Hackers playable?

[Malakh]

I own almost all the 2nd ed. and 3rd ed. SR books, but have never actually played a long campaign.

The part that always bothered me was playing with a hacker... I mean, that is a sub-game in and of itself. How does a DM handle letting a hacker tear thru a system, while the rest of the team plays? It seems that it would be very time consuming, and cause the rest of the players to get bored while the hacker does his thing....

The only solution I could ever imagine was having two DMs or something...

[Garm]

Well,the obvious solution also used int movies is to swap between what the team does and what the decker does. Works good most of the time.

[BigBunny]

Switching between the 2 'modes' works pretty well especially when there's some dice rolling, as we all know it takes up to 2 weeks in SR :]

[Slacker]

That is a problem, yes. Deckers can eat up a LOT of game time. That's why I usually tell them that I'll NPC a decker if needed and pre-roll that part.

The best way I've ever seen it done is the GM made the decker go "real time" with it. ie. He had to make the choices on the spot, no time to check his notes, etc etc. It very much made for a very good feel to the Run.

[TheElf]

Originally Posted by Malakh

I own almost all the 2nd ed. and 3rd ed. SR books, but have never actually played a long campaign.

The part that always bothered me was playing with a hacker... I mean, that is a sub-game in and of itself. How does a DM handle letting a hacker tear thru a system, while the rest of the team plays? It seems that it would be very time consuming, and cause the rest of the players to get bored while the hacker does his thing....

The only solution I could ever imagine was having two DMs or something...

You can do it, yet it is a twofold problem, you say deckers eat up too much of game time from other characters, one would say, many specialist characters get too little game time compared to the rest. Deckers aren't alone with this, but they are the most visible example. What can you do with it? Either use some coGMs to help with deckers, or use some multi channel envinronment to run your games.

For a fantasy game you can say, you don't want to see a PC on your gaming table for the feel, but for shadowrun it is all right. Say, you play with friends at gaming table, and you reach the decker online (say lan). Some of the exploring in system is done by levels you design for PC games, and he gets instructions to contact you, and roll dice at certain points...

[TheElf]

Originally Posted by Slacker

That is a problem, yes. Deckers can eat up a LOT of game time. That's why I usually tell them that I'll NPC a decker if needed and pre-roll that part.

The best way I've ever seen it done is the GM made the decker go "real time" with it. ie. He had to make the choices on the spot, no time to check his notes, etc etc. It very much made for a very good feel to the Run.

NPC deckers doesn't work too well, for many many reasons, including the first and foremost: What if a player wants a decker, or another: players don't treat your NPC as part of their team so you lose some possible story threads, etc.