| From: | marc.renouf@******.com (Renouf, Marc A.) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | The speed of decking |
| Date: | Tue, 4 Oct 2005 11:37:53 -0400 |
> From: shadowrn-bounces@*****.dumpshock.com
> [mailto:shadowrn-bounces@*****.dumpshock.com] On Behalf Of Ray Macey
> Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 4:55 AM
>
> In all my years playing Shadowrun, I've never, not once, seen
> a decker get in to a system and achieve their goals in 20
> minutes.
20 minutes real time, or 20 minutes game time? Because I'm
currently playing a decker in a campaign (imagine that, I actually get
to *play* for once...) who can be pretty quick. I usually do at least a
little decking at each session (though not always). During the last
session, we had a drop go badly and got burned by a Johnson. We had
placed the goods to trade in a secure storage facility (basically like a
safety deposit box at a UPS Store) and had given the Johnson the key.
Once we were safely away, we would send him the facility location and
the box number. He chose to jump us instead (presumably to capture at
least one of us and get the information the old-fashioned way -
torture). We put a kink in his plans by getting away (though one
character died in the process).
So the goods are still safe in the secure box, but we no longer
have the key. The solution was simple: rent another box at the same
storage facility (with its own key), hack into their system, swap the
key codes for the two boxes, and take the new key to open the old box.
And it worked like a charm. How long did it take? In game time, my
system operations were thus:
Logon to LTG (I was decking from a legal access point at a
motel)
Locate Host (I knew the company and they advertise, this one was
easy)
Logon to Host (once I found the host controlling the particular
facility we were interested in, I jumped in. I didn't bother to Analyze
the Host or do anything else of the sort. I immediately set about
forging myself an accounts manager userID, which required a...)
Validate Passcode (at a +2 modifier due to the nature of the
extra capabilities afforded by the account. Successful in this, a
number of basic system operations come for free, because of the nature
of the privileges granted to the account forged. This led to...)
2x Locate File (no test required - to find the accounts
belonging to the two boxes whose numbers we knew)
2x Edit File (no test required - to swap the key IDs such that
the new key opened the old box and vice versa. No ScrambleIC was
present on the files - guess those boxes weren't so secure after all,
but you get what you pay for, neh? I then deleted my own forged account
userID - no test required - and perfomed a...)
Graceful Logoff. Boom, I'm out.
Elapsed time in the Matrix: Well, I have Response Increase 2 and
basically get an average of 3 complex Actions per turn, so even if I did
extremely poorly on the Interrogation Operations (which I didn't since
one was on an LTG and the other two were free) it would have taken me 19
complex actions - or about 19 seconds.
Elapsed time in the session: I made exactly 5 system test rolls,
and both I and the gamemaster know the rules well enough to not have to
look anything up. I had a plan and knew what I was looking for and what
I was going to do when I found it. I intentionally kept my tests on the
system to a minimum to avoid complications with IC (the gamemaster later
revealed that I'd jacked out with a Security Tally of 3 - i.e. ghosted
the system) and there was no decryption of ScrambleIC necessary
(apparently the UPS Store were cheapskates when it came to actual
security) so the total elapsed time was under 5 minutes. By the time
the guy playing the sammy got back from his smoke break, I had the key
cards swapped and the rest of the party could do the dangerous work of
going to the facility and recovering the goods.
> And even if I had, I'm not sure I'd be happy with
> it anyway, because 20 minutes is a long time to wait when
> you're in the middle of a firefight and need the decker to
> unlock a door for you.
If your decker is taking 20 minutes to unlock a door during a
firefight, it's because he doesn't like you and is pulling Null Ops to
make a point. I was in and out in under 20 *seconds*, not 20 minutes.
And even in Matrix runs that were more involved or required cybercombat
(which my character avoids like the plague) I still didn't take 20
minutes of Matrix time, and very rarely more than half an hour of
session time. And when I'm taking that much session time, it's usually
because the party as a whole is trying to decide how to frag with a
system or what to search for in real time, so the other players are
involved even if they're not rolling dice.
> YMMV, but for most people, I think the above is
> a fairly accurate description of how they felt
> about deckers and decking.
Yes, my mileage varies significantly from yours.
Marc
