I'm just kind of thinking out loud here, guys. But these wireless bonuses for gear REALLY bother me.

On the face, they sound like a good idea, right? Seems reasonable that a piece of equipment could benefit from matrix connectivity. After all, how useful is my iphone without a network connection? Well, it'll still play Angry Birds, but I can't check stocks or weather.

The devil is in the details.

I am a rules lawyer. Always have been. Sometimes, I can tell this annoys GM's, and I try to not let it bog down gaming sessions, but as someone who is a rules lawyer and also GM's on occasion, I don't see any good way to house rule these wireless benefits.

On the one hand, if I (as a GM) were to say, well, let's just leave them out entirely. We just won't mess with them, because some of them are just plain stupid. Well, okay. But then, as a rules lawyer, I have to look at something like "Internal Air Tank" and scratch my head. "Hey, GM, does that mean, since we are ignoring wireless benefits, that I won't be able to tell the exact level in my Internal Air Tank?"

"Well, errrrr..." That seems pretty dumb. I mean, we've had the ability to monitor pressure and capacity for compressed gases for what, maybe a 100 years? 160 years by 2070 standards? Why the flying flip would I have to connect to a bloody cloud service to know the air capacity of a tank of air that is right there inside my chest? A lot of them really do make sense, but a lot of them don't. +2 on visual perception tests? WAT

Well, okay. The alternative is to look at these wireless benefits on a case by case basis. That makes my rules lawyer blood boil. That means there is no predictability in how wireless benefits can be applied since they end up being a matter of GM fiat. And predictability is the rules lawyer's right hand to the left hand of indiscriminate RAW (see what I did there) justice.

I like games with rules and I like games that follow those rules. These wireless benefits scream for being house rule'd, but I'm at a loss for a consistent, predictable way of house ruling them. I feel like this wireless benefits system is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Like speed bumps. They don't HURT anything, but they just kind of slow things down a little bit here and there. It feels like they just need to be refined and smoothed over.

RLA Brother!
Secret handshake.

I agree that a couple of sections in 5th opened up a whole can of worms with little regard to how much extra work it will cause GMs.
It's like spreading blood on the water.

However, the GM can just house rule that if you have some form of DNI link to the device then you can do any of the wireless bonuses that involves activate/deactivate as a free action or involve getting status on an gear.


They have stated that skinlinks still exists and will be out in one of the latter source books.

I'd also house rule that smartguns have a standard mode (+2 dice) or an advance mod (+2 accuracy) and you can switch between them with a free action. If the smartgun is meshed with the matrix (connected) then you get both bonuses. Because otherwise a smartgun does nothing for anyone less than a crack shot.


Really any bonus that you can get with a wireless connection to the matrix should be possible to recreate with enough expensive gear.
The point with wireless is that it can provide these bonuses to everyone without the expensive gear for nearly free.

Wireless bonuses should only come into play for things that benefit from talking to the matrix, or that benefit from talking to each other (and are not already internally connected). And they should make things like communications and tacnets better, letting you keep in contact with teammates and do things like indirect fire, spotting an ambush because it is visible to another teammate, and so on. Unfortunately, the implementation of wireless was very poorly thought out and illogically done.

AMEN...

The idea is sound. With any luck the future augmentations sourcebook will rationalize it a bit.

I'd disagree. The idea isn't sound if you have to wait on a later sourcebook to rationalize the core rules.

Here is an more fun thought. Even if that air tank has a wireless connection, if you were using it deep under water you don't have any signal anyway so you wouldn't benefit from turning it on anyway in that sort of situation.

Where is that Exalt Post button?

here's a wireless bonus that makes sense for a smartgun:

if it is wirelessly enabled, and your team-mates are carrying friend-or-foe identifier, it won't shoot your team-mates in the head by accident.

it existed in earlier editions of shadowrun. it provides a legitimate benefit over a basic smartgun that logically could require wireless. it has an obvious vulnerability to wireless attacks, providing a decker some very useful options in combat (like spoofing that friend-or-foe identifier signal from your own team's gear, or removing it from an enemy's gear). honestly, i can't for the life of me figure out why they didn't just go with that in the first place.

but yeah, you're pretty much going to have to just go through and make judgment calls on all of them.

Because that functionality already exists in SR4A?
We have had Hackers/Technomancers hacking that stuff since EARLY SR4.

Reading the internal air tank text, it's not "Wireless bonus: you can check your air level". It's a constant update.

It is awesome that being in six inches of salt water stops you from being able to monitor the functionality of your internal air tank.

Which part of that being dependent on matrix connectivity makes sense? We're talking about functionality simple enough to be handled by something not much more complicated than a digital wristwatch.

Here's another good one I just stumbled into:


So, are there wireless-connected peanut butter jars? Wireless: Opening a peanut butter jar takes a Simple Action.

I don't mean to dog on this too much, but it obviously could've benefited from some community playtesting. It's just too silly.

sure, and it is a bonus over what you could do without having wireless enabled on your smartgun, therefore making it an excellent candidate for a wireless bonus that would not be available if you were offline.

and i did already specifically say that the technology for that has been around in previous editions of shadowrun (actually, i'm pretty sure it existed in at least SR3 in some form, and quite possibly SR 2 or 1 although i'm not even remotely as familiar with them...)

Sorry to inform you that it has been around since SR2. No wireless anything needed. The 2070s just appears to be a dark age for Cybertechnology.

how do you figure IFF technology is possible without broadcasting an IFF signal and receiving said IFF signal? (both presumably encrypted or something, otherwise it would presumably be far too trivial to duplicate to even bother with).

it didn't need the wireless matrix, but it must have used radio technology or some equivalent, which is in SR5 (and really in SR4 too pretty much) considered to fall under the category of "wireless".

There's a world of difference between sniffing for a specific code on a radio frequency and allowing that signal to issue commands to your system.

not in shadowrun there isn't. if it's just a specific code, it'd take about half a second before it was sniffed and spoofed from every single person in the fight, making it useless. you want to make it work, you're going to need some hella good encryption on it or someone else will own it before you can even think about using it. which means you're going to need it protected by something rather stronger than your basic smartgun... something like, say, a commlink.

My argument FOR wireless bonuses:

Fluff perspective: Ignore the fluff. Some devices require Matrix access, but most of the time they just require wireless processing power, borrowed from your commlink. The device must be merely slaved to a commlink to receive wireless bonuses. That commlink is ALWAYS connected to the Matrix (remember, it can be running silent as a security measure!).

The world is not built with shadowrunners and security in mind. These devices are built for convenience. Hackers are relatively rare, and the hammer is brought down on them swiftly, thanks to the Grid Overwatch Division. In the case of military-grade hardware, maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but the added convenience is still worth retaining enough that beefing up Matrix security remains a viable alternative to going offline.

The Matrix is changing (again), so deal with it.

Gameplay perspective: Just because you always got a +2 dice bonus before doesn't mean you're entitled to one now. The system has been changed and rebalanced. There are more avenues of attack available to both groups and GMs alike. Open your mind. Hackers finally have an active, fun purpose. Quit whining!

Given moores law and how basic this stuff is and the fact that it was possible without wireless for more than 20 years these bonuses really do not make any sense at all. Most of this stuff used to be internally wired and there is no reason to not continue internalled wiring it. I have a laptop. It has wireless. But I do not use wireless to communicate with the internal hard drive or cd rom drive. That would be stupid.

Jammers (ironically, used wirelessly) are now must-have go-to gear (SR5, p. 441) and are cheap enough that everyone on the team can have one if they want (the directional ones in particular are handy). It's hard to argue that security teams cannot also be equipped with them when a Rating 6 directional jammer is cheaper than some light pistols.

I can accept the "for convenience" (and probably other goals like surveillance and data mining) explanation for consumer grade ware. I don't for military ware. Also, DIY is a big part of the punk culture, and also of the cyberpunk culture. The street find its uses for things, and this includes making custom cyberware. And if the people making that ware don't want external communications, there won't be.

A simple solution would be something like "unhackable ware", with increased essence and nuyen cost to make up for the unavailable processing power and the need for a DNI. But that wouldn't take into account things like the dermal plating having no need for this, or the fact that if you want your teammates to see the feed from your cyber-eyes, they might still be hackable.

Another solution would be to have a clear list of what wireless bonuses or options someone can get for each piece of 'ware. This is a bit like what they've done, but the trick would be to have reasonable explanations. You could also mix that with the other solution to list which options will be safe in "unhackable ware"

The problem of those solutions is that they're far too complex. They require lists for each piece of 'ware, and it would be pretty hard to think of all the ways a piece of ware can benefit from an outside connection, and how it can be abused. And I don't want to have to keep track of the setting the character uses for each option of his ware.

If I were to implement something like that, I'd use that following system:

- The cybered character chooses a "paranoia" rating, from 0 (completely open) to 6 (completely closed).
- Every time the cybered character wants to do something that would require an external connection (sharing the data from one of his sensor (from the cyber-eyes to the biomonitor), letting one of his teammate control his cyberarm or his injector, etc), he rolls a dice. If the result is more than the paranoia rating, it's possible.
- Likewise, when someone wants to hack a piece of ware from that character, he finds a reason why it would have a connection, then do the same test to check if the connection is indeed open or not.

I think what I will have to do for the campaign is break this down into stuff that can be covered by DNI OR PAN connections and which one's really benefit from having a matrix connection.

Basically I see normal civilian use is wireless because its shiny and easy. Yes there are some hacking issues for the normal joe but GOD largely deals with this.

Military/Governemnt/Corp/Shadows however will be using a mix of DNI and wireless as appropriate. Tacnet is still wireless as your bouncing signals/sharing intel and this can be spoofed/hacked, but your smartgun will typically be hardwired/PAN connected (depending on factors) as your not going to risk having your weapon too easily bricked. Course with nanite tech there is ways to force an item into going wireless so that is another whole level of attack/counterattack......

However it also means making the Availibility/Restriction/Forbidden stuff count for more as the powers that be do NOT want this normally available to the undesirables (though that won't stop us ). Honestly most players see R or F and it just means paying the fixer a bit more to get it or buying a quality to get it in chargen and that's it. But if a device is restricted you best have a really good reason to be sporting it if you are cutting through any area where you have to explain having it or someway of spoofing detectors/masking its true purpose. We have lost a bit of that flavour I think sometimes, it's just easier to never have anyone seem to notice except where it won't matter in any case. Probably not explaining my idea very well, need to comtemplate this a bit more.

Was not commenting upon it availability prior to SR4, since the Wireless Matrix was not prevalent prior to SR4.

Fair enough, that looks like pretty annoying. However, Deckers can use a data jack to get 1 noise reduction and load the Signal Scrub program for 2, but even then they're dealing with a ton of noise. They can always run backwards to lower the rating, since the farther away the jammer is the less powerful it is. Fortunately, riggers can make an Electronic Warfare test to temporarily punch through noise.

Jammers seem too cheap and common. If it affected everyone equally, maybe it's fine, but that wireless bonus makes no sense. That's one bonus I would eliminate: how can you saturate the airwaves without drowning out your own signals? Also, it seems like running a jammer would instantly give away the physical location of the jammer.

House rules, house rules...

I feel like this is just a problem of how the setting was designed. Shadowrun was first written in the late 80s, and every iteration ran with contemporary notions of what the future was going to be like. Wireless computing was not a huge concept in the 80s-90s, and so the book's lore had to invent a revolution that coincided with modern-day notions of the future of wireless. The more editions of Shadowrun, the more of a stretch all of this lore becomes. We just have to accept that and ask not what sounds most realistic, but what sounds more fun to play. A future where everyone is ultra-paranoid about hackers and forgoes convenience and usability for security is not very fun if you're playing a hacker.

But just for fun, in your example, you could have a wireless mouse. If you had a tablet, maybe a wireless keyboard too. I could see a time when wireless HDDs become viable. I have a remote control app on my phone that lets me send mouse-keyboard commands via wi-fi to my PC so I can sit back and watch Netflix without getting up. Now, if a super-hacker broke into my wifi network and saw I was running a server on my PC that interfaces with my phone, theoretically he could abuse the hell out of it... but do I want to change?... naww... easier being a lazy bastard who doesn't even have to get off the bed to change the video stream channel...

yes, but you're not a professional criminal using high-grade military equipment that is designed with the understanding that someone *will* try to exploit any weakness in your system.

if your ability to not get shot in the head depended on your network security, you would probably care about it a lot more.

A future where you have to decide between having gimped 'ware and devices, or having a gaping security hole that lets people invisibly hack into your 'ware and permanently damage it, is not very fun if you're playing a street samurai.

It's also not fun to play the game when it has things that jump out at you as making no sense whatsoever. Again, wireless bonuses could have been a fun idea, but the way they did it unwisely chose the stick approach (hold the idiot ball or your character will suffer penalties) rather than the carrot approach (you can get all kinds of nifty capabilities from a tacnet, or having all of your stuff connected to your PAN, but be aware, this is vulnerable to hacking).

This is a game. You can justify illogical wireless bonuses with technobabble, or the catchall excuse of "Well, who knows how computing works in the far-off future?" But that doesn't satisfy a player's desire for verisimilitude, even in a game of dsytopian corporate oppressors, super-hackers, and wild magic.

I'd have to read the hacking but from what i'm getting from the rules is that the signal on your cyberware is very low. You have to be in handshake range to hack it. So functionaly you are only conected to your pan. So that would make your Comlink the doorway to your cyberware. Now in SR4 to keep your smartlink from being hacked there was a touchlink. I haven't seen that in the book yet. still reading. Its not a huge stretch to make a Direct nural interface as cyberware that conects all your ware to either a datajack for an external comlink or an internal comlink that lets everything comunicate (Like reaction enhancers and wired refelxes.)

As far as the air tank being useless after 6 inches of salt water.... I scuba dive. I have a wireless monitor on my wrist that tells me what my tank pressure is. Now transfer that into your cybereyes and you have what I belive was the intended functionality of that particular wireless benifite.

That's just the devices talking among themselves in the PAN. You are still not going to be connected to the Wireless Matrix if you are at any reasonable depth and this is what gives you the wireless bonus of constant update or air level and air purity.

This is the argument that most people have with the wireless bonuses. To get the bonus you have to be connecting to the Matrix or its nothing. PAN alone supposedly is not enough when realistically in this case it should be more than adequate.

I'm going to have to go reread the rules. I'm obviously getting something diffrent when I'm reading wireless enabled than what you guys are reading into it.

This can be found on pg 421
It goes on to show some examples.

There have been a few threads battling back and forth about this.

So you can slave your airtank to your commlink, which will act as the defense for the PAN, but if you want to get the wireless bonuses you must turn on your wireless connection to the Matrix AND actually get a signal from same, something you will not get deep underwater.

That's the reason subs have to get close to the surface to allow an aerial to break the surface or pop a buoy with an antenna to communicate with the outside world.

as a submariner that's not entirely true.... another discussion for another day.

So yeah, while for some bonuses that makes sense for others that's just plain stupid. like the air tank, or wired reflexes and reaction enhancers. Throwing that much data back and forth across a wireless network is well.... the opposite of fast. IMHO the simplest solution would be to determine what would require matrix and what bonuses would only need a PAN to work properly. Split them up, and problem solved.

Also remember that any tool that the GM can use against you, you can use against his goons.

Indeed, we could discuss VLF and ELF, but the former is good for about 20 meters and while ELF can go much deeper, it's a one way signal unless you are packing a minireactor in the commlink and get around the whole size of antenna required bit.

Plus I don't think the SR matrix is using those particular bandwidths.

Yeah, so now you see what all the head scratching is about.

And why directional jammers are a hot item in the shops for the runners to use on the GM goons.

A lot of people are looking at house rules to separate the items that can basically be supported by PAN alone from the ones actually needing wifi on, but it's a lot of items to look at.

I am all about this mini reactor comlink.

I imagine it would be something like this

The scariest part? I used to have this microwave from the 60's that you had to first flip this switch (separate from the on/off.. a whole secondary switch) before you could set the dials and it made the same sound.

I suddenly recall that none of the ghostbusters ever had kids...

Some people say wearing Kevlar boxers with a lead weave built is a touch silly...

I call it good tactics

and we all know what happened when they took the ghostbuster's equipment off network....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vxEimC3HME

IIf I remember correctly, back in 3rd edition this was the secondary purpose of the Datajack. It had a number of internal ports for networking your cyberware. If your 'jack didn't have enough ports, you had two options, depending on your needs:

1) You could get a 2nd Datajack, connected to the first by one of each's ports. This gave you more ports to work with as well as extra external jack for gear to hook into.

2) There was a piece of cyberware called a Router. It supplied up to 10 extra internal ports for networking your ware, but didn't have an external jack. The cost and essence depended on how many ports it had.

The specifics were in Man & Machine, under "Interconnectivity". This pre-wireless nonhackable PAN functionality disappeared in 4th edition until the advent of skinlink. Your smartlink back then worked via wires or an implanted induction pad.

I once had a 3rd edition character with a chipjack, 2 datajacks and a router to keep his gear networked because he carried a number of sensors and other devices both internal and external which would logically benefit from talking to each other, the image link, cyberears, or the datajack.

Containment Unit
Contains various non-corporeal entities
Wireless: Provides count of entities held and DOESN'T BLOW THE **** UP!!!!

yeah... that's a pretty rough bonus.

Ok, this is in my official errata now. The sixth age started in the 1980s when the ghostbuster's containment unit was shut down.

But back to the subject, I like the idea of wireless bonuses and I for see a whole slew of additional bonuses and counter measures that can be used.

http://www.commissionedcomic.com/?p=4203

I think the comments below the comic about sum it up.

"Seeing the way technology is going, I see wires as something that will be used less and less. Eventually they’ll be used only when strictly necessary and then who knows? Maybe someday wires will be a thing of the past entirely.

But my cyberpunk world will always be wired. I for no other good reason, then just because it looks bad-ass."

Which is why even in SR4 my cyber characters had datajacks. Because sometimes you want to physically wire in to something.
I saw nothing wrong when SR4 went wireless to begin with. Wireless is versatile and quite useful, which is why so many things use it. But even our world can't force people to use wireless on devices that they do not want to, but SR5 is attempting to do so. And even worse, it is doing so in some of the dumbest ways imaginable.

I am also fine with skinlink being removed, and then people actually wiring external gear to things again.

But your wares aren't gimped, because the devs actually did choose the carrot approach. Everything you own works just fine without the wireless bonuses--that's why they're called "bonuses." They're not strictly necessary to be competent at your job. You can look at not having the bonus as a sort of "wired penalty" but that's just a matter of perspective. It's semantics. We use "rain penalties" and not "sunlight bonuses," because our perspective is that clear skies are normal and rain makes things more difficult. Similarly, running wired is fine and normal but only the most paranoid/protective do that (according to the lore), while most of us would rather benefit from wireless bonuses.

On top of that, unfair things can "jump out" and spook Shadowrunners at any time. That's part of Shadowrun to me: cans of knockout gas sleeping the whole party (unless you brought a gas mask), mages blasting you with nearly unresistable spells (unless you have a magic buddy), hackers making all your gizmos explode (unless you have a hacker buddy or turn off wireless), and dragons representing the very definition of "unfair." A hefty Background Count can bring the Awakened team members to their knees, Noise can disrupt a hacker's ability to do his job, and now street samurai have gained the misfortune of losing their ability to use their weapons and cyberware. These are all tools for the GM to use or abuse, and they've always been there. I think the greater benefit now comes to the team hacker, not necessarily at the expense of the samurai's ability to protect his stuff.

-- The gear functionality was intentionally gimped when not using wireless, especially when compared to previous editions of the game. It's a carrot-shaped bludgeon.

Don't compare it to previous editions. The mechanics are superficially similar but the addition of limits, higher skill caps, repriced and rebalanced 'ware, altered spells, the priority system, and other changes make it difficult to gauge the final result in play. Whether it's a nerf or a buff is all relative to how the other PCs operate in this new system.

What should we compare it to then, potato salad?

Yes, the game balance altered.

No, that doesn't excuse bad game design concepts which were tried in 4e and pretty much universally panned being shoved down the players' throats. There were strong reasons both in and out of game why Skinlink became essentially Standard Fraggin' Equipment for shadowrunners as soon as it came out.

Why not compare it to previous editions? It's not like SR5 is a special snowflake when it comes to mechanic changes between editions.

Unless you are brand new to the game with the newest edition, previous editions will affect how you look at the changes in SR5. And honestly, I would not have minded if wired reflexes had simply been nerfed. SR4 did that to the mnemonic enhancer and enhanced articulation, as well as raising the availability for muscle replacement/augmentation/toner because Attribute increases meant a lot more.

But saying that two pieces of 'ware that worked fine together in previous editions suddenly can't function together, unless they are connected to the matrix, when they should be working on pure DNI and not even need a PAN, is a ludicrously contrived way to force someone to make their character vulnerable. Hackable cyberbrains, electronic devices, and tacnets would have been fine.

Exactly.

Hacking tacnets and preventing your teams tacnet from being hacked would have been an awesome way to go. Having the corp hack into your tac net and start hacking into the street samurai's cyber eyes ala ghost in the shell would be awesome. Requiring a matrix connection to get your wired reflexes to work is stupid and lame.

Have the decker use tactics to help direct the team as he is seeing all the feeds and can anticipate the tactics of the other team..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn45pl8yXzk
Rather like what burk does in Aliens. Only using a deck and not an APC