Hacking and Intrusion

[Thisdan]

Hi, this is my first post and I apologize if this topic has already been discussed. If so I couldn't find the thread.

I have based my traveller campaign in the Darrian Federation because I like playing in a setting with really high TL.
One of my player's characters is quite good at Hacking (high computer (electronics), Int and Edu) and has reasonable intrusion software.
He is constantly asking to hack into systems (e.g. hacking the hotel's networking they are observing someone in, hacking the mall or offices). He has played a lot of Shadowrun and is of the opinion that in such a High-Tech world everything is accessible via data streams and therefore be hackable.
In order not to trivialize everything I am looking for some rules how to handle this.
What are your experiences? With his high bonus (between +4 and +6) I still want to give a reasonable challenge.
I am looking forward to suggestions. Thank you!

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

MGT1 Book 6: Scoundrels has a chapter on Intrusion and Hacking. It is based largely on the feel from Shadowrun etc. so that might be helpful.

 

[The King]

Supplement 8 Cybernetics (from the 1st edition) also has a dedicated chapter on Cyberspace, Intrusion and Cyberdeck Programs.

 

[Saladman]

One thing I've done running Traveller is only roll once for certain things. So the roll is not only whether you pull it off that one time, but sometimes even whether it's possible at all. That's an adjustment for some players, but if you tell them ahead of time they'll usually start thinking about increasing the time increment or involving another player with a task chain.

He has played a lot of Shadowrun and is of the opinion that in such a High-Tech world everything is accessible via data streams and therefore be hackable.

Except NPCs aren't stupid, and the more important a system is the more likely someone is to just air-gap it. Can't hack it if there's no internet or wireless connection. Some things like security cameras likely are accessible more often than not, others like starships and illegal AIs might not be hooked up to anything except their own consoles.

What are your experiences? With his high bonus (between +4 and +6) I still want to give a reasonable challenge.

This is one reason I really prefer characters with lower net skills, it lets you keep everything on the 2d6 scale without handing out a lot of minuses. But it's a little late to tell you that now.

Consider opposed rolls sometimes, rather than flat difficulty. Could be a sysadmin, or even a tasked AI.

Ask the player to tell you his end goal, what specifically he's trying to accomplish, before he rolls and before you assign mods. Hacking into a hotel to view their payroll records might be harder than accessing their security cameras. "I hack the hotel," [roll], "then I..." is bad play at a meta-game level whether he means it to be or not. If he's trying to do multiple things in the same system they're probably different rolls. (Possibly you could treat prior attempts as task chains to the next, to simulate momentum or attention drawn, but I'm not sure about that. With a high enough bonus it might just become an extra bonus, depending on what difficulty you're setting.)

Really think about base time increments as well as difficulty mods. Security camera on wi-fi or equivalent is probably fast as well as easy, finding, accessing and downloading the right secret account probably takes a lot longer as well as having a different difficulty mod. If you do it right he'll sometimes assign himself a minus to try it faster.

Give some thought ahead of time to minor drawbacks (when he just meets the target number), and major drawbacks (when he misses by 1 if he wants to increase it to a success). For that matter, enlist your player in that, ask him to think up some and send you a list. You won't use these every time, but sometimes they'll be more likely than a pure failure.

All that said, I've never had a fully satisfactory hacking subsystem, in Traveller or anything else I've tried, so I'm kind of dancing around the central question a little bit. But this is all how I would handle it.

A tangent - read up on Remote Ops and Electronics, just to make sure you're not calling for Computer rolls when they should be another specialty. But it doesn't sound like that's happening here.

 

[Jetrock]

Because hacking often involves gaining information and intelligence about the target through means other than a computer, you've got an opportunity for other characters in the party with interpersonal skills (Admin, Persuade, Streetwise etc.) to engage in "social engineering" before the hack itself; making this sort of intelligence gathering mandatory (to defeat things like an air-gapped network by attacking the most vulnerable part, the nut that sits behind the keyboard) to a hacking skill attempt, or just a chained task, can make it more of a roleplaying opportunity vs. a "I roll to hack the system" approach. Especially for a character with a high level of skill, difficulty levels will be high (14-16 or so) commensurate with reward (it's easy to break into the supply closet if your target is some mops and cleaning supplies, not so much the server room--but maybe the building schematic your light-fingered friend lifted shows a ventilation shaft from the easy-to-break-into supply closet to the secure server room!)

 

[Arkathan]

Freelance Traveller had an article on a Traveller Hacker mini-game.
I've used it and it works well.

The March/April 2022 issue of Freelance Traveller has been posted for download!

This issue's featured article is Jim McClain's Mini-game for Hacking Computers, an alternative for the simple one-roll tasks for getting information out of a computer in your campaign.

Joe Adams' graphic story based on the Pirates of Drinax continues in this issue, and Timothy Collinson shares his efforts from a Twitter "thing-a-day" challenge.

The rest of this issue is the usual eclectic mix of reviews, rules,
background information, and so on, hopefully for your reading (and eventual
using) pleasure.

Download it now at the usual place:

Freelance Traveller - Magazine Downloads

Perma-link to this issue:

Freelance Traveller - Issue 110 - March/April 2022

 

[Shardan13]

This is my first post though I have been lurking on the Traveller forum for a while now.

Consider also what happens the player succeed on the hack, gains the information and the rest of the travellers act on it. Darrians aren't stupid, if the only way to get the information was by an illegal hack they will notice that an illegal hack was successfully attempted. If the player has done this several times they may have inadvertently become a topic of disscusion in the criminal underground which means they are person of interest for law enforcement.

I release this may not the orginal poster was looking for but it is something to consider.

 

[Garran]

Paraphrasing what I wrote in a similar topic on the FFG Star Wars forums:

If a player goes out of their way to give their character the Computers (or whatever else) equivalent of the Fonzie Touch, let them be awesome with it. Aside from being what they're looking for in the game, it's also something that you can safely hang plot hooks on.


Now, that being said, network security in Shadowrun... well, it mostly exists to be bypassed by the PCs, not to actually secure anything. In the case of a Darrian world their network security is not only more likely to be effective on general principle but high-tech as well, so the PC may find it a little more work than in the equivalent Shadowrun locale. Still, a hotel's security camera feed probably isn't going to be especially well-guarded (unless it's a hotel that regularly hosts heads of state or the like), so getting in probably won't be much of a problem.

What will make this situation interesting isn't that their hacking attempt is arbitrarily blocked in the name of "challenge" (see: let them be awesome), but what they see on the feeds...

 

[Condottiere]

The point of having a game skill is to be able to use it (successfully) ingame.

And you can always throw more dice at a problem.

And airgapping may now include radiation filters, considering what I now hear about eavesdropping.

 

[Spenser TR]

From a fun-and-gameplay point of view, for a long time I've wished there was a computer hacking system available that had some ballpark parity with the amount of options we have with gun combat or ship combat. Lots of options, gear, lots of attempts to think it through and provide opportunities for players to personalize and invest in that part of the game and their character. Not so much for the systems specialist/hacker/operator.

Thanks for the recommendations above; I'll take a look as well

 

[Thisdan]

MGT1 Book 6: Scoundrels has a chapter on Intrusion and Hacking. It is based largely on the feel from Shadowrun etc. so that might be helpful.

Thanks, that is very useful information! Am going through it and will surely integrate it.

 

[Thisdan]

Supplement 8 Cybernetics (from the 1st edition) also has a dedicated chapter on Cyberspace, Intrusion and Cyberdeck Programs.

Thanks! I might have to buy this one now...

 

[Thisdan]

One thing I've done running Traveller is only roll once for certain things. So the roll is not only whether you pull it off that one time, but sometimes even whether it's possible at all. That's an adjustment for some players, but if you tell them ahead of time they'll usually start thinking about increasing the time increment or involving another player with a task chain.



Except NPCs aren't stupid, and the more important a system is the more likely someone is to just air-gap it. Can't hack it if there's no internet or wireless connection. Some things like security cameras likely are accessible more often than not, others like starships and illegal AIs might not be hooked up to anything except their own consoles.



This is one reason I really prefer characters with lower net skills, it lets you keep everything on the 2d6 scale without handing out a lot of minuses. But it's a little late to tell you that now.

Consider opposed rolls sometimes, rather than flat difficulty. Could be a sysadmin, or even a tasked AI.

Ask the player to tell you his end goal, what specifically he's trying to accomplish, before he rolls and before you assign mods. Hacking into a hotel to view their payroll records might be harder than accessing their security cameras. "I hack the hotel," [roll], "then I..." is bad play at a meta-game level whether he means it to be or not. If he's trying to do multiple things in the same system they're probably different rolls. (Possibly you could treat prior attempts as task chains to the next, to simulate momentum or attention drawn, but I'm not sure about that. With a high enough bonus it might just become an extra bonus, depending on what difficulty you're setting.)

Really think about base time increments as well as difficulty mods. Security camera on wi-fi or equivalent is probably fast as well as easy, finding, accessing and downloading the right secret account probably takes a lot longer as well as having a different difficulty mod. If you do it right he'll sometimes assign himself a minus to try it faster.

Give some thought ahead of time to minor drawbacks (when he just meets the target number), and major drawbacks (when he misses by 1 if he wants to increase it to a success). For that matter, enlist your player in that, ask him to think up some and send you a list. You won't use these every time, but sometimes they'll be more likely than a pure failure.

All that said, I've never had a fully satisfactory hacking subsystem, in Traveller or anything else I've tried, so I'm kind of dancing around the central question a little bit. But this is all how I would handle it.

A tangent - read up on Remote Ops and Electronics, just to make sure you're not calling for Computer rolls when they should be another specialty. But it doesn't sound like that's happening here.

Yes, I will introduce more active counter measures. Not for trivial stuff of course. And making the access points more important and not everything available via WiFi is a good input - will work with that.
And yes, I will use the other skills more, not just electroincs.

 

[Thisdan]

Because hacking often involves gaining information and intelligence about the target through means other than a computer, you've got an opportunity for other characters in the party with interpersonal skills (Admin, Persuade, Streetwise etc.) to engage in "social engineering" before the hack itself; making this sort of intelligence gathering mandatory (to defeat things like an air-gapped network by attacking the most vulnerable part, the nut that sits behind the keyboard) to a hacking skill attempt, or just a chained task, can make it more of a roleplaying opportunity vs. a "I roll to hack the system" approach. Especially for a character with a high level of skill, difficulty levels will be high (14-16 or so) commensurate with reward (it's easy to break into the supply closet if your target is some mops and cleaning supplies, not so much the server room--but maybe the building schematic your light-fingered friend lifted shows a ventilation shaft from the easy-to-break-into supply closet to the secure server room!)

Thanks, I like the integrated approach!

 

[Thisdan]

And thanks to all the others for the great input! I feel much more prepared now.

 

[nats]

I think its good the player is into the game like that, and that you want to encourage that and present a challenge as well. Good on you.

If left to hack stuff he is probably right that everything is hackable with expertise and tools but of course nobody often has that luxury of endless amounts of time - silent alarms can be triggered, people can interrupt the process, there may be other security that he can get through like mechanical locks that may require help from others in the team. Maybe the only terminal is in a location where lots of people are around so requiring a distraction by others in the team? Maybe look at the Mission Impossible films for ideas?

And maybe when/if he is starting to think he can do anything throw him onto a low tech world where hacking is useless just for fun lol so he has to use other skills ...

Have you looked at the old Mongoose Agent character book? That might have some stuff in it.

 

[Spenser TR]

-nods- Hacking isn't like pointing and shooting a gun. It seems right that it'd take a while to develop a piece of malware, sneak into the Baron's armory and load it into the air-gapped console that administers the software on the gauss rifles rotated into use by her huscarles. Or time to do the research to figure out who the armory admin was, find a weakness of his, and social engineer a keystring out of him. Pressing the transmitter button that makes all the rifles go butts-up wouldn't take any time at all... but the setup would.

Though I can imagine there are other hacking situations where the attempt might possibly be pretty straightforward - open that door, free those locking clamps, change the Baron's image on this one media platform, or do a quick security audit on our own gauss rifles (and vaccsuits, while you're at it), to see if some fool could have an easy time hacking them.