[Coyote]

You have to scan for icons that are running silent

Debatable.

"If you know at least one feature of an icon running silent, you can spot the icon."
Running Silent is a single hit of information given on Matrix Perception tests vs nearby icons, after you ask "are icons running silent in the vicinity (either in the same host or within 100 meters)"?
That info is useful if you haven't done any prep or work to know other features of the icon(s) you're looking for, but what about when you do? What happens when you know a feature of the icon?
"...You can spot the icon" - sounds like time to roll dice to me.

If you have to spot the icon before you can know any of its features, then this option of Matrix Perception is effectively useless. The only way that this has any use, is if you can pre-determine the feature set that you are looking to find, or to avoid. Since this doesn't declare whether it works before or after you randomly determine which icon to spot, and it only has an effect before, it makes sense to me that you get to determine the feature of the icon that you are looking for before you look for it.

Doing otherwise makes Matrix Perception to find hidden icons to be next to useless... after all, if you cannot filter for features before making the check, then YOUR OWN icons that are running silent can get in the way of your own search. That is seriously nonsensical, yet it's where we end up if we believe that the rule that says that you roll randomly comes before the rule that says that you can select the icons by their features (or, presumably, lack of features).

It makes far more sense that you get to select a feature set for which you're looking....
All Icons outside of my PAN
All such Icons that are not RFIDs
All such Icons that are commlinks (or cyberware, or guns, etc)

If you are wishing to defend against someone finding your stuff and bricking it, there are still ways (credit to Hobbes for the details) ... get a Commlink, use a Program Carrier to run Virtual Machine / Agent / Wrapper.
Then, you fill up your PAN with as many RFID chips as you have room for, after you protect all your major devices. Use Wrapper to make the RFID chips to look like important devices, and the actual important devices to look like RFID chips. Use the Agent to do Matrix Perception on your commlink, so that if anyone Marks your devices it gives you warning. Now you have either the death of the RFID chips, or the Agent noticing Marks, to warn you that someone is hacking at you, and you shut off wireless to save your devices.

That's enough defensive ability for me, and it occurs without breaking the ability to use Matrix Perception.

[JoeNapalm]

Of course you can filter your own icons. They're not hidden from you. That's like saying if I hide my SSID I can't be connected to my home router because it's hidden. You know all the features because you own it.

Saying you can filter on the features of an unknown silent device before you even know if is there or not, or have examined it, makes running silent useless. You're throwing out the Opposed Test and the decker only needs a single hit to ID all sure to icons in the vicinity. I agree that there's a problem, but making one or the other useless isn't a good fix.

And the defense you're suggesting is exactly what is being discussed -- though if you let the decker know the features through pregocnition it's useless because any Decker worth their salt would score so many unopposed net hits on Matrix Perception the wrappers are not going to work. It's exactly the same thing. Just another way of hiding the icon.

My intent is to use the rules as they are -- i.e. not gutting silent running -- but not abuse it by dragging a wagon full of RFIDs outside my PAN.

EDIT : Which, by the way, wouldn't be exactly subtle. At least inside the PAN, they aren't a huge walking ball of silent icons at first glance should someone be looking. Also if you did have a box of them, unsaved, it would make your own Decker very unhappy.

-Jn-

[Novocrane]

At least inside the PAN, they aren't a huge walking ball of silent icons at first glance

There are two ways to see a ball of silent icons.

#1 use a bug / radio signal scanner. 20m range.
#2 track each silent icon individually.

Anything else will only give you a general direction and within 100m Y/N.

(If the owner of the silent icons wishes, they may use AROs instead of standard matrix icons, which include more comprehensive location data for AR use.)

[Hobbes]

My intent is to use the rules as they are -- i.e. not gutting silent running -- but not abuse it by dragging a wagon full of RFIDs outside my PAN.

Okay so you've got to keep in mind that all Icons for Security Devices Run Silent by default.  Per the GM section, so essentially, every moderately secured location has hundreds of silently running icons.  Windows all have Alarms, Doors have locks, Cars in the Parking lot have alarms and locks... stand in the parking lot of any office park and count cars and windows.  In the Sixth world every one of those would have a Silently Running Icon.  If you really have to check randomly for each silent Icon you'll spend all night trying to find the right icon to hack. 

Every table shortcuts this somehow, consciously or not. 

Same with the bag of RF IDs thing.  If that actually worked every corp building would just spend 1,000 Nuyen on RF IDs and carry on.

In order for Hackers to actually Hack, you've got to let them have a reasonable way of finding Icons.     

[JoeNapalm]

I think if I were watching that network I'd go with option #3:

Send a threat response team. 

-Jn-

[JoeNapalm]

My intent is to use the rules as they are -- i.e. not gutting silent running -- but not abuse it by dragging a wagon full of RFIDs outside my PAN.

Okay so you've got to keep in mind that all Icons for Security Devices Run Silent by default.  Per the GM section, so essentially, every moderately secured location has hundreds of silently running icons.  Windows all have Alarms, Doors have locks, Cars in the Parking lot have alarms and locks... stand in the parking lot of any office park and count cars and windows.  In the Sixth world every one of those would have a Silently Running Icon.  If you really have to check randomly for each silent Icon you'll spend all night trying to find the right icon to hack. 

Every table shortcuts this somehow, consciously or not. 

Same with the bag of RF IDs thing.  If that actually worked every corp building would just spend 1,000 Nuyen on RF IDs and carry on.

In order for Hackers to actually Hack, you've got to let them have a reasonable way of finding Icons.     

Running silent in a secure area, without permission, is gonna be frowned upon in a BIG way.

I doubt a Corp would allow unregistered silent icons of any kind. Yeah some of their secure stuff will be silent, but they'll own it all and see it.

Actually, been giving it some thought, and I'm not sure it is really broken. It looks uber exploitable, at first, but it's not that simple.

If you have a ton of these loose in your bag, your own Decker can't find anything, either.

If you don't have a Decker, any secure area is going to be looking for hidden icons. A few new ones might go unnoticed in the background noise, but dozens and hundreds? Lockdown and call in the Red Samurai.

On your own PAN, even an Adept is going to have a lot of gear online. Call it a 50/50 shot to hit real gear on the first try, and the odds get better every attempt. A high tech character is going to have a full or nearly full PAN.

Now, you can set up dummy PANs full of decoys...hmmm...

At the end of the day you can break the system, any system down. That's how a hacker looks at things, and for hacker defense I try to think like an attacker.

I think the current system is actually workable the deeper I dig. If I wanted to blow a hole in it, I'd have to roll up a Decker, and -- if I really DID find an 0-day in the heart of Matrix defense strategy, I'd expect to be hunted down by every damn Corp on the planet.

They'd want to be the only ones who knew how.

-Jn-

[EDIT : Not to mention that this whole conversation is because I'm trying to secure electronics that shouldn't even be accessible -- if there is an idiot rule that counters the idiot rule that my SMG on full auto, inside an air conditioned building, firing at a target 20 feet away, is somehow less effective without weather data, or that my DNI is somehow slower without routing through the some distant server, then yeah, I'm gonna try to use it.

Unless someone can, with a straight face, tell me that a Hermes Ikon gives me adequate defense against unseen, unshootable assailants, then yeah, I'm gonna get creative, go outside the box, and do whatever I can to lock it the #%€¥ down.]

[Hobbes]

Running silent in a secure area, without permission, is gonna be frowned upon in a BIG way.

I doubt a Corp would allow unregistered silent icons of any kind. Yeah some of their secure stuff will be silent, but they'll own it all and see it.

Actually, been giving it some thought, and I'm not sure it is really broken. It looks uber exploitable, at first, but it's not that simple.

If you have a ton of these loose in your bag, your own Decker can't find anything, either.

If you don't have a Decker, any secure area is going to be looking for hidden icons. A few new ones might go unnoticed in the background noise, but dozens and hundreds? Lockdown and call in the Red Samurai.

On your own PAN, even an Adept is going to have a lot of gear online. Call it a 50/50 shot to hit real gear on the first try, and the odds get better every attempt. A high tech character is going to have a full or nearly full PAN.

Now, you can set up dummy PANs full of decoys...hmmm...

At the end of the day you can break the system, any system down. That's how a hacker looks at things, and for hacker defense I try to think like an attacker.

I think the current system is actually workable the deeper I dig. If I wanted to blow a hole in it, I'd have to roll up a Decker, and -- if I really DID find an 0-day in the heart of Matrix defense strategy, I'd expect to be hunted down by every damn Corp on the planet.

They'd want to be the only ones who knew how.

-Jn-

[EDIT : Not to mention that this whole conversation is because I'm trying to secure electronics that shouldn't even be accessible -- if there is an idiot rule that counters the idiot rule that my SMG on full auto, inside an air conditioned building, firing at a target 20 feet away, is somehow less effective without weather data, or that my DNI is somehow slower without routing through the some distant server, then yeah, I'm gonna try to use it.

Unless someone can, with a straight face, tell me that a Hermes Ikon gives me adequate defense against unseen, unshootable assailants, then yeah, I'm gonna get creative, go outside the box, and do whatever I can to lock it the #%€¥ down.]

Running Silent isn't illegal, it's actually common.  Most people have silently running Icon's in their Car or Home without even being aware of them as Running Silent is the default for the locks, cameras and alarms they have.

Corps don't know you're running silent as they have to see you.  That requires Matrix Perception checks.  By someone with a fair amount of dice.  Do you know how much Computer experts cost?  Lots.  Corps don't hire a cadre of them to sit around spamming Matrix Perception tests all day long.  You may task an Agent for such a thing but unless it's a damn big Agent the Dice pool isn't going to be anything a real runner is worried about.

If you don't want your stuff hacked it's fairly easy to set up.  Either Internal Router and carry on, or set up your PAN with an Agent to monitor it.  And after a few runs pick up a high rating Commlink, add a couple options and carry on.  Seriously you can have 17 dice to resist Matrix perception with a Rating 6 Commlink running Smoke and Mirrors at full blast with an Agent running overwatch on your PAN.  This requires something on the order of an 8 Stat, 8 Skill NPC to even spot you, then they have to peel away the agent and all that crap.  Two Commlinks and the Program Carrier modules, maybe some Frensal Fabric in your Armor to tone down your Smoke and Mirrors noise penalty.  Total cost is around 15k and you're hack proof vs any hacker that isn't some kind of Street Legend. 

And yes your Smartlink only works as advertised when it's running wirelessly because that is the balance.  Everything has a cost.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Data Trails managed to both address and not address the "trick" of getting 10x Stealth Tags and using the Wrapper program to make them look like commlinks that are running silent.

The crack security people of the Matrix are good at a lot of things, but seeing is perhaps their most underrated quality, because let’s face it, it’s not glamorous. But Matrix perception is about more than just having good rendering software and checking out all the icons that come into view. It’s knowing how to sort through information coming your way and find what’s truly important. There was a brief time when hackers thought they could confuse security by flooding hosts with dozens of RFID chips running silent, but once they figured out that demiGODs knew enough to design their scans to screen for icons that were running silent and were not RFID chips, the days of that trick were numbered. That’s the part of Matrix security that too many people overlook—it’s not  about just looking at reality, it’s knowing how to define reality so that what you want to see comes to the fore.

So while the book describes that this shouldn't be possible, it fails on a very basic level to describe how. And this is my biggest gripe with the entire 5th Edition Matrix; it just doesn't make any sense. Magic is magic, and therefore largely unexplainable. But the Matrix is a computer system in most people's mind, and thus most people try to apply logic to it. Of course, SR5 tries to introduce the concept of the Matrix being more mystical in nature than technological in some ways, but that doesn't alleviate the fact that there's a lot of disconnects (no pun intended) with regards to how the Matrix works on a fundamental, day-to-day life and still allow shadowrunners to operate.

Ultimately, you just have to work with your GM to make both deckers and non-deckers viable.


JoeNapalm,
From a gameplay perspective you do have to accept some suspension of disbelief in order for the Matrix to work. Deckers are supposed to be able to affect characters and their gear by hacking them; making this impossible by something as simple as having 100 RFID tags running silently kind of ruins the Decker gameplay, and as such you have to reconcile that real-world logic doesn't, and cannot, always apply. In some cases, you have to put gameplay before realism, unfortunately, and where the Matrix in particular is concerned a lot of concessions have to be made in order for it to actually work. Again, in my opinion the Matrix is by far the weakest part of the SR5 rule set.

[JoeNapalm]

Data Trails managed to both address and not address the "trick" of getting 10x Stealth Tags and using the Wrapper program to make them look like commlinks that are running silent.

The crack security people of the Matrix are good at a lot of things, but seeing is perhaps their most underrated quality, because let’s face it, it’s not glamorous. But Matrix perception is about more than just having good rendering software and checking out all the icons that come into view. It’s knowing how to sort through information coming your way and find what’s truly important. There was a brief time when hackers thought they could confuse security by flooding hosts with dozens of RFID chips running silent, but once they figured out that demiGODs knew enough to design their scans to screen for icons that were running silent and were not RFID chips, the days of that trick were numbered. That’s the part of Matrix security that too many people overlook—it’s not  about just looking at reality, it’s knowing how to define reality so that what you want to see comes to the fore.

So while the book describes that this shouldn't be possible, it fails on a very basic level to describe how. And this is my biggest gripe with the entire 5th Edition Matrix; it just doesn't make any sense. Magic is magic, and therefore largely unexplainable. But the Matrix is a computer system in most people's mind, and thus most people try to apply logic to it. Of course, SR5 tries to introduce the concept of the Matrix being more mystical in nature than technological in some ways, but that doesn't alleviate the fact that there's a lot of disconnects (no pun intended) with regards to how the Matrix works on a fundamental, day-to-day life and still allow shadowrunners to operate.

Ultimately, you just have to work with your GM to make both deckers and non-deckers viable.


JoeNapalm,
From a gameplay perspective you do have to accept some suspension of disbelief in order for the Matrix to work. Deckers are supposed to be able to affect characters and their gear by hacking them; making this impossible by something as simple as having 100 RFID tags running silently kind of ruins the Decker gameplay, and as such you have to reconcile that real-world logic doesn't, and cannot, always apply. In some cases, you have to put gameplay before realism, unfortunately, and where the Matrix in particular is concerned a lot of concessions have to be made in order for it to actually work. Again, in my opinion the Matrix is by far the weakest part of the SR5 rule set.

Nah nah, they lose the "suspension of disbelief" card when they break the 4th Wall with obvious metagaming. Like you said, this stuff makes no sense, even within the Sixth World. If wind was at all a factor in a close quarters fight, sensors on my person would be a thousand times better than The Weather Channel. If slap patches could suddenly stabilize any traumatic injury, automatically, for ¥500?! What's in them, web-enabled Khan blood??

As I said above, there are serious downsides to RFID flooding -- it just takes some thought on the part of the GM. If I can run an Agent on my phone that does Matrx Perception, any host can. The flavor text "fix" just breaks one rule in favor of a specific archetype, which is the problem to begin with -- imposing nonsense punitive "bonuses" to favor one type of character over all the others in the name of balance. It's lazy, just like super powering Matrix Perception and nullifying Silent Running is lazy.

Network security, both sides, is about looking at a problem from all angles and thinking outside the box. Somehow, in gaming, finding a clever tactic has become "bad" or "cheating"...if it is within the rules, it's a good thing, is it not?

And the GM should respond in kind. Reward the player and figure out how the NPCs would react and counter.

Isn't that the core of tabletop? Or are we just playing spoken text adventures? "Hit troll with axe. Hit troll with axe. You are eaten by a grue!"

Not saying you should let players break the game -- just that a tactic that is effective isn't automatically game breaking.


-Jn-

[Herr Brackhaus]

I laughed @ web-enabled Khan blood.

But to respond to the core of your argument; I don't disagree, I really don't. But what you're proposing would require an almost complete re-write of the Matrix as at it's very core it just doesn't make much sense when viewed from the perspective of someone who lives in the modern world.

The parallels to the Internet are just too great, and trying to decouple the Matrix from our perception of the what a global, networked computer system is is no mean feat. So you either have to make it even more mystical (i.e. at a level of "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") or bring it back to SR4 levels; in the latter case, at least it was sensible and somewhat easy to relate to, if at times rather too complex to be a good system from a game mechanics perspective. While the 4th Edition Matrix didn't suffer quite as bad in terms of disconnecting the decker from the rest of the team as 1st through 3rd, it was still significant enough that the decking game was quite distinct from the rest of the game.

Ultimately, Shadowrun is and always have been an RPG with extremely complex rule sets, and unfortunately the Matrix has always been a bit of a problem to deal with, both for players and GMs. At my table we've resolved this by simply accepting the fact that the Matrix of the 6th World is not like the technology of our modern word, and that most people, including shadowrunners, live in a state of perpetual connectedness. This may not be realistic from a modern day perspective, especially as far as cybersecurity tactics go, but it is what it is.

If you feel like rewriting the lore and rules to make it work better for your table, do feel free to share your work on here. You are most certainly not alone.

[aono]

Sorry for intervention, but question isn't really about "how do it relate to modern world technologically". It's not even "how to make decker game quite distinct from the rest of the game".  Question is "why should decker game not to be quite distinct from the rest of the game".
Matrix IS different world there. It's kind of separate dimesion, right? It's kind of point that Matrix is something connected to real world but stays separated. "If we left this cozy pocket system and slid over to that stormy looking data-fortress upgrid of the Fuchi Pagoda and slipped the right code into the right slave modules, we'd cut electrical power to most of Seattle." - but we don't need to enter real Fuchi Pagoda for that. At least we didn't. We could be... well...
"- Tell that to Cind, or Wendell, or Jerusalem. And while you're at it, ask Jerusalem about Billy Blake. He'll download a megapulse of close-reading analysis before you finish entering the query.
- Jerusalem is the quadripalegic with rejection syndrome?
- No, that's Cind. Jerusalem has myasthenia gravis. In your real world, they're objects of pity, and an easy meal for the predators walking around out there. In the Matrix, they're almost unstoppable."
It's what Matrix IS. It's why "But there has never been anything like the Matrix before."

Yes, it's creating known mechanical difficulties. You can try to fix them or you can just turn your matrix runners into another type of magi, who just can use another set of spells affecting another set of things. Second approach will fix a problem for "separated gameplay" for sure, but it will destroy something specific in Matrix, because it's exactly what it's trying to do!
Damn. I really can't say for sure I'm some kind of big player or GM in Shadowrun, I'm just a game designer for computer games. But in my experience a player who goes to play decker goes to have some distincted playstyle. So every approach that destroy distincted playstyle is bad by definition.
As I get it now distincted playstyle have Rigger. Yeah, it _feels_. Decker is a man who can wave a hand and brick an enemy gun. Wait, mage can do it too! "Disrupt [Gun]' spell, right?

Let me put it even another way.
When you say "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" in a setting where there is advanced technology AND magic, you can (and really you should) throw something away - sufficiently advanced technology or magic.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Aono,
And that's definitely the approach the 5th Edition writers have taken in trying to make the Matrix less analoguous to modern day computer systems. For some of us, however, who've played since the old day when the Matrix was closely modeled on what technology might be able to do and seemed wholly realistic, this is a significant departure from previous editions.

And there's a reason there are hundreds, if not thousands, of threads on this forum alone asking very basic Matrix gameplay questions, because it just doesn't make sense to a lot of people. So you've got to ask yourself, what takes precedence? Gameplay, or internal and external consistency within the system?

For me and my table only, it's the latter. Hence why I wrote this post explaining some of the high-level changes we've made to the Matrix at our table in order to have it be more internally consistent and a lot more sensible for the players.

[aono]

And that's definitely the approach the 5th Edition writers have taken in trying to make the Matrix less analoguous to modern day computer systems. For some of us, however, who've played since the old day when the Matrix was closely modeled on what technology might be able to do and seemed wholly realistic, this is a significant departure from previous editions.

As I said somewhere before here, I'm kind of "platonic lover" here. I knew about Shadowrun, I had some books (little, of course), I knew backstories and Earthdawn connections and so on, I even read some novels, I played games. I loved Shadowrun as a setting with magic AND high-tech, and I felt like it's kind of point (again). Damn, it's a tagline - "Shadowrun, Fifth Edition is the newest version of one of the most popular and successful role-playing worlds of all time — a fusion of man, magic and machine in a dystopian near-future."

So you've got to ask yourself, what takes precedence? Gameplay, or internal and external consistency within the system?

To be honest I have an answer and it's looks kinda obvious for me. Of course it's gameplay that should take precedence. System with internal and external consistency exists to make gameplay better and to uncover some themes better; if internal and external consistency makes gameplay worse, you're doing it wrong.

And yeah, If we have TWO rulebooks explaining how Matrix works, and "hundreds, if not thousands, of threads on this forum alone asking very basic Matrix gameplay questions", so that rulebooks do it wrong - not because they are inconsistent (I can't really say here yet), but because it's bad for gameplay.

[Hobbes]

So you've got to ask yourself, what takes precedence? Gameplay, or internal and external consistency within the system?

Having played each edition of Shadowrun so far I vastly prefer the 5th edition rules.  I'll give you they're the least "Realistic" of the bunch and require the most suspension of disbelief.  But they're the most playable and balanced rule set for the Matrix so far.  Could they be better?  Maybe.  IMO though they're the funnest ruleset so far.

The proof is, I've got mission Deckers that I never play because someone always has a Decker or Technomancer.  Always.  Earlier editions you just don't see that.  Hell, in First through Third editions many tables just got an NPC Decker and ignored the Matrix completely. 

For me the answer is Gameplay, and from what I can tell it is for a majority of the players out there. 

But the suspension of disbelief is always worth bringing up.  It knocks the player "out of the mood" when that suspension of disbelief gets disrupted by the GM having to say "...because it's a game and those are the rules.". 

[Rooks]

page 241
For each net
hit scored, you can ask for one piece of information
about the object—this could be type, a rating,
how many marks it has on it, any files it may
be carrying, which grid it is using, whether any
silent running icons are in the area, or any other
pertinent Matrix information. You learn one fact
per net hit. If you get a list of marks, you can only
recognize marks you have seen before or marks
left by personas that you have marks on yourself.
Otherwise you only get a count.
If you’re trying to spot an icon that is farther
than 100 meters away, this is a Simple Test: the
first hit lets you spot the target, and any additional
hits can be used to get more information about it as
mentioned above. If you’re looking for an icon that is
running silent (after you’ve determined that it’s present),
the test becomes an Opposed Test, with the target defending
with Logic + Sleaze. Net hits are used just like
you would for spotting distant targets, with the first one
for spotting the target and the rest for analysis.

so its just like 20 questions I scan for icons do I see any icons running silent yes no Im sure you can determine which one is harder to spot asking what their sleaze rating is set at