If I ignored it, I would agree with your notion that hackers with no combat skills are totally a thing. As you might have noticed I don't, and for that very reason.


Hmm, does that mean "personas of users who are physically within 100 m" or does the matrix use the layout of the physical world now?

Matrix reflects the physical world, to some degree now.

And you can search for stuff further out, but it becomes more difficult.

It's a pretty alien mindset to me as well. I'd also note that the vehicles getting the backseat in my games is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy as well--I've had plenty of people who wanted to get their Knight Rider or F&F on but I typically have shot down their sheets at chargen because frankly, the vehicle rules are a slog and are best handled with pure handwavium. Which, is something that I believe to be a real shame in a game which claims to support riggers as an archetype. It would be my personal hope that SR5 was made with the mindset that non-shooty stuff should be up to the challenge of carrying a session if the group breaks that way.

I think I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of my Technological Astral analogy.

It works well.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Yup. Simplifies things a lot and makes it a lot easier for folks to imagine.

Combined with noise, it also makes connecting to Matrix sites not hosted locally difficult to impossible, or am I missing something?

As in "lots of local grids which cover relatively small areas (just like GSM cells nowadays)" or an actual parallel to the real world?

There would presumably be a difference between hacking (affected by noise, range/noise, etc) and standard nonhacking Matrix functionality.

Go back to a bit of an SR3 mentality -- to hack into SecuriCorp's office in Manhattan from your cybercafe in Seattle you'd have to break into the Seattle LTG, then into the Pacific Northwest UCAS RTG, then into the intervening RTGs, then into the correct LTG in Manhattan, then into your target. While not "noise," per se, you'd technically be sitting vulnerable in half a dozen systems, making such an attempt pretty foolhardy, and your tracks pretty difficult to cover. You'd be better off getting really close (one or two hops out), or preferably inside your target's physical Matrix location where you could hack in directly.

And while the UCAS RTG was famously benign, there were some pretty nasty ones.

So in SR5 apparently it's the same way -- you can try to hack in from across the continent, but it's just going to be really hard (instead of giving 5 or 6 LTG/RTGs a shot at detecting you, you're just penalized directly to your rolls).

Now, in nonhacking activities, presumably you'd be able to run a perfectly legal data search for the lunch menu of a cafe in Paris without having to worry about noise, because you're making a legal query on a system that is working with you, rather than an illegal query on a system that you've broken into and isn't trying to help you because you're doing your damnedest to keep it from knowing where you are or what you're doing.

Something just occurred to me.

The design goal was for deckers to have something more to do in combat, correct? Which when you get down to it really means more for player deckers to do, not NPCs?

So why force player characters to use wireless cyberwear? Don't you really only need to tell the GMs that NPCs will have it switched on?

Give the GM reasons like:

Law abiding citizens don't need to hide anything - they always have it enabled for convenience.
Street gangs can't afford the modifications to let their gear function at full spec without wireless, so they will usually have it turned on.
Security teams will usually have their gear reporting back to a central hub.
Military and mercenary units use an advanced form of tacnet which monitors the status of all gear and cyberwear, but have high-rating commlinks and may have IC.
Crime gangs will operate as per street gangs or mercenary units, depending on their level within the organisation.
etc.

It seems to me that there was no need to encourage PCs to use wireless at all.

If the PCs have access to it, so do the NPCs. Like wise getting in to decker duals in your street sam's arm sounds sweet.

Unless of course there was a local SecuriCorp office, which would presumably have a link to other branches...which would be one of many things no longer possible in the "Matrix Astral" scenario...

Because this opens a big can of worm. The second you say, that the rules are not valid for NPCs or NPCs follow different rules you get a lot of nasty things.
Staying on canon is hard enough for some writers of novels or even runs. If you start giving them excuses, there is nothing the PC can count on. It is like playing in a universe, where the laws of nature change every second.

Why? As a registered, legal network on the Matrix it should be able to transmit data to its buddies without much in the way of interference.

You mean like between December 2074 and January 2075 ?

with a Dance between the Editions
Medicineman

did not think you had snark in you O.o

Always expect the unexpected

HeyaHeyaHepp
Medicineman

Matrix until now: Ares' America division has their own private network with access points in several major grids, all corp nodes are connected to that private network. Including nodes which do not really represent a physical place (say, Seattle main office) but are merely virtual meeting points

Hypothetical "Mirror World Matrix": Each node sits on the public grid where the appropriate physical office is located. Purely virtual nodes don't exist

Sure they can exchange data, but they are no longer on their own private network

Minding that "everything has a cost" is the new edition's motto, could you please explain the cost of magic and bioware?

Magic is probably Karma.
Where Bioware is Essence and MONEY.

It's MagicRun. They are just better than you.

No, they never had their own cross-continent network. You still had to route across the Matrix to log in anywhere.

Of course they had. It was called a PLTG.

Private, but Local.

Global.

How do you figure?
You KNOW that LTG means Local Telecommunications Grid, right?

Despite that name Private Local Telecommunications Grid name they weren't locally restricted:



In real world terms they were Class A private networks where subsidaries either had direct cable, satellite connections or were connected via VPN connections over public routes

"Local", in this frame of reference, means "not part of the global grid, but a sub-grid". It's grid topology, not to be taken in a geographical context.

ah, i see.

SR3 BBB sayeth:

PRIVATE LTGS
Private LTGs (PLTGs) are independent, restricted global grids that are closed to the general public. Most large corporations and all megacorporations maintain at least one PLTG. Typically, most developed countries maintain several government PLTGs, which may extend to military or diplomatic sites outside the countries’ borders. PLTGs are run on dedicated fiber-optic lines, owned by the agency using them or leased from the local phone company.
PLTGs are governed by the laws of the corp or country that owns them. As a result, PLTG owners can install any anti-intrusion measures they desire. Because building a PLTG requires a considerable investment, most owners don’t skimp on the IC.


Note the last paragraph. If the CC want to push through a new, more secure, and more layered matrix, why exactly would the corps give up the ability to have their own grids with their rules?

In my game, like as not, they won't have

The rules aren't different, just the factors behind their decisions.

The NPCS still have the option of illegally modifying their cyberware. They simply don't because either:

a) They're law-abiding citizens.
b) They lack the connections and/or money to get the modifications done, and do not have the skills and/or tools to do it themselves. (street gangs, small-time criminals)
c) They are actually required by their employers/superiors/policy to use matrix functionality, and have their cyberware tracked and moinitored via the Matrix. (corpsec, Lone Star)
d) They are all using the same hardware, and are taking full advantage of advanced forms of tacnet with the appropriate countermeasures and dedicated Deckers to mitigate the risk. (Black Ops military, mercenary units)

Shadowrunner teams generally do not fall into any of these categories, and thus bother to modify their cyberwear to function without the Matrix, along with all the extra hassles of having to schedule firmware upgrades, or possibly even buy cracked upgrades for their non-licensed cyberware on the black market.

Other people still have the option of doing this, it is simply expected (due to reasons which can be logically explained in-game) that most people will either not choose or else not have the option to do so.



Based on past behaviour I'd expect that most megacorps would only pretend to decommission their PLTGs.

There are two competing philosophies of security to consider in this setting:

1) Isolation, with ad hoc data transfer capability across the standard global network. This would mean that a Corp's network would exist at sites, and form an ad hoc connection from site to site as necessary. Each site would nominally be isolated from each other site -- meaning if you hack into one, you don't have access to all the other sites. You could try to intercept the data from the public grid, but since a connection is only formed ad hoc, doing so would be complicated and difficult.

2) PLTG -- that is a private line linking each site to each other site, completely sidestepping the regular Matrix. In this setup, the data transfer from site to site would be completely secure unless someone found a way to physically tap the data line (and I hope you're not using a satellite to bounce your connection or we're back to intercepting data in transit, but easier since it always comes from the same places). The upside to this model would be the capability of distributing and mobilizing security on your own turf all the time. The downside would be that if any one location was compromised, the entire PLTG would be open to the intruder.

Considering that in the new paradigm, hacking from the public grid is difficult, and hacking over long range is difficult, I'd expect corporations to follow the first model. Isolate each site and utilize the public grid in an ad hoc way. Most data would be largely indistinguishable from the overwhelmingly huge ocean of other data.

Only the most secure physical sites could really be connected by PLTG -- obviously you don't want a weather station in Uzbekistan connected by PLTG to your shiny new Arcology R&D labs. You probably would only want a highly secure site directly linked to another highly secure site, and not let any moderately secure sites or low security sites into the party, because physical vulnerability becomes much more of a risk.

Not really. You can certainly have internal network virtualization even if it's all on the same backbone. So less secure minor sites connect to major sites via layers of security hardware.

from what we've heard, it sounds suspiciously like there is no such thing as layers of security when it comes to the matrix. for example, slaving stuff to your commlink means you get to add your commlink rating to defense rolls for each device when they're targeted (which does not require, from what i have been able to glean, compromising the commlink itself in any way).

of course, it's possible the corporations are a bunch of dirty cheaters. honestly, i wouldn't even have a problem with that, so long as the dirty cheating is also (theoretically) available to the runners in the event that they manage to bankroll it (which isn't terribly likely, but you never know).

I'm not talking about how the rules do it, I have never seen a copy of SR5 and the SR4 computer rules are a morass that require all sorts of handwaving and house rules to make them work at all. I'm saying it's perfectly possible to do this in reality. The fact that nobody running SR megacorps or governments has supposedly ever heard of the idea of "off-line backups" is a pretty good clue that nobody writing the rules or the fluff has the foggiest idea how things work in the real world, or why they do.

SR5 has a rule that brings that idea into the game.

As far as writers who know about IT: I've got a degree in and now teach CS, but I was late to the SR4 party. Certain security and data management concepts didn't fit with SR4. They're lurking under the surface of the SR5 rules, but the system is necessarily abstract because a) they have to be playable and b) it's a game, not a text book. Hopefully, you'll be able to spot them when you read through the chapter.

If you want, I can start writing up corp facilities and corp security in an intelligent and logical fashion, utilizing all teh resources available in the high-tech and highly magical future of Shadowrun.

However, the game would be unplayable because Shadowrunners would NEVER win.

There are a lot of holes and weirdness that are there by design so that the game remains playable.

No, really Bull. Please do. I want to see these, and as a player would love to be set the task of cracking them.

Which would not be a problem unless all nodes on the PLTG operate on the principle of "everybody on this net is totally trustworthy, no further authentication required". Which is not entirely unrealistic, but we don't want to make things 8i]that[/i] easy for hackers, right?


Because if you have that fancy dedicated network where you can set the rules and everything, why bother using it?

Also, this is not just about data transfer: You (i.e. your persona) are inside RandomCorp's Seattle node and want to zap over to a conference call with the guys in Vladivostok. In the "structured matrix" that's no problem, both nodes are in direct vicinity, even though their geographic locations are not. If the matrix becomes a mirror world of IRL geography you'll have to take a tour around the globe just like a projecting mage.

I've no doubt that security systems and corporate counter-intrusion policies in the game could be laid out to where only the elite of the elite in the shadows could break in to a secure corp building. As a player and a GM, I'm glad that there are "gaps" and "holes" in the system because other wise the game turns into ShadowPlan. I can appreciate the idea of legwork but I've played in SR games where the GM made it quite clear that our objective was inside the Ivory Tower and that it would take a conspicuous amount of planning to operate.

In my opinion legwork is quite useful. No one likes to be caught unprepared. Complicated and sustained legwork to combat complex security is boring and frustrating as all hell. I mean I dunno about other groups but in games I've played the idea of "teamwork" is 70-30 proposition. Most times it happens, other times its Bionic Arms strangling Mouthy Magicians. That's why half the time I advocate not working for corporations and pursuing the criminal element (organized crime or high-stakes robberies). I think our group has deduced that its just not worth the time (real world and in-game) to run against secure complexes unless we're getting paid out the yin-yang. I know that not everyone's cup of tea but I am grateful for games that lets you get into the action quickly and not have to spend an entire game session planning the mission.

Having just read Bull's comment and all that went through my head was.... You mean like the Corporate Security Handbook did? You know, I'd love to see a new version of the CSH and CSF (Corporate Shadowfiles) they were incredible supplements.

I'd love a new Neo Anarchist's Guide To Real Life as well, but I honestly don't think the setting assumptions that have been crowbarred into the current rules will -work- for creating comprehensively internally consistent fluff books like that.

That would be good and it would give a good heads up of working systems under the new rules.

Well we normally get those after the Companion, Cyber, Weaponry/Combat, Matrix, Rigging and Magic books are released.

Wish list would be for a new Corp Security/Mr Johnson's Little Black Book style supplement
New NeoAnarchist's / Sprawl Survival style supplement
New Threats style supplement

After that some Shadows of/Target/SotA type stuff.

I'm sure that despite some of the heavy handed / crowbar (and the fact there will be ALOT of house rulings) that a consistency in setting info can be achieved.

Corporate Security Handbook was GREAT and is still relevant. It could certainly use an update and more attention to pointing out game mechanic effects when appropriate. CSH had a lot of fluff that ... well I'm not sure what they wanted the GM to do with it.

But a new Shadowbeat is what I want. Attitude was not a replacement.

Attitude was a sad joke. Yes, a new, quality Shadowbeat is highly overdue. And not one that rambles for 20 pages about the awesomeness of owning a small business, or one that mistakes BTLs for SimSense.

I second a new Corpsec Handbook. Honestly, it's still my number one resource when planning runs and obstacles. Some of the ideas in it are just genius. Drones that pop out of hidden holes when an electrified fence is cut? Yes please!

The only problem with the CSH is that whoever wrote it obviously had a certain kind of understanding how actual technical security works, so there are more than a few setups described that can hardly be beaten without a few hours of work by a well-equipped team and magic available (see pressure sensor mats or atmospheric pressure detectors used to detect doors opening).

Aye. CSH was written sort of with the understanding that the runners would do their research and were trying to be stealthy. The runners I'm familiar with are more the Panther assault cannon-toting shoot-everything variety