[KarmaInferno]

It's one thing to TELL people their stuff needs to be secured, and where it need work.

It's entirely another thing to crack their security and mess with them to prove a point.

The former will probably be treated as helpful advice.

The latter in Shadowrun will get you killed.



-k

[DWC]

It's one thing to TELL people their stuff needs to be secured, and where it need work.

It's entirely another thing to crack their security and mess with them to prove a point.

The former will probably be treated as helpful advice.

The latter in Shadowrun will get you killed.



-k

I'm sure there are plenty of characters who would catch you trying to hack them, then respond to your excuse by beating you to within an inch of your life to demonstrate how helpless you are in the physical world.  Those are the patient ones.  The rest will just kill you.

[Lacynth40]

Helpful advice is taken as "Yeah, whatever. I'll do that when I get around to it." The only way to get that Sprawl Ganger to take the electronic world seriously, when he hasn't grown up around anything but physical threats, is to scare the piss out of him in a safe environment. He wants to constantly be on the look-out for payback, you let him know in no uncertain terms that you put a nice little back door into all that security you set up for him. He wants to push it, tell him you could make his cyber-arm choke him to death. This isn't an ice cream social, people. These are all borderline sociopaths you're playing. People from hard lives, making a living out of being an expendable resource. It's not D&D, no one is out to make themselves into big heroes. They're in it for the nuyen, or because there isn't anywhere for them to go but up.

So, no, being nice about it isn't always going to work. And when it doesn't, your character gets dead because the meat character could have sat down with you for ten minutes, while you made some simple adjustments to his cybereye's security protocols. Instead of cleaning his gun menacingly for the fifteenth time that day. Now, OUT OF CHARACTER, you're sitting around a table with people that hopefully have been playing for years in many different games. And they should know that if your character gets geeked by the team, you're only going to make something even MORE annoying. Hehehehe. My personal threat for the rest of the group is to make Cat-in-the-bag Man from Attitudes. But, back on target, skinlinks.

The rules are vague, but it's not like the makers of Shadowrun can INVENT a type of technology that will not only do this in game, but be able to completely satisfy all the electronic techs they have playing it. If they could do that, they wouldn't be making games, they'd be making millions on patents. So, you have to have some suspension of belief for the game to work. Skinlinks provide a way to set up your equipment so it's harder to hack from anything longer than touch distance. And getting a street sam to stand still long enough for you to hack his equipment is pretty damned hard.

[KarmaInferno]

I dunno. Many of the characters I run across are the stone cold types that, if they think you're about to screw with them, won't even stop to ask why. They'll put a bullet in your brain. Then sell your body to an organlegger.

When you have a group of paranoid freak bastards that murder people for a living, the last thing you ever want to give them is a surprise. You might not get the chance to explain.

That said, most of the characters I've run across minimize their wireless usage anyhow.

My "old man" merc character goes one further, he still uses an old fashioned optic fiber body harness under his coat to hard-wire all his equipment that needs networking, and has a SEPERATE personal network for just the gear that actually needs a Matrix connection.



-k

[CanRay]

There's a reason he lived to be an old man in a business with a high death rate.

[Trenchknife]

"There are old runners, and there are bold runners.  There are no old, bold runners."

[lurkeroutthere]

First off, if the Street Sam doesn't know NOT to link his 'ware up his commlink, it's going to be set-up that way. It makes it easier for the Mega's and KE to shut down the cybered trolls. So, it's sold and installed that way. Only makes sense.

This is your own invention nothing more nothing less, yes unwired does point out that there are ways to hack cyberware, but they are not put in as a law enforcement cutoff. They are exploiting holes in the code.  I'm still skeptical you actually play with anyone / have played this scenario out as I really cannot see this sort of attitude ending in anything other then bloodshed at an actual table. It has been my observation that no matter how much people might desire otherwise 90%+ of people will not roleplay a scared character. They will roleplay a character that responds to threats with violence.

If the hacker tells me he has put a backdoor into my gear I kill him and then get my gear replaced or looked over by someone who I have a lot better trust relationship with. Simple and elegant. Any potential risk of scripted reprisals  or potential problems is much preferable to allowing such an untrustworthy and unprofessional runner to walk the same sprawl with me.

I firmly believe most Shadowrun teams at least to start out operate on a level of mutually assured destruction. The hacker can conceivably hack the street sam, the mage can fireball the hacker, the street sam can shoot the mage before he gets a spell off. It's a highly fluid game of eggshells with hammers. THe first person that actually comments on the situation or threatens the others invites reprisal.

Some of the best life advice I was ever given was "Don't ever pull a knife unless you are going to stab someone right then" same principle. Don't threaten, just do it or don't bring it up. Better to keep that ace up your sleeve. If your really that concerned about their infosec hack their gear and make the changes yourself discretely.

Also another thing at my table, if your character does something fantastically stupid and gets geeked by another player (which has happened a grand total of twice in the last decade) and your response is to make a "reprisal" character, you'll be asked not to return.

Cool story bro time:
Just the other day my character outed himself as a ghoul to the other PC's after the GM let it slip out of character (i figured once the players knew I aught to just bring it up in character). We had a brief discussion about it my character explaining that he was a second generation ghoul and was therefore sterile from a virus standpoint, and while he did have certain dietary needs people die every day without his intervention so he didn't exactly look at teammates as meals on legs. One of the other characters whose had some bad luck with infected pointed his panther cannon at me during this discussion while everyone else played it relatively chill. My character slipped a note to the GM later about installing a backdoor on the characters cybereyes to shut them off with a command in case it came down to a conflict between them. Now i'm fully aware that if that character finds out there's going to be a fight, likely to the death, and once they've ran together a bit I'm going to remove the back door. But it is what it is. As you said, SR isn't a nice world, there's no reason for people to take electronic assault as anything other then assault, and your position as a hacker just isn't that strong enough to bank on alone.