Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Overbyte on <03-03-19/2213:04>
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Somewhere there are some rules for stealing vehicles.
Anyone know where they are.. better yet how one can find things in the million SR books? :)
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R5 has rules for Anti-Theft systems (pg 159). Logically, if the vehicle lacks an Anti-Theft system, it lacks an Anti-Theft system :)
R1 just detects unauthorized intrusion without giving rules for the sensors. Presumably you'd use the ones in SR5 pg 360-362. GM will have to pick exactly what the sensors are detecting and what their rating is. Although the Vehicle's Sensor Rating is probably as good a metric as anything. Vehicles are probably assumed to have locks on the doors, but it'd be up to the GM to determine what kind/rating.
R2 incorporates rating 1, plus the ability for the owner to give a remote kill command to the vehicle. The mechanics that remotely kill the vehicle can be deactivated with a Hardware + Logic (4) test.
Of course, you could instead just have the team decker hack 3 marks on the car and BAM he's got control of it.
Becoming the new owner of stolen gear (cars included) involves an extended Hardware test (SR5 pg 237).
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Thanks SSDR.
I could have thought I read some more extensive rules somewhere, but I might just be old and senile.
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Don't forget the standard 'unless you manage to turn off its wireless or throw it in a Faraday cage, it can be tracked and it's a matter of law enforcement priorities'. And if you jack a criminal's... Plus changing ownership requires being online in the Matrix, so during the extended test you're trackable. Good luck changing ownership on that Mob Limo!
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If you only plan to steal it to get a few dozen kilometers down the road before ditching it, I wouldn’t worry too much about the myriad ways the car can be tracked.
Obviously, you shouldn’t try to steal anything too nice or do it in a secure neighborhood. After that, place a call to a buddy on your burner Meta Link telling him where to meet you, then demonstrate to the world what the phrase “Drive it like you stole it.” means.
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On my to-do list.
Dangit.
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The real challenge is to steal a car, use it on a run, then put it back where you found it without the owner ever knowing it was gone.
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The real challenge is to steal a car, use it on a run, then put it back where you found it without the owner ever knowing it was gone.
Particularly if the real goal of the run is to frame the car owner for the run.
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After that, place a call to a buddy on your burner Meta Link telling him where to meet you, then demonstrate to the world what the phrase “Drive it like you stole it.” means.
Extremely carefully, as to not get gunned down by Lone Star?
On my to-do list.
Dangit.
I feel your pain.
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Reminder to everyone that the owner can't call KE to tell them that their vehicle has been stolen if they are dead, unconscious, or tied up in the trunk.
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On my to-do list.
Dangit.
I would imagine that hot-wiring a car is probably involving some kind of forged RFID signal from a fake key fob. Necessitating use of the Electronic Warfare skill, perhaps? I would imagine getting a car to start hasn't been governed by the Automotive Mechanic skill since before the (first) Crash, although maybe Hardware + Logic would/could be involved.
Or instead... again the easiest thing is for a hacker to just put 3 marks on it.
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Or instead... again the easiest thing is for a hacker to just put 3 marks on it.
That's assuming that the car is wirelessly enabled (and therefore, on) when you try to jack it.
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Or instead... again the easiest thing is for a hacker to just put 3 marks on it.
That's assuming that the car is wirelessly enabled (and therefore, on) when you try to jack it.
We've already had the argument about whether or not it's safe/viable for cars to be throwbacks or have wireless off. Let's not rehash it.
Can we at least agree that cars are no more likely to be wireless-off than any other piece of gear? You can normally presume any device is wireless-enabled...
Besides, even if one assumes that parked cars are wireless-off, all you have to do is slap a data tap on it and it's hackable again.
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Making a car hackable is easy with some manual labour.
Reminder to everyone that the owner can't call KE to tell them that their vehicle has been stolen if they are dead, unconscious, or tied up in the trunk.
Only works if the car is privately owned (rather than corp-owned) and the owner doesn't have a biomonitor. So enjoy. =)
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Step 1, Agility + Sneaking at a difficulty TBD by the GM to physically get over to a Vehicle unnoticed. I usually set the Difficulty based on foot traffic and neighborhood security rating (Cameras/Police Drones). Head to the bad part of town and look for a car parked out on the street.
Step 2, Agility + Locksmith vs Device Rating to remove the lock covering and get a chance to Direct Access the Vehicle. Alternatively, Hardware + Logic, or whatever the counter to the appropriate Anti-Theft Rating is if one is installed.
Step 3, Direct Access, Hack on the Fly, Hacking plus Logic vs Firewall + Willpower.
Step 4, Turn off Wireless.
Step 5, Drive it like you stole it.
Step 6, As a GM feel glad that you can simply machine gun the team's car without making the Rigger cry.
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Step 6, As a GM feel glad that you can simply machine gun the team's car without making the Rigger cry.
In any heist movie ever, the characters acquire gear for the mission at hand rather than using their own drek they've previously used on X number of jobs.
Shadowrunners using the same sniper rifles/vehicles/whatever from mission to mission rather than acquiring them for the mission and disposing of them afterwards always rubbed me kind of "doing it wrong", but the gear prices and suggested run payouts certainly don't support buying gear just for use in one shadowrun...
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Step 6, As a GM feel glad that you can simply machine gun the team's car without making the Rigger cry.
In any heist movie ever, the characters acquire gear for the mission at hand rather than using their own drek they've previously used on X number of jobs.
Shadowrunners using the same sniper rifles/vehicles/whatever from mission to mission rather than acquiring them for the mission and disposing of them afterwards always rubbed me kind of "doing it wrong", but the gear prices and suggested run payouts certainly don't support buying gear just for use in one shadowrun...
Well, GM’s don’t need to pad out the run time by injecticting a five minute “gearing up” montage into their story. Usually.
Honestly, I’ve played several different games that had some sort of pre-mission “requisition” system in them (Deathwatch and SpyCraft spring to mind, but there were others). In all those games players either picked the same stuff mission after mission or spent 3/4 of the game session dickering over minutiae of Gear X versus Gear Y.
Shadowrun is already infamous for its three hours of planning / fifteen seconds of mayhem game play. I’m not sure if we’d get much gameplay benefit from a more realistic “disposable” gear system... Let’s just all shrug our shoulders and invoke suspension of disbelief and try not to think about it too hard. (Much as we do when our Second Level D&D heroes amass enough gold in one troll’s cave to live a life of luxury for the next three generations... But instead rush headlong into the graveyard to hunt vampires.)
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In any heist movie ever, the characters acquire gear for the mission at hand rather than using their own drek they've previously used on X number of jobs.
That's a bit hard to do when the streetsam has tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of gear implanted into his body, isn't it? To say nothing of deckers and riggers....
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Actually when I was thinking about this, I was going to have a player's car get stolen.. leading to all sorts of mayhem. :)
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Actually when I was thinking about this, I was going to have a player's car get stolen.. leading to all sorts of mayhem. :)
I saw that movie. It did not end well for Theon.
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Step 6, As a GM feel glad that you can simply machine gun the team's car without making the Rigger cry.
In any heist movie ever, the characters acquire gear for the mission at hand rather than using their own drek they've previously used on X number of jobs.
Shadowrunners using the same sniper rifles/vehicles/whatever from mission to mission rather than acquiring them for the mission and disposing of them afterwards always rubbed me kind of "doing it wrong", but the gear prices and suggested run payouts certainly don't support buying gear just for use in one shadowrun...
Well, GM’s don’t need to pad out the run time by injecticting a five minute “gearing up” montage into their story. Usually.
I do have to admit that being able to actually go 'I pay X to get a new barrel installed' would give me a good reason to have an Armorer contact and prevent my ballistics from being tracked, just like how you can say 'I'm paying 1 grand to replace my tires after that run'.
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I do have to admit that being able to actually go 'I pay X to get a new barrel installed' would give me a good reason to have an Armorer contact and prevent my ballistics from being tracked, just like how you can say 'I'm paying 1 grand to replace my tires after that run'.
In a home game, that's probably the kind of thing that a GM should be rewarding with extra Karma, extra Edge, or some other sort of "cookie" for good role-playing. In Shadowrun Missions, I'm not exactly sure what the GM could do to reward it since that format is a little more restrictive... But it definitely should be encouraged.
I've just spent ¥15,000 on my Neo-Tokyo Missions character to buy a "SHTF Stash*" Given the structure of Missions, I know full well it's probably something that will absolutely never come up, but I've been playing Shadowrun since 1991 and its just a habit I've developed for all my characters: as soon as I can afford it, I build it and never look back. Because in the world of Shadowrun, a professional `runner should expect to get burned, double-crossed, hung out to dry, or otherwise screwed over. To quote one of the Patron Saints of Shadowrunning:
"A guy told me one time: 'Don't ever let yourself get attached to anything that you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.'" -Neil McCauley, Heat
Professional `runners should probably also be ditching their weapons after any run in which they have to use them. Maybe not something as rare and expensive as a Ranger Arms SM-5 or something so generic that doesn't leave distinctive trace evidence like a combat knife. But even in a world where caseless ammunition is standard and every third sararīman and barrens squatter has an Ares Predator tucked in their waistband, the amount of forensic evidence that a firefight leaves behind is massive. Professional `runners should either ditch their weapons or pay a trusted contact to monkey about with them to change their ballistic fingerprint (nanotech would be amazing for this).
However, it's not necessarily something that a lot of players would find fun if it were a regular part of game play. Shadowrun is already a very complex game, both in terms of rules and in terms of narrative structure. Many players just want to do the cool cyberpunk gun-fu they saw in The Matrix and have a sweet neo-noir meets kung-fu meets blaxploitation swordfight like they saw in Kill Bill, Pt. 1, they don't want to spend table time role-playing days upon days of planning, meeting, prepping, and strategizing about this sort of thing. I mean, yeah, some of us really love that shit, I consider Heat one of the best movies ever made about Shadowrun. But, yeah, it's not something everyone is into.
My philosophy as a GM is that players who "go above and beyond" to enrich our collective enjoyment of the game or even make some sort of sub-optimal choice that is a temporary set-back for their PC mechanically just because it's keeping in character for that same PC narratively shoudl be given some sort of "cookie" from the GM.
* Three to six months of Squatter Lifestyle, a burner commlink, a fake SIN that that's never been used for anything else, a cheap motorcycle, a change of clothes, and a couple of concealable weapons. Buy it, stash it, and pray you never need it.
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I do have to admit that being able to actually go 'I pay X to get a new barrel installed' would give me a good reason to have an Armorer contact and prevent my ballistics from being tracked, just like how you can say 'I'm paying 1 grand to replace my tires after that run'.
In a home game, that's probably the kind of thing that a GM should be rewarding with extra Karma, extra Edge, or some other sort of "cookie" for good role-playing. In Shadowrun Missions, I'm not exactly sure what the GM could do to reward it since that format is a little more restrictive... But it definitely should be encouraged.
Mission GMs can hand-waive such things if they wanted to. Given the restrictions on looting it's easy enough to call it a wash for some of the RP things or repair bills or whatever if there is something lying around that would be fenced in a home game or if you've done a favor for an appropriate NPC. You can also rule that Lifestyle costs cover some of this, or if the PC has the appropriate skills/tools let them handle it.
"Sure, one day of down time and you swap tires with another car..." Whatever.
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Becoming the new owner of stolen gear (cars included) involves an extended Hardware test (SR5 pg 237).
You can also have the owner transfer it to you over a 1 minute period. So, a technoshaman uses a Great Form crack sprite with Gatekeeper to become the owner of the device, initiates the ownership change, then uses the Cleaner complex form several times to keep the sprite’s Overwatch down until the transfer is complete.
I’ve been wondering for a while how it is profitable for a contact to purchase stolen gear at 5% x Loyalty of market value given the ownership rules. I guess they all know technomancers...
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Or more likely, they know a guy with a lot of dice in Hardware and a Faraday cage to work in.
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Or more likely, they know a guy with a lot of dice in Hardware and a Faraday cage to work in.
"A matrix" inside a faraday cage counting as "the matrix" for the purposes of changing ownership is at best dubious, and more than likely insufficient for many to most GMs.
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I don't recall anything saying that a device had to be connected to the Matrix while you changed ownership with a Hardware check, and for the life of me I cannot think of a single reason that would be RAI.
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If you’re going to use Hardware to change ownership, the safest way is to ensure the owner is not on the Matrix during that time, so he can’t report it missing. The need to be on the Matrix has been debated before, and to my knowledge there wasn’t a definite answer either way.
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I don't recall anything saying that a device had to be connected to the Matrix while you changed ownership with a Hardware check, and for the life of me I cannot think of a single reason that would be RAI.
I'm sure there is a quote somewhere that says you have to be "online" throughout the duration, but you're right in that it doesn't say that explicitly on pg 237 of SR5. Still, on pg 236 it does say
Ownership, at least in the Matrix, is something that
is registered with both the device (or other icons) and
the grids, so it’s a bit more involved than just putting a
“Property of [blank]” sticker on it.
RAI is IMO pretty dang clear you have to be connected to the matrix so that the grids (plural!) can register the change... not just "putting property of Hacker McCool" on it inside a faraday cage.
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I don't recall anything saying that a device had to be connected to the Matrix while you changed ownership with a Hardware check, and for the life of me I cannot think of a single reason that would be RAI.
Beause ownership is partially in the Grids, so good luck changing that without a wireless connection.
It's also been fully confirmed in Kill Code, actually, possibly in part due to some saying the Grids-thing wasn't sufficient for RAI.
Yes, great one, stealing is much more easily
done. While not nearly as impossible as hacking
a persona or host, changing ownership of a device
is still a difficult procedure. Doing so requires
having physical possession of the device and a
hardware specialist talented enough to alter the
device’s ID chip while also avoiding Matrix security
while the device is erased from grid registries
and added again with the new owner’s information.
Failing during this process usually alerts authorities
to this illicit activity.
Ownership of a Matrix device is registered with both the device
and the Matrix grids, so changing ownership is a bit complicated.
The owner of an icon can legally transfer ownership to another
person in less than a minute. You can illegally change a device’s
owner with a Hardware toolkit and a Hardware + Logic [Mental] (24,
1 hour) Extended Test. Performing this test requires access to the
Matrix; a glitch results in the authorities being notified.
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Thanks for the post MC. I knew the quote was somewhere, I just couldn't find it.
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I was in that lengthy debate years ago and remembered someone went 'Yo, KC confirmed' so I did a search in there for ownership. :P
It's always fun to see old debates return. Even more fun when we now actually have something to settle them.
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I was in that lengthy debate years ago and remembered someone went 'Yo, KC confirmed' so I did a search in there for ownership. :P
It's always fun to see old debates return. Even more fun when we now actually have something to settle them.
Ahhh, the good ol' days..
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I was in that lengthy debate years ago and remembered someone went 'Yo, KC confirmed' so I did a search in there for ownership. :P
It's always fun to see old debates return. Even more fun when we now actually have something to settle them.
Ahhh, the good ol' days..
For you, ol'timer, the good ol' days are from before I was born. :P
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I was in that lengthy debate years ago and remembered someone went 'Yo, KC confirmed' so I did a search in there for ownership. :P
It's always fun to see old debates return. Even more fun when we now actually have something to settle them.
Ahhh, the good ol' days..
For you, ol'timer, the good ol' days are from before I was born. :P
Ouch...
I can't help it if my first 'car' was a brontosaorus..
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I can't help it if my first 'car' was a brontosaorus..
Yeah, but you did upgrade to that sweet rag-top with the red logs and white granite wheels.
https://media.tenor.com/images/39f140bfb1dd7fe6b7619341beb05ea8/tenor.gif