The Googles
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I’m happy to have Street Samurai in the comic. Not only does she have the best distressed jeans in all of Handbook-World, she also comes packaged with a boatload of tropes that don’t exactly work in a fully fantasy universe. I mean sure, Wizard is a smart dude, but I suspect that the “technical skills” section of his resume is limited to “metamagic.”
So what do you say we talk about Hackerman? I’ve met the dude a time or two, and he’s a bit of a problem in futuristic games. I mean, there’s nothing inherently wrong with playing a decker (except possibly this video). A character that knows their way around the net can be useful, especially when it comes to investigation and mystery games. It only becomes a problem when internet research becomes your first, last, and only avenue of inquiry. In my mind there’s a big difference between, “I scout out some useful intel on the target,” and, “I find out where the target lives. I hack into his robot dog. The dog delivers the maguffin to the alleyway.”
Happily, games that support Hackermans tend to feature countermeasures and limitations on tech, reducing the likelihood of hearing the dreaded question, “What do I even need the rest of the party for?” However, like a working cell phone in a 1980s horror flick, unrestricted internet access has a way of stepping all over dramatic tension in contemporary games.
Let’s bring it back to fantasy for a minute. Take the Pathfinder spell speak with dead. The spell does what it says on the tin, allowing the caster to ask questions of a dead body. Within the context of a murder mystery, it is hard to imagine a bigger obstacle for a GM. After all, it’s not going to be much of a mystery if the body can sit up, point a decaying finger, and croak, “J’accuse!” at its murderer. And so, even though the spell has built-in workarounds (the magic might fail if the creature’s alignment is different from the caster’s; answers are always cryptic; etc.), a mystery writer is obliged to have murderers remove victims’ jaw bones or otherwise restrict access to the spell if they want to preserve their genre tropes. In the same way then, contemporary games have to account for internet access and Hackerman PCs.
The problem is exacerbated when a player knows more about computers than a GM. Suppose it’s session 1, and that a mafia Don has invited you to his fancy soiree to meet the other PCs. If he gives you access to his home network, and if you can explain in technical terms how this allows you to steal enough personal files to blackmail him a dozen times over, my computer-illiterate ass has no choice but to say, “Ummm… Cool. I guess I’ll rewrite my campaign a little. A lot. Completely. Once I’m done crying.” It’s a lot harder to apply the old “a wizard did it” when there’s a literal computer wizard sitting across from you, explaining why your explanations a hooey.
So here’s my question to all you IRL Harckermans out there. What are some strategies that a technologically illiterate GM can use to manage a Computer Skill: ∞ kind of PC? How do you run a satisfying mystery when a high hacking roll can do seemingly anything? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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I totally understand this frustration. Having a lot of friends who are far more computer literate than me, I prefer not to go down a rabbit hole of “no really this is how this works” and use the time honoured “roll against skill and challenge”.
It’s a little surprising that this works, but it actually does. At least with my friends. I think it comes down to setting out “here’s how it works in this fictional world which isn’t ours” and being consistent with it, along with reminding people that just because they know a thing, doesn’t mean their character does. That tends to work better for me than arguing with them about it.
In really tech heavy games I like to split out the “use tech” or “science” skills into more niche areas that allow them to specialise without becoming game breaking. So “computer use” is your basic knowing your way around a desktop (with weird stuff like mainframes and obscure OSes at higher levels), and have skills like “web coding”, “database management”, and “hacking” as specific and unrelated skill sets.
So you can provide interesting challenges for a group who still have to work together to infiltrate a high security environment. On their own they’re each super stuffed, but together they can be awesome.
Oh, and having real life security experts to ask for advice is useful. That way when the hacker has an accident, you can always offer an armoured door with a tiny window through which can just be glimpsed a whiteboard with the words, “TODAY’S MASTER PASSWORD” on it. True story apparently.
…
On a separate note, the speed with which techy stuff changes is partly why I’m writing a sci-fi novel where the technology level is closer to “WW1 battleships in space”. In-universe there are no electronics, so modern things work provided they can be analogue. It’s one step back from the “computers processing literally dozens of calculations per second” of the 40s and 50s.
Nicely done! So to summarize, some strategies include:
On a related note to the “Today’s master password” thing, maybe also check out atomic physicist Richard Feynman’s autobiohraphy, which outlines all the disturbing gaps in the security when he worked the Manhattan Project
Have now done so. Fascinating and terrifying in equal measure.
As someone who dies IT and IT security for work, here’s how I handle that stuff as a player. I refuse to play deckers / hackers, and mainly play computer illiterate characters. I deal with this stuff at work, don’t want to deal with it during gaming time.
I’ve got a buddy who also dies IT. Kills him one day at a time….
I’d say an easier way is just keep everything entirely disconnected. Have a the important person be so paranoid that they have their computer, but also a seperate computer they use for important stuff which doesn’t have any form of wireless or internet access. Possibly locked in a purely mechanical safe. That way, it is quite literally impossible to retreive info stored on it until they get access to it.
Maybe just say that was really well encrypted, and pull out all the technobabble bullshit and maybe just say “look, this is too powerful, there’s a difference between +10 to hit and automatically killing people you look at”.
That was the old Shadowrun strategy (as I understand it), requiring physical proximity to jack into a local network. Seems like a solid solution to me. 🙂
Even with the new wireless system there are some GM solutions to forcing the decker to get on site. Faraday cages, WiFi blocking paint, and one of my personal favorites mirror materials. All in universe ways to get them on-site without just telling them that it is offline.
Nobody wants a character who gets to play from the safety of their race car bed in mom’s basement. At least not 100% of the time.
I heard that a lot of real world ICBM bases use legacy systems that also started out as purpose built so even in their own day they weren’t compatible with anything else. Because of this it’s damn hard for anyone to hack into them even if they do have physical access to the machine (and impossible if they don’t because they predate the internet)
American ICBM systems still used floppy disks. No, not those floppy disks, the big ones:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=wzG9sdge&id=D7923F5214200ABC3AE2FD9AF5487E47D963F3DE&thid=OIP.wzG9sdgeeotCX2Ky4L4ppwHaFe&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mdtadesign.co.uk%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2012%2f02%2f12%2fmy-retro-gaming-childhood%2fFloppy-disk-thumb-400×296-85290.jpg&exph=296&expw=400&q=big+floppy+disk&simid=607992527837530211&selectedIndex=6
Not only does it reduce risk of hacking or technical failure, such low-tech systems are also more resistant to EMPs, something nuclear weapons sites are quite worried about.
Same reason the Soviets designed a lot of their frontline military hardware with glass valves.
The extent to which this happened is often dismissed as “backward Reds” but actually stems from the Soviet nuclear doctrine. Having studied this stuff, I feel compelled to share the pain.
American nuclear doctrine largely stemmed from Brodie’s work in the 40s. He extended the idea that “the bomber will always get through” to nuclear weapons and stated that if even one bomber gets through, the results will be catastrophic. Thus, between two nuclear armed states war would be mutually assured destruction.
This idea was actually taken even further by later strategists who dismantled the US bomber defences, reasoning that deterrence would be more convincing if it were clear that they could not hope to launch a surprise attack and simply defend against retaliation.
No really.
The big flaw was that American strategists assumed the Soviets were operating under the same logic, but they weren’t.
Soviet nuclear policy stems from the Soviet experience in WW2 (The Great Patriotic War, Anti-Fascist War, names vary. The 1941-45 one). This experience could be summarised as “we went in as a second-rate power, lost about a third of our population, and emerged as a superpower”.
Soviet doctrine was aimed at winning, not avoiding, nuclear war.
Thus they built significant anti-air and later anti-ballistic-missile defences, created a nuclear shelter infrastructure that would allow enough* people to survive the attack, and then be able to fight through the aftermath.
Remember also that Soviet paranoia and political memory assumed that they would be facing Operation Barbarossa Mk.ii and that they would need to defeat tank armies rolling through East Germany and Poland, then counterattack deep into Western Europe. Therefore some of their nuclear weapons (including theorised use for Tsar Bomba – which due to its lead third stage produced very low fallout) were designed for use on their own territory.
Basically, nuclear war involves such terrifying destructive forces that even the people tasked with understanding it come to conclusions that appear right out of Dr Strangelove (“What good is a deterrent if no one knows that it exists?!”).
While the strategy and tools are fascinating, I think it’s worth properly contemplating what it really means. It’s sobering. Are the things it would be fought over worth the consequences?
*Soviet doctrine. Don’t look too closely at “enough”.
How can Wizard Metamagic? That’s a Sorcerer thing.
The problem with playing Deckers comes up when neither the GM or the players are computer literate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ
The way around Speak With Dead in murder mysteries is having the victim not know who killed them. (Disguise, poison, stealth, whatever) Doesn’t stop Zone of Truth from getting breaking the mystery assuming every potential suspect is locked in the mansion with you as is standard.
He took a correspondence course.
Double hacking is great technique when everyone is computer illiterate.
GMs tend to treat Zone of Truth shenanigans in the same way, inventing reasons why it doesn’t say “auto win” on it. The principle is the same with any divination type effect, Googling included.
A correspondence course can give you the X-Gene? (You’re missing out on so many X men jokes with Wild Magic Sorcerer and Divine Soul Sorcerer)
The other problem with deckers is that if it’s more complicated than a skill check it grinds the game to a halt while everyone waits for them to finish hacking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnCxG1IsXw
It’s the GM’s duty to know what the Diviner can do and be ready to counter it. That said; too much countering it means that the diviner is useless at the thing they chose to specialize in, so it’s a delicate balance.
In Pathfinder at least, Wizards can not only use metamagic feats, but it is slightly easier for them to do it than Sorcerers (Pathfinder Sorcerers using metamagic suffer from an increased casting time in addition to using a higher-level spell slot).
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/
Yes, but that’s Mathfinder and can therefore be safely ignored.
Honestly, the person playing the character can’t account for the character’s abilities if it’s a techno-fantasy setting… the world can be explained as “it’s magic science hybrid” and half their argument is out the window.
I actually like how Grrl Power comic handles magic like code though.
If you want a more simplistic approach then just keep things as-is with the rules and change up their flavor to match. You can say disable device is still disable device, even if the lock is electronic.
Don’t forget that if your tech guy is getting out of hand then just drop the blackout hammer on him.
“They took out a transformer down the street. This whole area is now dark”
“They cut the cable. You can’t access it from here.”
“There’s a signal jammer nearby.” (Optional raspberry joke if there is a character named Lone Starr)
“They are running a (D)DoS attack on you. You need to make a new check.”
“That was a Honey Pot. Your system is now compromised. Roll a save”
There are as many ways to mess with them as there are for them to mess with you…
“Drop the Blackout Hammer” is now my band name.
If you like ‘Magic as Computer Programs’: give ‘The Laundry’ a read and ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ a play. The former involves magic and mathematics being similar enough that you can summon literal Cthulhu with an iPhone, while the latter has an internet-based teleporter piercing the veil between worlds and the now-crippled head scientist using similar principles to create an MS-DOS program (this game came out in 1992) capable of translating, contracting, and digitally storing DEMONS (by which we mean mythological creatures ranging from pixies and jack o’lanterns to Lucifer and YAWH AKA Capitol-G GOD). Said DOS program gets ported to smartphones by the fourth game.
I’ve always felt that coding looked suspiciously like demon-summoning. They’re literally lines of arcane runes!
How is she getting 4g signal in the post-apocalyptic Austrailian outback? That’s why she’s breaking the game.
“Siri, Who runs Barter Town?”
“Bargain Town was destroyed in the Cleansing Fire. Would you like to search for similar stores?”
I have no experience with high-tech games, but I believe the basic principles of real-life cybersecurity still apply:
1) If it’s not connected to a network, you can’t hack it via network. You have to lower Tom Cruise from the ceiling instead.
2) Properly-constructed passwords of long length, random-ish composition, changed on a fairly regular basis and not used for other things are not going to be brute-forceable, especially if the system locks you out or self-destructs after a few failed password attempts. While humans are always the weakest link in such things, any competent organization is going to demand passwords like “EWco9066&t”, not “Password1!”, and have them changed once a year, if not every few months.
3) Multi-factor identification. When a person logs into the service, they get a ping on their phone or future equivalent, and must unlock the phone and permit the login for it to continue. The Super-Secret Vault of Secrets requires a physical “key” to be inserted while the login attempt is made. Biometrics, fingerprints, DNA scanners, iris scanners, voice identification. Even some basic security questions, ranging from obscure facts about your early life to some deliberate nonsense like “Why does the black moon howl?” (answer: “Because the white dove sings”). ANYTHING in addition to the password (ideally something that the rest of the party can go and get through normal means). If any of these conditions are not met, there is a lockout and a security alert, a silent alarm/release of a virus to hack and track the hacker’s computer or perhaps even a fake “Access Granted” that gives the hacker access to a pre-fabricated fake system with false information in it.
In summary, hacking major things should be a whole heist operation itself, with the party using all of their skills to counter the various defenses. And there are plenty of ways around all of these – perhaps the target is a big enough idiot to write his password down, or you can steal his phone from him, or digitally duplicate his voice, or call customer service and pretend to be him having forgotten his password, or assassinate the guy and steal the data when his replacement is transferring everything to a new system. The point is, hacking is a puzzle, not a win button.
(That said, every hacker character probably needs a few freebee hacks every now and then. The easiest way to give them that, I think, is for them to hack a robot or something that came with factory settings that the owner never changed, so the hacker can already have such knowledge and exploit it.)
That’s the real trouble though. You’re ready for a big damn heist story, and the decker thinks to screw with the traffic lights so that the cops can’t get there, and so tripping the alarms is inconsequential. Planning for that sort of thing is bloody difficult!
This isn’t directly related to the computer skill thing, but I’ve had to deal with the ‘speak with dead’ example you’ve mentioned. However, I had planned for it, since that’s the kind of solution I’d come up with, so I had the murder happen from behind. A nice fire poker through the back and the dead person had no idea who killed them. However, the ‘speak with dead’ helped as it gave them a clue about the attacker’s boots, which is the only thing the victim saw as they were dying.
On the subject of the hacking thing, my favourite trick for thwarting the super techies is the analog solution. Have some vital clue be buried in some old government or private archive that’s never been digitized, or some system that’s too old for their fancy new equipment to connect to.
I love that opening line from Johnny Mnemonic: “I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude.”
I don’t see the problem. Tech don’t resolve problems only change them.
Decker: Siri, where is the skullshacker’s hideout?
Siri: The Skullshacker’s Hideout in the Av. Desperado 747, it has 4.5/5 stars in Gay Night Life.
Decker: I don’t want to look for a gay club. Siri, look if the police has some information about the skullshacker’s hideout.
Siri: Sorry but i can’t find nor album or song called “skullshacker’s hideout” by The Police.
Decker: NO!!! Siri, look if this city police has some information about the skullshacker’s hideout.
Siri: There is an old police report about a incident in a gay club. Do you want to know more?
Decker: … >(
Decker: Siri, WTF!!!
I appreciate that Future Siri remains Siri. Never change, girl!
I see the computer wizard thing the same way I see bringing real word chemistry and physics into a fantasy game. It might be fun, and it really feels great to be able to use your own knowledge to great effect in a game. However, like you said, it trivialize a lots of things.
My approach, then, is to sacrifice a little bit of realism, and reming people that this is a game, with rules and (mostly) defined things you can do. And bringing real life knowledge into the game is not one of those things. Partly because of player/character separation, but also because the world might just works differently (it’s easier to argue that last point for real world physics into fantasy world than for hacking stuff, but still, it CAN work).
Another thing is, that’s just not fun in the long run. Sure, it feels great to be able to completely circumvent a challenge and be the hero of the day. But then what? Once you’ve done that, the GM has two options : he keeps putting challenges of that type in your way, or he doesn’t.
If he does, then sooner or later it’ll become boring. Different people like different levels of difficulty, but a game where there is no difficulty at all is just not all that interesting ; there’s no tension, there’s no stakes, you just… kinda do it. Woo, awesome.
And if he doesn’t? Well then your character area of expertise is rendered irrelevant, and you get to sit on the sideline while the other players have fun tackling on challenges that can’t be solved with real world knowledge. I think we can agree that’s no fun either.
So, the solution is, ultimately, to have reasonnable players, who will face the challenge you put in their way with in game means rather than out of game ones. That, or a DM that will put their foot down, and say “ok, it works, but just this once“.
As for Speak with Dead or Zone of Truth thing, that’s a whole other can of worm. We go back to the problem of “I can systematically solve this specific situation with no effort”, except there you can’t ask your player to not act on real world knowledge, because it’s an in game tool that allows them to do that. I won’t get into this, because this we’d just go back to the age old argument “casters in D&D/Pathfinder have just too many tools at their disposal”, so instead I’ll just say this : if your game hinges on a concept that could be trivialized with one or a couple of spells… then just don’t allow this(those) spell(s). This is within your powers as a DM and reasonnable players should understand.
I suspect that reasonable players are the solution to most of the world’s problems. 😛
True. But even if you’re not dealing with reasonnable players, I still think saying “this is a game, and trivializing it won’t be fun” is one of the better solutions for that sort of problem.
I can’t help with tech at all, but here are some solutions I’ve seen to “Speak With Dead”:
1) The dead person’s heirs already used Speak With Dead to settle inheritance disputes; players either end up a week behind the murderer or need a new solution
2) The dead person / heirs / civil authority / religious authority disapprove highly of necromancy and strongly forbid its use
3) The dead person belongs to a cultural group which burns its dead (either as an anti-disease, anti-undeath, no-good-graveyard-grounds, I’ve seen this done many times, actually, and the reasons were never the same twice).
3.a) Variant of above, which was just awesome world-building and worth a special mention: that group of dwarves had priests who turned the dead into stone and then stone-shaped them into part of that family’s holding. The dwarven family-clans were the primary social structure and extended families all lived together. The size and elaborateness of a family’s building determined its caste/power, so the older the family, and the more of its dead they were able to retrieve (lost at sea/adventure/unrecoverable from war/disaster was a tragedy in multiple senses), and the more prolific it was, the more power it had in society. Typically every family had several priests who could do this, and the more unsavory families were rumored to do away with their blacksheep and turn them into part of the outhouse structure…. these ‘building blocks’ usually were decorated with graven images from the person’s life so the family history was created in stone, and we really understood why the community refused to just up and move to get away from the impending disaster… ahem. Anyhow.
Corpse was turned into stone.
4) the “body” was actually a homunculus/duplicate/clone and couldn’t answer
5) death-trauma meant the answer came in the person’s first language, which was an obscure regional one and no one in the party knew it
6) scavengers got to corpse and the answers were unintelligible due to damage
7) there was a curse/trap set to go off if any necromancy spell was cast near the body (that one actually wiped out our party. A little too successful.)
8) the corpse had a hidden ‘magic mouth’ style spell on it, triggered by speak with dead, and the ‘agonized screaming’ noise it made when set off kept anyone from being able to hear the answers.
9) The corpse got possessed by a wandering spirit, got up, and walked away while our wizard was arguing with the marginally-devout town carpenter (he was also the undertaker. I guess carpentry’s good for making coffins?)
10) Victim didn’t know who the murderer was (poison is a great murder weapon, and often shows up when this one is used)
10.a.) Variant of above worth mentioning, because that was a fun session: DM had a family member in town who wanted to play, so his character started off in a reincarnated body and was introduced to the rest of us by hiring us to help him track down his murderer. At the end of the evening, he’d had his revenge and the rest of us were all set to go back to our usual campaign the following week when the guest was gone.
11) The method of murder meant the body was destroyed or lost
12) Victim was deaf/mute in life (the area’s oracle), which condition was not miraculously solved in death
13) the answer was too vague to be helpful (“One of you humans, I’m sure of it. I’d know you guys anywhere!” and on another occasion “It wasn’t anyone I knew personally.” which was less than helpful since the victim was a stranger to the area)
These explanations are spot on for the sorts of interactions I’m talking about. The advantage of fantasy is that “making stuff up” is viable method. As soon a sci-fi enters the mix, you need an entirely different set of knowledge to come up with believable explanations. For me, that additional challenge is all manner of intimidating.
I guess personally the reason I don’t play sci-fi games is because I feel like we’re already living in a science-fiction world? Well, science-reality world, literally, it would be. But we have so many crazy things out there that we can do with science that we long since passed the point where I feel like Clark’s third law has become our everyday life.
You have no CLUE how enthused I was when my family moved into a town and there was indoor plumbing. Magic, right there. Then later stuff happened and I ended up going to a city and attending university and…. we are DEFINITELY living in a science-fiction world.
So for games, I feel like entertainment should be the stuff we can’t get in real life, and I stick with fantasy games.
For science-fiction wonderment, I wander over to the library and pick up a science magazine and read about spidersilk-infused goatmilk, isotope dating methods, crimes SOLVED BY DNA ANALYSIS (seriously, how is that not already the real life equivalent of Speak With Dead?), the engineering behind traffic lights, and whatever else is around to gawp at.
I haven’t even MENTIONED the internet. But, seriously, THE INTERNET. Hello? Quintessence of science fiction! Real! Actual! Materialized into the real world and disseminated so widely that it is honestly literal when it says WORLD WIDE WEB, and it’s truly and genuinely a household-known-phenomenon, how can anyone look at the internet and not be blown away?? I’ll maybe begin to feel complacent about the reality of something like the internet in another six or seven decades…. maybe….
When I want sci-fi style social entertainment, I call up some friends and we pick a day and go take a tour of the water treatment plant (or we take apart a rotary phone someone found at an estate sale and try to see how it works, speaking of calling). Or something else of that nature.
So it’s less being intimidated by that type of challenge than confusion over the need for sci-fi games at all….
I can’t seem to find the quote, but I remember reading an article from William Gibson about retiring from cyberpunk. His rationale was that he was just describing he present.
And now I have a new author whose books to look up and read!
😀
Oh, for real? William Gibson is the guy that coined the term “cyberspace” back in ’82. His novel “Neuromancer” is THE seminal cyberpunk story. Go read it.
As I understand Shadowrun and other such settings, they’re typically set far enough in the future the you should be able to feasibly argue that the technical details someone at the table IRL knows might no longer apply.
But even if they do, if they tell you something like “I do X and Y and Z and now I own this person Mwahahaha!”, you have every right and turn around and point out that just like the players are allowed to roll for things their characters know how to do well that they as players do not, the GM too has that feature. So in that example you just say something like, “No, that doesn’t work so simply. They have proper protections against that sort of thing. Would you like to actually make a roll for that as the system outlines with the appropriate risks? I’ll happy accept yes or no, but I think we can all agree ‘I declare I win the game by trying to fast-talk to GM’ is not a valid answer here.”
Imagine somebody making similar arguments using their knowledge (or “knowledge”) of weapon techniques or martial arts. “No, Chad, I don’t care how unbeatable the Five Point Exploding Heart Technique is in ‘real life’, your monk can roll a d20 and add his BAB and Str like everyone else.”
Now I’m not saying that Fighter’s real name is Chad, but I’m not saying it’s NOT Chad either.
Within a setting where information-gathering powers are well defined, be they magical or technological, here are the two principles I use:
1) The powers are mostly well-understood within the setting, and thus appropriate countermeasures are also well-understood;
2) Build your storylines and mysteries with the assumption that the PCs have access to these powers, so that they use them to start investigations, not end them.
For 1) in Pathfinder, that means that careful murderers will, in fact, take the time to cut out the tongues of their victims, if not behead them or steal or destroy the bodies outright. It may seem a bit unfair to the cleric who asks, “Why does every murder victim we find have their tongue cut out? I can’t use my Speak With Dead spell!”, but it’s really no different from “Why does every murderer wear gloves? I can’t use my Search For Fingerprints ability!”
In a setting like Shadowrun, the hacking rules are integrated into the setting, and the countermeasures are clear. Powerful opponents have powerful computer systems, and the ability to hire hackers who are just as skilled as the PCs, with no qualms about giving the PC hacker a stroke. Particularly sensitive data can be kept offline or in isolated networks, although I’m less fond of that solution because evil corporations are all about convenience.
If 1) feels like it’s about stopping the characters’ abilities from working, then 2) is about using the characters’ abilities to start the investigation. Deliberately craft a murder mystery where the only clue is the corpse’s testimony under Speak With Dead. It won’t be enough to solve the mystery by itself (there are some good suggestions in other comments), but it gives the party their first clue, and means that the cleric gets to feel good about their information-gathering abilities. In Shadowrun, you should already have figured out what information is available on a given topic from a Matrix Search, and written your adventure with the assumption that the PCs will have that information.
The big problems come with systems where these information sources aren’t well-defined, such as modern or near-future settings with ill-defined hacking rules, and games where magic is more freeform and subject to, let’s call it what it is, player fast-talking. There, it’s a matter of laying down the law and saying what can and can’t be obtained with hacking or divination, and not letting the players try to talk their way around that. Setting out a well-defined difficulty for rolls is probably the simplest way to do that. “If you can get three successes on Intelligence + Computers, you get this information. If you can get five successes, you also get this other information. No, I’m not interested in your explanation of why your character should be able to find out more than this.”
A nice systematic approach to the issue. Well done, HopeFox!
That last bit rings particularly true for me. It seems as if all of my friends are more technologically capable than me, and so I run into issues of self-confidence. How can I hold firm and stick to my guns when everyone in the room knows I’m talking out of my ass? I think that’s falling back on the game-ness of the game is an excellent strategy in that case.
I eventually learned that hacking was not that powerful. It took a long time and some frustration to learn said lesson. But the easiest thing for me to say is “okay, roll for it” and let them realize that they aren’t as good at hacking as this guy is at encrypting. Is that REALLY his home network? Does he keep his sensitive files on paper only, or on a closed network? Just like speak with dead can be very easily fooled, like so:
Bard: Ghasp! Who could have murdered St. Pierre La’Plotdevice’?! Look, his corpse!
Rogue: I check his body…. 23.
DM: He was definitely murdered, stabbed five times in the back. With a 23, you also notice that there’s enough blood to indicate he was murdered here, and the back if his clothes are wet, but there’s no large amount of water anywhere else.
Wizard: I cast speak with dead.
DM: The corpse of St. Pierre gasps, breath flooding into him… What…. What…. Where am… Who… He struggles to understand what hapoened to him, or why he can’t feel his body.
Wizard: Who killed you.
GM: Pierre sucks in a rhasping breath and shudders, I know not, he says, I was making my way to the ballroom when… It was cold… Then hot… I was stabbed, oh how it hurt…
Rogue: I could’ve told you that.
DM: The killer… The killer was behind me… But… I only heard grunts… It was so fast, they sounded angry, furious… And then it was over.
And just like that, they get a little more information, but don’t get a direct answer from the spell. Balanced, as all things sometimes should be.
Haxxors work the same way. “Oh his home network? I just log onto his frame and jack into his securirig to download his dms and install my own cryptogrunge software.”
DM: yeah… No. Roll for that. DC rediculous not to trip any alarms or backup programs for hacking into the cyber yakuza.
Or…
Haxxor: I. Google. It.
DM: you get a lot of results, including a blog post about some girl who apparently ran into the cyber yakuza. However by the time she starts falling in love, you begin to realize you’ve been reading some girls self-insert romance slash fic. Turns out, it’s hard to dig up info on the cyber yakuza. Who. Friggen. Knew.
That said, it can give you a great out if you need them to just get a clue.
Also, who says hacking works the same in the future. Tech changes.
And if you were wondering…. The St. Pierre Le’Plotdevice’ was murdered by his bastard son he had with the maid. He paid for an alchemical ice blade that melted after use, which soaked Pierre’s clothes. Fun stuff.
Speak with Dead doesn’t spoil murder mysteries if you know anything about how to run actual mystery plots. Look at Rashomon: classic low-fantasy homicide investigation, dead guy’s spirit gets called up and freely provides extensive testimony – but his version of the story is inconsistent with the other two witnesses, who also disagree with each other. Plenty more fact-finding work remains to be done at that point.
The idea of a “mystery plot” isn’t exactly 1:1 between film and tabletop. If you’ve got to plan for speak with dead, you’ve also got to plan for zone of truth. And for other divination spells. And for all the other hyjinks that the players have access to. It’s a hydra problem, and thinking of a game in terms of “plot” is of limited use: the plot goes all over the place when the player get in on the act.
Actually, “Speak With Dead” is rarely of value unless the GM is being kind, since in a world where assassins know that it exists, they need merely ensure that the victim doesn’t know anything useful. Which isn’t all that hard, since a crossbow fired through a window leaves the victim knowing less than the investigators had already deduced from the bolt in the back of his head.
That’s the point. It either solves the mystery automatically or it does nothing because [insert plot justification]. The need for GMs to [insert plot justification] is the problem.
Not sure if anyone else suggested this, but assuming you trust the player, ask them how they would defend against what they are suggesting. Chances are they know ways to stop that (after all, white hat hackers do this for a living). Explain that that’s probably what they used, and offer them a chance to get around those defenses (set a DC or use a contested roll based on the level of security that said mafia don would have).
“White hat players” should be a thing.
In fact, there may be a comic somewhere in this….
About the murder Mystery:
Put a hat of disguise on the murderer. Free red herring for the party. “It was Peter, he stabbed me, laughed at me and told finally you paid for stealing my love!”
But Peter, or anyone else, has no clue who or what that love should have been, that Peter stole from dead Frank.
About the hacker stuff.
Misleading also works great there. A very effective way to protect from hackers is the honeypot. You set up a something that looks like the real thing, but isn’t.
For cybersecurity in general you could imagine the hacker as a rogue/thief with lock picking tools. There are doors of different quality, that are more or less hard to unlock. And yes, there are ways to get around that. For example with Dimdoor. But not with lock picking tools.
Another thing to consider is the public/private network difference. Every network that is easily accessible, like that for the traffic lights, is easily accessible for everyone. If you bring chaos to the city by messing with that, you’re connected to the same net as the dozen guys from homeland security. And it is only three escalating messages from the local administrator, over some cyber security responsible and his boss until you have the undivided attention of those guy’s. Like: “I hack into the system and search for the information we need, because .” GM: “You manage to get into the system, but the copy process of all that data that would end my nice campaign in one go is interrupted. A console window opens on your screen and text is typed on it. ‘You thought it would be that easy? Now we know who you are and we’re coming for you!’ Then your computer freezes and dies. Because .
Still another option: “Hacker has found the basic information for a hacking attack. Please roll 1d100. That’s the number of days it takes to break into the network.” Because real life hacking into secured systems isn’t fast. And even then you don’t know if the data you search is behind that firewall.
there are two because in the text that had a “tech babble” in pointy braces behind them. Looks like the input sanitation of your server cleaned that potential hacking entry leaving my post stunted. 😉
Well I mean, you could always double your hacking speed with aid another:
https://gfycat.com/oddripegoshawk-comedycemetery-keyboard-ncis