Hacking Games

(All art has been made by a human artist! I don't condone the use of AI art!)

Hey everyone!

I'm very excited to share something I've been working on for the last couple of weeks — Hacking Games, a new Foundry module that brings interactive hacking mini-games to your sessions.

Longer Showcase here:

What is Hacking Games?

Instead of resolving hacks with a single roll, Hacking Games gives players actual puzzles to solve under time pressure. The GM picks a game, sets the difficulty based not only on the outcome of the roll, but also based on the player's real life skill, to make it fair for all players. The combination of those two difficulty settings determine the final difficulty tier.

Not only do players have 6 different games to play, each changing their difficulty, but also have the option between 5 themes that should fit into any campaign:

• Retro

• Modern

• Cyberpunk Corpo

• Cyberpunk Streets

• Holographic

The GM and players get to spectate the operating player in real time, if there is more than one user playing at a time the spectators can choose who they to spectate and change it in real time.

Not only that, but the GM can also play against or with their players in any combination they want. If all users are playing on a side without the helper button checked, their successes and their scores are added together and compared against each other. If a user was marked as just a helper, their successes don't count towards the total, but half their score does. The helper option is implemented if a character can't use a separate console to directly help the other players, or if they are just not as good, but still want to help.

If the GM is playing against multiple players, they have their special multiplier option, to make it fair.

I sure hope that you like the module, you can report bugs in the Discord and any feedback is very welcome!

How to use:

• Right click on the the players tab in the bottom left corner of your screen and launch the hacking games window

• Once that is done, drag the players and the GM to their respective sides if you want to have competitive hacking. If you want the player to play solo, drag everyone into the spectators tab and place the player on any side. The same goes for having 2,3,4, etc.. players on any side together, if there is no one on the opposing side then it is not a competititve mode.

• You can click on each user on any side and change the difficulty for them individually, or even the game. In addition, players can be marked as helpers by clicking the helper check box, if that happens then they don't add their success to the side they are playing on, instead they only add half of their score. Otherwise if 2 players for example are playing as full players (No one is a helper) they could achieve 1 success with a maximum of a score of 100 each, adding that together to 2 successes and a score of 200. If one was a helper the max they could achieve would be 1 success and a score of 150.

• If the GM is on a side you could activitate his special option, the multiplier, which multiplies his successes and score, this allows the GM to play against a team of players, if he is for example representing a team of hackers, it is the option to use to even the odds.

• You can close the windows any time you want through the X in the screen of the devices.

  • There are two exceptions to this, the retro/terminal theme has a shut down button outside the screen, to its right. Once clicked it turns off the computer with a nice little animation.

  • The holographic theme has an abort button outside the main window

How Difficulty is determined:

Difficulty is determined by two settings: the player’s real-life ability at the minigame, and the character’s roll outcome. Set the base difficulty to match how good the player actually is at that specific game, then apply the roll outcome. The resulting final difficulty is shown in Default Tier.

Players will often perform differently across minigames, so it is normal to set different base difficulties depending on the game. Start lower, test what feels right, and adjust from there.

The hacking games are intended to range from manageable to extremely demanding, with the highest tiers meant to be rare and feel like a major achievement. If everything still feels too difficult even after lowering the base difficulty and adjusting the roll outcome, I may rebalance it further.

You can now also tweak individual variables to make each tier in each game more or less challenging!

Compatibility

Foundry VTT v13/14 — System Agnostic!

Note: The module has been tested on resolutions of 1920x1080 and up. Smaller resolutions might not be able to fully see the devices/main window. If there is demand, I might make the option to reduce the size in the future!

You can launch the hacking window by right clicking on the users in the bottom left and choosing the option launch hacking games! Enjoy!