QUOTE (Ancient History @ Sep 15 2009, 08:15 PM) 
Forgery concerns more than just the technical draftsmanship of, say, duplicating someone's signature on a check or making an exact plate in relief to counterfeit a dollar bill; it's the art and science of recognizing and circumventing security procedures - knowing how the system functions and how an item can be successfully introduced into a system and pass as a part of it.
That's a bit high-falutin' speak, but compare it to the Exploit program. The Exploit is functionally a collection of smaller programs that take advantage of flaws or errors in the code to achieve something a user is not supposed to do, continually evolving to meet the demands of the hacker. Modern examples of exploits would be hitting 4-2-3-1 on a Coca Cola machine to access its vendor menu or text-editing a file in a trial version of a program to give yourself more time to use it without paying the company; each of these exploits is specific to a device or program, and since a passable Shadowrun hacker would need at least hundreds of these to get by, it is impractical for them to have a list of individual programs or exploits; hence the Exploit program is used instead to represent a collection of such exploits and programs that implement them. Similarly, Forgery handles all the skills involved in any sort of counterfeiting or document obfuscation - from holoweave UCAS dollar bills to duplicating a certified credstick full of red yen, the Renraku corporate scrip.
That's a bit high-falutin' speak, but compare it to the Exploit program. The Exploit is functionally a collection of smaller programs that take advantage of flaws or errors in the code to achieve something a user is not supposed to do, continually evolving to meet the demands of the hacker. Modern examples of exploits would be hitting 4-2-3-1 on a Coca Cola machine to access its vendor menu or text-editing a file in a trial version of a program to give yourself more time to use it without paying the company; each of these exploits is specific to a device or program, and since a passable Shadowrun hacker would need at least hundreds of these to get by, it is impractical for them to have a list of individual programs or exploits; hence the Exploit program is used instead to represent a collection of such exploits and programs that implement them. Similarly, Forgery handles all the skills involved in any sort of counterfeiting or document obfuscation - from holoweave UCAS dollar bills to duplicating a certified credstick full of red yen, the Renraku corporate scrip.
My question to this is, if the intent is for forgery to be "the art and science of recognizing and circumventing security procedures - knowing how the system functions and how an item can be successfully introduced into a system and pass as a part of it", then shouldn't it be coming into play more often? Why isn't such a skill called for, say, when the hacker spoofs a command to a device, or hacks up a "legit" account for herself?