The short answer is: "It's maaagic."

Personally, I don't think Guard should defend against botches, but that's not a RAW discussion. The issue (I think) some of us are having is if a spirit can target a person's icon in the Matrix with various powers, such as accident. Personally, I wouldn't let that fly. In the same vein, I've found that Task spirits with Endowment can really break the game if they grant technical skills, so defining some limit to prevent spirit abilities from overpowering deckers would be nice.

See, A Sprit doesn't target an Icon, it targets the Hacker itself. The icon is an extension of the Hacker, and is irrelevant in a discussion about Glitches. The ICON is not making the Glitch, the HACKER is. *shrug*

Hence why I referenced Knowledge skills. Knowing something doesn't even require musclework, you either know it or you don't (and I don't see how Accident or Guard could conceivably alter that). Yet everyone pretty much agrees that those two abilities do function in that space.

It does matter, since in SR4.5 decking from Mom's Basement is actually more encouraged. As long as the meat body is safe, the decker is pretty much immune to Accident. This means there's even more incentive for the decker to phone in his work.

I disagree. I have hacked more stuff onsite in SR4, then I ever did, in all previous editions combined.
As for a Remote hacker being safe from the Accident power, he is also safe form all the other dangers the onsite team face. *shrug*

Pray tell, what made it "more advantageous" to hack on-site instead of remotely?

And, if anything, how is hacking on-site more advantageous is 4 than in 3?

An extra person to help in combat, as well as the opportunity to see where locks and cameras are located, rather than rely on teammates to report or having to use on their image link data, since they might skip over an important detail.

This is perhaps also a thing in 3, but you don't need to jack in to hack in 4, so you can do things immediately.

Instead of...say...hacking the camera system remotely and looking at what the cameras can see?

Or...feedback-looping them so it is irrelevant?

You were going to hack them anyway, right?

The short answer is: Offline storage.

Offline storage was par for the course in SR3, making it so the decker had to physically penetrate the site to get paydata. It doesn't seem to exist in SR4.5, or if it does, there's not much rules for it. Even with wifi-inhibiting paint, you still need the decker to attack the security system for you, which can be done from basement. Since those systems need to communicate with each other, once you get in you can ignore the wifi-inhibiting areas and remote hack everything in the facility. At worst, all you need is someone setting a commlink next to the computer with the paydata, and you can hack it that way.

What's more, there's no incentive to go in. With the old node layout maps, frequently if you started your run from inside the system, you could start somewhere with less security. In SR4.5, it's all just one great big node, so starting your run from anywhere will encounter the same security. You may as well deck in from the comfort of your mother's basement, since you'll face the same challenges no matter what.

I agree Cain... yet when I mentioned the old matrix maps.. and internal access points.. all I got was a vocal minority decrying the old matrix maps as something 'nobody liked'.

And to me it makes a lot more sense... in my apartment i have a very high end router/firewall/security device. If someone were to try and attack me... they'd have to go through that first to get at any nodes behind it with their softer firewalls. Or they could physically break in and just plug directly into it. Or they could see that I'm running wireless and go for that... and be royally screwed because I intentionally run the wireless on a separate network segment so wireless can't access my wired (though they probably won't realize it).

If I was a corp, i could do something similar... run a wireless network with dummy paydata in it. A honeypot just to catch lazy hackers... too dumb to realize that the real data is somewhere else.


In any case, that's something I'm hoping to see back in the new system... wired access is essentially unlimited bandwidth.... while wireless has severe signal/speed constraints in comparison. Which get reduced even more as jamming comes into play. That's the kind of thing which is easy to make uncomplicated rules for.

I feel that the current Matrix structure is just too nebulous. There's not enough of a sense of cyberspace, so to speak. It all feels so abstract and consequently doesn't feel impactful. Matrix maps might help hacking feel more... tangible.

~Umi

The fact that we could not hack remotely. It is not hard to accomplish, you know.
And the fact that we did not have any one else savvy enough to assist in obtaining remote capabilities.
Cold Storage.
Multiple Isolated systems in tandem.
Etc.

It isn't all just one great big node, and assuming it is is why you see hacking as not all that big of a deal, and easily done remotely. I have YET to hack a "One Big Node" system in SR4A. Layered systems DO exist, and they are described in Unwired.

Which is pretty much what I have encountered in the Matrix at our table, Falconer, which is probably why I am so vocal about the intricacies of the Matrix. Multi-Segmented and Multi-layered systems are the norm at our table, for all GM's involved. When I run into a "Simple Node Architecture" it is generally a public node that is inconsequential to my goals as a Shadowrunner. *shrug*

But that is not a design issue with the Rules, in my opinion, but a fluff issue with the tables you (generic) game at, from my experience. I have played at tables where the sense of cyberspace was not there (even in previous editions, dependent upon GM), but my regular GM's and table feels no different than what I felt with earlier editions (Since our primary GM ran previous editions for us), architecturally. We see the vastness of the Matrix at our table, and I do not expect that to change.

Note: Cyberspace IS abstract and nebulous by design, in all editions. It is a function of the differetn and varying design principles employed by every connection to the Matrix. Cyberspace can literally be anything and everything, and all at once. *shrug*

1) And these mechanics didn't exist in SR3?
2) And the pervasive wireless in SR4 doesn't make it easier to hack remotely? (Signal 0 is still wireless, and almost nothing is Signal —, and wifi-inhibiting paint is trivial to defeat as detailed up-thread)
3) Begging the question

#3 explained:

"I have hacked on site more than in previous systems because I could not hack remotely" is a statement which is tautologically true and offers no explanation as to why it is true because it refers back to its own premise to enforce its "true-ness." A similar example is "The sky is blue because it is not green."

1. Sure they did... And yet, I managed to hack remotely more often in SR3 than in SR4. This cannot be argued here as it is an undisputed fact. *shrug*
2. For general hacking, sure... For hacking of targets worthy of a Hacker Shadowrunner, no, as the same precautions in SR3 work just as well in SR4A. *shrug*
3. Not really.

Again, you cannot dispute my statement, as is is factually true. You may, of course, dispute it FOR YOUR EXPERIENCE only. Since I have the same GM for SR4A as I had for SR3, my Hacking access has not changed. Wireless may be more prevelent in SR4A, but access to isolated systems has not really changed that much. It may be that I play a Hacker more often in SR4A, becasue it is more accessible (as a system), so I see more hacks being non-remote than in SR3. *shrug*

You may have hacked remotely less in SR4 than in other versions, but I asked what is it about the game system that made that true and your answer so far is....

....personal preference.

Because of the reasons you have offered, none of them made it mechanically more difficult to hack from home.

I have answered you multiple times, you just refuse to see it.
Isolated Systems are the big one. Cold storage is a close second. You can isolate a system in SR4A just as effectively as in SR2/3. It isn't hard to do. Your only answer to that is "well, wireless." *shrug*

Soooo....

There's not a mechanical difference. If it's "just as effective" as in SR2/3, then there is NO CHANGE.

There is a mechanical change. You complain about it all the time. The system for hacking is easier than in previous editions. Becaue it is easier, I play more Hacker/Decker types. As a result, since I play more characters that hack, I tend to make MORE NON-REMOTE Hacks than in previous editions. What part of that do you not understand?

Regardless of the System, Isolation is JUST AS EFFECTIVE. Get it?

Bwuh? How is it an easier system? Mechanically it's similar in terms of the list of useful actions, but then there are a dozen or more extra special rules cases -- finding hidden nodes, rollfest probing the target, crashing a program, crashing the system, multiple tiers of access forcing the GM to assign standard account powers on multiple levels (and seriously, why?), spoofing commcodes in ill-defined ways to bypass doors/drones(??)... it's a huge bloody mess of haphazard rules.

Which was?

Or rather, to recap the conversation:




What was the mechanical change?

I disagree with you... We run hacking in tandem with normal actions. Something that COULD NOT BE DONE in previous editions. *shrug*
Yes, it helps when the Player and the GM understand the system. We do not have any issues on this.

THE SYSTEM CHANGED MECHANICALLY. You cannot argue that at all, becasue it did. I am amazed you do not get that. *shrug*

Well it couldn't be done if you refused to do it. As it's explicit in the rules that decking and normal actions go in the same initiative sequence in SR3, there's nothing preventing you from doing this but you.

But then you haven't addressed this notion that the system somehow became mechanically simpler, in direct contradiction to the giant mess of ad hoc rules that were introduced.

Yes. It did.

And I am asking what about those changes was the cause for hacking on-site to become more viable.

I am amazed that you do not understand my question.

The question is not what made Hacking on site more viable... it has always been the case for me and the tables I play at. The question is what do you think makes Remote Hacking more viable?

Maybe that is the disconnect. *shrug*

Door kicked in by HTR is not a good enough motivator to tag along? I mean atleast there you will have back up...

0) Not getting shot
1) Not getting hit with magic
2) Not getting hit with critter powers
3) Not getting shot
4) Not getting shot
5) Not getting shot

The "difficulties" of not being on-site are trivial to overcome. Wi-fi inhibiting paint? Meet my army of botnet flying insect-drones. Isolated systems? Meet my army of botnet flying insect-drones. Cold storage? Well, now we're not talking about hacking are we?*


*Cold storage data is just as difficult to acquire as a bar of gold as far as a hacker is concerned: someone has to pick it up. They can either plug it into their own comlink for the hacker to hack, or they can walk back out of the building with it and drop it on the hacker's desk to hack. Or the hacker can be on site. One way or another someone has to touch the object in question and that is a non-hackable problem solvable by non-hackers.

And I disagree with you. I am not saying that ALL hacks are on-site, just that when there is anything important, it is usually an on-site hack.
Good luck getting your botnet of flying insect drones into a hermetically sealed facility located underground with independant power supplies and filtration systems. Any place worth hacking is going to remove most, if not all, of the easy routes to the data. Saying that the corps would do anything to the contrary is short-sighted and ludicrous.

As for someone else running the hardweare so that hacker can get it, yes, that is an option that I have exploited a time or two, but it is not always a viable option. On-site hacking has a lot of advantages that you do not get with the off-site hacker (and yes, it does come with some downsides); In your poinion the hacker is better protected; in my experience, that is rarely the case, as a Lone Hacker is often a very dead hacker... Besides, Remote Hacking is BORING for Hackers at our table. BORING, BORING, BORING. If I wanted to be bored, I would play Mass Effect or something.

Indeed...

TJ, you're ignoring the question. The fact is, there's no advantage to decking in remotely versus hacking in on site. You face the same security regardless of access point, according to RAW.

As far as offline storage goes, I don't have time to pour over the books, but I did run a search on both the 4.5 core book and Unwired pdf. I did not get a single hit on "offline storage" in either book. It's safe to say that if it is mentioned anywhere, it's buried, and definitely not well supported. Yes, there are ways to kludge together an approximation of it, but they're all second-best rules twists.

Which is what I have said. Remote Decking is dumb, as far as I am concerned.
Apparently, according to Draco18s, there is some sort of magical accessibility that Remote Hacking provides that On-Site Hacking does not. I say this because he continuously seems to be saying that I am doing it wrong. *shrug*

Remote hacking provides obvious safety benefits (you don't have to haul your sorry body through the security sensors, armed guards and whatnot). And yeah, so far this thread is devoid of any new mechanically supported reasons for hackers to hack on site that deckers did not have.

I never said that either.

At best remote hacking has the same accessibility.

No. Well, I don't want to put words in Draco's mouth, but I *am* saying that there's absolutely no net advantage to onsite decking versus remote. Since the whole point of the wireless matrix was to make it easier for the decker to participate, I'd consider this to be a failure.

Now, I do acknowledge that what they tried for was a good thing. Locking deckers down to a fixed jackpoint does impede their ability to play alongside the rest of the team. In fact, it's such a good idea I was doing wireless tricks way back in SR2. I'll also add that getting deckers to work alongside the team was actually easier in earlier editions for me, and I had no trouble running matrix, astral, and physical actions side by side in SR2-3. It's actually harder to do so in Sr4.5.

My experience is the exact opposite of yours. But that may be becasue we did not use any wireless access in previous editions. Too, the Decking systems in SR2/3 were needlessly complex, in my opinion, and I have seen a marked improvement in SR4A. That may be a taste thing, though. *shrug*

I don't know if they changed Unwired for 4A, but according to my first printing of Unwired (again, may have changed, dunno) look around pages 59 or the very first page of the Security chapter (page 62 for me, or search for "Wired Link" or "Cabling"). Unless you'd like to play semantics, a network with all of it's wireless turned off and connected by wired links would count as "offline storage" to me. Shrug.

However, I'm not sure there's any point to this argument either way. In 3rd, so long as the server was on the Matrix, the decker could hook up from the depths of the barrens, or by satellite link on the back of a roving Thunderbird. Wireless just means the hacker can do his thing from his own bed, instead of a specific jackpoint- and he can still be traced back in any event.

The big split is more AR vs VR. To do anything in previous editions, the decker should be exclusively in VR and thus dead to the world. However with 4th's advent of AR, the hacker can now be more than a dead body and still function well in the matrix. This is the factor, more than anything else, that encourages the hackers to go along with the team- because it's interesting. If the hacker is off in VR (doesn't matter where, in his bed or in the facility), his presence is not with the rest of the team. This splits the GM's attention, and if the hacker's time in the spotlight takes a long time while he's also in VR, this will inevitably lead to "pizza time" no matter what rule set or setting you use.

AR on the other hand, allows the GM to avoid "splitting the party" and the hacker is allowed to be in, more-or-less, the same narrativistic scene as the rest for the runners, which hopefully eliminates "pizza time" and that is the encouragement to infiltrate with the rest of the group. If you're looking for in game reasons to support that... I'm not sure you're going to find a super compelling argument either way, but it won't be the first, last, or even close to the worst aspects of the setting that breaks under the scrutiny of "realism."

If it's wired to anything with a wireless antenna, then it's wireless.

I'm not sure if you're trolling, playing a game of semantics, or having trouble reading what I wrote.

No, I mean it. If a hardwired system is hardwired to a system that is accessible via wireless signal, then the hardwired system is accessible via remote hacking.

Hack the outer node, then access the inner one.

And because of how ubiquitous wireless is stated to be in 2070, pretty good chance that something along the chain is wireless-capable.


This is a good point and gives a (partial?) answer to the question of what mechanics make SR4 more on-site-hacking-friendly.

By a "network with all of its wireless turned off" I meant just that- nothing on that network has any wireless capability; it has all been turned off. Therefore there is no outer node in which to hack. This of course can be defeated by either physically turning on the wireless on any node in the network, or if every bit of wireless has been physically removed, a new node, with wireless, could be physically attached to the network to add a connection that the hacker could hack through.

But both options to allow a wireless connection to this network would require someone (or something) to actually infiltrate the facility. So yes, the runners could get in, throw a series of drone repeaters, and the hacker could hack from the safety of his bed. However it might be a lot simpler just to bring the hacker along in the first place.


Any megacorp worth it's name is going to make sure that there is nothing along that chain that is wireless-capable. Corporations already now, as in the modern day, enforce certain "clean" areas that employees are not allowed to bring in anything electronic at all. In order to make sure nothing gets out, there are no cell phones, watches, or car keys- nothing but the clothes on their back. Everything electronic that they would need for their jobs is already in the clean area and nothing from the clean area is ever allowed to go outside that area. So no, I don't believe that there is a pretty good chance of something being wireless within a clean area of a megacorp. Random government databases? Sure. The BTL collection of the dude down the street? Fair game. Even single A's or the telecommuters of AAA? Yeah, definitely hackable from bed.

But to assume that there are never offline networks, with no wireless connections, especially when talking AAA's? Ehh... you're on the far end of the leafy branch there.

Though, again, all it requires is one connection- but that requires physically adding a new wireless connection to that network, but at that point infiltrating the hacker can be just as simple as infiltrating that new node, but if the hacker's already with the team, it eliminates splitting the GM's attention and the accompanying "pizza time" when dealing with hacking.

I totally agree with you. But the point is that for some paydata that is offline and "wired" only, there is MORE of a chance that it can be wirelessly accessible in SR4 than in previous versions. More chances that somehow something connects the dots for a wireless hack. Inadvertently or through other means, such as the flying drones, social engineering, team infiltration, etc. So the wireless world has made it easier to be a stay-at-home-hacker, not harder.

I'm not sure I agree specifically on the wireless, but rather the rules of hacking themselves. I think, as I type out this post and delve deeper within the nuances, it might be more that the hurdles of the stay-at-home hacker to remote hack have been lowered because of the actual mechanics of hacking changed and not a specific quality of the wireless world itself. However the wireless change was the "face" of the new matrix, so therefore that's what people point at when they say they hate wireless, but I'm starting to think that it's more the system as designed that they hate and wireless is a convenient handle to grab on to.

Technically under the old rules, a AAA could hide the paydata behind so many nested networks and hordes of glacial IC, that it was effectively inaccessible but still attached to the Matrix. There existed stories of really great deckers that ghosted into the corp court but this is something that I think the transition to wireless left on the floor: the hacker doesn't need to go through node B to get to node C if both A (his node) and node C are both in range of node B. Furthermore, the response of nodes start deteriorating much quicker under the load of all that glacial IC so it's not not reasonable to expect the same level of over-the-top matrix defenses from SR3 to deter the hacker in his bed.

Also, I think the relative power between starting (optimized) hackers and the high end servers/nodes changed. A hacker out of the gate, properly tweaked, just has more dice to roll than the SOTA Rating 6 nodes. This combined with the almost binary results of either achieve Admin access (so the hacker can now do anything) or get punted/have the node shutdown (and thus can't do anything), leads to a change in paradigm: it's easy to connect directly to the node in question if it's connected to the Matrix, and it's relatively easy to crack the hardest nodes in the base book.

If in 4th, the matrix allowed direct connections between the jackpoint and the destination server over wires, allowed properly optimized starting hackers the advantage over servers, and instituted the relatively binary outcomes, I think we'd be in a similar design space regarding the stay-at-home hacker.

I think a way to short circuit that would be to allow authorized communication from matrix IDs as it currently stands... but to circumvent that with unauthorized commands (i.e. hacking) would require mutual signal range between the hacker and the targeted node- or the hacker has to hack a node within MSR, or hack the node that's within the MSR of the MSR of the MSR... and turtles all the way down. Or have his face do some social engineering and get him an authorized account. It'd play well with wireless fluff, reinstitute the legends of the epic deckers, and encourage hackers to get their lazy butts out of bed- how "realistic" it is... ehh, don't care. Still need to do something about the binary nature of success in hacking.

I would also mechanically encourage AR over VR in some manner- it's a break from some of the tropes of cyberpunk, but if it plays better if all the players are in the same "scene" rather than separate headspaces, I'm all for sacrificing it on the altar of fun. YMMV.

WAR! lets nodes go up to Rating 10, and a R6 node with analyze 6 locates a "hacking on the fly" hacker pretty fast (+ i give hot-sim bous to agents/ic/nodes). Also, it is possible to have a wireless external access point to a facility, and wired connections within, with multiple gateways and so forth. Also, nexi (when using the unwired rules) can have a program limit up to 50, thus the corp can stuff a ton of IC into the gateway nodes.

This wasn't quite the case, since you could shut off the RAS override in earlier editions, and going full VR conveys serious benefits in SR4.5. Even though I've done my best to get the decker to go in physically with the team, they always drop and go full VR when there's serious decking to be done. Unless I deliberately fail to tell the player all of his options, they will choose to use full VR if they have a lot of matrix work to do, and only use AR for less serious things or when they don't have much time to switch.

My biggest "pizza problem", however, is Legwork. Frequently, the team will come up with a list of questions for zillions of things, hand it to the decker, then leave for food while he rolls a crapton of Data Search tests. Most of those leads will never pan out, or will go toward plans that will never see the light of day. I do my best to make sure the leads that do pan out require in-person interaction to fully chase down, but the decker pretty much dominates the legwork section. Since most of these searches pretty much amount to advanced Googling, I can't fairly demand that the team chase down all of these in person.

For example: tonight, I sent the team to infiltrate a DocWagon facility. They asked a bundle of questions before they even formulated a plan. Some I had anticipated, some I had not. The key thing here is that it was important enough to require a roll, but not enough that I needed to take it to a face to face meet or other fix. For example, getting the shift schedule is something the decker should be able to do purely on the matrix, as is floorplans, names of key personnel, and so on. Like any smart team, they asked a lot of questions; and since many of them were dead ends, there's no point in doing anything more than a web search for most of it. Based on that data, they formulated their plan.

The problem was, before they could make a plan or decide which leads to chase down, the decker spent an hour doing Google searches. That's pretty damn time consuming. The decker pretty much dominates the legwork, and who can blame them? By having the decker eliminate a lot of the dead ends, they can focus their questions to contacts and others to the important issues, instead of wasting time. Unfortunately, this leads directly to the Pizza Problem.

Here are some things I would do:

Ditch the program limit on fixed nodes. Fixed node / matrix backbone / corporate server type machines should be fundamentally different from mobile commlinks in terms of sheer capabilities.

Return ACIFS (Access Control Index File Slave) or something like it to the system in some modified way -- I would introduce it as basic success thresholds for tasks. Think about it, it'd be dirt simple: "I look up the research file." "Okay, roll a Browse+Computer action.. the Index threshold is 3."

Introduce the idea that fixed nodes then don't have wireless access at all -- a wireless access point can only be attached. Hacking a system wirelessly involves hacking the access point (E-War), cracking its security, and then breaching the fixed node behind it. A common security response is shutting down the wireless access point to unceremoniously dump all connected users (instead of rebooting the whole damn system just unplug the router for a few seconds).