If it never came up, I wouldn't have started a thread about it.

And yes, it is an issue. Why write rules for something that has no bearing on the rest of the info in the game? If they'd written a bunch of rules for firearms combat, and then forgotten to put any guns in the gear section, would you be okay with "common sensing" your way out of it? Just randomly guessing how much bullets hurt in a completely arbitrary system?

And Rock on lorechaser, as well!

I have at numerous times written down the weights of every single little thing in my character's inventory because the numbers always were there and the GM liked me being thorough. But I can honestly say that I have never ever referenced those numbers after I wrote them down. As a GM I have always ignored weights myself. I was surprised when weights were missing from SR4, but I was pleasently surprised. For exactly the reason lorechaser was, I see .

What's reasonable? For the average gun-bunny, a pair of heavy pistols, a pair of light pistols, maybe a pair of SMGs, and an assault rifle, plus bullets for all of those guns? And naturally, they didn't put that much into strength. So adding all that up with armor, what would you say is needed to carry them around comfortably? Strength 3? 4? would you let them get away with a 2?

For those that apparently misread the intent of this post, it is me gracefully bowing out of the conversation, before my knack at pushing buttons, and having my buttons pushed, derails it further. Kindly do me the favor of letting me do so, and stop talking to me. Have a good one.

Actually, since the Panther AC is Single Shot you can just fire one as a simple action and then fire the other as a simple action. You don't have to split dice pool or worry about the dual-weilding rules at all.


Just ignore encumberance.

And just how did you come to that conclusion, given that the RFID Tag Eraser is one of those non-existant pieces of Shadowrun future tech, for which there's no readily available information owing to the lack of an offically published weight table?

Seems to me you already have a mental picture of what that item should weigh. Either you have absolutely no idea what these items weigh without that weight table, or you have a good enough concept in your head for what you think the items should weigh that you can tell someone else "No you've estimated that weight too high." You can't have it both ways.

You might want to do a quick search for 'RFID zapper'. Welcome to the future, punk.

I don't know what it should weigh. I have a fairly good idea of what it shouldn't, though. Besides, they described what an RFID tag is and it's general dimensions fairly well. Now, the eraser could be anything from a credit card sized thing to something the size of a video cassette. who knows?

You cannot go from "you estimated an eraser" to "you can estimate everything." It does not follow logically, unless "everything" is somehow a subset of "erasers." Since it's a superset, the inference is incorrect.

No, the reason I bought this game was to have a complete or at least reasonably complete set of streamlined rules to play street-level games in. Instead, I bought a book with several major rules and even entire chapters (the entire Matrix section, the encumbrance rules, etc.) are not even close to complete. For the Matrix, this wasn't a problem, as we usually houserule it anyway. For something as simple as encumbrance, having the developpers not even attempt to do at least half the work is annoying. It's more like a suggestion than a rule with how the book is written.

Actually, they've made two of my characters for me. I actually use the sample characters from time to time.

But they do make some of them.

Which has nothing to do with the actual ruleset, and thus is worthless as a reply.

Okay, so let me get this straight: According to you, wanting a complete ruleset is wanting to play an MMORPG? So does that mean I should play DnD Online or World of Warcraft only if I want a medieval-style fantasy game? What I want isn't the bullshit strawman you posted.

Now, that aside, why the hell would liking a ruleset where my group doesn't have to go in and write around 30% of the rules that we use in every game mean that I would have to buy an MMORPG? Hell, SR managed to do it with the previous edition. Call of Cthulhu does it. Pretty much every game I can name, except SR4 and ones that are not serious attempts at games, have done it. With areas like encumbrance, it's like they basically said "We're too lazy to do our jobs, but we're still charging you money for it, so pay us and then finish what we started." While it's nice at times to have that level of involvement with a game, the fact is that I cannot sit down with SR4 and have a completely relaxed game and just play it RAW. I can do that with most of the games on the market, and with past editions of SR. Frankly, there's no excuse for some areas being incomplete.

Now, I'm not going to stop playing SR4. I happen to enjoy the game and the fact I can simply remove entire rules from some sections because of the lack of completeness. But, at the same time, it's frustrating to have to have the entire group sit down and write up a set of houserules just to play a B&E game.

The YSF, in in the light pistols section. There is no real-world equivolent to it that currently exists.

Also, there's problems with the XM30, the panther cannon, the Fichetti Pain Inducer, certain types of ammo, the entire section on clothing due to changes in materials, credsticks, most of the vision enhancing items due to changes in materials, and anything magical. Of those, you can extrapolate on some of the ammo, some of the clothing, the credsticks, certain vision items, and most of the magical items. The rest you cannot. They are based on technology or potentially involve materials for which there is no real-world equivolent to compare to.

Now, I will admit you may attempt to argue on the XM30. There were actual, working prototypes made of it and put through heavy testing. However, one of the reasons why the system was never adopted is weight. It simply weighed too much, and H&K couldn't get the weight down. The XM30 in the book is also a lot more modular than the real-world version. Considering those two items, the XM30 becomes impossible to extrapolate for, since its weight is based on the eventual weight of the weapon itself plus the weights of whatever modules the owner has. In addition, the SR4 version uses an entirely different electronics system than the one in real life, making it even harder to figure out the weight of. To get an idea of the difficulty this presents, this is like using the real-world XM30 to try to extrapolate what a XM8 is like on the battlefield.

Which really doesn't work out. It's amazingly easy to ignore a single column in stats by accident. However, that doesn't mean that they should only do a small portion of the work and then use the lazy excuse of it being players complaining. Players are going to complain and houserule anyway.

Now, so that you can be lazy enough to not look at a single column and use it, every GM who wants to use that rule has to spend three to four hours (or more) doing weapons research and weight conversions, whereas before they just had to look at a column. Oh, and because some GMs will use the rules, this also means that if you are in a game that uses RAW, you must go and figure out the weight of your equipment by yourself. It's my understanding with the online games that, unless it states otherwise, it's RAW.

Huh? You mean you've never seen a game where knowing what something weighs was useful?

I got a reply to an email from FanPro basically saying that they might put a unified equipment list in Arsenal bt that it would not include weights. They did say that a fan submitted weight chart might be put online.

I've yet to receive a response for a question about the rationale behind giving a half-assed rule set. I phrased it a bit better than that of course.

You got some things mixed up. The SR4 XM30 is just a standard assault rifle with some modular options. It looks almost like the current and ongoing RL XM8 program except that the XM30 has become bull-pup. They have almost the exact same modular options, like configured for sharpshooter, automatic rifle, compact, an underbarrel grenade launcher etc.

The system that was scrapped was the XM29. It was radically different, more like a large grenade launcher with an underbarrel carbine. It didn't have any modular options AFAIK. There is nothing in SR that resembles the XM29.

well, no. i meant more that i've never seen a ruleset for defining how much material a character can pack, in general, that i find usable. how much gear, i mean. how many clips, how many hidden guns, etcetera. rules for actually picking stuff up with your arms and hauling it around, sure--those are easy (as long as you include a weight chart). rules for packing stuff into your many pockets, less so.

speak of arrrrgh my eyes, why is there a production assault rifle named the XM-30? the X is used to indicate "eXperimental", ie "not in production". grumble grumble bitch bitch.

Because FanPro's SR4 team loves to abuse your delicate sensibilities?

They hit you because they love you.

Well, you can't really get away from the XM30, so make up fluff. Xs are cool, that's why game designers name them like that. So guns with Xs sell more. When HK put up their stock of prototypes for sale and received more orders than for the actual production rifles , some marketing wizkid decided to rename the entire series XM30 to great effect. The trend spread through-out the industry, and is now a standard business school example - name your actual products like cool and hyped prototypes to boost sales.

Yeah, I did mix them up. Which isn't that difficult, since they look very similar and use the exact same design philosophy.

http://www.hkpro.com/oicw.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/sys...ground/oicw.htm

For reference. The weapon was intended to at least be partially modular, if not to the capacity that the XM30 is.

Oh, and interestingly, here's a bit of news about the XM8:

http://www.world.guns.ru/assault/as61-e.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM8
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/sys...und/m8-oicw.htm

So, there's actually no ongoing XM8 weapon program. I actually didn't know this before today.

Except the XM30, of course.

Look, the XM29 is radically different. If the XM30 inr SR4 had a 1,000 meter range airburst grenade launcher and an underbarrel SMG (which is how SR4 treats compact carbines), it would be the same weapon. But the XM30 in SR4 is just a regular assault rifle with a regular grenade launcher.

Which is based on what, exactly? In most of the weapons with grenade launchers, we can find some info on where in the weapon the grenade launcher is. Not so in this case.

I want links. I want quotes. I want actual evidence to support what you're saying.

Okay, so they fixed their earlier stupidity of having the grenade launcher above the bullet barrel. But, still, same barrel design, and nothing to say they wouldn't have gone this route anyway. It's just a complete version of the XM29 with a few tech updates.

..you are aware that this 'stupidity' is the main design of the weapon and necessary to use precision grenades?

No. It's a bullpup version of the XM8, both in external and modular design.

I'm also aware that someone who uses the grenade function, followed by firing a burst while unprepared, could very easily shoot the grenade. While necessary to the function of the gun, it presents issues when soldiers are forced to fight alone. Admittedly, the weight of the prototypes did a lot to alleviate this problem, but weight reductions were necessary for the final product.

I'll admit I could just be full of shit on this one. Just saying it based on the knowledge I have of the weapon.

And the XM8 is, in turn, just the kinetic energy portion of the XM29 with a few tiny changes to allow for it to be effective as a mainline assault rifle on its own.

http://www.world.guns.ru/assault/as61-e.htm

..if shooting exactly the same point within a very short time - which is quite unlikely given recoil and normal use.

Which comes from the G36. So it's more accurate to say that the XM8 is basically a slightly modified G36 in a new casing.