Technically it works that way because of tcp, copper, and ipv4. If we were to redesign it today we wouldn't have to have those restrictions

Rockers are still around, and Cat 'o Nine Tails will rock you like a hurricane if you try to say otherwise.

Cyberdecks aren't gone. They evolved into commlinks; they got better and smaller and cheaper so everyone has one.

Dikote is... Okay, it's not mentioned in 4e, except a bit about the patent on it in 2050, which implies that since the patent is up, every blade worth mentioning is dikoted.



Well, yeah. Everybody with half a brain. Lots of people have less than half a brain - just imagine how many stupid idiots leave the factory default credentials on their modems. And then think about how corps might require their employees' chrome to remain wireless so they can get firmware updates up-to-the-minute, and so they can shut them down if their employees start using their chrome against the corp. Heck, they might not be designed for the owner to be able to turn the wireless off.



True, but when talking about something which is a component of someone who is moving around and shooting at you whom you want to hack on-the-fly, it usually is. If someone has the hardware access to your chrome that's necessary to bypass the fact that you turned off the wireless connectivity, you have bigger problems on your hands than the fact that you're about to be hacked. At that point, turning on the wireless and giving them your admin credentials might just be the wise move.

Yeah, we still would. Because you'd be limited by the kinds of communications equipment people would be able to readily install in their homes. And continent-spanning radio transceiver antennae are not on that list.

Rockers are gone as an archetype for PCs. Cyberdecks are gone, commlinks have replaced them. And I personally think the dikote comment was a retconn...

After posting my previous post, I kept thinking of things that seemed to have been setting tropes that were "reverted" or whatever you want to call it. The Shaman/Hermetic divide. Buying spells at a certain force. Grounding. Firepower ammo. Probably tons of others, I'm no SR scholar. Doesn't seem like restricting drone-jumping-in to a certain subset of characters would be all that ridiculous of a change.

Good idea? It's debatable Bad idea because it's ridiculous to change existing setting tropes? Nope.

I agree with your comments about the wireless stuff, tho'.

Phlap, the shaman/hermetiv divide going away was explained as the understanding of magic advancing. That works.

But saying "technology that worked in the '50s, '60s and '70s just stopped working arbitrarily to give the TMs a schtick meathackers can't get into", when they're already stupid-good compared to meat-hackers is utterly retarded.

Wow, that escalated quickly.

So it's ok to explain the divide going away because of the magic, but it's not ok to explain the jumping-in thing with something equally magicky, like VITAS mutating or something? Magic is essentially handwavium anyway, anything works when you handwave it like the authors did with the divide. I do see you've shifted the goalposts, so I guess that's something.

AND my idea was part of a redesign to get rid of "hackers" as an archetype, putting the serious hacking burden squarely on the TM shoulders. I'll put you down in the disagree category, no worries.

Virally-Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome mutation could not explain "technology that used to work doesn't work now," if only for the fact that you're not going to get a 100% coverage of metahumanity in any event. For one thing, folks who already had, and beat, VITAS, are immune to farther infections. And magic (nor resonance) certainly wouldn't, and shouldn't, interact with technology in such a way as to make full-immersion rigging, which has been possible since the 50s, suddenly impossible for anyone but technomancers. That would be like saying that magic suddenly made guns unworkable, time for everyone to go back to bows and arrows.


And, you will never get rid of the Hacker as an archtype. Won't be done! It kind of sticks a lit firecracker up the ass of cyberpunk to even suggest it.

...and now I'm changing you to the "strongly disagree" category

I'm getting myself confused, maybe the hacker archetype thing was in another thread - that would provide more context for my opinions. But the gist was more that "everyone" is now a hacker, that the game is pretty much headed that way anyway. So I think a possible move in the next edition would be to not have the mundane hacker as a standalone concept. Serious uber-hacking wouldn't be split between "hackers" and TMs anymore, but just be left to TMs.

*edit* *edit* this hole goes too deep, the more I dig into your post, so I'll just stop now.

Yeah, see this?

That is bullshit of the completely and utterly fucking batshit retarded sense.

I cannot stress this enough. Hell, cyberpunk itself, which consists of one-half of Shadowrun, is only one-half human augmention, the other half is information technology and not abstracting it out to a single die roll like, say, the Star Wars RPG treats hacking.

Think about Deus Ex. Great game, but hacking was monumentally disappointing because it meant watching a progress bar that might as well have been titled "Stickin' it to the man." Human Revolution fixed that by making HACKING something that not only Jensen did, but that you, the player did.

Fantasy is one half of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk is the other. Serious, hardcore hacking has, for most of Shadowrun, been the domain of deckers. Then along came the Otaku, who freaked us out because they did with their heads what normals did with their cyberdecks. Fast forward ten years, and now everybody's Meta Link could take a Fairlight Excalibur and break it. Now, Technomancers came on the scene, too, basically renamed Otaku, but they're still the new guy, they're as feared as mages were back in the 2020s. Meat hackers are, and remain, weird, scary, the Other. That's fine, though.

What's also fine is that Technomancers don't get as much niche as mages. They're already summoning technospirits, and their rules already need an overhaul so that it doesn't become nearly or completely trivial for them to just up and thread a 14-dice program when your hacker's broken his bank on Rating 6 stuff. They shouldn't have as much of a unique domain as mages, they're basically technomages playing in a realm in which the mundane already have dominating presence. They can play, but they don't get to dominate the way mages have exclusive access to the Astral, to the Metaplanes, and rigging. No way, no how. They want their exclusive access club, they can go to the Resonance Realms. Otherwise, they need a nerf, which is easily enough done by saying technology is catching up faster than they're advancing, which knocks them down a peg into the realm of competition, not an overwhelming impossible challenge.

They certainly shouldn't fucking get to suddenly have exclusive dominion over the meat-rigger, who gets handwaved out of the game because bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullish shivit.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you drank too much eggnog or something. Or are annoying relatives visiting you? But whatever, man, you take your SR way too seriously.

You might have some valid points, but the way you keep saying things like "bullshit" and "utterly retarded" and so on....it makes what you say really not that interesting and hard to take seriously.

Dude, think about it. You're suggesting completely excising a staple archetype character that has been around since the game started and you're calling reactions against it over-reaction? Geez...

Yeah, a simple "I don't like it, I think it's a really bad idea" would suffice. It's admittedly just brainstorming and all, but calling it, quote, "utterly fucking batshit retarded" (in bold and italics!) is an overreaction.

But wait, you're the guy that made the really insulting post about people wanting errata equaling whining. Not sure your opinion counts for much.

First, this is a game guys.
As a game with dragons and magic and encryption that routinely is broken in seconds and people who can not only attune their brains to wireless signals but surf the global computer network its all a little bat-shit crazy and honestly, no one's vision of the specifics of that is any more/less bat-shit crazy than the next guy's.
So let's take a moment and speak to each other rather than at each other and be civil to the other guy who shares your bat-shit crazy hobby.

Thanks and Merry Christmas.

Yes, but no matter how well designed is a protocol, physic limits the rate at which information can be transmitted over a given frequency spectrum. In a wireless network, that spectrum has to be shared between every devices around. For that reason, it would be impossible to have server farms running on Wifi. That is, hundreds of powerful computers handling thousands of connections each, all within one meter from each other.

However, a multi-spectrum shotgun implementation would overcome that limitation.

I've posted this before, but as written, combat hacking of equipment or cyberware is utterly useless. It takes too long: three Complex actions at minimum. And since they're mostly extended tests, longer is more likely, so we're looking at six or more actions to hack the simplest of devices with zero added security. By the time that happens, the sam could have shot the guy twelve times or more! Heck, depending on the situation, the sam might have fired all his bullets, reloaded, and emptied a second clip before you can set up your fancy hack.

But those people usually don't become shadowrunners, or if they do they don't survive their first run. Given that even starting characters usually have some experience under their belts, it's fair to assume that runners have the wireless switched off, unless stated otherwise.

And yet, the situation you describe is so easy to avoid that your solution is ludicrous. As for a Hacker sitting 3 continents away, have you ever heard of an Isolated System? You should look into it. I have yet to have a hacker actually try to actually HACK from their living room. At least for anything that was important, anyways.

And if your world works as you say it does, how do you cover your trips to the Stuffer Shack again? I seem to recall an overly complicated series of remote hacks that eliminated your trail form any camera, anywhere, just so you could go buy a Growlie Bar. You are contradicting yourself. Might want to look into that. Of course, I could be mistaking you for someone else, and if so, I apologize.

It's not just a bad idea. It's a horrible idea. Utterly-you-know. You're basically suggesting removing one of the staples of the genre.


And that's why backbone lines in SR are still all wires.


Not really, if you remember Shannon.

Well, your shadow could just drop a few transponders for you to work through...

Wireless Negating Paint and/or wallpaper. On every wall, floor, and ceiling throughout the facility. (And before you call that excessive? I knew a guy who worked with the FAA. The facility he worked in, had exactly that going on, throughout the building - to the point, even, that they couldn't use building-wide WiFi networks INDOORS, even. Had to have wired networking, with a WAP in each room. And that was "just" the FAA - no Black projects, no multi-billion-nuyen research programs.)

...

A transponder, nor fifty of them, isn't going to help.

Shannon's Law applies to a single radio link between a receiver and a transmitter; create multiple radio links across more frequencies simultaneously, each link itself is limited by Shannon's law, but taken collectively they exceed the limitations.

Is this thread about hacking wireless cyberlimbs?

I think its about everyone having an opinion about SR5. Just trying to open some minds to the possibilities of the future on how some things can move beyond where we are today.

I prefer a monoblade or a troll with an axe myself.

You still only have so much frequency spectrum to work with. Suppose all your devices are active at once. Each gets a fair share of the spectrum, and the transmission speed is limited by its width. You can optimize spectrum usage with multiplexing for the devices that are not active constantly, but you can't fit more traffic than this optimal case into it.


They still have doors, windows, service openings and so on. Pierce the wireless negating shell and place a transponder at the border - and there you go, the inside network is accessible from the outside.

You're definitely thinking of someone else. A trip to the convenience store (unless someone is running Food Fight) isn't of any importance, so such things are just 'glossed over' in our games.

Five links with bandwidth B or one link with bandwidth 5*B, the effect is the same.

Otherwise, my wireless telephone (for the landline) wouldn't have to be specially marked on which frequencies it uses, in order to not conflict with my TV-remote, cell phone, wireless modem, etc. etc.

Could have sworn that was you, but no worries. I happen to agree with you on that one. Ah Well...

This old chestnut again - I thought I had listed many parts of the genre that were already changed / removed. Do you disagree that SR has a long history of this already?

I'm suggesting changing the idea of what a "hacker" is in SR. People already make combat-hackers, face-hackers, etc. The "Hacker" archetype is already slowly being subsumed. It seems like a natural progression for the next edition, to where every PC can usefully hack in one way or another. Think Aliens, where Hudson is a marine, AND he's the guy who gets the doors open and the computer systems online.

If anything, this doesn't remove a staple of the genre, it hugely increases it. The world in 2090 or whenever is going to be even more networked and online than 2070. So everyone is (or must be) a hacker to some extent, but the true "wizards of the matrix" are the TMs.

Might be better to figure out some way for the Resonance Realms to collapse somehow, effectively removing Technomancers from the equation. After all, they're the new guys and less 'staple' than the normal Hacker.

There is a difference between "changed" and "removed".

Let's remove sammies, while we're at it, then. Everyone has some combat ability, anyway, after all.

Yes, and one person's change is another person's remove. One says the shamanic/hermetic divide was removed, another says no, it was just the understanding of magic that changed. One says cyberdecks were removed, another says no, it was just changed to commlinks. And so on. I'd argue that I'm more for changing hacking so that it's available in some form for every PC, and that the specialist mundane hacker gets removed as a concept. Combat hacker? Yes. Medic hacker? Yes. Shaman hacker? Yes. Hacker...? No.

Even though I think you meant it as an outrageous statement, what do you consider "sammie-like" that could go away? If you mean a character that only has combat abilities and nothing else, then I agree with you.

Maybe I'm lurking and reading too much over at TGD...

Guys speaking as someone who actually works day to day with Shannon and similar stuff. There's a lot of gross negligence I'm seeing in these forums as to how it actually applies to communications. In this case, you're referring to Shannon-Hartley (shannon has his name on a LOT of different topics in this field...). He built upon Nyquists earlier work which dealt with single bit symbols... this theorem expands it out to multi-bit symbols.

Shannon actually encompasses far more than simply using more bandwidth (and bandwidth is not infinite... so it very well is not a given that you can just use more bandwidth). It also involves POWER.. you can send multiple bits per symbol... you can also send data when the SNR is NEGATIVE and the signal is less than the ambient noise.

The equation is actually Capacity = bandwidth * log2(1 + SNR). Please note that signal power plays a huge role in this... and simply doubling the bandwidth doesn't do much good if you're still limited to spitting out the same amount of power... all you'll end up doing in most cases of this is increasing your data rate marginally but substantially reducing your usable transmission range.


For game purposes... really just stick with Signal... it's a great abstraction which works well. Even better would be if they'd re-introduce bandwidth to limit how fast you could upload/download files. Especially over wireless! (I'd be fine if wired was almost unlimited.. but to put bandwidth limits on wireless links based on mutual signal strength).

You don't get it, do you? You just don't fucking "get" it. As was said above, we might as well remove sammies because you can have a combat hacker, a kombatmage, a combat technomancer.

"Hacker" is the guy who does the job and does it well. Do you know what happens when an asshole with mediocre hacking stats - we'll be generous and say he has Hacking at 4 and his program at 4. That's not even average, that's above average. This guy can only reliably attack Rating 2 systems. If he attacks a Rating 3 system, he has the dice advantage, but not so much so that the system is unlikely to hit his Stealth of 4 before he hits the 9 hits required to get an admin account. If he attacks an R4 system, he's in deep shit, and he'd be insane to even try attacking a higher-rated system.

You see, the problem with hacking is that there's no teamwork bonuses, and if one person gets spotted. Everyone pays the price. Hacking is not a "team activity" the way gunfights are. In a gunfight, everyone who hasn't built to be an idiot can contribute: the Samurai and Mage are the stars of the show, but the hacker with a set of Wired Reflexes 1 and 6-7 dice can still contribute. They can lay down cover fire, they can attack someone as a prelude to the Samurai's attack, depressing his dice rolls. They can attempt to subvert the enemy security systems, or they can haul out a grenade launcher and start being very dangerous to everyone generally downrange.


Hacking does not play out like that. Hacking is a game where only superstars get to play. If you bring the mediocre teammates with you, they get spotted, the resulting security increase hikes the system's resistance to you, then you get spotted. Everybody gets fucked up.


Are you starting to understand now? "Hacker" is a required role on the team, and it is not a rule that should be handed exclusively to technomancers. Hell, if anything, technos need a nerf! I built a pretty damn good hacker for the game I'm in, with a dice pool of 10 for most of my hacking purposes. The technomancers are routinely throwing 20+ dice . The GM builds systems to challenge the technos and I can't compete, despite having put a very large amount of my karmagen karma towards hacking.

I don't get this, this is generally the role most often missing--second only to pure Face, or at least Face with the kind of focus seen on this forum and the other forum--when we play (we have a small group), and we do just fine usually.

Though one thing coming to mind now is the quantum computer theories bouncing around in real life, and how this will drastically increase processing speed - and probably be able to increase the amount of data that can be sent without having to increase bandwidth. It's one reason I think that AR is viable in Shadowrun, and that computers can be so much smaller, while doing so much more.

I actually think it would be good to break down hackers by type - and yes, I do think the 'street samurai' is somewhat going the way of the dodo. I've not seen a proper street samurai in any Shadowrun game I've been in since ... err, 2nd edition, perhaps?

Usually, we have someone who blends combat capability with a secondary roll. Usually, the character is an adept of some kind -- we had a driver / gunner adept, a swordsman adept, a face adept, a technomancer, and a possession-mage in our last group. Before that, we had a fox shaman face/special ops, a raven shaman healer/rifleman, a physical adept/archer, and an ex-military merc-for-hire. He was in our 3rd edition game, had been with us since 1st edition, and was the closest we'd ever had to a street samurai. And he didn't even really fit the genre.

Really, 'Street Samurai' is an interesting concept, but it seems most well-rounded characters will have a second role to fill when they're not shooting and hacking people to bits.

I guess having a reasonable discussion isn't an option with you after all.


Good thing this thread is about 5th edition, and I'm not talking about changing hackers or hacking in 4th edition. Did you miss that part? Your whole post is talking about 4th edition and utterly worthless to this discussion.

Yeah, I think that would definitely be more interesting to reintroduce bandwidth in some way, as you sweat waiting for your download to complete before the guard comes back

Along with bandwidth limits, what about re-introducing something like storage capacity on datachips and commlinks and whatever? Give more thought to how you store the paydata, rather than just abstracting that part away.

I think 4th abstracted too much in some areas of the matrix(see above), and didn't abstract enough in other areas (hacking a door lock or camera feed, etc).

I could see the security rating of the node determining how many IPs it takes to do something, and then having the ability of your commlink allow you to get done faster by giving you more IPs.

Actually, the idea that hacking is a solo job? I could see that not being true. If one hacker gets to the middle of the network and gets sysop level of authority, he can sit there and ensure that security isn't triggered by anyone else as they head through the network and do different jobs at once. Having more hackers means getting more done, faster.

Hmmm, this is an interesting idea. I was worried that the bandwidth thing might be too details-oriented and not simple enough, but this scaling-IP-commlink thing seems like it would serve nicely.

Yeah, a hacking change would mean more players get to participate in the so-called hacking minigame, which seems like a win for everyone...

This actually makes sense to me. People shouldn't be hacking places willy nilly, and the 'good' hackers should be scared to take on a reasonably secure network. The 'very good' hackers should pause before considering taking on the network of a megacorp. If this wasn't the case, there's something seriously wrong.

On top of that, going into a network half-cocked, without having had the time to study the network, or doing a few scouting runs (not trying anything, just slipping in a little), is stupid. When I play Shadowrun, I don't take jobs which involve just rushing in with a short time limit. I want time to case the location, learn the security's patterns, and figure out what's going on with my target. This could take a week, or a month, depending on how complex the job is. Hacking, I feel, is the same thing. You want an idea of the IC you'll face, how difficult the network is, and perhaps set up some back doors and get some passwords so you can hit some areas semi-legitimately without worrying about tripping IC. Just going in and expecting to be able to 'hack' a network is... short-sighted.

Tashiro... no, quantum only enables people to achieve better compression and forward error correct efficiencies. It doesn't change the physics of the comm channel and how much you can transmit over the channel. All quantum does is change the workability of some kinds of processing algorithms.

For example... longer chips in DSSS might become usable if quantum were usable in the correlators.

That may work for you, Tashiro, but the rules should support not only your "careful study and probing" style, but also the play-style of "kick in the door, kick arse and don't worry about names".

Now the question that comes to mind: Is it, 'the higher the node, the more IPs it takes' (greater level of security) or 'the lower the node, the more IPs it takes' (less bandwidth)? Either could apply, in theory. Mind, this could be combined with other factors: The old blue, green, yellow, red, black nodes, with the ratings 1-6. So one could represent IPs needed, and the other represent Hits needed, perhaps.

So a Red 6 node might require 6 hits, and require 4 IPs per roll, for example.

Perhaps so, but people who use that style shouldn't be surprised at how fast things go south, and they suddenly need to shoot everything to get away with their hides intact while tripping every security team the place has to offer. Mind, some people enjoy that. As per my tagline... I prefer to ghost. The best runs are the ones where nobody knows you were ever there (IMHO).

Ah, I thought quantum computers allowed more data compression. Hmm, I'll need to look back at the article I read earlier today.

No, if that's their play style, it shouldn't "go south" that much, or else it's the GM being an arse and trying to force a so-called "right" way down their throats.

And before you start pulling anything, note the "that much". Meaning that some times is okay, but there is a limit to what is acceptable before it becomes being an arse.