How do people handle matrix combat between hackers in their games? Hacker v. system and hacker v. ICE are governed by the rules well, but there’s nothing about two characters slinging code at each other, beyond just treating their decks as systems, or something.
Been having a similar problem with trying to hack character PANs as well. I feel like it should take less than 2 or 3 rolls for the hacker to do something flavorful and interesting like disabling someone’s cyberarm in combat. Any custom move solutions?
Given that you can take someone out with one roll (and maybe an interfere) in physical combat, you should be able to do the same in matrix combat.
I would treat the deck as a system and have the defending hacker roll to interfere. In that way it would work the same as physical combat.
In the case of PANs, I would also treat the piece of cyberware as a system. If cyberware has wireless networks that can be hacked, this is probably something that should be discussed at the start of the game so that players can choose cyberware and options with that in mind. Especially being more liberal with +encrypted tags.
(This is not intended as a definitive ruling! Others please feel free to chime in!)
My rule knowledge is currently not very good but from my experience with other pbta games i would think that if you do something covered by basic moves almost and the only difference is “in the matrix” a stat substitution might work good.
If you to take by force something but in the matrix you might roll take by force with matrix-stat instead. Thus could be easily added via custom
Move.
The idea is to not focus to much on skill/task but on the fictional effect.
However this might be not suitable to the sprawl and i just dont see it. If so then ignore me or – i’d appreciate – tell me why.
Yup. Usually this would be a Synth swap. So if you wanted more of a mano a mano feel than mutual hacking, you could go with mix it up (etc) with Synth or Mind instead of meat, depending on whether you imagined it at more dependent on tech or cognitive abilities. This is a great opportunity to make a statement in your game about humanity vs technology.
I’ve been using Mind for combat between two hackers (battle of wits and all that), and Synth for hacking into personal systems. I just wanted to get some input as to what other people have done with it.
Might this be something that will be tackled in a later supplement?
Also, I’ve been thinking of an interesting option in my game: cyberbrains. It would provide the benefit of preventing death regardless of the results of any Acquire Agricultural Property roll (as long as the hardware isn’t damaged, of course), but make memories hackable (for good and bad). How might I implement this to ensure it doesn’t make death in my setting cheap?
“Disabling someone’s cyberarm in combat”… or more fun, the “stop hitting yourself” option… 🙂
Re: Cyberbrains
Make it all about consequences. You have to provide a new body after all and that probably comes with a price tag, debts, history, etc.
However it shouldnt be too frequent, so maybe some risk should stay.
I figured that I’d make it so the body could be resuscitated as long as the brain isn’t destroyed, but requires a high cost to do so (moreso than usual medical care), and leaves ones memories at risk of being hacked.
I didn’t want to necessarily strip away a person’s body, if only because it would have different effects depending on the character (a hacker might be completely unaffected, while a hunter will be essentially forced to retire). So I think that making them owned, or having other complications would be better.
Ah, okay, that makes it less ripe of story-based consequences. I instantly went full Takeshi Kovacs (from book Altered Carbon) when I read Cyberbrains. But I have to admit that is not the usual, Neuromancer-inspired Cyberpunk.
The Megacorp behind the tech is going to be a major element of the plot, so I’m trying to get that low-life feel while injecting a technology that generally pushes things into the Transhuman genre. So while there will be mental backups and AI (based on human brains), there won’t be forks and rapid body-switches. And this Megacorp’s unmitigated access to every (legal) cyberbrain’s online backups is a large part of the story I’m planning to tell.
So I’m trying to pick a nice medium between the two, on the cutting edge of what constitutes the high-tech low-life of cyberpunk.
Those are both good ideas, Chris!
Cyberbrains are definitely cyberpunk tech (Ghost in the Shell and the Takashi Kovacs novels), so it’s a matter of how you use it to evoke the themes you want in your game. I would consider making a custom move to replace AAP that offers bad options like memory or personality loss tags because of corrupted data. That would really get at the humanity/technology interface angle of cyberpunk.
I’m basically using the cyberbrain element much in the same way other cyberpunk settings use identification. Everyone who has one is either part of a massive backup database maintained by a megacorp, or is using an illegal model with backup elsewhere. If you’re on that system, then you have immortality at the cost of your mind and memories being held hostage by a megacorp. If you’re not, you hold illegal ‘ware in your head that a megacorp would pay a lot to destroy all evidence of.
I like how cyberware is often used as a way to make a character more hardy. Enhanced skin can make a character bulletproof, enhanced bones can make a character capable of leaping off buildings without injury. In the case of the cyberbrain, I’m making it so that the character’s head is more hardy to injury. Even with hackers being able to edit and format your memories, cyberbrains can restore from backup on the fly, making a lobotomy little more than a temporary inconvenience (mostly because I think the visual image of a guy being dropped momentarily by a mental brain formatting and standing back up minutes later after a data restoration is an evocative idea).
Illegal models will be “safer” in the sense that you have control over your own backup, but with the added risk that your implant is now illegal if noticed. Similar to the freedom of having no SIN in Shadowrun. Of course, having no cyberbrain at all will still be an option.
One element that is bringing me problems is forking, as I’m trying to avoid copies of people all over the place. I liked the idea of cyberdeck programs having chips that make it more difficult to copy than mere software, so in my setting the cyberbrain will have a chip that acts as a unique key to decrypting and managing the brain’s data. People can’t just hijack and resleeve into another person’s body (though they can move them around like drones if they tweak the system enough). Finally, a flaw in the architecture makes it so that any time that a person meets their own fork, their cyberbrain has an episode that always results in the death of that copy and frying of that cyberbrain. Whether this is actually a flaw or an embedded safety is one of many plothooks for my players to explore.
I really like all the thought that has gone j to these posts. Touching upon cyber brains and memory backups is a very slippery slop in many cases, especially in regards to game-rules, but I love how it is being treated as more story relative.
I think memory backups (and artificial life) is where cyberpunk starts to slip into tranhuman scifi for me, which is why neither are explicitly part of The Sprawl. Both are mentioned tangentially in the final text though.
I think the divide between transhuman fiction and cyberpunk has less to do with the tech being portrayed, and more to do with what the tech achieves in the setting. Transhuman fiction is all about societies problems being solved by technology, while cyberpunk tends to be about how technology inevitably gets used for oppressive and selfish desires. In a transhuman setting, cyberbrains will be portrayed as an end to death, and artificial life the next evolution in existence. In cyberpunk, cyberbrains are portrayed as a means of slavery or control, and artificial life a threat to the position of humanity as apex predator.
Besides, some of the best cyberpunk fiction has played with these things. Both Ghost in the Shell AND Blade Runner feature mind artificial life and brains to a large extent, as did Armitage III and Chappie (and I wouldn’t consider any of them to be transhuman, per se).
That’s definitely true, they just feel a bit more optimistic to me.
Depends on how you use it. Immortality seems far less optimistic when it means that slavery can continue past the point of death. Artificial intelligence is far less optimistic when it threatens to replace humanity, or humanity treats them as machines.
Hell, I think a fully-immersive virtual internet is pretty optimistic, but separating that from cyberpunk is practically an impossibility.
Again, totally true. Technology is just a tool, after all. I just noted the point at which I start to make associations with a different genre.
These are certainly technologies that are available for use in cyberpunk. I’ve used them frequently myself.