The Chase, Pit Bulls, Tagging, and the Visit
System
Should a player botch – or even, in certain systems, just fail – a roll inside an active system, that player and the Storyteller play out the chase. Both parties roll their characters’ Intelligence + Computer in a resisted roll.
• If the sysadmin gets more successes, then he catches the hacker – usually ejecting her with an identification tag on her computer. With five successes or more over the number needed to beat the hacker, he can send a nasty virus or trace program back into the hacker’s computer, or else detain her in a virtual lockup. This sort of thing is more cinematic than realistic, but it’s a good way to make a player sweat… especially if she’s been trying to hack the Technocracy.
• A successful sysadmin can also hack the hacker. With five successes or more, that sysadmin has gotten ac cess to the intruder’s own system; at that point, the Storyteller becomes the hacker, and the player becomes the sysadmin, defending her system against the party she had originally tried to hack.
• Technocrats or other high-tech mages and Night-Folk might also have pit bull countermeasures: smart programs that act to trip and catch trespassers. If the system has such programs, then the hacker’s difficulty rises by +2 during a chase. In story terms, the pit bulls slow her system down and give the sysadmin an edge. (For potential pit bulls, see Memophores in Mage 20, p. 638.)
• If the sysadmin wins the chase, then the Storyteller also makes a secret roll to find and purge the backdoors the hacker had implanted in the system. The player should not be told whether or not those backdoors have been found – that information is for the Storyteller to know and the player to find out. And if the sysadmin does tag the trespasser’s computer, then it’s probably just a matter of time before boys in blue or Men in Black show up to pay her a visit…
• Should the hacker roll more successes than the sysadmin, then she remains free and untagged inside the system. If she scores five successes or more above the number she needed to beat the Storyteller, then she’s got free access within the system for one hour per success. If she wins by only one or two successes, though, the chase might resume at any time. If she wants to keep working within the system, then she’ll have to work fast.