But realistically the bonuses aren't that hot anyway. They're nice to haves.

+2 dice to shoot your gun from a wireless smartlink? Nice. But not essential for your Ag7, Skill6+Specialty guy to hit their targets.

You can exceed +4 Reaction if your Wireless is on? Nice. If you really need a Reaction of 10+. Is reaction 7/8 all that bad?

+3 dice to perception tests? Awesome. But hugely necessary for Intuition 5 and Skill 6+Spec? Plus Sensor Arrays? Thermographic vision? Etc.?

I think you can easily run with throwbacks. Missing out only the very highest points of optimisation at which point the net affect of +1/2/3 dice is reduced dramatically compared to at lower pools.

So I don't agree with this statement



Combined with the Drone+Wrapper+Pocket of RFID chips meaning you could probably run full wireless and be pretty safe for an investment of <2000 nuyen.

At the penalty of exposing your position for all to see because you are transmitting wireless. Commo Discipline is a thing for a reason.

'S'all good.

also, it really depends on how your GM interprets the part about needing to know one thing about an icon to target it specifically even if it's hidden.

if the one thing can be that it's the gun that guy over there is holding in his hands, a billion stealth RFID tags won't do squat.

Run Silent.

They can only then spot you if they are explicitly looking for things running silent. Then if they do the Wrapper means your icons should all look like innocuous stuff they'd expect to see.

If the site is essentially empty and no one is expected to be there at all (i.e.: you don't use Wrapper to look like a Janitor or Researcher or whatever) then you shouldn't need the wireless anyway as you're not likely to be opposed until security gets there.

I also query to people in general if they even can identify your location. GOD can only find you if you break Overwatch.

Pretty sure there's a cyberprogram to make finding your physical location even if you do get detected impossible, though don't quote me on that.

So. Run your Drone, use the Virtual Machine cyberprogram to get two program slots, run Wrapper and the second one that makes it impossible to pin point your location and all they know is that there are some icons on their host. As "everything" has an RFID tag "everything" is technically visible on the Matrix and if you choose the correct icons from Wrapper they should ignore them as the tags on a packet of cigarettes or other rubbish that may have blown on site on the wind.

Even with those two additional programs you're still at <2k nuyen.

If security is proactively investigating every unexpected icon on their grid/host then they should be pretty easy to get following ghost trails.

And hey. You only need those +X dice to reaction and firing and such when engaging with a hostile right? Most of the time anyway. Activate wireless for the buffs (which you probably don't even need) during a fight as that almost certainly means you've been detected anyway.

So. Not saying I like wireless bonuses or anything. I just don't agree that a Cyber Samurai should be quaking in fear of some hacker somewhere. The buffs you get won't make a massive difference to your core competence, most of what you rely on has no wireless functionality at all and the countermeasures to make hacking you difficult are cheap and easy to carry. And even then with a good Commlink if all goes horribly wrong it's tough to brick your gear in a single action anyway. At which point you turn it off after the first bits of matrix damage come in.

Except that a Comlink provides no protection for running silent (nor can it run the Wrapper Program), and a Deck has not got enough channels to protect your entire team. Net effect, you are vulnerable... After all, It is trivially easy to scan for Transmissions.

You really want to run Silent, you turn that stuff completely off. That is the only way to guarantee Comm Discipline. Anything else is a likely to get you very dead, very quick.

Not to mention that a Spider doesn't have to bother hacking a cyber sam to ruin his day. A sudden influx of unidentified icons might just be enough to make him trip an alert, and bring down physical security on their heads.

Indeed...

I highly recommend you pick up shadowbeat. I'm pretty sure it's fairly cheap, and it has all kinds of fun stuff. The rules are antique, but give you a good idea if you want bash out something similar for 5e.

As to your actual comments, there are 24 or so pro football teams in the UCAS, CAS, and CFS. With my limited understanding of football, eve if you go with the minimum number of reasonable players per team (12 each on the offensive, defensive, and (one) special team, plus your second string/reserve), you are looking at more than 1,400 pros, and most NFL teams have four or more strings, plus multiple special teams. Then you add in college ball (though that has less cyber), and amateurs trying to break in, and you have a fairly good base for a small business (such businesses have started with smaller client bases). Then you had baseball and basketball (both use less cyber, but WR is expressly mentioned for basketball), and similar assundry teams and would-bes, plus the minor leagues for baseball, and you have a fairly large market for a product that already exists. When you add Combat Biker (where hackers don't really play) and Urban Brawl (ok, this one I can agree that hackers may be present, but the canon fluff from 4e doesn't reall support this), and you have a huge pool to swim in. And thatis just the UCAS and the CAS.

You then add tthe NAN, and another major sport (NHL, nothing canon on this, but I would hazard they would follow the MEL's lead on this and up the blood factor), and we get even bigger. And we are still only counting North America and non-corporate teams. Urban Brawl is French in origin and has a massive global following. Combat Biker is largely American, but it too has a larger global impact then the big three). Both of those sports have corporate teams as well as municipals, and not just AAA corps.

Then you add all the additional smaller sports (Soccer, Boxing, Courtball, basketball, baseball, football, and combat sports (all of which have some sort of global following)), and the number still climbs. Finally, you have the biggest market that corps would care about, fans. Not only can you sell jerseys to little boys who want to be pros (and think they can make it), but you have the dads who are willing to take the risks of cyber in order to impress their kids or try to live out their own dreams.

I went a little overboard with that, but my point stands. Athletics are a sufficient market for cyber that could be hacked (WR/RE (which only applies if they have both), smartlink tech (smartballs! Yes, it's a thing), and maybe cyber eyes), though it's a small pool of options. As for the security side, if these teams invest that much money in a player, security and repair are both probably hgih factors also.

As for the Titanium lacing, the book mentions that it was a huge fight to allow it. I would hazard that lacing is plastic/Kevlar at best, but is still fairly common.

After all that, and because the internet has no tone, I want to make it clear that I am not trying to be aggressive here. It's just that I have been reading that fanned book for 13-14 hears now, and the athletics thing has become something of a knowledge skill for me. I agree that a lot of the wireless bonuses are big security risks with no real reward. I just feel there is enough logical evidence to support the sale and use of those same thing by people who aren't shadowrunners or elite corp security (the kind of people who would have the support to use those things safely).

I also have another argument for rent-a-cops and beat walkers, but that's neither here nor there.

EDIT

Maybe I should update Shadowbeat for 5e, since I get it stuck in my head so often, and it carries a lot of the punk that I feel is missing from the more GTA like game of modern Shadowrun.

If you're going looking, check out the Wolf and Raven novel as well. It has a short story about modern baseball in the SR universe with a good bit of detail given that Valerie Valkyrie is a huge fan.

I had forgotten about that. I like that story, but I'm not sure about how it ties in with the source books. The story heavily implies that almost no one plays baseball as themselves anymore.

Honestly I think you’re making a few unwarranted assumptions of Megacorporations. Yes they’re big and yes they have extraterritoriality but that doesn’t automatically follow that EVERYONE has to belong to the corp. The corp can definitely control whose product their own drones and those living in corporate arcologies and compounds use, but what of everyone else. There’s a lot more people than just corporate workers and though I don't have a number citation on hand I'd say the majority of people in the Sixth World are NOT corporate citizens.

Think about it, the SINner quality in SR5 details National SINs, limited corporate SINs and then corporate SINs. There were entire nation states(e.g. Tir Tairngire) which didn’t sign the Business Recognition Accords and didn’t allow megacorporations to operate except through subsidiaries until recent changes to government.

Lastly, one of the main setting-cities has a prime example how competition is the watchword even for AA and AAA corps: Lone Star is the primary private security provider for most of North America. Due to bad publicity and poor execution, they lost their contract to be law enforcement for the Seattle Metroplex to Knight Errant, the Ares Subsidiary.

I personally feel that from everything I’ve read (see also Buzzkill short story from SR4 (not A)) that consumerism is huge for megacorporations. Yes a lot of megcorps recycle money within themselves (MCT tends to only issue its own corporate scrip as payment) but in order to be an actual business they need outside consumers and resources they can make profit off of.

I'm trying to establish, as a grounds for discussion, that wireless isn't intrinsically bad, that there are ways this could be done right. I happen to think that what we have at present is better than nothing, but it isn't remotely what I'd like to see. Much like the technomancer rules, this is an area where I think a strip to studs rebuild would be best - though there's ways to add something instead, those aren't anywhere near as clean of a solution.

Yes, I have read and own Chasin' the Wind. And no, I still think your "evidence" is circumstantial at best, twisting it so that it makes sense for your argument at worst.



But then you're limiting the game to only a set amount of missions and restricts the kind of gameplay you could do and the stories that could be told.

What if I, as both the GM and as a player, want to do a mission outside the city? What if I wanted to do something different besides the usual datasteals or corporate extractions, I wanted something new.

For instance, we have a mission where the PC runners are supposed to track down a fugitive. After doing all the legwork, they find out that he's hiding out in the woods. So what could the team do to get there? Well, the face could try to either convince the local wildlife rangers to either help them or look the other way. The mage could send in spirits to flush the fugitive out or use Detection spells to find them. The rigger can likewise use their drones to try to find the guy to search the place. The street sam and/or physical adept can head in the forest themselves to get the guy out and cover them from anything dangerous in the forest, particularly paracritters. And what can the decker do? Absolutely jackshit. At that point, you might as well tell the player to go home because their services aren't needed anymore.

The alternative being to either make the guy who just HAPPENS to have a tricked out trailer home that's also a fortress, or he just HAPPENS to be an uber rigger with an army of drones at hand. Which to me, smells of being really forced and contrived.

If I as the D/GM am setting up a dungeon for D&D or PF or whatever, I don't think to myself: "Boy, I better have all these locked doors and treasure chests here, otherwise the rogue won't have anything to do!" Nvm of course that there are other ways to open up locks that isn't reliant on the rogue.

It's an inherent flaw with the system if you have to force in certain aspects to a mission/quest just so ONE class/archetype/job has stuff to do. Why should it be like that? Why can't the system be robust enough to fit any kind of scenario? Why does this one archetype have to As is, you either need a Matrix system for the decker to do anything, and anything less and the player shouldn't even bother come.

So yeah; giving the decker something to do when there is no Matrix system to fuck around with, I'd say is the way to bring them up with the other archetypes...in a way that's not as awkward as the current forms of wireless bonuses.

actually, the wireless matrix is present out in the wilderness. it reaches pretty much everywhere, even the middle of a desert wasteland, unless there is enough noise from a source other than distance to keep it out (which is really a function of the device rating of whatever you brought with you).

so if the guy you're tracking hasn't turned off his wireless, and you have whatever your GM determines is the vaguely-defined threshold of necessary data to make a matrix perception check on the target's equipment, you can locate his icon in a few seconds and probably have his location traced within 15 seconds or less.

failing that, the hacker could search the matrix for satellite footage, possibly even hacking into hosts that have the information needed, covering the area. he could tap into the ranger's comms because even though the head ranger might be willing to help, that doesn't mean all of the rangers are on your side. he could keep tabs on any camera/sound feeds coming in from any wireless-enabled hunters, hikers, campers, etc in the wilderness area (if any). he could hack the ranger's system to show that the group is authorized to enter the area, authorized to carry whatever equipment they want, and authorized to haul out their target in handcuffs.

if all else fails, provided the target doesn't have a tag eraser, it is likely that the target has numerous RFIDs on his person, which means that the hacker can search a 100 meter radius at a time with exceptional reliability to check if there is someone in the area (and even if the person has gone completely naked and purged their stomach/intestinal track of all RFIDs and is now living off the land, it is likely the hacker can at least find some of the stuff the target left behind, which gives a chance to find the physical trail).

how "useless" the hacker must feel.

(on a side note: investing in the attributes needed for hacking *does* give the hacker some interesting secondary options for skills. for example, disguise and perception are intuition based. survival is willpower based. tracking is intuition based. most of the technical skills are logic or intuition based, including the full biotech group, chemistry, demolitions, and forgery. not to mention a number of knowledge skills, which most hackers will have a lot of free points in compared to most characters at chargen).

Jaid nailed what I would do.

If I'm a decker, and the mission is to locate a guy that's taken to the woods? Firstly I try and get his com code or other details. Then I setup an agent program on my cyberdeck and set it to make constant matrix perception test to look for that commlink, and trace it if it's found.

Static Noise in the wilderness can get bad, above 3 often, enough that most RFID tags, implants, etc won't be online and therefore won't have an icon to look for, but if the target is using his commlink to check in with contacts, It's something you could try and locate and track while it's online. With a device rating of 3-6, he's likely to get that through if he turns it on even in the wilderness. If the target is smart, he'll only have it on for regularly scheduled calls, and he'll move after making the calls, possibly hiking a ways out to make them and then returning to camp after words, but that gives you a place to start looking, and maybe start tracking from.

Mean while I can do a lot of other things, like using the electronic warfare skill to be good at using sensor systems in drones scouring the wilderness. I probably have one drone of my own, but the rigger might loan me control of one to aid in looking around faster.

Also, if you are playing in Seattle, the wilderness is all Salish tribal lands, so getting out of the city and into the woods means crossing a border. Borders can be easier to get across if hacked, but it's also somewhere the target may have left trace information. The border crossing host system may have video footage of the target crossing, which would let you know what kind of vehicle he's in, and what kind of gear he has with him.

The Johnson should of-course make sure the group has at least someone in it that's skilled at wilderness activities, but the decker is still useful, even if he isn't that guy.

Maybe, but I don't see the difference between wilderness adventures and high backgorund count adventures, or places where they put a lock deactivating cyber etc. There are places or adventures that are poorly suited for a character. They might decide not to go on the run or maybe the GM figures no fixer would set the team up for that kid of run, but you can always do it and just have a character at a disadvantage. Which I personally think makes a good story. And as pointed out they really aren't helpless in the wilderness.