This weekend my group finished their first action phase. After a violent fight, the team was able to retrieved their target, but with some consecuences. Most of the team end the mission injured and the hacker was captured by some corporate white hats during the run, and his mind and body got separated.
After going through the getting paid and retailation, we discussed about the fate of the hacker, if the team will try to rescue him or if the player will create a new character. The player offered an interesting alternative: playing his character as a ghost-in-the-machine type of character. His will mind will navigate the sprawl free from his body and with no chance to return (fro now). This was particulary appealing to him as he is interested on exploring the nature of the AIs on the setting, and how corporations are making advancements on making software from the human mind.
Fictionaly speaking is very a interesting possibility but we are not exactly sure how to handle it mechanically. Should we create a whole new playbook (Im thinking something like the Ghost playbook from Blades in the Dark? or shoul we use the fact that he is not on his body as fictional positioning to apply certain moves (not able to use mix it up, for example) but keeping the Hack playbook
Thoughts?
My Sourcerer playbook from Necropolis does this. You can either just have him keep playing his Hacker and assume he’s just permanently logged in until something changes that but if you want to look at my playbook it gives a lot more options for dealing with AI and ICE in cyberspace as characters.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jKSKMJNF7pQO-71gRRxGZnLfaYExGOx5y9TKx9Rrldw
Just look at the Digitize The Soul move and assume that has already happened.
wow, that´s really nice, thanks Jesse Burneko
Least amount of work would be to give the hacker the Drone Jockey move (or suggest they take it as an advancement) or just let them build out a Drone.
Let them use the drone(s) to interact physically with the environment. They could have a tiny one that could ride shotgun with another PC or a large one for when they need to F* things up.
Either would work fine!
I would start by looking at the Hacker playbook. How much of that no longer applies? If it’s a lot, you might make a new one, if it’s not much, you might stick with it.
You might find that as you play you revisit the question.
Omari Brooks’s drone option is also good!
Totally, the drones idea sounds really clever. During the legwork phase his character hacked into a security/survillance system and took control of several drones. Later, he use those sames drones to swarm one of the enemies. Using the drones to interact with the world in the current situation sounds like the next logical step. We will play to find out a bit more before going into game hacking territory 😉