So, before I begin, just for full disclosure: while I am a CGL Freelancer, I did not work in any way, nor did I have any input on the development of SR5. That's that, read the rest as you will.

Last night was my group's game. We are currently running the Coin of Luck mission from Corporate Intrigue (which, incidentally, is an amazing campaign book. I highly recommend it). This was our first game with SR5, everyone having converted all their chars and etc. One did not have much time, so he outright switched his character to the Brawler Adept, which is close enough to what he had before.

The team had just entered the dreaded Kowloon Walled City. First thing they ecounter are some thugs beating up a man in front of his child. Turns out the Brawling Adept has a Code of Honor that doesn't like that, so she steps in. Words are spoken, threats are made, but the gangers won't back down (narrowly failed Intimidation test). After some posturing, the biggest of them goes mano-a-womano with the brawler to settle things. Our first taste of very basic SR5 combat. Rolls are fluid, and moments later, after suffering a minor cut from the ganger's knife jab, the brawler puts the ganger down. So far, so good.

Next, the continue on into a "building", more like a pile of rubble, and cross over to the next one via a narrow plank walkway. The toll sammy's weight causes it to collapse, but his Gymnastics 6 allow him to nimbly scramble safely to the other side. Once there, the team's hacker runs a perimeter search for Silent icons. He rolls wells, and spots a gaggle a few feet below them. Hmm. This is unusualy in Kowloon Walled City, where few people have any Matrix devices. He beings investigating, randomly Perceiving the Icons for more details. He encounters a commlink, which he Hacks-on-the-Fly. Gaining a Mark on it, it turns out it's the Master device for a bunch of other sutff, uincluding cybereyes. So, having hacked that stuff, he proceeds to pipe into the cybereyes and gains field of vision. Black Chrysanthemum Triad members and brokering a organ deal with Ghouls. Wow, would have been bad if they'd just stumbled into that, so everyone thanks the hacker. The team decides these scumbags deserve no mercy, so the sniper gets into position and the rest of the team advances. The hacker continues to wrack havok. He trips an alarm on another ganger's commlink. The meeting being typically tense, the Triad assume the Ghouls are pulling something and weapons are drawn, though not immediately fired. Unfortunately for them, the hacker continues his merry game, and hacks a gun and causes it to fire a round. That's enough to ignite that poweder keg, and shooting commences. The sniper makes a few gangers explode while the team engages two Triads trying to make a run for it in melee. Another very fluid round of dice rolling sees the Brawler use Called Shots to Disarm a Triad before the Troll and Brawler beat the Triads up. Everyone cheers when the brawler kicks the gun out of the Triad's hands - a cool move for sure! And everyone shakes their heads sadly when the sniper causes something like 14P of damage in a single shot to a poor Triad guy.

The team moves on, reaching a suspicious looking courtyard formed by 4 buildings. Pretty juicy spot for an ambush. They have no real reason to expect one, but Shadowrunners are a paranoid lot, so they advance cautiously. Of course, paranoia is a healthy thing. Turns out there IS an ambush. The sniper's background includes the Enemy quality, which (while he doesn't know quite all of this) is in fact the Fallen from Quebec (the sniper's homeland). Now, those Very Scary and Cunning Psycho Bastards are bad-ass motherfuckers, but Hong Kong is a long way from Quebec, so what's reaching out to the runners is a locally hired team of runners (I grabbed 5 of the archetypes from SR5). Their team hacker is very competant, so a stealthy battle of detection between the Player's hacker and the opposition begins. The opfor gets an in in that the sniper, because he's a paranoid pig-headed kind of guy, refused the hacker's offer to slave his stuff to his. Being much less defended, the opfor's hacker spots him and proceeds to one-shot brick his Sniper Rifle's Smartlink, and half-brick his cybereyes. The opfor's sammy tosees a grenade at the team, which the Player Troll Sammy does a Quickdraw Test on to throw back, and succeeds. Gunfire starts being exchanged, but no hits yet. The poor Elf Face Chick tries to run out of the middle of the courtyard, but runs right into the opfor's Troll Bounty Hunter's shotgun instead. Thankfully for her, she dodges the shotgun roll.

So, that's where we left off for the night. All in all:
* I was able to do 2 and a half Combat scenes in one sitting, which is *unheard* of in our previous SR4 games. Without a doubt, dice rolling and combat is much more fluid and faster now
* We all LOVE the new hacking. Even though the hacker is much less powerfull, finding it much harder to Matrix-dominate the opposition, he really enjoys it a lot more. The challenge is much more fun, and everyone really loved the scene with hacking the Black Chrysanthemums. The sniper didn't mind too much getting his rifle bricked, just part of the challenge, once again.

All in all, everyone agreed this was a really awesome game under the new mechanics.

You can quickdraw to throw back grenades?

Only properly holstered weapons or in a sheath or sling are supposed to be quickdrawn. Idea is you know where it is and have practiced that snap movement.

However, a creative GM could have made him do a snatch from the air with penalties to the QD roll (he can clearly see the device so he knows where it is, jus the exact motion is being a bit improvised - or not, some military training (or an outfielder for baseball) might lend that sort of response) to basically grab and return throw the device I suppose.

Of course you can, just as long as your Wirelss is enabled.

Where is the Awesome post button?

Quick draw rules on pg 165 do not mention anything about grenades and support that the grenade had to be in a holster. It also isn't mentioned on page 181 that has a section for grenades. The wireless link allows you to remotely detonate ahead of the timer, reducing scatter.

Personally, I think the throwing skill would have sufficed. Add penalties if the grenade landed in a pile of rubbish, and have the player drop it if they critically glitch.

Epic Fail on the response...
Wireless fixes anything...

We looked for rules concerning throwing back but found nothing specific, so this seemed a VERY close rule to what we needed.

All in all, good call. Maybe the errata should include a quick note on how to throw back?

You noted that the Sniper's rifle's smartlink was bricked. Where you playing it easy on the player by not bricking the rifle first?

Partially yes, but also, I wasn't sure the RIFLE could be bricked. You can only brick Matrix Devices, right? The rifle *itself* is not a matrix device, is it? I mean, for example, if you take a revolver without a smartlink, there's nothing to brick - it's already fully mechanical. So killing the smartlink seemed to be the limit of what could be done. I think maybe I could have been more cruel and said a smartlink modification is so invasive that if it's disabled the gun can no longer fire until the smartlink is taken out, but, yes, that'd be a little mean towards the Player.

oh dear...

Actually under the new system ALL devices, right down to your Ruger Super Warhawk (you would think its just a mechanical pistol right?) has a wireless capability and can be bricked.

Don't ask...

But the good news is you can either rip it out or buy a increasingly rare throwback version that never got the wireless put in.

That interpretation makes far too much sense to be an actual rule. (I like it, though!)

I am just curious WHY the Sniper was not Dark (at least for his weapons and smartlink). Serious security hole, there.

second

That's exactly the intent of the new rules. And per the Firearms section, even non-smart weapons have wireless functionality that allows for wireless manipulation of the firing mechanism, feed mechanism, and monitoring of magazine contents. So yeah, the hacker bricks the rifle, not just the smartgun system. I see a strong move towards throwbacks as more and more trigger pullers move all the way to the left on the risk/reward graph, but that's the way it is.

By the way, I do like the idea that organized crime goons would be relying on running silent rather than being EM dark, exposing them to being absolutely victimized by shadowrunners. Turning a meeting into a Aztlaner standoff (you see what I did there?) was a nice bit of hacking work. Glad you all are having fun with SR5.

Ya, pg 228 says that the internals melt, clog up mechanics and could jam the firing pin, for example. That's the risk/reward cycle for keeping the smartlink wireless. It may be mean, but it also drives home the idea trusting the team hacker is beneficial. Which actions did the enemy hacker take to brick it? Data Spike? I'm curious since I haven't had a chance to play a session yet and would like to know how the actions handle in combat.

Players can disarm the wireless as a free action for all of their devices (pg 421). Let that be a lesson to your sniper to trust your hacker or shut down the wireless once you know a hacker is around.

If he hadn't been so stubborn and gone under the wing of the team hacker, he would have been fine. The opfor was probing them for a while, but he couldn't get any hits on the Perception to get past the hacker's Running Silent security for the rest of the team. The only way he managed to get to the sniper was because he refused the hacker's extra security. Oddly enough, he agreed to have his stuff slaved under the hacker now...

Annd as to why he wasn't completely turned off, one one hand the general 2075 attitude is that that is a very odd thing to do in the first place, especially for characters who in-game are not Matrix experts and don't fully understand what could happen to them, and on the other hand, the sniper does enjoy sharing his scope field of vision with the team (and vice versa)

Thanks for posting.
Looking forward to hearing about the next session.

Yes, data spike. He had 1 or 2 Marks on his rifle already, so he got like 3 net hits, base damage 5, +4 from the marks, so one-shot bricking. That impressed got the Player hacker's attention, by the way. The sniper has not shared with the rest of the team the fact he has powerful Enemies, so the hacker asked him "just who the fuck did you piss off?"

Snipervoyuerism

I can see that as being the attitude for the general populace, but not for Shadowrunners, Military, Security, etc. Communications and Tacnets are one thing, but complete device Matrix Integration is thoroughly stupid. *shrug*

Cool, thanks for sharing. Eager to see how the games progress.

This quality is not in SR5. Is this a house ruled item?

Yes. While most characters Re-Qualified (hehe) using only SR5 stuff, as painful as that was - this character's Enemy stuff was really central to his character and I in fact had the ambush session all set already right before we decided to hop to 5th. So, I kind of hand waived it. In exchange, he got to keep his Sniper Rifle

See, I don't care where you stand on combat hacking or the wireless bonuses - I think we can ALL agree that this is fragging awesome.

I agree.

Thanks for sharing, please let us hear about the next session. I want to see how the ambush turns out!

I would suggest that he purchase a separate gun camera so that all a decker could do is interfere with the picture he was sending the team.

I would think all the sniper forums would say first thing is go offline before a shot.

He could have been directly connected via a datajack or a smartgun link induction pad to his rifle with the wireless off.

By using a comlink with an ear piece and throat mike (maybe shades with image link) there would be no connection to his DNI via the data jack so no way to get to his cyberware or the rifle.

Or the sniper's comlink is linked to a micro thin fiber optic line (that he ran as he moved to position) that leads back to a laser comlink a good distance away from the action.
The laser comlink could then connect him to a drone with a laser comlink, his team, a tacnet, and/or the matrix. There would be no wireless signal any where near the sniper.

I could see the professionals having weapons with limited capacity.
You know the military is not going to want weapons that can be hacked.

Say with a smartgun link that provides targeting info and a camera view, but has no other connection with the weapon. So for example no ejecting the clip by command. There is a manual override to go to a plain scope and or laser sight.

A non wireless grenade launcher with airburst with mingrenades that are given a fix range to explode at. Of course the minigrenades can not be armed until they have been fired and traveled the minimum safe distance.

Why would anyone carry a Wireless grenades that didn't have a hardware detonation system that doesn't arm until 2 seconds after the pin is pulled and the grenade is thrown. Only once the hardware detonator has armed can the wireless system activate it.

If that is too complicated and expensive what about wireless grenades that are turned off and can only be turned on when the grenade pin is pulled. Pull the grenade off your belt, pull the pin, the wireless goes active, give it a command or select one of several presets, throw.

Gun Camera's that only transmit the feed to the wireless and can not receive.
If you want to change a setting or position, you use the separate comlink to tell the sniper to manually change the gun camera settings or position.

Indeed - if you can let it slide that all this kind of thing is out there for the world to hack.

It's hard

I mean, see the discussion about the mechanical rifle being subjected to wifi hacking attacks (RAW, not what they did in the game session - I can dig the smartlink being bricked).



The idea of more wireless stuff, giving the hacker a 'non-combat combat role' is nice. Getting used to just saying 'all this stuff is hackable now' is going to take large amounts of salt.

That is what house rules are for.
Every thing is hackable.....
unless the target is a pro using proper military matrix security SOP.

And unless the decker has time to prepare, hardware always beats software.

But then are you taking away stuff for the deckers to do? Are they back to being a secondary gun hand?

I guess maybe the best option overall is to tweak the wireless bonuses to 1) not be dumb and 2) maybe give a bonus that makes more sense than RAW so there is incentive to leave wifi on and let your decker/TM defend it.

Oh, I just thought of something funny. It doesn't have any SR5 rules crunch, but seeing how some people enjoyed the story, this may amuse you.

So, more detail on the courtyard scene - when the team saw the courtyard, they all kind of paused and starting looking at it. They saw a dwarf living in a shack. After some observation, the Face decides to go try to talk to him. At that point, a glowing ball appears in the middle of the courtyard. The team goes "wtf?". The dwarf denizen - really, having very little to live for anyway - decides to go check it out. He walks up to it, listens, nods, and walks back to the Face.

"It's for you" he tells her.

Face blinks at the dwarf. "What do you mean?"

"It's for you", repeats the dwarf.

Face cocks an eyebrow, and the team agrees she should go check it out. Face walks up to it, gets her head close to the ball. It whispers "We want Mazen Mor" [this is the name of the Sniper wanted by the Fallen, but, due to his paranoia, most of the team only know his name is Mazen. Also, us Players are in Montreal and we're all bilingual english/french, and while we play in english, "Mor" sounds like "Mort" which is the french word for death. This will matter in a few seconds]

Face says "Uh, what do you mean?"

"Bring us Mazen Mor" it whispers again. Now, this is magical communication, so the team's audio-net isn't picking it up. All the team members are staring at him from a safe distance away (except for the hacker who is wondering how come his fly spy just went dark [it got bricked at this point, too]

"Well, uh, why would we do that?" asks the Face.

"Bring him, or you will all diiiieeeee" whispers the orb.

"Uh, that's not very friendly" says the Face, looking increasingly nervous.

Face decides this is not a decision for her, and yells to the Sniper "Mazen, it wants you dead!"

At this point, out of game, I comment "That's not quite what it said", but the Face Player confirms "That's what I say". So, no misunderstanding, so we go with it. The sniper, who is the only one that has an inkling of the shit they're in, freaks out and shoots the orb to oblivion. At this point, the opfor Shadowrunner team figure they tried negotiations and that didn't work, so they open fire, and ensure the rest.

After the game, we're talking and the Face's player says "Mazen Mor... that's your name? I though it said "we want Mazen mort"... as in, literally in a little frenglish moment, "we want mazen dead".

Heh.

that is an awesome bit of RP

Or turn it off.

How many pros do runners usually come across in a run?
SWAT, High Threat Response Team like the Red Samurai, Secret Service security detail, an experienced team of shadowrunners?
And only when they are expecting trouble.

There are plenty of noobs out there for the decker to have lots of fun with.
Gangers, Mafia goons, Fanatics, security guards, standard security drones...

And even if there isn't, there is always the driver of a speeding delivery truck, or a office cleaning drone, or some thing else the decker can do to tilt the odds.

The thing is to set the level of expectation for the team decker.
If they are pros expecting to party and running military grade matrix security then there is not a lot the decker can do directly to them.

Most cyberpunk books put military grade stuff in a whole separate category above what the non military world is using.

There has to be a middle ground between every thing is online and hackable and there being nothing for a decker to do.

For example why would a rigged Helicopter being used for a black op allow anyone hack the flight controls?
My answer would be that the Helicopter was not dedicated to supporting black ops so wasn't setup for military style operations.


I know if I was a Mega Corp, the thought of someone remotely hacking a suborbital and dropping it on top of my HQ would give me nightmares.
If a rigger was jacked in, I'd want a hardware switch to have to be thrown before someone could remotely control the sub orbital. A big red button right between the pilots.

... You know, a weapon being bricked seems like a far preferable form of force depletion than a highly trained individual, especially one in whom you're already reasonably invested in with augments, getting killed.

And playing the pros like that is a pretty horrible thing to do to the decker player - and isn't "the one and only true way" that you want it to be.

This is what I was hoping to illustrate. The hacker and the sniper both gave and took hits from the Matrix. They had more fun overall now than in SR4 where you were LESS vulnerable to hacking. Now, mileage may vary based on people, but my point here is to illustrate vulnerability is not a bad thing. It makes things more challenging, more colourful and more fun for the Players. Fun doesn't come from flawlessly plowing down the opposition without a scratch.

oh sure if you want the EASY way, but I still got 3 crates of these throwbacks to try and unload on some poor sa..... customer.

I was hoping to convert a metal shop from SR4 and stamp out M1911's. No wireless, no problem.

QFT.

Hey as always, your game your call.
I like the new Matrix rules.
I like the new options decker have.
I like deckers period.
I just think they went a little too far.

But you are telling me that a well trained team with military gear and training, who are going in expecting trouble have no way to minimize the risk?

Say a SWAT team is going against a Neo Anarchist terrorist cell. Neo Anarchist have some ace deckers.
I don't see a bunch of ex military SWAT team members risking any exposure.
I certainly wouldn't want to get in a helicopter that some ace neo anarchist decker could hack and crash.
And I doubt their sniper would want to risk not being able to cover his team.

And why would they stop at bricking a weapon?
Why not take out their decker, hack the helicopter and crash the entire squad?
I'd really have to trust someone's ability before I'd literally put my life and the rest of the teams' lives in their hands.
And what if the team deckers is getting double or tripled teamed?
Two or three deckers could likely take out any single decker having to defend a vehicle.
If that happened wouldn't you immediately shutdown the wireless connection for the helicopter?

I'm not being hard on the decker.
I'm telling him that if the opposition is well trained and equipped and expecting you then some times you won't be able to hack them.
That the military takes matrix security very seriously when expecting combat and a shadowrunner doesn't want to mess with the military even in the Matrix because they operate at at a totally different level.

I'm sitting it up so that some times a decker is going to have to be inventive and think outside the box.

SWAT Deckers seem to be a more likely answer than sacrificing the edge that the wireless bonuses could give them. The odds of the neo-@'s having a better decker are about the same as the odds of them being better armed and armoured as well as more skilled. In other words, not bloody likely.

And groups like SWAT teams HAVE to have that kind of trust to be able to operate at all.

And I like the idea of needing to think outside the box, but there's other ways to encourage that. They already have a difficult time with certain less sophisticated enemy types (paracritters, feral ghouls, etc). High-tech enemies should be right in their wheelhouse, if perhaps well defended.

I do like the new matrix rules.

So I'd like to know if the sniper is going to take any extra precautions after having had his smartgun bricked?

(CN?) Warforged Artificer weilding the necronomicon and wearing the black robe of the archmagi (spellcraft checks to fool your alignment to magic items!) walks into an angel stronghold and says, "Don't worry! We're here to slay good!"
...
"I mean evil!"

Yes, he agreed to have his stuff slaved to the Decker's deck.

On the helicopter, what if a couple of Shadowrunner deckers where hooding and joined their Neo Anarchist buds?
What if there where a couple of Neo Anarchist deckers hidden near by?

I don't care how much better the gear or training of a SWAT decker was, all it takes is for the Neo Anarchist decker to get lucky one time. The SWAT Decker is a single point of failure at least as long as the team is in flight. Take out the decker and you take out the whole team.

All it would take is having A SWAT or HTR helicopter doing a nose dive once or twice and there would be big changes.

Now once they are on the ground, the benefits out weigh the risks. I figure SWAT and the rest would be trained to work both ways. As soon as they realized they were compromised they would go off line and switch to backup comlinks.

I guess I just want to make the point that if you don't mind the expense and inconvenience (and draconian measures), you can prevent drones, ware, and gear from being hacked. (unless they set it up a head of time via a little sabotage).

Micro thin fiberoptic cable, laser comlinks, not connecting your comlinks to your data jack, Cyberware wireless connections off, using a data jack to plug directly in to your gear and so on. And Jammers. Lot of Jammers.

And a well trained and equipped force expecting trouble would be buttoned up tight and ready with alternates if they lost their matrix support.

If they weren't expecting trouble then there would be lots of opportunities for hacking.
Too inconvenient to not use wireless.

Now we want to talk site security?
Only the most secure corporate research facilities would be matrix secure.

Security is only as good as your users buy in. People trying to live and work would be too hampered by really strict Matrix security for there not to be holes for runners to find. Unless the users are totally behind the security measures there will either be a little slack for the regular users some where or they will find ways to circumvent the security.

Now a Mitsuhama Zero Zone?
I'd say they would have a lot of buy in from their people.
Once again a place a decker will need to really think outside the box.

So ask the team what their SOP will be if the team decker is dumped or incapacitated?

Unless they have a biomonitor on him or are moving together, will they even know?

Here's the trick: That Neo-@ hacker doesn't get to just keep making rolls until he succeeds. Every time he fails, he's getting marked or eating unresisted Matrix damage. You'd have to be a pretty ballsy decker, or a seriously skilled one, just to try. And with limits in play, he's doubly relying on his being lucky and the other guy being unlucky at the same time. Really, it all depends on what the benefits of running the helicopter wirelessly even are... Remote operation is about all I can think of.

High end teams (not runners) will have their devices slaved to a Host over a WAN. They will perform better with Wireless enabled, and have excellent defenses.

A squad of Red Samurai will be defending in the Matrix with the Renraku Host attributes.