Haha, good for your player then! That's fast thinking in a pretty bad situation. I just know I hate it when I'm a player and the GM pulls out a 'problem' that I know my character wouldn't have. Like, if he never runs a red light. Cool.

(And I see he had a backup comm, so you weren't murdering him. More misunderstanding, I apologize.)

No worries and thanks for having the guts to do so. ^_^

Errr last i recall unexpected crap happens all the time in life, car crashes, laptop batteries left out int eh cold and being completely drained or left out in the heat and then flat exploding. Personally critical glitches are always bad and always have the potential to damage you or your gear, and as your profficiency with items and skills go up your less likely to have them, so I feel the system is mapped well after all.

And of course, a phone call is not blowing your 'link up cause you don't need to make a roll for it in the absolute majority of cases, thus removing the potential for a glitch.
Things that require a roll may fail, however, and if something can fail, it can fail catastrophically.

Not my life, Lurker! Seriously though, I'm just saying it seems like a strangely 'unrelated' glitch, and you can see Hida mentioning it above as such. Analogy: a critical glitch on a vehicle test (including Gunnery!) is not likely to result in the gas tank being empty.

It could though: You critically glitch your driving test you go over a a curb sttriking the gas tank on a park bench. In fairly short order your gas tank is empty. This does happen to people.

I'm with Yerameyahu on that.. it feels strange. Like you'd have the conversation:

GM: Your commlink's battery runs out.
Player: Huh? Well, I guess I replace it.
GM: Did you think to bring batteries?
Player: I didn't know they could run out.
GM: Nowhere does it say they don't.
Player: Nowhere does it say they do. Spare batteries aren't even in the equipment list. Anyway, if that stuff happens in the setting, then my professional hacker would have brought spare batteries along, and thought to replace them before the current batch was completely exhausted.
GM: But.. but..
Player: *throws dice at GM's head*

A gun jamming if it's handled roughly, that I can get. Seems a logical effect of how you were handling it.* But sudden power failure isn't really a normal result of using a computer.

*Though some of those guns, described as being far more reliable than normal guns, could be immune to that. Glitch-proofness could be a selling point for a gun with otherwise mediocre stats.

Man, some of all have lived very sheltered lives (and i am somewht envious) if bad power has never affected your computing. I do agree with you that it would be an extremely dick move to presume that someone with the hardware skill didn't have some means on their person at most times to get their primary bread device back up and running again. We're talking about a complex action if that.

LurkerOutThere, that example is not 'running out of gas'. That's damage to the vehicle. And the car, like the commlink, has an always-visible gas meter, with automatic alerts when it gets low-but-not-empty. I'm just saying, it's a less *expectable* and believable glitch effect than a gun jam, etc.

I agree on that: the result matters. If they can fix it *fast*, that's a big difference (the difference between a gun jam and a gunsplosion). But, as I said, it's now down to non-critical glitch territory. Honestly, your curb-breaks-gas-tank example is a *good* critical glitch, to me.

Ok Yerameyahu what do you do for a living?

Without any rancor involved I'm an IT guy first in the military now int he civilian world. Battery failures and power failures are a major fact of life. Batteries can be defective and give a full reading right up until the point that they fail. Power can flicker suddenly and the UPS or the generators don't switch over properly. Otherwise smart people can forget to fill up before making the drive between fire bases and then need rescuing later. Maybe we're talking past each other but my point is bad/unexpected crap does happen in life. That's why it's called unexpected. Glitches and especially crit glitches seem like a good time to represent that.

Also the gas gauge on my truck is currently broken, i have to use the trip odometer. I've only failed to observe it once, you only need to. Comparatively I've only ever had a firearm jam on me once or tice and I've fired some crappy ammo

Fixed.

This is my wife's gas gauge: http://www.cars101.com/subaru/forester/for...09dashright.JPG
This is mine: http://images.thecarconnection.com/lrg/200...100265670_l.jpg

I have to look twice every time I drive her car because if I think she just filled her tank, chances are, it's empty.

My car's gas gauge works, it's just miscalibrated.

When it's reading at a quarter tank, it could actually be anywhere from a quarter full, to almost empty.

I've learned to refill the tank before it gets there.





-k

Lurker, I'm saying that (especially in 2070, remember?), you know how much gas/power you have. As you suggest, the *only* way this could happen is if the battery suddenly *breaks*, which is not the same thing as 'you forgot to charge it'. I'm saying that a glitch should not alter history, and the character didn't forget to charge his one critical piece of (hacker) gear that lasts for days. I'm also saying that power failure is an oddly tangential glitch, compared to something more directly related to whatever hacking action he was taking. I gave the example of a Gunnery vehicle test emptying the gas tank.

Having owned two laptops, and been around many more:

I have never seen someone lose power without knowing it was coming. With two exceptions:
1) Battery is non-functional and they're on AC power and someone tripped over the cord (and thus not applicable to this argument)
2) Battery comes unseated accidentally and loses connection (glitch level, as you just shove it back in, start back up, and keep going).

While batteries can sometimes give incorrect readings, there's another device that batteries have that can measure if the first device is working properly. I have no idea how the hell it works, just that it does. My first laptop's batteries still hold a charge (about an hour, tops) but the power level meter can no longer tell. If I use the button on the battery to get a reading (instead of looking at Windows) I have 5 lights. 5 green means I have full charge (*****), 1 green means I have no charge (*oooo). This is what I get now: three in an on-off-on-off pattern (*o*o*) that blink.

You are assuming that everyone checks the power levels regularly.

I can tell you this does not happen.





-k

And I'm telling you that it's 2070. Everything is connected, intelligent, and augmented reality. The *hacker* would always know if he had even the slightest battery issue. Our laptops today pop up little alerts as the battery even approaches low-ish.

If my life is even remotely reliant on my 'link's battery not dying on me, I'll be sure to have big flashy red AR signs blinking annoyingly at the edges of my field of vision when it's even coming close.

Also, a few days worth of battery power seems kind of low end for 2070s tech. Hell, the latest generation of smartphones runs for a day without a problem, as long as you don't have GPS running all the time. Hell, we have flashlights that run for two hours off a single capacitor and not even a two minute charge.

The problem is how common are "glitches" and how should we model them? For example we shouldn't have to make rolls just to walk down the hallway, but we've all tripped from time to time. You might commute to work for years without getting into a near accident. You might always keep your keys in your pocket, but you took them out of your pocket to use the can opener for the first time and now you're locked out of your apartment.

This is a common RPG issue. It's really easy to say "my character always checks his gas levels, his tire pressure, checks his transmission fluid, follows the suggested maintenance schedule, gets on his hands and knees and checks underneath the car every time he drives." Actually living that way and keeping to it 100% of the time is another issue. I generally follow that skill checks often cover this sort of thing and your ability to stick to it.

To be fair, I am a fan of the "describe how your character failed/succeeded that roll" post roll explanations typically favored by lighter RPGs. It lets RPGs cover a lot of small details that sometimes really do matter. It's quite post-hocy ("I made a mistake when cleaning my gun last time so it jams!") but it isn't like you were covering the gun cleaning anyways so it isn't retconny. And for all its (badly written) rules, shadowrun 4th is quite abstract and thus leads well to this style idea. If you can trust your players (which you might not be able to), you might want them to describe the glitch and what happens.

"You know, that last attack that bounced off you? You've just nowt realized that the thing that stopped the bullet was the battery pack on your gun's Smartlink."






-k

This, I believe is WHY he wouldn't notice it. Everything else is competing for your attention and is you see the same thing EVERY day, your brain ignores it. It's no more noticed then signs in a storefront window that you can walk by and not even pay attention to.

Reality has enough stuff in it. Augment it and my brain just can't up with all the junk. And now you want me to notice something important in the midst of all the confusion? It's a car chase and in the middle of warning signs about driving too fast, people shooting at the car, cops telling us to pull over, you expect me to notice the warning light that says some ganger drained my power supply while we were pulling the job?

I ran an information booth at GenCon a few years ago. I kept getting the same question asked, over and over, "Where is X event located?" So, I made up a sign with 1 inch clearly readable block letters indicating Event X is in Room Y. I located it such that anyone approaching the booth would have it right at eye level in front of their face.

I still kept getting people asking where Event X was.

Also, working a summer job way back in high school. I got a lady angrily demanding where it said she couldn't park there when I asked her to move her vehicle.

I didn't say anything, I just pointed to the big sign that said "NO PARKING" that was right next to her.

People are stupid and do not notice stuff. Often to the point where it kills them. Do you realize just how many stupidity-related deaths there are every year?

Technology might have changed by 2070. I am not so sure people will.



-k

People actually do die all the time because they failed to pay attention to gauges or other items they know their life is dependent on.

Throw in all the attention draws of combat, high stress, low sleep enviroments and I don't have a huge isssue witha critical glitch on a computing related test indicating the Hacker forgot to charge the battery last night. He might not ever fail by that agian, but that one time it's entirely plausible he did.

And now the value of discussion is done as we've both reached our points, we both have our reasons for feeling that way. Neither invalidates the other.

But But
You're wrong...

on the Internet!

How can we stop?

Because some alerts are more important than others, and people get skilled at dealing with AR. And by 'last night', it's 'every night and day for the last week', because of 2070 power densities. It's just an odd, 'post-hoc-y', and kind of bunnying glitch, that's all.

Do they actually state that batteries last for a long time? It's left deliciously vague. Part of the problemw e're seeing now is even though battery technology has made huge leaps just in the past 5 years the amount of crap we're cramming onto devices is increasing at an even greater rate. At some point presumably in the SR universe they'll likely have to decide what amount of uptime their willing to accept on a device. This could easily explain the difference in allowed number of users/icons on a comlink vs a nexus. I'm just positing out loud at this point now.

Eh. I think at this point we're focusing on unimportant details. Batteries are irrelevant, really, they're just a convenient excuse why something stopped working. It could be due to a thousand other things. It really doesn't matter. The thing stopped working. Either it's a temporary thing in case of a regular glitch, or maybe permanently for a critical glitch.

As I said before, batteries in SR last as long as Plot.




-k

Battery life isn't spelled out, but energy efficiency must be crazy in 2070. Didn't they say that cyberware is biopowered now?

Tru dat, Blitz. Actually, the peak-discharge laser 'batteries' have already been mentioned. From that, you could work out roughly how much energy they store… it's a hell of a lot.

Yes, I know that the point is 'something stopped working'. I'm *only* saying that 'you forgot to charge/didn't notice it was low' isn't the right fluff for that. That's retroactive bunnying, altering history *and* playing their character for them; why do that, when 'crap, something shorts out!' is available?

I believe that the sort of person who will complain about glitch A will complain about glitch B.

maybe a ghost passed by and caused sudden battery drain?

Except that in SR it's well known that ghosts don't exist and that spirits can't effect the material plane unless materialized.

Well-known... or not proven incorrect yet, due to the insufficient nature of modern methods?

Tune in next week while our daring crew investigates a really creepy place, and we'll make YOU a believer!

It's been posited in-universe for SR that there's no substantial difference between certain Spirits of Man and the respective people they represent.

Edit: Not to mention the possible origins of Shedim (which we do not conclusively know).

Well, and if you accept War as being canon.. then there are ghosts :/

There are ghosts in Running Wild, page 178.

I think Draco's point wasn't so much that there aren't ghosts, but that ghosts aren't exempt from the materialisation requirement of other spirits because they're spirits (be they spirits of man, imprinted wild spirits, or something else). Of course, I could be wrong! It's all a bit OT anyway

This.
(Although I will admit that "ghost" as a critter wasn't in my knowledge. I have a copy of Running Wild, but I haven't actually LOOKED at it)

Can I get a clarification here please?

The first paragraph of the Knockdown rules in SR4A says

but the second paragraph, when talking specifically about gel rounds, says

my emphasis. Note the rules now say DV not damage taken.

So which is it??
Is it is a question of the kinetic energy imparted by the round - in which case the base DV of the weapon as modified by ammo type (but not adding attack successes) would be appropriate.
Is it the damage inflicted - which is more a case of shock & collapse than knockdown (and this would nearly always make the 10 box rule irrelevant).
Or perhaps it should be the kinetic energy applied to a vulnerable part of the body - ie DV modified by attack successes.

OK, another stupid question, this time regarding S&S rounds: some folks here claim that S&S rounds can hurt materialized spirits, however there is no information in the corebook that electricity damage is treated differently from "normal weapons" and thus is not stopped by the spirits' default immunity. Care to clarify?

ItNW does apply to SnS rounds. However since Immunity is treated as Hardened Armor, the -1/2 AP aspect of SnS also applies. Thus a called shot with 1 net hit from a SnS round can hurt a force 10 spirit (6 base + 4 called shot + 1 net hit versus the spirit ItNW value of 20 / 2).

AP -half is pretty good at telling ItNW to piss off.

No idea.

I don't have my books handy, but since the idea of a bullet's kinetic energy knocking someone over is silly, I have always assumed it was "shock & collapse". So, unless the rules explicitly state otherwise, I would go with damage taken.

Splendid. Can spirits get KO'd or do they need to be zapped until their Physical damage track goes pop?

On the Knockdown question, I don't see how net hits logically translates to *either* kinetic energy or damage. It's 'how good you hit them'; maybe you hit them somewhere with greater leverage for how they happened to be standing, or maybe it's the greater damage, or both. Fluff-wise, it doesn't care.

If either of a spirits tracks are full, they are disrupted.

Announcer: Headshot!

Since when did spirits get 2 damage tracks??

To me, the idea that a taser, SnS, stun baton or shock glove would have any effect on a materialised spirit is daft. These weapons are designed to cause neuro-muscular chaos in a living creature. A spirits materialised body has no nerves, has no muscles, it is nothing but a solid lump of ecto goo - it is more akin to an object than a creature. IMO, only physical damage should affect it, anything that relies on a physiological response (taser type weapons, toxins, etc) - nope.

Hmm, now that i think of it, Bogota! may just have brought an answer to SnS Abuse everywhere . .
If there's a CHARGE spell, then why not a DISCHARGE spell either?
LOS(A) and you are looking at much useless ammo? O.o