Hacking for non-programmers

The player characters are on trial soon and their opposition is rumored to tamper with evidence. They need the un-tampered-with versions of recorded testimony before they go to trial, so they can prove their opponent is a dickweasel. Problem is, none of them have the Program skill and their NPC hacker ally has been captured. They could find someone else, but escort-and-defend missions are so last century.

How do you make a hacking mission interesting for PCs who don't have the Program skill?

Set Up

Time to grab some index cards because we're going to cyberspace!
That NPC ally who does their programming? He knew he'd likely get captured, so he set things up for the PCs. He created a hack and gave them some visors. If someone can insert the data disk containing the hack into the target network, the visors will let the PCs enter a representation of the network, so they can "hack" without needing Program.
There were six interviews available for my players to find, so I grabbed six index cards, numbered them, and labeled each with a room, like Academic Office. I left space on each card to write on later. I then grabbed six more cards, and added the below information to them:

Player Card Title	Player Card Text
Crowbar	Defeats Lockdown Defeated by Firewall
Zero Day	Defeats Firewall Defeated by +1
Off-by-1	Defeats +1 Defeated by Lockdown

GM Card Title	GM Card Text
Lockdown	Defeats Off-by-1 Defeated by Crowbar
Firewall	Defeats Crowbar Defeated by Zero Day
+1	Defeats Zero Day Defeated by Off-by-1

You might already see where this is going.

Digital World

I'm underwhelmed by the book's description of cyber warfare, but I appreciate the simplicity of the rock-paper-scissors rules. Since this situation is a bit different, I came up with my own version of it: The PCs' actions are hacking methods (pre-programmed by their NPC ally), while the GM's actions are security measures to counteract them. Each action has equal chance to win, lose, or tie.
With the hack planted and the visors equipped, the PCs virtually entered a long hallway. A pre-recorded hologram of their MIA friend told them to pick a door and start searching - the rooms will match something of what you can find there. Doors filled in on either side of the hall, and the first to say they opened one rolled 1d6. I revealed the room card that matched the number they rolled and placed it on the table.
The rooms started out rudimentary with quirks, like a chair clipping into a table, but gained detail once the PCs realized which NPC they've met before was tied to that room. For instance, that Academic Office had a desk and some books, but once they realized the evidence was an interview with Norah Everdinn, it started to look like her Blue Spire Academy office.

Let's Play a Game

To find the hidden evidence, a player described where they looked and chose one of their cards in secret (Crowbar, Zero Day, Off-by-1). As GM, I did the same from my three cards (Lockdown, +1, Firewall) and we revealed at the same time. Which player didn't matter, and mine are good at sharing the spotlight, but an established turn order would also work.

If we tied
There was nothing of interest in that spot. They didn't find what they needed, but set off no alarms. That spot could no longer be searched.

If they won
They found the evidence, or if they already found it, a path to a room of their choice. I added what they found and where to the location's index card.

If they lost
They rolled 1d6 for which room they were randomly sent to. I added this pathway to their starting location's card, and they next had to deal with an Alarm.

I had only one piece of evidence per room, but there's no reason there couldn't be more if the story demanded it.

Pathways

Once found, pathways were permanent and could be reused at any time with no additional steps or alarms, but they were one directional. Loops were OK - they just ended up back in the same room with a slight visual glitch. The pathways also may not make sense. This is a digital, non-euclidian space, after all. They might find a path in a filing cabinet drawer, for instance. I described the paths as instant teleports, but they could be spaces the PCs can climb into.
One of my players decided to "search" by jumping out a window.

Alarms

Alarms manifested as something going wrong in the room, like crumbling furniture, a flood of water, a searching guard, etc. The players had one chance to turn it off, using any skill they could justify. Each time they use a particular skill, the difficulty to disable future alarms with that skill went up by 1. This was to encourage creativity and represent the security system getting better at stopping them.
I had my players come up with how the alarms manifested and how they dealt with them, but they're improvers so I can offload this work to them. Other GMs may find this puts too much on the players to come up with on the spot. Depending on your group, you may want to brainstorm a bunch of possibilities ahead of time that require different skills to resolve.
The difficulty depends on how costly you want their failure to be. If you want one failure to end the mission, start the difficulty low, such as 6. This is what I did, and they didn't fail until the fourth alarm and after having gotten all 6 pieces of evidence. If you want to be more forgiving, you can start with a higher difficulty but let them fail a few times before the mission ends. Perhaps each failure also removes their access to a path they've already found.

End Result

Evidence found:	6 out of 6
Alarms triggered:	4
Alarms failed:	1
Mission duration:	Approx. 1 hour

They found everything before failing to stop a single alarm. They encountered another pre-recorded message from their captured friend, and returned to reality. It took much less time than I'd expected. In the end, not my most exciting mechanic, but it did exactly what I wanted. I'd run it again as a mini-game in future campaigns, if the situation made sense.

This is a guide on a homebrewed mechanic I used in Stars Without Number (Revised). It can be adapted to other systems, party compositions, and story needs. If you use this, have feedback on it, or make your own modifications, leave a comment and let me know how it went!

Items Needed

12 index cards (or similar)

Players: 2d6

GM: 1d6

My Party's Composition

1 telepath

1 precog

1 sharpshooter

(the psions have close to no combat ability)

Modifications

Some potential changes depending on your needs:

Shorter	Four rooms instead of six
Longer	Players need to traverse through several layers before they find what they need
Harder	Each skill can only be used once
More combat	Alarms are resolve with combat instead of skills
Less random	The rooms have a specific order
Visual	Each room has a map with pre-determined hiding places
Different data	The rooms contain pieces of the whole

Have other suggestions? Leave them in a comment!

Author Commentary

Not technically right

Yeah I know rock/paper/scissors is supposed to only have 3 options, not 6, but I struggled. It ultimately made more sense to me to have 3 hacking mechanics and 3 security methods.

Technically right

Zero Day is a real type of system vulnerability and Off-By-1 is a common programming error. Firewalls are real parts of network security. Lockdown is a nod at encryption. The rest are made up.