I used to be an avid Shadowrun player and GM'er. When 4th edition was dropped, that stopped right in it's tracks. I returned when I got the itch to check if Unwired was finally ready (I'll spare you all revisiting the shock I had that 'Street Magic' [upward nose turn at themeatic priority] would be the first release). I'm still not completely satisfied.

I'm not saying that Unwired didn't alleviate some of my concerns. Far from it. But there still ain't much going on but the rent, chummer.

Now.

Frank's rule are professional, and (ironically, much more importantly!) appear playable. The snark and delivery is effective. The mechanics seem likewise effective. As a result, I believe my 2008 presidential write-in ballot will have the name 'Frank Trollman' for president.

Are there any other Alternate Matrix rules out there, floating around, that someone has written up? Admittedly, my DumpShockFu isn't what it used to be, but after a few rolls in the hay with the search command, very little was turned up.

Could this thread be limited to discussing: 1) Alternate Matrix Rules, or rule suggestions. 2) Successes (or failures) that have occured w/ said Alternate Matrix Rules. 3) Coordinating national Frank-4-Prez day.

-s&s

I would love to help you; however, I can't get my regular game group to play SR.

I too would love to see some playtest reports on Frank's rules - or anyone else's rules for that matter.

I don't know that it counts as house rules. But I've had great success with....well I suppose I could call it shooting for the sweet spot.

I'll consider the "sweet spot" to be the point where the player knows the rules well enough to act smartly in the game world, but well enough that they see the holes and the exploits.

The way I got there for the current hacker I'm GMing for is that when we started up with SR4 they didn't know the rules well and I assured them that I'd have their back as a hacker. I.e. I'd let them know if they were making mistakes, or forgot something obvious. They just had to let me know what they wanted to achieve and fill in details as they could.

The result is that I think they have a fun time with hacking and it takes up a minimal amount of gaming time. This is because things are largely kept simple. I let them use the buy hits things to change their comcode and presume they do it regularly enough, we don't mess around with reality filters (I didn't get them the program), I'm able to keep system archetecture simple and to the point, and we aren't getting into arguments at the table. Just me describing the nodes they're in and the IC they may run into. Good times.

So what if you've got a munchkin? Well, first, just be glad they aren't a mage this time. But beyond that I'd offer something of the same deal. Their character may have logic 8 but they don't and if they have to always explicitly say everything they will make errors (forget to declare they changed their comcode, forget to check for that data bomb). Additionally you'd be free to use the BS stuff that the rules allow against them as well, I believe unwired makes it even easier to be a total drek head with system design if a GM should choose to do so. Remember this isn't simple GM threatening you really are offering to have their back in the matrix in exchange for them not searching for every little exploit.

Changing comcodes (and all the other maintenance stuff done between runs) should just be assumed. Does anybody make gun-bunnies explain when and how often they clean their guns?

In my games this also extends to keeping programs up to date. No rolls required just an expenditure of nuyen (or time if their programming skill rank matches or exceeds the program's rating).

I've played with pre-unwired RAW, and done a mock-up run for myself with franks. Frank makes a better case for his rules at the start of his last ( Haa haahah *sigh* that's likely not a joke is it...) post, and I feel he does what he set out to do. They are flat out better rules. The only issue is how much work it is to adopt for your table. If you want to know which rules to use ask yourself how much the matrix bothers you, and how hard it would be switch.

How much The Matrix bothers me?

The Matrix doesn't bother me, especially. I have some beef with encryption, mind you, but I think Frank really tackled that in a straight forward and effective manner. I especially like the idea of a one-time key-pad piggybacking with a transmission, and the only open exploit is at the asymmetric handshake. I think that gives a lot of incentive for Hackers to: A) Be in the right place at the right time to intercept that transmission. Or B) Spoof into the subcriber list, and then hack the key out from the system.

It seems much more playable (and interesting for a PC Hacker, for that matter) than just listening for days on end to all the freqs floating through the air, and then running it through a decrypt program for a few minutes.

But. To stay on track: I am interested in finding out if there are additional alternate rulesets that have been created, however, and where those rules are successful, and what pitfalls they've encountered. Are Frank's rules the only Alternate Matrix rules that have been openly proposed?

-s&s

Yes.


To answer the rest: It works wonders in PbP and PbIM/Skype games.

Incredible. That said, I'll be recruiting for one for later this week/month.

I've proposed my own houserules here. Be sure to check the additional details on page 2. They weren't supposed to be a complete replacement of the Matrix rules but additional details and rules to complete the existing. I've discarded most of them now that Unwired is out.

The problem with the way I've written them in that thread was that I'd spent too much time to make sure I wouldn't get the usual suspects complaining about Hackastackagentsmith (but to no avail, since to some these issues can only be fixed if they're the one to fix them) and so there are a lot of details that dilutes the main idea behind the rules.

You can also find Serbitar's guide to the Matrix which offers a closed ruleset that's not too different from the original rules either.

Having read through Frank's rules there are still some questions I have, but in general they seem sound - one hacker and his attack dog vs. one spider and his black IC sounds a lot better than one hacker and his cracked and copied Agent Smith army vs. a neverending torrent of IC. I like the encryption mechanics, too, since they encourage activity in the meat - which is stuff the rest of the team can get in on - without making the hacker feel like just anyone could be doing his job.

The actual act of hacking seems to be resolved in one roll with programs like Jedi Trick or Taxman, which I actually don't like - it seems like that makes it trivial to break into the top secret mainframe with the research data and have it spew out company secrets without any chance of actually encountering IC in the process. I may have misread something in that, but that's how it looks to me. Or, more realistically, you're walking down the street and you pick someone's commlink at random. This person is running Rating 6 Black IC, but you don't care because you just point your Taxman program at it and if it fails they can't do anything to you anyway. Maybe I'm forgetting about something like Connection range, though. Anyway, what I've heard from playtest reports is that Frank's mechanics play well and above all fast, so I intend to give them a try later on when the group gets back together.