Drunken Review: Shadowrun 5

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 5:50 am

5th ed hacking is still pretty fucked, IIRC. The pointless bullshit "roll to see which guy is aiming a gun at you" is still there. And your gear is still more important than your stats.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 7:56 am

About SR5 hacking:

If you are a technomancer, then you are fucked and should go back to chargen. Technomancers are only viable as a buffing support for the actual hacker. I can go into more details, if someone is interested.

If you are a hacker, then your A priority is in resources, because decks cost $TEXAS money. This has a side effect of the GM never using hackers against you, or at least having them all explode on death, because selling a deck for 30k-100k is better pay than your average run.

Now, while having a good deck is required, it's not enough - decks act as limits on your hacking actions, so you need actual stats Logic to make the rolls.

MARKs are an abstract bullshit that is hard to understand. It's kinda like access rights, but they are bound to your Persona and you can't pass them to someone else.

Finally, GOD is watching, and as soon as you do something illegal access the internet, the instant death counter starts ticking. Further illegal actions move the counter faster. If you fail to reboot your deck before the timer runs out, you die Technomancer dies your deck explodes. Corporations are arbitrarily protected from this effect.

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:20 am

It's like they realized that Script Kiddy was a thing, and their response was to artificially enforce the Decker niche by making decks insanely expensive, to the point where they competed with cyberware for intensive resource investment except that decks are much more easily lost or stolen and the minigame they enhance is substantially crappier.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 7:39 am

They don't "compete" with cyberware. Cyberware is bought piece by piece, and getting a muscle enhancer you couldn't fit in at chargen is just 20k nuyen for you. The top chargen deck costs 400k. The next one is something like 600k. You are absolutely not getting a new deck in the game, unless GM gives you one.

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 7:39 am

Though I agree with many of Silent Wayfarerer's and Longes' points, I think the most important way that SR5 hacking is fucked is that if you are wirelessly active at all they you're guaranteed to be spotted by any reasonably competent security designer. A drone + agent combo can use the analyze program with a modest pool and force one analyze roll per in game second. Your wireless stealth luck better be pretty good if a few of those are around.

The system doesn't only allow dropout, it forcefully encourages it.

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 8:57 am

Longes wrote:They don't "compete" with cyberware. Cyberware is bought piece by piece, and getting a muscle enhancer you couldn't fit in at chargen is just 20k nuyen for you. The top chargen deck costs 400k. The next one is something like 600k. You are absolutely not getting a new deck in the game, unless GM gives you one.

What I mean is that getting loaded out with cyberware (and maybe gear) to be an elite cyberninja is going to cost hundreds of thousands of nuyen. Same way a good cyberdeck costs hundreds of thousands.

As such, being a decker requires at least as much financial investment as being a cyborg ninja, except that your minigame is shittier. In the good (bad?) old days hacking was pretty much a matter of Program + Agent + Commlink, and you could get a decent hacking package for under 20k and no actual points spent on skills. This means anyone could be a hacker. Which is good, because it means everyone can get in on the action at once and eliminates the Decker Problem where everyone else plays the PS Vita while the GM runs the solo adventures of Hacker Hal vs the IC Princess.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:54 pm

In the good (bad ?) old days a Fairlight Excalibur and a Fuchi Cyber-7 costed 1,2 mi and 700k respectively. So its not much different from now. Couple this with Limits and more balanced skills spread and 5e is perhaps the most niche-protected edition of the game (they could just make it class-based at this point). You can start as a Rigger-Decker-Samurai-Mage jack-of-all-trades but you will be pretty mediocre on all fields.

I love it.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 1:45 pm

silva wrote:In the good (bad ?) old days a Fairlight Excalibur and a Fuchi Cyber-7 costed 1,2 mi and 700k respectively. So its not much different from now. Couple this with Limits and more balanced skills spread and 5e is perhaps the most niche-protected edition of the game (they could just make it class-based at this point). You can start as a Rigger-Decker-Samurai-Mage jack-of-all-trades but you will be pretty mediocre on all fields.

I love it.

Silva, don't ever change. Actually, I would love it if you started a blog reviewing movies and PC games. You are a treasure.

Because you are always, consistently, on the side of the stupidest shit imaginable. I would buy and play FATAL if they made a 3rd edition and you didn't like it.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 2:02 pm

silva wrote:In the good (bad ?) old days a Fairlight Excalibur and a Fuchi Cyber-7 costed 1,2 mi and 700k respectively. So its not much different from now. Couple this with Limits and more balanced skills spread and 5e is perhaps the most niche-protected edition of the game (they could just make it class-based at this point). You can start as a Rigger-Decker-Samurai-Mage jack-of-all-trades but you will be pretty mediocre on all fields.

I love it.

Just because things were done that way in the past doesn't make them good. Let's say you are GMing Shadowrun. You intend to give players about 10-20 thousand nuyen per run, controlling their growth, ensuring that they don't outgrow your campaign plans too quickly. A mediocre cyberdeck, the basic tool that every hacker needs, cost 100k nuyen. This means that every dead hacker is worth ~30k for the players. This means that you can never ever use hacker against our players, because dead deckers blow up the economy. Street gangs also can't have hackers, because 100k decks in a poor neighborhood break suspension of disbelief.

Hackers should be common in cyberpunk. You can't have common archetype use tools of the trade that cost too much.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 3:22 pm

Longes, I don't know. Shadowrun 2e is the game I most played (and GMed) in my life and never had a problem with that. The Excalibur and Cyber-7 were supposed to be top career achievements you were expected to get after a life of running, or at least its like my group saw it. The most our deckers got was the Fuchi Cyber-6, and they never bothered with it. The same reasoning was applied to wired reflexes 3 and control rigs 3 and power foci 8, etc. Also, its always possible to find those items used in the black market by 1/3 the list price (though possibly glitchy, by the GM discretion).

Honestly, I can't see this as something inherently good or bad, just an option the devs decided to take. It would be bad if they took the option but didn't balanced everything out, but this don't look to be the case here (nor in the good/bad days neither).

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:36 pm

Silent Wayfarer wrote:being a decker requires at least as much financial investment as being a cyborg ninja, except that your minigame is shittier

Except it isn't anymore, as decking was reduced to "access, hack, repeat", which makes it more playable than ever both in the meat and digital worlds.

Someone mentioned above (Pragma?) that it is pretty easy for a security spider to spot wireless enabled intruders. I'm pretty curious about this statement myself, as my group will be playing on a " wireless is always on" house-rule. Could you elaborate it more ? Between running silent and the group Decker lending its sleaze and firewall programs for the rest of the team ( device slavering), it looks a pretty fair/balanced contest.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:39 pm

The funniest thing about silva posts is that he routinely makes it sound like his MCs run the sort of Secret Railroad games that feature dudes you can't loot and spoils you can never manage to sell.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:43 pm

silva wrote:
Silent Wayfarer wrote:being a decker requires at least as much financial investment as being a cyborg ninja, except that your minigame is shittier
Except it isn't anymore, as decking was reduced to "access, hack, repeat", which makes it more playable than ever both in the meat and digital worlds.

Someone mentioned above (Pragma?) that it is pretty easy for a security spider to spot wireless enabled intruders. I'm pretty curious about this statement myself, as my group will be playing on a " wireless is always on" house-rule. Could you elaborate it more ? Between running silent and the group Decker lending its sleaze and firewall programs for the rest of the team ( device slavering), it looks a pretty fair/balanced contest.

The number of devices you can slave is finite. You enter the facility, and your spare gun/earbud/pants are visible to every wifi search in the area that happens every second.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 7:30 pm

Ok, it seems a deck can slave rating x 3 devices, which is... nonsensic, as a single razorboy can have more than this rating is capable of protect alone.

Well, back to the house-rule board. I think Ill suggest to my group that each deck can slave its rating x 2 people. It's much simpler and direct this way.

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 12:19 am

While making sure everything is slaved (usually by ignoring system) helps, it doesn't actually fix the core issue I mentioned. In particular, every drone forces one roll per network per in game second. You need to roll multiple wireless tests for every instant of game time. If played by RAW, the matrix slows the game to a crawl.

So, fine, as part of the gentleman's agreement the GM agrees to forgo wireless scanning drones. So far so good, but the same issue crops up if there's a legitimate security spider. They have nothing to do but scan for suspicious wireless activity.

Alright, back to the gentleman's agreement, the GM agrees to roll whenever something "wirelessly significant" happens. That's pretty pure fiat and a really hard thing for runners to plan around. So instead a reasonable runner team will all use micro-transceivers and forgo every wireless bonus.

So the gentleman's agreement boils down to: "We agree to be hacked by one another and the GM won't force us to be detected unless it's super important to his plans." Writing that in the book would have saved 20 pages of technobabble.

By the way, it is totally insane that microtransceivers can transmit data wirelessly and be entirely immune to hacking. This is certainly because they're a copypasta job, but it raises an important question: if it can send voice then why can't it send bits. And if it can send bits then can I make an unhackable rigging network out of microtransceivers? The rules are silent on the point, but the game has inadvertently suggested that the future has reverted to mysteriously unhackable walkie talkies for their wireless transmission.

Any rate, it's this inadvertency which drives me crazy about the SR5 (and SR4) wireless rules. At first glance they seem workable, but really they require an infinite number of rolls and nonsensical McGuyvering.

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 5:41 am

The wireless bonuses are also silly (wireless bonus for a fancy coat is to raise social pools, lolwut). Frank touched on this, but it's basically an incredibly hamhanded way to force people to use said bonuses as opposed to just declaring that everyone is online all the time.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 6:35 pm

pragma wrote:While making sure everything is slaved (usually by ignoring system) helps, it doesn't actually fix the core issue I mentioned. In particular, every drone forces one roll per network per in game second. You need to roll multiple wireless tests for every instant of game time. If played by RAW, the matrix slows the game to a crawl.

Im having a hard time understanding this. Im sure my ignorance in the system is the reason. Could you elaborate a little bit better ?

When you cite "networks", you mean the characters PANs (personel area networks) ?

If so, I understand a security drone has a device rating of just 2 or 3 (if its a security version). Isnt that a really low number to beat the characters (supposing they are being protected by a local decker) ? Ie: the drone will roll 3 + 3 dice, -2 for silent iconts, averagin around 1 hit, against an average deckers sleaze + willpower, say, 3 + 4, averaging at least 2 hits ? Doesnt it mean a minimally competent decker will keep the team hidden most of times against default security drones ?

Is there something that can boost drones detection capability ? (some autosoft perhaps ?)

Also, where does it say about the frequency of perception tests for drones in this situation ? I cant find it.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 7:11 pm

If you take average results for both, then yes, the decker will keep everyone hidden.

If you have either or both roll, then the drones will just test repeatedly until they succeed. That's the magic of iterative probability.

A possible solution is to say that whatever result you get, that's the result you're stuck with until something changes. Although depending on how you define "changes", it might just lead to the drones turning on and off repeatedly or something equally silly.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 7:42 pm

Ice9 wrote:A possible solution is to say that whatever result you get, that's the result you're stuck with until something changes

Yup. This is the default method for detection - the result you get from your sneaking roll (or invisibility spell) works as the threshold for any attempts at detection.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 7:47 pm

Could you guys take the incredibly, painfully, pathetically slow realizations of silva about how the Hall of Mirrors issue makes the Shadowrun Matrix unplayable to another thread? For fuck's sake, Infinity Mirror was described in its entirety seven years before Shadowrun 5 even came out. This is not, or should not be, news to anyone. The fact that silva is still arguing this point is simply Exhibit Q that silva is a very very stupid person.

Now get off my lawn.

-Username17

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 9:20 pm

Well, it's no longer news that you shouldn't talk to silva, but it just wouldn't be the internet if social problems ever went away.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 10:43 pm

pragma wrote: By the way, it is totally insane that microtransceivers can transmit data wirelessly and be entirely immune to hacking. This is certainly because they're a copypasta job, but it raises an important question: if it can send voice then why can't it send bits. And if it can send bits then can I make an unhackable rigging network out of microtransceivers? The rules are silent on the point, but the game has inadvertently suggested that the future has reverted to mysteriously unhackable walkie talkies for their wireless transmission.

I don't have the book and so can't speak to microtranscievers specifically, but it's not necessarily insane. If a device can't be reprogrammed, it's obviously impossible to remotely reprogram it. If it uses certain types of storage, it might be possible to reprogram it locally but not remotely because the radio has no connection to anything that can write to the storage. It's going to be possible, though not necessarily practical, to transmit messages to the reciever, pick incoming messages up with another reciever, or jam it, but it doesn't have to be possible to make it transmit when it's supposed to be switched off or change how it reacts to legitimate messages.

Hook the same radio up to a drone, and it's going to be a lot more problematic. It doesn't have to be possible to do anything except react exactly as desired to messages sent with proper authentication, but making sure of that is wildly unmanageable.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:47 am

so . . if that can not be hacked then . .
place a microphone inside the drone case.
put the transceiver right next to it.
shut off all wifi on the drone and have it work on voice command.
use the unhackable transceiver to control your now unhackable drone?

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 4:29 am

I think a device that converts a voice circuit to transmit data is usually called a "modem".

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:19 pm

No, i was thinking about this idiocy they implement basically everywhere:"OK google!" "Hey Siri!" "X-Box go!" etc. where you talk to a device to make it do stuff for you.
And then simply have a tiny microphone inside the drones casing. And the speaker of the microtransceiver next to it.
So you talk into your microtransceiver "Drone Arucardo! Searcho Ando Destroyo!" and it gets transmitted into the case where the drone simply listens and this whole thing would be unhackable, if the Microtransceivery really can not be hacked via wifi . .