Slicing

[Silas Miu]

Greetings one and all! My character, Silas Miu, is a slicer and has worked for several persons, to be left unnamed. My concerns and questions are:

1. What Exactly can somebody accomplish through slicing?

2. What are the roleplay rules of slicing?

3. What slicing abilities/skills would designate my character as a beginner/expert/master in his chosen profession?

4. Is it fair to assume that, due to my characters knowledge of programming and computer systems, he'd have decent knowledge of most comm systems, scanners, jammers and droids?

Anyone who can help me answer any, if not all, of these questions will earn my gratitude. Thank you very much to anybody who replies!

 

[Davon Karr]

1. What Exactly can somebody accomplish through slicing?

Depends on the time taken.

I see a lot of people go "I'm a slicer I break into this secure system in ten seconds."

If it was that easy, the other side would leverage more resources to prevent future exploitations of that same vulnerability. Things take time and money. If the One Sith have data that could lead to thousands of lives lost and millions of credits of damages, you can be sure they'd make it so it would take months of work and cost a similar order of magnitude of credits to break in. Slicing still requires a vulnerability, these are either publicly known and likely researched or found by significant cost in time and credits.

If you want to get into something really secure IC, do the development for it or prepare to be ignored/handwaved away! There are no specific slicer rules.

 

[Sal Katarn]

Generally I think of slicing more along the lines of stuff R2D2 does in the movies. Open X door, move y turbo lift, reverse Z conveyor belt

 

[Ria Misrani]

Generally I think of slicing more along the lines of stuff R2D2 does in the movies. Open X door, move y turbo lift, reverse Z conveyor belt

^ This is generally what I go by as well, sometimes I'll borrow a bit from what I can recall from KOTOR.

 

[Gir Quee]

[member="Silas Miu"], I think that what the others have said is pretty much spot on.

That being said, the hacking gameplay system for Spycraft II is typically my go to for ideas on how to conduct hacking. The key thing to keep in mind is that where Spycraft uses dice, we don't. Just keep in mind that IC, hackers are employed for the same reason that mercenaries and soldiers are. There's always a fight between the attacker(hacker) and defender (what's being protected). If someone cakewalks through all of the cyber defenses like they're not there, that person may find RPing to be a bit difficult with their fellow writers.

 

[Red Queen]

I may be souped up slicing haz extraordinaire ; but I take several posts to do whatever I'm doing.

It isn't a one shot one slice deal.

 

[Silas Miu]

Gotcha. That certainly helps. I don't make it seem like a cake walk for my character, but i don't split it into seperate posts. Probably because I'm afraid somebody will somehow interrupt my character from his task, but I suppose that's just part of the game. I usually imagine slicing to be more along the lines of how its portrayed in movies, though with a bit more realism in how I implement it. However, I might be taking certain liberties with that.

I do, however, go into lengthy explanations as to how my character is able to bypass the security of the systems (i.e. Pinging their network, gaining access to their database through code injections in order to acquire password and user id files, uploading corrupted files into the root directories by disguising them as network updates) in order to show that, although my character accomplishes his task within one post, it certainly isn't taking him less than ten minutes, unless its a simple task.

However, due to the way I'm describing everything like that, I imagine my character doesn't use much in the way of slicing tools, beyond the occasional data spike. Are there any specialised equipment out there that may cause run times to be reduced for those sorts of tasks?

 

[Cira]

[member="Silas Miu"]

It is a matter of common sense.

I will tell you that if you do everything in one post, the average writer whom you are writing against is not going to be happy. All the more so if it is to gain access to highly protected files or assets that are PC owned. If you are doing PVE on an NPC character, there is more leeway, but no one is going to one to two post overriding a highly secured compound.

Typical posts are not in the terms of minutes; it can vary depending on the context of the thread. Some posts are seconds, others are a few minutes. In a PVP situation, expect it to be seconds to only a few minutes. My character the "Red Queen" has taken anywhere from 7 to 14 posts to do a single objective. ( 7 posts if no one has interrupted me over seven days because i am waiting 24 hours per post -- more posts of course, if I have an opponent and we are posting back and forth)

Toys can give you a little bit of leeway, but computer spikes or dataspikes or equipment doesn't mean that it is also a way to steamroll slicing. It is just flavor. I know diddly squat about technology, but I can write a neat story about the context, the situation, my thoughts, and most importantly what my intentions are.

How one writes an act is important. Is one simply saying they are doing what they want and gaining it? Or are they simply stating the intent for a lead up?

For example. I'll have a prep post to show what my intentions are for slicing. Depending on how complex it is and if there is opposition, i can take anywhere from two to 5 posts attempting to bounce back and forth to meet my objective. Slicing a door to a regular room? Two posts. Slicing into a high security facility? Expect more posts focusing on the intended process that will hopefully lead to my success.

Honestly, a character gets more street cred icly and oocly if they work for their reputation thread by thread and show respect, a willingness to cooperate with their opponents, and an ease of being able to roll with the punches and think outside the box.

The more one does this, then the more the character builds up a reputation of being a great slicer

 

[Silas Miu]

Okay, that makes sense.

Thats the part that I have the most trouble with, in most aspects of my life, not just with RPing. Even when I do tabletop, I'm pretty impulsive and want things accomplished quickly. What're some good ways to write posts that show what a character is intending to do? I'm trying to understand the process so that, in later posts, I can still have my character accomplish his goals, while not stepping on any toes.

Whats a good way of pacing the posts?

 

[Davon Karr]

[member="Silas Miu"]

I think what I was also trying to suggest is that if you want to levy a big operation against a major corporation or faction not only does one post certainly not cut it, but you might have to get inventive too.

Just rocking up to one of their terminals and assuming you can get access to everything in one go, even if spread across posts, might be a bit much. Organisations of that size probably take operations going over weeks or months to find and exploit. People on the other side are more likely to acknowledge what you're doing if you talk to them OOC and do the ground work. Someone isn't going to have the company jewels in a place you can just hop to from any old terminal.

The same as a PvP battle. You swing your sword and outline what you're going for, it's on the other side to respond and take the hit or not. Break your plan down into steps and put them in one at a time, giving the opposition time to respond and counter.

Don't get upset if you don't get what you want, it's collaborative roleplay and you might not succeed just because you have a plan. It's not just breaking down a preordained story, but engaging with someone.

Hope that helps

 

[Jen]

From what I have read s far I think you're handling the slicing really well. Davon and Cira nails the PvP aspects of slicing.

Regarding question 4 I think it is a good idea to find some specialities of your char. Does not matter if it is social engineering, hardware coding, com systems (phreaking), malware, droid programming etc etc. But it ensures you don't come off as a 'leet haxor kid'.

There is after all many aspects to hacking/slicing.

We're writing for entertainments sake so don't take it too serioisly either. Movies I go to for inspiration are Mr. Robot, Who Am I and Hacker (even though it is quite silly)

[member="Silas Miu"]

 

[Silas Miu]

Thanks for all the feedback! [member="Jen"], I think the specialization idea is great. I'm leaning towards my character being more specialized in droid programming and encryption/decryption algorithms. That way, he can still be semi knowledgeable in a couple of the other areas of slicing, but not anywhere near as good as script kiddies think they are.