming your running 5's and 6's)
A rating 6 program normally costs 6,000 . You buy it for 600 and pay 100 upkeep per month on it... So after 54 months (4.5 years!) you have spent what it costs for the program to start with...
Interesting note, you pay full price at creation whichever way you do it... But if you get it unregistered GM could call it as you have 4.5 YEARS worth of credit paying for the patches from warez groups. I think thats longer than the average shadowrunners lifespan.

(EDIT: 1000 per rating not 500... either way the math is the same, it'll still be 4.5 years till you actually spend the equivilant of a registered program)

Or

Software + Logic + (Software Programming Suite) about 15 dice probably.
every hit is a program patched (I don't think the 2 x Rating applies to hacking software, since its pretty much already there by having to be done monthly instead of bi-monthly)

I think the interval of 1 week is a bit steep, because with a full host of programs you'd be constantly patching... But the rule looks nice as is...

Change the interval at per day. Then they have a Software + Logic (# Programs, 1 day) extended test to patch all of their programs. So given a few days of downtime (max a week most likely)

But this is also by my logic of if you roll twice the threshold, it takes you half the time.

Pardon me?



One can change many things ... but it doesn´t change the official rules.

SYL

I will consider cracked programs as a different type of commodity - you get to buy them at chargen, even if your current set of contacts does not allow you to get any updates. Fully in the players hand.

I've been wavering back and forth on this one. It hurts my soul to think of being able to buy 100K of rating 6 programs for 10K in chargen. I mean, it's better than them buying no problems and getting a Loyalty 6 warez contact and getting all their programs for a few weeks of cracking rating 1 programs, but still.

I'd almost rather go with the idea of having to purchase at full price and giving them a credit towards never having to do upgrades in the future or just flat out saying the cost represents time and effort previously having kept the data patched up.

Then again, I just detest the thought of diluting a hacker's role even further by allowing every runner to have a 5/5/6/6 commlink and full suite of rating 6 programs for less than the cost of most cyber.

You could just keep the BBB rules for software if you wanted to that. No problem at all.

We are using the Logic+Skill capped by program rating option. That makes program rating less important.

It hurts my soul to pay 100k for software as a hacker... As a GM I´ll offer rating 4 unregistered open source programs as alternative for those who don´t want to care about the matrix (autosofts up to rating 3, activesofts up to rating 2). For free. As an incentive to use the matrix. True hackers will have to cope with the SOTA issue. A working rating 6 setup will demand more than money.

Heh. I miss the days of spending nearly your entire resource A mil on a great starting deck and still having a long time til you can get to the elusive rating 12 MPCP uber decks

But different strokes and all that.

Here's a question I have: my shadowrun games rarely encompass much more than 25 days of game time and I'm talking full campaigns lasting 8-10 months of real time. Considering that, most of my games may not have degradation in them since there isn't a month of in-game time elapsing. Am I in the minority on this one?

Well, when I ran a game (R1, roughly 1989 - 1993) the game certainly lasted for a lot mroe than 1 month game time.
If I ever get to play in a face-to-face game, I will certainly be hoping for something that will last for a lot more than 1 month game time.

But then, character development and advancement are things I want. And in Shadowrun that means time to buy things, time to learn things, time to have surgery, time, time time...
I grant that not everyone plays for those goals (I never quite understood the attraction of classic traveler, where after game start your character could not learn any new skills or get much better at his existing skills.)

Yours,
Joel

Meh ... I ignore skill training times since I tend to focus on an event that takes two/three weeks to fix. That way, characters can grow and change within the year or so of real time that we spend on the game, but that timespan isn't represented in-game. It might also be my style since I tend to run larger conspiracy style games that end up playing kinda like a novel in that the PCs get roped into events larger than they are and have to fight their way through to the end. In that style game, development and changing aren't as important as solving the mystery, perhaps.

YMMV.

I played with one slightly odd GM once who took his inspiration from the show 24 in a big way, such that with a few months of play, only three weeks of game time passed. Was an interesting way of things, especially as we started out as 700 BP characters to represent kind of elite sorts that got tangled up in this horribly twisted world-spanning plot. There wasn't much left in way of character development, which was purposeful, but it was still fairly fun.

Other than that one time though, I've never played or GMed in a SR game since SR1 that didn't span a significant stretch of time, usually with a month+ of downtime in between sessions/runs.

A lot of our "runs" are not actual runs, but stuff that happens between runs and has to be dealt with.

Granted, if you take thhe time out f downtime, I see why you have no issues with degrading software.

Personally, I had characters traveling long distances by ship or even have send characters in hibernation to Mars and back. The very idea that when they reached their destination, their software already runs at aout half efficiency is just... wrong.

I'm trying to weigh this myself and here's what I'm coming up with.

Cracked vs. Registered vs. Price at Start

Registered Price to Start as Book - no Arguments there.

Cracked as Book - 100k thats likely to be given to every member for free... The hacker is footing the bill for the entire group, not fair for him.

Cracked at 10% - 10k the Hacker is already the cheapest build there is, and with 2 BP investment in gear he's even more likely to be at the top of his game coming out, as well as near top in somebody elses.


So I'm thinking he'll have to start with Registered Programs, and crack them in game. Or his other option is to only start with a few programs and then seek out more for the 10% price after game starts (only feasible for High or Luxury Lifestyle really where your Leftover trades straight across or increases)

Going this way, he's actually having to invest some time, and if the whole group is going to get copies, they can share in the money to be spent to get the additional programs. Take it out of run expenses.

I still keep on wavering on the whole thing. I tried to modify my favorite decker adept build to use the cheap program cost and the result was a bit surprising by the time I was finished up. Instead of branching the character out into other major roles, the extra money ended up actually kind of crystalizing the concept. It let me afford some skillwires and an encephelon 1, which was out of range before for fitting in, it let me buy a bunch of toys that made him a better break-in artist sort, and it let him do things like harden all of his equipment so EMP's can't take him out. Just odd little things that all helped him be a better decker rather than becoming a decker-something else.

Of course, I went completely nuts with the DIMAP, Optimize 2, Rating 3 Activesofts, turning a former cliche couch potato hacker into a real runner, but I actually put that in the good column as it fits the character concept to have turned to tech for skills rather than skill for things not related to the matrix.


Edit to add:
Admittedly, when I now look at it and add it all up, he would have spent something like 350K just in programs, which is just horribly wrong of me, so maybe I agree that programs shouldn't be 10% at chargen, especially activesofts as I abused the hell out of that.

Maybe allow chargen characters to buy things at rating 4 or below for 10% off? That way, if the hacker wants real hacker-worthy progs, they have to foot the bill for it, otherwise they can get the cheapo progs at the start and use those to spend the time to get the high-end stuff.