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How much do you use the matrix in your games ?

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Seras

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« Reply #75 on: <03-06-19/1452:19> »
The omnipresence of SIN is why I have changed the way I play shadowrun...

Something dangerous needs doing, like killing bugs or toxic mages or stopping a cyberpsycho or killing devilrats the hard way ....you know going outside

The rich corp owners: Do something dangerous, hell no Im valuable !

The Executive working for the corp: Hell no, One day Im gonna be rich, I know it !

The army of wageslaves: If I was brave you think I would be a wageslave ? If I want adrenalin, I chip a sim of someone else Skydiving !

This leave a huge demand for moneyhungry fools I mean brave shadowrunners to go do dangerous stuff.

Seriously, there are a ton of jobs that require shadowrunners that are actually legal. Bodygard, security, transportation...killing  mutated and/or magical shit. Fighting or capturing roegue drones and A.I. Stopping punks from testing combat drugs in downtown. Bringing back your son/daughter after they ran away from corpsschool to join a weird cult.

Going to frag knows where to harvest reagents....

....Bringing back said reagents after the first three teams were eaten....

..you know stuff.

Plus smart criminals ( even in real life) have some kind of legal enterprise going on to hide what they are really doing. Most smugglers also work in legit transportation for instance...

« Last Edit: <03-06-19/1455:03> by Seras »
I apologise for my posts beeing weird to read, I am fluent in english, but almost never write in english anymore :-(

PiXeL01

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« Reply #76 on: <03-06-19/2000:59> »
We’ve been doing that for three editions (2nd, 3rd, 5th) Now we have two hackers, which is half the group so it’s better.
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neomerlin

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« Reply #77 on: <03-07-19/0103:06> »
got to agree with a lot of the posts - deckkers take up a one to one isolated session for them to do stuff in the matrix - a solution could be to hire one in who will do their dekker thang remotely from the safety of the hotel room via some device the player runners cart around with them
This is something I keep seeing, personally, it just doesn't match my experience. I'm not accusing you of exaggerating or making anything up, mind you. It's just from where I'm sitting, the whole "other players go out and get pizza while the GM and Decker do the matrix minigame one-on-one" strikes me as a meme held onto since earlier editions and doesn't hold much weight in 2080 (we are up to 2080, aren't we?)

I'm not going to say Deckers are now integrated perfectly and there's never a time when a decker is the focus for an extended period. But the decker minigame just doesn't exist in my games, not like when deckers had to do a literal dungeon crawl every time they jacked in. Now it's more like when the rigger is spending time doing recon and sneaking their fly spies around, or when the Face is taking the lead in a meet up. It's just that character getting their spotlight for their speciality. That's normal and expected.

And a decker can't really do the remote dude-in-the-chair schtick anymore. Even if you can deal with the noise, which isn't usually that hard, the ubiquity of hosts means anything worth securing can have a Firewall of 10+ without much difficulty. If what you want is in the host itself, you're going to get opposed rolls that quickly outclass deckers in raw numbers. It is always better for a decker to get up close and plug into a slaved device. Runners should always look to come at a problem sideways and for deckers, that sideways is usually to get out the wires in your wireless world. But for them to do that, they frequently need other team members to help them, so not only does 5e bring deckers into the field by necessity, it brings other players into the matrix run. The sam can give them cover, the infiltrator can find them access, the Face can be a distraction to buy time.

Yeah, I've had sessions where the decker takes up a big chunk of time on their own to do some legwork and I've worked to try and reduce that a little more. But it in my games, it's just not the problem other people claim to have.

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« Reply #78 on: <03-07-19/0214:44> »
got to agree with a lot of the posts - deckkers take up a one to one isolated session for them to do stuff in the matrix - a solution could be to hire one in who will do their dekker thang remotely from the safety of the hotel room via some device the player runners cart around with them
This is something I keep seeing, personally, it just doesn't match my experience. I'm not accusing you of exaggerating or making anything up, mind you. It's just from where I'm sitting, the whole "other players go out and get pizza while the GM and Decker do the matrix minigame one-on-one" strikes me as a meme held onto since earlier editions and doesn't hold much weight in 2080 (we are up to 2080, aren't we?)

I'm not going to say Deckers are now integrated perfectly and there's never a time when a decker is the focus for an extended period. But the decker minigame just doesn't exist in my games, not like when deckers had to do a literal dungeon crawl every time they jacked in. Now it's more like when the rigger is spending time doing recon and sneaking their fly spies around, or when the Face is taking the lead in a meet up. It's just that character getting their spotlight for their speciality. That's normal and expected.

And a decker can't really do the remote dude-in-the-chair schtick anymore. Even if you can deal with the noise, which isn't usually that hard, the ubiquity of hosts means anything worth securing can have a Firewall of 10+ without much difficulty. If what you want is in the host itself, you're going to get opposed rolls that quickly outclass deckers in raw numbers. It is always better for a decker to get up close and plug into a slaved device. Runners should always look to come at a problem sideways and for deckers, that sideways is usually to get out the wires in your wireless world. But for them to do that, they frequently need other team members to help them, so not only does 5e bring deckers into the field by necessity, it brings other players into the matrix run. The sam can give them cover, the infiltrator can find them access, the Face can be a distraction to buy time.

Yeah, I've had sessions where the decker takes up a big chunk of time on their own to do some legwork and I've worked to try and reduce that a little more. But it in my games, it's just not the problem other people claim to have.

Glad its working out well for you. I have to ask, what are to doing to speed up all the required checks? Even something as simple as hacking a maglock directly has several rolls involved... Going through a network to hack a mag lock as several more rolls....

Now I fully agree the game has done a lot to speed up a lot from 3e and back.. but it still has a ways to go. And the other side of the coin is for some its not as rewarding as the other roles..

For example: your team comes into contact with a group angry gangers! What do you do!?!?
Pass 1:
Mage: I blast them with a fireball!!
Rigger: I command my drone swarm to lay down multiple zones of suppression fire!
Sammy: I Multi attack several with my Assault rifle!
Decker: I begin looking for hidden marks, so NEXT pass I can begin to hack, and then maybe the next round; Brick a gun!
Pass 2:
GM: "well, everything's dead"
Mage: I start scrubbing my aura!
Rigger: I send the drones out to recon the area!
Sammy: I reload
Decker:.... I hate my life.

Deckers/technos can be annoying in combat - ask any sammy that's had a gun bricked. (and Ask the Sammy how good it felt to beat the decker to death with the bricked gun! Its part of the story too :P)... But they don't offer that immanent gratification that other combat options have...
Heck it is for this very reason, "decker arm of doom" is a trope... because "Why deck when I can shoot! And I STILL get to deck when the door needs to be opened"... 
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« Reply #79 on: <03-07-19/0422:37> »
Any Decker that didn't score marks in advance is a fool. -_- Anyway, the mages end up doing summoning rolls as well, which is 2 rolls and also takes prep time. And the Rigger commands drones, but that ALSO is a lot of rolls. So not sure why Decker is bad in comparison when it comes to taking some time for the 'minigame'. If anything, Riggers play minigames.
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neomerlin

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« Reply #80 on: <03-07-19/0624:21> »
got to agree with a lot of the posts - deckkers take up a one to one isolated session for them to do stuff in the matrix - a solution could be to hire one in who will do their dekker thang remotely from the safety of the hotel room via some device the player runners cart around with them
This is something I keep seeing, personally, it just doesn't match my experience. I'm not accusing you of exaggerating or making anything up, mind you. It's just from where I'm sitting, the whole "other players go out and get pizza while the GM and Decker do the matrix minigame one-on-one" strikes me as a meme held onto since earlier editions and doesn't hold much weight in 2080 (we are up to 2080, aren't we?)

I'm not going to say Deckers are now integrated perfectly and there's never a time when a decker is the focus for an extended period. But the decker minigame just doesn't exist in my games, not like when deckers had to do a literal dungeon crawl every time they jacked in. Now it's more like when the rigger is spending time doing recon and sneaking their fly spies around, or when the Face is taking the lead in a meet up. It's just that character getting their spotlight for their speciality. That's normal and expected.

And a decker can't really do the remote dude-in-the-chair schtick anymore. Even if you can deal with the noise, which isn't usually that hard, the ubiquity of hosts means anything worth securing can have a Firewall of 10+ without much difficulty. If what you want is in the host itself, you're going to get opposed rolls that quickly outclass deckers in raw numbers. It is always better for a decker to get up close and plug into a slaved device. Runners should always look to come at a problem sideways and for deckers, that sideways is usually to get out the wires in your wireless world. But for them to do that, they frequently need other team members to help them, so not only does 5e bring deckers into the field by necessity, it brings other players into the matrix run. The sam can give them cover, the infiltrator can find them access, the Face can be a distraction to buy time.

Yeah, I've had sessions where the decker takes up a big chunk of time on their own to do some legwork and I've worked to try and reduce that a little more. But it in my games, it's just not the problem other people claim to have.

Glad its working out well for you. I have to ask, what are to doing to speed up all the required checks? Even something as simple as hacking a maglock directly has several rolls involved... Going through a network to hack a mag lock as several more rolls....

Now I fully agree the game has done a lot to speed up a lot from 3e and back.. but it still has a ways to go. And the other side of the coin is for some its not as rewarding as the other roles..

For example: your team comes into contact with a group angry gangers! What do you do!?!?
Pass 1:
Mage: I blast them with a fireball!!
Rigger: I command my drone swarm to lay down multiple zones of suppression fire!
Sammy: I Multi attack several with my Assault rifle!
Decker: I begin looking for hidden marks, so NEXT pass I can begin to hack, and then maybe the next round; Brick a gun!
Pass 2:
GM: "well, everything's dead"
Mage: I start scrubbing my aura!
Rigger: I send the drones out to recon the area!
Sammy: I reload
Decker:.... I hate my life.

Deckers/technos can be annoying in combat - ask any sammy that's had a gun bricked. (and Ask the Sammy how good it felt to beat the decker to death with the bricked gun! Its part of the story too :P)... But they don't offer that immanent gratification that other combat options have...
Heck it is for this very reason, "decker arm of doom" is a trope... because "Why deck when I can shoot! And I STILL get to deck when the door needs to be opened"...

The biggest change I made was to make most decking rolls a threshold and not opposed. I can calculate results much faster and keep things moving. It is a little but noticeable difference.

Combat is a bizzare metric to judge how rewarding being a decker is. It isn't what they do and that is fine. Combats are usually over in a couple of turns and if the decker spends that time playing digital poker with the face and driver, while your samurai, drone rigger, and combat mage do the murdering... Okay. Seems fine to me. I would suggest players who want to kill stuff be physical adepts, not deckers. That said, if the runners are doing the job right and ensuring all combats are on their terms, the decker should be getting their MARKs before initiative is rolled for a fight. In my campaign, fights often start at the decker's signal. The physical team gets into physical position and the decker gets into digital position. The decker feels a lot less left out a and useless in combat when the run is going well. And if the run is not going well, nobody should feel good.

In any case, a more interesting comparison is the maglock, which can be resolved by similar non-combat types. There is one roll to open the lock casing, all would-be thieves must do this. Now a locksmith rolls to unlock the lock that is an extended test so is one or more rolls. A decker rolls to place a MARK and since the lock likely doesn't have a rating higher than 4 (and that is a good lock) a competent decker likely doesn't need more than one MARK, so she now rolls to Control Device and open the lock. In all it is at most one extra roll. Not a big deal.

But it is a huge benefit if that lock was slaved a host. Now the decker has easy access to every lock slaved to that host, and the cameras, and the data, and depending on security setup, possibly the commlinks, drones, and weaponry of security. The decker might now be well placed to get the team out of any fights.

But in this scenario, the samurai role is looking kind of left out and unsatisfying. But of course a particular role will feel out of place when it is... out of place. Sure a Samurai might have a tool for the job but it isn't what they bring to the team.

But stepping away from this idea of being unsatisfying again, and back to deckers taking up time, all of the above successful decking requires a decker on site and they can't be there on their own because they need somebody to at the very least guard their squishy (potentially unconscious) body. And GOD makes it impossible to deck too far in advance. The matrix side of any run must be physically and temporally adjacent to the meat space side of a run.

Some legwork can be done solo, but everybody does some leg work solo. Again, the decker isn't unique.

I readily grant that decking is often still time consuming and it has taken 5 editions and some personal house rules to get to this point, and we can still probably do better, but in my weekly experience, it just isn't the problem I hear about from other people.

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« Reply #81 on: <03-07-19/0814:52> »
got to agree with a lot of the posts - deckkers take up a one to one isolated session for them to do stuff in the matrix - a solution could be to hire one in who will do their dekker thang remotely from the safety of the hotel room via some device the player runners cart around with them
This is something I keep seeing, personally, it just doesn't match my experience. I'm not accusing you of exaggerating or making anything up, mind you. It's just from where I'm sitting, the whole "other players go out and get pizza while the GM and Decker do the matrix minigame one-on-one" strikes me as a meme held onto since earlier editions and doesn't hold much weight in 2080 (we are up to 2080, aren't we?)

I'm not going to say Deckers are now integrated perfectly and there's never a time when a decker is the focus for an extended period. But the decker minigame just doesn't exist in my games, not like when deckers had to do a literal dungeon crawl every time they jacked in. Now it's more like when the rigger is spending time doing recon and sneaking their fly spies around, or when the Face is taking the lead in a meet up. It's just that character getting their spotlight for their speciality. That's normal and expected.

And a decker can't really do the remote dude-in-the-chair schtick anymore. Even if you can deal with the noise, which isn't usually that hard, the ubiquity of hosts means anything worth securing can have a Firewall of 10+ without much difficulty. If what you want is in the host itself, you're going to get opposed rolls that quickly outclass deckers in raw numbers. It is always better for a decker to get up close and plug into a slaved device. Runners should always look to come at a problem sideways and for deckers, that sideways is usually to get out the wires in your wireless world. But for them to do that, they frequently need other team members to help them, so not only does 5e bring deckers into the field by necessity, it brings other players into the matrix run. The sam can give them cover, the infiltrator can find them access, the Face can be a distraction to buy time.

Yeah, I've had sessions where the decker takes up a big chunk of time on their own to do some legwork and I've worked to try and reduce that a little more. But it in my games, it's just not the problem other people claim to have.

Glad its working out well for you. I have to ask, what are to doing to speed up all the required checks? Even something as simple as hacking a maglock directly has several rolls involved... Going through a network to hack a mag lock as several more rolls....

Now I fully agree the game has done a lot to speed up a lot from 3e and back.. but it still has a ways to go. And the other side of the coin is for some its not as rewarding as the other roles..

For example: your team comes into contact with a group angry gangers! What do you do!?!?
Pass 1:
Mage: I blast them with a fireball!!
Rigger: I command my drone swarm to lay down multiple zones of suppression fire!
Sammy: I Multi attack several with my Assault rifle!
Decker: I begin looking for hidden marks, so NEXT pass I can begin to hack, and then maybe the next round; Brick a gun!
Pass 2:
GM: "well, everything's dead"
Mage: I start scrubbing my aura!
Rigger: I send the drones out to recon the area!
Sammy: I reload
Decker:.... I hate my life.

Deckers/technos can be annoying in combat - ask any sammy that's had a gun bricked. (and Ask the Sammy how good it felt to beat the decker to death with the bricked gun! Its part of the story too :P)... But they don't offer that immanent gratification that other combat options have...
Heck it is for this very reason, "decker arm of doom" is a trope... because "Why deck when I can shoot! And I STILL get to deck when the door needs to be opened"...

The biggest change I made was to make most decking rolls a threshold and not opposed. I can calculate results much faster and keep things moving. It is a little but noticeable difference.

i'll have to try this.
Where am I going? And why am I in a hand basket ???

Remember: You can't fix Stupid. But you can beat on it with a 2x4 until it smartens up! Or dies.

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #82 on: <03-07-19/0856:37> »
Basically,  just have the opposition buy hits.  It in effect converts decking from opposed to thresholds.  But you can still "revert" to full opposition whenever the host is supposed to be a challenge.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

Beta

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« Reply #83 on: <03-07-19/0912:15> »
I think one of the problems with decking is that any sort of moderately secure facility has a lot of security to get through, and deckers haven't had an 'AOE' attack.  Kill Code sort of brought one in, but I have to admit that I've not played with it yet.

I mean, typical case of coming in a door from the outside that is locked, decker has to deal with:
- that the door is actually locked
- the sensor that reports whether the door is open or shut
- the camera watching the outside of the door
- and if it off hours then probably a motion sensor inside the building that would a) notice the door opening and b) notice people coming in.

And that is security that is not uncommon now.  In the 2080 of the SR universe it would not be shocking for there to be more than one external camera with view of the door, another camera on the inside (quite possibly an IR one, not that the decker cares much), possibly a patrol drone roaming around, and possibly a microphone (the processing power for figuring out what is unusual noise is easy enough, and there isn't much concept of employee privacy), and possibly more.

And that is just to get inside the building. 

Which is a good argument for using some combination of social engineering and/or disguise+forgery to enter the front door during normal hours.  But you will still hit similarly layered security sooner or later.

I'm leaning towards the proper hacker route being getting into some sort of security agent and convincing it to ignore all of that, meaning that only a human happening to check those particular feeds would notice anything.

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #84 on: <03-07-19/0942:10> »
If players/teams are relying on hackers to get past locks, cameras, and motion sensors they're doing themselves a disservice by not familiarizing themselves with the rules for defeating maglocks and security sensors. (SR5 359-362)

Having a covert ops character who picks locks and sneaks past sensors frees the decker up to do other things.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

Michael Chandra

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« Reply #85 on: <03-07-19/1011:13> »
Basically,  just have the opposition buy hits.  It in effect converts decking from opposed to thresholds.  But you can still "revert" to full opposition whenever the host is supposed to be a challenge.
I disagree with buying hits, unless players agree to also buy hits on matrix defense and that their defenses are then weaker because of the lower average. Simply doing a 1:3 threshold is more fair, and prevents extreme randomness.
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Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #86 on: <03-07-19/1015:17> »
Well, just as NPCs sometimes get to do things the players never are allowed to, PCs are presumed to win and NPCs are presumed to lose when they face PCs.  There's no equivalency between hosts/NPCs defending against PC deckers and PC deckers defending against NPC deckers.

Whether the NPCs buy hits at 1:4 or 1:3 has no impact on whether PCs should be prevented from rolling their matrix defense tests.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

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« Reply #87 on: <03-07-19/1019:55> »
Well, just as NPCs sometimes get to do things the players never are allowed to, PCs are presumed to win and NPCs are presumed to lose when they face PCs.  There's no equivalency between hosts/NPCs defending against PC deckers and PC deckers defending against NPC deckers.

Whether the NPCs buy hits at 1:4 or 1:3 has no impact on whether PCs should be prevented from rolling their matrix defense tests.
If you are deliberately weakening the defenses of your NPCs, then the PCs should be weakened as well. A threshold is already plenty, forcing an NPC, which already has a weak device, to buy hits? Then the PCs need to pay a price for that luxury. Everything at a price.

If you don't like it, write weaker NPCs. But don't pretend it's fair to nerf only the NPCs.
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Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #88 on: <03-07-19/1026:02> »
Well it's not about fair.  If things were fair, it'd suck a whole lot more for players without benefit of the campaign story revolving around a presumption of them being successful in their adventures.  But that's a philosophical argument for another thread.

I never meant that players would be stripped of matrix defense rolls; just NPCs/hosts in order to speed play/simplify players' meta decisions about whether X hits were enough and if edge is required.

Extending the paradigm to players wasn't my suggestion, but I do grant that it's a neat way to handle the meta-OPSEC problems involved in players' matrix defense rolls against sneaky stuff like hack on the fly.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

Michael Chandra

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« Reply #89 on: <03-07-19/1517:47> »
I never meant that players would be stripped of matrix defense rolls;
It's not about stripping. It's about your decision to make them buy hits on their defense tests. Because if you pull that, you should counter. Because your 'the game isn't fair to NPCs' argument does not apply to deliberately weakening what gear does when an NPC uses it.

Yes, players can do more than npcs. But asides from Edge use an Ares Alpha is just as deadly in the hands of an NPC as an equally-statted PC. An Armor Jacket doesn't magically soak more damage when a PC uses it just because they're PCs, it soaks more because they're more lucky. So making an NPC buy hits on a matrix defense test, turning 11 willpower+firewall dice into 2 hits instead of 3 or 4 like with a PC's average roll, is declaring that PCs are so special that equipment performs better when they use it. And at that point, you might as well do the same for the guns, and the armor, and everything else. Because there's no reason why Matrix Gear should be the only gear that performs at 75% when an NPC owns it vs when an equally-statted PC owns it.

If you think NPCs shouldn't be as good as players, give them worse stats and gear. But don't go arguing that PC superiority means gear magically performs worse in the hands of an NPC, and expect me to blindly agree with that 'because the game isn't fair'.
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