Here is a question for the group- If playing modern with no magic, could any one of you give a rationale for placing a “hacking” action under resolve instead of insight?
In some ways, it is analog to attune for spirits. However, hacking is less emotional manipulation and more mental ability.
Thoughts?
What would you shift to compensate?
Benjamin Davis since there is no magic / spirit world, it would simply replace Attune. It is the easiest swap, I’m just trying to justify it. To me, it makes more sense to put it in insight, but then I have to shift other actions & have a substitute for attune…
Eric Brunsell My early ideas for hacking went along similar lines, where it just replaces Attune, but that’s odd as Resolve except in the cyberpunk sense where you’re always on the clock avoiding detection with high stakes.
These days, I tend to think of hacking more as using technological tools to do other existing actions, such as Study, Survey, Hunt, or maybe Tinker or Wreck. So I’d instead not make a particular hacking action and instead replace Attune with something modern that takes resolve, depending on the genre, like grift, seduce, perform, or endure.
Adam Minnie Makes sense to me. I was already thinking about either act or empathize as an alternate to attune.
Consider swapping out Deceive for Sway and Negotiate for Attune.
As is Sway is covering a lot of ground so why not split it up into it’s base components.
I’m definitely in the ‘swap hack with attune’ camp. That’s what I’ve done in my little cyberpunk hack of BitD since the ghost field and the ‘Net are roughly analogous in my setting. Both filled of potentially useful and dangerous things that you can only really control or access if you have the ability.
In a modern setting I guess that’s a question of tone and genre. Do you want computers and computer networks to be an integral part of the game, and thus have a dedicated ability for that? Do you want your players to be able to play over-the-top 90’s film hackers? Is this a world where there are secret, terrifying things that can be found by hacking? If that’s the case, then that’s a good reason to have it be under Resolve. If not, perhaps some other skill would be a better fit?
An interesting question!
To make room for the high technology action in Runners, I swapped out Study (placing it under Resolve). It felt like the only way!
I think the reason I tried it was it felt far more like an Insight action than Resolve. And I think the main reason I ended up keeping it was that in playtest, it felt somehow better to resist the consequences of Study with Resolve.
One thing to remember is, that attribute rolled to resist is chosen by the GM based on the nature of the consequence. In a hacking situation, the harm is always going to come in as mental strain (well, unless we are talking about VR anyways). Mental strain would be Resolve regardless of what action brought that harm. So its actually likely to create MAD (multiple attribute dependency) but I think its fine..
Since the other side effect of moving the actions around like I describe is that characters with the Attune replacement action will have a higher Insight rating. And a character with Study will have a higher Resolve rating. Which actually makes sense to me even though the way Blades does it also feels good
Also, worth noting that I tossed the Hack action since this created a situation where it was only used by hacker characters (even though there are plenty of other things you might want a roll for when using technology, which Tinker doesn’t really cover)
So, I went with Interface instead. Which is almost exactly like Attune in its risks, but the fiction is just different. A new experiment if you will. :crosses fingers:
Mark Cleveland Massengale interface sounds perfect for a cyberpunk hack!
Mark Cleveland Massengale I’m going to skip a hacking skill altogether. Instead, I’ll make the safe assumption that all characters are competent computer users, but those that have the hacking special ability are the true hackers. Then, they can use whatever skill makes sense on the fiction while they hack – study, survey, command, finesse, etc.