So, I've been gamemastering my first few sessions of shadowrun and it is all going pretty well.

Except I have a few issues with hacker. Now, one specific question and one general wondering:

Tracking: Can the Hacker always find the original node. I mean if he is going against the hacker then it is different game, but when someone calls you, can hacker easily (say he has high program Track and high Computer skill) Track down the caller and triangulate his location??

Hacker can intercept the wireless traffic, so then each time when someone calls somebody else, hacker can intercept wireless traffic, decrypt it, track it and triangulate both the caller and receiver? I understand that there are countermeasure programs, but can really easily triangulate every non-hacker of his interest?


And then I have a general wondering - does the hacker take a lot of game-time for all of you? I mean his activities are quite extensive (in out of game time, not in-game time) - regular datasearch of every potential lead, hacking in every nearby hotel or suspicious place, hacking in every home nearby target, hacking in every camera near some target location, hacking in transport grid. I mean with ubiquitous matric the search possibilities are limited only by imagination. Is this a problem also for others or maybe there is some nice streamlining suggestions?

Thanks.

My solution for this? Make sure the hacker is a rules-guru type, and give him a bit of a leash. Mine made damn sure he's almost impossible to catch in the act - he'd basically have to screw up by the numbers to get noticed - and knows both the rolls and how hard the typical target is. Given that, and given that the Matrix isn't really a huge focus compared to my five non-Matrix players, I can give him enough leash to make background rolls and tell him what he finds.

Keep in mind that typical computer security in Shadowrun is a total joke unless you're running up against spiders - a well-built zero-karma character can laugh as he walks into all of the systems you mentioned above.

I started letting my hacker just roll once on a lot of trivial stuff. Granted, I have to make a lot of stuff up on the fly because its not really relevant to the mission. So, if a hacker wants to triangulate a call or find some public or semi-private information about something, I make them roll once and keep it as a simple success test.

I've ran two long campaigns now in 4th edition, both having hackers and I think everyone involved in both games are no longer wanting a hacker in the party. Its still just too much of a time sink unless you dumb down the majority of the matrix rules to success tests.

When someone calls someone else, the call only goes directly from the caller to the receiver if they're both in range of each other's signal (and even then, the MSP might not allow direct calls, since it can't bill them). If they aren't, the call has to go through the Matrix backbone (or through any other nodes on the way). The caller can also explicitly route the call through some nodes.
Even then, the hacker can track the caller with the Track program, except if the caller has used a countermeasure such as a proxy or a spoof program. These countermeasures aren't available to hackers only. I'm pretty sure there are some businesses out there that provide such services to anyone with a credstick.



If the face tells you he's going to visit everyone in a neighborhood to ask question, will you play each situation?
If the mage tells you he's going to astrally search an area, will you have him roll astral perception for each room?
If the gunbunny shoots unarmed and unprotected civilians, will you play the whole combat?
Don't roll when it's not necessary. Or roll only once for a bunch of hacks.

Well this is exactly my problem. And as Ephiral said, many useful sites have very weak security for our hacker. I do not want to make this player's character less useful, but as of now his Matrix actions are overtaking the game, since the game itself states that everything is in Matrix. So this one character basically can find everything in Matrix...

Regarding the Track: What if hacker hacks into some commlink and finds the target's commcode. Can he call the commcode and then track the signal? Until the receiving commlink?

Well, and regarding these other things - in most cases I would play it out as long as it includes a probability of failure. And there is tiny chance of the local network beating hacker's Stealth rating of 6. Very tiny (if the node gets 8 dice to roll) but still...

Here's a paradigm shift that I think you'll benefit from. Instead of thinking that everything is on the Matrix, GM your game like the Matrix is everywhere. Remember, SR4 rules make the Matrix a very interpretive system - easily the most creativity-driven aspect of the game - so be the adult and don't be afraid to tell him "no". Some things are going to be reasonable requests that, from your perspective of GM, won't do shit, but help him feel in-character. Pulling street cameras off the grid and peering through them are a good example of this. Hand-wave it. Make him do a simple AR hack-in roll and give him little morsels of information based on that. On the other hand, some requests are unreasonable. First and foremost, people are still people. Good luck finding any kind of meaningful Mafia data on the Matrix. They're smart enough to not do it, pervasive computer access or not. Same thing goes for corporations. They're all so big that their networks are probably similar to military networks today - mostly closed networks that might as well be an entirely separate Matrix, with heavily gated bottlenecks. Emphasize sideways ways for him to use his hacking skill, while including other players. Maybe he needs to get into an Aztechnology node, but all he has is some middle-management's commlink and address book. Instead of hand-waving the difficulty and letting him hack into something that would take months of real-time planning, give the face an opportunity to try and socially engineer some bullshit with a secretary and get the codes that way.

That brings me to one of the most neglected rules in RPGs - time. If he's hell-bent into hacking into something he shouldn't, make it take time. If he bulldogs it, and tries to charge in without preparing, play out a sequence that makes it apparent he has no chance. Make him code purpose-made programs. Make him decrypt files and talk to hardware architects who got let go. Make him use his contacts. And most of all, put him to a time-table. He can't dick around with hacking light bulbs and trying to unlock city sewer drains if he's got a half-hour to get to the run site, and the doors have to be popped before they get there.

Also, if you think that the systems aren't throwing enough detection dice at the hacker, but you don't want to ramp every node into a military supercomputer, search this forum for posts about security tallies. Rule-set that keeps track of actions and encourages discretion and short visits. There's one in Unwired, but I saw some better user-made ones in the last couple weeks.

I agree with some of the other posts here. I tend to 'blanket' many basic rolls into one. It is easy enough to create a general task level for that group and have them roll for success than to sit down and roll for 6-8 different aspects of a procedure when there is one single desired outcome. I try to do this for more than just hacking as well. Yes, sometimes it involves a little fluff and rule-bending, but I am always more concerned with fluidity of the game than nitpicking each rule.

Most of the time, yes. But it's still possible for the target to have his calls forwarded to a node somewhere in the world that'll forward it to another one somewhere else and so on before receiving it on his commlink. In game terms, I'd still resolve this using the "Redirect Trace" and/or proxy rules.



Well if you want to have the details of a full Matrix run, you can't do anything else than a full Matrix run. Maybe you could speed up dice rolling by pre-rolling the dice, but if there was a way to do everything in one roll without losing details, it'd already be in the rules.

By RAW, it pretty much ends when you hit a proxy or similar node. You need to hack that specific node to continue the trace. If they've disconnected/wiped the logs after the fact, you have no chance.

TMs/Resonance beings have a better chance of finding the hacker but thats it.

This is covered in Unwired specifically btw.

- J.

yep, prices are in the back of unwired, along with a host of other toys.

in SR4, the matrix have become much like combat. While the sam or adept is the king of the battlefield, everyone in the group should have at least some familiarity with firing a gun. And same with the matrix, as the hacker or technomancer may be the master of the digital, everyone should have some grip on running searches or basic communications security (complete with using code words).

if he is going to search the matrix in general for some info, rather then a specific node, thats when you crack open the data search table and basically tell him to roll towards one of the target numbers, with a game time interval matching the whole matrix entry.

and note, SR4A changed the table somewhat, adding a entry for data that you basically cant find in on a matrix connected node. Basically, tell the hacker that no amount of rolling will bring in the data, altho it may provide a rumor about what offline node it may be on. And thats the time to get those others into action for a bit of B&E

yeah, i'm thinking the simplest solution is to not make it any more useful than it should be.

if he wants to track everything, well, guess what... that usually doesn't accomplish everything. there is far more insignificant data out there than there is significant data. the solution is to point out that it doesn't accomplish anything anyways.

as far as finding everything they want to know on the matrix, that isn't at all what the books say. even the old books indicate that it's talking about only information that you could plausibly expect to find on the public matrix, and that for anything secure, you're looking at only finding out where you should hack into to get that information... and that's if you're *lucky*.

it doesn't sound like a mechanical problem of hacking taking up too much time, it sounds more like the kind of problem you would have with any archetype if all they did was constantly disrupt things with demands to make rolls. or perhaps you think it would all go smoothly if you had a perception-focused character who demands to roll their perception vs every individual object and person wherever they go?

ultimately, the solution is to get the player to play nice. the demolitions expert doesn't blow up everything they get their hands on (hopefully). the face doesn't spend the time to befriend every person they walk past (hopefully). the stealth adept doesn't try to break into the building you're going to meet Mr J at by going through the HVAC system (hopefully). so why is your hacker trying to hack into and track everything they come across? just stop rolling, tell him he doesn't find anything of interest (unless there is a genuine reason for him to want to hack into a specific node or track a specific signal), and move on. if it's going to be a trivial task for him to hack it, then you should even go as far as skipping the rolling.