You make that sound like that's bad thing.

only because it makes things like this happen:
GM:"OK, now for the Decker. You other guys, there's a McDonalds 30 minutes from here, go eat something, bring me back something too, and we should be done when you are back"

Not a problem for me. I don't play Shadowrun, I just read the rulebooks and think, "Wow, that'd be cool if I had a group to play with." Sadface.

That was the problem, yeah.

Ah, ok, then it's not much of a problem. I feel the same, i haven't played in well over one year by now . .

Yup, Decker-Work usually got handwaved by the GM by way of using an NPC for this and that . .

Different kind of problem. :'(

Technically, in Play by Post or something like that, the Decker would not be as much of a Problem.
Figures, you need to play with computers so the computer specialist becomes a playable option . .

What about the other stuff? I've heard strange things about spirits in SR3.

Whine whine whine. I've been wanting to place since '92.

Spirits are ALLWAYS Strange ... Especially, to me.
Can you be a bit more specific about this? ^^

True, but I've heard about 'hearth' or 'city' spirits, and different rules for hermetic and shamanic conjuring.

Ah, that. Yup, all true.
Shamans basically snap their fingers and they have a specific spirit of a location that they can not keep.
Hermetics need to buy stuff and do hour long rituals to get elementals which shamans can not get. And the Hermetic can keep these.
Take a look at the NSRCG3 linked in my Signature and look through the magic stuff in there. It's not much, but it shows a bit more detail.

And other traditions do one or the other? What about possession?

*Blinks* Really? You've never heard of a Hearth Spirit? Well, guess that shows how weird my upbringing was.

They're Spirits of the House and Building. "Hearth" is a type of fireplace or oven, and is sometimes used to refer to as a home. Any building that you're inside has a Hearth Spirit, which can be good or bad considering how well the building has been treated, and the types of people living in it. If it's an old home with a loving family, that's one powerful spirit you can call in. If it's a laboratory full of human test subjects with no budget for painkillers, quite toxic.

City Spirits are the external version of Hearth Spirits, spirits of the City, the Roads, the Skyways, and so on.

They're Human Spirits given to objects.

Shamanic and Hermetic are the two big categories.
Any other tradition is, per the rules, either shamanic or hermetic in nature.
Posession can be done by all traditions, if they can get spirits, as far as i remember.

I just reorganised my wishlist.

And you can Dikote your Ally Spirit and have Sex with it.
SR3 is much more detailed than SR4 is, right now, in my eyes.
And it has rules for each of these small little details too.
Thus it becomes much more complicated, of course . .

SO MUCH WANT

*snickers*
look around in your FLGS, they probably still have some of the SR3 Books.
Get the BigBook, Man and Machine, Can(n)on Companion, Magic in the Shadows and the Shadowrun Companion.
If you want Matrix and Rigging(yes, those two were 2 complete big books in themselves) Rigger 3 and Matrix.

Rigger 3 is still my favorite book ever (warts and all).

Yeah, there was so much fun stuff in there . .

Don't have one. There's probably less than 10 in the whole country.

i love being german/in hamburg, germany . . i can name 5 alone in the city right of the bat, and if i looked around more, i'd probably find some more ^^

Like stats for a supercarrier

Still, War! have brought that to SR4 iirc...

i am STILL looking for that Riggery Toybox pdf file . .
Stats for a motorized wheelchair, a gummi-boat, a prrot, a toy tank, a locomotive engine and a howitzer . . i can't find it anymore ._.

Can't say it rings any bells.

How to brick an AR Hacker's link.

Step 1) See the AR Hacker.
Step 2) Counter-hack the AR Hacker
Step 3) Drop Pavlovian Data Bombs on everything, starting with the Disarm prog.

It's way less of an instant win than perma-nuke.

Step 1) See the AR hacker.
Step 2) Shoot the AR hacker.
Step 3) Repeat Step 3
Step 4) PROFIT (Because you save on attack progs. )

Take an actual brick to it? You know, that'd probably be more painful to him/her than the hands would be. An interesting interrogation technique...

Or beat him up with his own link. Irony always makes it more painful.

gna . . if even somebody like you does not know what i am talking about/where to get it, then i guess it is pretty hopeless <.<
it was even on the official shadowrun page for quite some time . . i think it was still from the fasa/fanpro team for SR3 . .

i may have read references to it at some point, but beyond that i'm blank.

See the hacker = matrix perception

Once you've got his matrix ID, you can start hacking him.