[Shadowrun 5] On the playability of Matrix

[silva]

in a straight up you or me 1v1 it does.
in a fight about something else, true.
but then you just make it a fight you or me 1v1 and do whatever afterwards . . so probably not any time soon.

Actually, no. SR5 corebook states that any damage to a device is persistent and can only be repaired by a hardware skill test. This means damage dont go away with a reboot. It also states that a decker in Cold-Sim suffers Stun biofeedback damage, while a decker in Hot-sim suffers Physical biofeedback damage.

Also, Cold/Hot-sim gives such a huge edge in Initiative (while Hot also gives +2 dice to all matrix actions), that most deckers will run on one of those modes. Consequentially, they will be prone to stun (or physical) damage.

I dont know what edition of SR Longes is describing, but its definitely not 5th edition. Perhaps 4th edition is like that ? I honestly dont know, as we never tried the matrix on it.

[kzt]

In 4th edition only an idiot would use hot sim in combat. IIRC, AR makes you essentially invulnerable while you spawn black hammer agents with your hackastack.

[silva]

Thanks for clarifying, Kzt.

Well, in SR5 you could hack on AR mode to avoid any damage (though your deck still get it) but then its like facing a wired street sam with only your 1d for initiative. AKA: its suicide. I think Cold-sim is more balanced option, as it gives you a nice initiative boost (+3D) while making you prone to Stun damage.

[Longes]

How people think SR5 Matrix works. Taken from reddit.

There is one clear first step to a matrix duel...
Matrix Perception checks to find eachother (Opposed tests in the case that they are running silent).
After that it becomes a little less clear cut. They could
Gather Marks, super useful will allow you to do half of the tricks that two deckers would want to do on one another
Gather enough marks for a Trace Icon to direct the rest of the team to pick off their opponent in the meat.
Hide (This means your opponent has to start back at square 1) however this only works if your opponent has failed to get a mark on you.
Grid Hopping, impose some penalties from hacking to another Grid on both users.
Full Matrix Defence, higher defence pools for the entire combat round mean that hopefully the duel won't end too quickly.
Data Spike, just a painful old hurt the decker.
Erasing Marks, to stop the other Decker from pulling tricks on you.
Crash Program (Requires 1 Mark) force your rival to stop running one of their programs
Of course they have to remember that GOD could converge on them at anytime during this duel so they don't want it to go on for too long.



In Practice
D-elite and Hurts got into a fight over how to split the payment from their last data dive, D-elite thinks he should get 65% of the cut because it was his contacts which managed to sell the data. Both have Novatech Navigators.

ROUND 1
Roll Initiative, Hurts is in Hot Sim VR because cold sim is for chumps whilst D-elite is only in AR at the time (chump). Hurts gets 22 and D-elite gets 11 dice on this round.
Not at all happy with this Hurts searches for D-elites Deck (he did just get cheated out of 15,000 nuyen it was a big big payday). He rolls his matrix perception of 16 dice (Only 12 after doing his work from another Grid and due to noise) against D-elites pool of 10. He narrowly beats D-elite by a single success. D-elite hurt by the words jumps into VR cold-sim planning to do some light pranking on his chummer.
Realising that he's in the wrong Grid to really show D-elite the error of his ways Hurts swaps onto the Emerald City Grid so that his future moves won't be suffering. D-elite unlike his omae Hurts has a Satellite and isn't suffering from the noise at all. Having jumped into cold sim he gets an extra 6 initiative. D-elite does his perception test 14 dice vs. 9 against Hurts and gets enough successes to find out the Hurts has recently swapped onto the Emerald City Grid.
Hurts still has 2 initiative left after these passes and attempts a hack on the fly at D-elite. Throwing a hefty 15 dice against 10 dice and gets the successes necessary to get his first mark. However it was a close thing as D-elite managed to get half of his pool in successes in his defence check. Hurts now has an overwatch score of 5.

ROUND 2
D-elite rolled perfectly, getting 26 whilst Hurts rolled rather pathetically only achieving a measly 16.
D-elite goes on the full defence seeing his chummer Hurts swap Grids so close after their argument. Hurts tries to get another mark via Hack on the Fly, however this time it's 15 dice vs. 15 dice. Hurts fails the test by one success as D-elite gets an equal amount of success, 4.
Hurts now has an OW of 9.
D-elite is going to get his Agent in on the action and hits hurts with a Hack on the Fly. He now has a monumental 19 dice vs. Hurts's 10, Hurts rolls well, but D-elite gets 2 net successes and finds out his friend attempted to hack him last round. The cheek! D-elite OW 3
Hurts realises that he might have a little trouble beating D-elites top notch security in a prolonged duel and tries once again to get another mark, this time successfully. Hurts OW 13.
D-elite decides that now that things are serious it's time to switch into Hot Sim and really get the party started, he gets another 5 initiative meaning that he still has another two actions.
With these two actions D-elite rapidly picks up a scary 3 Marks... Enough to force Hurts to reboot and suffer dumpshock on his next round!

ROUND 3
Through the fate or statistics Hurst manages to go first. And with his last action he traces D-elites icon successfully pinning it down to an apartment in Redmond. He quickly sends out a message to a "cleaner" that there is a man inside that needs to be dealt with, he'll pay the cleaner 15,000 nuyen. Hurst OW 15
D-elite then hits Hurts for a shockingly painful Data Spike, link-locking Hurts. Hurts barely manages to soak enough of the 12P heading his way (only soaks 3P)... he's not going to survive the dumpshock if he manages to jack out. Hurts calls for his Street Doc to pay an emergency visit and jacks out... hopefully his Street Doc is speedy as Hurts takes another 2P and falls into overflow... He'll be dead if his doc doesn't make it to his place and stabilise him in 12 short minutes.

Aftermath
D-elite now plans on keeping the entire funds for himself. He is completely unaware that a man is currently on the way to his place and is planning on killing him for a sweet reward... however that's a problem for another adventure.

[Stahlseele]

Which ammounts to more less the same as 2 Gunmen standing in the Sun on high noon making minimal dodging movements without actual use of cover . . and somebody else shooting the winner in the back . .

[RadiantPhoenix]

Perhaps we should throw down a gauntlet with a specific scenario.

You are a hacker attempting a shadowrun against the local Stop-and-Shop.

The building is a 100m x 100m warehouse with a 10m ceiling.

There is a 2-meter aisle every 4 meters, with a half-meter deep by 2 meter high stack of shelves on each side of each aisle, and every inch of those shelves is packed with food products, each and every item of which has a Matrix-based tracking device on it.

An average food item is 5cm x 5cm x 10cm, or 2,000 items per cubic meter of shelving. There are 50,000 cubic meters of shelving. Thus, the food items alone constitute 100,000,000 matrix devices.

For security purposes, every single Matrix icon associated with anything in the store has an icon that is the Stop-and-Shop logo with a randomly-assigned serial number. Especially the security systems.

Actually, every food item has five matrix devices:

1. One on the item somewhere for tracking.
2. A second one on the item somewhere else for redundancy.
3. One on the place on the shelf where it is supposed to go.
4. One in the back where the packaging is stored until it can be recycled.
5. An extra one thrown in a random location in or near the store to fuck with hackers.

Thus, 500 million matrix icons from merchandise. All with randomly-assigned serial numbers, none distinguishable without the cypher until and unless you do a proper analysis with matrix perception. My laptop computer literally doesn't have enough memory to store all of those serial numbers.

Also, any number and permutation of them may-or-may-not be "running silent" if that's advantageous. I have no idea what that even means.

I haven't even gotten to the actual security systems, but all of their matrix icons presumably follow the same scheme, and they're presumably not completely incompetent.

[RelentlessImp]

This scenario does not play out properly due to the Matrix Spam Filter automatically filtering out "unimportant" things like Matrix Icons reporting "Just some cereal here". What it does do is raise a point someone else has made elsewhere about installing RFID chips that read "Ork Underwear" into your weapon of mass destruction/gun that can shoot a hole through the world and thus not being able to even make a Matrix Perception test to find it due to spam filters.

EDIT: Before someone calls bullshit, here's the actual rules text:

There are uncounted billions of icons in the Matrix.
Devices have icons in the Matrix in sort of the same way
that living things have auras in astral space. This could
get overwhelming, but some background tech keeps
things from getting out of control.
The first piece of assistance comes from your com -
mlink, which automatically filters out the least interest-
ing icons. Do you want to know the virtual location of
every music player in the world? Right, neither do I. So
the Matrix will usually show you an icon for an individ-
ual’s personal area network (PAN), not every device in
that network (although it makes exceptions for inter-
esting or dangerous devices in that network, such as
a gun). Additionally, the farther away devices are from
you in the real world, the dimmer their icons are in the
Matrix; this is partly because your commlink figures the
farther ones aren’t as interesting to you, but mostly be-
cause the connection is a bit slower due to the distance.
Matrix gear renders the far-off devices and personas as
dim, muted, or flickering icons. Also cutting down on
the visual noise is the fact that some icons are deliber-
ately hidden from view, such as locks and other security
devices, baby monitors, maintenance monitors, and of
course people who prefer not to be seen.

Page 217, Wireless World, Virtual Visions

[silva]

This scenario does not play out properly due to the Matrix Spam Filter automatically filtering out "unimportant" things like Matrix Icons reporting "Just some cereal here".

Yep, this.

[RelentlessImp]

I've come to a realization. The entire 5e Matrix system is predicated on a number of inferences the writers want you to understand but cannot come right out and say. Why? I'll get to that in a minute.

First, the use of the word "unimportant" is shorthand for the authors to say to you "Things that are not plot-relevant", which means they want you to only roll Matrix Perception to detect things that move the plot along. They can't actually say this because Shadowrun has had a fairly impressive level of fluff/mechanic integration. You can see this in the Matrix example on pages 224-225. He never makes a Matrix Perception test for anything that isn't plot-relevant or relevant to his own interests.

Now, the SR5 team had two decisions here: They could have said, "Yes, this is a stupid, gamey rule, but Matrix bogs down too much rolling Matrix Perception for every icon, so only make Matrix Perception tests for plot-relevant or player-relevant interests", OR they could have written rules that weren't such shit. Either choice would have garnered a little respect. Choosing neither means it deserves to be bashed for the shitstain it is and the authors called out for it.

I can understand why they didn't do it - they wanted to trade on Shadowrun's mechanics/fluff merging, which has historically been okay - better than most. so on the SURFACE it looks like they're doing that, but under the hood the mind caulk is everywhere even in their own examples so as to clue you in to the fact that they really wanted to add in some shit that makes no sense in the worldspace they're writing in. That they chose to do this in the Matrix rules is understandable - the Matrix rules have changed in EVERY edition, some times DURING editions. But not having the balls to just say "This doesn't work unless you mind caulk over the cracks" in a new edition? At least they dropped all the hints that let people mind caulk over it without really realizing that's what they're doing.

There's still too many fucking die rolls, though. They could have really streamlined this shit if they'd just gone for it.

[TheFlatline]

This scenario does not play out properly due to the Matrix Spam Filter automatically filtering out "unimportant" things like Matrix Icons reporting "Just some cereal here". What it does do is raise a point someone else has made elsewhere about installing RFID chips that read "Ork Underwear" into your weapon of mass destruction/gun that can shoot a hole through the world and thus not being able to even make a Matrix Perception test to find it due to spam filters.

EDIT: Before someone calls bullshit, here's the actual rules text:

There are uncounted billions of icons in the Matrix.
Devices have icons in the Matrix in sort of the same way
that living things have auras in astral space. This could
get overwhelming, but some background tech keeps
things from getting out of control.
The first piece of assistance comes from your com -
mlink, which automatically filters out the least interest-
ing icons. Do you want to know the virtual location of
every music player in the world? Right, neither do I. So
the Matrix will usually show you an icon for an individ-
ual’s personal area network (PAN), not every device in
that network (although it makes exceptions for inter-
esting or dangerous devices in that network, such as
a gun). Additionally, the farther away devices are from
you in the real world, the dimmer their icons are in the
Matrix; this is partly because your commlink figures the
farther ones aren’t as interesting to you, but mostly be-
cause the connection is a bit slower due to the distance.
Matrix gear renders the far-off devices and personas as
dim, muted, or flickering icons. Also cutting down on
the visual noise is the fact that some icons are deliber-
ately hidden from view, such as locks and other security
devices, baby monitors, maintenance monitors, and of
course people who prefer not to be seen.

Page 217, Wireless World, Virtual Visions

Right which goes back to what Frank was originally stating. It's *trivial* to recode the icon to show up as a Troll Penis Enhancement System (or more realistically something like "fire sprinkler piping 473A") so you have to do a matrix perception test on pretty much everything to find out if you're looking at cheesy poofs in the matrix or a hacker.

Or the opposite, where you take a handful of RFID tags and throw them like glitter across the room and suddenly you have to scan 5000 icons that register as "Gunzerking Ork HERE". If the spam filter bypasses that, it's officially more intelligent than your hacker.

[silva]

I agree with RelentlessImp assertion. SR5 is one of the more badly written books I've read and the Matrix chapter is the most emblematic to this.

*Edit*: The Reddit example of play looks spot-on to me. The only strange thing is the damage done in the end, which looks too high.

[silva]

Right which goes back to what Frank was originally stating. It's *trivial* to recode the icon to show up as a Troll Penis Enhancement System (or more realistically something like "fire sprinkler piping 473A") so you have to do a matrix perception test on pretty much everything to find out if you're looking at cheesy poofs in the matrix or a hacker.

Nope, you just need to make a test for the plot-relevant things, as Relentless said above.

[TheFlatline]

Right which goes back to what Frank was originally stating. It's *trivial* to recode the icon to show up as a Troll Penis Enhancement System (or more realistically something like "fire sprinkler piping 473A") so you have to do a matrix perception test on pretty much everything to find out if you're looking at cheesy poofs in the matrix or a hacker.

Nope, you just need to make a test for the plot-relevant things, as Relentless said above.

So you're running with the spam filter actually being more intelligent than the hacker.

JFC.

[TheFlatline]

First, the use of the word "unimportant" is shorthand for the authors to say to you "Things that are not plot-relevant", which means they want you to only roll Matrix Perception to detect things that move the plot along. They can't actually say this because Shadowrun has had a fairly impressive level of fluff/mechanic integration. You can see this in the Matrix example on pages 224-225. He never makes a Matrix Perception test for anything that isn't plot-relevant or relevant to his own interests.

Do they still have the rule that lets you turn any icon into what looks like a "not polt-relevant icon" unless you like really look at it?

[silva]

Right which goes back to what Frank was originally stating. It's *trivial* to recode the icon to show up as a Troll Penis Enhancement System (or more realistically something like "fire sprinkler piping 473A") so you have to do a matrix perception test on pretty much everything to find out if you're looking at cheesy poofs in the matrix or a hacker.

Nope, you just need to make a test for the plot-relevant things, as Relentless said above.

So you're running with the spam filter actually being more intelligent than the hacker.

JFC.

If thats your preferred interpretation, I can respect. For me its a matter of whats important for each table and for the story to move on.

[RelentlessImp]

So you're running with the spam filter actually being more intelligent than the hacker.

JFC.

Unfortunately, that does look like the rules they wrote. Or at least meant to write but couldn't due to reasons of false verisimilitude broken by having written it in the first place.

Do they still have the rule that lets you turn any icon into what looks like a "not polt-relevant icon" unless you like really look at it?

Yeah. Weirdly.

CHANGE ICON
(SIMPLE ACTION)
Marks Required: Owner
Test: none (Data Processing action)
You change the target’s icon to one that you have
a copy of or have designed yourself. Changing an icon
doesn’t change the results of a Matrix Perception action,
but might fool personas who don’t take the time to in-
spect your new look. You can target your own icon, if
you like.

We're back to the spam filter being smarter than the hacker. But it does look like that is the basic rule that the writers leaned on.

[Longes]

First, the use of the word "unimportant" is shorthand for the authors to say to you "Things that are not plot-relevant", which means they want you to only roll Matrix Perception to detect things that move the plot along. They can't actually say this because Shadowrun has had a fairly impressive level of fluff/mechanic integration. You can see this in the Matrix example on pages 224-225. He never makes a Matrix Perception test for anything that isn't plot-relevant or relevant to his own interests.

Do they still have the rule that lets you turn any icon into what looks like a "not polt-relevant icon" unless you like really look at it?

Sort of. Hacker can install a program that allows him to change the image of any devices he has slaved. It won't cover the entire team, but about 18 devices would be effectively unhackable.

[silva]

I think Data Trails (the Matrix splat book) will clarify a bunch of things, for the better. Right now the RAW is very confusing, and we can only deduce the RAI.

[kzt]

I think Data Trails (the Matrix splat book) will clarify a bunch of things, for the better. Right now the RAW is very confusing, and we can only deduce the RAI.

You really think so? I think this is being written by the same crew that wrote the last 4 increasingly crappy rule versions (SR4, unwired, SR4A, SR5), so why do you think it will get BETTER?

[silva]

Ok, you have a point.

[fbmf]

I agree with RelentlessImp assertion. SR5 is one of the more badly written books I've read and the Matrix chapter is the most emblematic to this.

*Edit*: The Reddit example of play looks spot-on to me. The only strange thing is the damage done in the end, which looks too high.

I'm confused. Earlier you implied that SR 5E was the best edition. What made you change your mind?

Game On,
fbmf

[Orion]

I believe his position is that the book is badly written and thus difficult to understand, but that once comprehension is achieved it will prove to be the best game.

He's persistently proven himself to be an esotericist.

[silva]

What Orion said.

Also notice that being the "best edition of SR" doesn't say much, really, as SR is a convoluted artifact of the 80's no matter the edition.

[Username17]

That Reddit description is basically gibberish. They are skipping an ass load of steps and aren't even handling the same things the same way when repeated within a single combat round. It's bizarre. Of course, the "hacking" also accomplished basically fuck-all and also involved rolling dice over eighty times. If you wanted to more solidly prove that the SR5 Matrix is unplayable garbage, I don't know how you would go about doing that.

Anyway, yes the actual authors of SR5 appear to believe that you only roll the important rolls and only interact with the important icons. This is comically unworkable, as for example the rules include the ability to disguise yourself as an unimportant icon and there is no way to see through such a ruse without rolling dice tens of thousands of times. But even on it's own terms, it's still horse shit. The Street Samurai sample character is unplayable trash but he has fourteen matrix active devices that an enterprising Hacker might plauisbly want to brick. That's one character, and he has fourteen matrix devices that could actually be considered important at any particular time.

Not only has not one person in the history of anything ever written out two hackers fighting in even the simplest of cases to actually getting to any kind of result, but even the attempts have trailed off into gibberish and handwaved many whole initiative passes before even getting that far (as well as having obviously skipped the whole Infinity Mirror problem outright). But that's not even the difficult case. The difficult case is where you try to actually do something with hacking. Meatspace people aren't a single blob of Matrix avatar, they are a bunch of distinct devices. So if you want to do something with those people, you go from the two body problem (that no one has successfully written up a complete example of) to a problem with dozens of bodies. Becoming quadratically more complex.

I agree that what you're "supposed" to do is to ignore all the parts of the rules that aren't important. That's why none of the examples of play that anyone has ever done, even the writers themselves, has involved actually tracking GOD at the appropriate times. Because obviously you aren't really tracking GOD. What you're supposed to do is pretend that you're tracking GOD and then periodically smite the player if they don't seem to be taking GOD seriously enough. That's it. That's the whole rule as it's actually supposed to be used in the minds of the authors. And it's still too fucking complicated.

-Username17

[silva]

Stop behaving like a frustrated writer wannabe and grow up. The whole fucking world agrees SR5 has the most playable matrix ever, regardless of what you keep repeating. The fact you were not invited to work on it only proves your delusion about your own design/writting prowess.

Oh, and clean up the spite juice flowing from you mouth.