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Disappointed with hacking

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Last post
Fri, 2016-12-23 19:46
#1
Kssian Kssian's picture
Disappointed with hacking
On the surface, the hacking system seems pretty deep and fun, but for every step you just roll Infosec with modifiers. So you just roll n times Infosec and you succeed or fail, pretty naive and boring. I'm thinking about making it more thrilling with party combat or making it more narrative, but I'm not a a computer scientist (neither my players), seems hard to me. Am I wrong? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
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Fri, 2016-12-23 20:30
Opiyel Opiyel's picture
If you want it to be more fun
If you want it to be more fun, you'd probably want to stick with Hollywood style hacking. My gf does a lot of computer security work and CtF style events and hacking is really, mind numbingly boring.
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Fri, 2016-12-23 23:08
UnitOmega UnitOmega's picture
Some of the tests involve
Some of the tests involve Interface or Programming, but yeah, slipping past firewalls and admins is all InfoSec - that's kind of what the skill is for.
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Sat, 2016-12-24 03:43
Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture
I agree, the actual process
I agree, the actual process of breaking through a Firewall and snooping around isn't that interesting, and thanks to the time taken can break up the flow of a game pretty hard. There's a few things I like to do to help with this: Let hackers pre-roll their break in. I allow hackers to make their intrusion attempt in advance of actually breaking in. Mechanically this means that the 10 min task action be done before the hack, and if undetected and successful, the hacker can break in at any time before the firewall reconfigures (which depends on the security of the of the network). I do this to avoid the moment where everyone gets into position and waits several in-game minutes for the hacker to get in. Assuming the hacker isn't detected while messing around in the system, their "hole" stays in place until updated over. Basically I give out free weak backdoors. I also like to use mesh topography/network maps, with some things being easy to break into, and important things often being very hardened, on a VPN, or wired access only. The idea is to make fairly boring off-site mesh scouting more of a prelude or recon mission to a real hacking attempt. Along with this I tend to make most networks very secure, VPN's are common, as are other security measures. The idea is to make social engineering, physical infiltration, impersonation, and signal interception more important; as I find those more interesting to play out. I think there's a lot of setting support for this kind of hacking, the core rules even mention that much data is so well wirelessly secured that physical break-ins have returned as a way to steal data.
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Thu, 2017-01-05 03:09
Scottbert Scottbert's picture
I /love/ hacking in Eclipse
I /love/ hacking in Eclipse Phase. It's true that every task is an infosec test, but that's like saying attacking in combat is always a weapon skill test. For me the interesting part of combat isn't rolling attack dice -- it's figuring out how to position myself and the team, and how to stack modifiers in my favor, and whatnot. The interesting bit of hacking isn't rolling dice -- it's coming up with ways you can use your character's computer skills. There's more than just breaking into networks to steal data. EP hacking isn't Hollywood hacking, but this is balanced out by nearly everything having a computer in it, and the ubiquitous presence of wireless networks and sousveillance. Investigating the abandoned base/ship to find out what happened? Is the network on? Hack it for security camera footage. Open doors, close doors, change turret orders, make the security system see your friends as supposed to be here. Spying on someone? Sniff their wireless signal and see what they're doing. The possibilities are endless! You then roll the dice to see if your plan works. That said, I [i]do[/i] have a CS degree, so coming up with uses for computer skills comes naturally to me. If that kind of hacking isn't fun and you /want/ hollywood hacking, maybe make the mesh work like in Shadowrun instead.
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Fri, 2017-01-06 10:06
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
As has been said, I think the
As has been said, I think the EP hacking rules are excellent--but I think they are (necessarily) missing pieces. Hacking as an activity is complicated. They could easily write a book just on RPG hacking. What's in the book is a great overview which gives plenty of material for creating realistic challenges and methods of attack. But it's necessarily a little alien and very complex for anyone not used to using it, and it can very easily look like it's just 'throw dice, system hacked'. I would vote against adding more diverse infosec skills. It would be like replacing 'kinetic weapons' with 'suppressive fire skill', 'aimed shot skill', etc. It would get very complicated.
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Sat, 2017-01-07 01:04
MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture
Well the big problem with
Well the big problem with hacking, is that most folks dont really know what hacking is... They just get holywood NCSI double keyboard hacking. And Hacking is a lot more then just the tedious time expensive open port exploiting. Hacking is as much social engineering as it is breaking into systems. I think EP hacking rules are fine for real enough hacking.
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Sun, 2017-01-08 16:44
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
drom what everyone tells me
drom what everyone tells me Mr. Robot is supposed to be the most accurate to date production in regards to tech and hacking
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Sat, 2017-01-21 19:33
CordialUltimate2 CordialUltimate2's picture
Last session half of it was
Last session half of it was taken by hacking and excitement was running high. I agree that the simplicity of one Infosec test for everything can seem foolish or too shallow. But the hacking rules are actually pretty complicated and allow for a decent degree of freedom. Now let me tell you how good hacking sequence can be organised from GM side on the example of my game. First you have to realise that if the whole sequence hinges on making one critical roll, it is a badly designed sequence. Check out Alexandran rules for investigation. http://thealexandrian.net/gamemastery-101 If you take a look at a three clue rule and investigation in general, especially the node structure you can realise that the node structure can be adapted to be the structure of your computer network. In our case the first node was a terminal that was at the end of 4 tier wired lattice structure. We gathered enough information from it to ascertain the position of one other terminal (for free/no rolls required). Then our team was able to do some preparation, because intrusion into the first terminal was "free" or rather paid by psychointerrogation in session before. The single point of possible failure was therefore eliminated. Then our hacker proceeded to penetrate the network trying to take over other system terminals/clusters. Rest of the team was a fast response team. When we breached the second layer we learned some of the plot and also gained possible avenues into other parts of the computer system. Due to fudged die roll our hacker was detected. From then on everything was run with frantic abandon as our one talented AGI was against exhuman hacker. Because systems were latticed and wired, the battle between them was like a tug of war. Pushing forward from your controlled systems stealing info when possible. Finding workarounds and bypassing some connections. At one point the whole thing was routed through overclocked speckbot. The big turnaround was when our standby team was able to storm the third layer of system psychical location and attach a greybox to the terminal. This gave us another point of entry into the system and ability to bring in hackers hired through the mesh to overwhelm the exhuman defenses. Then it was a struggle to disarm some servers self-destruct mechanism and cut some connections, before the exhuman who apparently also brought some help regained enough control to push a big red button. Finally the big reveal of the game was not what was on the server, but where the last connection led to. It led to SI headquarters, which gave us a clue of the Exhuman involvement or infiltration in the corporation . EDIT 1: The important thing to remember was that the map of the whole network was as complicated as any map of physical location we used. Also most of the nodes could be accessed by means other than hacking. It would probably mean another session to just storm the place we failed to hack but well that is why you hack them instead of just doing it in the first place. Also everyone in the team was involved. Face paying bribes to get one broadcast tower to malfunction for a moment and jam all the signals in the area. Investigator running around the city trying to find the elements of the system hidden in the plain sight. Only combat guy was somewhat distant. EDIT 2: I can ask my GM to give me the spoiler sanitised notes from the session so I can translate it for you. With schematics and all.
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Sun, 2017-01-22 07:53
Kssian Kssian's picture
CordialUltimate2 wrote:Last
CordialUltimate2 wrote:
Last session half of it was taken by hacking and excitement was running high. I agree that the simplicity of one Infosec test for everything can seem foolish or too shallow. But the hacking rules are actually pretty complicated and allow for a decent degree of freedom. Now let me tell you how good hacking sequence can be organised from GM side on the example of my game. First you have to realise that if the whole sequence hinges on making one critical roll, it is a badly designed sequence. Check out Alexandran rules for investigation. http://thealexandrian.net/gamemastery-101 If you take a look at a three clue rule and investigation in general, especially the node structure you can realise that the node structure can be adapted to be the structure of your computer network. In our case the first node was a terminal that was at the end of 4 tier wired lattice structure. We gathered enough information from it to ascertain the position of one other terminal (for free/no rolls required). Then our team was able to do some preparation, because intrusion into the first terminal was "free" or rather paid by psychointerrogation in session before. The single point of possible failure was therefore eliminated. Then our hacker proceeded to penetrate the network trying to take over other system terminals/clusters. Rest of the team was a fast response team. When we breached the second layer we learned some of the plot and also gained possible avenues into other parts of the computer system. Due to fudged die roll our hacker was detected. From then on everything was run with frantic abandon as our one talented AGI was against exhuman hacker. Because systems were latticed and wired, the battle between them was like a tug of war. Pushing forward from your controlled systems stealing info when possible. Finding workarounds and bypassing some connections. At one point the whole thing was routed through overclocked speckbot. The big turnaround was when our standby team was able to storm the third layer of system psychical location and attach a greybox to the terminal. This gave us another point of entry into the system and ability to bring in hackers hired through the mesh to overwhelm the exhuman defenses. Then it was a struggle to disarm some servers self-destruct mechanism and cut some connections, before the exhuman who apparently also brought some help regained enough control to push a big red button. Finally the big reveal of the game was not what was on the server, but where the last connection led to. It led to SI headquarters, which gave us a clue of the Exhuman involvement or infiltration in the corporation . EDIT 1: The important thing to remember was that the map of the whole network was as complicated as any map of physical location we used. Also most of the nodes could be accessed by means other than hacking. It would probably mean another session to just storm the place we failed to hack but well that is why you hack them instead of just doing it in the first place. Also everyone in the team was involved. Face paying bribes to get one broadcast tower to malfunction for a moment and jam all the signals in the area. Investigator running around the city trying to find the elements of the system hidden in the plain sight. Only combat guy was somewhat distant. EDIT 2: I can ask my GM to give me the spoiler sanitised notes from the session so I can translate it for you. With schematics and all.
Great post, mate! It's really helpful, I am going to investigate that site to make more powerful hacking scenes. It would be great if you ask your GM for that. Thank you very much!
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Sun, 2017-01-22 08:42
CordialUltimate2 CordialUltimate2's picture
On similiar note the
On similiar note the Alexandrian site is great but his ideas (at least for me) are not always immediately applicable and are inspiration rather than guideline. If you want something even better, check out: http://theangrygm.com EDIT: "How to run a ******* game" and "How to write a ******* adventure" are the most useful for GMs aspiring to greatness (like me ;-P ). Just skip the rambling if it gets on your nerves :-)
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Sun, 2017-01-22 09:43
CordialUltimate2 CordialUltimate2's picture
Kssian wrote:
Kssian wrote:
It would be great if you ask your GM for that.
He didn't agree pointing out that his notes contain too much spoilers. http://imgur.com/yqBpOTw So I scribbled the schematic of the system from memory. Excuse the terrible handwriting. The green lines connect slaved elements. If you had admin acces to terminal, slaved systems where automatically under your control, but if you wanted to deny access to them to the Exhuman or access them without admin privileges you had to hack. Red/orange lines are wired connections between clusters. Hacking "along" them was a full 10 min hacking task action. It occured to me that I was not entirely precise before. We stormed the Villa, which was second layer of the system. Speckbot was a workaround for destroyed laser commlink, before we could attach the greybox and bring one hired hacker. Also the exhuman had an inherent advantage of starting as an admin on all layers of the system. He didn't immediately shut it down because he wanted to mindrape our hacker. Because of the enhanced server which he was residing on he managed to partially do that forcing a cyberbrain restart on the part of the hacker and copying some of his mnemonic augumentation memory. Also at the beginning we were able to disable autodestruct at T2. In the end our hacker managed to get access to the comm facility on the T3 cluster. At this point we gained a broadband connection into the system (in contrast to limited one from greybox). So we just threw at it, a team of Vectors that we scrambled to assemble in the background. Exhuman deleted himself but much data was gathered. What was this data, we will be informed on the next session. EDIT: Investigation elements came in when we gained access to surveillance/security cameras and from their limited view we had to figure out the location of the place.
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Mon, 2017-01-23 07:17
Kssian Kssian's picture
CordialUltimate2 wrote:On
CordialUltimate2 wrote:
On similiar note the Alexandrian site is great but his ideas (at least for me) are not always immediately applicable and are inspiration rather than guideline. If you want something even better, check out: http://theangrygm.com EDIT: "How to run a ******* game" and "How to write a ******* adventure" are the most useful for GMs aspiring to greatness (like me ;-P ). Just skip the rambling if it gets on your nerves :-)
That link is so dense and interesting. Lot to study & practice! Thanks for the diagram, I have a lot to work with :)
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