Why is hacking such an involved subsystem?
Feels sprt of counterintuitive to have the brief elegant Move structure… and then to have the Matrix be a whole other mechanical half of the game. Does it bog down as much in play as it looks to me? Has anyone stripped it out in favor of something simpler?
Not for me. Most hacking sequences for me average 3 to 5 rolls.
Jesse Burneko But almost nothing else in the game is that involved. It feels contrary to most PbtA design.
Breaking into a physical facility takes about the same number of rolls, maybe a few more. With similar beats: Entry, a security threat, the objective, a twist or response, escape. Doesn’t matter if it’s physical space or cyber space.
What Jesse said. The deck and program mechanics are a bit involved, but that’s the genre – a mix of personal skill and technology. In terms of simplification you could do away with the technology, if you wanted to change the genre out to just being hard core black hat hackers instead of the mix of man and machine.
Robert Sanderson I know it suits the genre, but it’s less than ideal design to have a solid chunk of the mechanics tied to a very limited subset of characters. It would be like if The Driver pulled out the full sheet of Chase Moves whenever they hopped in their ride.
You can do genre authenticity simply.
Remi Permann, I’m fairly certain that Hamish at one point said that if he ever did a 2nd edition that he would simplify those rules.
I’ve personally found that it does slow things down a bit… but certainly nothing like Shadowrun 🙂
You should try hacking in Shadowrun…Then you’ll appreciate the system in The Sprawl. Coming from Shadowrun I find the systems in The Sprawl to be efficient and fast.
I agree they’re unnecessary, or at least could be handled with two basic moves (Melt ICE and Manipulate Systems). They’re also exclusive to one playbook unless you take a cross-book advance 🙁
However, in practice, they give the hacker or PC who cross-booked to get hacking moves something cool to do in most action sequences and runs.