On ‎8‎/‎16‎/‎2018 at 2:41 AM, jendefer said:

There has been some interesting discussion of slicer abilities here. One of the house rules in the game I run is that there is no wi-fi in Star Wars. Sometimes Computers checks can do remote stuff, but it's limited to short-range radio. I have been trying to make hacking more interesting for my Slicer player, and one good experience we had was playing the Quarantine Quandary module from the Shadow of the Broker series. That gave some suggestions for how far you could get with each Computers check, as well as having a mechanic for the dangers of time passing. As a result, the Slicer really had to make some decisions about what was worth the time-risk to go after. I've also taken a little inspiration from the alternate hacking rules in the Genesys core rulebook, where they split things out into hacker and sys-ops. Having your slicer encounter someone actively defending the network has the potential to make things more interesting, and lets you fold the hacking into the same round-based structure as combat, when that works for your story.

One last thought, an overly active and ambitious hacker is likely to start leaving tracks, even if just from hubris. That can lead to bounties, too.

I love your house rule about the wi-fi, I use that too.

I like the short-range radio description and the use of "sometimes" I think that getting into any kind of Hack vs. System Defense stuff is basically to acknowledge the Hacking thing, so I avoid that as much as possible and try to give Slicer characters other things they can do like re-coding equipment performance modules or attempting to re-program droids. I would have preferred that Slicers had been more modders than hackers, or if they hack they do it by using pre-made tools not by coding and keyboard jockeying (a bunch of data chips that have to be put into a chip board in the right order or something). I know FFG writers did this by putting it in the game, but the constraints I have on Slicers are part of the social contract as I explicitly explain it before characters are made. I would rather have a gun fight over access to a computer room than a hacking match most of the time.

Can I ask what systems were being invaded just as examples? I am curious as to how that came up in play.

If you don't rope this stuff in it's easy for "hacking" to just be a technical explanation for "magic."

Just some suggested clean-up that may help for future encounters:

On ‎8‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 7:25 PM, Ehrran said:

The players were being watched while wandering the colony, and the new Techie PC spotted someone ducking into an alley to use a commlink. He calls up the Slicer to inform him. I have him (Slicer) roll an Average Computer check, which he passes easily...

When developing the pool, always dumb it down to it's base components, and use the information the players have available to them first. Only after that expand.

They saw a guy duck into an ally and take out a radio, and talk into it, that's it. The players don't know if he's talking to a ship in orbit, or his grandmother across the street. They don't know who he is, or what he's saying.

So for this, Hard should have been the minimum, since the player is essentially trying to find a comm signal almost at random in an entire colony. Boost and setback could be added to show colony size (boost for small low-tech, multiple setback for large and bustling)

Quote

The slicer says," I slice into their computer, and jam their transmission!"

What computer? I mean, you can use the shipboard comms to jam their transmission (and likely everyone else's in the process) but there's nothing to slice here. Also remember the range of the ship to Jam and slice will be the range of it's comms and sensors.

Quote

He rolls PPPPPDS. The 1 setback die because he's on the ground, the target is 150 miles in orbit overhead, and heavy snow is coming in.

More setback, fewer purple (maybe). so first off, it's 2 setback minimum. 1 for trying to tag a moving target in LEO, 1 for Weather. After that purple is whatever you think, though 3-4 is probably fine.

You can also add more setbacks for other things. Is it encrypted? How strongly? Is the droid trying to hide his jamming to make it look natural? Blasting static? Being totally non-subtle and blasting Gamorrean opera?

Quote

"Okay, their comms are down."

Up front, fine.

Back end, what else? Are the opposition aware they are being jammed? Are they going to try and get through it?

Also backtracking jamming isn't tough. Jamming means you're basically broadcasting junk as loud and powerful as you can. Sensors will find you, or at least narrow you down.

Quote

Now that i have a backdoor into their system, i shut off their engines. They can't restart for an hour."

No... you jammed a hand-held radio.

Now... lets say you did know there was a ship in orbit, knew to slice it, and were able to succeed... that's an awful good result that basically needs it's own separate check, you can't just do it collaterally while jamming their comms. And even then to shut down for a total hour? Yeah, that's one heck of a roll.

Quote

"Now I open every door to space, and begin powering up the freighter to go get my new ship!"

GM answer to this: No, you don't just get a free ship.

Nice GM answer: No, because the ship was built with this kinda stupidity in mind.

1) Not collaterally, no way, no how. Assuming you allow it at all, it'll be it's own separate thing.

2) You want to vent a ship, that's not an easy thing to ask. There's multiple safeties in place to prevent this exact situation. Easiest solution, air-gapped. You can't open the inner and outer door together remotely from any station in the ship at all. It has to be done manually, at the lock, specifically to prevent a computer glitch from venting a ship by accident.

3) Emergency systems? Shields, blast doors, emergency bulkheads. Even if you did allow him to attempt a vent, these systems would override and slam into place. He might blow a few guys right next to the lock out, but he won't kill the whole ship. Also, while exposure to vacuum is not a healthy thing, you can do it long enough to get to an emergency space suit. A NASA test engineer survived a suit breach in testing just fine, a few dozen bad guys can too (some might be a species that can survive in vacuum), and you better believe they'd be angry, and ready for some dumb-donkey slicer to show up and claim his "prize."

You gotta be able to dig in here. Some players will try and walk all over you, cook up reasons why you should allow them to have a gadget that makes their Holdout pistol Range: Extreme and Damage 30 Breach 5.

Quote

"You successfully open all the doors to space

If you want to allow this... ok.

Quote

Some do manage to make it to the escape pods

I'd make this a separate roll to monitor ships systems.

Quote

and escape to the surface, there is no way to lock someone out of an escape pod. All but one officer.

Unless there's a reason why the players should, or need to, know this, they don't. They don't find out until the crew shows up in town blasters in hand and ready to kill.

Bottom line, break it down, make him roll more, and don't let the player walk all over you. He's got a character with some good numbers, fine, he can succeed at this thing, that's what his investment gets him. But it's not an "I win" button.

Ok, I'm seeing a lot of things I should have thought of that session. A LOT. I'm seriously thinking about printing out all of everyone's comments and having them handy next game.

The Slicer's player said he designed this droid "specifically for this, to kill a ship in 1 round" (direct quote, iirc). That set off a few alarm bells, so that's why I'm here. I thought that felt wrong, so I'm glad to get confirmation from all of you on this. I don't mind him having 5 dice for slicing, my GMPC is going to have 5 dice in Gunnery and 4 in Ranged(Heavy) next session. ( I want to kill him, but they keep saving him ...)

The group has around 96 points each banked, give or take an extra point or two for anything funny said in character. They found a creative (and funny) way to get their obligation below 100 last session. I'll detail that in another thread.

But back to the topic: yes, looks like I got ran over, thinking back on that session. I'm going to have to tell the players that we're playing SW, not "Monty Haul 2.0"(100% Big Loot,0% Effort) The droid, IMO, is made to be an "I WIN" button, when it comes to slicing. tbh. But he has a soak of only 3, iirc. I can work with that, and no more insta-kill button, thanks to your tips.

I'll give him this: He did get creative and craft 2 combat droids and 4 spy drones so he never has to leave the ship. And he rarely allows any non-droid crew back in engineering of the PC's YT-2400, not even the ship's owner. During one session, the crew had to go back to the rear of the ship, and found he had crafted 6 units of the most powerful explosive in the game simply stored in the middle of main engineering and another 10-12 units stored in the circuitry bay. I am DEFINITELY going to use this against them.( he did craft these items with my knowledge, but secret from the other PC's) ? He forgot there is the protocol droid they saved on board that didn't like being tortured for sport for 6 months.. ?

I hope I don't sound like I have the "me vs. them" mindset, but I can't let them just blow up the rules of the game for loot. I did get them laughing so hard two were crying last session, though. That felt good. I'll put that in my next thread as well.

2 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

Bottom line, break it down, make him roll more, and don't let the player walk all over you. He's got a character with some good numbers, fine, he can succeed at this thing, that's what his investment gets him. But it's not an "I win" button.

^THIS. EXACTLY.

1 hour ago, Ehrran said:

I'll give him this: He did get creative and craft 2 combat droids and 4 spy drones so he never has to leave the ship.

This is also a D-bag move by the player. Over in Mutants and Masterminds (a superhero RPG) it's called bathtub mentalist. A guy with psychic powers so epic he can find, fight, and kill bad guys without leaving the safety of his bathtub. It's an excuse to win without adventuring.

Anyway....

Something you can do to help rope this guy in is to start getting a mental structure for computer networks. Taking a page from Shadowrun, computer networks have a structure that dictate what you have access to through what paths. I don't think you should map out every one, or possibly any, but the idea of breaking a network down into a kind of map might be a good mental exercise for you as the GM.

So here's a little example:

See the system is set up so you can't just slice your way from the outside to Tier 1. There's an air-gap there and a droid protected by secure terminals that limit what you can do to the droid to prevent it from being cooped through the network. You want Tier 1 access, you have to at the very least go in and grab the droid in person, or physically access the Tier 1 system system yourself.

See, you can apply that other things too.

So like a starship... The comms, sensors and targeting systems are probably linked up with a certain amount of direct connections, making it (relatively) easy to temporarily shut down weapons or overload various small components inflicting system strain. But just popping the airlocks, or setting the power core for self-destruct... those systems wouldn't be directly connected to the outside specifically to keep that sort of thing from happening. At least, not easily, and certainly not in one round.

16 hours ago, Ehrran said:

Ok, I'm seeing a lot of things I should have thought of that session. A LOT. I'm seriously thinking about printing out all of everyone's comments and having them handy next game.

The Slicer's player said he designed this droid "specifically for this, to kill a ship in 1 round" (direct quote, iirc). That set off a few alarm bells, so that's why I'm here. I thought that felt wrong, so I'm glad to get confirmation from all of you on this. I don't mind him having 5 dice for slicing, my GMPC is going to have 5 dice in Gunnery and 4 in Ranged(Heavy) next session. ( I want to kill him, but they keep saving him ...)

The group has around 96 points each banked, give or take an extra point or two for anything funny said in character. They found a creative (and funny) way to get their obligation below 100 last session. I'll detail that in another thread.

But back to the topic: yes, looks like I got ran over, thinking back on that session. I'm going to have to tell the players that we're playing SW, not "Monty Haul 2.0"(100% Big Loot,0% Effort) The droid, IMO, is made to be an "I WIN" button, when it comes to slicing. tbh. But he has a soak of only 3, iirc. I can work with that, and no more insta-kill button, thanks to your tips.

I'll give him this: He did get creative and craft 2 combat droids and 4 spy drones so he never has to leave the ship. And he rarely allows any non-droid crew back in engineering of the PC's YT-2400, not even the ship's owner. During one session, the crew had to go back to the rear of the ship, and found he had crafted 6 units of the most powerful explosive in the game simply stored in the middle of main engineering and another 10-12 units stored in the circuitry bay. I am DEFINITELY going to use this against them.( he did craft these items with my knowledge, but secret from the other PC's) ? He forgot there is the protocol droid they saved on board that didn't like being tortured for sport for 6 months.. ?

I hope I don't sound like I have the "me vs. them" mindset, but I can't let them just blow up the rules of the game for loot. I did get them laughing so hard two were crying last session, though. That felt good. I'll put that in my next thread as well.

^THIS. EXACTLY.

In this game the Narrative Dice give the players some Narrative Control, but it is always your call to approve it. You want to be able to say Yes to their propositions, but the player needs to moderate their statements so that they are not overreaching or otherwise destroying challenges out of proportion. A Triumph is a great thing, but it is a great thing for the situation at hand, not objectively the best thing to happen ever.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

There seems to be a bit of an issue of the Social Contact here. Playing the game should include a tacit agreement that you are responsible for depicting the world and its physics, and the player is responsible for depicting his character's thoughts, feelings, and actions. Where the character's background is concerned the player has some limited narrative control, but overall again his scope is not the world but the character itself.

So he can say I designed a droid to kill a ship in 1 round

and you should say, "No, there is no such droid because it isn't possible to do that under the circumstances you are describing."

• Player: Character's Thoughts, Feelings, Actions
• GM: The World and its Physics, History, and Technology

The Game World obeys your rules, not theirs. You can be lax about this to some degree for little things, but for big things you have got to define the parameters and enforce them.

This needs to be hashed out with your group it sounds like. The GM chair is often a role of little glory, and one of its chief pleasures is being able to enjoy the adventures of the characters, but you won't enjoy those adventures if you hate the characters. Players who do not reciprocate, who Take and Take and Take but do not Give, are a bummer. Of course everyone wants their character to be cool and to do cool things, but if they lay waste to everything before them and leave no room for challenge, they are rendering the game boring. That boring quality affects everyone, even the Munchkin as he will eventually be a victim of his own success. No one will want to play and the game will end.

It's usually only you vs. them if they make you do it, because the GM is omnipotent. Ideally the competition in the game should be positive in nature, seeing if you can do something or if you will fail. If I am a player and I am going to use external social pressure (being an *** to you) because you challenged my character I am in the wrong. So you should not feel bad about holding limits and boundaries with players.

This also means a discussion is in order about not being a munchkin and a risk-averse player. A risk-averse player is a player who sees any adversity as a terrible outcome, and will whine and complain if their character encounters anything but success. Those PCs are incompatible with adventure. In my experience you will have to have this discussion more than once for it to sink in so in the meantime...

CRAFTING:

The crafting rules allow you to control the Schematics or Recipe, and the materials. I advise you to start controlling those things and making sure that the Encumbrance and Cost and Rarity for these things are being used. Also, If he can craft those Droids so can the bad guys. I also think this guy is just asking to be ignored in the session. I would barely come back to the guy who is sitting on the ship and when his droids go out I would have them captured by Droid Thieves using restraining bolts. If he tried to craft more I would make a list of every part he needs and have it be in some dangerous location.

If he wants to blow up his ship then I say more power to him, and I would make sure to know what he has on the ship when it goes up. Also if it blows up in a docking bay or a port I would charge him with Terrorism by the local authorities and have them put a bounty on him.

On a personal note, you are fighting the good fight and doing it with humility. You seem like a great person and the group is lucky to have you as their GM I think.

On 8/21/2018 at 5:21 AM, Archlyte said:

Can I ask what systems were being invaded just as examples? I am curious as to how that came up in play.

In one episode, the group was in a space station going awry and there was a security droid monitoring the systems. That was a case of using the computer systems to control environmental effects on the space station (temperature, lighting, etc), and the main security droid was working against that and taunting the slicer over the network. That was my one experiment so far with having another user "fighting back".

In another episode, the slicer had physically broken into an Imperial administrative building and at a terminal there was trying to pull information off the system. One thing they wanted to find out about was secret prisons for Force users, which I wouldn't allow, given the nature of the Imperial presence on their current planet. (That's a good example of discussing with the players what one can reasonably accomplish on a given network.) But I did allow them to access the HR records of Imperial officers. They used a Computers check to find those records and another to adjust the personnel record of their nemesis to make his career progression more difficult.

They've also broken into a medical facility to copy research data. At our table, we routinely groan about how hard it is to copy computer files in Star Wars (see "Rogue One"), so that was not a simple one-roll check, either.

5 minutes ago, jendefer said:

In one episode, the group was in a space station going awry and there was a security droid monitoring the systems. That was a case of using the computer systems to control environmental effects on the space station (temperature, lighting, etc), and the main security droid was working against that and taunting the slicer over the network. That was my one experiment so far with having another user "fighting back".

In another episode, the slicer had physically broken into an Imperial administrative building and at a terminal there was trying to pull information off the system. One thing they wanted to find out about was secret prisons for Force users, which I wouldn't allow, given the nature of the Imperial presence on their current planet. (That's a good example of discussing with the players what one can reasonably accomplish on a given network.) But I did allow them to access the HR records of Imperial officers. They used a Computers check to find those records and another to adjust the personnel record of their nemesis to make his career progression more difficult.

They've also broken into a medical facility to copy research data. At our table, we routinely groan about how hard it is to copy computer files in Star Wars (see "Rogue One"), so that was not a simple one-roll check, either.

hehe yeah that Rogue One download upload business was hard to fathom, but then again that was a big station. Maybe in the Star Wars universe data compression was what brought Skynet online so they don't use it

On 8/20/2018 at 6:55 PM, Ehrran said:

I'll give him this: He did get creative and craft 2 combat droids and 4 spy drones so he never has to leave the ship. And he rarely allows any non-droid crew back in engineering of the PC's YT-2400, not even the ship's owner. During one session, the crew had to go back to the rear of the ship, and found he had crafted 6 units of the most powerful explosive in the game simply stored in the middle of main engineering and another 10-12 units stored in the circuitry bay. I am DEFINITELY going to use this against them.( he did craft these items with my knowledge, but secret from the other PC's) ? He forgot there is the protocol droid they saved on board that didn't like being tortured for sport for 6 months.. ?

I hope I don't sound like I have the "me vs. them" mindset, but I can't let them just blow up the rules of the game for loot. I did get them laughing so hard two were crying last session, though. That felt good. I'll put that in my next thread as well.

^THIS. EXACTLY.

I'm with GhostofMan on this never leave the ship thing. If it is a character setback like he does suffer from Agoraphobia and is afraid of open spaces, then more power to him but that will also add setback to any time where he is forced to leave the ship. If they are on a planet like Coruscant or any planet that has a lot of active communications going, Upgrade the challenge dice based on how far his droids are from the ship. A Despair rolled on a check means that he's completely connection to the droid and it is "stuck" until he comes and fixes it manually.

Despairs rolled by other members on the ship when doing any routine activity or possibly in combat, could mean that a droid or a random short in the electronics detonated his booby trap completely knocking out the engine and blocking access into and out of engineering which he seems to want to keep to himself.

I don't go out of the way to punish players and I appreciate the ingenuity of this guy but this is Star Wars and things go wrong all the time. There is a reason why the second most quoted words after "May the Force be with you" is "I have a bad feeling about this"

8 hours ago, Varlie said:

I'm with GhostofMan on this never leave the ship thing. If it is a character setback like he does suffer from Agoraphobia and is afraid of open spaces, then more power to him but that will also add setback to any time where he is forced to leave the ship. If they are on a planet like Coruscant or any planet that has a lot of active communications going, Upgrade the challenge dice based on how far his droids are from the ship. A Despair rolled on a check means that he's completely connection to the droid and it is "stuck" until he comes and fixes it manually.

Despairs rolled by other members on the ship when doing any routine activity or possibly in combat, could mean that a droid or a random short in the electronics detonated his booby trap completely knocking out the engine and blocking access into and out of engineering which he seems to want to keep to himself.

I don't go out of the way to punish players and I appreciate the ingenuity of this guy but this is Star Wars and things go wrong all the time. There is a reason why the second most quoted words after "May the Force be with you" is "I have a bad feeling about this"

Well I wonder what the other players think of the slicer and his attempts to take over the Galaxy from his evil lair.

No better time to find out than after he inadvertently blew up half the ship

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Well I wonder what the other players think of the slicer and his attempts to take over the Galaxy from his evil lair.

Imagine if Palpatine had been a slicer instead of a Sith Lord. Consider:

The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the HoloNet.

If you only knew the power of the dark side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father--the Emperor deplatformed him off of the HoloNet!

That name no longer has any meaning for me--call me \/4)3l2!

On ‎8‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 3:05 PM, Varlie said:

I'm with GhostofMan on this never leave the ship thing. If it is a character setback like he does suffer from Agoraphobia and is afraid of open spaces, then more power to him but that will also add setback to any time where he is forced to leave the ship. If they are on a planet like Coruscant or any planet that has a lot of active communications going, Upgrade the challenge dice based on how far his droids are from the ship. A Despair rolled on a check means that he's completely connection to the droid and it is "stuck" until he comes and fixes it manually.

Despairs rolled by other members on the ship when doing any routine activity or possibly in combat, could mean that a droid or a random short in the electronics detonated his booby trap completely knocking out the engine and blocking access into and out of engineering which he seems to want to keep to himself.

I don't go out of the way to punish players and I appreciate the ingenuity of this guy but this is Star Wars and things go wrong all the time. There is a reason why the second most quoted words after "May the Force be with you" is "I have a bad feeling about this"

It's also worth noting that commination from a distance isn't instantious. Sure command hubs exist, but they usually exist as large, bulky instillations that entire stations are based around; immensely complicated instruments that require complex orders in order to coordinate an army. Given that he wouldn't have one of those (and quite frankly, NO HE SHOULD NOT as it would require a much larger operation then what he actually has.) I would say as GM Fiat that he technically can't order them around with his mind; an astromechs mind frankly isn't the right tool for the job in regard to compeering capacity.

Does this character have ranks in leadership? Because being able to command several droids is exactly when a leadership check would be rolled; a computer's or intellect check wouldn't suffice, but it also requires a practical experience on how to use the correct verbiage, the correct commands and frankly to have the tactical understanding on how to move units that have limited intelligence by themselves. I also assume that he can't see through their eyes, thus while he would be able to conduct slicing checks remotely (by data spikes carried by the droids. Again, everything is fairly manual in star wars.) his information would be likely limited to what information is actually fed back to him. To give him an example of this, ask him to be blindfolded next session and conduct a game based entirely on the information that he can hear.

Difficult, isn't it?

Though in this particular case the management of the droids NPC's are much better fore filled by the PC's, who can see what's going on. After a couple of sessions of having his hands tucked under his bum without much to do other then slicing checks and the odd com request, he should get the hit; adventuring PC's should take to the field unless they can actually buy the commanding rigs required for complicated remote military moves. This is very expensive and illegal. Not that it seems to bother him.