/srg/ Shadowrun General

Reaction Enhancers and Wired Reflexes aren't stacking by default, but everything else assumes that you're receiving your wireless bonuses. Could that be changed? Is that an option?

Asking again since it wasn't answered:

When converting SR5 sheets to SR4 do you just
>keep Attributes
>halve Skill ratings
>replace Skills and Gear when needed
Or is there something I forgot?

Changing the precedence0 to precedence1 for the bonuses would do it, but I'm not likely to be able to implement wireless bonuses any time soon.
Give me an example, it worked in testing.

Whups, pressed respond too soon. No, there's nothing directly similar to Diagnosis for AIs short of GM fiat that if you're in someone else's device, you can do Teamwork tests with them in the same manner as a sprite.

>I'm not likely to be able to implement wireless bonuses any time soon
You kind of already do. Smartlinks provide their dice bonuses by default, for example, assuming that the wireless is on. So does most everything else. I'd just find it really convenient if Reaction Enhancers and Wired Reflexes stacked by default too.

>Changing the precedence0 to precedence1 for the bonuses would do it
I don't know what this is.

Be an Elf.

Be a Harvester.

Take Increased Reflexes 3.

You should have 5d6 init, you have 4d6. Works the same with other variants, AFAIK.

I always make room in my inventory for a bag of zip-ties, some RFID tags and a survival knife. A subvocal microphone is also a must have for any infiltrator.

Maybe reduce the amount of ammo you have? Unless you plan on supressing a lot, 3 clips of regular ammo for each gun should last you enough to make a run or two, and then you can buy more. Same for the burner commlinks

I'm trying to gather some info on Manhattan, most notably who's on the Manhattan Development Council.
From Stolen Souls page 105, it should be: Ares - Aztechnology - Horizon - NeoNET - Renraku - Shiawase - Saeder Krupp - Citygroup - NYPD,Inc - Prometheus Engineering - Spinrad - Sony - Trans Orbital. Can anyone confirm and maybe give me somewhere to look for more info on each of these corps (in particular Citygroup, Prometheus and Trans Orbital)?

I got myself a combat knife that's mostly used for utility. He has toolkits for whatever work that needs to be done, but it's not a bad idea to switch that over for a survival knife.

Zipties and RFID tags are a good idea. Maybe some tracer rounds too for the Alpha.

Lacking a subvocal mic is definitely an oversight, I should have picked that.

I dropped Assault Rifle rounds down a bit and cut pistol rounds down to half. He's a bit squishy so if SHTF he'd need to suppress and peel, hence the high amount of rounds. Pistol is purely for self-defense, so I think I could get away with dropping those a bit more. I'll knock off couple of metalinks as well.

>Citygroup
They're a real-world banking institution.

>Prometheus
Here's the most relevant holding:
shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Proteus_AG

>Trans Orbital
An aerospace and information technology firm:
shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Trans-Orbital

All right, run and gun is going to give me a fucking aneurysm.

What the fuck is the difference between a smartlink and a smartgun system as standard features on a gun? Don't you need both a smartgun system on your gun and a smartlink in an AR device to use the features of either?

>What the fuck is the difference between a smartlink and a smartgun system as standard features on a gun?
A smartgun system is something you install onto/into a gun.

A smartlink is something you install into an optical device, like cybereyes or goggles.

A gun which is 'smartlinked' is a gun with a smartgun system installed.

That's it.

That's not true. Staying at 4 MAG still gives you a comfortable level of power as a full mage.

So they are the same thing then? So why does R&G use two different ways of referring to it?

>So they are the same thing then?
What? No.

A smartgun system is the device installed in your gun.

A smartlink is the output device installed in your eye.

If a smartgun system is a computer, the smartlink is the computer's screen.

Two different things, but you need one to use the other.

No, they're two different things, but you need both for either one to do any good.

Because Shadowrun loves fiddly bits.

>So why does R&G use two different ways of referring to it?
A smartgun system is the technical term for the device being installed in your weapon.

A weapon being 'smartlinked' is the common parlance way of referring to a weapon with a smartgun system installed.

That's it.

Smartlink / smart gun is such retarded bullshit. Yeah cool, ammo counters and HUD crosshairs. Really amazing and useful. Ballistic calclulations? Don't need wireless even in real world.

As a GM, I completely ignore all wireless shit. I have my mooks run their guns permanently offline, and if they have smart link (augmented or not), they use wires that can't be compromised by hackers. Wireless? Who the fuck came up with that fucking stupid idea?

>Wireless? Who the fuck came up with that fucking stupid idea?
Someone who wanted deckers to be able to brick someone's gun in combat - or hack it before combat even starts - instead of cowering behind the street samurai.

>As a GM, I completely ignore all wireless shit. I have my mooks run their guns permanently offline, and if they have smart link (augmented or not), they use wires that can't be compromised by hackers.
I'd go out of my way to literally never play any kind of hacking in any game ever run by you, because you're the type of person that goes out of their way to make them the archetype that's least useful for 95% of the run.

Which book has 5e's Food Fight (not Fast Food Fight) in it?

Alphaware

>Someone who wanted deckers to be able to brick someone's gun in combat - or hack it before combat even starts - instead of cowering behind the street samurai.

That someone is a fucking retard then. If they want to do shit in combat, they can gear themselves towards it. Protecting the party is the Samurai's fucking job, their MOS, their time to shine.

>I'd go out of my way to literally never play any kind of hacking in any game ever run by you, because you're the type of person that goes out of their way to make them the archetype that's least useful for 95% of the run.

Hardly. Hacking is pretty prominent in a huge part of the run. Dealing with alarm systems, surveillance and drones is hugely important, as is intel gathering.

Nobody's bitching about a face not being that useful in combat, so why the fuck should hackers start stepping on the Sam's toes?

Each member has a fucking role, stick to them. It's the whole reason why you run as a team in the first place.

>everyone must stick in carefully regimented silos! Nothing can cross over!

>Can my face use his social skills to distract and mislead some of the guards, preventing them from responding quickly? Can my mage use Physical Barrier to give cover to the sammy so he doesn't get blasted as he moves across this open lobby? Can my decker use his ability to disable technology to interfere with the highly advanced gear the guards are using?

>No, none of that is possible. The rest of you go sit quietly in the corner. It's Street Samurai time now, in an hour we'll get to the Face section, then an hour afterwards we get to the Mage portion of the run, then an hour after that we can start decking. The schedule is posted on the wall, guys, stick to it.

Cool story, user. I think you're a bad GM, and I'm glad I'm not in your group.

>>Can my face use his social skills to distract and mislead some of the guards, preventing them from responding quickly? Can my mage use Physical Barrier to give cover to the sammy so he doesn't get blasted as he moves across this open lobby? Can my decker use his ability to disable technology to interfere with the highly advanced gear the guards are using?

Your decker can use his technical skills to distract and mislead the mooks, you fucking idiot. I don't even have to sit down and think, and multiple ways already pop into mind.

>>everyone must stick in carefully regimented silos! Nothing can cross over!

If you want to cross over, you build a hybrid character.

Your mage can't crack into a host and extract information either. He can't command sprites to put a cookie on someone's commlink.

Why aren't you whining about your samurai not being able to summon a spirit and put it on surveillance duty?

The trinity exists for a fucking reason.

Niche protection is fundamental to all roleplaying games that aren't built with the specific intent of avoiding roles (in itself a dubious decision), and here's why.
It results in characters that aren't perfect and need each other, but can still barely stick it out if someone's missing - essential to storytelling, and what is roleplaying again now? You seem to have the belief that playtime=rolling time, and if your character doesn't have all of the big numbers on their sheet, you can't play them and could as well be RFED'd by the GM (see, I can strawman too).
Niche protection doesn't only protect balance by making sure that the game doesn't turn into a mess of exploiting rules loopholes (remember, CGL would be in charge of plugging them) and trying to min-max a perfect jack-of-all-trades - it also protects group integrity (you need each other and won't be ditched by a magic hacker who can break into security systems, headware and grenade belts and thus mow through a whole run on their own), the fundamental mood of cyberpunk (most characters are weirdoes, obsessives, hyper-specialists or just freaks, with non-overlapping areas of interest that in turn make the game more interesting because there's always something new to be explored), roleplaying (because everyone has their own approach to things which varies on the subculture or stratum they're part of, allowing players a better springboard to flesh out their character), and in the end just plain creativity.
Just because you can't blow up someone's grenade belt, resulting in an instant kill, or lock their gun so that the adept can play Whack-a-Mole with them, doesn't mean you can't be of use in a combat situation.
Use your brains, the terrain, psychological warfare, the security system, whatever. The most important thing is using your imagination rather than the strictly regulated abilities the game gives you, which makes you even more of a rules lawyer than the guy you're strawmanning.

Well written, thank you.

And agreed.

Except if nothing is wireless you can either be a rigger, hybrid yourself, or look for a port.

Its like good old Shadowrun returns deckers. If you can't just hack from a distance your abilities are entirely limited to your usb cord length.

You are signifigantly more limited in what you can do unlike the mage who can cast fireballs even if they dont shoot guns as well.

Nobody is saying wireless is entirely bad. Wireless hosts, communication devices and certain security systems make a lot of sense.

However, putting everything in the network is downright idiotic, especially if it's something critical such as firearms, explosives and 'ware. Not only is it not realistically advantageous in any way, it also compromises those elements. Nobody with a brain would ever do that. Ever.

>As a GM, I completely ignore all wireless shit. I have my mooks run their guns permanently offline, and if they have smart link (augmented or not), they use wires that can't be compromised by hackers. Wireless? Who the fuck came up with that fucking stupid idea?

So now that we got the fact that this entire arguement is on the idea that deliberatly exing out all wireless stuff is unfair to anyone who actually wanted to hack is out of the way.

Yeah, I should have said 'all the wireless shit that has no reason to exist'. My bad.

Where is the RCC listed in Chummer? I can't seem to find it.

It's not the Control Rig, is it? That seems to be a different, but related, thing.

On the topic, what 'ware does a Rigger really need?

Or you could use the massive amount of gear that's out there (oh, I forgot, only FASA actually balanced gear instead of making Noizquitoes) in order to make a decker who can do more than that. There are plenty of ways to make do with old-fashioned decking and that alone (at least if you use gear and rules made for wired decking, as if that shouldn't be obvious enough), and as a bonus you'll be experiencing having to roleplay and think your way through obstacles instead of being a wireless magician.
Different roles have different playstyles, and if you like the creative kind of play, you play a decker without wireless everything. You have a lot of tools and a lot of tricks, and even though you have to put in a lot of work, this leads to play and actually getting engaged in the game.
Meanwhile, a 5e decker or 4e commlink yob who takes out enemies by exploiting clumsy gamist elements jammed into the fluff of a previously fluff-first game is just a mage with a plug in his head (oh, I forgot that cyberware is evil and steals your soul - go with an induction datajack, which just steals fluff elements and characterization hooks).
You point at an enemy at medium range, and that enemy becomes incapable of attacking or takes damage. Instead of playing a character with actual weaknesses that require you to plan around them and make yourself useful by using your brain (for example being the guy who needs Matrix access and can't fight, but is a wizard with the Matrix), you duplicate an existing role and give it a new coat of paint because your playstyle stinks of CGL.
You're a point-and-clicker. You want your enemy in your magical/physical/digital crosshairs and then to shoot them magically/physically/digitally. You rely on numbers and see only bad parts in having to get around a role's weak points, instead of seeing it as an opportunity for thinking and roleplaying.
I want to roleplay - you want to hit numbers against numbers and win.

wow, must be a load of fun to have you as a GM.

Yeah, it's been a blast thus far.

Maybe it's because I actually bring a challenge to the table?

I can say I'd much rather play with him than you.
Whinging sarcasm at not being allowed to have more cool numbers at the expense of roleplaying is not something I like in my GMs.
The willingness to accept players actually thinking, roleplaying and planning instead of having to view everything through the tinted lenses of a murderhobo number junkie is something I want in my GMs.
It's a roleplaying game, not a "use random number generation to figure out how many statblocks the GM can throw against your statblock before it breaks and you have to make a better one that the GM can't break" shitshow.

>Protecting the party is the Samurai's fucking job, their MOS, their time to shine
Mage: I summon a force 6 fire spirit! Engulf them all!
Rigger: My doom van has gecko grip wheels! The second floor will not save you!
Decker: I have 6 dice in pistols
Yeah, you're an asshole.

Decker: I hacked the comms system and they're halfway on the other side of the facility and we don't need to fight anyone
Others: Wow, good job, now we don't have to waste any resources or risk ourselves.

>Where is the RCC listed in Chummer?
Under Gear. An RCC is an electronic device which lets you remote-control several drones at once and/or stream them Autosofts. It's basically a giant remote control.

>It's not the Control Rig, is it?
No, that's for a completely different style of rigging. A Control Rig lets you plug your brain directly into a drone/vehicle and control it like it was your own body.

>On the topic, what 'ware does a Rigger really need?
Reaction Enhancers regardless of your type of rigging. A Control Rig if they plan to Jump In to their drones. A datajack to plug their RCC into if they don't.

Everything else depends on the build.

RCC and Control Rigs are different. Broadly speaking, an RCC is a computer that you use to remotely control and jump into drones and vehicles, and a Control Rig is something you use to physically connect yourself to a vehicle.

The RCCs were placed in the Rigger Chapter instead of the gear chapter, in CGL's infinite wisdom and organizational ability. Pg. 267

The Control Rig is a very good thing to have, because it's even at R1 it does wonders for a mediocre rigger when he needs to drive. Anything that boosts reaction is similarly good (Reaction Enhancers being the obvious). Damage Compensators are good as a fairly cheap way to ignore some penalties and let you risk hotsim more (good if you have a low BOD). A Cyberarm with high Agility is also good if you want to do some shooting, but your physical agility is trash.

You're protecting a fuck-up with another fuck-up.
It's not our fault CGL agrees with you, and just the fact that a hive of fraudsters and their hangaround gaggle of desperate unpaid freelancers with the average writing ability of one out of the thousand monkeys agrees with you doesn't make either of you less retarded.

Your spiel entirely depends on the dm remenbering to actually GIVE you things to hack. Unlike the samurai and mage and the litterally everyone else who don't have to hope the dm gave you a way to avenue to do something.

The same person playing a mage can do a lot iwth fireball, but the spell fireball does not require leylines and astral presence to be able to be casted. A samurai does not end up incapable of firing a gun because you can only shoot 5 feet away from a ammo depot.

It takes a character class and makes them situationally useful.

It also makes no sense with how our actual technology has developed, everythings wireless.

That makes sense, I had a similar complaint, but I was told that there are devices specifically designed so you can integrate smartshit without it being hackable, atleast if they don't hack the commlink anyway.

So it mostly I assumed was just to give them a way to do more tricks once they actually finished decking.

>Whinging sarcasm at not being allowed to have more cool numbers at the expense of roleplaying is not something I like in my GMs.
Not the guy that you were passive-aggressively bitching at, but intentionally limiting an already-limited and extremely expensive archetype's utility in play in service of the GM's personal pet peeves is not something I like in my GMs.

Just to doublecheck, main stats for a Rigger basically would go Rea/Int>Agi>Logic/Will>Anything else, with all the ones actually listed basically being "Put a 5 in this or softcap it, minimum", yeah?

If I want to be jumped into a Drone and shoot shit, do I need a Control Rig, or an RCC? Would being an AI actually be viable? It seems like it might make a Walker viable, since it increases the Speed of the vehicle. Failing that, would it be possible to take an AI as a contact and have it inhabit a vehicle?

>Use your brains, the terrain, psychological warfare, the security system, whatever. The most important thing is using your imagination rather than the strictly regulated abilities the game gives you, which makes you even more of a rules lawyer than the guy you're strawmanning.
You sound like someone claiming fighters in 3.5 don't suck. That's literally the exact argument they used.
Have you ever tried to hack a host? Those things roll huge dice. You ain't going to succeed in hacking a host.
Also, force 6 spirits are the opposite of a resource. You have to resist their hits in drain, and anyone with good drain dice can resist 2 stun damage.
"I have no argument, I'm just going to insult people!"

>If I want to be jumped into a Drone and shoot shit, do I need a Control Rig, or an RCC?
You need a Control Rig. An RCC is for letting you order around multiple drones at once and controlling autosofts.

If I'm jumped into a drone, can I control other drones at all? For things like having a support network of drones.

Yeah if your idea of a intersting challenge is having everyone only ever meet challenges that are 'their' niche and thus beating numerical challenges is all that matters. Everyone has their specific scripted niche challenge that is obviously meant for them, and noone else is allowed to have a go at.Shadowcrawl, the dungeon crawler set in a not to distant future that might aswell be a computer or board game.

Then again this is pretty much devolving into a "no wrong fun allowed" argument.
If you and your group like to play like this I guess it's fine. Just not my cup of tea.

>If I'm jumped into a drone, can I control other drones at all? For things like having a support network of drones.
I think so, but I'm not sure. It's best to just give them open ended instructions like "Shoot at anyone who attacks you or the party"

>jump into
No, that's the Control Rig. You can't Jump In to a vehicle without a Control Rig; at best, you can use VR to do normal remote controlling/Command actions.

>Rea/Int>Agi>Logic/Will>Anything else
Depending on your reading of whether Gunnery uses Agility or Logic when you're Jumped In (consensus in the community overall is Logic, but several people are adamant that it's Agility) Agility might be basically worthless to a Rigger.

Intuition isn't super useful either; you use Electronic Warfare + Logic with Sensor Suites, and Matrix Initiative doesn't use Intuition at all.

It's REA>LOG>WILL, generally speaking, that you want.

>If I want to be jumped into a Drone and shoot shit, do I need a Control Rig, or an RCC?
You need a Control Rig to Jump In, or an RCC to just remote control it.

>Would being an AI actually be viable?
AIs are both really bad and a serious headache. Don't bother, they're more trouble than they're worth. Especially since they don't have a way of getting the benefits that a Control Rig provides.

>Failing that, would it be possible to take an AI as a contact and have it inhabit a vehicle?
Just give a vehicle a good Pilot program and a 100 nuyen personality software.

>If I'm jumped into a drone, can I control other drones at all?
Yes, with normal matrix command actions.

>You're a point-and-clicker. You want your enemy in your magical/physical/digital crosshairs and then to shoot them magically/physically/digitally. You rely on numbers and see only bad parts in having to get around a role's weak points, instead of seeing it as an opportunity for thinking and roleplaying.
>I want to roleplay - you want to hit numbers against numbers and win.

There is so much wrong with that, I don't know how to unpack it, not least of which is the fact that you can't tell the difference between multiple people disagreeing with you, despite drastically different writing styles.

But maybe you should actually read how decking and wireless gear works before you knee-jerk ban it because muh niche protection. The decker is not going to point and click his way through every guard. Unless they all walk around with a belt full of grenades with wireless on, he isn't even going to be able to hurt them. What he can do is get into their PANs and send out false alerts, or disable their AROs/smartlink so they are less effective (but still able to use their weapons, unless they have electronic triggers), and assess their 'ware and see if they can get enough marks to cripple them at a perfect moment. Not to mention stuff like going through their commlink to read the SOP and know how they are going to react, check their e-mails to see if an alert when out about the new basilisk security critter program, etc.

They can't do that if wireless doesn't work because they can't get through a host to some random guard, because hosts will fuck your day up with massive dicepools, black ICE and tons of Overwatch. Disabling wireless doesn't turn the decker from some god-king of the physical world into a 2e decker. It turns them from someone who can gather info and offer limited help by exploiting technology into someone who can talk about Ubuntu then get his brain fried as he tries to go brain-on-silicon with a supercomputer.

I don't see how limiting characters by making it pretty much a no-go to break their "class" has anything to do with promoting good roleplay, cracking down on murderhobos or preventing statblock wars. Actually I find it is quite the opposite, and that strict dungeon-crawl-esque limited classes tend to promote that kind of play, not discourage it.

Cyberpunk is a product of the past.
It's inherently influenced by the fin-de-siécle mentality, technology shock, fear of pollution, questions about the nature of humanity and a lot of other key fears of the 80's and 90's - and as such, you're going to have to take a bit of anachronism if you want the feel the original books and series had. If you want to create fiction that plays on modern-day fears and technology, go ahead - but it's speculative fiction and not cyberpunk. The timeline split, the world nearly ended, there are Tolkien races everywhere, and the first thing you whine about is how things that came to be after the timeline split don't magically teleport into Shadowrun when they're invented.
And from reading your post, I can tell that you really don't know how roleplaying works. You're not supposed to play different variations on the same gun turret - some roles are more situational, and the challenge lies in arranging that situation through actually roleplaying and planning. Street sams are strong head-on, but have to deal with social alienation and cyberpsychosis (if they're not CGLsams), mages have a lot of supernatural utility and can interact with a completely different world as well as cast spells, but are limited by magical taint and can't get a lot of cyber - and deckers can interact with the Matrix, which has a lot more potential effects than screwing around in the astral and can be used for a lot of interesting and dangerous things.
Turning the decker into a digi-mage because you want to storm in headfirst and never actually think destroys a lot of fluff, balance and group cohesion, and you're only going to undermine an already dying game even further by mindlessly pushing it.
By playing a decker, you trade being perpetually ready for having a lot more potential, and you need to think to use that potential. You're not used to this idea, and I can tell by the fact that you're cherrypicking painfully hard.

To be fair the guy you quoted does allow WIFI hacking, just not wireless guns.

So for instance you can always wire someones comms so it plays audio of the others talking shit about him rather then you know "Look out for that grenade on the left"

And if one of them has a pacemaker....

That's completely wrong. I reward good planning, regardless of the avenue, and quick/creative thinking. The challenge lies in the unexpected, the fuck up and the danger of combat. How the party decides to tackle a certain problem is entirely up to them.

Sometimes there isn't anything for the mage/decker/samurai/face to do, depending on how the plan and execution happen to go.

It's in the party's interest to always avoid combat as much as possible. The Sam is there, because he's pretty much the only one who can go toe to toe with a decent response and give the others time to get the hell out of dodge if they DO attact unwanted attention.

>but still able to use their weapons, unless they have electronic triggers),
That's just wrong. It's entirely possible to completely brick a weapon that has wireless on in 5e.

>And if one of them has a pacemaker....
If he's not going to make guns wireless he's certainly not going to make that shit wireless.

Considering that you literally just called roleplaying, planning and creating play "pet peeves", I'm not even going to bother with you.
Also, if you think I'm being passive-aggressive, you must be really dull - I'm just plain being aggressive because I'm talking to retards. Got a problem?
Except for the fact that fighters are specifically defined by their lack of tricks, advanced gear, knowledge, contacts or need for planning. Fighters in 3.5 suck for the reason that the magical classes had the game warped in their favor because the creators thought it a lot more interesting to wank over magic, and attempts at making them better involved throwing reskinned magic on top instead of trying to make the role more relevant in its original format.
Sound familiar?
I really, really like how when trying to refute my argument, you just prove how much CGL editions fail to render Shadowrun properly and end up a bleeding mess of conflicting and poorly balanced rules. Stop playing coy and pick up some FASA books.
It also says a lot that the systems that are actually in effect are different from the way that people interpret them in practice, considering that it perfectly proves my point of CGL-era players just hungering for more explosions.

Yeah, that's pretty much guaranteed to be in the 'wireless shit that has no reason to exist'.

Honestly, if you had a cyber heart, would you connect it to google and voluntarily give some decker a potential killswitch? Come on.

>The timeline split, the world nearly ended, there are Tolkien races everywhere, and the first thing you whine about is how things that came to be after the timeline split don't magically teleport into Shadowrun when they're invented.

But they did? My arguement is that wireless is a thing that happened in real life and makes sense. It also happened in shadowrun since we aren't talking about some scrubs homebrew, we are talking about if we should remove a actual canon game feature.

So now we know your full of it on that.

>And from reading your post, I can tell that you really don't know how roleplaying works.

Roleplaying is not SUPPOSED to be based on crunches and mechanics. Being able to think outside the box and act like a actual person is not actually affected by whatever system you use.

And im not even talking about "oh I want to be able to send people hurt.exe" you just want me to be saying that. Taking out wireless entirely limits your abillity to actually interact with the Matrix, which means the decker gets to actually do their job less often.

Not even worse, they just can only deck in limited places. In a car chase what the fuck will they hack? The car? No way the lonestar copper gunning after them has a reachable jack.

Also fuck you for being so god damn righteous about this, we are talking about a fuckin tabletop game not goddamn church. I'm allowed to not want a homebrew that limits me. Maybe I'm not a good roleplayer, but that shouldn't preclude me from being able to play a game, fuck your elitist ass.

I think the idea of deliberatly giving one of your employees a remote killswitch in case someone tries to extract them is not entirely unbelievable, just morbid.

so you don't want the decker stealing the Sams spotlight because in your runs, combat is one of the few time the Sam can shine? I can respect that somewhat I guess, but I still much prefer run designs where in most situations, everyone has something to do.

To go back to the original WiFi point that of course doesn't mean the well-prepared HRT team running everything on an open WiFi, after all that is what an internal router and wiring are for, but still I don't see why regular Joe Guardsman can't have a smartgun running WiFi that the decker is allowed to disable. I see that less as stealing someones spotlight and more as shining as a team.

Oh, nevermind apparently. A Control Rig adds the rating to the Speed of your vehicle, which presumably works even with Walker.

Is Speed 4 enough, most of the time?

PILOT ORIGINS
COST: 8 KARMA PER LEVEL (MAX 3)
An AI with this quality likely evolved from a drone Pilot
program and retained its abilities. The AI may “jump into”
drones and vehicles of a particular type (aircraft, ground
craft, or watercraft; chosen when the quality is selected),
controlling them like a rigger even if the vehicle does not
have rigger adaptation. Each level of this quality grants
the bonus of a control rig of an equal rating. The AI is
also capable of loading, converting, and using drone au-
tosofts (AI-driven drones use the attributes, skills, and
Matrix Initiative of the AI). Note that AIs with this quality
are only able to operate a particular type of drone or ve-
hicle this way (e.g., aircraft, ground craft, watercraft); any
other type of vehicle must be controlled remotely using
the Control Device action.

?

>Everything I like is roleplaying, everything you like isn't
Really?
>and attempts at making them better involved throwing reskinned magic on top instead of trying to make the role more relevant in its original format.
>Sound familiar?
Sure, in that it worked there, just like how it worked here. Seriously, now you're knocking Tome of Battle? Jesus, you really are one of them.
>FASA were perfect
Their solution to the decker problem was to give him his own little mini-dungeon where all the other players couldn't contribute.
They've done that with insulin pumps IRL. The fact that something is an extraordinarily bad idea will not stop people from doing it.
I wonder if there's any internet of things gas stoves.
>I think the idea of deliberatly giving one of your employees a remote killswitch in case someone tries to extract them is not entirely unbelievable, just morbid.
Jesus, I didn't even think of that. Aren't cranial bombs already core?
But anyway, I was just arguing that mister nofun would probably decide that it wouldn't happen, not that it actually wouldn't happen.

>so you don't want the decker stealing the Sams spotlight because in your runs, combat is one of the few time the Sam can shine?

Shouldn't it always be like that? I never visualised Shadowrun as a combat crawler.

>I can respect that somewhat I guess, but I still much prefer run designs where in most situations, everyone has something to do.

I try not to design runs like 'so this is when the decker will do this, and the mage will do this, then the samurai will do this and that...'. I give them a realistic gig, and it's up to them how to complete it.

Of course I visualise different possible solutions, but the fact is that the players will always think differently than the GM. They'll always come up with something unexpected. As such, I try not to overthink things, only to react to the players.

I love the feeling of mad in the evening.
There's really no better skill to have than being able to sound autismal when you're just leaning back and enjoying the show.
Roleplaying is influenced by the universe, which is reflected in crunch. If you add wireless decking, you remove the people who actually plug wires into themselves to access the Matrix better - and that doesn't change your character's worldview or approach to problems at all? If you play like that, you have the opposite problem - you're playing in a void where your own character should be unlimited by the fluff and crunch, except you started the argument by wanting to roll more dice more often.
You're incoherent and need to resort to hypocrisy and flip-flopping to defend your opinions, while I'm just sitting here and enjoying the delicious feeling of being right (you should try it sometime instead of just feeling martyred).
Likewise, you first say that roleplaying is independent of crunch and mechanics - and then you start talking like you're not having fun unless you're actively rolling dice. The challenging part about being a decker is that the Matrix is your time to shine - you're almost too strong there, but when you're in between plugs, you have to really try your best, and most of all you need to plan so you're not caught with your pants down. This is a "niche" - a character who's strong in one situation and needs to plan, prepare, think and roleplay themselves into the optimal solution. You get?
And I'm just going to leave the first part of your post untouched in its brilliant, sparkling idiocy. It shouldn't be sullied by the hands of a mere shitposter - nay, it should be allowed to shine on its own, so that people passing by can behold it and see what happens if you play neo-roleplaying games.

It's not that the heart has a killswitch. It sends real-time data to your doctor, where it can be stored and monitored to see that it's working correctly, and adjusted to make sure it operates at peak efficiency. The problem is that it is a 'potential' that someone can get through the Firewall and mess with it, though you could turn wireless off if you think someone is happening (making your health care more shit, at least temporarily, but possibly saving your life).

And do I think people would do that? Fuck yeah I think so. People happily do banking off cell phones, which are easy as fuck to break into. People voluntarily report exactly where they are in the world and broadcast it on the internet (via shit like 4square), so someone with a browser can look at their history and know just when to rob their home. Or maybe they'll just connect to the cameras in the house that are designed to be accessed through the internet, ostensibly by the homeowner but really by anyone with the knowhow to get in, and see who's around. Folks are begging for automatic cars, despite the possibility of hacking and errors driving them through a crowd of toddlers and off a cliff.

If you offer someone something, and tell them it's safe, they'll use it happily and not worry about the possibility that something could happen. Or maybe they do worry, but it's so convenient and they've never had a security problem personally, so they keep on going. The "People wouldn't stand for it, they're security-conscious!" argument is the weakest shit, proven wrong by walking into any office in any country and seeing how many terminals have a username and password written on a post-it beside them.

>>They've done that with insulin pumps IRL.

Granted, but to hack a wireless signal IRL is nigh-impossible even with specialised equipment, while it's nothing uncommon in the sixth world for people to succeed in it with their damn cellphones.

>the Matrix is your time to shine - you're almost too strong there, but when you're in between plugs, you have to really try your best,
Yeah, see that's what is known as an issue. Because it results in Deckers not having anything to do while everyone else plays the game, and everyone else not having anything to do whenever deckers get to play. Unless you're a big fan of your players wandering off to check on twitter or something during the game, this is not good.
Plus, everyone else's niche is somewhat applicable to mundane combat. Riggers have drones that can fit inside buildings, mages have spirits, etc.

theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/fatal_insulin_pump_attack/

>It's not the first time a hacker has figured out how to wirelessly issue potentially lethal commands to a medical device implanted in a patient's body. In 2008, academic researchers demonstrated an attack that allowed them to intercept medical information from implantable cardiac devices and pacemakers and to cause them to turn off or issue life-threatening electrical shocks. The devices are used to treat chronic heart conditions.

And here's a blackhat's paper on it
media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Radcliffe/BH_US_11_Radcliffe_Hacking_Medical_Devices_WP.pdf

It's literally already happening. The only difference is that current wireless range is short because they have not yet fully integrated the pumps into the Internet of Things, but they plan to do so as soon as they get more capable technology.

All good and fair points, but I still maintain that the prevalence of hackers between our world and the sixth one is incomparable. People in Shadowrun know very well that anything with a wireless signal can be hacked on the fly by someone skilled without breaking a sweat.

>People in Shadowrun know very well that anything with a wireless signal can be hacked on the fly by someone skilled without breaking a sweat.
And people IRL seem to think hackers can do that with their magic computer boxes.

Did they really use an unencrypted wireless connection for that insulin pump?

What were they thinking?

nah I dont see it as a combat heavy game either, but just as I tend to give the hacker options in combat I give the Sam options outisde it.
In the end, I think our understanding of the game is actually relatively similar, I just got a wrong impression from your original posts.

>People in Shadowrun know very well that anything with a wireless signal can be hacked on the fly by someone skilled without breaking a sweat.

The same thing happens in our world, you just aren't aware of it or assume it will never happen to you. Same thing in the Sixth World.

cnbc.com/2016/06/17/your-smartphone-could-be-hacked-without-your-knowledge.html
telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/27/beware-public-mobile-charging-points---your-phone-can-be-hacked/
wired.com/2016/05/2036876/
wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/

Literally the running theme of sic-fi for the past 30 years is "there are magic computer men who do magic computer things and can destroy your life by typing really fast. Nothing you do is safe when someone wants to make it unsafe." Everyone knows about it, nobody cares until it's too late.

They were thinking, "We can save $18 million a year by using less-secure networks."

>Really?
The only argument you have is lifted from prime-time Amurrican "comedy" shows. Go chew on a brick.
>knocking Tome of Battle
Yes. I'm doing that because it makes the classes into different small variations on one playstyle that involves very little roleplay and a lot of minmaxing, and that its way of "fixing" something came solely from fucking up the balance by pouring on more kewl p0w3rz.
Sometimes you have to realize that shit is shit, and that things don't get worse with age by definition. 2e, both Shadowrun and D&D, will still be as good fifty years in the future as they are now, while the novelty junkies like you who refuse to play a game simply because it's not hip enough will be playing whatever you're saddled with then - and from the pattern that I can see, you'll be lucky if you're not just given a sheet with all the dots filled out and a replay podcast that you can desperately wave your character sheet at in a feeble attempt to convince yourself you're roleplaying.
But the job - wow, big word - of the GM and the player is to make sure that the decker always has something to do. The GM writes out or improvises the challenges in a way that makes sense, and the decker uses knowledge skills, infiltration, contacts and team members to get where they need to be.
The demand of the GM and player is higher, but that's why you have different roles and not just a single class with a lot of points in everything - different roles have different playstyles, skill levels and payoffs. There should be variation within difficulty as well as flavor, and a good GM and player should know when too much is too much.
Making demands of people isn't bad game design, it's opening up opportunities and rewarding people who want to try. Meanwhile. the people who don't want to try (guess who) are sitting and gnashing their teeth on the Internet in abject misery because they have to get their first brain cell into the wheelchair and the other one to push.

I think at this point its safe to say that while the scenario is viable within the actual setting, it will be rare enough that it only happens in certain scenarios. For instance the aforetementioned "Have the decker fight off a spider trying to terminate the kidnapped employee" or certain wetwork runs. Maybe someone wants to underline the importance of their newest PAN and a few scare stories will pump up the news.

At this point you aren't even trying to actually argue your point, your just masturbating to your own ego.

Enjoy your third edition I guess.

>I'm doing that because it makes the classes into different small variations on one playstyle
Wizard, clerics, druids, and all full casters are small variations on one playstyle. They're all identical

I'll just wait here until you've looked up the difference between "some" and "all" on Wiktionary.
Go ahead, I'll be waiting.

Pacemakers are already wireless in real life.

>At this point you aren't even trying to actually argue your point, your just masturbating to your own ego.
>Enjoy your third edition I guess.

Good job not actually reading what I was saying about wireless implants being something people would do, and assuming I'm 3efag when nothing about that post says such or implies it when it's arguing about totally different tech, it doesn't follow from any specific post, and it's a reply to two people arguing with each other.

Enjoy sucking your mother's cock.

We were complaining about whether the presence of wireless was something you should write out.

You then decided to insult everyone else and argue they aren't real roleplayers and how much fun you have being so much better then us.

Then you started praising 2e so I was off by one. So whatever.

The thing about hacking in real world is that it's mostly about capitalising on the human error side of things. Not the system itself. Take for instance that article about someone's Apple ID being hacked. It wouldn't in the least surprise me that the first security breach happened because of some idiotic "lost your password? Answer this question that can easily be pulled out of your kikebook in 5 seconds flat" thing, which then domino effected away.

Sure, there are ways, probably even some intentional ways, to crack into someone's device, but those are usually time-consuming and demand specialised equipment.

Not so for Shadowrun. That's the point I'm trying to make here.

>praising 2e
???
Where in do you see 2e mentioned?
genuinely curious

Again, entirely wrong. Here's what I posted.

>Wireless medical devices are plausible
>wireless medical devices exist, and have been hacked
>shit is constantly getting hacked, that doesn't stop wireless stuff from existing

I'm not part of your spergy edition war. I was providing context for critical technology being wireless. You're just assuming that someone saying wireless medical devices exist is the same guy who made an entirely different post about entirely different things. Actually read next time.

>What were they thinking?
They weren't.
>How dare you point out that I have no argument other than claiming what I do is the one true way to roleplay?
I thought your position was idiotic enough I didn't need to expand on why. So once more I say, really?
>Sometimes you have to realize that shit is shit, and that things don't get worse with age by definition. 2e, both Shadowrun and D&D, will still be as good fifty years in the future as they are now
And you have to realize that neither of those were good. One involved the whole "everyone else goes out to get lunch while the decker decks" thing, and the other had absurdly overcomplicated rules and far too many splatbooks than is good for it. Furthermore, several of its base classes were useless 100% of the time (I'm looking at you, Thief), even when supposedly in their own niche.
>I think at this point its safe to say that while the scenario is viable within the actual setting, it will be rare enough that it only happens in certain scenarios. For instance the aforetementioned "Have the decker fight off a spider trying to terminate the kidnapped employee" or certain wetwork runs. Maybe someone wants to underline the importance of their newest PAN and a few scare stories will pump up the news.
Why? The rules already state it isn't rare, and IRL it's very clear people will happily shove wireless capability in whatever they can, even if there's no reason for your dildo to connect to the internet.
As I said later in the thread, I know, but I don't think Mr. NoFun cares.
>Sure, there are ways, probably even some intentional ways, to crack into someone's device, but those are usually time-consuming and demand specialised equipment.
>Not so for Shadowrun. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
Really? Last time I checked, hacking in Shadowrun does require specialized equipment. I think it's called a deck?

....I am really sorry.

I clicked the wrong post. I meant this guy.
I have no idea how i did that fuck up, but fuck up I did.

>Really? Last time I checked, hacking in Shadowrun does require specialized equipment. I think it's called a deck?

Or a cellphone. Or your goddamn mind.

But decks are something anyone can buy out of a store. They're expensive, yes, but not hard to get hold of. Hell, some of them aren't even restricted.

In Shadowrun it requires specialized equipment (either super-expensive and highly controlled decks, or somewhat expensive and highly illegal dongles for your commlink). Regular commlinks explicitly can't be used for hacking in 5e, to fix that obvious problem.

Brute force is more common in SR than social engineering, but dictionary attacks and key search are still things here. For the kind of work we're talking about (accessing personal devices) those work fine. It's only when you get into hacking into hosts that Brute Force makes less sense, though there's still the quasi-social part of the decker needing to hide and hack on the fly to blend in with other icons and avoid notice. But at that point it's deep into movie hacker territory.

Human error is still something that can be used in SR, it's just less fun to have the face go out and do 90% of the work instead of the decker decking, the samurai sammying, and the mage maging.