The wrist cel with screen is made so you can have real time video chat, ipso facto there is a camera in it.
But I think Copperhead hit the nail on the head. If we go too far one direction, then SR4 and 5 rules would work better. If we go too far the other direction then we are going to keep getting tripped up and someone (me) is going to try to kill someone with an unvulnerable Nokia.

So:
Matrix is still user-friendly in the shallows. Anyone who doesn't have a flaw specifically limiting it can still Google stuff and read from on-line libraries. The heavy lifting still comes from Deckers though, and they are the ones who get the benefit.

It's also fair to say that Noruas has customized his deck at least a little bit, so if he has it strapped to him somewhere, then there is a very good chance that he has a webcam in his jacket storing an MP or two of data. However, he would have to decide whether to take a penalty to the Stealth roll or to the quality of the video - either he is focusing on getting the best shots he can (and looking at the camera) or he's taking wide angle shots/risking shooting a wall because his lapel is creased.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:06, Wed 04 Mar 2015.

So still waiting on two votes, but it sounds like the Matrix at least is available to all (in some limited fashion).



And remember, that same camera is almost the entire size of two eyeballs, and costs $5,000.

Ok, then I vote to go modern.

So is this what you meant?

17:03, Today: Noruas rolled 4 successes using 5d6 with the Shadowrun system with a target of 4 with rolls of 4,(6+6+5)17,(6+5)11,(6+3)9,1. Stealthily taking pics.

Well done.  She now has to roll a perception test against a target of 17 to notice you taking pictures

Actually, the camera is considerably less than the size of a single eyeball - there's a camera in each eye or there'd be no depth perception.  And a decent chunk of the space would be taken up with the hardware to extract power supply from the blood/movement/etc. plus the processing needed to convert images to something that you can conduct over a neural interface.

"Camera" is actually a cybereye enhancement that costs .4 essence and $5k.

So the good news for Eve is she does have some modifiers in her favor, which reduce the penalty below 17. And this is a cell phone camera, not a spy camera or anything, so it's not super discreet. However, she totally whiffed, so you're in the clear.

It is at this point that we would like to point out that if you *are* going to commit shadowrunner faux pas on a regular basis, you should invest in one of those nifty spy cameras.

Point taken!  ;)

Even though the dice roller claims you got 4 successes, in the case of an unknown target number, you don't actually know how many successes you got.  Target number of 4 represents "average" difficulty.  The real target number might be 2 or 10.  Even if you think you know the target number, it's best to show your rolls because the GM may have modifiers to apply you don't know about.

I guessed as much, that's why I rerolled.  :3

So as an update on SR5 (because I have now read through all of the 3 books I own)
1 - the power level of SR3 appears to be far above the norm. From what I have read, you are about 1/3-1/2 less powerful than a kitted out SR3 character after chargen.

2 - the combat rules are lovely and simple, but you need to seriously consider whether it's worth cracking open the new martial arts & advanced combat rules. The revamp on Close Combat is the one thing that didn't make my eyes glaze over (ok, 2 if you count herding/throwing people down elevator shafts).

3 - their rules on custom lifestyles are pretty great, if they make any damn sense. Unfortunately, running the numbers on their "sample lifestyles" means that either their explanation at the beginning of the chapter needs work, or their math at the end is completely wrong. Also there is a very important typo that makes it easier to find you when you are hiding at a safe house. Which kindof defeats the purpose.

4 - dual wielding is severely nerfed to the point of being pretty much useless. Not that I think that's a particularly bad thing, but it should be noted. You have to spend something like 20 karma and learn a martial art to gain +1d after splitting your dice pool in half and getting mondo recoil penalties. About the only good thing dual wielding can be used for is 2 weapon defense, which is still about a +1d to defensive rolls for about 20 karma - which could more easily be spent on things like a better weapon skill.

Also, they removed dikoting which makes me sad in my heart place.

Oh yeah, and the art dept & writers can't seem to agree on whether a gun has an integral stock (so the Recoil Compensation on some of the guns is wrong one way or tother)

For this part, unless you're actually planning to probe their system, you don't need to do anything too complicated.  You'll be doing a search.  You can take a penalty to your successes if you "keep it quiet" - which given the J's warnings, is probably advisable.  That makes it much less likely the target will notice you asking questions about them.  You'll need to identify the types of information you're looking for and generally how you're going about it.  Based on that, BB will choose a target number.  He may roll secretly for you.  (If you roll badly, he may give you false information - and it's more fun if you don't know it's false :>)  It just takes a lot of "game time" to do the searching.  You're rolling your Etiquette (Matrix) Skill against the target number.  Base time is 2-12 hours.

I'd recommend doing a general search before you probe for a couple of reasons:
- it may make your matrix run easier if you've got some inside information first
- depending what we find physically, we may be able to put a tap into an "inside" line (camera or other sensor) that may let you bypass some of the nasty chokepoint security they'd have for people coming off the public matrix

Both of those advantages will let you learn more with less likelihood of drawing attention and thus making them beef up security before we do the run.

I won't be doing anything too exciting on my end either - rolling a few perception rolls to see what I can see.  Toombs will have the most fun, but if he's staying outside, he won't take long either.  I'll probably drop Toombs off well before you're done and will spend the day conducting a more detailed scan (once I can get my drone concealed) and will also be spending some time trying to crack their radio transmissions.

This would also be the time to reach out to contacts for any information about the target or the Johnson.  Again "keeping it quiet" is probably a good plan, though probably less important to do that on the Johnson.  She presumably expects us to dig up on her.

There's a possibility that my character should not be where he is right now since he was probably at work and not present at the meet.  Then again, I could be mistaken.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:10, Thu 12 Mar 2015.

For the sake of the story, we can always say that after getting the call from your fixer you shoved a finger down your throat, yakked on the floor and told your manager you needed to go home because you weren't feeling well . . .

Or that...

Given your workplace, I'm assuming you keep more-or-less normal office hours, and this meet falls in after that.

Soraun, you're right, I originally said it's Saturday. My bad :( Moving it to Tuesday makes your life a lot easier though (work nonwithstanding).
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:13, Thu 12 Mar 2015.

So do I begin decking in the same thread or is there somewhere special for that?  Any clues regarding that facial recognition software I asked about?  Should I borrow it from someone else's database?  Build my own?

@Copperhead: What admonition did you give me?

In case no one notices, my name in reverse is Sauron.  Like the giant eye on a tower from LOTR.  ;)

If you're just searching your network, there'll just be some rolls - and BB can do those for you.  So just post what you're searching for.  Once you actually start decking, that may be a different thread.

I'd recommended that you take the penalty for keeping your searches "quiet" to avoid letting our target know we were probing them.

Ok, understood.

So, how do I use facial recognition software?  Do I hack into Lonestar or Knight Errant and borrow it from them?  Build one from scratch that can hijack the aforementioned organizations?  Eat cookies and drink synth juice?  Raid Fort Knox?  Read a bedtime story to an elderly T-Rex?

:D

That's something BB will have to answer.  Hacking LS or KE as an entry-level character is likely to get you snuffed.  Building one from scratch will likely take you a few months of game-time.

In terms of facial recognition, your issue isn't the software, it's accessing the database of images to "recognize" against.  And that would mean hacking the department of motor vehicles or Lonestar or KE a wide variety of corporate databases, etc.  Plus sitting around long enough for your software to find a match - because it's not an easy search and would have to plow through hundreds of thousands of records.  As an entry-level decker, that doesn't seem like a plan that will result in long-term survival and wouldn't be worth the risk for the rather small payoff of knowing which corp she works for.

As well, if she's a highly placed Johnson, her image won't be a whole lot of places.  I suppose you could do an image search against all media reports, but unless you've got some additional metadata to filter your search with, you're looking at a month or more of search time.You might be able to get software that would be able to pick her out of a crowd in a subsequent video feed - but that won't be terribly useful to us in this game I don't think.

You're probably better off posting some of the higher-quality stills on the ShadowLand BBS and asking "Anyone worked with this Johnson?  Have opinions?" and seeing if you get any bites.

The plus side of this is that it means that odds are good that even if your face is captured on camera during a run you're ok unless the corp has your face on camera somewhere else that they can tie your identity to.

Well, I was thinking there are ways I could narrow down the search if I add on a list of traits with which to shorten the list.  Like say, first of all, I'm purely guessing here...the J's a woman...wow, that halves the couple of billion.  Then I search for say employees of Cavalier or rivaling corps above the groundfloor.  That should also narrow the list.

But if I don't hit pay dirt, I'm fine with that.  I'll merely leave the search running on its own until it gets a hit.

In the mean time, I could be searching for building plans and schematics of the hit location in city hall, or planning & zoning commssion, or wherever it is that the blueprints for that place could be located.  This might give us better details than the little map the J gave us.

If you narrow your search down to a set of candidate corps (and all their known affiliates), you might be able to complete a media search in a day or two.  Anyhow, it's really BB to decide what you can get away with and how long.  I was just pointing out some practical challenges.

Certainly looking for information about who the active players are in this space could be useful.  And seeking building layouts could be useful.  Whether this layout would have been submitted to city hall or not is hard to say.  Certainly do make sure you search several similar buildings and make it look like the search is coming from an architectural firm though :>

In SR in general, people don't use social media and such as often as we do, so it is indeed a lot harder to match faces. Like Copperhead said, if you know the corp or if you're hitting LS or KE, you can try, but that involves, well, hitting a megacorp. I'm okay telling you straight out, it'll be a lot of effort for not much gain.

Probably the easiest way to get the low-down will almost always be to actually talk to people. Call up contacts, roll your etiquette, see what shakes out. Both you and St. V can do that while you're hanging around, just be careful who you choose. If you choose the Mitsuhama Security Chief contact, that may just backfire.

You also need to remember that your time is not all yours. Even if this was a big run where searching for days is worth it, you've got to clock in tomorrow morning.