Only things you want to have access easily.

Yeah... If I were setting up the security on a satellite with THOR shot capability, here's how I'd do it:

Each engagement authorization (which can be more than one weapon launch in rapid succession, mind you,) has to be authorized by use of a one-time pad. On the weapon platform's end, it has a battery full of these pads, all of them on ridiculously tiny, physical media, which can only be moved into position to even be read, mind you, by the transmission of a heavily-encrypted arming command.

Dirtside, the one-time pad is printed on hardcopy, not stored in any kind of electronic medium. Each hardcopy has what looks like a legitimate code printed on it under visual light, and, if viewed in thermographic vision with a thermographic light source aimed at it, an entirely-different code that also looks legitimate. Both of these codes are, in fact, illegitimate; sending the first code locks the satellite down for two hours and has the satellite send a warning to the owner's high-threat response teams that the facility has been compromised. Sending the second indicates that illegitimate users are close to figuring out the secret, and triggers a weapon launch on the facility which houses the pads. (Under the presumption that the facility has been hopelessly overrun and hostile conventional forces, rather than a small raid team, have captured the facility.)

The correct authorization code is on the back side of the paper, and only visible in the ultraviolet spectrum, when the paper is back-lit. Nowhere in the facility is there to be any set of UV lights or viewing goggles; those are flown in only during times when deployment is likely to be needed.

just one authorisation? not required multiple simultaneous ones from independently authorised subjects each with a personal access code that needs to supplement the activation codes?

It's not like they're nukes. However, if things are going to shit, you do not want any delays: one guy who knows how to do it (and has access to the safe, which is usually going to be the same thing,) can run in and start dropping Thor shots. Sometimes, that one guy is all you have left, especially if the CC issued an Omega Order and you're past the stage of survival and onto the stage of "No FUCK YOU!" mutually assured destructive retaliation.

I may go down, but I'm taking those sons-of-bitches with me. Let's see how profitable things are when I'm dropping Thor shots on all your headquarters, most profitable/vital industrial/commercial/transshippment sites, and everywhere your owners are reputed to be.

Given the destructive potential of a THOR shot it is like they are nukes. The command and control system for the release of the kiloton range THOR missiles are going to be similar to those for tactical nuclear weapons today. The smaller subkiloiton yield Freya weapons may have looser release codes but no one is going to take chances on some hacker launching a THOR shot after all if an Ares THOR shot takes out a SK Facility , Lofwyr is probably going to retaliate.
The last scenario you give is the one current strategic arsenals are intended for and they have release protocols similar to those suggested by the previous poster, if you are being wiped out then you won't really care that your enemies die 5 minutes later. The THOR weapons are fairly vulnerable but we also know that Several Mega;s (at least SK, Ares ,AZT) have nukes and submarines so they probably have subs on long term patrol which provides their secure revenge strike capability .

200 meter radius total destruction and no radioactive fallout is far from a nuke. Comparatively, the bombs dropped on Japan each had a total destruction radius of about a mile, and with serious damage at least twice that (whereas a Thor missile won't do any damage at all after 599 meters. And remember that those two nukes are quite low-yield, compared to later designs (16 and 21 kT for Little Boy and Fat Man, respectively. Tsar Bomba was around three thousand times that, and was designed for double what it was used in its test detonation.)

Actually, I have one even better than that: authorised Fire Control command personnel are universally fitted with cybereyes, that are in turn equipped with custom UV-only Eye Light systems, and UV-spectra sensors as well.

That means, if you have an "OMG right now" emergency, someone on-site has the ability to read the OTT. And better, to do so DISCRETELY, with noone else on-site being aware of how, except MAYBE catching him/her looking at the back-side of the OTT sheet.

Additionally, it means there's no protocols for "delivery of special lighting and viewing gear in the event of imminent launch" that hostile outsiders might get wind of.

EDIT: and one even better, they also have an implanted commlink. That has a Nanotech Passkey system - the key to which is stored in the same safe as the OTTs. And until the key is inserted, even the Fire Control officer DOES NOT KNOW about the UV mode of their own cybereyes. The key switches it on, but only while the (RFID-tagged) OTT is directly in his field of view.

All he knows is, "put this key in yoru head, and then look at the BACK of the page for the real code".

A UV Eye Light system wouldn't work, Pax, because it has to be backlit in UV. Front-lighting it won't reveal jack shit.

Besides, you don't want this to be something strictly limited to only guys with cybereyes. After all, they might get an upgrade off-the-books, and/or they might have someone not on your payroll take a look at the eyes who will say "Huh, that's funny. Why do you have a UV mode? And an eye light system?"

You won't need any special protocols. You just hand them to the guy who's going to do the launch. (Besides, you don't want it to be too impossible for potential Runners to overcome... Just really, really hard, with the mother of all lethal traps if they cock it up badly.)

Gosh my Ignorance is outstanding , how did I ever confuse a kiloton range weapon with the 16-21 kt weapons used on Japan. Perhaps I considered that a weapon capable of destroying that much of a city IS a weapon of mass destruction and of course building THOR weapons with more than 1 Kt yield would be rather easy. I really did not know that modern weapons can have yields of up to 50mt because I am an idiot

200 Meter Radius Vaporization zone is a Quarter Mile Diameter, with 600 Meter Radius at 3/4's of a Mile Diameter Destruction (though not total). That ain't no popgun. That is equivalent to low yield Tactical Nukes. SO yes, it IS a Nuke. Just one that does not have any detrimental fallout to overcome later in the cleanup.

Given the actual rules for what it does, it's closer to the ATBIP conventional bomb in damage inflicted, than it is to nuclear weapons. And not having nuclear fallout is another good reason that it isn't a nuke.
It's a very high powered conventional bomb. Not a nuke.

Potayto-Potahto

Would it suck to get a nuke dropped 5 km away? Yes it would, and you'd probably die. Would it suck to get a conventional bomb dropped 5 km away? Yes it would, but you'd probably survive.

However, when it talks like a Duck, Walks like a Duck and Looks like a Duck (1-2 KT Explosive Power), it MUST be a Duck.
2KT is still 2KT whether it is Conventional (2,000 Tons of TNT), Unconventional (Thor), or Nuclear. Yes, there are worse consequences for Nuclear, but those caught in the blast are just as dead.
I do get what you are saying, but it is largely irrelevant at point of impact.

2KT should be modeled identically in game as far as destructive capacity on the ground goes (after all, it is the same destructive potential). The only differences would be the radiation and fallout of the Nuke (due to composition of the bomb, not the explosive force of the bomb).

My point is that it's a bloody huge difference, because point and time of impact is not the only important thing about a bomb. You want a bomb to tear down a building so that you can dig up some orichalcum that's underneath? Thor shot does that without the workers you're sending in to dig having to wear radiation suits, and your own facility downwind of that building can still remain operational, where it would otherwise have been evacuated for months. Huge. Fucking. Difference.

Congratulations. You reinvented the magnetic hard drive.

And I say it is cheaper to use conventional demolition for such a mundane task. THOR shots are for Combat purposes, not demolition. You do not use a 2 KT explosive to bring down a building. If you are, then you have a very skewed idea on how THOR is supposed to work.

I do get what you are saying, but in war, such considerations do not really matter all that much if you are inflicting them upon the enemy.

Way to miss the point. I'm trying to say that if you want people in the area where you just shot a nuke, you have to either use bulky radiation suits or wait for the months the nuclear fallout takes to disperse enough for safety, not to mention the damage it will cause to people downwind of the blast, even pretty far from the point of detonation. Not so with a Thor missile.

And in wars, it can matter quite a lot being able to get people on the ground without them dropping dead.

Or, you know, use Drones in the irradiated zones. Or not care and just use people. You sound like you think that the Corps are kind to their combatants.

Wasn't this post about hacking bank accounts? Boggles the mind sometimes how far astray things can get around here.

Anyone played Curiosity - What's Inside the Cube recently?

Schrodinger's Hat.

And depending on the yield, so too could the guy (of embarrassment) who ordered the deployment of that nuke in the first place. You'll wanna check the side bubble in War! on page 159. In short, the bigger the nuclear boom, the less reliable it becomes.

Which is kind of stupid if you ask me.

In no other instances that I am aware of does physics just take a lassez-faire attitude without specific, explicit magical intervention, but for some reason nuclear initiations sometimes fail to work because bullshit?

Ok, lets say we make the "Bankjob Commlink" who's only job is to get cash from cheap commlinks owned by wageslaves.

1. Spoofing the commlink gives you access to it
2. 2-step verification would block you at the bank verification for the transfer
3. Spoofing Paypal would be easier as there is no 2-step verification

When your agent spoofs the commlink to get the cash moved from the bank I'm pretty sure a bank applied hand-held code device would tell the owner someone wants to have a transaction verified - That's where you would fail.

Services similar to paypal would be easier as they do not require a 2-step verification over a 2nd device. This would create a paper trail and the customer most likely reimbursed and the account purged.

It would work as long as the transfers were fairly small so that most people who have a bad sense of their economy would not bother looking into the finer transaction details.

But, in that case you'd have to go for a LOT of accounts instead.

Hell, even my E-mail have 2-step verification today out of sheer paranoia.

Memory fails me a little but didn't the second Great Ghost Dance do something to nukes? I haven't read that trilogy in years. Maybe I should.

Copied out of the bubble: "Some postulate that the Earth’s manafield effects rapid nuclear reactions, while others believe that Gaia has some sort of cosmic veto power over nukes, but the fact remains: nuclear weapons have become unreliable." & "...with the general guideline that the smaller the nuke, the more reliable it is..."

The reason why is one of those things that's been left open ended. As for the GGD, I do recall that weather in places was changed forever (like those living downwind of Mount Rainier), but I'm not sure if it had an impact on nukes (plausible, though).

Nah, the second one from the first trilogy of novels with Sam whatshisname. "Never deal with a dragon", and I forget the other two books.

1.) For actual access you need to hack yourself an account on it
2.) Been over that already, either cryptography works and the rules for decryption become "Extended EW + Decrypt Test (Rating, 1 galactic year)", or it doesn't and two-factor systems are just as broken as the rest.

@annachie: I think you are confusing the GGD with the ritual Twist performed in the Secrets of Power trilogy to defuse a lot of nukes that got into wrong hands (and which was kinda based on the Ghost Dance).
Edit: NVM

As I have observed already: if you actually apply good, logical, rational security procedures to things liek this? The entire game breaks down. Not just hacking Joe Nobody's commlink, but ALL of Shadowrun. Pack up your dice, put your pencils down ... game over, no more quarters.

Cameras are everywhere in Shadowrun. Face Recognition software is frightfully effective right now; it could only be lightyears better in a world with full-immersion VR, not to mention actual god's-honest-truth Metasapient AIs. Marketing profile tracking is another angle of attack; every soycaf you buy, every bus or subway fare you pay, every drink at a nightclub, every taxicab you ride. Every single last nuyen you spend on anything even vaguely legal, in fact. Plus the movement of your vehicle - if security systems work by real-world standards, then "gridlink over-ride" would simply be physically imp[ossible for less than a AAA megacorps quarterly site-security budget. All of it. For maybe two vehicles. Three, tops.

...

Security like that is a place where the entire world of Shdowrun MUST firmly grasp the Idiot Ball ... or the genre collapses in on itself.

As I said the second one. Everyone dances until they die, use the resultant power for whatever.
It was the same basic ritual, though probably smaller.
(Then again, it's been at least 15 years since I last read the trilogy. Maybe longer)

But if i can just swoop poorly secured commlinks all day, why should any hacker go on runs paying less than 50 grand a day?

Because otherwise you're not playing Shadowrun.

Nope... It happens because of Explicit Magical Intervention.
EDIT: OOOPS, Already Covered in greater detail above.

Indeed. While the game world has to explicitly ignore a lot of things to work, so do the players have to ignore some ramifications of that.

No it doesn't.


It happens because bullshit.

The ambient manafield of the world doesn't flat interfere with jack shit else on a global scale. It sure as hell doesn't interfere with electromagnetic radiation! It doesn't interfere with ballistics, or chemistry, and it definitely does not interfere with nuclear power generation. There's no Force 30 spirit out there named "Gaia" who's flying around sustaining a Suppress Nuclear Reaction spell on every single nuclear warhead in the world - if there were, Ares would have tracked her down and dropped a Thor Shot on her ass.

Maybe because all those other things you listed do not directly cause massive long term harm to the biosphere? So yes, it happens because "fuck you I'm not going to let you explode that 100MT warhead and make toxic 500sq miles plus fallout".

Starting to make me wish I had read more than the game books. Would be nice if this were mentioned in one of them that I've read.

You're wrong, but it is really not worth arguing over.

Fifty grand? Yeesh. The estimates above are around fourteen or fifteen grand, for one. GROSS, not net. I estimated about 5 grand actual net result - with more than one day's work required. Call it 10 grand a week.

And yes, IMO you SHOULD be getting paid at least that much, to do shadowruns.

Well, call the 50 grad a risk premium - if i can make 10 grand a week without risk, they have to pay really good to make me take that risk.

And toxic, regulations-free extraterritorial unfeterred pollution does not directly cause massive, long-term harm to the biosphere?


Frankly, I think the whole "nukes stop working, lol," thing is just to explain why the superpower nations didn't say "Okay, this corporate extraterritoriality shit has gone on far enough, we're not letting you jackasses get all the benefits of nationhood whilst leeching the responsibilities off on us, time to end this little experiment and put the law down."

Except it's not "without risk". Pull that scam too often, for too long, and someone WILL eventually track you down. Someone unhappy with having had to cover all the "Fraud insurance" payouts you've been costing them. It just isn't likely to happen this week, or this month. Probably not even this year.

So, if a shadowrun doesn't pay at LEAST as much as you'd get from this sort of thing? "Why're you wasting my time with this lowball drek, chummer? Go hire some ganger punk, and call me when you have REAL work on offer."

If off-camera, day to day activities can earn more than the presumably higher-immediate-risk stuff runners are expected to handle ... why the frag would most of them bother? "This ain't no charity, chummer. You wanna play with pro's, you gotta pay pro rates."

Yea, pretty much.

They basically created Shadowrun 4 to be a combination of a future STASI society combined with the british fetish for excessive camera usage and cranked up the volume to a 110 with the addition of the wireless internet world.

If one followed the rules by the letter the game would be IMPOSSIBLE unless everyone went completely black ops with daily disguises just to get some bloody food.

Well, if you take the face-case from Spy Games, this is entirely possible.

That's the way I would handle that:

-Hacker PC: I've come up with a terrific idea to make loads of cash.
-Me GM: Uhm what?
(Hacker exposes his idea, I come short of counterarguments)
-Me GM: Ya know you might eventually be discovered? And that would off-balance the whole group! I don't like it at all.
-PC: Not my concern, I'll do it anyway.
-Me: Well ok...You found out a way to get way more cash than by Shadowrunning. Your character stops Shadowrunning. What will be your new one?
-PC: What!?! I'm still deciding for my PC and he Runs for fun.
-GM: Not in my gaming group and I don't feel like ruining the game.


Seriously, I play RPGs since 15 years or so. I've seen so many GM that hadn't enough courage to oppose a player and say no to something that could be detrimental to the game. You know what I think about? The munchkin that unbalanced the game. The player, who wants to play a bad guy that crosses his friends until the whole group finish disgusted by the game. The player who uses loopholes for short term advantages.

I'm done with such things. Now, I'm just considering things firstly under that aspect: Will it make the game enjoyable or not?


Exemple:
Fairly riskless mass account hacks in Vampire=> additionnal wealth and influence: Positive for the game and in scope of the game => Cool.
Fairly riskless mass account hacks in Shadowrun => less fun for the group (lowers suspension of disbilief because technically, if you have loads of cash, there's no need to Run => dull shadowrunning+possible jealousy/imbalance between players)=>No way.

I know some GMs that would say: well ok because you (supposedly) can do what you want in an RPG, then strike back with problems induced by the idea. But for the (whole) group it's not fun to deal with the problem 1 player just induced. Heck, it's not fun for the GM neither. I mean dealing with problems induced by a great run against Yakuza: yes! Cool! But for mass hack of wageslaves... Not cool at all...

sk8bcn: So basically, you're saying that the GM can demand the players grab tight onto the idiot ball and not use the skills they have in sane and logical ways to make money that does not involve doing stupid, massively risky Shadowruns for peanuts? Because otherwise you can't control the game?


You need to hand in your GM card. If the only way you can think of to make players want to take a risky run for low reward is "you're running out of rent money and will wind up on the streets,' then you're boned.

There's plenty of reasons that could lead the players to play an adventure whatever the RPG. I have, like any GM around a full hand of motivations that I can use to drag the players in the game. It can be: do the right thing (save the world kind of stuff), fight evilness, use the players background, emotions, use the lust for new powers, whasoever.


It's not my point.

Let's say I propose a Shadowrun for the players way too difficult or not worth the reward. I failed as a GM. I guess it's time for them and me to discuss with each other about how we both perceive the game and make adjustments.

Because, either the characters say "no thanks, I'll pass" and we can all go home tonight because we won't play (heh, you seldom preparre a second scenario just in case of).
Either they say yes because they want to play, but actually don't want to step in the scenario (and it will fail anyway).

So I'm not saying that I must refuse ideas like mass-hack just to keep control of their motivations for the game. I even consider it to be my fault if they don't want to step in the scenario.


My point:

What I learned is that I'm responsible for their fun, but they are too.

When I start a Shadowrun game, I have a good idea of what I find cool in the game. Running on the edge, action, infiltration investigation, teamplay.

1 player hacking accounts large scale is unfun to me. Because, part of Shadowruns pleasure is to get upward in equipment and karma and reputation. It's a reward of the adventure. A mass-hacking idea might work, might induce complications, but that's not something within my scope of what's fun in the game.

Ofc, it would be open to debate within my group. Like "Ok, you wanna mass-hack. But why? Because you find that the scenarios aren't enough rewarding in money? You feel you struggle too much in that area? Or did you just found a loopshole to exploit?"

If it's one the 2 first reasons, I should maybe change somthing in the Gaming style. Augmenting rewards maybe? Having the Runners closer chronologically closer to each other (to pay lifestyle less often)

But mass-hack adds nothing to the game. Not in my sight at least.


Again it also depends on which game you play:
Exemple: you play vampire: How I see the game: Gaining power among cainites by controling spheres in human society: You come up with that idea? Nice, thumbs up!
you play Ars Magica: How I see the game: raising the power of your Covenant: Nice thumbs up, fits perfectly with the game.

First off, it's not "risky runs for peanuts" it's that by using the high level skills players have access to and using them in either legitimate fashions (see: ChemistRun) or "shoplifting" levels (i.e. hacking 1000 comlinks for $5 each) that takes less than 10 seconds to pull off (read: higher pay per hour, but boring), the game breaks down.

It's not that runs don't pay enough, but that the rules that make runs possible also make it so trivial to con the masses for pennies each.

Essentially it boils down to "why do the scatter rules on missiles suck?" "Because otherwise they'd insta-kill players, and players don't like that." Only replace "scatter rules on missiles" with "any given rule" and "otherwise they'd insta-kill players" with "the side effects of a good rule."

I'm with sk8bcn, actually. The GM and the players should be cooperating to craft an enjoyable story for everyone at the table. GM included.

The very vulnerablility that makes such a mass-hack scheme possible, is the result of the system itself playing with an Idiot Ball so that the players can play AT ALL. So frankly, if the setting has to grasp the idiot-ball in a way that allows such a hack, then I think it's only fair and reasonable to require the players to follow suit in a way that preserves the integrity of the game and setting.


No, s/he doesn't.


That's a huge assumption; nothing sk8bcn said, suggested his runs were not properly compensated-for.

Whereas, there ARE people who will say "look I can make 10K/day profit! With only one hour per day of "work", too! 'Day Job' can suck it, this pays MUCH better!" ... and they'll say it no matter how much their shadowruns are actually playing.