We has a PC AI in my last campaign. He used another PC's PAN initially - the AI had Rootkit and wasn't detected until it took temporary control over the PAN, including the other PC's wired reflexes and skillwires, scaring the crap out of the other player! Haha. Eventually it moved into a dedicated commlink they carried around and *eventually* moved into human looking, bipedal drone and could move amoung metahumanity with relative ease. This actually worked a treat. If you use an AI NPC I think it could work well.

We also had an NPC human hacker on call, but I didn't want the players to use him for every random hacking job (the AI player turned up sporadically). So I made it so the NPC hacker would happily schedule jobs weeks in advance, preferred to work 9-5 only (was a family man basically and his family didn't know what he was doing, but they didn't know that). He would only do jobs over the Matrix and never face to face. OH and if you called outside hours it would be very sketchy if he'd answer the commlink or not (I'd roll 50/50). If he did, he would pillage them on his fee (triple hourly rate, two hour minimum - more if the caller pissed him off or it was interrupting family time). He was a very competent and skilled hacker but I made sure the PCs would bleed financially if they ever called on him. It really made them think "how badly do we need him? is there another way?".

I had an alternative they could use too. Their alternative NPC hacker was an young elf party animal with a shaky rep and drug habit (read: tempo). She was as skilled, but much cheaper, usually drop whatever she was doing for a job, but she was not always reliable (read: known for being high on a job, or just plain "forgetting"). They never used her in the end.

OK I'm sure at one point or another, you've hit the problem where you need a hacker, none of your players wants to play one and you have the icky situation of how you deal with it.

Do you use an NPC and completely eliminate the situation or use an NPC and try not to trivialise it - and if so, how?

My last campaign I had a few methods (quote this from another post) but I felt like I finally had the process to a point where it worked well



My purpose for this thread is to see how others have dealt with this challenge?

Cheers

- J.

In my current group I'm using a R4 Agent and giving him orders as the hacker. 8 dice to hack, so far so good.

do Runs in Chicago, Laos or Geneva

The simplest way, and dare I saw, almost best way I've seen it done is to dice off between the NPC Hacker's Connection Rating vs the target node's Firewall.
Check for glitches, and go cinematic from there. Reroll every now and then if they have to do something, and maybe assign a bonus or a penalty to either side if someone is doing really well (like well enough to get admin access, or the team stole a security class login for the hacker beforehand)
(per strict rules the Connection would be a dice pool bonus to the hack attempt, but....)

If you're running an NPC hacker, its because you DONT want to deal with the Matrix bogging down the game, but at the same time you want to see how well they are doing and leave a random element to shake things up a little. Which probably means you want to roll something instead of just deciding how it plays out, but at the same time you want to keep it fast and not interrupting your narrative or the gameplay of your real players.
Basically its quick and easy and doesn't get in the way.

The simplest way, and dare I saw, almost best way I've seen it done is to dice off between the NPC Hacker's Connection Rating vs the target node's Firewall.
Check for glitches, and go cinematic from there. Reroll every now and then if they have to do something, and maybe assign a bonus or a penalty to either side if someone is doing really well (like well enough to get admin access, or the team stole a security class login for the hacker beforehand)
(per strict rules the Connection would be a dice pool bonus to the hack attempt, but....)

If you're running an NPC hacker, its because you DONT want to deal with the Matrix bogging down the game, but at the same time you want to see how well they are doing and leave a random element to shake things up a little. Which probably means you want to roll something instead of just deciding how it plays out, but at the same time you want to keep it fast and not interrupting your narrative or the gameplay of your real players.
Basically its quick and easy and doesn't get in the way.

Until the 4th ed rules came along it was understood the hackers were always NPC's in our games. it by passed the slower decker/hacker rules and allowed a regular element for plot exposition.

The simplest way, and dare I saw, almost best way I've seen it done is to dice off between the NPC Hacker's Connection Rating vs the target node's Firewall.
Check for glitches, and go cinematic from there. Reroll every now and then if they have to do something, and maybe assign a bonus or a penalty to either side if someone is doing really well (like well enough to get admin access, or the team stole a security class login for the hacker beforehand)
(per strict rules the Connection would be a dice pool bonus to the hack attempt, but....)

If you're running an NPC hacker, its because you DONT want to deal with the Matrix bogging down the game, but at the same time you want to see how well they are doing and leave a random element to shake things up a little. Which probably means you want to roll something instead of just deciding how it plays out, but at the same time you want to keep it fast and not interrupting your narrative or the gameplay of your real players.
Basically its quick and easy and doesn't get in the way.

This is a solid simplification, although I'd possibly go with "Hacking Skill" rather than "Connection Rating" I could see arguments for both.

The better solution is to do both. Best of either number. That way the player doesn't ever really get screwed out of effectiveness.

I'm glad this idea is as well-recieved as it has been!