After playing Shadowrun with a relatively new team, I realized the duality of the need of a gun bunny.

If the team does everything right, with skilled infiltrators, there is no need for confrontation or a gun bunny...

However if the team does everything right, with skilled infiltrators, and alarms still go off, and a gun bunny is needed. Is it because the GM Fiat dictated it?

Discuss.

Johnson hires your team to make a very open attack on a Massage parlor ran by the Yaks-
must dress like mafia-etc

Infiltration specialists not really needed-

Do we need ninjas?

No team does EVERYTHING right. There will always be something the team did not or could not plan for. There will always be a guard who went to the bathroom instead of moving along his usual patrol route, or something like that. Call it GM Fiat if you must (but I completely disagree with that. It just sounds like flame bait to use that term in this discussion).

Well if the infitration plan did not cover all the bases then no it is not GM Fiat. However, given your assumtion that that the infiltration team did everything right, yes it would be GM fiat. Most likely due to either another teams presence or a double cross (by one of the team, contact or the the Johnson).

A gun bunny's role is fire support if it is needed. In mirrored shades games, he will be less needed for that role. In Pink Mohawk games however he will be needed (along with the mini-gun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif) ).


That being said, I would expect most gun bunnies to have other uses. Possible combos: hacker/gunbunny, b&E specialist/gunbunny, rigger/gunbunny (ok he could be a drone rigger and make the fire support role redundant), mage-gunbunny (rare as the attributes and karma go in different directions), and face/gunbunny. Alot of it comes down to the character concept. IMHO--the gunbunny has a primary combat role in the group, but should have other secondary skills as well.

The only reason that everything should go off right is that the GM has been out thought--after all its 5 brains vs 1. If the plan is brilliant then as a reward maybe it should go off without a hitch. But there can and are all sort of things that can and should go wrong. To my mind its less of a matter of the need for things to go right--but the old maxim that no plan survives contact with the enemy is fundamentally true.

Though if things have only gone bad in a minor way your gun-bunny should be able to take one (silenced, non-lethal) shot and remove the problem for a bit.

And violence need not happen only on the run itself. At the meet, after the meet, meeting their contacts to laundry the money, or with a go-gang on the way home.

And, as I think about it, your gun bunny probably needs make a number of rolls himself, keeping them in the action--so they can stay close to, or with, the infiltration team.

You can do everything right, and Murphy will still drop in to visit. "GM Fiat" if you wish, or "yeah, a guard left his post to take a leak."

My old gaming group never used to prepare for if stuff went out the window, and the most obvious indicator of this was their armament choices. The biggest firepower they'd have when things went south would be one submachinegun and the mage's Power Bolt. That changed after a bit of us all playing together... stashing a light machinegun in the trunk of a car along your exfil route, arranging for a package containing vented AK-97's to be delivered to the loading bay of where you're going, or simply smuggling in a couple of automatic shotguns in an instrument case ("we're with the band, dude!") made life a lot easier sometimes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/sam...ivationalsh.jpg

This was my first experience running SR in a nutshell. Not only were all the players REALLY smart, but the average CHARACTER intelligence (in SR2) was 7. But man, was it a fun ride.

Right it depends on the work. If you are doing a quiet snatch and grab and do everything right, you do not need shooters. BUT if something goes wrong, we are a needed element because the bad guys will have shooters.

Also remember that with the high variation in shadowrun dice, if there are enough steps, the dice will turn south at some moment, and so even without the GM forcing it, something is very likely to go wrong, sometime.

Yours,
Joel

If the infiltration team did everything right, they brought along a gun bunny just in case.

You're talking as if the Infiltrator and Gun Bunny roles don't have a lot of overlap. The Stealth group and the Firearms group are both Agility based, you can use Gymnastics for Ranged Defense tests as well as getting places you might want to go.

Quoted for truth (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

Its really a question of efficiency. If you are trying to get the most bang out of the smallest team (no pun intended) a strict gun bunny will be dead weight on a stealth mission and a strict ninja will be dead weight on direct combat mission. I think the optimal mix is that each runner has a non-gun bunny specialty, but each member is able to pick up a gun and use it effectively when the brown hits the whirly bitz.

[edit] Along the same lines, you have to consider that in almost all cases (barring a merc campaign) any runner invested in the idea of continuing to breath should be engaging in horribly lop-sided, ambush-style combats using explosive violence and asymmetric warfare tactics. If you conceptualize the gun bunny as the guy that is going to go toe-to-toe with corp sec and slug it out like a couple of battleships, well don't be surprised if that PC spends 90% of his time sitting around doing noting and the other 10% dying.

Of course, the perfect runner in my game is the guy that can do a bunch of stuff well but no one can quite figure out what his "specialty" is.

I forget who it was who said that a plan never survives contact with the enemy, but the same goes for gaming. I've played several different RPG systems, and I've never seen one of our brilliant plans go off without a hitch. Even if everything else goes smoothly and the GM is non-interventionist, someone, somewhere, at some time *will* flub a dice roll. That's what makes playing Warhammer and BattleTech so frustrating; every time I've got my enemy by the balls and am ready to drop the hammer, my dice go to shit.

The point I'm trying to make is that a group should always have a contingency plan. Ninjas stealthing out all over the place are good and all, but when someone rolls a glitch, I would sure as Hell want to have that gun-bunny sitting outside to cover my escape. Then again, I love guns and hate ninjas, so I'd probably *be* the gun bunny.

This! Shadowrun is so dear to me because overspecialization is not strength. Being able to play several team roles is a good thing; it prevents you from looking inept and foolish, and you get to have fun doing different cool things.

(Also, I don't precisely agree that not firing a shot is always the best way of doing things. Gunning down one guard to open up a more direct route to a target or evade an area with more potential guards is a good thing. And since it has to go right, you want a gunbunny to do it with one shot, one kill/stun.)

The trick here is how you define 'gun-bunny'. If the player is willing to accommodate the rest of the team and find ways to work with them, instead of trying to solve every problem with bullets, it can be a great asset to have a combat specialist. Case in point:

I've been watching a lot of Leverage lately, and I do find it inspirational. The premise is that a shady corporate CEO assembles a dream team of the worlds' best crooks, and pairs them with a brilliant guy who has been busting con artists for decades, ostensibly to recover stolen property. They do the job, get double-crossed, and turn the tables on the CEO with a vengeance. They realize that they can accomplish more together then individually, and set out to con all the other bigwig dirtbags they can find out of everything they own.

The team includes a mastermind/faceman, a grifter, a hacker, a burgler, and a tough guy. The tough guy is a strange duck - the jobs don't generally require head-busting, since the players favor a soft touch and they are very good at what they do. He winds up playing a lot of utility roles - he'll disguise himself as a repair guy, or a construction worker, or a waiter, or a chef. He makes himself useful, no matter what the situation is, and it's easy to forget just what he does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyvdlQIkpVw...feature=related

If the team wants to play a ultra-subtle grifter team, this character concept might be a good one. A generalist with a few really maxed out combat skills (stealth and unarmed in this case, although you really do need a gun in SR4) who can keep up with the rest of the team and carry his weight...until somebody screws up and he just saves the day.

The thing about Leverage is that it's not taking place in the 6th World. For an SR game, each of those other chars, from the face/logistics head to the hacker feet would be about as combat ready as the Leverage Tough Guy, and the SR Tough Guy would be someone who eats bullets and shits handgrenades. It's a full lateral movement towards violence. It's still a great show and a great character, but it takes place in a softer world.


That said, no one has mentioned the fact that a team could always hire on a specialist. Hackers aren't the only NPCs whose services are for sale. If a team wants to play an Infil-heavy game where they trick, trap, rip and rob that doesn't mean they couldn't hire on a button man to spread mass murderations on a pay for play basis. Besides, most ninjas are competent killers and no one can fuck with a rigger when it comes to heavy, heavy firepower.

edt: actually, nvm. The guy from Leverage did beat up like 4 guys in the time it took a duffel bag to fall 6 feet. That's pretty ridiculous, (and I'm glad they toned that down over the season.)

Combat specialists should always have a role in a dystopian world such as Shadowrun. Infiltration is hardly the be-all and end-all of runner activities. Shadowrunners always face the risk of betrayal, in addition to faulty logistics or Murphy's law. They have to regularly deal with violent, untrustworthy people in the course of maintaining their shadowy lifestyle. Shadowrunners can also be hired for runs that are more paramilitary than infiltration.

That said, gun bunnies should still have a measure of versatility, or they will be stuck in a niche role, and bored the rest of the time. Shadowrun is built to reward specialization, but you can still have a secondary role or two without sacrificing too much from your primary role.

First of all, the gunbunny will rarely be unable to do other physical tasks such as infiltrating.
Secondly, the job you get are supposed to be jobs you can do (except if Mr. J. wants you to fail).
Third, the way the team will act will also depend on what resources it has.

I've once played in a game with 5 gunbunnies and was very impressed by the combat power of such a team. You can view the problem the other way around : why infiltrate when you can get rid of all opposition in the building?

Actually, if that always happens, no matter what the PCs do, that's not GM fiat anymore. It's Railroading - for Trainwreck.

Any GM doing that is sufficiently punished by Plan B becoming default option, and Gunbunnies being the major build in his game, followed by Sorcelators.

I'll give you something that was unplanned for... by me or the rest of my players... One player in response to the group being trapped in traffic and being approached by two unfriendly groups of 4 (both indicating a desire to talk) decided to take his rocket launcher and shoot a nearby restaurant. His roll was such that I ruled he not only nailed the building but hit the main gas line coming into the building. Medium size boom boom became a huge fireball and explosion.

All for a social interaction encounter, not a combat one.

I might also add that the GM should prolly take into account the team make-up when planning a mission. If the team has a lotta Gun-Bunnies perhaps there should be missions geared to their strengths more so than ninja missions. After all the game is not just about what the GM wants to run but also the PCs.

Because there are going to be a hell of a lot of guys who also have big guns waiting for you as you leave.

That's why your plan should be a violent and obvious infiltration combined with a very quiet and stealthy exfiltration.