Today on my ever growing list of "ideas that would be fun to design around but currently lack the defined mechanics to make them useful": hacking.
This is a little outside of the wheelhouse of what I usually discuss, but I want to talk about hacking. In TTRPGs that have a high tech level, hacking is often included because it's cool and ingrained in popular society as an aesthetic of high tech fantasy. Hacking is often seen as an advanced parallel to magic (because people lack understanding of how computers and their ilk really work), with the ability to do anything if the hacker is given enough time.
This is fine. Cool even. The issue is that hacking is implemented in TTRPGs poorly. Hacking is often a sub-system, a minigame within the TTRPG (just look at Shadowrun). Such minigames can be fine, but the issue arises when the mechanics grow complex and engaging with the system takes time where the non-hacker players simply watch someone else roll dice. This can be fun every now and then, but if you want to play THE hacker, well, prepare to take the spotlight, and a lot.
I think this sucks. It sucks to play and it sucks because it fails to capture the aesthetic of hacking. I personally cannot think of a piece of media where the process of hacking something is important rather than the outcome of the hacking. The tech-wiz tapping on her laptop keys to open the door is what people find engaging about hacking, not the process of finding weak points in code-based defense and tricking firewalls into ignoring you.
So what? Is hacking supposed to be a glorified version of lockpicking? A quick dice roll, some narrative tapping on the keyboard, and the door clearly labelled "use hacking here" is opened? That's also not what people want from hacking. Well, it's not what I want, and I imagine you don't either.
Well, if hacking is magic, why not lean into that?
Environment Based Magic.
A group of mercs are attempting to bust into the skyscraper of a shady megacorp (not that there's such a thing as a non-shady megacorp). The lobby is heavily guarded and the mercs are outgunned, but they have a secret weapon: a hacker sitting in an alley across the street. She's already got her eyes in the camera system, so she has a bird's eye view of the lobby. Before any combat starts, she trips the fire sprinklers, spraying the room with water and giving her team the advantage of surprise.
First round of combat she activates a smart grenade on a guard's belt, causing it to explode. Second round she causes a turret to haywire and shoot at the wrong target. Third turn she jams a call for support from the guards, but accidentally trips security and gets herself locked out.
Environment based magic is exactly what it sounds like: magic based on the environment presented to the hacker/mage. An environment based mage's spells (or a hacker's hacks) take advantage of distinct traits of the environment: such as a roaring fire or fire sprinklers.Effects are guaranteed, but something has a chance to go wrong. These spells/hacks would be tiered, similar to spell slot levels. As a mage/hacker gets better, they get access to better tiers of spells/hacks, and eventually can do lower tier magic/hacks without fear of backfire.
A low tier spell/heck on a half decent mage/hacker is 100% safe. The next tier up would require a d12 roll, then the next tier would be a d10, and so on. If the mage/hacker rolls a 1, something bad happens. Perhaps a magical anomaly forms, or a hacker trips security and gets locked out of using their abilities. Something dangerous to fill the aesthetic of accidentally tripping the alarms and realizing everything is going to hell.
Personally I prefer the idea of a system with defined spells/hacks rather than a more open one. In a more open one, it becomes the GM's responsibility to define how difficult any action is at any time which makes running for a mage/hacker annoying. You might think that if a mage/hacker only has certain spells/hacks, then they'd be useless if none of their abilities work in the situation they find themself. And I'd agree. I'd argue it's good.
Staking out a place before causing a problem there is peak cyberpunk media for me. Asking the player to plan and think ahead of doing anything dangerous is, I think, good. It's fun to plan ahead. And besides, it's very possible to shift the environment into your favor (start a fire to use said fire).
Example Spells/Hacks.
Magic.
Level 0: Expand Fire, Freeze Puddle, Redirect Wind
Level 1: Create Flamethrower, Earth to Mud
Level 2: Freeze Pond
Hacking.
Level 0: Look Through Camera, Disable Light Security, Open Door
Level 1: Stun Machine, Jam Weapon, Trip Fire Sprinklers
Level 2: Disable Heavy Security, Activate Grenade
This is effectively how hacking works in the video game Watch Dogs. In play it's indistinguishable from using a cell phone as a magic wand that can hex any nearby electronics for tactical advantage.
ReplyDeleteWatch Dogs is actually one of the points of inspiration I had for this idea. Personally I think it gets hacking better than any game that turns hacking into it's own personal mini-game like say, System Shock (not that there's an issue with System Shock's hacking).
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