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mellonbread
Dec 20, 2017

PurpleXVI posted:

I'm looking for some more FATAL & Friends fodder, does anyone have any interesting RPG's they'd like to see reviewed that haven't already been tackled by the thread?
Do the most obscure game you can think of that you have personally run or played.

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CitizenKeen
Nov 13, 2003

easygoing pedant

Kestral posted:

What would you say is the less clunky modern implementation of it for action-y games? I've had an Infinity hack on the backburner for a while now, curious if there's more elegant versions of the system that also manage to have a lot of fun crunch.

Personally, I think Achtung! Cthulhu is just :kiss:

I'm not really a fan of WWII or the Mythos, but the system seems to be the perfect sweet spot between the fiddly crunch of Infinity, Conan, Mutant Chronicles and the pared down narrativeness of John Carter, Dune and so forth. (The forthcoming Dreams and Machines 2d20 game, which takes aim at Horizon Zero Dawn, is thematically my jam but is another "no d6" version and is a little too light for me.)

A!C's crunch factor gives you all the good parts of the 2d20 core mechanic - Momentum, Threat, Challenge Dice giving you cool weapon effects, etc. - while including the free-form Traits/Truths mechanics from Star Trek Adventures, so if there isn't a rule for what you want to do - or you don't want to look it up - you can just slap a Fate-style aspect on it and call it a day. All on a feat-based chassis that does everything I ever liked about Savage Worlds.

All my hacks have started with A!C.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Magnetic North posted:

In theory. Man, the rules in original 4th were so bare bones as far as hacking. 4A (Anniversary edition) was a bit better, but that system was still underbaked. So much was put onto the GM's imagination in the core book, in ways that guns, skills cyberware and magic weren't. The sourcebooks probably helped, but that was around the time me and Shadowrun parted ways.

Meanwhile the hacking supplement had extremely detailed rules leading to DDOS attacks being incredibly powerful.

Hilarious stuff.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
...I just looked up 4th edition Fading Suns and those assholes split it into a base three mandatory books? A separate Chargen guide, GM Guide and Lore book? Motherfuckers! That's almost $60 for the three .PDF's!

disposablewords
Sep 12, 2021

PurpleXVI posted:

I didn't know they did a 4th edition of Fading Suns. Is it meaningfully different? Because 2nd and 3rd edition were just repackagings of 2nd, occasionally folding some expansion content into the corebook, and doing minor rephrasings, with no meaningful changes.

It came out in mid-2021, and the very very basics of "roll under stat+skill on d20" is the same but a fair bit otherwise is different. You get Victory Points equal to what you rolled on the die on a success, and do a lot of stuff to spend VPs, keep extra ones to augment later rolls, and stuff like that kind of like a 2d20 game's Momentum rules. Managing your VP is a big element. It also got changed to a level and class based system, though the classes are very loose (more a formalization of the fuzzy limits around social classes in the earlier editions) and the level system simplifies XP advancement while trying to eliminate the min-maxing potential of character points and XP spending differently between creation and play. (That whole thing where you want to max out your important stats as much as possible at character creation because it saves you a lot of XP to pull your neglected bad stats up to mediocre instead of buying up well-rounded stats to good during play. Exalted 2e was really bad about it too.)

The timeline's also been advanced about 20 years, so we're now in the midst of the "Pax Alexius" as Alexius has secured his position as Emperor, gotten married, and had a child that's getting the weird Imperial-cult wannabes coming out of the woodwork again.

And yeah as you noticed, the core is now divided up into three books, a 300-some page character book with the bulk of the rules, a 110 page GM book with non-player-facing rules, and a similar length Universe Book full of lore and timeline stuff.

disposablewords fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jun 20, 2023

Servetus
Apr 1, 2010

PurpleXVI posted:

I didn't know they did a 4th edition of Fading Suns. Is it meaningfully different? Because 2nd and 3rd edition were just repackagings of 2nd, occasionally folding some expansion content into the corebook, and doing minor rephrasings, with no meaningful changes.

Fairly different.


-Victory Points are radically different, characters can now bank Victory points for use in future turns within limitations. If you generate victory points on a role you can save them across turns if the amount is equal to or less than your Bank, excess Victory points are in your Pool. Your Pool empties at the start of your next turn, so if you don't get the chance to boost your defense against an attack before your next turn you lose those excess VPs. You generate VPs equal to the number rolled if you role under the target number, no VPs if you role over, and the target number doubled if you role the target number.

-Levels are now a thing, but it's not like D&D really. There is a slight increase in Vitality as you level up; along with other stats, but most of the increase in character survivability from your Victory point Bank increasing every couple of levels.

-Opposed Spirit traits are a thing of the past.

-The 4 Classes Noble, Priest, Merchant and Yoeman now have some mechanical effects. They not only determine which Callings are open to a character, they also each grant some special mechanics. Yoeman characters also get more support this time around; with groups like the Frontier for Alien Rights, the Mercurians and the Dispossessed being covered in the Core Rulebook.

-The focus of the Lore is on the planet Hargard and the Vuldrok systems. The Church Fleet has blockaded Ivar to prevent heresy and Republicanism from spreading into the Known Worlds, and the Kurgans gave up Hira and sealed their jumgate to protect themselves from the Hazat. On Hargard, house Ramakrishna brokered a deal between Thane Eldrid and the Empire; the planet was delivered into the Empire with the marriage of Emperor Alexius to Freya Eldridsdottir, and both house Ramakrishna and house Eldrid and minor noble houses. There is an insurgency on Hargard needless to say, and Alexius has offered freedom and land to Shantor to relocate there and help put down the insurgency. The rest of Vuldrok space is preparing for the onslaught.

-Alexius and Freya have a daughter, Aurora, who is now the Imperial heir. Guilds and Church orders are squaring off to squabble over who controls which parts of her education.

-The Avestites have somehow gotten weirder, they've started getting converts among alien races the rest of the Church can't connect with: Ukari and Acorbites. The Lucustae Rubri are now one of the most feared parts of the Inquisition; the Avestites managed to grab some Ascorbites in one of their larval forms and have raised them in Avestite beliefs.

Edit:

PurpleXVI posted:

...I just looked up 4th edition Fading Suns and those assholes split it into a base three mandatory books? A separate Chargen guide, GM Guide and Lore book? Motherfuckers! That's almost $60 for the three .PDF's!

Yeah, the price point has really gone up there, and they went for full colour art, I backed a couple of the Kickstarters.

Servetus fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jun 20, 2023

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
Can people name some games where the combat, social, hacking etc systems are all the same base robust extended resolution mechanic, but also spend page space in the core book fully laying out combat, social, hacking etc as their own distinct items? In my experience they tend to be either completely disconnected systems or the book just explains combat & underlying generic resolution system and then kind of says "and you can do the same for science idk"

The closest is Modiphius Star Trek but it's not exactly what you'd call crunchy and not exactly what you'd call well layed out.

CitizenKeen
Nov 13, 2003

easygoing pedant

Splicer posted:

Can people name some games where the combat, social, hacking etc systems are all the same base robust extended resolution mechanic, but also spend page space in the core book fully laying out combat, social, hacking etc as their own distinct items? In my experience they tend to be either completely disconnected systems or the book just explains combat & underlying generic resolution system and then kind of says "and you can do the same for science idk"

The closest is Modiphius Star Trek but it's not exactly what you'd call crunchy and not exactly what you'd call well layed out.

The only other one I can think of is Infinity, which I'm assuming you're familiar with.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009

Splicer posted:

Can people name some games where the combat, social, hacking etc systems are all the same base robust extended resolution mechanic, but also spend page space in the core book fully laying out combat, social, hacking etc as their own distinct items? In my experience they tend to be either completely disconnected systems or the book just explains combat & underlying generic resolution system and then kind of says "and you can do the same for science idk"

Was this a deliberate attempt to describe Hardwired Island?

CitizenKeen
Nov 13, 2003

easygoing pedant

Lemon-Lime posted:

Was this a deliberate attempt to describe Hardwired Island?

I don't know how I blanked that one. Maybe because it's not super crunchy?

Hypnobeard
Sep 15, 2004

Obey the Beard



Wonder if you could solve the Decker Problem by treating the player group as an entity and giving it a Decker ability score and whatever other stuff you can think of that applies to the group as a whole (equipment/gun access, vehicle support, medical support, cop avoidance/government wheel greasing, etc), and just use that whenever the appropriate roll is necessary. "Oh, you want to hack the security system? Roll your Decker support."

The actual values could even be (simply) derived from elements of the PCs mechanics so it's easy to swap characters if necessary.

ninjoatse.cx
Apr 9, 2005

Fun Shoe

Hypnobeard posted:

Wonder if you could solve the Decker Problem by treating the player group as an entity and giving it a Decker ability score and whatever other stuff you can think of that applies to the group as a whole (equipment/gun access, vehicle support, medical support, cop avoidance/government wheel greasing, etc), and just use that whenever the appropriate roll is necessary. "Oh, you want to hack the security system? Roll your Decker support."

The actual values could even be (simply) derived from elements of the PCs mechanics so it's easy to swap characters if necessary.

Lots of conversion of Shadowrun into other gaming systems pretty much do something similar. You roll decking like you roll lockpicking in a D&D game or making a stealth check in the standard SR rules. If you really only care about the effect, there are loads of mechanics that will do.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Thing is what do you do with the players who want to be the cool antisocial Decker who hangs out seperate from the party and does his own thing in the matrix.

although followup: is it the same as you do with the players who want to be the cool wizard who solves the problem with a single spell from the back row

bewilderment
Nov 22, 2007
man what



My Lovely Horse posted:

Thing is what do you do with the players who want to be the cool antisocial Decker who hangs out seperate from the party and does his own thing in the matrix.

You say "this is a social game. You play it with other people".

Although Blades in the Dark and similar games have an answer for this, which is that they don't go on mission but they do there entire thing via the flashback mechanics, and so they still take stress and consequences that way. Only downside of that is that if a player does that you can't really force them to respond to a danger (unless the place their character is chilling is in danger), they have to be proactive in saying "ah, the party ran into a challenge? but fortunately three days ago I planned ahead for this"

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









PurpleXVI posted:

I'm looking for some more FATAL & Friends fodder, does anyone have any interesting RPG's they'd like to see reviewed that haven't already been tackled by the thread?

(saying you love my style of posting and want me, specifically, to review an already-reviewed game also works, I am always vulnerable to praise)

It's either that or I have to tackle yet another Planescape module where they expand the canon with yet another superpowered cosmological concept just because they can't be hosed to be creative with the fifteen or so they already have.

has someone done nights black agents? alternatively, against the darkmaster (essentially rolemaster but with a few of the edges filed off).

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Thanks for all the recommendations! Now that I've reached... Faction War... in the Planescape Modules, I'm going to polish that off and then see which one of these suggestions seems most promising.

I'm greatly tempted to give Fading Suns a look, see what they changed, since I was a big fan of the original Fading Suns and contributed a bit to that review by reviewing the Alien Weirdos(tm) sourcebook alongside the main reviewer's work.

Magnetic North
Dec 15, 2008

Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

Hypnobeard posted:

Wonder if you could solve the Decker Problem by treating the player group as an entity and giving it a Decker ability score and whatever other stuff you can think of that applies to the group as a whole (equipment/gun access, vehicle support, medical support, cop avoidance/government wheel greasing, etc), and just use that whenever the appropriate roll is necessary. "Oh, you want to hack the security system? Roll your Decker support."

The actual values could even be (simply) derived from elements of the PCs mechanics so it's easy to swap characters if necessary.

My imagined fix was to imagine realms as impressions of each other: The material realm bordered by the astral plane and augmented reality on either side. There's a core set of rules governing them somehow, but each problem can be attacked in each realm. If you need to open a security door, I envision at least two ways to do something: damaging and non-damaging. The hacker can use computer stuff with a few different computer methods that might make the door sluggish or become stuck open, the street sam can physically try to batter the door down or mechanically or electronically override it, and a magic user could use a spell to try and blast it open or potentially activate it like an equivalent of the Knock D&D spell. Now, I've complained about 4E's concealed homogeneity before, so this sounds bad, but the key part would be to have a diverse set of challenges and that certain challenges will be easier or harder for some types than others. For instance, perhaps blasting open a security door with magic is harder because magic has a lower effect on highly processed manufactured objects like doors, cars and vehicles while hacking has a comparatively easier time. Or perhaps an inherent risking limited similar to Drain could happen in AR-level hacking. Another example might be a group of guards: a magic user might charm or confuse them, a hacker can overload their smartguns with wireless commands to eject their magazines, and the street sam simply shoots them first. *points to forehead* I think it would be fine if they were still quite asymmetric, but the idea of a lack of 'rules content parity' is what I was hoping to avoid; there are so many more rules for the magic in the base book 4E book it's not even funny.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

PurpleXVI posted:

Probably the best way to handle "action hacking" would be to have a sci-fi world so IoT'd that there's always something for them to do. Fighting in a corridor? You can make a vending machine go berserk, trigger the sprinklers, turn off the lights or cause a cleaning drone to come zooming out and bump into enemies. In a car chase? You can deploy bollards out of the road, make another car's auto-steering go haywire, confuse the enemy GPS, turn on their auto-driving, etc.

Just treat it like Science Magic of some sort, and have a bunch of effects they can call on X times per scene, or using Hacking Mana(running out of either means that the exploit they were using has been patched, or they've been blocked, so they need to set up a new VPN or find more glitches, etc.), as long as they can explain how it happens and it's funny.

I got an idea of a cyberpunk-ish setting that's pretty much this, Mega Man Battle Network also comes to mind. The setting is so Internet of poo poo that one enemy type is a smartfridge that's been neglected both physically and digitally to the point that it's a vector of filthy viral warfare from both its poorly secured software and the rancid food inside that it tactically spills out from the door.

You can always have the world's software paradigm just conveniently happen to be what suits the gameplay. Maybe actually important systems are air-gapped often enough that a hacker needs to be on site to access them, that nanomachine lassos or wireless signals that can subvert hardware have a limited range, and so on. poo poo changes often enough IRL it doesn't seem that weird.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Ghost Leviathan posted:

You can always have the world's software paradigm just conveniently happen to be what suits the gameplay. Maybe actually important systems are air-gapped often enough that a hacker needs to be on site to access them, that nanomachine lassos or wireless signals that can subvert hardware have a limited range, and so on. poo poo changes often enough IRL it doesn't seem that weird.

One good "compromise" I heard at one point, I forget where it was, was a world where there was so much transmission spam that you could use wireless hacks... but they only had a limited range because beyond a certain distance there were so many other transmissions that they attenuated and got lost in the noise.

Chakan
Mar 30, 2011

sebmojo posted:

has someone done nights black agents? alternatively, against the darkmaster (essentially rolemaster but with a few of the edges filed off).

NBA has been done a couple years ago. Looking this up reminded me to read through the dracula dossier f&f.

goatface
Dec 5, 2007

I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.


Grimey Drawer
Make hacking a side feature that allows all characters to roll a check before a mission and receive [success] actions. Then you pick your action loadout from a list and you can spend them later in the mission on targets to disable, confuse, distract, damage etc.

Maybe the hacker class gets to add riders on things, or play more than one card at a time and refresh their hand if they get a few minutes to rest somewhere with network access.

E- I think I just invented Vancian hacking. Now I feel dirty.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Since hacking is typically based on writing an exploit in advance of when you want to deploy it (tossing together quick hacks with Kali Linux running on a Raspberry Pi after wardailing a wi-fi hotspot aside), I've occasionally thought about modelling hacking as D&D's Vancian casting. You prepare your hacks over hours, then deploy them in seconds when you need to.

The problem with that often comes down to the fact that there's not much do with a hack. Sleep and Fireball can take out a goblin with a sword, but owning someone's email and reading their personal correspondence typically isn't going to do much to the man trying to shoot you with a gun. You can make up reasons like ridiculous levels of IoT, but I fear it'll easily become contrived.

In terms of pure elegance and modelling the experience and narrative role, Night Black's Agents making much of hacking into simply yet another Investigative skill that you tag to say "I learn something about the conspiracy" is certainly convenient. It doesn't make playing a hacker have much mechanical bite, but it's very realistic and cinematic in many ways.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

PurpleXVI posted:

One good "compromise" I heard at one point, I forget where it was, was a world where there was so much transmission spam that you could use wireless hacks... but they only had a limited range because beyond a certain distance there were so many other transmissions that they attenuated and got lost in the noise.

I was actually thinking something like that. Especially if you're trying to brute-force hack something.

Come to think of it, probably the most relevant recent game that incorporates hacking and info warfare into combat is LANCER.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
yeah, LANCER basically handwaves the IoT question with paracausal technobabble; it doesn't really make sense to worry about "how come i've got unprotected wifi" when in the same setting there exist, just for one example, malicious light patterns that can paralyze any sentient mind, human or otherwise, if you look at them.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
It's also outright said that it's military info-warfare and you got a whole thing of jamming and encryption and decryption and so on. Fun mix of handwaved sci-fi magic and plausible analogues to real life warfare.

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


Ah the good old Parrot, although this is a less deadly version than in the original story that posited vision based cognitohazards. In that one, it was a pattern that could be spray painted on a wall that if you looked at it without protection you would die or be horribly disabled if you only saw part of it. Pretty dystopian future where cans of spraypaint were illegal.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

LatwPIAT posted:

Since hacking is typically based on writing an exploit in advance of when you want to deploy it (tossing together quick hacks with Kali Linux running on a Raspberry Pi after wardailing a wi-fi hotspot aside), I've occasionally thought about modelling hacking as D&D's Vancian casting. You prepare your hacks over hours, then deploy them in seconds when you need to.

The problem with that often comes down to the fact that there's not much do with a hack. Sleep and Fireball can take out a goblin with a sword, but owning someone's email and reading their personal correspondence typically isn't going to do much to the man trying to shoot you with a gun. You can make up reasons like ridiculous levels of IoT, but I fear it'll easily become contrived.
I think you're throwing away a good idea because you're falling to one of the root assumptions that leads to the wizard problem in the first place. Since a wizard's only hero-level capability is Vancian Casting then to avoid being sidelined they need Vancian Casting appropriate to every situation. But most pure casters in classical fiction aren't protagonists, they're villains (where their overreliance on magic is often their downfall) or maguffins/deus ex machina that also happen to have lines. Protagonists casters usually aren't "is a Wizard", they're people with a wide variety of heroic skills who can also cast magic (or that is literally all they can do at which point we're into the difference between sidelining a character in a story vs sidelining a player's only expressive output which is a whole other thing).

If all a character brings to the team is casting dozens of one-shot hacks then their solution/contribution to encountering a man with a gun needs to be once-shot combat hacks which means you need to be able to hack his gun. If your game's hacker characters have a wide variety of skills and abilities and also 5 or 6 vancian hacks loaded into their deck then their solution to encountering a man with a gun can be to shoot him with their own, much better gun, and then go through his pockets for the material components to cast "clone passkey".

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Kwyndig posted:

Ah the good old Parrot, although this is a less deadly version than in the original story that posited vision based cognitohazards. In that one, it was a pattern that could be spray painted on a wall that if you looked at it without protection you would die or be horribly disabled if you only saw part of it. Pretty dystopian future where cans of spraypaint were illegal.
Worse, people had to go back to a text-based internet!

Splicer posted:

I think you're throwing away a good idea because you're falling to one of the root assumptions that leads to the wizard problem in the first place. Since a wizard's only hero-level capability is Vancian Casting then to avoid being sidelined they need Vancian Casting appropriate to every situation. But most pure casters in classical fiction aren't protagonists, they're villains (where their overreliance on magic is often their downfall) or maguffins/deus ex machina that also happen to have lines. Protagonists casters usually aren't "is a Wizard", they're people with a wide variety of heroic skills who can also cast magic (or that is literally all they can do at which point we're into the difference between sidelining a character in a story vs sidelining a player's only expressive output which is a whole other thing).

If all a character brings to the team is casting dozens of one-shot hacks then their solution/contribution to encountering a man with a gun needs to be once-shot combat hacks which means you need to be able to hack his gun. If your game's hacker characters have a wide variety of skills and abilities and also 5 or 6 vancian hacks loaded into their deck then their solution to encountering a man with a gun can be to shoot him with their own, much better gun, and then go through his pockets for the material components to cast "clone passkey".
Cyberpunk 2077 (though not a TTRPG) does this well, I think, although it happens in, well, 2077 in a period and region where pretty much every antagonist will have substantial amounts of chrome. Old school Net Dives :tm: wherein you are plugging into an actual gatdam alternate reality space while taking an ice bath or what-not are rare spirit journeys.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

LatwPIAT posted:

The problem with that often comes down to the fact that there's not much do with a hack. Sleep and Fireball can take out a goblin with a sword, but owning someone's email and reading their personal correspondence typically isn't going to do much to the man trying to shoot you with a gun. You can make up reasons like ridiculous levels of IoT, but I fear it'll easily become contrived.

"You've gained access to the security guard's emails and know what sort of furry porn he's been commissioning. With a single powerful word, the name of his favourite artist, he's struck by such deep embarrassment that he keels over, unconscious."

I feel like sufficient levels of ridiculousness can theoretically replicate many of the wizardly effects you want, but yes, it will get somewhat silly but... c'mon, don't we all need a bit of Pink Mohawk in our lives?

Nickoten
Oct 16, 2005

Now there'll be some quiet in this town.

My Lovely Horse posted:

Thing is what do you do with the players who want to be the cool antisocial Decker who hangs out seperate from the party and does his own thing in the matrix.

although followup: is it the same as you do with the players who want to be the cool wizard who solves the problem with a single spell from the back row

Someone should make a hacking-themed activity book for the decker to play with while everyone else is in combat.

goatface
Dec 5, 2007

I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.


Grimey Drawer
Kevin, if you can finish that sudoku before the party gets through this combat, you'll have successfully hacked the door controls for this entire floor.

trapstar
Jun 30, 2012

Yo tengo un par de ideas.
Gary McKinnon would make a fantastic decker.

Thanlis
Mar 17, 2011

Kwyndig posted:

Ah the good old Parrot, although this is a less deadly version than in the original story that posited vision based cognitohazards. In that one, it was a pattern that could be spray painted on a wall that if you looked at it without protection you would die or be horribly disabled if you only saw part of it. Pretty dystopian future where cans of spraypaint were illegal.

For reference:

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm

https://www.nature.com/articles/44964

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-of-darkness/

They’re a bit laboured but short.

The Deleter
May 22, 2010

Nessus posted:

Worse, people had to go back to a text-based internet!

"Create an ASCII art version of the parrot without accidentally killing myself" challenge: failed

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

goatface posted:

Kevin, if you can finish that sudoku before the party gets through this combat, you'll have successfully hacked the door controls for this entire floor.
It's like the library encounter in Eyes of the Stone Thief!

evil magic books that fascinate you with their content and you the player have to grab the nearest book and read it, every page you get to roll a save

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

The Deleter posted:

"Create an ASCII art version of the parrot without accidentally killing myself" challenge: failed

They list a minimum resolution in the first story, so you might not be able to display it in ASCII?

MuscaDomestica
Apr 27, 2017

Combat hacking in Shadowrun would have been so good if it was something like one roll but the game makes things too complicated how you have to find the gun, get past the gun's firewall and then get the permission to do something with the gun and then finally a fourth roll to actually get the gun do something you want. Lots of chances of failure and still not as useful as just shooting them. The computer RPG did a great job having hackers boost other PCs in combat by giving lots of extra information, This gave them something to do that helped everyone in the middle of combat without having to do a whole bunch of extra rolls. They added these rules to fifth edition in the second matrix book... They then ignored it and went back to the limited usefulness hacking in Sixth edition.

Hel
Oct 9, 2012

Jokatgulm is tedium.
Jokatgulm is pain.
Jokatgulm is suffering.

LatwPIAT posted:

The problem with that often comes down to the fact that there's not much do with a hack. Sleep and Fireball can take out a goblin with a sword, but owning someone's email and reading their personal correspondence typically isn't going to do much to the man trying to shoot you with a gun. You can make up reasons like ridiculous levels of IoT, but I fear it'll easily become contrived.
In the real world there isn't really much you can do by owning some low level staffers email, it's why it's often used as a way to move deeper into an organization. Likewise you can have a ingame email show weakpoints in an organizations tech, maybe because the staff keeps reporting certain tings to the building management that is never handled or because the company wide email about how the the next equipment upgrade is still 6 months in the future so try and keep the old stuff running until then , so you know which of your premade scripts( that do mostly the same thing, but work on different manufacturers/ models) you can then use, because CPU time is at a premium in combat and you can't just run all of them.

Honestly I think you could treat hackers like necromancers with some success. Have them need a resource to actually use their powers, which starts low at the beginning and then snowballs as the mission goes on. So you spend downtime on either specific hacks, or to generate a weakpoint resource which then limits your hacks, probably with by tier instead of spending them. Taking out enemies and hacking their comms for cryptographic keys or spending a moment with an unsecured terminal/power box let's you open up more weakpoints and enable more/ higher tier immediate action hacks. This can also fit the narrative, where you can have the hacker save the day with something they found in the enemy database, just when everyone else is starting to run out of resources.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

MuscaDomestica posted:

Combat hacking in Shadowrun would have been so good if it was something like one roll but the game makes things too complicated how you have to find the gun, get past the gun's firewall and then get the permission to do something with the gun and then finally a fourth roll to actually get the gun do something you want. Lots of chances of failure and still not as useful as just shooting them. The computer RPG did a great job having hackers boost other PCs in combat by giving lots of extra information, This gave them something to do that helped everyone in the middle of combat without having to do a whole bunch of extra rolls. They added these rules to fifth edition in the second matrix book... They then ignored it and went back to the limited usefulness hacking in Sixth edition.
I don't exactly understand Shadowrun hacking in 4th-5th edition myself, but it seemed like updating the tech for 4th bothered a lot of people because they couldn't quite understand what you couldn't and couldn't do with AR realtime hacking.

Having to make multiple rolls sounds reasonable if the result is instantly killing the enemy by making them shoot themself, but I'm not even sure if that's supposed to be on the table.

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Magnetic North
Dec 15, 2008

Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

Halloween Jack posted:

I don't exactly understand Shadowrun hacking in 4th-5th edition myself, but it seemed like updating the tech for 4th bothered a lot of people because they couldn't quite understand what you couldn't and couldn't do with AR realtime hacking.

Having to make multiple rolls sounds reasonable if the result is instantly killing the enemy by making them shoot themself, but I'm not even sure if that's supposed to be on the table.

Oh, god, that was another thing that was annoying about AR hacking: of course, you still only got one initiative round! So the mage can go three times, the street sam can go three times, the adept can go three times, you can go three times but only in hot VR! Otherwise your slow rear end is stuck in meat space like any chump. If instead it gave you "two AR actions" that you couldn't use to shoot or whatever, wouldn't that have been six hundred times more rad?

I tried to solve this by making a hacker who was also a street sam with wired reflexes. And cyberlimbs because they were considerably more usable in 3e. I don't know if they were better, but they were tough to justify before.

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