Any game with Science Fiction elements seems to lend itself to "tooling up".  A Star Wars Smuggler tools up his Freighter, a Cyberpunk 2020 Solo tools up his Cyberware and his guns, a Shadowrun Mage tools up his libraries, spells, foci, and spirits.

With Deckers/Hackers you tool up your computer depending on game, but here's the problem...

If you want to avoid the overpowering minigame of a decking session, how do you do that while still letting the decker "tool up"?  If you don't engage all the decking systems and programs, which can make for the extensive sessions, then it seems like the decker ends up just making a skill roll or two and all the gearhead stuff just gets left behind.

What houserules have you used that you think has struck a balance?

Quote from: CRKrueger;582037If you want to avoid the overpowering minigame of a decking session, how do you do that while still letting the decker "tool up"?  If you don't engage all the decking systems and programs, which can make for the extensive sessions, then it seems like the decker ends up just making a skill roll or two and all the gearhead stuff just gets left behind.

I think this stems entirely from allowing a class to revolve around an element that's not likely to be in play.  The same issue could result from a Sailor class in a desert campaign, I'd think.

As such, I'm really interested in seeing what people have come up with in the past.  Myself, I'd probably just say "don't pick that one, it won't come up that often" and encourage them to dabble in decking instead.

Watch all of the episodes of Stargate Atlantis (again) and write down every technical trick Rodney pulls on the computers, whether its data hacking or putting a tripwire into engineering systems or whatever. They're actually not unrealistic as it turns out, assuming you've got an ubergenius at the keyboard, the technical consultants earned their keep on SG:A.

Now you have a nice list of reasonably spectacular hacking maneuvers to either turn into individual skills, base around one single skill with a range of modifiers, or create a quick contested-roll minigame out of. In all of the above you can keep the gear and even segregate it a bit more (say into iOS, Linux and Windows based types, or human computers, or computers from the last ten years, etc).

More tedious stuff like tool building can be added for the player to mess around with during the group's downtime as well.

Make the "tool up" translate to bonuses/maluses/modifiers on the standard roll, instead of full sub-systems/mini-games.

Have everyone jacked in at the same time like Inception or The Matrix on the big runs, otherwise have the decker doing relatively mundane stuff like The Traveller suggests; breaking security, rigging systems, setting up viruses, and so on.  Things where they don't necessarily have to be jacked into the full 3-D thing all the time.

Quote from: StormBringer;582875otherwise have the decker doing relatively mundane stuff like The Traveller suggests; breaking security, rigging systems, setting up viruses, and so on.

See that was the cool part about it, despite the lack of fancy VR or transition to The Net special effects, the skills used were absolutely pivotal in many, perhaps even the majority of episodes. It may have been just a guy typing at a computer but it got the job done and saved their bacon.