Maybe I've been watching to much Leverage, but I think it would be entirely possible for a face to con his way into a lifestyle. Unwired already had rules for spoofing one, why could a face convince someone that they needed a place. You could even use the same table on p. 99 as the threshold needed to do it.

"I'm so sorry Mr. Peck, it appears that someone forgot to put your reservation in the computer, I could go ahead and upgrade you to the Presidential Suite?"

That actually sounds like a good idea. A little more Lone Star or The Riches than Leverage, if you wanted to try and con your way in on a more permanent basis...

For a one-shot I'd probably require two sux and appropriate bribery to get to a level higher than your normal one, with an additional sux per level above.

There's rules for Spoofing a Lifestyle in Unwired.

That's the first step unless you want to convince the senile old lady that you're really her Nephew Harold who was lost in the EuroWars. Despite you being a Troll. And him being a Dwarf.

The advanced lifestyle rules have rules for roomates - each adds +10%(the Dependents quality also reflects deadbeat roomates you have to pay for).

So, basically, all a face has to do is convince someone they're worth letting schmooze off their lifestyle for free.

Another option is in Runner's Companion, where you live with your Parents.

"Mom, I'm going out with my friends... ... ... Yes, the Troll that carries the Shotgun where ever he goes. And the crazy girl that has more tattoos than clothing. ... NO WE'RE NOT DOING DRUGS!"

In a roleplaying game social skills should be able to get anything able to be sold. Smokes more easily than nukes.
It may not get your SIN on the lease but if you get a key does it matter?

I'd use the spoofing rules, but replace social tests for hacking ones. Either that, but allow it as flavor text but still force him to pay the upkeep as a "symbol" of the effort he has to put in.

Well, spoof is basically the matrix equivalent of con anyway, so I would think it is totally possible. I think it might be a bit harder than spoofing on the matrix though because you have to totally BS someone that you paid your rent last week, or some other fairly hard to swallow story, and that is only for the place to live, doesn't include having to BS the utility guys, BS the furniture salesman, and the waiter at the bar, etc. It just seems like it would be far more difficult than spoofing a fake payment for the various things, or whatever else spoofing entails. Maybe double the threshold since you have to deal with people instead of automated programs. Program won't question the fact that it actually didn't get any money if it gets sent the proper command to think that it got sent money, but a person is going to be a bit more careful about that sort of thing.

Then again, I saw on TV someone pulling such an epic con check that they bough a diamond ring (few thousand dollars) with blank sheets of paper.

You can already use social skills to reduce costs and increase selling values. I feel like that's probably enough. I like the idea of 'let's go steal a house' à la Leverage, but social skills are known to be the *most* broken.

Hehe... One of my NPCs was like that, only her mum was her Johnson.

I'm currently doing the big beefy troll street samurai with a bit of a soft spot. He keeps disposable comlinks to occasionally call his parents because, "they worry."

The problem with comparing spoofing a lifestyle with conning one is that, when you spoof, you're grabbing a touch of cred here and there, routing the things you need to be where you need them. Doing that by talking to people is going to be considerably more time consuming and harder. It's comparing running a series of short cons to just using stolen credit card numbers. Not terribly similar.

I do like the idea of conning roommates/lovers for a massive lifestyle reduction.

I had an old character who had the handle Smiles who had street lifestyle. He managed to spend most of his time in the houses of one night stands or with other team members.

He was such a sleezy face. It was hysterical.

In any case, while he managed to con his way into houses and beds most of the time, he often spent time under a bridge as well even with his dice pool. Especially if he was in an area for too long. If you con people face to face, they might eventually start talking. If you have regulars, they will eventually notice too. So, it isn't very unlike the spoof charts: eventually, you need to keep moving.

maybe have a look in RC advanced lifestyle rules. One could probably con the Entertainment part easily. And maybe go the local Gang to get a better Security. But with Necessities, which includes electronic bills for power and water, maybe harder.
Instead conning a hotel lifestyle might be ok...

The old "Beverly Hills Cop" movies shows various ways to con people into letting you stay at a nice place for free.

That was Darren Brown. He talked with the person he was buying stuff off and managed to fit the words "Take that," into the conversation just as he handed the 'money' over. Not a con, more like Palming.

I don't think there should be a difference between conning and spoofing. In both cases there are still some people involved. There is no difference in me telling someone I already paid my rent or a computer program does it. In both cases the owner of the flat will notice that no money arrives on his account. Because spoofing a livestyle does not include real money being spoofed.
The same goes even for automated kitchens and alike. Sure I can spoof the kitchen to give me some meals but the owner will notice at sometime that repeatedly free meals leave this auto-kitchen.

Spoofing and conning alike include, in my opinion, to change location on a regular basis. I suggest spoofing and conning can just be an upgrade of the current lifestyle with the same thresholds.

Says who? You steal someone's Matrix ID, then you spoof it and make a purchase. Now that guy just bought you lunch.
The trick that a hacker has here is that he is stealing small amounts of money from lots of different places and routing the purchases around to hide the trail. Digital identity theft is a lot easier than physical identity theft. Next to no research needed. Just sit in a public place while running a Trace program and you're grabbing ID after ID. Sure you're not going to be able to buy guns and stuff with stolen money, but grabbing a new soy block? That's not even an issue.

Indeed...

In game terms, I'm pretty sure you'd incur the -6 for Spoofing a command from an Admin account(advanced spoofing in unwired), to spend someone elses money - or else you'd have to spoof their bank to authorize the transaction.

Not saying its not doable, but it might not be easy. Banks have notoriously high security, and I wouldn't be surprised if they needed a biometrics scan to authorize internet purchases.

Note that a risk to spoofing the account is that the owner of that account may be notified. (One option on visa cards is to get a text message when "a transaction is approved or declined; when funds are loaded to you account; when your account balance falls below a specified amount; and when your account profile or card status is changed". ( https://www.visaprepaidprocessing.com/BancF.../FAQProgram.htm ).

Spoofing isn't free cash for hackers. It contains a certain amount of work and risk. Sure, you can pay for your power with someone else's account. And that someone else may now have a large incentive to find out who is getting powered delivered to that address with their money.

Notoriety isn't always a good thing. Anyone who keeps getting free lunches by spoofing is eventually going to be known as the Soyburgler, no matter what he wants his handle to be.

I don't think it works that way, as described. The book seems to say that you're tricking automated systems into working, not that you're paying for anything with stolen money. It's like phreaking, or getting a free soda from the machine.

According to Unwired, PG 84 the hacker needs access IDs. The section ends with:

The constant need for more access IDs makes it very different from Phreaking or getting a free soda from the machine.

Sure, but that's not stolen money. Like I said, it's defrauded goods and service. That's why you'd cut power, send bills, etc. Access IDs are just changing your *trail*. I think you're missing the point of my analogy. It's like phreaking in that it's defrauding goods and services, and in that it's *not* stealing cash. Context.

It would be like phreaking from *different* phone lines, or (to use a different analogy) sneaking into a hotel with a different fake ID.

Heh, old school 'face cons lifestyle' is easily Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop 2, "Bullshit! You've stolen this house!" or #1 when he cons "I think I might as well just call it "Michael Jackson Can Sit On Top of the World Just As Long As He Doesn't Sit in the Beverly Palm Hotel 'Cause There's No N***** Allowed in There!"

The problem ends up in that its entirely short term. For either matrix con or face con, the time limit is pretty short, requiring either you move around alot, or con someone into paying for you (the LAPD, for example).

I'd think the fallout would be interesting too. I'm not sure how it is in other places, but some of the stores I goto, noodle shops, whatever, usually have posted bad checks and stuff to alert them of people that have conned them before. In some cases, they have pictures. While the matrix dude can erase that trail, the face, especially if they've gotten their picture taken, or if they plan on running the same con, has to watch out for 'running out of locations'.

Yeah, it specifically says that you are doing things like 'telling utilities and services the hacker is a subscriber'.

In other words the hacker goes "I am a subscriber and so I get electricity/water/Trid/food deliveries/etc." and the program, being a program goes 'Okay.' and starts sending the stuff. It obviously isn't that simple/easy, but this is essentially what it boils down to. The program 'thinks' you should get these things, and so gives them to you, and doesn't bother to do a through investigation into if you already paid or not (There are likely millions of subscribers after all. No one is going to bother going through every single payment ever to see if they are missing the 200 nuyen that you supposedly sent them)

As for redirecting payment, that's basically "Okay, bill this address [insert someone else's address]" They send the bill, the person maybe pays it by mistake for a while, thinking it is just a price hike or not noticing that they are paying their bill on the 1st and the 16th, and when they do get it figured out, they have to fight the company for a while, and then the company figures it is just a case of some computer error (isn't everything?) and so sends along a request for a real address and the money owed or they'll shut off the power/whatever. The Hacker ignores the request and allows power to be shut off, and starts up the process again with another company.

Or maybe they split their bill up into 10 parts and tack it on to 10 people's bills as 'additional fees' which means it is even less likely to get noticed.

The point is that this is all totally doable with spoofing, but good luck trying to manage any of it with a con check.

But, Con, rather than allowing you to increase your lifestyle by one level in return for a bit of time invested, potentially allows you to mooch off someone else's lifestyle by just chipping in a bit here or there (10%) to "pull your weight." Advantage, Con.

Though there may well be other disadvantages to living with someone whom you're constantly lying to or taking advantage of...

Just ask any teenager.

People are generally easier to fool than machines are.

And ofcource if everythink else fails, seduction should get you a troof over your head at least for a night.

What's funny is that outside of the game mechanic of what dice pool you're rolling, it is still a con. You're simply asking someone to believe a computer notice or not notice something about that computer notice instead of asking someone to believe a person or not notice something about a person.

Why is one likely to succeed and the other not?

Almost any character who doesn't care who he hurts can get a free place to live. Seduce your way in. Con someone into letting you in. Break and Enter into a fully furnished unrented space (or somewhere where someone is on vacation), spoof the access ids, or, if you want to go full Street Sam, just kill the people living there.

Really, it becomes an issue of how much you have to cover your tracks and what the GM lets you get away with. If you're making sure everything on the run can't be traced back to you, committing a variety of crimes (that people will have incentive to investigate) to pay for your lifestyle doesn't really make a lot of operational sense. Some GMs will wave away the free lifestyle. Some will use your actions as more plot points to add things to the campaign.

The same can apply to getting your hands on a facility or shop. Depending on how long you need the place, there should be a wide variety of ways to get it without paying. All of them with their various advantages, disadvantages, and morals.

Simple, because if you are joe average and you get a bill, you will pay it. You aren't going to look at every single bill and add up every single expense and keep a record of "Oh yeah, I used 63.5 gallons of water last month, and used 897 watts keeping my TV and lights on (because that is so easy to measure) and watched 72 hours of Trid, etc" so they're unlikely to notice if their bill is slightly off.

It is however much harder to walk up to someone and go "Hey yeah, give me $10." or "Yeah, I totally just handed you $400." A person is much more likely to believe a bank report that says that $400 was transferred (even though it was spoofed and no money was actually moved) until a while later when they might go through their accounts in enough detail to find out that the $400 was never actually transferred.

And yeah, no one said you couldn't break into a place or kill the residents, but those are both going to be fairly short term and the killing would bring a fairly serious repercussions (Good luck getting every last skin/hair cell out of a place you've been living in for a few days), and seduction will generally be night to night. Con could maybe work very short term (Conning your way into a free night at a hotel, or into a bar) but it isn't likely to get people to give you a free month of rental fees.

Where are you getting "slightly off"? Lifestyle spoofing is using an access id to send the bill to someone else. If I'm paying a bill every month and it suddenly doubles (because I'm now paying for gas/electricty/porn for TWO apartments instead of one) I'm going to notice the sudden doubling of my bill.

And that's assuming it only doubles AND I get the bill at the end of the month. If there's a fee to turn it on and the company requires 1-2 months expected usage paid in advance then I'm going to see a sudden painful dip in my account balance before the runner spoofing my access ID has even gotten comfortable.

Joe Average is going to notice the sudden decrease in funds. Joe Above-Average may well have connections or cash to send someone to explain the mistake made terminally. Joe Small Business needs to pay attention to the bottom line. Joe Large Business has accountants.

From a real world standpoint and a game balance standpoint, I don't see why one archtype is considered to get a free ride when they do it but everyone else has issues. "Good luck getting every last skin/hair cell out of a place you've been living in for a few days" should apply to everyone.

Or maybe that hacker just routes the power charge for a single day, or half a day to a single ID. He subtracts a bit here and adds a bit there. Or maybe the poor sucker does get the full month. He contests the bill. The company says "tough shit" and cuts him off until he pays. Have you ever had someone commit bank fraud with your account? That money is gone. The bank doesn't care. It's not their money. The people the bank paid on behalf of the fraudster don't care. They were paid. The guy who got his business all messed up, he's swinging in the wind.

That's how it works today.
Do you think that it will somehow be better in a dystopian future?

Or, wait, no. You think that some random schlub is going to track down a world-class hacker, who can kill AAA corp spiders 3 at a time and crack the most secure installations on the planet.

The difference between the Hacker and every other guy in the set is the Matrix. The massive, nearly-anonymous logistical system which controls just about everything. The Hacker rocks the Matrix, and therefore he rocks the system.


Sammy can take over a spot with firepower.
Smiley can talk his way under someone else's roof.
Mojo can straight up devour a guy's mind.
But the Hacker can make the world look straight past him as if he didn't exist. Information is his domain. Day to day life is ruled by information.

You're saying that a world class hacker finds it an acceptable risk to piss off people at RANDOM? That makes as little sense to me as Jason Bourne shooting his way out of restaurant to avoid paying the bill.

That guy now swinging in the wind has nothing else left in his life but to get revenge on your hacker's butt. Just like the guy last month and the guy the month before that. The records show where the power went. So, what did random schlub do in his past? The world hasn't been a pretty place for his entire lifetime. Did you manage to find the random schlub who was never a revolutionary or a member of a resistance or served in the military and has somehow survived in this dystopian world unable to shoot a gun?

Stealing from random people is begging your GM to wake up and add repercussions to actions. If he won't then go ahead and have your free lunch, but don't expect me to buy into the "Shadowrun is a video game on cheat codes" concept.

Seriously, If the hacker was as good as you think he is, he wouldn't sit in his apartment all month writing patches to try to keep his software current.

I really don't think there's any 'sending someone else the bill' involved. You're tricking the *machines*. If you use a pay phone with a dime on a string, or kick a soda machine, no one else gets a bill. There is no Joe Average, there is no 'doubling' of his payments.

If you *wanted* to, a hacker *could* mess with someone's bills/accounts/etc. But that's not what Spoofing Life does.

Again, I'll point to Unwired, pg 84-85. That section clearly explains the need for access IDs and a number of possible outcomes for hackers doing it.

If you're doing some other form of lifestyle spoofing that doesn't require other people access IDs, please point out the rules covering it. If you have another interpretation of the words "access IDs", I'd like to hear it so I know what you think is involved in spoofing a lifestyle month after month.

Maybe the rules don't make sense for your table, if so, feel free to explain your houserules. I'm not against someone saying that they've replaced the section on those two pages with something that makes more sense and fits their world better (that's what this thread is all about after all). Or explain to me how the way you're saying it works is supported by rules I've missed.

Not is not how it works in the U.S. If someone steals your money from the bank, whether they go there with a gun, or hack in from Asia, your losses are covered. In 2072, I imagine there is a global banking market, and who knows if the FDIC even exists.

It does not appear to say you need other people's access IDs, as I very clearly said before. It says that it's a good idea to *change* access IDs so you don't get *tracked down*. Nothing about that tiny paragraph is at all incompatible with defrauding goods and services *providers*.

I feel like I've clearly explained how I understand Spoofing Life to work. No house rules involved. You seem very hung up on the astonishing inclusion of the term 'access ID' in the description, and have extrapolated from that an elaborate system of stealing from random citizens (to *pay* goods and services providers). That doesn't make sense. In addition, access IDs are not account numbers. They're hardware MAC addresses. You use them to track down an access, never to bill someone. There's nothing in that little paragraph that that says, 'the hacker steals lots of (account numbers) and has to keep doing it'.

certainly sounds to me like "the hacker steals lots of (account numbers) and has to keep doing it".

Which part of "grabbing new access IDs" doesn't mean "steals lots of (account numbers)"? Which part of "constantly" doesn't mean "has to keep doing it"? Help me understand how this means something other than people are being ripped off by the hacker and sooner or later will do something about it.

I don't know how to make it any clearer the third time around: access IDs are *not* account numbers, and sending bills/etc. is wholly compatible with *providers having been defrauded of a good or service*.

Access IDs are hardware serial numbers for the *devices* you access the Matrix with. They're the fingerprints of the hacking you did to trick their soy vendor machine. You change them to avoid being *found*, not because they're in any way part of some bystander's checking account.

I didn't say you don't have to keep changing *access IDs*. I said you don't have to steal *account numbers*, let alone constantly.

'People' *are* being ripped off by the hacker: *providers* of the goods and services. The hotel is being ripped off. The coke machine is being ripped off. These companies/owners are the ones losing property to be reclaimed, not bystanders. They will eventually notice discrepancies and track down the hacker and punish him. How is that at *all* incompatible with the text (for the third time)? There is no stolen *cash* and there are no ripped off bystanders.

There is a hacker stealing hotel nights and free cable. The cable company will send the retroactive bills, not the next door neighbor.

Suoq, you obviously have a serious problem with all of this, so why don't you sit on it for a little while to cool down, because it seems your fighting a lone battle here. Maybe take some time to read through and digest responses fully.

As several people have said (Myself included right in the same post that you quoted and then asked 'what do you mean slightly off') if you are actually sending the payments to someone else (Which you aren't necessarily doing) then you could split it up so that you send 1 day's worth of bills to 30 different people. Most people won't notice a 3% price hike unless they are watching their spending like a hawk as I pointed out above, and even then it might just be that they left the water running one day or something. And if they do find out then they call the company, the company either goes "Sorry, that's what the computer says you owe, so pay up or get cut off." or "We're sorry, the computer made an error, we'll refund you your 10 nuyen."

And in both cases you aren't looking at some "Oh crap, now Joe Average is going to put his vast resources (He was concerned about 10 nuyen?) into action tracking down a world class hacker that evades AAA corps. Now the hacker is totally in trouble."

Similarly, the part you quoted said that the people he is getting the free stuff from are going to track him down/send bills/etc, nothing about stealing from Joe Average. It just means that the hacker was spoofing commands (AKA spoofing AKA spoof) to make the company think the bills had been paid, but every few months they do an audit and notice that account XXXX-XXXX hasn't actually paid any money in a while. Maybe some computer error and then they send on the bill. But if the hacker uses different access IDs then the company notices there is a slight error in account XXXX-XXX1 and XXXX-XXX2 and XXXX-XXX3, etc. None of which are important enough to devote any real effort to.

You seem to have a rather disproportionate idea about how much money people are willing to put into getting revenge for a minor monetary loss. Heck, even if you do rip off Joe Average for 5k nuyen, they aren't going to be able to go after a high grade hacker. First off, 5k was likely half their life savings, and no team is even going to touch a job of this nature (Someone ripped me off for a bunch of money. I have no idea who or how or why, it was done over the matrix, so I want you to track them down) for anything like that amount, because the hacker is going to be impossible to track down.

It'd be like if you wanted to find me because my posts make you mad or something. You could maybe higher someone to hack into DS to find out what IP I connect from (And I only use like 5 different IPs) to narrow it down to the right state via Geo IP (Providing of course that I don't use proxies or reroute anything). Then you have two cities to search through for 'a person' You don't know if I'm male or female. White, black, Hispanic, or Asian. You don't know anything about me. Now, if you were really careful you could potentially narrow it down and have to hack into a couple more websites (and do some fairly in depth searching that still might not come back with the correct results), and then you could maybe get it down to a few hundred possibilities, but all that is only if I'm not being careful (You know, since I'm not committing a felony here or anything).

So yeah, good luck having Joe Average getting tweaked over a small computer error tracking down the hacker that was actually behind it (Because it will be explained as a computer error because there is no way the company would admit (if they even knew) that they were hacked into and that's why the bill got passed to Joe Average)

@Yera: This is true. It's going to be easier for a hacker to get into the system and spoof it to tell the software that you've got supervisor-level access and you're 'testing the connections' at X address for 30 days, at the end of which the month-end folks go through, see the discrepancies, yell at the supervisor they think did it, realize what happened, and cut power (after a bill is sent for the usage).

You've spoofed the supervisor accessID, but not his bank account. You've got free cable by stealing it from said cable company. The same story can be used for power and water. The property management company habitation schedule can be spoofed to say your apartment is being renovated all month(you slimy bastard, you ruined all the walls). And so on.

Nowhere does money change hands.

@Karoline: They'll match the books monthly, and do a more in-depth look quarterly.

I'm missing the part where the people ripped off don't pay a visit where the power/gas/food/etc. is being delivered. The book says it happens. You seem to be saying it doesn't. Or is the hacker always looking for a new place to live as well as new access IDs. And what was it you said he was constantly leaving behind when he left?

And this isn't an isolated incident. The hacker is doing this day after day, month after month. Sooner or later, someone is going to get fed up with that hassle. Companies don't like "mistakes" in their balance sheets. They find the cause of those errors and they fix them. They may not announce publicly that they fixed them or even had them but they certainly don't ignore them.

And remember, this IS a dystopian society. Why wouldn't people be watching their money like a hawk? If you live in a repressive society you don't ignore the things that keep you from becoming a squatter and drinking acid rain. If companies don't forgive, you can't afford to not care about your access ID.

"You've spoofed the supervisor access ID". Now he's fired so you need a new access ID. So you're going back in for more free stuff against a company whose balance sheets tell them to be expecting you. If the GM isn't running this as a plot line against your team, he's passing up a great opportunity.

Doing it as a one shot? Go for it. It makes for a fun session. But if you're doing the same one-shot again and again and again, companies are going to notice. At that point it can get interesting.

You're making a number of assumptions and misconceptions here.

Companies are big. It takes them time to find these discrepancies, and they are going to work to get their money for the services before they do anything else. 'Taking care of the problem' in the manner you suggest is cost prohibitive. They aren't going to spend $5,000 to send a band of knuckle-draggers to your door when you've only spoofed a grand off of them - they'll send a crafted letter stating there is a billing discrepancy and the amount owed is $1,000, and would you like to use PlasterCard or Geesa?

You don't have an 'electricity man' dropping off lightning in a bottle next to the milk every morning - you will never see the guy who turns on your power. The meters are monitored at the building outside, the tech writes them down (or the drone flies by and does the same) and the billing system compares the two and spits out a bill at you. If you don't pay for a month, they add it to the second bill and send a shutoff notice. If you don't pay again, off goes the power. Same for water. Same for cable. If you're living it up in a hotel room you spoofed, you tell the room service drone it's being charged to the room. It doesn't care that you're spoofing - Corporate will, but they're not going to see it until month end.

Indeed. Point of interest, my last apartment had apparently been owned by a guy who skipped out on a ton of bills and stuff, so for over a year later I got letters for him that constantly said stuff like "You need to pay us by X day or we will consider legal action." followed on that day by "You haven't paid us, now you need to pay us by X+1 month date or we might really consider legal action" and then about 6 months later "We are considering legal action, and need you to appear in court/send us the money." So yeah, give a company a year or so and it might actually be motivated to come after you in some way. The cops came by once asking for the guy, but that was it. They weren't exactly through about it either. They knocked on the door, asked if he was around, and I said he hadn't lived there for a while. I could have easily been lying.

Now granted modern times aren't the dystopian future, but I think it shows that a multi-billion(hundred million?) dollar company isn't really going to care that much about a few hundred dollars misplaced. Also keep in mind it wouldn't be hard for the hacker to go in near the end of the month and change the address that was supposedly getting the free stuff. Now the company sends their goon squad that they paid more for than they were scammed out of to an address that doesn't exist, or to some totally innocent Joe Average. And just because this happens once doesn't meant the company is suddenly going to spend millions to update all their software and stuff to try and catch the person scamming them out of a few hundred (Who will still blow right through their stuff anyway).

Besides, companies rely on misappropriation of funds to do stuff like higher runners/goons in the first place, so it is going to be all the more difficult for them to notice that money is missing.

Mmmm, lightning bottle. I doubt they even send a drone around, I'm sure the meter just sends the data along the matrix, which is another opportunity for the hacker to spoof saying that no power usage was registered that month for their residence, so no bill gets sent along.

Ah. I see. Suddenly we're NOT a dystopian society anymore. Everyone has gone from being repressed to taking all this stuff casually. Shadowrun, where hackers and street sams do the dirty jobs no one else dares to do in a libertine society.

All silliness aside, do they wait till you spoof 5 grand off of them before they send the knuckle draggers? 10 grand? How long do you get free services before someone comes to collect the bill? When did corps stop caring about being ripped off?

And so you need to get out before that month-end comes. Where do you go next? Same corporation or another one? How long can you keep this up before the GM decides that there's something here worth role playing?

I'm cool with the getting into the company, grabbing the supervisor's access ID, editing the database to send the power to your house. Editing the log files so the supervisor doesn't see that his access ID is being used for it. Looking up how often reports are run and when they're scheduled to run next so you know you have to start doing this all over again. At what point do you sit down and start rolling dice for all of this and it goes from being a handwave to a session at the table?

Ok. So the hacker is so good that he doesn't even need to roll dice to do this and so confident that the GM won't have any NPCs even notice. Given that level of power, I don't see why the face isn't living in a penthouse (White Collar), the street sam hasn't killed everyone in a private mansion (XXX), and the Technomancer isn't living in the shadowrun version of the Bahamas with a back door to a local node whenever he's needed (I've forgotten what echo that is.)

Ah. I see. You're being deliberately obtuse. Perhaps you should take Karoline's advice and go cool off.

Recall that corporations are about profit. As to ensure no obfuscation, I will use several simple words as it seems 'profit' has been misunderstood.

They want to make more money than they spend. You understand this concept, right?

It costs them money to have teams of accountants going over their figures. It costs them money to verify transactions. It's not cost-effective to match figures daily and no shareholder on earth (save perhaps Lofwyr) wants a daily update on their earnings. Most feel perfectly comfortable with quarterly reports, and month-end matchings.



At the point where you either cost them enough that 5 grand in knuckledraggers is going to net them a return or they're so far in the hole that the 1,000 you spoofed is going to save their asses. There's room for manuvering in both of these: If Joe Shadowrunner is bragging to his neighbors that he just hacked the system to fix it, then they're going to ask him to do the same. You get enough folks trying to spoof their lifestyles then the management company's going to turn the whole building out.



Unless you're the GM, I don't think that decision's up to the likes of you.

You know, you act like people are getting tons of free stuff, but remember that hackers can write their own programs too, and thus get expensive programs for free as well. The investment is the same thing, time. And once again, there is nothing in the rules that says a Sammy can't rob some place for similar effects, only much faster and much higher risk.

It's not cost effective to ignore pilferage. It's not good to be the supervisor who has to explain why your department has more pilferage than the other departments.


And now, Katherine, I will take your advice. Up to now it's just been a debate over rules, houserules, and handwaving. But now, it's personal, and quite frankly, I want no part of turning this into a war of insults.

Have fun. Up until now, it's been good times.

You...don't really know how a company's finance department works, do you?