Darkness falls OOC

The damage would have been repairable - Hardware + Logic extended test (1 hour) with the total number of successes needed being 5 times the points of signal burnt out. But that's neither here nor there. 'course, with a headware implant, you would have needed someone to cut into your head to get at it first, which wouldn't have been pleasent.

And I think that's a vote from everyone but phantom and thakir to move on - phantom's pretty prompt about posting so we'll wait on him, but thakir's probably gonna be dropped if he doesn't post soon.

Edit: And I told you, he's a great dragon uber-adept in disguise - are you sure you can kill him?

Further Edit: Also, on a 'what to expect' kinda note and reguarding the possibility of burning out an expensive commlink - I try to avoid killing my players without giving them a fighting chance - sometimes the dice gods are against you, but I generally don't throw uber combat mosters at you without a reason, and even if I do have a reason and do pull them out, you'll generally be able to run away if you are smart enought to realize you need to do so. But the flipside is that I don't have any qualms about doing just about anything short of death to you. For example, there will probably be some runs that you end up doing at a loss - the pay isn't enough to cover lost/damaged/destroyed gear or you get stiffed by the Johnson. Generally speaking, those runs will earn you extra karma, but don't be suprised when/if it happens.

It's shadowrun, getting screwed by the Johnson is par the course!

(Of course so is making yourself look like him, make his wife think he's having an affair and then convincing his boss he's selling secrets to another corp)

Ack - looks like I am late to the party. Shall I go ahead and post anyway?

My sheet will be ready by today.

Yeah, that's fine.

This post exists for no purpose other than for me to see how the dice-roller works.

The member 'Westmoreland' has done the following action : Dices roll

'D6' : 2, 2, 2, 6, 5, 2

Well, that's very slightly irritating. Won't be doing that IC. Better than nothing, though.

I'll be including the results of my dice rolls as a private line, and just use the rpol dice roller for the sake of honest record-keeping.

Invisible Castle is a decent roller.

I just realized you can't run programs higher then your system rating.

Ruh-roh raggy.

(Changing software lowering my softs to 3 and using the extra space to grab a pavolvian data bomb, encrypt, and maybe an exploit or an agent or something)

Actually, the more I read this, the more I like the wireless rules. Hackers / Mancers are being to be FEARED, since the matrix feels so much more ubiquitous then 3rd ed.

Very true... but no matter how subtle the technomancer, a dagger in his back will seriously cramp his style.

While I love how well hackers have actually been integrated into the action in 4e, I lament the loss of the cyberdeck. That's why I've brought them back for my games via house rule. Basically, I've replaced the sim module with a whole piece of equipment that gets its own Response rating.

Eh, never cared for cyberdecks, myself. Which is why if I did a hacker in 3E, I went Otaku. Anyways, you can run software that is higher than your System, but it runs like a program with your system rating. This means that if you, say, upgrade your system, you don't have to upgrade the program as well.

Of course, anyone in the group that isn't me would have to periodically update their programs anyway, so...

One thing I like about technomancers is that, with a bit of planning, they can be extremely versatile. For instance, Motoko is a pretty good hacker, and also a decent rigger. And it doesn't take much to make a drone army at your beck and call. The vast majority of Motoko's real world combat ability lies in her drones, and her sniper rifle. If she gets in melee, or even closer than sniping ranges, she's dead.

I'm a huge William Gibson fan, and have been since "Burning Chrome" (the anthology, not the original short story) was first published, so I still envision virtual reality and cyberspace the way he did, even though current technology suggests that that's not the way it's gonna pan out. Decks have always been an integral part of my understanding of the cyberpunk genre.

Hacking / Rigging is a heck of a lot easier period without VCR's and 500k worth of decks and programs being required to getinto sometihng tougher then a stuffer shacks.

So when can we continue playing?

I don't think anyone else is going to post.

Yeah, and by comparison, my main inspiration for cyberpunk would be Ghost in the Shell. Which is part of the reason SR4 appeals to me a great deal more than third edition.

Mirikon wrote:

Yeah, and by comparison, my main inspiration for cyberpunk would be Ghost in the Shell.

Reallllly?

Well, I never said it was a secret.

I keed, I keed.

Actually, when I first read 4th ed's wireless I thought "huh, now you can hack PEOPLE just like in GitS" (assuming they have serious cyberware anyway) right before vowing that all my characters would have disabled wireless connections on their cyberawre and guns.

I also wonder if it's possible to hack someone's skillwires or move-by-wire system.

Yes, it is. Anything with a wireless connection can be hacked. Though honestly, it would be easier to just hack your PAN, and turn things off from there. But you can't hack someone's brain like you can in GitS. Unless you're a technomancer hacking another technomancer. But even then, you can't rewrite their mind, or anything like that.

Screw turning it off :>

MBW (and skillwire to a lesser extent) basically turns your nervous system into a computer controlled vehicle right?

Screw turning it off. You could take it over and do a cool jerky puppet movement thing with his body (GM permitting).

Not quite ghost hacking but still pretty nifty.

My personal ruling (other GMs would likely differ) is that a hacked move-by-wire system would let you take control of their body like a drone, controling it using your Pilot Anthroform skill. Hacked skillwires would let you reduce the subjects skill rating by the skillwire's rating or a maximum of 4, but wouldn't actually let you control the other person's body, since the work along side the body's natural wiring rather then replacing it entirely. Hacked wired reflexes would let you paralyze someone, but not control them (they just transmit signels, which you could shut down, but don't initiate them).

Anywho, gonna go ahead and update the IC thread now.

I generally assume that except for cyberware clearly designed to interface with other devices (headware commlinks, control rigs, simrigs), the wireless radio is OFFLINE by default, and is generally activated only for diagnotic and repair purposes. If all you use your cyberarm for is to BE AN ARM, then there's really no reason for its wireless radio to even be turned on unless you're performing some sort of maintenance, repair, or upgrade.

Let it be known that except for her control rig, image link, and smartlink, Artemis' cyberware is wireless disabled by default - direct neural interface only.

Except that there has to be some way to turn the wireless connection on when needed and when its something tucked away inside your body, a simple button usually won't do the trick, which leaves a potential back door into the system. The location and type of backdoor is something I would generally rule on on a case by case bases based on the total 'ware package rather then just an individual piece - in some cases, there may be no way in short of cutting into them to get to the 'ware, finding an actual button below the skin, or sticking a datajack into their cyber arm, others it might be possible to hack in through another piece of ware that does have an active connection.

Also, bio and gene ware can't be hacked, even if cyber and nano stuff can.

For those who aren't up on their matrix-fu, basically there are two ways to hack into a system. You can do it the quick and dirty way, which takes a couple moments, but risks setting off alarms, or you can do what Motoko did, and probe the system for an exploitable weakness, which takes longer (1 hour per test if you're full VR, 1 day per test if you're AR) but has the advantage of not setting off alarms. So right now, unless TacTech's System or Firewall rating is obscenely high (a rating of 7 would be super advanced cutting edge military tech, basically the equivalent of a lightsaber in feudal Japan), Motoko is in the system on an admin account, which basically means she'd have to seriously screw up to set off alarms now.

Actually you are far more likely to run into higher level system ratings in this game - uncapped tech, per the house rules after all. Still rare, but more like a WWII machine gun in WWI then the lightsaber matchup. That being said, you get in without any fuss after a little over two and half hours. Let me know what you want to look for, change, and/or add.