Get the PDF here.

Well, the first review on DriveThru is claiming that DT isn't much of a Technomancer fix. Disappointing if true.

I just skimmed it. There isn't much material on TMs. I think there is a planned PDF that will have a lot of information on them.

I don't hold much hope - the Developers think Technomancer's should die in a hot fire (it has been said more than once), so the lack of information is a direct reflection on that line of thought, I think.

from what i've seen on the official forums, the general consensus is that the only way technomancers presently work at all is as a "pet class" basically.

that is, you spend every moment of your downtime frantically compiling and registering sprites in hope that you won't run out of services when you need your minions to do something for you (with the understanding that no, you aren't going to be any good at doing it yourself). with the exception of occasionally chipping in with a complex form if things get *really* desperate. use machine sprites to cause accidents for the enemy and buff your allies, and use other sprites for various matrix tasks.

honestly, i'm slightly surprised they haven't taken that to the logical conclusion and made a leadership build that just gives teamwork bonuses to their sprites on everything. who needs hacking skills? you aren't gonna be any good at hacking anyways, may as well just face the music and accept your role as a pure support (it's what i've considered for the only technomancer i've played around with the possibility of making... first aid, medicine, leadership, and a bit of other face skills. heck, i've even considered cybering up to 1-2 resonance, because really who cares about your own stats? go high edge for desperate situations, buff resonance to ~3 at some point, and then just keep enough resonance to handle R6 sprites and otherwise invest resources into being a face and medic. of course, it only even remotely works in something other than priority gen. sum-to-10 seems like it can work ok...)

oh, and of course, pick up automatics so you can lay down suppressing fire in combat. it's the supporty thing to do.

naaah, they just want to make an extra Buck for an extra PDF for Technomancers.
Everything has a Price, Y'know
CGL has become like one of the Megacorps (in Mind) I don't think they care (or don't care ) for TMs, they just want to ( do you say "Milk the Cashcow " ? ) earn some cash , that's all.

with a capitalistic Dance
Medicineman

I have not really had that experience with the Technomancer that I have been playing since 5th Edition hit the streets. While I do agree that they make some great support characters (All the Technical Skills benefit from your Logic Stat after all), There is no lack of hacking ability. The biggest issue is the Limits on your Living Persona. Since your Living Persona is so intimately tied to your Stats, it is difficult to attain an equivalent "Deck" to a Hacker. Submersions will help with this over time, as will a few select Complex Forms to boost your lower Living Persona Attributes when needed. I think that the Fading Levels are extremely harsh in comparison to what a Magician faces, but again, I think that is something that was done on purpose. I am still a bit undecided on Sprites, as they have been useful, but not really as useful as a Spirit is to a Mage (But since I am only mediocre (5-6 Dice) at Registering and Compiling of Sprites, that may be a build issue - was not something that I really concentrated upon). However, I built to a specific concept (Espionage and Spy crap) that has paid off well for me... I have not really tried to make a powerhouse Technomancer with Resonance 6 and all the bells and whistles.

For teh record, I *loved* Otaku, and I'm fond of Technomancers.

But, I'm weird, so.

Good to hear... Wish everyone was fond of them. I don't need crazy super powers to enjoy a Technomancer, but the team swung the pendulum to far back the other way in 5th.
Reducing the Fading by a point or two (probably 2) across the board for CF's would be a good start, in my opinion.

Not really sure what to make of this...my initial reaction to the preview was that they must have switched up the link. I looked at the cover, which seems oddly like a hastily composited Photoshop job, then on the next page that short list of headings (without any subdivision!) that apparently serves as a TOS, and honestly thought this was a missions book, or some PDF supplement. Scroll back, no, it's called Data Trails, scroll forward, the headings span 166 pages, seems like it is the real deal.

Well, I hope content beats presentation here. Or at least initial presentation, as the further artwork in the preview is typical 5th edition.

PS: Amazingly, the not-so-great cover art is credited to "Mark Poole", which I'm guessing is the same Mark Poole as the MtG Artist

After resurrecting Grids, Fuchi will be retconned back in? Interesting. (p. 17, commlink List, last entry ). Also, "Überwelt", seriously? But at least for once, the correct Umlaut is used. Gotta be glad for the little things, I guess.

Ach, CGL quality writing, it just never, ever gets better.

We do? News to me.

Sadly, Yes, Critias... I know that Bull has said it a time or two, (though likely in his guise as Player and not Developer), and I remember a few other instances a time or two over the years (but not specific people), but no worries. I do understand that there were some issues over the power level of TM's in SR4, but the swing went way to far the other way in 5th Edition, in my opinion (as evidenced in the post by Jaid above).

Of course, I could have misread or misremembered as well... Would not be the first time. *sigh*

The table of contents is all cryptic headings, and the preview on DriveThru is all fiction. For those of you interested in what's inside, here's what I've skimmed:

A lot of fluffy descriptions, like what all the Megacorp and National grids use for sculpting, what it's like to be on the matrix in various formats, how different generations interact with the wireless world, etc. Also stuff on what it's like to be a hacker, and various hacker groups.

New Positive and Negative Qualities related to the matrix and hacking. One quality lets you be a member of Jackpoint. There is also a Code of Honor for being too skilled to bother bricking stuff.

Hacker related Life Modules for use with Run Faster. This includes some Technomancer stuff and even Otaku.

Commlinks can now run "Apps" which are minor programs instead of full on Cyberprograms.

There are new Cyberprograms, mostly illegal hackers stuff.

There are also some new Complex Forms and a fair number of Echoes including Skinlink, for that direct-link hack-by-touch ability that will make Technomancers all the more useful.

More Commlink variations, and rules for buying links of variant form factors. There are also commlink add-ons called "Dongles." A link can take a single dongle at a time, and they do things like add an Attack or Sleaze rating, or turn your link into a tazer. Keep in mind, links still can't have an Attack and Sleaze at once, can't run programs, and can't alter their matrix attributes on the fly.

There are new Decks, including "cheaper" decks that can't have their matrix attributes reconfigured. There are also CyberDeck Modules that must be physicaly installed into a deck (one at at time, not changeable on the fly) for various purposes, including a matrix initiative booster.

There are rules for modifying electronics, including adding Sleaze or Attack to something that doesn't have it, and boosting existing ratings. Doing so requires parts, and there are rules for stripping parts from other electronics. I think you could now build a Deck out of Commlinks, or at least convert a really cheap deck into a good one using commlinks for parts.

There are details on host systems, including some examples of spiders, and a few new kinds of IC.

There are details on traveling into the underlying systems that run hosts, including the file archive. It looks like this section was inspired by Inception. There are a lot of crazy things that can be done inside a host's innards, but apparently it's some kind of odd dream-world place that's hostile and uncontrolled even to the people that run the host? I think the story content I haven't had a chance to look explains a non-standard origin for the new Matrix and the Host systems in particular.

There is a section full of matrix rumors which talks about odd AI stuff, UV systems, Resonance stuff, etc. There are also rules for some of this.

There are rules for AI characters, including Meta-sapient AI PCs. NPC AIs are built using the same rules and there are details for Proto-Sapient and Xeno-Sapient AIs. Life Module creation is not supported for AI player characters, but several other options are supported. eGhost characters are considered a meta-variant of Meta-sapient IAs and are supported (although this is listed at the end of the chapter instead of with the character creation rules.) There is a restricted list of Quality options for AI player characters, but also special qualities just for them as well. The ability to eat other AIs and Sprites to gain digital-essence caught my eye. AIs also get access to some particular special abilities, most notable of which is that they can change ownership of devices much faster and easier than meat-bodied people. You could change the owner of a stollen car in combat turns instead of hours.

I did not see any new Sprites or sprite powers.

and in comparison to a decker, you are probably behind on dice pool, unable to reconfigure your deck, mostly unable to access programs (barring an echo that gives you one per time you take it), rely on a single resource instead of being able to progress meaningfully with two, take an extra penalty from getting 'ware, and are likely one priority lower on the priority chargen table in at least 2 categories (possibly more if you didn't put technomancer into priority C), and you require an extra 2 skills (practically speaking you can ignore decompiling) and an extra attribute while progressing your character.

a character that was essentially the same but as a decker instead of a technomancer would likely have higher dice pools in a variety of areas from a combination of being able to put special in E instead of C or higher, and being able to incorporate more 'ware (although depending on character, 'ware may not fit even if it would give you better dice pools).

and ultimately, as you've noted, your character is not so much a technomancer, as they are a spy that happens to have some technomancer abilities. i have my doubts that if you were to, say, bring your character to a missions event at a con, that you would present your character as a technomancer. you would probably introduce them as a spy, and if asked about your skill set you might bring up that you can hack simple devices like maglocks or commlinks (but not top-of-the-line commlinks)... but if the group was looking for a dedicated hacker, would you step forward and say "i've got just the runner for the job"?

My point was that "Bull =/= The Developers," just like "Critias =/= The Developers," or "Wak =/= The Developers." An off the cuff comment, even repeated ones, from one guy doesn't mean it's what every developer feels, or what's going to be coming out in future books. Bull had nothing to do with Technomancers in Data Trails, so whether or not Bull likes them is immaterial; it doesn't mean the other writers feel the same way, it doesn't mean the line developer feels the same way, and it certainly doesn't mean Ren, who wrote the material in question, feels that way. If anything, in fact, you tend to see the opposite; the people who love something are the ones who pitch to try and write about it (see Way of the Adept, for instance).

If "the Developers" hated everything Bull grouched about, there wouldn't be any more books coming out, 'cause homey grouches a lot.

on the other hand, if the developers liked technomancers, they wouldn't have screwed them over to the point where they are like a more expensive, less effective decker.

I might make that a slow burn goal. Take a couple of years, gather feedback from tons of people, see how to handle it overall. Yeah, it'd be slow, but by thunder, when it was done, it should (hopefully!) be done in a way that everyone loves. Hard to slip that in amoung other products (From several companies! I think I have three things out at GenCon! Ack!), but something to keep in mind for the long term.

Pounding away at Current Project right now, so can't sit and give this, or Lockdown, a good hard read yet. I'm darned interested, however. The Matrix is kind of important.

Just reading that proposal was accepted for TM focused "book" and that's the reason we didn't see a huge chunk of data trails dedicated to them.

As presently implemented? I'll get the torches and diesel fuel. Both the mechanics and fluff for 5e techno are trash.

Can someone explain to me in simple words what's good about playing an (non-rigger) AI?
I'd love to play one, but right now they seem to be a little worse deckers. No hot sim and no 'ware seem like they'd struggle to get as efficient as a decker. And their powerstat is damn expensive.

I have a feeling that technomancers are going to be strong when you're planning a deep run into a hosts foundation. No practical experience yet, though...

That's an awful lot of character investment to be good in one niche part of an oft-neglected section of the game. It's like paying to be a mage just to be good at astral quests, and lacking spellcasting.

Honestly, I'd kinda like to see that analogy pushed further. Err, not in the AI sense neccessarily, but ... full VR Matrix runs lock out other players in a way akin to Astral scouting does for mages, while DEEP Matrix runs, like deep Astral plunges, are pretty much things that should be reserved for solo-sessions, bluebooking, or all decker/all mage campaigns.

AR hacking, like spellcasting, should be something done in realtime, with initiative passes doing stuff with the rest of the group, keeping the game flowing smoothly.

My personal opinion, mind you.

I have a higher Dice Pool than the Decker in our Group had, I cannot reconfigure my Living Persona, I do not have access to programs (Submersion for program access is so underpowered it is laughable - I would give the ability to purchase Programs for 3-4 Karma and integrate them into your abilities, with ability to run a number of them equal to Resonance (maybe 2x Resonance?) at a time), progress with two resources (I have no fear of Resonance Loss - I have 2 Essence Points sunk into 'Ware (with no extra penalties as you imply beyond the opportunity cost and lower resonance caps - yes I did lose 2 Resonance, but so what), and 2 Submersions - Resonance 3), Not sure about the Priority. Took Skills as "A" (so never worried about Skills) and never really worried about trying to get maximum Resonance.

Relevant Dice Pools are Hacking 14 (Hack on the Fly 18) (16/20 Hot), Electronic Warfare 14 (Hide 18) (16/20 Hot), And Cybercomabat 14. Living Persona is Attack 3 (6 with CF), Data Processing 8, Sleaze 7, Firewall 3 (6 with CF). Decent Matrix Perception (14) due to Technomancer. Next Specialty is for Hacking (Hidden), which I will also apply to EW and Cybercombat at some point.

Yes, the Character is a Spy. I hack Top of the Line Commlinks consistently (after all, they are not as difficult as a Rating 6 Host), as well as Hosts up to Rating 9. I don't use Sprites all that often (definitely not as Pets), but I do use them when needed. Yes, I am the "Hacker" of the group. While I am likely more cautious than some (hell of a backstory), I tend to get the job done.

Now, All that did take about 159 Karma to realized as well, so it was a slow rise to where I am now, but most of those points went into non-Technomancer things (Spy, remember?)
Would she be better with a Fairlight Excaliber Deck and some programs? Most Assuredly.

Agreed... Maybe my comments were a bit stronger than they needed to be, but SOMEONE does not like Technomancers at CGL, as evidenced by the massive changes put in place.

At Bull's age wouldn't be surprised to see him sitting on his virtual lawn somewhere waving his cybercane and yelling at the local scriptkiddies to get off his LAN.


To be fair the only comment that really sticks out is Hardy's comment that TM were OP and had to be cut back.

It was not a flat out condemnation or a call to pull them entirely, but a statement that they needed to be pruned back a bit.

Now granted most feel that pendulum swung more than a little too far the other way and gimped them, but finding that sweet balance point is never easy.

This goes back to the playtesting and making use of their feedback, and unfortunately there does seem to be some serious disconnects along the way on this.

The obvious one is the lack of body. A Decker or Technomancer that is doing cold or hot VR hacking is an easy target in the meat world, especially if they are direct jacked into a system inside a secure facility. With an AI, you never need to worry about a body because you can always hop onto a grid. It also means they can largely ignore physical skills that every other Shadowrunner has to think about. No running, climbing, hiding, hand-to-hand combat, or shooting skills unless they go rigger, and even then, they only need the gunnery and pilot skills, not the body based ones. It also means that when not inhabiting a device, they don't have to worry about real world static issues and jamming. Like a Sprite, they have no location.

A more subtle but potentially potent feature is that they are the new masters of theft. They can take over ownership of a electronic device via combat turns worth of hacking instead of hours of hardware changes. Besides making this useful for stealing cars, it's also really potent for hacking. Neither Deckers nor Technomancers can hack ownership mid run. Ownership level control of a device is far more potent than 3 marks. As owner they can order it to do anything it's intended for without having to make hacking rolls or gain OS.

There may be some other features I haven't fully worked out. Emulation lets them hack with Matrix Attributes without having the related gear in exchange for a few penalties, but I'm not sure how effective it is a character creation considering the hobbled attributes they are likely to have, plus the extra OS it gains. Similarly, none of the Advanced Programs I skimmed looked all that amazing. I haven't fully absorbed the rules yet, so I'm probably missing something, and my one halfhearted attempt to build an AI thus far showed it's difficult to get a good balance of attributes and skills under priority.

EDIT:
In terms of long term play, Exceptional Entity is an amazing AI only quality, as it will let you have no maximum attribute cap for one mental attribute and Depth. In long term play your AI hacker could continue to raise Logic (for example) beyond anything possible for a meat-space character. Because Depth is a limit on Emulation, it means they could also emulate Matrix Attributes well beyond anyting a Decker could buy.

Thanks for your reply. I think I'll give them a shot

Though I got two questions that came up ins discussing AIs.
Do they use Hot-Sim? It's not stated anywhere, but I'd assume they should. After all you can't be better connected to the matrix than living in it.
Can they use regular programs? It seem to be a really harsh restriction to not be able to buy programs and run them on a deck.
Is the restriction on maximum number of programs only for those they know and carry around with them?

AIs don't get Hot Sim. They have no meat brains to link to the matrix, so there is no bonus for better connections, but also no risk of Biofeedback. They are more like Agents. in that they get a really nice Initiative by default.

AIs can use standard software, assuming they are inhabiting a device that can run the software. You can't run cyberprograms on Commlink (only Apps). The AI counts as one or two programs, so they use up some slots just being there, but they can fill the rest with programs normally or their own internal ones.

AIs can't use their Advanced Programs unless they are the special integrated ones they bought with Karma, and they are limited in how many of those they can have.

If you want to talk more about AI character building, we should probably start a new thread on the topic.

Sorry if this is a bit diruptive t the diskussion but
Data Trails p. 55

> And thank Ghost for that! We actually got some of the
damn kids off my lawn!
> Bull

So now that I've read it...

Guys, are we sure that the people writing for Catalyst have ever played Shadowrun, used a computer, or in fact spent any time thinking about how any piece of technology more modern than a butter churn works? I hate to get offensive, but what the frag is this hot steaming pile of drek doing in a Shadowrun book?



So, full stop, the base assumption of the setting is now apparently that all devices only use Cloud storage. Meaning that, in the vast majority of places in the Shadowrun world given that crowding creates Noise sufficient to silence consumer rating (1-3) gear, and being out in the boonies applies similar penalties for no repeaters. Oh, and that commlinks and other devices can't run hacking cyberprograms stock. So average people are BASICALLY INCAPABLE OF STORING DATA.

What the full-on fuck? Who wrote this? Who approved it? Who thought it was remotely a good idea?

Even ignoring the utterly basic point that 'The Cloud' is just a euphemism for 'A bunch of server clusters owned and operated by megas' in the first place, why would any sane corporate IT person ever accept a standard that means every secure document they ever produced is on the Cloud? Clearly, given that the program to make a device Cloudless is a blatantly illegal hacking program, there can be no such thing as a secure site running an internal network, or a server that must be physically compromized to obtain paydata.

Oh, and it gets even better in the sidebars!



So we're also going to fix the 'problem' of it being more profitable for most deckers to sit at home and hack the Gibson for paydata than get shot at for beer money by penalizing the rest of the team's Karma rewards for a Decker character looting?

Indeed.... Looks like things just keep going further and further down the rabbit hole.

I guess we should probably be penalizing the party for the Rigger being good at stealing cars, or the mages snagging foci off of any wagemage they take down, too.

Because we need to make sure we keep the PC's too poor to ever advance their characters, clearly. After all, the party needs to decide if they're going for nuyen or karma advancement, because the clear intent is that trying to gain both needs to be punished! That's how making choices have costs works, right?

The level of what I shudder to call 'game design' that is evident in recent publication makes me really, really disappointed.

This is actually counteracted by the content of the core book. Files don't exist in the Grid, they have to be either in a Host or on a Device like a commlink or datachip. When I read this new "Cloudless" program's description I immediately thought: can't we do this already?"

What I think this program is supposed to be doing is encapsulated in the sentence "This program uses legacy code from previous incarnations of the Matrix to place data in physical media and physical media only." I think the idea here is that if you copy a file out of a host system using this program, you can also attempt to delete it out of the host system as part of the same action instead of needing to do two edit file actions (one to copy it and one to delete it).

Now this apparently doesn't remove all the back-up copies and previous version of the file/etc. There are rules in the book now for getting ahold of files from back-ups. It's implied that a file that was on a host can be pulled from last saved version in the foundation archive as a simple request of the Host. To get around this, you can use the Shredder program:


To really destroy a host file you'd need to use the Nuke-From-Orbit program.

And then of course the first sentence of Cloudless screws up a ton of things by existing, but that's sadly about par for the course these days.

SOLD.

Why would one need a Quality to be a member of Jackpoint? What mechanical Benefit does it give you other than having access to an "illegal" online community.

That's what the quality does - membership in an elite underground hacker group. It also mentions other groups, like the Helix.

By Cloud, I assume the SR5 Matrix is made from all computational devices that are online. Meaning, all your saved data is not even stored on your device, but is instead mass distributed to a billion other devices. Its pretty much taking SR4's mesh network to the extreme.

Noise would make more sense this way too. If your data literally follows you, when you attempt to hack a target that is too far away, you are having a harder time hacking the data out from the surrounding devices. And spam zones are that your data getting jammed up with other people's cloud data, and static zones don't have enough devices to leach processing power so slows your connection.

MARKs are just metadata that allows the surrounding data cloud to accept a user's inputs.

Is that possible? About as possible as information technology being so advanced that it needs a 3D virtual interface in order for people to use it.

This is exactly what Data Trails says the 5th edition Matrix is, but more so than you imply. Apparently the underlying "foundation" of the matrix is a massive distributed super computer setup involving all the electronics online working as a giant cloud software platform. This Matrix "Foundation" is a massively UV system, and the grids and hosts that sit on top of it are just a "scaffolding." It's apparently so powerful that when you go into the foundations of a particular host you end up in a system so potent that you can only interpret it on a subconscious level in the form of a dreamscape. Host systems are grown from fractal code cores instead inside this foundation instead of being coded up on a server. To go into a host system's deep code is a basically the movie Inception, complete with trying not to draw attention or the entire world will turn on you, and daisy chaining other people to your deck so you can make use of their particular set of skills. Oh and the thing is downright dangerous and hostile, even to the admins that are supposed to being running the things. Also, they are grown, not coded or installed.

I'm not sure what I think of it all yet, but my initial impression is "WTF?"


It uses the same rules as group contacts do, but I think it's slightly cheaper in Karma costs... although it has to be paid for in Qualities Karma instead of from Charisma based bonus karma-for-contacts?

Mine was "how awesome is that!"

Which can be a roleplaying thing... It does not have to be a quality. *shrug*

I don't disagree, but the same can be said about A LOT of qualities. You can take high Gymnastics or whatever and say, "hey, I'm a natural athlete!". So, you can roleplay or even simulate via normal purchasing some of these.

However, Prime Data Haven Membership DOES provide something you can't normally purchase. Group Contacts are limited to Loyalty 1. This quality gives you a Group at Loyalty 3.

It's actually a great deal, because you get more soft benefits that with a normal Group Contact and you actually get it for less karma than normal. There is an obligation to share info, though.

Why are group contacts limited to Loyalty of 1 (Yes, they start out that way)? Loyalty does not raise over time from association and cooperation with a Group like it would with a Contact (they always have in our game, but then our campaigns span a lot of real time years, so that progression is natural, for the most part)? That just, Hmmm...

Which they, note, built in five years, from the wireless proposal being considered in 2065 after Crash 2.0, to fully implemented by 2070. Five years in which the basic Matrix infrastructure which controls all the just-in-time logistics that make modern civilization possible was effectively nonfunctional, which should have absolutely crippled the world economy (Except for Sader-Krupp, who apparently were the only mega smart enough to have a way to fully isolate their systems). However according to the fluff apparently things chugged along just fine until 'all better!' in 2070 without any major effects besides some corporate maneuvering.

Seriously, I cannot comprehend a lot of the writing choices made in the last few years, and they keep doubling down in the SR5 materials.

Its even worse than that, since SR5's Matrix Infrastructure sprang up over night from December 31st, 2074 to January 1st, 2075 in the wake of the scare from Technomancers and the open matrix of SR4.

The wireless Matrix was up and running in just a few months time. They even had placeholder rules for it in System Failure so people can play with the idea in SR3.

Which is kind of silly, when even the official timeline has the Wireless Matrix Initiative not even being introduced until 3 months after the Crash (Nov. 2 2064 to Feb. 14 2065), much less how long it would take to implement a wireless solution without hardline backbones to handle the bulk of traffic. Launching enough geosats alone to bounce any significant fraction of the old traffic while at the same time moving to an even more traffic-intensive constant AR everywhere environment...

But I'm grognarding, and the stuff that's actually in this book is bad enough all by its lonesome.

Oh, man, this book just keeps giving :



So even the people who rebuilt the entire Matrix in a few months have no idea how it actually works. Great job there, book. That sure is helpful of you to just graft a Metaplanes analogue on there.

I don't even feel a little bad about writing that, no. I appreciate you buying the book, thanks.

The Matrix book already had rules for full cellular and radio access to the Matrix.

Actually, the Wireless Matrix Initiative originally appeared in Shadows of Europe, and was described as "a major upgrade of the Scandinavian cellular network" with the Scandinavian federation government calling for tenders in early 2062 and the first login scheduled in the fall of 2064.

What System Failure introduced was augmented reality and a generalization of WMI. But I don't remember it providing actual rules or a date for the WMI and AR deployments worldwide, only mentionning Seattle was eager to get a city-wide Wireless Augmented Reality network available by July 2065.

It is still very unlikely that a global wireless network could be built without resorting to existing optical fibers landline (and geostationary satellites are not the solution one may believe, as speed of light enforce a 0.24 seconds delay on every transmission - low orbit satellites with handover and inter-satellite links akin to the Iridium constellation would be a better, if not cheap, solution).