Hacking in Null Protocol
"I'm in..." - hacker in every movie involving hackers
I've discussed a bunch of other aspects of Null Protocol but what is a game in the cyberpunk genre without hackers? Probably just punk? I'm sure there is already a story game out there about British punks in the 1980s or something. But we're talking about putting the 'cyber' into the punk.
A lot of media portrays the hacker as "the guy in the chair". This is fine in a movie or on TV, but TTRPGs are about the group working together in relative proximity. If a fight breaks out and the hacker isn't on-site, they aren't actually in danger. They might be able to assist with their kit, but there is an inherent disconnect between the player and the rest of the group who are putting there characters on the line for the job.
So what's the solution to this conundrum? LORE! Seriously. In the case of Null Protocl, it's about making the dystopian future one where hacking from a distance is not a viable option. So if you'll indulge my writing for a moment...
In the early twenty-first century, the promise of the future was a world of wireless communication and universal connectivity. Then it all went to shit. Every chud with interface plugs and a baseline NeuroRig could get access to packet sniffers, encryption breakers, and signal jammers.
An open wifi signal was a target on your back. Any signal left open for more than a few hours was either cracked by blackhats, or a trap laid for them. Outside of short-term drone ops and proximity comms, wireless was suicide.
So it all went back to hard line. There was no other option. Now every signal travels over the miles of Cat12 cable woven through every building, service tunnel and utility pole. Every building has its own local network, and accessing the outside Net is often a luxury.
There's no sitting back in your cushy chair like in the old days. If you're on the Crew, you're on-site.
The Question of Time
When talking about hacking, one of the key things I wanted to avoid in this design was making it into a full blown minigame. Nobody wants to sit around the table while one player basically runs their own personal dungeon to unlock a door or turn off an alarm. So that's out.
We also don't want to go the other extreme and just hand wave the whole exercise like a PbtA game. It speeds up play, but it removes a lot of the tension and time pressure that can come from hacking something in a heated situation. A classic scenario is trying to close and lock a security door to keep the security goons out while your team does the job.
So where does that put us? The simplest solution is to just make hacking take the same amount of time as anything else. One hacking Action is the same as one combat Action. Hacking during a fire fight becomes very straight forward. You're fighting with the network while your allies are fighting the corpo hit squad. If a non-combat situation, it means that we can also clearly track time as the hacker works. If a Round is 10 seconds, then the Hacker that takes 12 Rounds to find the right Node, fight off any Daemons, and hack it with the desired effect has taken two minutes. Still blazing fast by real-life hacking standards, but at least we have a reasonable way of knowing how long it took if there is time pressure involved.
Tools of the Trade
As with any good game mechanic, hacking needs to provide a series of interesting decision points for the player to interact with. While deciding on how I wanted this system to work, I read a bunch of other Cyberpunk RPGs and most are pretty limited in their creativity. They just provide you with a tool that does a thing, and that's about all it does. You know which game didn't do that? Cities without Number. Kevin Crawford has a very inventive system for letting players combine different verb / noun pairs to create far more hacking options than you might normally see. I love this specifically because it lets the players use their brains and engage in creative thinking.
Aspects of Hacking
- Neurorigs: Like all the best OSR games, you are only as good as your tools. All hackers Null Protocol need to bring a special device with them to a job call a neurorig. Each one has a limited number of Memory Slots to bring the toys.
- Access: As noted in my little lore section, you have to be on-site to hack a location. That means finding an access port to get into the local network. Better start looking for an access panel.
- Programs: The actual way you do hacking. There are three kinds of programs:
- Breaker: Breakers are Programs designed to gain access during a dive into a hostile network. When attempting to breach a Gate or defeat a hostile entity, you roll 1d8 for each Memory Slot you allocated to a Breaker. When attempting to breach a Gate or defeat a hostile entity, you roll 1d8 for each Memory Slot you allocated to a Breaker.
- Exploit: Programs that are paired with a System. They describe the effect you're trying to impose as part of your hack.
- System: Systems are the thing or person you are trying to hack. They must be paired with a valid Exploit to create the desired effect.
Breakers are your ability to get into a system. The more you have, the easier it is to bypass Gates or battle Daemons, but by taking more, it means you have fewer Exploits and Systems to bring.
The Exploit / System pairing is really where this system shines. You can only take so many of these things, and each time you take a System or an Exploit, you're paying an opportunity cost on Breakers, as well as other Systems and Exploits you could bring in your limited hacking slots.
So, as you can see, there is a delicate balance about how much of anything you want to take. Before you start a job you might want to know how strong the Network is (for gauging your Breakers), but you also need to know what your target is. If you need to break into a locked vault, you might want ACCESS and DOOR. But what about the guards, or the killer security robots? Lots of choices to make!
The Network
So now we have Breakers, Exploits and Systems. We also have the Network your hacking. Networks are comprised of Nodes, which are basically digital dungeon rooms. Nodes are digital spaces that serve a specific function within the network. The might be a lobby, control a System, or be traps for unsuspecting hackers. A good way to think about nodes is that they are point crawls through the digital network. The larger the network, the more Nodes it has and the harder it is to get to the most important systems.
Gates
Each Node has a Gate, which is basically a door. Each Gate has an Access Level (AL) required to bypass it. Every time you access a Gate, even a Gate you have accessed previously, you must roll a Breaching check to bypass it.
Each Breaching attempt takes an Action. You roll your Breaker dice and attempt to exceed (greater than) the AL of the Gate. If you pass, you're in. If you fail you take damage equal to the difference. The damage first hits your WALL (firewall) defense, then it starts hitting your MIND vital.
Daemons
Daemons, ICE, watchdogs, etc. are a classic staple of the Cyberpunk TTRPG genre. These are sentinel programs that the player(s) must overcome to continue their dive into the network. Daemons are always located with in a specific Node, and cannot leave the Node they are found in. Until a Daemon is defeated, the hacker cannot attempt to Breach a Gate connected to the Daemon's Node, nor can any Scripts can be run in its Node.
You battle Daemons with your Breaker dice, so they double as your digital weapons. Hope you didn't take too many Exploits and Systems. I won't go into how you battle them in this post, because we're already running very long, but you get the idea.
Putting it All Together (Example of Play)
So how does all of this mumbo jumbo actually work in practice? It's a lot of things going on, which probably is a bit hard to parse in blog format compared to a well laid out rulebook. To help, here's a semi-narrative example of play:
The Job
The Crew needs to reach the penthouse of a luxury high-rise on the 48th floor to access a corp exec's personal computer.
Before they start the job, Wyv3rn (MIND 12, WALL 5) loaded his Lux (10 slot) NeuroRig with 2 Breakers (2d8), Scan, Access, Gitch, Decrypt, Cyber, Data, Door, and Alarm.
The Crew finds a maintenance terminal in the back alley behind the building, hidden behind a dumpster. After moving the bin and breaking open the terminal cover, Wyv3rn jacks into the building's network.
Hacking the Network
The initial network Gate is Access Level (AL) 4, which he beats on his first Breaker roll with a total of 6. The referee informs the player that the Lobby Node connects to Nodes with Access Levels 5, 6, and 8. Wyv3rn then runs a "Scan + Data" command on the AL5 Node, passing his Mind Save to avoid detection. The referee states that this Node contains the door controls. That's not what Wyv3rn was looking for, so he runs a second "Scan Data" command on the AL6 Node, again passing his Mind Save. He learns it contains the alarm system. Bingo.
Wyv3rn attempts to hack the AL6 Gate. He rolls a total of 3 on his first Breaker attempt and takes 3 Damage from difference between his roll and the Gate's AL. This reduces his WALL from 5 to 2. He makes a second Breaker attempt and rolls a total of 7, just beating the AL. Now inside the Node, he runs a "Glitch Alarm" command, again passes his Mind Save, tripping the building's fire alarm system.
While security is preoccupied with evacuating the building residents from the "fire" that Wyv3rn just caused on the 33rd floor, the Crew slips in the back door.
Daemons
Before jacking out, Wyv3rn moves back to the lobby and attempts to Breach the AL5 Gate that contains the door controls. He Breaches the Gate with a total of 8 and enters the Node where he finds a Gremlin Daemon (6 MIND, 2d6 Attack).
As a PC, Wyv3rn goes first and rolls a total of 3 Damage for his Attack, reducing the Daemon to 3 MIND. The construct attacks back, dealing 4 Damage to Wyv3rn, reducing his WALL to 0 and causing 1 Damage to his MIND, reducing it from 12 to 11). The hacker's next Attack roll is a total of 6, which enough to destroy the Daemon.
Wyv3rn runs the "Access + Door" Script, unlocking the penthouse door before jacking out of the network.
That's generally the broad strokes of hacking. You probably noticed that the example of play covers things that I didn't go into detail on in this blog post. They're in the alpha rules, but there's only so much I wanted to fit into this post, which has run on for too long as it is. This is all pre-play testing, so it's all subject to change, but the system is at least wholistic.
One final note: this does not include Combat Hacking, which is also already done in concept, but that's a topic for a different day.
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