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Something that's always bugged me about hacking in games is that the metaphor that they use to describe it is physical combat and "if you die in the matrix, you die in real life". *cringe*

I'm not looking for "realistic" hacking. If I want real hacking I'll go and actually do some hacking. What would be great is to have a system for hacking that presents the actual challenges a hacker can face in a fun and easy way.

I don't care if you're sitting at a command line or have a neural connection to a matrix style environment. The challenges should be similar since they're still based on the same physical infrastructure and security protocols.

So what are these challenges? What's fun about hacking? The way I see it, hacking is partially stealth, partly of knowledge and partially an issue of way finding. You're trying to find the path of least resistance. You're trying to use your knowledge, or steal someone else's. You're trying to stay undetected and cover your tracks.

I liked and think the principals could be applied here. That alone would give you skill challenges. If anything, the analog of surveying a target and trying to learn patterns and who is involved in the intrusion is a big part of hacking and so it all applies here.

Using knowledge you have has the potential to get you most of the way to a secure site but there should be an element of stealing other people's knowledge. Describing social engineering and the way of tricking or charming people into divulging information is really important. Deducing things about a person by looking into their background is another important aspect.

Wayfinding is a difficult one, or simple dependent on your point of view. It could be made simple by the right metaphors. For example, describing a computer system as an army base is somewhat accurate and useful for people that don't know computers. You can't fight your way in, easily anyway. But sneaking in is more likely. If you can work your way into a lower security base, and then use whatever credentials you gain to walk into a higher security base, you've got an entry point.

What would you like to see in a hacking module for a game? Do you think I've defined the challenge properly? Did I miss an important challenge? Do you have a favorite way of handling the challenges I've already mentioned?

I think hacking in a tabletop game should be as simple and fast as possible. I'd almost say that using social skill style rules are better than the majority of overwrought hacking systems out there; Shadowrun has an egregious example of every task being super duper specialized and having its own action.

Step 1 is to gain access, step 2 is to convince the machine to do what you want (similarly to a legitimate user), step 3 is profit, in short.

There could, of course, be additional systems for doing things that a normal user doesn't do, but hacking often comes down to different things in tabletop games than it would in real life—in real life hacking tends to be a lot of prodding for vulnerabilities followed by a very short window of opportunity to do tasks. In tabletop games, it's usually been handled in a way that is more akin to a protracted action movie shootout, even in games that profess to be realism based.

I kinda like some of Eclipse Phase's hacking systems, though I'll confess to not being as familiar with them as I should be.

I agree that you don't want it to be cumbersome. You don't want it to be confusing or boring. I feel it's important therefore to have an easily understood description of the process. Players need to understand how, and why they go through the steps they do.

However, I disagree that it should be just gotten out of the way. With the proper story behind it, hacking could be a fun and useful part of a game. I sat in on a cyberpunk game where the net runners obviously knew computers and hacking. Their contribution to the game was huge even though their characters were in locked rooms ordering room service.

Or to tie their shoes before going out the door. Yes rolling for mundane things is not fun. We would want rolls for things like probing ports without being detected. Investigating people's backgrounds so you can figure out how they think, is possible material. Finding network links by investigating who is doing business with the target works too. Rolling to see if your character knows about a flaw in the software that a buffer overflow would open up a path and so on.

I tend to use a fairly free form system based on margin of success. The higher the hacker rolls above target number, the more system actions they get. Clever use of social engineering (ie tricking the IT department, stealing the secretary's log-in information) gives you a bonus.

In turn, you can use these actions to affect things connected to the network - open doors, switch cameras, turn things on or off. In a low tech setting, you plan out what goes on beforehand, while in a more futuristic one, the hacker carries around the actions and simply spends them as necessary.

Example: I beat the sys-admin's roll by three, and found the sticky-note with an employ's password attached to their desktop. There are four things I can do while robbing the place - unlock the back door, turn off the camera, pull a file from the mainframe, and activate the garage tire spikes as I leave to limit pursuit.

Variations can either give a certain action point cost for different abilities (physical actions take more than simple data retrieval, high security systems even more so) or to make it like D&D's magic system - you get so many pass doors, shut off lights, deactivate alert - with higher skill opening up new tiers of ability. Perhaps each system is divided into discrete networks, and players have specialty in areas like physical control, data retrieval, mimetic commands and the like.

There are two lines of exploration here. The quick and dirty assumes that most of the adventure happens in reality, and the hacker is a lone individual that is a part of the party.

The other angle assumes that most or all of the adventure takes place in cyberspace. Onix's pointing towards stealth rules imply several skills are useful in maintaining secrecy and hacking (disguise, power from a hundred-thousand zombied computers, or cleverly guessing answers to security questions, or brute forcing the same password, etc.).

But hacking can take an entirely different angle, one that goes truer to the origin of the word. A hack used to mean a clever, improvised, technological solution to a problem. Yes, cameras can be turned on and off, but connecting the monitoring software of a major corporation to the cameras at many different diners to use facial recognition software in realtime is an example of a hack. To do so without the corporation or the diners realizing you're doing it would be extraordinary.

It's late and I'm tired, but there's definitely some potential here. I'll think about it and maybe post again later.

That would be a cool use of hacking. It would take either a player that knows computers or a way of suggesting uses of computers (possibly by having a number of software packages listed) to have most players think of it.

I am all for any hacking that ties a hacker into the real world. It means the hacker isn't a separate process, but one that is tied into the more physical players.

I tried writing hacking rules for Cyberpunk and, in all honesty, made a bad job of it.

One suggestion for you:-

Cards.

Good for both hardware and software and for recording results, just like an index card. You can keep switching back and forth between ‘real-world’ stuff and what’s going on via the Net. They just lay there in front of the player(s) until someone has an available action, which fits well with Cyberpunk’s stratified initiative system.

The thing is to get it to augment rather than bog down the rest of the gameplay. Cards can affect combat via environments, etc. You can even lift bits and pieces from Netrunner.

I'm interested but because I'm not yet sure why cards would make a difference I'd like to hear more.

Of course we are talking about a card based game on the other thread so I like the general idea, I'm just not sure if theres an advantage you're seeing in a card based system that I'm not.