Hi!

I'm very new to DS and to SR4, I used to play SR3 but I'm planning to GM a SR4 bunch of adventures (maybe a campaign, maybe not). My question is the following:

One of my players would like to play a hacker character but I've never seen one in action and I've always heard lots of complaints about how slowing they were and the difficulty to integrate them into the usual fast and furious adventures (like First run).

Is it really so hard? should I wait to get a better grasp on the rules and so? how much have they changed in SR4?

I'd like to apologize in advance for my poor English and the possible not-in-this-thread posting.

Thanks!

PS.: Where do I check the icon code for the topics?

Hacking in SR4, while not perfct, works better than ever before. A lot of stuff can be handled on-the-fly with an opposed success test, so it's not that different to having a mage in the group. However, if you and the player do not know the rules very well, things will slow down due to looking up rules a lot. The matrix is a different beast than the fundamental reality, so it requires a different approach. Be prepared!

Of course, the biggest hurdle is the extensive hacking of well-defended systems. If your hacker gets into cybercombat, things will slow down for the other players inevitably. This is not really different to, say, the face having a lengthy discussion with Mr. Johnson, but players tend to perceive this differently because they feel that their characters could not contribute even if they wanted them to.

There are some ways that might help to alleviate this

* Put some extra effort into the narration. The virtual reality is a place where you can let your fantasy run free, so don't be afraid to dream big. This might entertain the players that are doomed to watch otherwise.

* Parallel combats. If you have the physical team attacked in the meat while the hacker is in cybercombat, you can run both as one combat where everybody gets to participate. Works especially well if the hacker tries to get into the opposition's drones or cyberware, because than even the results overlap.

* Have the other players tag along. Everybody's got a Commlink, so they can all come along for the ride. Even low matrix skills will allow you to help the hacker with Analyze, Medic and so on, and you might even participate in Teamwork tests.

* Encourage them to use the time for some intra-group roleplaying and planning ahead. So you feel frustrated because you have to sit around and twiddle your thumbs until the hacker finishes his thing? Go ahead and express it in character!

Thanks a lot! Specially for the "Parallel combats" idea! You've been very helpful to me!!!!!

Yep the biggest problem with Hackers "slowing down the game" is that the Hacker tends to get into trouble on his own instead of with the rest of the group. The Hacker tends to end up with a good amount of legwork to do, and they can pretty much do that anytime they want - while the team is driving to the meet, while everyone else is asleep, and so on. So the Hacker can end up bogging down the game for everyone else by interrupting the flow with hacking, if you don't keep a handle on it. Another thing you can do to smooth this out is to streamline the legwork bits to a couple of rolls, rather than requiring a full-on hacking session for every little scrap of information.

Actually, the legwork is an easy opportunity to integrate the rest of the team, because you can interleave the different actions. The face is talking to Mr. Johnson, meanwhile the hacker digs up something which might give him an endge in the negotiations. The hacker "finds" a floor plan, the team broods over it and depending on what plan they come up with, the hacker looks for other information.

There are a few minor issues with the hacking rules. See Hacking a Node: Diary of Failure for an analysis of some issues.

Some of his issues are outright wrong, and some are obtuse readings of the rules. If you go out of your way to make the matrix annoying, it can be, but otherwise it runs quite smoothly.

@ The_Vanguard
#1 is a particularly good suggestion. The node can be designed to look like anything. Maybe you're breaking into a Feudal Japanese castle, or blasting through outer space attacking a space station (or heck, the death star). Maybe you're breaking into a prison or Fort Knox. Or you could get even weirder. Maybe you're in an impressionist painting, or diving into the sun.

#2 is how you're supposed to do it if the two happen to be occurring at the same time

#3 requires some effort. The hacker first has to create a back door that everyone can use (they can't simply jump in on his hack), and it carries some risk if there is an IC pulling security duty if the rest of the team doesn't have good stealth programs.

#4 Agreed to some extent, but remember that while the hack may take 10 minutes to play out on the table, it likely takes less than 10 seconds in game.

You're welcome



Yeah, but the GM can fix some things here. Oh no, suddenly ninjas come crashing through the window!



If the hacker gets an admin account he can set up legit accounts for the rest of the team. Some systems also have public access for normal users.



Probing the target takes one hour or even one day per interval.

yeah it can slow down the game but compared to how it use to bring it to a screaming halt it is a vast improvement.
It went from "tron" to "Ghost in the Shell" for game interation

Well, yeah, but probing is something that is going to be done in the planning phase and take like 3 rolls of the dice. Nothing for players to get impaitent with there.

And since you just find an exploit without needing to use it, just let an Agent do it and use the time otherwise.

In my experience, hybrid hackers have been easier to integrate than pure hackers and are a good way to ease into the matrix side of things. By hybrid I mean the character has two defining roles, such as a drone rigger or a combat hacker. That way you can throw some hacking into the mix on the fly, but the character is still physically integrated into the team. In this case, the primary uses of hacking becomes infiltrating and disrupting the enemy communications and security right in front of the team, rather than digging deep into major systems on their own. Personally, I like combining a hacker with a sniper role since a sniper already defaults to a observation/overwatch role in the team which meshes with this kind of hacking role. One of my favourite bits about SR4 is how much smoother it has made these dual role compared to previous versions.

There are a couple downsides to this approach. First, the player may just want to play a character totally focused on hacking which this wouldn't work well for. Second, you cut off a lot of the potential of the matrix as part of the game and part of the world since you're deliberately only doing short bursts of hacking against small targets to supplement physical actions. Maybe try talking to your character to see if there are hybrid options that would appeal. Then as you and the player gain comfort with the matrix system after playing for a bit, you can slowly scale up the hacking side of the character and the depth of matrix interaction.

He's merely writing out how the rules were intended to function, and some limitations thereof.

If you take a look at the dice rolls behind "Game, Set, and Match" you'll find that even the matrix rules writer (Aaron and Jenifer Harding) found them to be mind bogglingly complex and obtuse. In 10 combat rounds with only 3 participants, a simple exchange involved 60 dice rolls and left Slamm-O! with a single point of damage from engaging in cybercombat.

Yup. You can't use RAW, it doesn't work. You can't even use RAI, because they don't work either. So anyone who claims the matrix rules in SR4 don't suck isn't using the matrix rules of SR4, they are using house rules that they THINK are the SR4 matrix rules.

But all the previous version sucked even worse. ...

Why is 60 dice rolls such a big number? 10 combat rounds (assuming you mean turns?) with 3 IP each and 3 participants. That is 90 complex actions and 90 free actions. That's a potential for 90 attacks, each of which requires an attack roll, a defense roll, and potentially a soak roll. So perhaps you meant 10 IPs for 3 people, in which case 60 dice rolls would be about right. I don't see how that is odd though.

Switch to meat. 10 IP with 3 combatants, each of which uses a simple action twice to shoot the others. That is 60 attack rolls, 60 defense rolls, and up to 60 soak rolls.

As for the damage, well, don't know what kind of program setup they were using, but unless it was purposefully set up to make it impossible to cause damage, you're not going to go through that many attacks on the matrix and not take some damage unless you're up against a skilled TM.

I find this assumption quite laughable... But you are definitely entitled to your opinion...
The Matrix Rules for SR4A do not Suck, and I have been using the RAW rules since this Edition came out. Can the rules for the Matrix be complex? Most definitely... Are the Rules impossible to utilize? Not hardly...

The rules for the Matrix in SR4 are not all that difficult to use once you understand how they work. And even if they may take a few rolls of the dice to complete an action, that is okay... As Karoline pointed out above, a typical combat scenario outside of the Matrix could rack up so many rolls that it is ridiculous. Why would the same amount of rolls required in the Matrix be seen as complicated at that point? And in comparison to previous rule sets on the Matrix, the Matrix in SR4 is positively a joy to play...

Anyways... To each his own I guess...

You could read the example instead of speculating? But that was the people who wrote the rules trying to write a 500 word description, and it doesn't actually involve using many of the more clever tricks the rules allow.

Yes, it could have been worse, but the idea was to be a simple, and broad-topic example of how the matrix rules work. The objective is "disable that drone." Which, really, should fall into the following rolls:

1) Locate Node (1-3 rolls depending on your method)
2) Hack node (~3 hack-on-fly, ~3 detection, depending on dice pools*)
3) Command drone (1 roll): "shutdown"

Yes, compiling sprites, threading, cybercomat, and wrestling an opposing hacker require additional rolls, but that's the jist of it, or what the jist should be.

In reality you need:
5 rolls to issue a single spoofed command (3 trace, 1 electronic warfare, and 1 spoof), which is over-ridden once the rigger does anything at all with the drone.
6 rolls to fire up an echo,** compile a sprite, thread stealth (resist fading), and hack-on-the-fly (+2 more rolls for the detection). Which, again, is over-ridden as soon as the rigger jacks in. Oh, and Netcat had to resist damage for her troubles.

That's then followed by a complete stalemate between Netcat and the rigger who are unable to do anything about each other (Netcat's Steath is 12 for god's sake and the drone is not allowed to delete admin accounts). Which leaves Slamm-O! two full rounds to unload Spoof and Load Exploit and begin hacking in himself (which he fails at) and then proceeds to cybercombat (leaving the drone crashed and Slamm-O! with a single box of matrix damage, simply because Slamm-O!'s software/skills outmatched the Rigger's by overwhelming margins).

Grand total: 13 rolls, not counting cybercombat or the Rigger's Analyze vs. Netcat's Steath.

*The example one was two rolls for Netcat, who threaded her Exploit up to Rating 10, and "one" for Slamm-O who was detected and got dragged into cybercombat for it.
**Which let her locate the node rather than doing it the old fashioned way.

That's a sentence I really do understand!


As far as I can see, all of you have a great knowledge about the rules, at least you've all decided which rules are useful and which not. From that point and on, sincerely, do you really think that the hacker is a playable character for a group of newbies? (to SR4, the player who wants the hacker is used to play CP2020).

And to add some spice, your best oh-lord-this-is-my-first-run set of character "archetypes"? For example: a street samurai, a tribe shaman, one hacker and a rigger...

Obviously I cannot answer to all of you, but you can't imagine how much I'm learning with your responses! Thanks to all!

MY suggestion is to have an NPC who is essentially a plot device until you get familiar with the combat and magic stuff. Then, if possible try to run hacking just with the player (to avoid other people being bored) who wants to be a hacker so you can figure out how to make things work for you.

the only problem might be, if you had a mage and a hacker in your starting group, you'd need to learn the magic and te matrix rules. and you're only human. It might be just too much to start. once you know the combat rules and the magic system by heart you can go on and learn the rest of sr4. it's perfectly ok to leave it out at the beginning.
I know for a fact, that the most used archetypes for startes are: street sam, weapon specialist, street shaman, smuggler and gunslinger adept (which are all female in the corebook *g*) and sometimes combat mage.

Oh, and the book archetypes really do suck. They are fine to learn the game, but any player who reads the book and uses one will figure out how to make a better character.

Contrary to that, my experience would be that the most important part of any team is talking, then hacking, then magic.

So, IMHO — don't bother much with combat, learn a working abstraction of the social, matrix and magic rules. Go for a technomancer in team, mostly because Sprites work similar to Spirits and you can pretty much ignore the inane and contradicting rules involving Agents. And with Spirits, especially Great Form ones, combat tends to be pretty one-sided — if there is combat at all.

I forget to say that one of biggest problems is that only me and a friend have some command on English, for the rest of the group reading just a small section on the rules is the closest thing to hell, not to mention doing it in the middle of the action. So I'll have to explain everything step by step.
I usually try to avoid the pre-generated characters, but this time... I know I could lose myself tweaking every little aspect on the sheet but my players could be easily overwhelmed and I pretend to keep the group tight. So, for the first adventures I'll provide them with the pre-gen chars. Later will contemplate the possibility of making new chars when their comprehension of the Sixth World have improved.

I have to admit that I'm still trying to get to proper terms with the Matrix rules as yet, but personally I'd suggest that in situations where the team is out together, especially at a run, have the hacker stay in AR. Still plenty of stuff you can do there, and it saves you having to try and deal with the full VR world.

One way to combat new-ness to SR4(A) is to create a worksheet with the basic dice pools the character will have for standard situations. Talk, dodge, shoot, soak, etc, etc. Then when making rolls, you can just be like, roll this DP, but add 2 dice or whatever the case is. I agree with some of the suggestions to start small, then expand. If you play a series of one shots. Start basic, with social and basic combat. Next run, throw in rigger or hacking. The run after that, throw in some magic. The players will get a flavor of a couple different skill sets and will help me over all develop a sense of what kind of character they want to play. They might like something they played. Or they might like how someone else's character played.

Also, as you prep for runs. Research the specific thing you want to introduce into the game. Have your players read that section as well. Slowly, you'll end up covering the whole book.

I don't see hacking working out well given that limitation. The rules are hardly clear and well written, trying to do it under these circumstances? Maybe you'd you'd be better off just not bothering with the rules and just faking it?

you mean cheating?? I think I'm gonna follow the upper advice, social and phys. combat then rigger and hackers and finally some magic. Fortunately my I-also-can-read-some-English-without-imploding friend is the one wishing to run a hacker, but I'm getting afraid with you all telling me that the hacking rules are so confusing!

PS.: You can't imagine how much I'm learning!

Not cheating. More of a free-form narrative approach. You know what people want to do with hacking, you have an idea of what you want them to accomplish. You have an idea about how tough the target is and how skilled the PC is. so they describe what they want to do and roll some dice. If the plan isn't stupid and the roll seems reasonable compared to the roll of the defenders they achieve some/most/all of what they want. They completely hose it bad things happen, or they get bad info, etc.

It's not cheating if you're the one running the game. If you're running a game and you make things up in it, that's called "GMing".

Do this:


To clarify, I'm not saying "you're the GM so blindside the players with whatever you feel like", but that it's your job to make the game work, and simplifying it and running it somewhat free-form like kzt said is probably the best way to do so. It's certainly what I'd do; just be sure to drop your players a warning that you're going to be doing hacking in a more narrative fashion so they don't start with incorrect preconceptions about how hacking is going to work in your game.

There are a couple of threads around here that have big lists of 'pre-generated' characters made by the DS community that use only the basic rules, but fail to suck as spectacularly as the ones in the book.

The Matrix rules can be simple or complicated. It definitely helps to have a little side card with a list of common dice pools (similar to the Matrix combat table already in the book, but more in depth). When it comes to running the Matrix, I would suggest starting with the basic rules from the core book, then once you're comfortable with them, move on to the advanced rules in Unwired. If he's not wanting to play a technomancer, then those are a set of rules you can ignore early on, as are the rigging ones if he wants to be an outright hacker. AI's are another thing that can be left out rules wise, appearing only as fluff if you want them. In fact, I would use this advice with any area. Start with just the SR4 core book for a few one or two shot runs while you get used to the rules, then start adding in things like Unwired, Street Magic, Arsenal, Augmentation, etc one at a time.

As for a basic, well rounded starting team, it depends on how many players your group has. Ideally you should have a combat specialist (ideally an actual street sam built both for taking and dealing damage), a magical specialist (specifically a mage/shaman, leave the Street Magic stuff alone until you're comfortable with magic), a face (who can backup the sam in dealing damage), and a Matrix specialist (mundane hacker, again no TM, AI, rigging, or Unwired). If you have more than 4 players, you can start adding in things like an infiltration specialist, an offensive combat specialist (i.e. a gun adept or anyone else specialized in dealing out lots of damage but not necessarily very good at taking it), a driver, a rigger, or any of the other areas.

I speed up the hacker hacking by having him roll 30 hacking+program tests, then starting 1d20 positions into the list. He doesnt roll, he just says what he is going to do and provided it isnt Matrix Perception or Cybercombat he just goes with it. The use of Edge is impacted by him only able to roll the edge rating after the fact (if not matrix perception or cybercombat which is where he spends edge anyways) but all in all it greatly speeds things up by him telling me what he is doing then me marking off the value and telling him what he see's as a result.

Since my player's hacker can get in a lot more stuff without undue slowing of the game its a pretty good tradeoff on his end.

I actually really like the hacking rules.
If you don't mind giving your hacker some love, it adds a ton of story and theme options.

1. Every node looks different. Styling on a nerdy spider's nexus could be anything from a VR stone age with dinosaurs to an alien planet.
It's all narration, so make your nodes unique. A node could look like an epic dragon battle or a wild west gun fight. Most GMs don't bother explaining the VR scene. Naturally, if your hacker is just rolling over and over it gets boring for players. Narration is both essential and cool.

2. Security on every node is different. Would a node have one giant monster program that does everything, or like 10 single program agents who all overwhelm intruders with attacks and tracking? My Ares nodes tend to have a couple of armored agents all doing different things vs. my Aztechnology nodes which zerg the hell out of hackers.

3. Every node has limitations. I usually give each access level different functions. Every account can't do everything. Let your hacker figure out what each account level can and can't do. Maybe you can't get into a certain area without an unhackable admin account. That's a perfect opportunity for the rest of the group to go grab an admin in the meat and interrogate the hell out of him.

Describe the matrix the same as you would describe a barrens dive bar or a corporate enclave.
If your GM doesn't bother to flesh it out, it's just ones and zeros.

That is exactly what my character is. I initially planned to play a sniper, but after realizing our group didn't have a hacker, made the changes to have this role as well. Its also a first character so I feel like it works well. Usually, I do my stuff at the same time as the mages do their thing (spirits and such) so everyone's rolling already and that way nobody is left out... besides the face and dedicated combat person. Though, the face usually does talking when nobody else does as well so that works, and the combat guy is also our driver and mechanic. Works out pretty well.

And i really think the combat guy is really the one to be left out more often than not.

Yup, if you can't so anything other then shoot people we'll just leave you in the truck until it's time to shoot someone.

I first read that as "leave you in the trunk" and thought, "huh, I guess the trunk monkey is actually a popular character archetype."

(Emphasis mine.)

Do you?


You're talking about describing the matrix well, fleshing it out, differentiating between locations on it, and making places unique. These things aren't dependent on the matrix rules, and can be done just as easily be done while using relatively free-form hacking that ignores all of the wonkiness of actual rules themselves.

So, think about it. Is it really the hacking rules you like? Or is it the narrative possibilities that hacking offers?

I wonder what would happen if I show this to the ork sammy in our group?

If he's anything like our guy, the backup character becomes a heavy-weapons dwarf with a fondness for enclosed spaces.

I did the same thing.
Which is why I try (emphasis on try) to get my gun bunnies into situations that they're no good at.

Nope, you're right Emy.
I like the idea of the matrix

The actual rules slow down my game, leave people out and piss me off.

That was my original question! I have only three players right now, a fourth one could be attending soon, and two of them have never played a cyberpunk game, so I'm trying to make SR as reachable as a I can! With this thread something has become clear to me, I'll add some spicy combat at first, then magic will do its appearing and finally all the hacking stuff will be added slowly.

The magic rules may be confusing, hard to manage, whatever... people are used to the "magic" concept in games. Hacking will be too new and too alien at the same time.

And for the beginning group... I'm gonna make a small group of shadowrunners, with the magician/shaman and the hacker as backups at "home", and I'll let the players to switch characters until they find a suitable one.

Playing a is-there-anything-to-shoot-at guy could be less than interesting, but, sincerely, almost everyone can understand an archetype like that. Lets say that the finishing touches will come along the adventures.