[Ghost Rigger]

I didn't forget it; it's incorporated into variable #1.  Is there a compelling reason the device has no wireless functionality? By default everything is/should be, unless there's reason to say "No."

Except that's the exact opposite of how you should be thinking. Shadowrun is a dystopian future ruled by greed, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is ever-widening and decisions are made based on how it affects the bottom line. Wireless costs money. Having features that could even be wireless to begin with costs money. That means things don't have wireless by default, and that most people can't afford extraneous wireless features. Almost no one is going to buy myomeric shoelaces when they're (at least) 40 times the price of normal shoelaces of the same quality, and simsense-broadcasting nanopaste is right up there with gold flake hamburgers so chances are the only hackable things you'll ever find in a can of soup are sensor tags used to collect various consumer data.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I didn't forget it; it's incorporated into variable #1.  Is there a compelling reason the device has no wireless functionality? By default everything is/should be, unless there's reason to say "No."

Except that's the exact opposite of how you should be thinking. Shadowrun is a dystopian future ruled by greed, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is ever-widening and decisions are made based on how it affects the bottom line. Wireless costs money. Having features that could even be wireless to begin with costs money. That means things don't have wireless by default, and that most people can't afford extraneous wireless features. Almost no one is going to buy myomeric shoelaces when they're (at least) 40 times the price of normal shoelaces of the same quality, and simsense-broadcasting nanopaste is right up there with gold flake hamburgers so chances are the only hackable things you'll ever find in a can of soup are sensor tags used to collect various consumer data.

Well now we're getting into opinion, and of course arguing about one anothers' opinion can never end well. Let's just leave it at each of us thinks the other has it backwards.  I prefer to think that "Big Data" surreptitiously spying on every thing you do through every thing you own is rather appropriately dystopian.

In an attempt to leave opinions out of it, here's something we can both agree on.  This is written on page 214 of SR5 core, in the Matrix chapter introduction:

Everybody uses the Matrix. Most shadowrunners
have multiple pieces of gear that use it, often interacting
with the Matrix without them knowing it. Smartlinks use
it to look up local conditions and calculate firing solutions,
medkits access medical databases to analyze and
diagnose injuries and then recommend treatment, and
your clothes and armor use it to detect wear and tear.
And tell you when it’s time to do the laundry.

I find this to be implicitly saying everything manufactured has a wireless component. Now yes I agree that just because your pants detect and broadcast when they're overdue for a wash, it doesn't mean they also can be hacked into walking around like they were worn by a ghost.  When it comes to what CAN a hacked device do, that's GM's call.  And that goes back into opinion/theory about how accommodating a GM should be to players' ideas.

[Beta]

I agree about ruled by greed -- which is why corps work hard to sell as much upgraded items as possible (upgraded meaning cheap base materials with fancy features allowing them to charge a premium price).  A mix of marketing, setting implied expectations among employees, control of what is actually available.  It would not shock me to see most corp employees above a certain level would have self-tying shoelaces, because to not have them would suggest that you were not being paid as much (so were not as valued or at the same tier).  Using a cheap soy food base (that has been engineered to last nearly forever) and providing 'exotic' flavors through AR could potentially be cheaper than providing actually interesting food, etc.

Of course people in the barrens or on the lowest rungs of corp work wouldn't have those items.  Most of the point of them would be to provide snob appeal to those who are a little higher up than that.

How it is in your game is, I guess, a matter of what is more interesting or fun to you.

[Ghost Rigger]

I find this to be implicitly saying everything manufactured has a wireless component. Now yes I agree that just because your pants detect and broadcast when they're overdue for a wash, it doesn't mean they also can be hacked into walking around like they were worn by a ghost.

Oh, so is that why all those suits in Run&Gun have wireless?

I agree about ruled by greed -- which is why corps work hard to sell as much upgraded items as possible (upgraded meaning cheap base materials with fancy features allowing them to charge a premium price).  A mix of marketing, setting implied expectations among employees, control of what is actually available.  It would not shock me to see most corp employees above a certain level would have self-tying shoelaces, because to not have them would suggest that you were not being paid as much (so were not as valued or at the same tier).

Problems with that line of thinking: A) For the same price or less (in fact I'm nearly certain it's less given the cost of clothing given in the back of Run Faster), the corp employees could instead buy much better quality shoelaces which would last longer, look better aesthetically and possibly convey the same social status as lower quality self-tying shoelaces. Depending on how you run the setting, that might reduce or eliminate the pool of hackable shoelaces among the wageslaves. B) That might be fine and dandy for the wageslaves working in sales and accounting, but not for any employees who are security-minded. The corpsec will not have myomeric shoestrings that someone could hack and tie together, because company policy isn't going to give some punk shadowrunner the chance to humiliate them like that.

Using a cheap soy food base (that has been engineered to last nearly forever) and providing 'exotic' flavors through AR could potentially be cheaper than providing actually interesting food, etc.

While I agree, that's different from having nanopaste in your soup. Eating real food with real flavor is a status symbol of the rich, so anyone who's using simsense flavor with soy food to get flavor without paying the premium of real food is going to be using it through their commlink.

I think I haven't properly conveyed my main point, which is that things do not have wireless just so that they can be hacked by shadowrunners. Yes, this means anything with wireless is going to have some degree of protection, but it also means that things only have wireless because there is an in-universe justification, not because a player asked if they could hack it. If a player asks if they can hack the soup, the answer is "no, you cannot hack the soup". If you feel really accommodating, you can follow that up with "but sometimes people who can't afford real food use simsense chips to make their shitty soy-soup taste better, and if that's the case you might be able to make the soup taste horrible if you hack their commlink" or "but sometimes insanely rich people put nanopaste in their soup that wirelessly broadcasts simsense to enhance the flavor, so if you ever run into that you could hack the nanopaste to make the soup taste horrible" But at no point do you ever say anything that can be interpreted as "yes, you can hack the soup". It might seem like splitting hairs, but there's an enormous difference between the mindset that says "yes, you can hack the soup" and the mindset that says "no, you cannot hack the soup, but you can hack the simsense that is being used in conjunction with the soup".

[Reaver]

This kind of takes me back... 25 years ago I went shopping for a new game harddrive for my computer.... a 400MEG hard drive costed $1000...

Just went looking for a new solid state drive... a 1TB drive costs $400...




Morale?

Just cause it sounds fancy in SR, doesn't mean its not dirt cheap, old skool crap to the time line....

[Ghost Rigger]

Except the books make it crystal clear this stuff is still expensive 62 years down the road. Myomeric rope costs 40 times more than conventional rope of the same length, and the prices for nanobots are consistently in the thousands of nuyen.

[JudgeMonroe]

I think I haven't properly conveyed my main point, which is that things do not have wireless just so that they can be hacked by shadowrunners. Yes, this means anything with wireless is going to have some degree of protection, but it also means that things only have wireless because there is an in-universe justification, not because a player asked if they could hack it.

Things that are true in Shadowrun 5E: unless explicitly noted, all things are wireless (page 214, 420); gear doesn't have to have a listed "wireless bonus" to be wireless; anything wireless can be hacked; hacking most things gets you no advantage.

It's the last point that sticks. Just because all things are wireless doesn't mean that their entire control surface is available to remote exploits by hackers. Most of these things will be wireless for no purpose other than telemetry. So you can't "Hack the pants" and hinder someone's movement. For a contemporary example,  most if not all new cars have inflation sensors in the tires. Say that sensor was wireless and attached to the Internet of Things. Say you hacked it. What would you be able to do? Blow out the tire? No, but you could brick it so it no longer reports its status, or you could change its status to say the tire was under pressure when it wasn't. This isn't far from the example in the book (page 421) about hacking some dude's bone lacing. This sets up some out-of-the-box, if trivial, options for shadowrunners.

You're right that "things do not have wireless just so that they can be hacked by shadowrunners" -- things have wireless so the corporations can benefit. Hack The Pants doesn't mean turning the pants into a immobile sheath about someone's legs, it means flagging the telemetry in some way to cause a distraction: "Your pants are ruined," the AR popup says, "Come over to Gap to buy a new pair!" and an AR pin is dropped on the nearest shop. So yeah, "Corporate Dystopia" is the in-universe justification for all things being wireless. 90% of these things should fall beneath a shadowrunner's notice. Hacking the Soup is such a non-action that if it comes up, it's because someone's missing the point. And so is suggesting that the book is *wrong* when it says that all things are wireless.

[Ghost Rigger]

It's a bit disingenuous to say "everything has wireless" when most things only have wireless sensors, isn't it? If you implanted a tracker in a crocodile's head, you wouldn't say the crocodile has wireless.

[JudgeMonroe]

It's a bit disingenuous to say "everything has wireless" when most things only have wireless sensors, isn't it?

No.

[AnotherUser]

I would like to point out that the idea of `things do not have wireless just so that they can be hacked by shadowrunners´ is applicable more universally. While we digressed, this is basically my point from last page.

If you build a world (+rules) just to suit the needs of your ongoing run this will inevitably result in weirdness that in the end tears down the 4th wall.

Heck, it may cause problems when the run is over or the roles are reversed and the PCs are trying to stop a run.

It is in this light that I see the idea that anything is hackable and exploitable by the PC. Hackable it might be, but that doesn´t mean it´s useful, as JudgeMonroe rightfully pointed out.

There is no need to make shoelaces able to move freely when simple contraction-relax fiber would be easier to manufacture and program. To make them more complicated than needed, just to accomodate the player and make him feel useful is undermining versimilitude. (not by much, admittedly. It´s just an example.)
 
Players are smart. They will realize when the whole game world revolves around them. And then stop to take it seriously. That´s the opposite of what I am trying to achieve as a GM.



Unrelated, but amusing to think about: I would not make soup hackable. Nanosensors able to withstand gastric acid sounds like something that would cost money. A couple of sensors in the wrapping and in the sewage system might provide more representative data of your target groups anyways.

[DeathStrobe]

I'd like to point out that it is canonical that there are RFID tags in food.

I'm with SSDR on this. Everything should be hackable, and if you can make it more fun allow it.

Why do people allow their shoes or soup to be hacked? Because of an over confidence in the safety of the system and for general convenience, laziness, and apathy, just like in real life.

Should shoes and soup be hackable? Yes.

But this breaks verisimilitude. It does not because electronics are cheap and getting cheaper. You don't need myomeric rope, you can probably get away with self tightening straps, like in Back to the Future, or maybe you deflate their Reebok Pumps. (remember those?) Which should hit them with some movement penalties or at least a distraction hitting them with a dice penalty for a turn.

But it's not fun when that happens to you. Team work game should require team work. If a team is being assaulted from the Matrix, their Matrix specialist should handle it. You wouldn't expect the decker to banish the spirit, so don't expect your mage or street sam to stop the enemy decker.

One I haven't heard, but I personally feel;

I didn't make a decker to be a crappy debuffer. Agreed...but for some reason people don't like my suggestion of allowing dealing biofeedback damage to people in combat. Somehow this is broken compared to a mage or street sam being able to do the same thing for less...

As for foundations killing system admins, I feel it's very thematic as it shows how little corporations value their own employees and would always feel the more lethal option is more secure.

[AnotherUser]

I think I said what I wanted to say about the option and usefulness of hacking shoes and soup.

As for foundations killing system admins, I feel it's very thematic as it shows how little corporations value their own employees and would always feel the more lethal option is more secure.

I don´t think anyone in this thread suggested that the corps would abstain from using the current host design because of a concern for their own employees.

They should abstain from it because it costs money. We aren´t talking about unskilled labour. The employees cost money. The training they must receive only to ->try<- doing admin stuff costs money. Replacing dead employees costs money, the guy in human resources costs money, heck even the paperwork costs money. Even if we disregard all of that as mere sparechange the delay and disruption of ongoing projects caused by personnel turnover alone might prove crippling.
And all the equipment these people fry while doing everyday admin stuff costs money too. Alot of it.

All of these expenses are running costs, a term that makes bean counters clutch their hearts since antiquity.

If we agree that the prime motivation of any corp and the foremost vehicle for individuals to advance within the hierarchy of the corp is money and finding ways how to get it then the whole practice is just inexplicable.
Having them fry employees and equipment despite it hurting the bottom line just because is in the area of cartoon villainy.


And we haven´t touched on the question that not having access to your own system is not improving security, but the opposite. How is making access for your own guys just as deadly helping in thwarting intruders? You explicitly cannot improve security and upgrade your intrusion countermeasures safely. Yes, you want your system lethal, but for the other guys.
A high personnel turnover is a security concern in itself. Either because people aren´t yet familiar with protocols or because of the haste which complicates background checks.
Plus, if any hacking attempt succeeds, (most likely because of the delay or distraction of your guys fighting for their lives against the host instead of having its support) you actually have to hack your own system `back` to get any measure of control over it again. Instead of having a kill-switch or an override.

[DeathStrobe]

The Megas are the bad guys. Short sighted-ness is their MO. When Danielle de la Mar said she had a solution to close all the loopholes in SR4's Matrix, the Corporate Court just jumps on it without thorough venting or scrutiny. This literally happens with current world Mega corp too, because some business-to-business corporation sells their software-as-a-service solution as a silver bullet that can solve all the company's problems. But it turns out that's not true and there are all kinds of issues with it. These decisions happen all the time by people with a C in their title that because they don't know tech but still fall for the snake oil salesmen's pitch.

I hold people in my fictional setting to a lower standard to people in the real world, because somethings just need to happen for plot convenience.

[Wakshaani]

I think, somewhere along the way, what RFID does got confused and it sort of ballooned out of reasonableness into weirdness.

Add to that the loss of things like storage limits and things really took an odd turn, with, for instance, wireless shoelaces that would let you download a copy of the entire Matrix inside of them.

That really needs to be fixed but I don't know if you can get away with a clarification that won't be seen as a massive, if needed, retcon.

[Michael Chandra]

I think, somewhere along the way, what RFID does got confused and it sort of ballooned out of reasonableness into weirdness.

Add to that the loss of things like storage limits and things really took an odd turn, with, for instance, wireless shoelaces that would let you download a copy of the entire Matrix inside of them.

That really needs to be fixed but I don't know if you can get away with a clarification that won't be seen as a massive, if needed, retcon.

'The Hosts grew sentient and went to war with the Monads, so we blew it all up and tried again, with less success'.