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• Nov 12, 2023

  The Great Tabletop Hackathon: Shadowrun 5th Edition, Part 2

  

  We set our parameters in the last post, so let’s do the actual run in this one.

  Run Summary

  Our decker enters with her team, and they get past the reception as usual. This time I decide to do things a little bit differently and go for spoofing peripheral devices over trying to control them from inside the host. This seems to be the correct way to do it in SR5, judging from the examples in the Matrix chapter. The Control Device action is only used for things that would require a conventional skill test if done in the physical world, like shooting a turret’s gun.

  First, the camera. It’s visible both in the real and in the Matrix, since running silent would harm its functionality. Ms. Decker always prefers to use the “quiet” Hack on the Fly action, since that’s her specialty. The camera and other devices are tied to the office’s host, so they use the host’s ratings instead of their own to resist. But when Ms. Decker places a mark on a device, she automatically places a mark on the host as well.

  She manages to place a mark on the camera, and therefore on the host. This means she can dispense with silent running from this point on, since the Patrol IC can’t tell the mark she has right now was illegally obtained and will no longer try to raise an alarm. She uses a Spoof action on the camera, disabling it. Our tally sits at 6. We do not want it to reach 40.

  Ms. Decker knows there is an alarm, but it’s not immediately visible as an icon on the Matrix. Unlike the camera, the alarm is running silent. A Matrix Perception action reveals that there is indeed a hidden icon nearby. A couple more attempts at it reveal the alarm’s icon. None of these perception tests accrues Overwatch, since they’re not tied to the “illegal” attributes.

  She tries to mark the alarm, but fails! I spend 1 Edge to roll an additional 2 dice (her Edge score) on this, and get 2 extra hits. From what I understand, a tie here isn’t a victory for either side, so ms. Decker still fails to mark the alarm but the system does not detect her. Whew! The next attempt succeeds, but both sides roll really well. The spoof attempt succeeds handily. Our tally sits at 17 after all of that.

  Ms. Decker disconnects from the host at this point since she needs to move with the physical team. But since she does not reboot her deck, all of the marks she placed remain on the host. Her Overwatch Tally also stays at 17.

  The team enters the records room and begins the physical search. Ms. Decker spots a physical jackpoint here and uses that. She’s inside the host again, and now she is able to see all of its remaining files and devices automatically since none of them are silent. This includes the evidence she’s after, which is only accessible from this jackpoint.

  Downloading a file is automatic, but it requires a mark on it first. She manages to mark and download the evidence, and then decides to go for the money. I rule that this will require marking the account file and then editing it to transfer the money. The marking goes smoothly, the editing runs into a tied test first, succeeding on the second attempt. Fortunately only the marking accrued Overwatch, which at this point sits at 23.

  Finally, still jacked into that physical access point, Ms. Decker attempts to mark and spoof the exit door to unlock it. The marking succeeds, and the spoofing gives me a bit of stress as again the first attempt ties and the second one succeeds. Good rolls all around here, so our final Overwatch tally is a dangerous 37.

  Our hacker has time to safely jack out, and the team gets to walk away through the now-unlocked door. All mission goals have been accomplished. She waits until they’re out to reboot her deck, since that would erase all of her marks.

  Total time: 31 minutes.

  Analysis

  31 minutes is something I consider fast, comparable to CP 2020 and CP RED. It’s also about as easy to slice up into manageable chunks as CP RED’s and SR 4’s runs were.

  However this was a near-perfect run, with our decker remaining undetected throughout the whole thing despite a couple of close calls. If we had been detected at any point there would have been cybercombat and things would have taken longer.

  Unlike most of the other games we’ve looked at so far, it’s impossible to simply kill all the ice, since each one a hacker destroys is just going to be relaunched at the start of the next turn. The occasional assurances by the book that you can rely on brute force alone to smash through a host ring a bit hollow, since that seems like it leads to combat sooner even with good rolls from the hacker.

  Had she activated the host’s ice, Ms. Decker would need to spend actions to hide instead of just attacking. That Patrol IC would be trying to find her every turn and she’d take a universal -2 dice penalty for silent running. I could see this maybe doubling our run time, but I’m not going to count that as an official timing. It’s just a guesstimate.

  Even with this near-perfect run, we ended up with a tally of 37. With even slightly better rolls from the host in a couple of places we’d have hit 40. This wouldn’t have meant instant death since we’re inside a host, but it still would have placed 3 marks on Ms. Decker at once, and let the host see her and start activating IC. She sure hopes the team doesn’t get into a firefight on the way out, because if she has to do anything else Matrix-related to help then she is definitely going to draw the ire of Overwatch.

• Nov 9, 2023

  The Great Tabletop Hackathon: Shadowrun 5th Edition, Part 1

  

  For this post we’ll be taking a look at Shadowrun 5th Edition, originally published in 2013. The book we’re looking at is the Master Index Edition published in 2016, which is largely the same but incorporates some errata and includes an index of supplementary material.

  I’ll confess I have some reluctance to tackle this specific system, because its return to expensive cyberdecks was part of what made me kinda stop paying attention to Shadowrun at all. But I’ll read it with as open a mind as I can manage and give its rules a fair shake just like I gave all the others.

  One thing I notice is that they have switched back to the more “conversational” style employed by SR1, which makes it much harder for me to understand the rules. It’s more of a problem here than it was in SR 1 because there are a lot more rules and concepts they’re trying to get across.

  Setting Overview

  Visually, the Shadowrun 5th Edition Matrix is a complete return to The Full Gibson Experience. An infinite black plane criss-crossed by shimmering silver lines, upon which swim thousands and thousands of icons representing small connected devices and users. Way up above in the sky float the giant geometric shapes of corporate hosts.

  Descriptions focus almost entirely on the visual, with the technical bits boiling down to “it’s everywhere” and “no one fully knows how it works”. “Civilians” still use commlinks like they did in 4th edition, and “smart” devices that are currently online around them show up as icons in augmented reality. The descriptions we get for the uses of augmented reality here are actually pretty good and evocative. However, it’s not the main event. It seems that any time someone would use a web browser for something in the real world, they go into full VR instead.

  If this Matrix has any basis in reality, it would be on the popular perception people had of the Internet in 2013, and the fears they had for its future. Cloud computing is a concept that looms large here despite not being explicitly named. A Matrix host is a location that doesn’t have a 1-to-1 correspondence to a single physical device. In other words, the reason they’re all up in the sky and visible from anywhere in the world is because they’re all in the cloud. Access to cloud services also tends to be the explanation for why certain devices gain mechanical bonuses when they’re online.

  The Matrix is split into Grids. When you connect to the Matrix you are in whatever local grid services your physical location. Big Corps have private global grids where all their stuff lives. You can access stuff that’s in other grids without going there, but for the best connectivity you’ll want to grid-hop, which requires some hacking if you’re lacking credentials.

  The “fears” part comes into play when the book says the Matrix is almost entirely locked down and under the control of the megacorps. Those everyday civilian uses are allowed, provided people pay their fees or consent to getting bombarded with ads. The entire Matrix is watched over by the Grid Overwatch Division, an organization composed of law enforcement and corporate specialists whose job is to sniff out and eliminate any and all hacker activity.

  “Hacker” here is an umbrella term that covers both deckers and technomancers. Deckers use cyberdecks, devices which are a little bigger than commlinks and have extra hardware that lets them be used for hacking. Technomancers still use their quantum-bullshit-powered brains (and I still think they’re cool).

  Cyberdecks are back to being super-expensive, with prices comparable to those of SR1. The cheapest deck costs the same as an armored cargo truck, the starter used by our sample character costs a bit more than a luxury sports car, and the best one costs the same as a couple of light military vehicles. Fortunately it appears they no longer require much in the way of optional hardware enhancements, and programs tend to be much cheaper, but still the price of a deck is once again the main thing making “decker” an exclusive specialist niche.

  Mechanics Overview

  Devices have Matrix Attributes that dictate their base capabilities. All of them have a Device Rating that represents their general robustness, a Firewall attribute that is used for defensive rolls, and a Data Processing attribute that gets used for searches and other generally lawful operations. Cyberdecks have two others, Attack and Sleaze, which are used for hacking. Hosts have also have these so that they can fight back against hackers. The full array is abbreviated as “ASDF”.

  Most devices, including hosts, have “static” attributes, but cyberdecks have an “attribute array” of four numbers that can be allocated dynamically between those last four values. Their device rating is still static and cannot be changed.

  Instead of having user accounts, each icon, device or host has a single owner that has full control over it, and it might accept marks from other users on to grant them more limited levels of access. An example is a social network host lets users register by placing a mark. More marks means more access, and the limit is three. The owner counts as having four.

  Hacking a device means placing uninvited marks on it, and using the access those grant to perform Matrix actions that get you closer to your goal. Different actions require a different number of marks to attempt, and unless those marks are legitimate most of them still require hacking tests to perform and might fail. They’re opposed by the host’s rating and its ASDF attributes.

  Hacking actions use either the Attack or Sleaze attributes. Attack actions are “loud” and alert the host that it’s being attacked when successful; when they fail, they cause Matrix damage to the hacker. Sleaze actions are “silent” and don’t increase the hacker’s visibility when successful; when they fail, the host becomes aware of the hacker, places a mark on them, usually triggers IC.

  With both types of action, successes on the target’s resistance rolls increase the hacker’s Overwatch Tally, even when the hacker wins the contest. When this tally hits 40, GOD’s eye is upon the hacker. They take a boatload of damage, get forcibly ejected from the Matrix, and their physical location is instantly traced. In other words, game over¹. If inside a host when this happens, they’re “merely” instantly detected and have 3 marks placed on them at once, which makes all the host’s IC extra effective against them. And you bet all that IC will be activated at once.

  Rebooting your cyberdeck resets Overwatch Tally to 0, but it also erases all marks you’ve placed, so while you’ll usually reboot right after a run is finished you’ll need to wait a bit longer if you still need those marks.

  IC fights using the host’s rating and ASDF attributes. Some variants try to place additional marks on the hacker, while some attack either the hacker’s deck, their brain, or both at the same time. The more marks IC has on the hacker, the greater the damage they do. It’s possible for the hacker to spend actions removing these marks, but this ironically is also an illegal action and accrues Overwatch. It also doesn’t make the host or the IC forget about the hacker, it just makes enemy attacks less effective.

  Matrix perception works a bit differently than in the past. Most icons in close proximity (and there are several ways to define this) are automatically visible and identifiable unless they’re running silent, which means they require a Matrix perception test to notice. Running silent gives a penalty to all of that icon’s rolls, so the hacker is usually the only one running silent during a run, and that only when necessary.

  Run Parameters

  We’ll be using the sample decker from the core book, a dwarf lady. She has a Hermes Chariot starter deck with a device rating of 2 and an ASDF of 5-4-4-2 (which is dynamic, as mentioned before). She has a few programs that help with cybercombat but her specialty is still stealth, with an effective skill of 9 for that approach.

  It looks like our host design philosophy is The Full Gibson once again. A given location will have a single host that takes care of all of its business and is connected to the wider Matrix, only this time it represents a set of servers in the cloud instead of a mainframe. Nevertheless it is considered to be at the same physical location as the office.

  There are rules incentives to being in close physical proximity to your target, and our hacker lacks the accessory that would let us ignore those rules (a Satellite Link), so she will be joining the physical team and hacking from the inside.

  This is a private business, so we’ll give the host a rating of 4 according to the guidelines on page 247. Its ASDF ratings are 5-4-6-7, which gives us the “surprisingly high security” requirement. Cameras, alarms, and door locks are Rating 3. The alarm is running silent.

  For IC, it runs Patrol at all times. When it detects an intruder it launches Killer, followed by Track. When it detects unauthorized access to the buried evidence it launches Sparky. As usual, whenever one of these is destroyed it’s immediately relaunched at the start of the next combat turn.

  The file containing our target evidence would normally be archived and thus impossible to access without some social engineering, but we can cheat a bit here and assume there’s a physical jack point in the records room that allows access to the files.

  With all this in place, we’ll see how our decker does next post.

  1. Petty rant time: Many Shadowrun GMs love the idea of omniscient and omnipotent organizations that stand ever ready to squash players, and I guess GOD made it in either because of their demands or because some of SR5’s writers were ascended GMs themselves. ↩

• Nov 8, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: Beyond Evernight

  The last couple of posts have already covered all important locations inside Evernight, so now we leave town to look at its surroundings.

  Burning Woods

  Turns out the surroundings are mostly on fire!

  The Shadow reflection of the Neverwinter Wood started burning when Mount Hotenow erupted and never stopped. The fire spread through the whole forest and the trees still smolder decades after any mundane plant would have been reduced to ash.

  Travelers going from the city to the Wood first wade through a wasteland where they’re calf-deep in ash sprinkled with embers. The smoke in the air becomes thicker and thicker, with a color identical to that of the ash on the ground, resulting in very poor visibility all around. Sometimes they’ll get ambushed by burrowing undead jumping from the ash.

  At the forest itself the road splits into several twisty forest trails that weave through the incandescent trees. Despite being a navigational hazard themselves, these trails are the only usable paths through the forest, and the many bandits and predators who somehow live here know this. Where the world has waterways, the Burning Wood has rivers of lava streaming from Hotenow.

  Most of the Burning Wood has the extreme heat or pervasive smoke terrain features, often at the same time. There might also be some squares with more active fire-based hazards like cinder falls, caustic geysers, or the lava rivers. And there are stats for an Ash Tree hazard (har har) that will try to slam or grab passing PCs with its burning branches.

  Den of the Hunters

  Some sample opposition/dubious allies for the area. This band of erudite hunters has a temporary shelter in an earthen cave that’s protected from the heat and cinder falls. They’re made up of several mortal species, but their leaders are shadar-kai. They have a pack of “hounds” who are former humanoids corrupted by the Shadowfell, robbed of their sapience and reduced to walking on all fours.

  The hunters welcome visitors, and would be happy to chat with the characters and provide them with shelter and a place to rest for a while. That peace is unlikely to last for very long, because soon it will be obvious that these hunters hunt people, and they’ll either invite the characters along or decide to hunt them. Either situation is likely to lead to violence.

  Mount Hotenow

  This Mount Hotenow is still erupting, making it much more dangerous than the one in Toril. Some of its caves are still navigable, and might contain portals to the middle world or the Elemental Chaos. These portals are usually controlled by elemental creatures from the same group that inhabits the mountain in Toril, but some of them also contain fire-themed undead.

  Characters who have already fought and killed some of the elementals over in Toril’s Hotenow might find themselves having to fight their ghosts here. There’s also a small table with fire-themed heroic undead that could be found in the place.

  There doesn’t seem to be much of interest here, despite all that. Most parties will only come here via a detour from the Toril version of the mountain as they descend to Gauntlgrym. Perhaps this detour is the only path forward, as the corresponding passages in the world are blocked by a cave in or some such.

  Shadowfell Road

  The Shadowfell Road is a ritual path. If you start at either end and follow the proper boundary markers (alleys, tree arches, mountain passes), the space-warping properties of the Shadowfell will carry you for a much larger distance than the one you end up walking. The Road starts at the Thayan outpost in Evernight, and ends in the Thayan city of Surcross.

  Supplies for the Dread Ring arrive from Surcross via the Road, and then are taken to another Shadowfell portal just outside Evernight that leads directly to the fortress over in Toril.

  To follow the Road you have so start at either Surcross or Evernight, otherwise the magic has no effect. Not all of the intermediate stops are in the Shadowfell either, or even located between the two physical ends. The Thayans usually travel in high enough number to discourage attack by monsters, but small parties of PCs won’t be so lucky.

  The route along the road is not obvious. PCs who wish to follow it to Surcross will likely need to track a Thayan caravan that’s heading there to pick up supplies, or locate the next portal via applications of the Arcana skill. If they can’t find their way, they might need to travel back to the campaign area the hard way. This is an excellent opportunity to include Shadowfell-based side adventures, though I imagine your players might not be as happy about that as you.

  The book presents some of the stops along the way, in the order one would find them when going from Evernight to Surcross.

  Endless Alleys

  The portals leading to this place are easy to spot, because there will be a bunch of empty Thayan wagons parked near them, probably guarded by undead. They keep them in reserve at both ends because this area has to be traveled on foot.

  This is an endless series of alleys. The buildings on either side are tall and have no windows or doors. They go on forever - turning a corner leads only to more alleys. It’s possible to climb to the roofs, and the view from up there is an endless expanse of nondescript roofs with alleys between them.

  After they’ve been here for a little bit, the PCs will start to see phantom children holding toys. Their faces are expressionless but they giggle in an unsettling manner. The ghosts will try to hug the characters, but their touch inflicts necrotic agony. When one is destroyed, the child vanishes and the toy drops to the ground, whining in disappointment as it dissolves. You can use any kind of level-appropriate incorporeal undead stat block for them.

  Still Waters

  This stretch of the Road is a swamp that looks exactly like you’d expect a Shadowfell swamp to look. The road is made up of a bunch of logs lashed together, and it branches off at points, going to gods-know-where.

  There are small communities living here in small villages that can be seen off in the distance. Their inhabitants move around on pole barges and keep to themselves, but if you look closely you’ll notice they all wear blindfolds. That’s because if you spot your own reflection in the water it will animate and try to drown you.

  Obsidian Ziggurat

  This part of the Road goes through an abandoned village, cutting right through its center. The village itself is unremarkable, but the giant obsidian ziggurat looming just outside it is very noticeable. The platform at the top of the pyramid sometimes shows torchlight and moving shadows, though there are no shapes casting them. They dance to the beat of an unhread drum.

  The shadows make an attack against the Will of anyone watching them. Those who are hit feel compelled to climb the steps of the ziggurat and join in their dancing. Those who end up dancing for a minute or more are teleported to a similar ziggurat in the world, in an area called the Lake of Salt. They’ll appear among the snaketongue cultists and were-snakes that were performing a ritual and are the ones actually casting those shadows in the Shadowfell. Hilarity will ensue.

  Those who get trapped like this can return to the Shadowfell Road by destroying the altar in the Lake of Salt pyramid.

  Village of the Mad Druid

  This is a peaceful village full of people who are thriving as much as can be expected in the Shadowfell… except that they all wear hilariously bad undead disguises. You see, the village’s protector is an eladrin druid named Shalanka, with stats as a twilight incanter. She went insane and has come to believe that undeath is the natural order of things, therefore she must protect the undead and kill the living. She is aided in this by a menagerie of undead animals.

  Shalanka’s grip on reality is tenuous enough that the amateur hour disguises of the citizens can fool her, and she does act as an effective protector for them. She lets the Thayans pass through unmolested because she doesn’t have the strength to oppose their large force, but she’ll feel pretty confident about her chances of killing the PCs. Shalanka isn’t really evil, tough, and PCs who don’t want to deprive the village of its protector might get bad disguises of their own to avoid a fight or perhaps even try to heal her mind.

  Impressions

  I love the idea of a ritual road, and I love that it seems to be a license to add surreal and bizarre locations to a campaign. While I wouldn’t call the other locations in the campaign “mundane”, the example ones here stand out for how evocative and weird they are.

  I also really like the imagery of the ash-choked, eternally burning woods. The book really sells how dreary it is, and how hard it is to see anything. But there’s not much reason to go there unless the GM places an important objective somewhere in the woods. I wonder what Shandarar’s Shadow looks like.

• Nov 4, 2023

  The Great Tabletop Hackaton: Cyberpunk RED, Part 2

  

  After creating both our netrunner and the systems she needs to hack, we can start the actual run.

  Run Summary

  G0blin Jr. goes in with the physical team, they get past the reception, and as the rest of the team pretends to work she locks herself in the bathroom to try and hack the security server.

  We are cheating a bit here, because it turns out you need to be within six meters and within line of sight of an access point to hack the corresponding architecture. I don’t want to actually map the whole office out like I would in a real adventure, so we’re kind of assuming the wireless networks here have the same coverage as in the SR 4 version. They want to track where all guards and guests are at all times so there are security server access points in each room, covering the whole office.

  G0blin Junior’s strategy is to be meticulous and defeat each piece of ice as it comes up, to avoid having them pile up on her. Still, even a meticulous approach looks like a brutal all-out-assault here.

  Security Server

  Junior has no problem dealing with the Skunk ice at the top layer in the first turn. She then uses the Pathfinder net ability to see deeper into the server and rolls well enough to see the whole thing, even past the Password wall. She now knows the exact route she must take - down the left branch to disable the alarm and camera, and all the way down the right branch to unlock the back door and plant a Virus to keep these things disabled after she logs out.

  A quick peek at the files on level 3 sees they’re worthless, and then it’s on to the main event: the fight against the Hellhound/Killer pair.

  She beats the Hellhound in the contested roll, but loses to the Killer and so loses a program at random: the Eraser. It’s completely destroyed. We’ll be generous and assume she has backed-up copies at home, but they can’t be restored within this run.

  Fearing for her software more than for her brain, Junior focuses her attacks this first turn on the Killer, destroying it after 2 Sword attacks.

  After that we’re in for a slugging match with the Hellhound. It attacks once per turn but always goes first, with Junior spending her 3 net actions per turn on two Sword attacks and one Zap.

  A good roll by the Hellhound in the following turn deals only 3 damage to Junior (thanks to her Armor program), but also sets her on fire. She will begin taking 2 points of damage per turn until she spends a Meat Action to deal with that. And she can’t afford to spend any Meat Actions now.

  A series of bad rolls on her part mean she misses her first turn of attacks, so has to take more burn damage next turn. Fortunately the Hellhound fails to damage her, and she can finish it off then. But she needs to wait for another turn and 2 more burn points to be able to put out the fire: you cannot spend a Meat Action in a turn where you spend Net Actions and vice-versa.

  Junior is down a program and 20% of her HP so far. Fortunately she doesn’t have any problem going down the Architecture’s left branch and disabling the alarm and camera.

  The Skunk at the top of the right branch doesn’t give her any trouble. Turns out Skunks are harmless when fought alone. The Asp in the next level beats the initiative contest and destroys her Armor program, though it goes down to the usual Sword, Sword, Zap combination.

  Junior reaches the bottom of the security server, unlocks the door, and spends 2 Net Actions creating a Virus that will keep the security devices off after she logs out. She then Cloaks her efforts and jacks out.

  Total time taken for the security server: 19 minutes.

  Secret Server

  A slightly singed G0blin Jr. follows her teammates to the records room and jacks into the secret server she finds there.

  The password is a breeze to blow through, and a good Pathfinder roll lets her see all the way to the bottom of the server. The Skunk is easily defeated by turn 3 of this hack. The Wisp loses initiative and goes down before it can act. The Hellhound wins initiative and further burns out poor netrunner’s brain, leaving her with 17 remaining HP since she has no more Armor program.

  She manages to kill it with lucky Sword strikes before it can attack again, but has to take 2 burn damage and spend a Meat Action extinguishing the fire. She successfully IDs the evidence file and copies it. She knows there’s a Killer further down but she’s hurt and down 2 programs, so she doesn’t risk engaging it in order to cover her tracks. Junior jacks out.

  Time for this hack: 10 minutes.

  The team has fulfilled their mission, but unlike the hackers of every other game, G0blin Jr. decides discretion is the better part of valor. She’s half-dead, down two very important programs, and that office net might have another Hellhound like the two others she jacked into today (it doesn’t, but the doesn’t know that). Plus there’s a chance that a firefight is ongoing in the meat world.

  The team leaves with the evidence, but without the money.

  Junior deciding to give on the money and just leave is the sensible roleplaying choice. All netrunners are brave folks by definition, but someone who names herself after a goblin would probably not be suicidally brave.

  But What If She Was?

  What if our Goblin had decided to brave the office network in her present state, after all? What if she had thrown caution to the wind, messaged WITNESS ME to her companions, and dove in?

  She would have succeeded in 10 minutes, but just barely. The Asp takes out both her Sword programs, and two max damage rolls from the Wisp leave her with a measly 3 HP before she could derezz it and drain the office accounts.

  Junior is probably not making it out of the office if any sort of fight erupts. And if she does a good chunk of that money is going to pay for her hospital bills. Her teammates will probably begin calling her “Crispy” if she survives.

  Total Time Elapsed: 29 minutes if she doesn’t go for the money, 39 (and a lot of pain) if she does.

  Analysis and Impressions

  29 minutes is well within our tolerance for a manageable amount of time, so we can say that CP RED’s system remains fast. It took around 12 minutes for Junior to disable the camera and alarm, which is about what I consider the upper limit on the time you can keep the rest of the team waiting. You could cut to the physical team at that time and go turn by turn to keep everyone moving.

  Disabling the door has to happen in the same hack because the system resets when the netrunner jacks out, but that’s an additional 7 minutes so it’s OK. The secret server hack takes 10.

  Going for the “easy” office server after being beaten up by the first two does indeed border on the suicidal. It’s fast at 10 minutes, but not worth it. Cutting your losses and leaving is a perfectly rational decision.

  Because ye gawds is this system brutal.

  Stealth is not a thing in these rules. The closest thing is the Slide ability, but that apparently only works to escape combat, not to avoid it. Most ICE threatens to either permanently destroy your programs or directly damage your HP, and if I understood the rules directly they get a free and automatic hit against you if they beat that contested initiative roll.

  So avoiding combat is impossible, and getting out unscathed is extremely unlikely. I feared I made the CP 2020 data fortress too easy, and here I think I made things too difficult by having three decent-sized Architectures generated with the random system. It looks like CP RED wants a single big Architecture per adventure instead of a bunch of scattered smaller ones. If there are smaller ones, they should be tiny with at most a single piece of ICE or Demon, to help preserve the netrunner for the main event.

• Nov 3, 2023

  The Great Tabletop Hackaton: Cyberpunk RED

  

  In this post we’ll take a look at Cyberpunk RED, the current edition of Cyberpunk-the-game. It’s meant to be the followup to Cyberpunk 2020, and in a nice bit of synchronicity it was published in 2020. It’s kind of a companion piece to the Cyberpunk 2077 computer game, since according to the foreword the two works started being made at around the same time.

  CP RED provides what the critics of previously attempted 2020 sequels most wanted: more of the same. It takes the 2020 setting forward to 2045 by essentially doing a copy-and-paste on the timeline to extend it, so you have a new and improved ecological collapse, a new and improved corp war that leaves plenty of cybered-up veterans, and so on. Of course, it’s not an exact copy and a lot of things are different, but the tone is almost exactly the same as 2020.

  One of the things that underwent a big change was the Net, which we’ll look at now.

  Setting Overview

  The Net of Cyberpunk RED contains about the same amount of space magic as its 2020 ancestor, but it looks different. Somewhere around 2023 or so, iconic netrunner Rache Bartmoss releases a bunch of data-destroying rabid AIs into the old Net. They do so much damage that the authorities who oversee the old telecom grid decide to shut it down entirely, in the process undoing the spell that made the use of virtual reality possible.

  Nowadays there’s still the notion that the Net is a parallel dimension, but it’s a dangerous and fractured one. Each city has their own small Net realm, isolated from the world by firewalls, and in between you have the wild and wooly domains of rogue AIs and demon programs. Why do we need firewalls to keep them at bay if there are no physical lines connecting them to us any more? Shut up, that’s why. Any similarity between this and Shadowrun’s deep astral planes is probably a coincidence, which is kind of a waste in my opinion.

  Inside the city nets, someone came up with a new spell in 2035 that once again let people see the virtual aspect of the Net in a simplified form. Now you can put on a set of “Virtuality” goggles and see the parallel dimension of the Net overlaid over the physical world, with every connected object having a corresponding icon. The main difference here is that more things have icons, and you can no longer leave your body behind.

  Standard users mostly use the city nets through devices called Agents, which are a bit like slightly smarter smartphones. They can use these for pretty much everything we’d use the Internet for, except that they’re just accessing the local city net.

  Hackers are still called netrunners, and they still use cyberdecks. The servers they hack are named Architectures, and can represent any device complex enough to be the target of a netrun, not just mainframes. Due to the even stronger “parallel dimension” metaphor here, you can only hack an Architecture if you’re within about six meters of one of its physical access points. Netrunners can no longer work from home. Devices not complex enough to warrant an Architecture (including Agents) can be tampered with using electronics skills.

  Mechanics Overview

  Hackers are still named netrunners. To do their job they need the Interface skill, interface plugs, “Virtuality” glasses and a cyberdeck. Cyberdecks in RED look like their portable ancestors in 2020 and come in three generic tiers that differ by the number of Option Slots they have (5, 6 or 7). Each Option Slot lets you install a program or hardware expansion in your deck. Decks are not uniquely expensive - their prices are in line with other types of specialist gear in the book. Once you earn more money you can perhaps buy an armored jumpsuit with a deck compartment that gives it an extra slot.

  Most actions you can perform in a netrun can be done with the Interface skill alone, including a basic attack. The roll is almost always 1d10 + Interface against a difficulty set by the Architecture you’re hacking. Programs come in three categories: “boosters” that can give bonuses to some of those basic rolls, “attackers” that act as better weapons than your basic attack, and “defenders” that reduce or negate damage while they’re active.

  Netrunning happens faster than physical combat. Characters only get one “meat action” per turn, but netrunners get a number of “Net actions” proportional to their Interface skill. Some net tasks require meat actions, but you can’t use net actions to do physical tasks. Programs that need to be actively used take a net action to activate and can only be used once per turn, so there’s an advantage to having multiple copies of the same attack program loaded. Controlling a physical device takes a Net action, but each device can only perform one action per turn as well.

  Architectures are relatively abstract and modeled as tables. Each row in the table is a level in the architecture, and it contains one thing. That thing could be a file, a controllable device, or a security program. Netrunners start at level 1 and can move down one level at a time. They don’t know what’s in a level until they get there for the first time, and possibly pass some tests to analyze the thing they find. If it’s a security program, it will prevent them from descending further until dealt with. The stuff they want to steal or sabotage tends to be in the middle or lower levels of an architecture, protected by a few security layers. They can move through already-explored layers freely.

  Security programs range from password barriers to Black Ice, which is very dangerous and can move through the architecture to chase a netrunner. It’s pretty much a monster that you need to fight or die trying. Netrunners can also run Black Ice from their decks, and order them to kill other netrunners or programs in combat, but they take up 2 slots instead of 1. Black Ice tends to attack right away - forget stealth for the most part.

  Another type of security program is the Demon, whose main purpose is to control physical devices like turrets, drones, and traps to fight intruders. They’re relatively weak at Net combat, but it’s hard to find and destroy a Demon that’s shooting at your meat with a pair of heavy machine gun turrets…

  Run Parameters

  I don’t think there’s a ready-made sample netrunner in the book, but the book does include all we need to generate a quick-and-dirty one so let’s do that. I think I do have some supplements that might have suitable ready-made Architectures that fit our purposes, but if they do not then we can generate one.

  Our Netrunner: G0blin Jr., daughter of G0blin.

  Proudly carrying on the family tradition. Lazy but lucky.

  INT 7 REF 6 DEX 7 TECH 7 COOL 6 WILL 3 LUCK 6 MOVE 5 BODY 6 EMP 5

  HP: 35 Death Save: 6

  Cyberware Capacity: 14/60

  Skills

  Interface 4. Other stuff from the Netrunner Street Rat Pack as it becomes relevant.

  Cyberware

  Neural Link, Interface Plugs, Shift Tacts.

  Equipment

  • Very Heavy Pistol with 30 rounds
  • whole-body Light Armorhack (SP 11)
  • Agent
  • Cyberdeck (7 slots)
  • Virtuality Goggles
  • Programs: Armor, Sword x 2, Worm, Eraser.
  • Clothes.

  Our Target Systems

  As for our target system, I could have made a single architecture for everything, and the examples I have here kinda point in that direction, but I really feel like this would benefit from the same approach as Shadowrun 4th Edition.

  So we’ll have three Architectures here. One for the office network, one for the security server, and one for the secret server. All individually small, but the latter two with somewhat elevated security for their size. I’ll use the random generator to help me with this.

  Office network is Basic and has 7 levels, Security server is Standard and has 9 with a branch, the secret server is Standard and has 6.

  Office Network:

  1. Password DV 6
  2. Skunk
  3. Asp
  4. File (DV6) - Worthless
  5. Password DV 6
  6. Wisp
  7. File (DV8) -> Accounts

  Security Server

  1. Skunk
  2. Password DV 8
  3. File DV8 - logs, worthless
  4. Hellhound, Killer

  Left Branch

  1. Control DV8 - Camera
  2. Control DV8 - Alarm Sensors, as Camera.

  Right Branch

  1. Skunk
  2. Asp
  3. Control DV8 - Door

  Secret Server

  1. Password DV8
  2. Skunk
  3. Wisp
  4. Hellhound
  5. File DV10 - The Evidence
  6. Killer

  We’ll soon see how Junior manages these systems. I relied more on the random generator here than on my own judgment, it might be that this ends up being too hard.

  My predictions are: since there is a lot of black ice in there, we’ll see plenty of combat, but I also expect this to go fast. Either Junior kills everything and completes the objective, or she dies fairly early while hacking the security server. Probably while fighting the Killer/Hellhound duo.

  If the worst happens, I’ll adjust the difficulty down a bit and try for a successful run, timing how long that took.

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