Prepainted assembled ones available please, the warhammer models just induce rage for me.

If they are not prepainted assembled, non collectible, then I won't touch the game.

I want to able to buy the game, and play it out of the box.

What Larsine said.

I will not buy "blind box" miniatures. Not for any price, nor for any reason.

Ditto

Ditto

After the popularity of "Neat", it might not have to be a fanfic...

All the better, but DO EET!
And have him punch out a Centaur.
It has to be in there somewhere ^^

Have him battle Binky!

No, the world would be the only one to die in that fight . .

Challenge Binky in Miracleshooter?
"Becuz dat iz huw proz do da fightz!"

Some news.

So, sounds like another world-ending/changing event between editions again.

Now everyone is an adept?

Bogota disappears in puff of smoke and magic, the war where nothing happens ends because everybody is bored and goes home, one of the dragons gets bitchslapped into metaplanar exile.

The matrix will be changed once again, at least. I got a "back to deckers" vibe from what's been told in the short stories.

you know . . that doesn't sound half bad to me somehow . .

What the fuck. I hope to hell your vibe is way, WAY off, because otherwise what the fuck.

'What the fuck' is here represented by 'wireless was bad idea in the first place'.

In your opinion.

Give it a few months, and we'll see if the game designers agree.

I just want deckers. Wireless or otherwise.

Not played SR4 much (couple of one shots), so this is pure speculation on a way to reintroduce the name, but I gather from examples like Mungo that most hackers are the equivalent of script kiddies? Maybe Corps finally get a grip on this 2.0 tech, finally clamp down the massive holes in their security (wireless or otherwise) and just being a script kiddie with a shiny commlink won't cut it anymore. The real data jockeys take to calling themselves deckers in homage to the old heroes of the digital frontiers, or just to differentiate themselves from 'hackers'.

I never agreed that not having decks would eliminate the term decker, we continued using the term "driver" after the wagons were replaced by cars.

Please bear in mind that Mungo is written by a hack of a writer with issues dealing with the hacking rules of SR4 (before I started writing for CGL, mind you), and was just posting that for dreks and giggles.

"Mungo like da Cookiez."
"NO, MUNGO THAT'S... Never mind... Now all our CommLinks, which were TacNetted together, are SpamBots. Thanks Mungo."
"Yew welcum."
"JIMMY! You were supposed to teach Mungo about sarcasm."
"I tried. By Ghost and all the Spirits, I tried, oh how I tried." *Devolves into sobbing as the spam continues to hit the AR Display*

Still, I want deckers.

Mayhaps a hack of a writer who now writes for CGL could manufacture a better reason for the old terminology to be adopted again? Please?

One way to milk players would be a core rulebook that functions from 2050-2080, and SOTA 2050/55/60/65/70/75/80 books. And then you could resell all the old adventures converted for SR5 too.

I love this idea as a customer, but I'm not sure how well that would actually work for CGL.

Madness, that's what.

Easier, by far, to let people do it for products that they want, possibly with some kind of guidelines for converting characters from edition X to edition Y.

There's generally no point in pulling the older stuff out and dusting it off. Better than make new stuff, but with some echoes of teh past for us old farts.

Unless it's cool.

Like Shadowbeat.

Because Shadowbeat ROCKED.

Well, it mostly comes down to Gearporn / Ware / Drone (e)Books, Decking vs. Hacking and maybe Introduction years for Metamagics and Spells.

In your opinion. I particularly like the ideas of Wireless, personally.
But it does look like Decking will make a resurgence.

4e hackers don't use attributes for the hacking tests, those are skill+program rating. Up to you if it makes the "script-kiddies", despite needing the skills.
Also, as a relatively new player joined well into the fourth, this whole decker argument puzzles me. What's in a name?

Nostalgia, apparently.

So what's stopping you from calling hackers deckers in your games?

Me? Nothing. Others? Nostalgia and Grognardism, I guess.

And that is easily covered by a houserule or two. Like limiting successes on any one roll, to the attribute governing the skill used (logic usually). So, given the same skill and program, the Logic-5 hacker is going to succeed more often and with greater speed, than the Logic-2 "script kiddie" hacker.

Not a houserule actually. There are two Optional Rules in the books.

1. Skill + Attribute, Hits limited to Program Rating.
2. Skill + Program, Hits limited by Attribute.

WE used Rule 1 for the most part, though we eventually changed to Skill + Attribute, Programs act as Reach. We are much happier with this one.

The name isn't the issue. the way the Matrix worked is. Taking decking from something that was a full-time commitment and resource sink that required a dedicated professional into something you buy 'good enough' stuff to do as a side job to your main work was a big change in the game. Making absurdly large amounts of things that have zero reason to have publicly accessible wireless connections directly hackable was a big change.

'Decker' as used by a lot of us old GMs and players is a shorthand for the way the Matrix and its console cowboys were developed and used for the first three editions of the game.

Which has not really changed. To be a GOOD hacker, you have to dedicate yourself to it. As for Isolated Systems, and systems that are a pain to hack, those still exist, they never went away. *shrug*

So, you're saying ... you prefer the way Decking was always a separate, parallel campaign? That dealing with the Decker and his stuff, always meant the other players, ALL of them, pretty much got told "go find a movie on Cable for an hour or two" ...?

Not me. Wireless is one of the things I like BEST about SR4's matrix.

I would disagree. I"d say that style plays a part as well. If I took the Ares Alpha and renamed it the Ares First, would you think that's a good change? Probably not, and if the opportunity came up, you'd say it should be changed back.

Frankly, 'decker' sounds better than 'hacker'. The hard 'd' gives it more toughness. And it has a different cultural heritage. I also like calling my riggers 'riggers' and not 'drivers', and saying 'drek', not 'shit'. I just think it sounds cooler, and adds to the atmosphere.

I play SR3, so I may be biased. The time I did play SR4, I house-ruled it for my character (i.e., I didn't remember or care to use the new terminology) and no one complained, so of course you're right, it's not a difficult fix.

"Decker" is a term unique to Shadowrun. It adds flavor and depth to the game. "Hacker" bring to mind script-kiddies and cheesy movies.


The main rulebook. If a new player reads "hackers" everywhere, it's harder to get them into the classic Shadowrun mindset.

If your player and GM both know the Matrix rules, it isn't any slower than combat, or a face's social RP scene. Nature of gaming is that the spotlight shifts, and occasionally someone's going to have to sit on their hands for a couple minutes and let the others have their moment in the sun.

That said, I totally agree that the decking rules benefit from mechanical cleanup and simplification, but I still find that SR4 went in the wrong direction. Dumping 20 years of backstory and setting-unique 'look and feel' for the sake of 'modernization' wasn't a move I can call smart.

Everyone can be involved in combat. Oh, sure, the nonspecialists aren't going to be the stars of the show, but they can still be supporting cast.

Everyone can be involved in social RP scenes. Indeed, everyone should be involved int hem - not all at once, not everyone in every scene. But there should be some social RP elements in each character's story.

But decking? Innately, unavoidably, irrevocably solo. Nonspecialists aren't just "not the stars", they are active liabilities.

...

When the Face is doing his or her thing, the GM can have some sideline RP going on with the other characters. Whiel setting the scene up, the GM can go 'round the table, giving everyone else a chance to narrate where their character is, in that scene's "background". Then the GM turns to teh centerpiece of the scene, the Face, and together they build the "foreground".

When the samurai (etc) are shooting, spell-chucking, or nunja-kicking their way through waves of enemies, anyone not in one of those three categories can still dive for cover, pull out their light pistols, and fill in their little section of the background.

But when the Decker rolled up on a high-security node, and started workign his way inside it? Noone else even gets to be PRESENT during that scene. The only character allowed to take part, is the Decker. More often than not, the sole and only decker on the team. And let's be clear: every single other player in that group might as well go out for pizza; they aren't needed at the table, they won't be involved in the game until the decking is done, and odds are good at least some of them will be bored in the meantime.

...

Now, once in SR3, i did manage to run a session with significant decking, simultaneous to significant meat-world action. I did well enough, despite glossing over a lot of details on both sides, that I got very high compliments from the six or eight players I had that night.

And it was soul-drainingly exhausting. Plus I had to discard about a third of the stuff I had planned, on both sides of the fence, in order to finish things up by the end of that night. I swore to myself, NEVER AGAIN. With cause.

...

Now, with the Wireless Matrix? Hacking X or Y node (on the fly) would be no more than movign the spotlight to the hacker/technomancer for a minute or three, then moving on to the next player(s). Without being exhausting. Without having to gloss over anything. Withotu having to discard a thrid of what I'd planned on, in order to keep things rolling, keep the game moving and the story flowing.

That's a winning scenario, in my book.

I find balancing decking to be even more tedious in SR4.5. The fact is, it's just a series of extended tests, so it becomes a series of boring dice rolls with zero flavor. The same is true with cyber combat. Plus the fact that the decker dominates in legwork, which means we've got a huge series of tedious rolls in order to get needed information to the team.

So skip the rolls and just give them the information. Or say that not all information is available to a Matrix search, then give the other players a chance to contribute to the legwork.

Yep... Wireless is awesome sauce.

Excuse me, have you read 4E matrix rules at all? My first couple of characters were hackers, and let me tell you, I barely had enough BP to be competent in that alone, minding the costs for hacker gear and ware. Saying that hacking can be done as a side job is not even like saying you can go without a sammy - because having everyone barely combat-competent might still let you struggle through a fight, but having a bad hacker is what's getting you into one.

now tell me again, how is a hacker (buaahh x.x <.<) going full VR that much different from a Decker going full VR?
how did wireless change the fact that a decker can simply stay at home and work from there, if that works even better with wireless?
and if the hacker (buaahh x.x <.<) is going in for a system that's not accessible at your leisure in full VR, how is anybody else going to work with him in AR if they can't get close to the system?
for them to help they would all need to go into full VR and become meat-puppets to b put into funny and compromising positions by the people they are working against right then, correct?

how did the loss of the specialized archetypes of decker and rigger change the fact that vehicle combat is still all kinds of wonky and that the matrix is still pretty much single player, if you don't have at least 2 people in full VR?
a hacker (buaahh x.x <.<) going AR into combat against any kind of ice is going to lose because he is limited to his meat reflexes compared to their lightning program code so he has to go full VR anyway for that.

Question:
For automated systems (i.e. the target) what is the Attribute counted as..?

Response.

At least, it's do some dice rolls (flavorless or not), then the rest of the group gets to play again right away - not "come back in two hours".


Why does the decker/hacker/whoever "dominate in legwork" ...? A lot of the information legwork is going to be needed for, is not the kind that you can find on public or semi-public networks, with a simple Data Search extended roll. Plenty of the kind of information legwork is supposed to be turning up, is not going to be on the matrix at all.

Everyone who has a few contacts of relevant types/backgrounds, can gain information. (One of the most useful contacts any runner can have, IMO, is a Virtual contact with ShadowSEA - or it's equivalent in other regions - precisely because it can potentially drum up ANY kind of information you might want ... if you're willing and able to pay the requisite nuyen for it, and if the dice are kind to you that night.)

Exactly my point. It was only a name change. However, the accessibility of most other information is a great boon, as is AR. *shrug*

In fact, for non-automated systems, I might consider going with "hits limited by your attribute, or the response of your commlink/computer - whichever is lower". Maybe.