[evildmguy]

Okay,


My group switched over to Shadowrun the day 5E came out but went with 4E/20th.  From what I had heard and read, matrix hacking was supposed to be really streamlined and not the mini adventure for one player that it used to be.  However, in playing last night, that's not what we found.  My group tried to use the 20th rules per the book and even accounting for learning the rules, it still would have been an hour for a "simple" hacking run by himself, leaving the other players with nothing to do. 


Am I missing something?  Where can I look if this is wrong? Or was streamlining down to an hour the fix?   


Thanks!


edg

[Michael Chandra]

Streamlining to make it faster is part of SR5, since in SR4a it was way too slow.

[Crunch]

SR4 was an attempt to improve over SR1-3 where decking was essentially it's own run that basically resulted in a lot of "All right guys why don't y'all go eat pizza and play videogames for an hour or two while bob tries to Hack the server."

It worked to a limited extent, although the rules are pretty Byzantine and still time consuming. Essentially getting down to an hour was the fix.

SR5 does a much better job with matrix rules that mesh much better with the central action of the game.

[evildmguy]

Ah, okay.  I guess I thought 4E had done the streamlining.  I have 5E and will have to read it and see what they did for it. 


Thanks!


edg

[Crunch]

Ah, okay.  I guess I thought 4E had done the streamlining.  I have 5E and will have to read it and see what they did for it. 


Thanks!


edg

Don't get me wrong 4E IS strealined compared to 1-3, they just cut out the wrong bits and ended up with a system that was less interesting and less rewarding for specialists and only slightly quicker.

[PauloAM]

I agree that hacking is a little adventure in itself sometimes, but shouldn't the GM account for that during adventure preparation? if the other players just sit by and wait, I guess that's more of a GM's fault.
I don't know how 5e works though...

[WrongConcept]

I tend to run Matrix Hacks and Game at the same time, i take 3 rounds equals one round on "shadowrun real world" so whenever 3 rounds passes i spent some time with the other players, and keep everything exciting

[farothel]

I think it's not that bad.  Sometimes others will have to wait, but that's for all roles.  If the mage is off into doing some astral recon, the rest is also waiting.  With a bit of preparation you can keep it quite streamlined.

For instance during combat.  The matrix combat system is exactly the same as the meat life one, just with other skills.  So you can have your hacker roll initiative (matrix init for him) and just fit him in the initiative order.  He describes his action just like the others, rolls his dice and gets a result.

If the hacker is doing the hack of the corporate server where the plans the group needs are on, maybe the others have less to do, but the hacker had little to do when the face talked his way inside.  And a couple of perception tests to see if they spot the cleaning people in time should keep the others on their toes (and can give the face some time to talk his way out of why they're there, or the street sammie to knock them unconscious without making noise).

[RHat]

I agree that hacking is a little adventure in itself sometimes, but shouldn't the GM account for that during adventure preparation? if the other players just sit by and wait, I guess that's more of a GM's fault.
I don't know how 5e works though...

It's a bit difficult, though, if the team decides they want the hacker to get control of everything before they go in, or if he's doing that while they're getting in - either he does things the long way, which has to be done pre-run anyways, or everything he's doing is at the timescale of a Combat Turn, with the Hacker probably being in VR acting 3 times a Combat Turn, effectively getting an entire action phase every second.  When the team is in something that's on the same sort of timescale, it's easier to jump around.  Of course, with the extended tests, you can always have the player make any declarations he needs to, tell him the threshold if he doesn't already know it (which he should), and have him roll in the background while other stuff is going on; or you can give him breaks to plan what he wants to do.

SR5 does make things faster, puts all hacking on a running clock, and encourages you to get close (ideally "plug right in" close) to a point of access.  It also does terrible things to technomancers, but still.