Is there any consensus on how awake to the real world a hacker is when they are jacked into the matrix? Are they able to communicate as normal through compads or just talk out loud, or are they supposed to be in an comatose state and not able to communicate to the outside world in any way.
I can see being locked into the matrix with no outside senses being a turn off for doing too much hacking, especially in the middle of a mission.
Well, you can always have camera looking at your meat body and look at it from matrix. Same, commlink surely supports texting, and I do not see any reason why hacker jacked into matrix can’t multi-text with his team, his virtual girlfriend and his day job boss
This is definitely a question for your table.
My take is that unless they take steps such as proximity alarms and cameras they can switch to, they’re pretty helpless. As far as team coms, I assume that if they can hack with a thought they can also chat on comms as well, if for no other reason than to keep the hacker involved in the in-character talk. I see talking by thought while hacking being as distracting as meat-chat while doing such.
I assume they’re completely unaware of their surroundings – through their own senses, at least. But as others have said, when jacked in, they’re part of a massive information network, so communicating with teammates through that network is little different to those teammates communicating with each other via their less-immersive tech.
And if they’re smart and/or paranoid enough, they’ll likely have some way of monitoring their own physical surroundings, giving themselves a chance to disconnect when someone comes knocking…
In terms of disconnecting, most classics seem to aim that while you can trigger it as any command, quite fast (faster than the real world), the process of jacking out and coming to senses is in fact a slow one, and may take, depending on a source, tens of seconds to several minutes (leaving you a bit dizzy due to suddenly being back in a slow physical meat sack). So I would assume it may be faster/safer in many cases for a hacker to respond to a threat without leaving matrix (e.g. shoot a turret gun or drive a vehicle he is in) than jack out
I wouldn’t have a hacker get messed with in real-space very often or else it becomes an annoyance. It should be a possible threat that might happen, but once it’s “a thing” it can go from ominous to obnoxious. Even so, I’d reward a player who took cool in-game steps to add to the fiction by preparing for such a possibility. Maybe they create or purchase a peripheral that pulls them out in the event of unauthorized visits during a run (perhaps a milspec device that protects a hacker from “translation fatigue” by soothing the process with drugs?). Or they hire a guard or have automated protection. Endless possibilities, really.
Even in more crunchy, gear-heavy games I gloss over the little things that interrupt the fun, such as penalizing a hacker with an inability to talk to their team on a run. Being able to do so just makes sense.
If I interrupted a hacker into jackout while the rest of the team is inside firefighting, it would not be an actual attack. More of a threat. A conversation he’s unable to logout of. A drama move.
I assume table trust and a desire to see a great story unfold is a massive boon, if not necessary.