24 minutes ago, whafrog said:

I'm not sure how that relates to "if we have it, they have it"... I'd say it comes down to common sense  ,

It relates to plenty of intelligent, educated people not knowing what we have.

You're absolutely right, using magic to summon a permanent until cancelled 100 mile wide blizzard in July should be a very difficult thing that's probably well beyond the scope and scale of most player characters (and even when they can do so, at that point the opposition should probably be equally bananas). By extension yanking a smart phone off someone on the subway and using it to crash the power grid on the entire eastern seaboard in a few minutes of "hacking" should probably be beyond the scope of a PC, if not outright impossible (again, unless the opposition can do the same kind of crazy and the game is just running on that level).

But I had someone at work ask me to photoshop a license plate from a vehicle once. It was 2 pixels wide, literally just two grey squares. I explained there was no need because the license plate was unrecoverable, there just wasn't enough data for even the best computer to turn it into a readable plate. He insisted a "hacker might zoom in and enhance it" and had me do it anyway... This wasn't some total dingus, this was a trained engineer with years of field experience... but he'd also watched season after season of NCIS and was utterly convinced a goth chick with a computer and enough caffeine could bring humanity as we know it to it's knees with a few minutes of "hacking."

.

1 hour ago, Tesoe said:

Ok, I wasn't able to find a WiFi toaster, but I did find a WiFi slow cooker.

With a camera? I believe that was part of the criteria.

45 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

This wasn't some total dingus, this was a trained engineer with years of field experience... but he'd also watched season after season of NCIS and was utterly convinced a goth chick with a computer and enough caffeine could bring humanity as we know it to it's knees with a few minutes of "hacking."

Doesn't matter, the same principle applies. In game terms, the more power it puts in the hands of PCs, the more it "costs".

14 minutes ago, whafrog said:

With a camera? I believe that was part of the criteria.

It doesn't, but now I really want to hear about some PC overloading the reactor on a star destroyer because some imperial IT guy forgot to password the slow cooker and the player was able to use it to remotely back door into the ship's systems.

In regards to the tangent of the thread, what hacking/slicing accomplish in the movies is no more or less absurd than how any number of capabilities actually play out in reality. I'm not sure this is even much of a tangent because the implication reads like this "hacking/slicing is way too powerful in the RPG about the movie with lazer swords, telekinesis, and planet killer lazers....."

I'm suddenly wondering if they have identity theft like we do. Does Tarkin occasionally get letters letting him know someone in Dantooine bought a small frieghter in his name?

11 minutes ago, whafrog said:

With a camera? I believe that was part of the criteria.

No, let me clarify...

Modern wifi kitchen appliances do exist. Modern fiction, like say NCIS, or the MacGyver Remake, or the SWAT remake, would totally have a hacker spying on someone by hacking their wifi toaster and getting full motion video...

Why does a toaster have a webcam? No frelling idea. And logically in the real world it would not, there's no reason for it. But in the TV show, it did, because the producer/director/writer decided they wanted a "you can't trust your own toaster anymore" message and the hacker was, from a storytelling standpoint, essentially a wizard, taping away at a keyboard and making the seemingly impossible occur.

Now...

Because that's how other popular fiction shows the technology "working" a GM and/or Player might attempt/allow the same thing. But, unlike the NCIS episode that was written for that to occur once and never again, in the RPG a GM might allow that to be normal. Every time anything happens the Slicer sits in his bathtub and slices the nearest toaster to fix the problem and bypass adventure.

and yes, I was saying, in agreence with you, the GM needs to know it's ok to squash that kind of silliness. In Star Wars even more so, because they DO have more than "what we have". Not by much, and usually in a form the 30's or 70's perceived it, but it's still there. A General Purpose Scanner is a pretty wild piece of hardware when you consider all it can conceivably do based on it's description. So a GM has to really look at it, and be comfortable explaining it's limitation to players in ways they may have to extend beyond "because I said so, for the story" to keep the players engaged and not feeling manipulated.

2 minutes ago, Tesoe said:

I'm suddenly wondering if they have identity theft like we do. Does Tarkin occasionally get letters letting him know someone in Dantooine bought a small frieghter in his name?

Hello, I am honorable Lawyer Huon Burrick,

I am the executor of the offworld holding of the Aldereanian royal family and it has come to my attention that you are one of the last surviving realatives to Senator Bail Organa. I have access to 20.09 Million credits in offworld holdins that you may now claim. All I need form you is your Imperail ID Number, back account codes, home address, mother's maiden name, favotire ice cream flavor, and 200 credits to cover the transfer expenses and processing.

Please response quickly or the accounts will be claimed by the Imperail courts and seized if an heir is not identified soon.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

In regards to the tangent of the thread, what hacking/slicing accomplish in the movies is no more or less absurd than how any number of capabilities actually play out in reality. I'm not sure this is even much of a tangent because the implication reads like this "hacking/slicing is way too powerful in the RPG about the movie with lazer swords, telekinesis, and planet killer lazers....."

Hacking is too powerful to unleash as a sort of Make-Your-Own-Spell form like many players want to do. They just try to bypass everything with the one-stop skill and spec for Galactic domination.

So you just say no when it's not possible.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

Hello, I am honorable Lawyer Huon Burrick,

I am the executor of the offworld holding of the Aldereanian royal family and it has come to my attention that you are one of the last surviving realatives to Senator Bail Organa. I have access to 20.09 Million credits in offworld holdins that you may now claim. All I need form you is your Imperail ID Number, back account codes, home address, mother's maiden name, favotire ice cream flavor, and 200 credits to cover the transfer expenses and processing.

Please response quickly or the accounts will be claimed by the Imperail courts and seized if an heir is not identified soon.

And now I have my next adventure hook.

9 hours ago, Tesoe said:

IDs are apparently physical. We see them a couple times in the TV series.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Identichip

I've never seen a wallet before, but now I'm amused by trying to figure out what the wallets of various main characters would look like.

Yeah, we quickly determined physical ID is a thing but figured they would have smart chip verification or similar in them too. The GM wanted to work out if the NPC could see the PC's Certificate of Deputization (pre-Empire Bounty Hunter license) when the PC went to pay for drinks at a bar but then figured as a Skip Tracer, he would have 2 sets of ID wallets to avoid revealing himself too early in situations like this one.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

So you just say no when it's not possible.

Which most efficiently is right when they ask how it can be used. Shutting it down early helps prevent expectations while also preventing inconsistent presentation of technology that you are later on going to have to shut down anyway when they get out of hand or invalidate footwork or fighting. I know you can't do it with everything, but a lot of inappropriate stuff can be dealt with before anyone gets attached to the idea of using it. I would say that Slicers are the specs that get the most eyeball time in character creation because I want to make sure the player isn't thinking it's gonna be watchdogs.

8 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

We also saw Bohdi’s scandoc in Rogue One. I’ve got a screenshot at home that I’ll try to remember to post later. Because I’m certainly not trying to design something like it that I can print out for a player who has multiple aliases. ?

Here we go:

56 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Which most efficiently is right when they ask how it can be used. Shutting it down early helps prevent expectations while also preventing inconsistent presentation of technology that you are later on going to have to shut down anyway when they get out of hand or invalidate footwork or fighting. I know you can't do it with everything, but a lot of inappropriate stuff can be dealt with before anyone gets attached to the idea of using it. I would say that Slicers are the specs that get the most eyeball time in character creation because I want to make sure the player isn't thinking it's gonna be watchdogs.

Y'know, for a guy in the one thread talking about how you want to ignore the rules on something pretty simple, and talking about me being 100% RAW, and then here you're essentially poopooing any PC creativity with a whole aspect of the game, you're kinda a 6 alarm hazmat scene of contradictions.

24 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Y'know, for a guy in the one thread talking about how you want to ignore the rules on something pretty simple, and talking about me being 100% RAW, and then here you're essentially poopooing any PC creativity with a whole aspect of the game, you're kinda a 6 alarm hazmat scene of contradictions.

I'm just saying if you don't want those things in the game then stop the exercise early is all. I was guessing that you are 100% RAW in your approach to all things but I don't know for sure. I am poopooing the idea of the stuff that will spiral into situations that I feel aren't what you want in a Star Wars game as opposed to some sci-fi game or another space fantasy. This discussion is about setting fidelity, and as you said before, I don't care about what was said in another thread.

8 hours ago, Tesoe said:

It doesn't, but now I really want to hear about some PC overloading the reactor on a star destroyer because some imperial IT guy forgot to password the slow cooker and the player was able to use it to remotely back door into the ship's systems.

Yeah, I had to shut down one of my players. He saw under "Bad Motivator" that he could cause 1 enemy device to fail. He tried to have it be the main reactor of the Star Destroyer. Had to use a few house rules on what constituted a "device". He tried the same type of thing on hacking, too.

57 minutes ago, Edgookin said:

Yeah, I had to shut down one of my players. He saw under "Bad Motivator" that he could cause 1 enemy device to fail. He tried to have it be the main reactor of the Star Destroyer. Had to use a few house rules on what constituted a "device". He tried the same type of thing on hacking, too.

Let him do it. Too bad that a ship that size has several secondary reactors that kick in only a few seconds later.

Of course, I had a player that wanted to use BM to disable Vader's respirator...

A thing failing also does not mean it cannot be repaired, and the main reactor will have an engineering team stood next to it at all times.

11 hours ago, Darzil said:

A thing failing also does not mean it cannot be repaired, and the main reactor will have an engineering team stood next to it at all times.

Heck, this is star wars we're talking about. They probably have at least one engineer stationed inside the reactor.

5 minutes ago, Tesoe said:

They probably have at least one engineer stationed inside the reactor.

Or one of these...

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mark_II_reactor_drone

16 minutes ago, Vorzakk said:

Or one of these...

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mark_II_reactor_drone

That's surprisingly practical for the empire.

On 9/25/2018 at 1:25 PM, 2P51 said:

Ships have sensors/radar. We see tracking images on Vader's targeting computer in Star Wars, we see the big war map in Rebel HQ on Yavin of the Death Star's position, we see tracking info on Jango's scope in Attack.

Until Rebels we never saw anyone poop or pee, I just went ahead and assumed they had bathrooms.

Star Wars makes clone armies, they're genetic engineering knowledge is vast.

Star Wars deploys droid armies and controls them remotely, they're automation/AI/ and wireless data output tech is vast.

They fly planet sized ships through hyperspace, they're math and ability to actually manipulate gravitational fields is arcane in it's abilities.

They have real time conversations across galactic distances, they're data throughput/networking knowledge is vast.

I've never seen anyone make a convincing argument about we have something they don't, we just use different names than we see in the movies.

Some computers are networked many arent. There is no internet like we know it. But they effectively have skype and cell phones.

I suspect lots of encryption and very solid network security. You cant hack into the imperial base from outside because security is super strong. Get inside the firewall and R2 can access everything...

The way I see it, most of the tech that we take for granted now and miss in Star Wars has long since been outdated or outsmarted.

"Why no easy connectivity to other devices, like blue-tooth or wi-fi"?
With massive AI advances and droids that can "hack" much faster than any human can, those would be massive security holes.
Things are disconnected on purpose. You have to actually walk up to a manual connection port to be able to access a ships computer network. That means it's impossible for another ship to "hack" you while you're in battle (unless they have someone on the inside)

"Why no DNA forensics?"
Because making forged DNA is so easy even a petty thief could afford it.
Murdering someone and spreading some "phony" DNA around would be a piece of cake.

"Why no radar?`"
Radar absorbing materials are cheap and common. Other sensors are more common and effective. Thus radars died out for spaceships at least.
I mean, almost nobody uses the radar absorbing materials any more, for sure, but that's why it went away.
It's the same way that personal shields came and went in the old Legends material. Personal shields were developed, quickly countered by training troops in close combat and then fell out of favor again and the technology was lost.

The way I see it, the tech that we have that isn't in Star Wars is either something that was invented, countered and then lost to time, or something that's simply too much of a security risk to have around.

I can easily explain away most stuff in that way.

On 9/26/2018 at 3:55 AM, 2P51 said:

Until Rebels we never saw anyone poop or pee, I just went ahead and assumed they had bathrooms.

On ship plans, they are called refreshers. One of the reasons why I like the Starlight light freighter (i tend to really like ships that have weird flaws) is that the refresher is notoriously awkward in design due to being designed by an insectoid race with different sensibilities to humans.