So, in this particular situation, the PCs are fleeing a corp facility that they shot up and decided to take a hacked doberman drone with them. The hacker PC logged off of the drone as they were leaving and didn't think of the ramifications before doing so (new SR players). There is a single character in the back of the boosted truck along with the team's own drones thrown in there as they fled. The driver and passenger of the truck are shot to hell and bleeding. The team's hacker and drone rigger are in a separate van fleeing the scene. Cue scene....


As I see it, I have these options:

1) As Karoline devilishly pointed out, the corp rigger could VR into the drone and remain silent while it transmits its location to a corp response team and gathers the log file from the drone with the PC hacker's access ID from the comlink. This option could end very badly for the group but it could provide a chance for big surprise when they bunker down at their safe house and some memorable role-playing opportunities.

2) The corp rigger could VR into the drone (slaved to his comlink now) and unload absolute mayhem on the passengers of the boosted bread trucked used during their run. The sole passenger in the back of the truck is looking at a crap sandwich.

3) The PC hacker and PC drone rigger could try to use a sniffer to figure out who is connecting to the drone, then try to hack into the corp rigger's comlink through the corp secured firewall and layered IC to gain its access ID, and then try to spoof commands to the drone. The drone dog brain would still take over and unload on the passengers. Probably not the best option considering the number of turns needed to track, hack, and spoof the drone while the sole passenger is dealing with it.

4) The PC hacker and PC drone could try to jam the signal to the drone. The drone dog brain would still take over and unload on the passengers. Again, crap sandwich for sole passenger.

As I see it, the PCs are in a pickle because of the player's inexperience and greed in thinking that she could snatch the corp drone and keep it like "loot." I'm open for any ideas that will make an interesting game session so feel free to add your twists to the current situation. I'm looking for something that will show how deadly the SR world is without a TPK. I certainly don't want to punish the group for their out-of-character lack of experience with SR but I'm a big fan of consequences for actions.

Getting the access ID does not require you to hack the commlink, you just need to trace the signal back to its source. See the link I posted earlier for the rule mechanics behind "Game, Set and Match".

Sooo, options which do not tear the team apart
1.) Karoline's plan
2.) The drone's pilot does not know how to handle the situation (locked into a small room with an unknown person) and starts to literally bounce off the walls, possibly sending the truck off the road.
3.) The drone has an anti-theft system which gets armed as soon as it leaves the corp property - electric shocks, thermite bar strapped to the central node, HE charge with extra fagmention body, your call.

If it's a small container/room, I'd let the PC try to "subdue" the drone. Basically, they jump on top of it, where the drone can't shoot at them. Could be pretty comical, depending on what character's locked in with the drone.

Meanwhile, the PC hacker tries to regain control/jam the signal/hack the enemy rigger.

Once jammed, the enemy rigger will be dumped (and suffer dumpshock). The drone's Pilot will take over, but they aren't that effective (unless upgraded). And given the circumstances, it might just do nothing. I think there are rules (Common Sense test) for such a thing.

If they stop the jamming, the PC hacker could then try to exploit their way back in, assuming the rigger hasn't jumped back in (and likely won't right away anyhow, considering they've just been dumped, and won't know when the drone comes back online).

They could also, you know, just dump the drone out the back of the truck.

Just a bit of clarification: the current rules for jamming do not require a selective/smart/directional jammer any more. "You start a jamming device. You may choose any number of known devices to be excluded from the jamming when you initiate the jamming, and may change the list with another Jam Signals action" (SR4A, p231)

That being said, you clearly cannot jam a device *and* wirelessly connect to it. Of course, nothing prevents you from jamming everything within signal range besides your commlink and the drone, which would have something of the same effect.

Incidentally, there's another option: jam the drone, and hack it wired. Even if it's slaved, you can try that.

Oh. I can't imagine why they changed the jamming rules. Bleh. That sounds more like DDoS than radio jamming.

I don't see why you couldn't, your connection passes info to the drone "use the following freq key to talk to me" then you use your jammer to jam anything that might allow a matrix signal to pass.to the drone. I could see it requiring at least a user level account when you first connect but other then that it works although to be honest driving your wifi inhibited trunk into your wifi inhibted garage seems simpler if you were going to make a practice of this.

True, but the dog brain would be active. A firing doberman makes it hard to slip a fiber optic cable into it. Would be fun to watch though

I don't know that a node that is being jammed would accept a random "Come to this frequency, it'll be fun!" message. Remember, if you can't get two way communication, you can't hack or spoof or do much of anything, because you can't get a response out of the node.

Also, if selective jamming is just leaving a particularly frequency open.. it'll take about a quarter second or less for that frequency to be found and connection to be reestablished.

Maybe it's just me, but it sounds beyond stupid that a jammer can go "okay, I don't want this commlink, or that soda machine, or old man Ferguson's dishwasher to be affected." and then blanket out an entire city. Now, I could imagine it being set up to follow a certain pattern than could be distributed to particular devices, and those devices would be unaffected as long as the pattern is followed, but this is basically just an encryption key, and you can't magically retroactively pass this key out to random devices and force them to use it.

If the rigger does slave the drone, the drone could remain slaved even if the rigger gets dumped out, which means we're back to approaching an armed drone with a fiberoptic cable.

Oh, and I'd imagine that to take control of the drone, you might need higher than user level access. User might let you look at its schematics or ammo levels or things like that, but I think it'll only do things for an admin.

But yes, if you're going to make a practice of this, you make sure to shut the drone off and have it in wi-fi inhibited vehicles/storehouses while you work on it. Drone snatching is not something to be done opportunistically from a corp.

Psh, think Ghost in the Shell! Gymnastics up the drone, rip open something, connect a random plug… Shadowrun is Cinematic.

Too bad most hackers don't have the 9 gymnastics and dozen or so agility and reaction needed to do it like Makoto does.

Well… yes. Alas!

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone that chimed in yesterday. The session went off great with the proper amount of stress on the players. I chose to have the corp rigger VR into the drone and take control of it (seemed like the most logical response from Shiawase). I took the opportunity to explain some of the finer points of the rules to the group and listed some of their options. They ended up coming together really well. The sole passenger in the truck (squishy occult investigator pre-gen) used his last point of edge to go first in combat and cast improved invisibility on himself. Unfortunately, he moved himself into a cross fire position and failed to tell anyone where he moved to in-character. The gods of dice favored him and he managed to avoid the bullets. The PC rigger and hacker VRed into two of the group's drones that were stored in the truck with the corp rigged one and bullets were flying. The nitro-hyped bleeding troll that was driving decided to hand his beer over to the other bleeding mage riding shotgun and told him "this is going to be fun" just before he drove the truck into a light pole. Ah ... good times from this group. They all ended up walking away from the encounter. Well, the mage riding shotgun had to be carried out. That was the last time he lets the troll drive. All in all, it was a really fun night. Thanks again for the advice.

Why wouldn't it, it's not like it's going to stop listening on the other frequencies, it's just getting instructions for best signal strength in the opening packets, essentially it's a handshake process.



That is how the rules work however and honestly that's hardly the most brain breaking portion of the games rules from an elint or electronics standpoint. Of the top of m head the most feasable answer is the Jammer has some level of reactive information to it and starts to squelch on signals once they give a transmit ID that isn't "Friendly" yes you could abuse such a system and break through and that's exactly what ECCM is. We could do a very realistic model of such things and everytime someone wants to use a jammer break out a map with signal strength blots and a book of elint formulas but how fun would that be.

Addendum: Fenris Cool! I'm glad things worked out for you.

Or jammers could just block everything like they're supposed to.

That would actually fairly counter productive both in game and out and tends to attract missiles.

Then your knowledge in this case is wrong, sorry. I just looked it up (Unwired p. 55):

One node, the slave, may be linked to another node, the master.
In this setup, the master is given full admin access to the slave.
When slaving a node to a master, the slaved node does not accept
any Matrix connections from any other node but the master and
instantly forwards any connection attempts to the master.

As in like tells the master about them, not has the connection attempt attempts to connect to the master instead. At least, that's how I read it.

Then your reading it wrong. It's not an ambiguous statement.

It forwards the connection attempt. So the attempt is made on the master, not the slave.

Yes, slaving is direct, instant rerouting; you call the slave, and you ring the master.

Well, I suppose if you want to make slaving half useless you can go with that. I read it as it forwards the connection attempt in the same way I would forward an e-mail. The person I forward to has access to the e-mail, but the original sender doesn't know anything about it.

In other words, the connection attempt is forwarded to the master, but that doesn't mean an actual connection will be made, just that the master will know about it.

You are incorrect on the rules as written regardless of how you want to spin it, once again might I add. Your analogy doesn't hold up. Slaving is literally relocating communication processing and authentication duties for communications between two devices, my email server doesn't handle authentication it takes it's que's from the domain controller, that is a closer analogy.

Why would that make slaving useless? Its just the difference between redirecting the connection instantly and the the Hacker having to spend 1 or 2 IPs to scan and then connect himself. 3 seconds difference are far from "making it half useless" in my book.

Yeah, I suppose half useless is a bit much, just seems like a stupid way of doing it to me, though it depends someone on the device. 9 times out of 10 though, I think I'd prefer that I be warned and then the person trying to connect will have to find me instead of automatically being connected to me.

It's a completely different thing, though. It's not *for* warning, it's for converting independent nodes into mere extensions of the master. A slaved node is 100% immune to hacking, except via direct wired connection (even then, +2 Threshold against).

Warning about connection attempts is something that nodes already do. There are extensive rules for alarms and things. If you're saying that you want your drones to immune to all wireless hacking *and* also have your character's main commlink hidden, that's hardly fair.