[UA] The Issue of Gaming Hackers

[Scott Smith]

Playing Information Gatherer's is rarely "fun". Especially if it's the main 
focus of the game. It can be fun if you are playing a game such as Cyberpunk 
or Shadowrun and roleplay out the cyberspace thing, however, generally that 
just separates you from the rest of the group. But that's not UA. And the 
cyberpunk deck run really, really, just doesn't work.

So what's to do?

You just don't make it the focus. Admittedly, I've never played a "modern" 
hacker as the above examples show, I'm far too much a fan of the cyberpunk 
genres. However, my advice is still applicable. In Shadowrun I generally 
played a combat hacker, sort of a mix between a street sam and a decker. 
Basically, you just surrender full utility with two different job "options" 
and be a duck i.e. neither fish nor fowl.

How do you encourage this, well there are always intranets and other secured 
internal websites. They have no connection to the outside world, and 
therefore are fairly hard to get into it. Unless you do some B&E and get 
inside the building. And then you've still got to socially engineer a way 
in.

Contrary to popular thought, most hacking is via social engineering, which 
basically means fooling someone to get into the system, thus forcing a 
hacker to be fairly personable.

In short don't be a hacker. Be someone who knows how to hack - "Yes I'm a 
taxi cab driver, but that's because I got kicked out of college for 
hacking."

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