Lurks-no-More said:
but sucks big time in a RPG, where everyone else sits half an hour or more doing nothing while the GM and the hacker play out a fifteen-second jaunt in the cyberspace.
Sounds like a bitter SR experience. Despite the flaws of that system concerning the Matrix, I think it does belong in a game. It simply needs a more streamlined mechanic, and a game master who can run the hacking player and the other players at the same time.
Stylistically, it sucks too, since it tends to restrict the net as an exclusive province of some character type. And that strikes me as totally wrong. Computers should be everywhere! Accessing and using the net should be an integral part of every character living in a technological society with all-pervasive telecommunications and computing!
See, I have to disagree here. Yes, in that setting, computers should be everywhere, yakety yak. Computers are everywhere now for the most part. I don't know anyone who doesn't have one or doesn't have access to one. Not a single person I know can hack however. Should I assume that you want all-pervasive computer access,
and everyone is an expert hacker? There should be a character type, we'll call him a decker or hacker, who is adept at moving and manipulating the information network in ways that the average user can't comprehend. Especially if you have character types are are better at, let's say, combat, than the average person, or magic, or schmoozing, or what not. The rules should exist. If you don't like them, you don't have to use them (What I ended up doing in SR, I just made the decker an NPC. I had plans on streamlining the Matrix rules but never got around to it). IMO, it's better to have the rules, since some people will want to use them. It's a lot easier to ignore rules than it is to create new ones.
