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The Matrix, or how I'm on the verge of quitting as GM

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Redwulfe

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« Reply #15 on: <02-26-13/1727:43> »
Several good Ideas here. just to reiterate the ones I find very important to your cause. and add my 2 cents.

Anarkitty: The kid was the son of someone important. this is great for continuing the story.

If you want your players to not just go around murdering people then they need to sometimes realize that those are people too and that they may have connections and so on. the ramifications of actions can ripple out causing major problems down the line. Remember kids, your a criminal and they don't tend to just go out and try to make people notice them in everyday life. unless they need to make a distraction of course and even then they cover their hoop.

Use public awareness and notoriety to your advantage here. It usually really sucks when you can't negotiate up fees or get information because your the kind of people no one wishes to be associated with because you deal with tanomous or murder kids for no reason. Wow, is there actually a reason to murder kids? I've been playing SR too long. :)

Rhat: interlacing is a very important skill to develop.

This can't be stressed enough. and there are lots of tricks to get the party back on track and all doing stuff. This is usually where the design of the module comes into place. And feel free to run it by the community they will give you tons of advice before game to help you make sure the game is not boring for your players. they may not make it through the game but it won't be boring. :)

The primary way is the team needs to get the hacker into the building to get to the archives, the backup system, or the evidence system all together. the system could be off line unable to be accessed via wireless due to attenuation and so forth. not to mention that this is Ares and they have access to programs that are higher than 6. your technomancer may be good but when facing firewall 8, system 8 with analyze 9 running and two pieces of IC also running analyze 9 on everything every turn. This is just the access node that connects to an even higher rated evidence node,  more than likely he will get caught. and massive combat with several IC and Spiders will ensue. Not to mention he needs a biometric passkey to access the node. To me it sounds like the easiest way to do this is to get a detective drunk still his badge have the mage physical mask our infiltration specialist and then open up the motor pool during the slower night shift. While we are smoozing the detective the technomancer can locate several building that will just suddenly give off false panic alarms to get the majority of the cops out of the building and then hack grid guide to make sure they have problems getting back in time to catch us. Then we can move to where the backup are stored and set the corrupt file into action with the sprite the technomancer cooked up to do just that with the detectives logins.  Though on second thought I doubt I would even wish to do this at all especial for free for some jerk-off that murdered a kid. bullet to his head tie a ribbon on his toe and drop him out a van on KE's doorstep problem hopefully solved. .

Falconer: When your unfamiliar with a system it makes simple tasks take longer than what they normally would.

To me simple tasks should be simple. don't bog the game down with things that aren't important. if your hacker is trying to get the layout of the bar you are meeting the johnson in and he wants admin to the system, why is this a problem? give it to him, no roll move on. If the hacker has admin on the node that the security door is connected to then no roll move on, its within his access privileges and he can issue it a legitimate command. Tell him to make and extended test and the target number he needs, which he could figure out if he would just make a perception test on the node, and then tell you how many rolls he had to make. While he is rolling to his hearts content you can focus on the rest of the party and what they are doing, if they are just standing around have them make perception tests and hear something that may be a guard they investigate and its not. The hacker tells you 2 tries you ask him his stealth roll twice and if you beet it deal with that and actually throw a guard at the rest or tell the one with the highest electronics skill that he thinks he may be able to bypass the door lock, so you have a combat and hacking going on or something else. The point is their is never a reason that the players should have to feel bogged down by one player something else is going on.

Past that I would just like to make a commented on something you said that really bothered me. you said that your group wouldn't switch to another system you wanted to use when you where unhappy with shadowrun. You should never feel pressured by the group to GM or to do something that you are not having fun with. You should talk to them about that and as your friends they should understand. Everyone should be having fun or whats the point in calling it "playing" it shouldn't feel like work.

as a parting note, remember feel free to run ideas past the posters here to glean information and ideas and if you don't understand something truly use the people here to your advantage, but make sure you pass the favor forward with the next guy needing help.

Hope this helps,
Red

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GiraffeShaman

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« Reply #16 on: <02-26-13/2100:50> »
Quote
Though on second thought I doubt I would even wish to do this at all especial for free for some jerk-off that murdered a kid. bullet to his head tie a ribbon on his toe and drop him out a van on KE's doorstep problem hopefully solved.
Hahah, yep. I was a bit surprised when my players refused a run on the ground that it was a snatching of a kid. There are often different rules when it comes to kids. This issue came up on the TV show Breaking Bad too.

Csjarrat

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« Reply #17 on: <02-28-13/1225:23> »
when it comes to matrix, remember that it does actually work in the same time scale as everybody else on the 'run as it uses initiative passes just like astral and meatspace.
while he's hacking away in his hotsim 3 IP's, have the other team members be looking around corners, checking their sensors and keeping an eye out for guards/drones/camera's etc.

also, if you're getting into a high security area, it is perfectly feasible that the security is hardwired, rather than wireless, meaning he'll have to crack out the tools and work in meatspace like everyone else.

if his hacking is too easy, have the appropriate security measures for the facility be present on the system. higher end facilities will have much better rating analyze + very high firewall, gratuitious amounts of IC, databombs on important files, spiders (onsite hackers) responding to threats and engaging him in Cybercombat with several agents in support, the whole shebang! have the defenders spend some edge too, really put him through his paces.
also, they will have important places that need defending be covered in wifi-inhibiting paint, or use very low signal ratings to stop remote hackers. this means he'll need your team to get him past the guards or pull a scam to get passkeys etc.
he'll need to be onsite with the team, which means you can effectively interleave the initiative passes with the team as they fend off guards, rapid response teams and drones, rather than everyone sitting around the breakfast table while he remotely hacks and owns the enemy systems.

have a look through the system design section of unwired too. its not a case of exploit + hacking and thats it, you've got the whole system..
a set up will have a lot of nodes (individual servers running different tasks)
you'll maybe have one node running user sessions for KE operatives at the station (things like the email and printing servers, user log in, personal storage of files). this will be relatively lower security than the rest of the system because security is expensive and this isnt the mission critical bit. this node will be connected via a *very* secure connection (super high firewall, lots of IC, biometric access codes for only detectives on the case + administrators etc) to a series of other nodes that store data on the arrested criminals, open cases, closed cases and evidence archives. each thing (like an evidence archive) will have a separate hyper secure connection (requiring more hacking tests), with lots of IC to avoid/defeat and databombs on important files.
KE know that hackers want to get into their systems so they will deffo take pre-cautions to keep them out!

remember as a GM, you need to scale the challenge up for all your matrix players just as you do with the combat optimised elf street sam. if your hacker can pwn your average megacorp server, then double the defences for the next batch of runs. he wont enjoy it if its too easy, and he'll feel more part of the team effort than a random add-on when he has to share IP's with the other guys
« Last Edit: <02-28-13/1251:01> by Csjarrat »
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