Yep, a definite gold mine of potential there

You know, on further thought, I'm not too sure that all that hangs together very well. Current generations, as you put it, are quite capable of evincing massive techno-scepticism. Just look at the fuss around organic food, GMO, nuclear power, spyware with or without government involvement, pollution management, labour rights vis-a-vis automation, and you can see that it's far from a techno-utopian world. It isn't even clear that the answer to the problems of technology is widely regarded as being more (different) technology.

Besides that, a large part of cyberpunk was always social commentary on the intrinsic worth, or worthlessness of humanity in the high tech age, and the social ills which might result from the comparative devaluation of a substantial proportion of the public at large - a problem which is growing in the real world as technology displaces entire classes of labour as being simply uneconomical. The labour movement is fighting hard on this front, and it is a real world concern for millions and millions of people.

I'm not saying that there aren't places to find bits of optimism, but the idea that cyberpunk should dig its own grave while abdicating in favour of transhumanist spiritual imperialism boldly colonising the future isn't something I quite buy, yet.

I don't think post-cyberpunk has really dropped the social commentary or skepticism regarding technology. It is simply less likely to be pure distopia, and more of an examination of all of the changes that technology brings. They tend to start out emphasizing the postive changes a certain technology has brought, but then the story, when it kicks in, is usually about some danger or hidden downside to it. The solution, though, will not be "technology is bad,", but "okay, how can we fix this problem?" I think cyberpunk introduced some changes to science fiction in general that are going to stay, even as some of the older cyberpunk stories begin to seem dated, with their Japanese-philia/phobia and disintegrating nation-states/corporate feudalism (big corporations are more powerful than they should be, but I think they prefer the current status quo, where they have a disproportionately large influence, pay disproportionately less taxes, and have laws and government largesse that benefit them).

I think Shadowrun has weathered the change better because it was never completely cyberpunk. I don't mean merely the addition of fantasy elements. I mean that they never went full-on gonzo distopia - there are still nation states, activist organizations, and places where you can have a real lawn with real grass, and drink real coffee (even if that puts you in the luxury bracket).

Even Gibson wasn't purely anti-technology, and forsaking technology wasn't a particular answer in his books - nor in Dick's. They're both rife with illustrations of unintended consequences, but any depiction of high tech low life will turn its lens on those who don't get all the blessings and perhaps get more of the downsides.

The idea that cyberpunk dystopias universally offer less hope or light than a session of Kult (for those who don't know it, it has been described as Call of Cthulhu without all the mindless optimism) isn't really supported by the major literary inspirations. Even Bladerunner mostly amounts to: "Wow, that really sucks for the replicants." It isn't a universal condemnation of every aspect of its milieu.

Fighting is boring: the street samurai burst in and cuts the disarmed octogenarian security guard in two.
Rigging is boring: the rigger turns on his signal and makes a sedate left turn onto Pike.
Infiltration is boring: the infiltration specialist lifts the unlocked window's sash and slips in.
Magic is boring: the shaman summons a watcher from within his lodge.
Negotiation is boring: the face agrees to a reasonable rate, plus material costs.

You see? Any time you take the simple case, it gets kind of trivial. Real world hacking on a trivially secured, poorly monitored site with lax processes is, yes, simple, and yes, boring.

A hacker trying to penetrate a serious site should be combining a lot of legwork (perhaps trying in a few fake job interviews to figure out what technology they have, maybe buying drinks for disgruntled employees at favourite watering holes near the office, maybe even pickpocketing or burglary) with tech work to find exploits for their actually fully patched kit, should be prepared to identify their honeypots and not get caught in them, because otherwise any source address will sure as hell get identified and turned useless, if not outright assailed, should be hacking surrounding networks to listen in on things like port-knocking systems used in authentication...

This stuff is not easy, it is a serious intellectual puzzle, and is way beyond what your typical sinus-excavating script kiddie even comprehends, let alone achieves. You may find it boring, but lots of people really don't.

Now comes the payday: the hacker, having carefully laid his plans, found his holes, identified his targets, has to coordinate with a maintenance schedule, or ride in on a temporary firewall hole created for a scheduled offsite backup initiation, or get a physical connection to an airgapped embedded network and actually get the right result at the right time and deal with unexpected side effects while his team have their hoops on the line halfway down an elevator shaft. Again, not easy. Not boring either, even if you aren't slinging a rendered claymore around a rendered landscape at a rendered boar.

And why? Why all this hard work? Because unlike with the recent Target fiasco, where maybe they'll lose seven figures, and some guy might lose his job (odds are, not the person responsible, if my experience in the field is any indication) in the world of Shadowrun the presumption is that hugely vaster sums are at stake, and responsible parties might be walked out the back and retired, gulag style, right in their faces. Or the base of the spine. Whichever. So yes, security on any serious site will be tight, up to date, and will have the actual organisational juice to call some shots. Otherwise they'd quit and do something else, low stress, like backup maintenance.

Or no corporation would ever put anything of importance on electronics ever, and hackers are superfluous.

Im not calling you old SF. But lets face it, how many of us have been here since the old Jive boards? Those went off in what, late 2001? We have been here a LONG ASS time. I started posting on DS 15 years ago, and that's verging dangerously close to half of my life span. Some times even the bitter old vets like us kinda move on with our lives.

We should subtitle this thread 'old familiar faces'...

When Fanpro went through with 4th edition I pretty much gave up on it. I've stuck to playing 3rd edition as life and growing older allow. CGL's biggest mistake was not instantly reversing all the damage Fanpro did (Which included the nWoD knock-off which was 4th edition). 5th edition has brought me back to more active posting because it is bringing back Cyberpunk to the setting, the Shadowtalk culture. I think the massively successful SR kickstarter showed people where the money is at. 5th edition launched with a lot of sales which it deserved for going back to its roots, but I think its future is wobbly because the book was in many ways a disappointment with poor editing and a lot of things like the wireless equipment bonuses/penalties that never should have made it print. I've been a round for a few edition launches so I know there is still time to see if the publisher is going to clean it up with future supplements. I also know there is rarely a second chance to make a first impression with your customers.

Regardless the future moves on with or without you.

Just run fourth. Just because they ruined your product, doesn't mean the old stuff isn't still valid.


For what its worth, I've recently had GMing duties dumped on (okay, shared, really, its better than it sounds) for the first time, and the resources you made for 4th - hacker cards, guide to the matrix, etc - are all still REALLY useful. Don't sell yourself short.

That being said, I'm totally guilty of not being around as much as I used to. I feel the same way about 5th, and now that its released and the 'in' thing to do, all the interesting stuff I liked to talk about in 4th has fallen by the wayside.

You kinda got at the point I was aiming, that real world hacking is more about social engineering than actual hacking.
My point is, hacking as it is Shadowrun is only seen on action movies. In the Real world, hacking like this unless it is government supported with the backing of some REALLY expensive gear is practically non-existant.

Das ist not correct, there are examples of real world hacking which hit the news (and which were not social engineering, but indeed network attacks), like Sony or Blizzards network failures.

SYL

And these were not made in the blink of an eye as it is with shadowrun. It took at least weeks, perhaps months of carefully planing. That's what I'm talking about. In real world you either use social engineering or you spend weeks/months watching a screen looking for patterns to make your attack.

Real life hacking is much more a matter of opportunity than anything else. What takes time is finding which one are available and where, and, if you're a large operation, how to maximize the time during which you may take advantage of it without being caught (the Windows™ of opportunity ?). You get what you can.

Possibly, even the NSA has computers it would really want to crack, but still can't. Then they may plan long-term, or try to get their hands of second-hand intelligence instead.
Shadowrunners get their target designated first, and then deckers/hackers are expected to be able to hack them within a short timeframe (or do nothing for the entire adventure).

Isn't it rather self-evident that SR hacking has zero in common with real life hacking? I mean, in Shadowrun, you (for some reason) slip into a simulated Virtual Reality avatar to shoot actual anti-theft program avatars (IC) with simulated guns (programs). There is literally no reason whatsoever for hacking, or to be honest, anything outside video games to have full VR, and yet there it is. And for some reason destroying the avatar or representation of something in VR is equivalent to actually hacking it.

Which is awesome, cause real life hacking (like most real life things) is mostly dull work, and none of my runners ever did an honest day's work in their fucking lives. So yes, that requires somehow both envisioning a Hollywood-style world where a kid with a commlink can apparently slice through the toughest security that the corps can offer and yet a world where literally everything still takes place on the Matrix.

The answer, of course, is to have real life fucking security. What do you think wageslaves do all day, if not endlessly patrol the virtual corridors of the corp's datastreams in a sick parody of IC? The benefits - (established infrastructure, instant transfer and update, etc) - beats the downside of (getting hacked like all the time by skript kiddies), even if the actual security (encryption/detection) is laughably weak. People keep bitching that hacking should be rarer or something - I hated 5th for that. Hacking should be retardedly easy and retardedly common (like it pretty much was in 4th) because it doesn't take much else beyond a skillchip and some hardware corps can take advantage of economies of scale for. The difference between a real, dedicated hacker and a skript kiddie in that case is, of course, the difference between an ex-ganger mall cop and an ex-ganger runner - a matter of reputation and luck. And the fact that the hacker can make his own programs (which should be cheaper and more reliable for him in the long run.)

Bah, we can always have a whinefest about the metaplot, or about charop.

Also, while it was the game on Sega Megadrive that sold me on Shadowrun, I only actually started playing with fourth, and frankly, I can't see how it's any less cyberpunk if you want it to be, or how cyberpunk is outdated. Yeah, it's moving a bit into retrofuture territory, but the social issues it was created to address are still there (and black leather's still in fashion). For what it's worth, the Fifth could revitalize the franchise - getting a new edition is much better than an endless stream of pdf releases, after all, - and I hope it's shaped into something that actually makes sense with errata and splats.

The Kremlin allegedly switched back to typewriters.


Yeah, this. Same as SR combat has very little to do with real life urban combat, SR vehicle usage differs from RL, etc. Simply put, SR universe runs on movie rules.

I feel like the only way 5th can be made playable instead of 'DIVIDE BY ZERO' constantly is if they rewrite the entire thing. It's not that the changes in and of themselves are shitty (those are more or less subjective) but that the actual rules are shitty and/or missing. I would have rather gotten an endless stream of PDF releases if they actually improved the game, instead of a new edition which doesn't work out of the box.

In aesthetic terms, Almost Human is a bloody cop drama, and still manages to feel cyberpunk despite the lack of 80s retro-futurism.

I don't really think it has to be completely rewritten. They just have to fix the standing issues with the rules, make up their mind on wireless bonuses (are those for devices communicating with the Matrix or each other; and in both cases, how does that work?) The Fifth actually genuinely addresses a few issues with the Fourth, and if somehow CGL manages to wipe its own ass for once, I'm sure it holds the potential to be better than its predecessor.

Aesthetically, Keanu's still the same :ь

What issues does Fifth solve from Fourth? Maybe I missed something, but Fifth ed. read like 'All the same problems, but worse!' when I got my copy.

Hackers rolling endless Extended Tests to do their stuff. Melee combat being vastly outperformed by ranged. Hackers never needing their attributes. Direct combat spells being be-all end-all combat solvers. Some skills being nearly useless. Just off the top of my head.

Why I'm not surprised if this is actually true?

But Fifth doesn't actually fix any of that. It promises to fix it. It even makes puppy-dog eyes and trembles its lower lip when it promises to fix it. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually fix it.

Extended test hacking - I love it from a GM perspective, because it lets me set hard timers on otherwise routine hacking. Fifth didn't really get rid of rolling endless amounts of barely useful rolls during hacking, it just made it so the GM also has to roll endless amounts of barely useful dice.

Melee combat was shit in Fourth and Fifth did bring it back somewhat up to par, I'll grant.

Hackers never needing attributes was solved IMO with the optional rule of using Skill+Logic with program ratings serving as limits in core 4th. I'd say 5th solved that if the rest of the 5ed matrix rules weren't so shit as to drown anything possible positive effects.

Direct combat spells definitely needed a nerf, but while Fifth did fix that (A little?), it also introduced alchemy which DIVIDE BY ZERO all the time.

There were plenty of useless skills in both editions - can anyone tell me why we have like five different Engineering active skills please?

Well, as CoD had it, "амьериканци дьелают попьитку" - "the Americans are making an attempt". The Fifth might not fix all these, but at least it addresses them and tries to make the game better.

You say "the GM also has to roll endless amounts of barely useful dice" as if you've never tried hacking on the fly in the Fourth.

Well, yeah, I won't argue on relative value of houserules here, but fact is, the hacking mechanics as used in the Fifth RAW addresses the issue with the Fourth RAW.
Fifth Matrix is not unrepairably broken, it just needs someone to write it clearly, and someone to actually do editing on the results.

Why the hate for alchemy?

Because Engineering is different DUH!

I'm sorry, but NDAs prevent me from giving specifics, but please take my word for it that this is utterly incorrect. Some pretty small time hobbyists will pretend to play secret agent, and do all these things. Usually the overlap involves people with a background in psychology as well as computer science or software engineering (although plenty of others are self taught). All it really takes is one guy with a believable smile, and some time on his hands, and a computer or two.

And just on the off chance that there is a CIO or anything reading this: every time you tell your admins to just get it done and nobody cares about cracking us guys like that get wood.

I think it's been proved in other threads that alchemy results in divide by zero errors with even basic, expected applications of the ability.

Fifth fails in most ways in making the game better. Hacking on the fly was not really all that bad - I run a weekly game with near-RAW Matrix rules, and it doesn't take all that long. The Fifth edition Matrix really is broken beyond repair - just look at ownership chains, for example, and tell me that a system that incentivizes never using the gear you bought (because unattended devices use their DR*2 to resist hacking) is somehow an improvement. The math doesn't work on the given host ratings (the IC will murder-rape you so hard at the high ratings, and there's really no way to catch up short of an entire squad of nothing but elite hackers - while that makes awesome cyberpunk, it makes for shitty TTRPG play if people wanna play something other than 'elite hacker.')

I can't see that Fifth did anything significant to skills, either - hell, half of them are straight copy-pasta from Fourth. Actually half the book is straight copy-pasta from Fourth, and the other half is an unworkable morass of half-written rules and paens to GM intervention. (What's the difference between an attack and not an attack? Ask your GM! He's always right and in no way will that ever create table conflict.)

Honestly, I never thought melee being outperformed by ranged combat was bad - I mean, that's how it should be. That said, SR4 had some pretty wicked options for characters specializing in close combat. Direct spells were never the problem - overcasting being too easy was the problem. They were over-nerfed in SR5, to the point of making them nearly useless.

There were some things I liked in SR5. Some things simply had the wording tightened up a bit. Edge is almost the same, but now we know that you can re-roll misses or negate a glitch, what happens when you buy a "critical success" on an opposed dice contest, etc. I agree with raising skills, so that we don't have to pretend that differences of 1 die represent vast differences in ability, and so that people don't start out as the best in the world at char-gen. I think the initiative changes resulted in too little difference between augmented and non-augmented speed, but I do agree with tying when you go with how many passes you have, rather than having initiative score and initiative passes be two separate things.

Because it's a lovely and poetic solution to the problem of electronic signals espionage?

Much like your friendly local sammy getting 2060-era Wired Reflexes put in.

There are, or certainly used to be, classifications which were never supposed to be put on computer in the USA as well. Never having worked in those environments, I could not confirm the truth of this.

I don't feel that claiming it's a commonly known fact counts as a valid explanation.

So, a ruling that can be fixed with a single-line correction is killing the Matrix for you?

I have frankly not tried playing a hacker in 5th; so I'm taking your word for it. However, I fail to see how the need to be competent in your archetype is making the rulesystem any bad.

What he could mean (just a guess): the entry level to do anything worthwhile in the matrix is becoming to high. You are either nothing or a crack elite matrix commando, nothing between. Considering the prices of decks it indeed seems that there are either no hackers or only elite hackers who wield hardware in the higher 5 to lwoer 6 digit numbers just to start hacking.

SYL

Well, that was kind of the point of return to cyberdeck - making deckers a breed aside. Focused on decking and nothing else.

With no entry level, though, it is fairly difficult to get Elite Hackers?
You can be a Street Sam or Face with Very Little investment in resources, and then improve from there. The entry level is obvious and easy to attain.
Sadly, you cannot really do that with a Hacker/Decker, since your Investment is ludicrous. There are no real "entry level" hackers.

Not any less than starter sammies, or in the previous editions. I mean, yeah, they're likely hacking their local laundromats with a self-made deck, and can't really take on megacorps nodes, but an entry-level sam won't take on corp spec-ops, either.

Ah, no, there are no selfmade decks (as quote by the devs during this part of the discussion (they were asked because in one of the examples a hacker clobs together five commlinks for a crude deck - which the devs immediately correct that this was just an example which is not possible via rules and not intended).

A streetsam, or in the most basic sense someone who shoot people or beat them to death, need an investment of some hundred ¥ (for a weapon, from a rusty katana to an low level assault rifle). Thats it. From there you can add armor, implants (cheap and expensive), more weapons, sensors, equipment etc until you have a 6 million ¥ cyberzombie.

For a decker? 50k or the local laundromat will not even talk to you. Low level megacorp nodes for a beginner round? I am not even sure if a 50k deck would be enough or if you really should start with the 100k/200k deck.

Low level scaling was indeed far better in SR4.

SYL

That's some bs. Hell, self-made decks are canonically there in Storm Front.

Yes, exactly and that was explicitly "corrected" by the devs as "its only fiction, it has nothing to do with how SR5 works". Otherwise, if 5 commlinks would make an deck no one would need to pay 50k+ ...

(Hey, I am just the messenger, don´t shoot me)

SYL

I always thought that was a feature, not a problem.

Yes, me too; but apparently for a lot of people it was a bug, not a feature.

I think I see what knasser was getting at, it used to be that an edition war would be over twenty pages by now, dozens of people would be caught in impenetrable arguments about edge cases of the rules, appeals to authors and mods would be everywhere and there would be a sizable community of people posting to say how much they were enjoying watching.

Incidentally, some of us New Authors (since the big bust up) do lurk here occasionally.

It becomes a problem when you consider that your average Ork, Troll, Cybered up sammy, or physad is literally superhumanly strong. Having a troll with a combat axe hit less painfully than a .45 slug is downright silly, because there's more force behind the troll's swing.

Remember folks, physics is a bitch. Most bullets don't have all that much kinetic force behind them, because the whole 'equal and opposite reaction' bit of conservation of momentum means that the recoil would murder you if they did. They just exert their force over a very, very small area.

Gunplay outperforming melee by a bit isn't a terrible problem, but a vast gulf is.

Dumpshock used to have actual knowledgeable people around.

I will try not to take that personally.

Whoops, that's my cue to go back to lurking.

I absolutely agree, with a couple of details added:

The bigger and tougher the shooter, the nastier the recoil the shooter can handle. There are also some tricks which can be added to the mix to allow for more power, such as porting, recoil compensation gadgets, and recoil pads or jackets.

On the other hand, you can put grip tape on the handle of your combat axe, wear work gloves and so on.

In the end, momentum is a generally better predictor of penetration than kinetic energy (although there are many details to that) and swung weapons tend to build up momentum in the swing. This is why hammering nails works better with a claw hammer than a rock.



Again, I totally agree, and I'd add that it may be an interesting exercise to try some thing in the realm of terminal ballistics similar to what can be seen on websites like Brassfetcher and The Box of Truth.

Yeah, leverage is, as one would expect, incredibly useful.


Also, the above is why I've always wanted to see strength-based recoil compensation in SR. I have a hard time finding it plausible that the recoil off a 9mm light pistol is any sort of problem to someone who can crush steel with their cyberarms, after all.

You mean, like the recoil rules in 2nd edition Fields of Fire (1 point of RC for every two points of Strength, starting at 5), or 3rd edition Cannon Companion (1 point of RC for every 6 points of Strength, starting at 6), or 4th edition Arsenal (1 point of RC for every 4 points of Strength, starting at 6) ?

I'm not at all convinced of this. Yes, the axe imparts more kinetic energy per strike... but you can also fire a gun a whole lot faster than you can swing an axe. If Heinrich Triggermensch can put two rounds in a guy in the time it takes Gunther Axemann to get in one good swing (two Simple Actions vs. one Complex), I'm OK with Heinrich's two bullets doing more cumulative damage.

But it is not only about cumulative damage, if you compare 4k from a light pistole and 4S from the strongest man realistically alive. And that is not even counting in strength 14 cybertrolls who are literally way about any human charts.

SYL

Yep! I've always liked those (FoF especially) and wanted them to be in the base rules.

Damage isn't where melee gets outperformed, since it often deals more damage than non FA guns. It gets outperformed in terms of action economy (Simple vs Complex), dodge pools (in SR4) and investment, needing the most commonly dumpstatted attribute in a system where attributes are not equally important but equally expensive.

That, and the whole "need to get close" deal. That's why melee gets outperformed.

There are plenty of games out there where melee characters outperform gun users. Please don't make Shadowrun one of those.

I'm kind of confused as to why people are acting like none of this happened with SR5.