I've heard this before but can't find it in the book. What page/section is that located?

gunsnammo

Not really. You certainly DON'T have to buy Pistols all the way up from 0 if you have the firearms group. It's just that you can't say, buy the firearms group up to 4 and THEN buy pistols up to 5. If what ShadowDragon is saying is true.

2 nuyen a bullet is expensive? You must have a very stingy GM.

Actually, nowhere. There are hints that you can't, and hints that you can.

This was discussed before. A lot. So try searching the forum .

To be fair, ask your GM. Mine tends toward not being able to do it and so I tend toward the same thing. My reasons follow...

1) They give you rules for groups at char-gen and rules for individual skills at char-gen, not for both at once.
2) The rules for buying a skill after buying its group only deal with karma-costs, not BPs.
3) No template character does it. They use skill-groups but never buy extra points of any skill they have the group for.
4) I am sure one of the designers was here and told us you couldn't do it at char-gen...

What he said

You're right that it's not explicitly written in the book (like so many other things)

Well, that's for standard. However, I plan to be shooting 2x a round, with 3 init passes per round, using bursts. So that's 18 bullets per round, or 36 nuyen.

And most of those will be Ex-Ex, not Regular. So that's 180 nuyen per round.

So a fair amount of cash per round....

Unless the cost of living has dropped considerably. Soy and very cheap housing.

Which means that the Czech, Minnesota, Illinois, or Arkansas made ammo I buy at 13 to 20 cents per round is 15-10 times more expensive exactly how?

Thats for bulk rounds. Go look up high performance ammunition (the kind I think proffesional shadowrunners would use) and you will see that they can easily go to thirty bucks a box of 20 rounds....

Um, wow.

Yes, Columbian businessment sit around and say: "You know, I could sell my product at home or in Europe for market price, but I feel so good about U.S. support for our government that I think I'll sell it for less in the U.S." Or maybe not.

I thought after your first sentence I was going to be treated to the old balance of payments song and dance, which while horribly wrong in many of its particulars at least has the merits of being widespread and supported by some quasi-logic. But I'd never imagined that the horrible, far more than mildly retarded economics that have underlayed SR and the megacorps from the beginning had infected one of the brightest minds around here.

I will buy that the UCAS is poorer due to the massive upheaval of the Ghost Dance war and later developments, megacorp extraterritoriality eroding the tax base (or megacorp revenue not counting in national statistics!), or post-Ghost Dance political instability driving away foreign investment to Japan, the only "obviously" safe place to park your money since the awakening. But the idea that present day private enterprises sell to us for less than they could get elsewhere out of the good of their hearts...no.

Oh, and what's Japan's per capita income? Survey says...28,700 (SoA pg. 74). Empire just doesn't pay like it used to, I guess.

What makes you think that? Just because none of the ammo types they list actually works the way the game designers think they work, and explosives don't go off when you connect an electric current to them, and you can't use your pistol to blow a hole big enough to walk through in a door, and, and, and . . . you think that they just made this up of of thin air? Me too.

Or maybe... they repeatedly sign contracts to ship goods and services to US corporations in exchange for substantially less than they are worth because they don't want to die.

In ages past, this arrangement was called "tribute". You sent the powerful empire some gold and pretty women every year because if you didn't the empire would periodically send the brute squad into your capital and burn it down. Imperialism is out of fashion, so people don't call it "tribute" very much anymore, but the fact is the contracts we've signed in Latin America are awfully nice, and we only had to invade...

Honduras in 1903
La Republica Dominica in 1903
Cuba in 1906
Nicaragua in 1907
Honduras in 1907
Panama in 1908
Nicagua in 1910
Honduras in 1911
Cuba in 1912
Panama in 1912
Honduras in 1912
Nicaragua in 1912
Mexico in 1914
Haiti in 1914
La Republia Dominica in 1916
Cuba in 1917
Panama in 1918
Honduras in 1919
Guatemala in 1920
Costa Rica in 1921
Panama in 1921
Honduras in 1924
Panama in 1925
Puerto Rico in 1950
Guatemala in 1954
Panama in 1958
Cuba in 1961
Panama in 1964
La Republica Dominica in 1965
Guatemala in 1966
Chile in 1973
El Salvador in 1981
Nicaragua in 1981
Honduras in 1982
Grenada in 1983
Bolivia in 1987
Panama in 1989
and Haiti in 1994

Boy, I'm glad that all those people in Latin America make the US such sweet deals voluntarily after we invaded them 38 times in the 20th century. Yet, somehow I'm still going to guess that after both of the US' attempts to overthrow Chavez failed in the 21st century, that a lot less countries are going to be renewing those contracts...

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That being said, no, Imperial Nippon doesn't seem to get anything from the East Asian Prosperity Sphere. But then the statistics in a lot of the older books (and some of the newer ones) are just whack. I mean, SoNA has the PCC conquer an area that is more populous than the entire PCC without having its population rise at all. I have no idea what the populations or GDP of any of those countries are "really".

-Frank

well the ute own Las Vegas, don't they?

i assure you, those huge hotels, casinos, and ludicrously expensive publicity stunts don't get there because the owners like to flush their money down the toilet.

consider the expenses involved in building a roller coaster on top of a tower roughly the shape of the space needle, iirc. the bellagio has it's fountains, the luxor has some crazy spotlight thing that probably needs a small nuclear reactor just for itself...

and that's just the top of the iceberg. if companies can make so much money that they can afford all that, *and* they're paying enough taxes that the rest of nevada doesn't need to pay income tax... (well... state income tax. the federal government still takes their share of course. and i believe that's just personal income tax as well... businesses still pay)

i'd say that owning Las Vegas is reason enough to keep the Ute financially afloat...

I don't know much about sweet deals in South America, but the Middle East is a good example of the US getting "tribute" due to military power. There are numerous examples, but the most obnoxious is probably the long term support for the regime in Saudi Arabia. The US military power has kept the regime in place for decades as their proxy rulers. The tribute arrives from the people in the form of generous oil deals and Saudi money coming into the US arms and other industries.

By 2070 in SR, I believe US control of the Middle East is gone. The current US economy is fuelled by cheap oil (hence Iraq) and without it, I would expect their economy to have suffered badly. I always supposed that in 2070, energy supply was more based on nuclear power and agriculturally produced oil. That would be one reason for everyone eating soy - so much arable land is used for oil crops that there is much less available for food production and the most efficient crops have to be grown by necessity. And there certainly isn't the land to waste on cows for meat.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify a single "generous oil deal" that the US has gotten from the Saudis. Oil is a fungible commodity sold at world market prices. Yes, the Saudis have increased production at our request, most notable in 1985 when the price was driven extremely low, devastating both the domestic oil business in Texas and (more importantly and why we asked for it) the Soviet Union. But everyone else paid the same low price as well. There are no sweet heart deals for our oil majors, because there are no foreign oil companies permitted to drill in Sauidi Arabia. It's all Aramco, which is owned by the state.

US military intervention in the Middle East is an example of a benefit provided to the entire oil consuming world that we are not compensated for, rather than some unique benefit that accures solely to us. It makes sense for us to provide the service because we're the biggest beneficiary as the largest consumer of oil, but we still provide a positive externality to the other oil consuming countries. That's one of the reasons Germany and Japan paid us so much to help fund the first Gulf War.

Arms sales to the Saudis are important to the companies involved and neglible to the economy as a whole. They're interesting from a public choice perspective, but irrelevant economically.

Iraq is responsible for expensive oil. And total Iraqi oil production at inflated prices is worth about half of what we spend to maintain our current forces in Iraq. The best way to get cheap oil would have been to kiss and make up with Saddam and drop all sanctions against him.

I don't really expect anyone to take a few years to get an economics degree and read enough to know what they're talking about, but try not to grab onto every uninformed dogma that drifts by.

Assuming that you are willing to a) Let 36 million people a year freely visit (Which means no visas, passports, border guards asking "Your Papers") and b) allow the million or so people who work in the the hotels, casinos, etc to remain happily employed and living there. Have you read the description in NAN? Does this sound like this place? I don't think so.

As there are only 6000 or so Utes, it's kind of hard to see how every man woman and child managed to conquer 40 square km and personally subdue 400 people each. And how exactly did 6000 Utues in 2000 expand to 1.3 million in 2064? Each woman continually pregnant with triplets?

And as the Utes are shown to control the entire area of the Navaho Nation, where did the 250,000 Navaho go again?

It sure is. That's because US corporations control the lion's share of world-wide oil distribution. An internationally high oil price makes US companies fearfully rich the way things are currently set up. The war in Iraq is not about more oil, it's about more expensive oil. The United States gets its oil from itself mostly, with the second, third, and fourth suppliers being Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela respectively.

Now, you can make a strong argument that the US economy as a whole suffers when the price of oil is fearfully high - after all the price of petroleum products is subsidized in the US so higher prices means more US tax dollars being embezzled b Exxon. And as the world's largest oil consumer by a substantial margin the US expenditures in total are more heavily afected by oil prices than any other country (or two countries together if you want to look at it that way). But that's politics for yoou - I'm not sure anyone ever accused the current administration of having a real clear grasp of what is in the interests of the nation as a whole...

Hey, don't dis United Fruit, they are one of the few multinationals that has its own army capable of overthrowing national govrnments. However, following the money on this can be pretty hard - when US corporations get deals where they receive goods for lower prices, the "dollar value" of the trade is the money exchanged - so the US is getting more stuff but the "value" of the trade is calculated suchthat it doesn't show. If you want to see how much stuff the US is getting, look at the garbage produced by the USA - over 2 kilograms per person per day.

Remember: resources in, garbage out. The United States produces 30% of the world's trash. That means that a lot of external resources are being shipped into the United States.

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How does that happen? In a variety of ways. Sometimes it's as simple as simply invading other countries and forcing them to allow corporations from the US to purchase their plantations and factories for pennies on the dollar and then ship the proceeds to themselves for perpetuity. Sometimes it's by holding the economies of other nations hostage to the amount of dollars they have as a reserve currency (which is to say: forcing them to "sell" a certain amount of goods and services to the US in exchange for pretty pieces of paper which they are then forced to hold onto). But it does happen. And with Venezuela successfully renegotiating some US corporate holdings, and Iran threatening to switch to Euros as a medium of exchange for oil - well, the US is looking down the barrel of getting a lot less free stuff.

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Yeah... I have a lot of problems with India as presented. Most importantly, it's presented as India. A billion people all together in a sngle national unit in an era in which population itself is like buying lottery tickets to get military power. By demographics alone, such a nation would have more than 2 Awakened people for every man, woman, and child in Tir Nan Og.

I cannot reconcile their 10 million magicians and their 10 nuyen average annual income. I just can't do it. That means that he average income for magicians in that country is 1000 nuyen a year, and everyone else engages in homestead farming and barter. I just can't make that make any sense no matter how I spin it.

I simply cannot see how a nation, any nation, could be in the modern world and have per capita GDP so low. And I can't see how a nation could be in the Shadowrun universe with those borders and not completely dominate everything worldwide. I've had words with the author of that, an I don't think we're ever going to see eye-to-eye on that issue.

In my home campaign, India is chopped up into 8 pieces like most of the other major powers (Kalistan, Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, United Bengal, Dravida, Goa, and "India") and the regional annual average income is ~3,000 per person (mirroring today's economy a bit more). But that's neither here nor there.

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The same way my grandfather became a Cheyenne, I'm guessing. A lot of people in the US have various amounts of native blood and do not consider themselves to be Native Americans. A lot of other people don't have any native heritage and similarly don't claim native status.

But why not? These people are Americans, they were totally born here. They are "Native Americans". Yet people claim heritage from Europe - a subcontinent most Americans have never seen. As soon as talking to the Great Buffalo Spirit works, it's not a hard sell for me that a tremendous lot of Americans would decide that they were "Native Americans" - they'd start going to sweat lodges and start trying to speak to Coyote rather than going to churches and trying to talk to YHWH.

And then... who's to say who is and is not a Ute? If you happen to live in Ute territory and do Ute things, why wouldn't you be a Ute? My grandfather was a member of AIM. He was also the son of a long line of Germans, it really can't be that hard.

-Frank

Even if that were true (it's not), distribution is a low margin and low value game no matter what the product. The money where oil is concerned lies with production. And western, let alone US, oil companies control hardly any global oil production. You could do worse to break out of fantasy land than to start here.

As I said, your concerns about US intervention and economic benefits are interesting from a public choice view, but even assuming the best (or worst, depending on your perspective), such interventions for "tribute" are economically destructive to the nation as a whole - the government will always spend more on the military campaign than it will recoup in increased taxes, and usually more than the private revenues, let alone profits. So the loss of this private rent seeking through government intervention overseas would be a net benefit if you were right about your narrow point, thereby invalidating what started this - the silly idea that the UCAS would be poorer for not making similar interventions. It would be richer. Even if the effect went in the direction you imagined, it would be neglible. Total exports and imports make up about 21-22% of the US GDP. What percentage of that do you imagine comes from your mythical tribute contracts?

It doesn't matter how much oil a country claims to have left in the ground. The proof is in the pudding, and new reserves are found all the time. Old wells dry up sooner than expected, and so on and so on. The fact is that Exxon-Mobil is the biggest by the only measurement that counts: the amount they sell the oil that they have for.

Sure, lots of countries lay claim to the oil that is under their land - that's perfectly reasonable. But the oil doesn't just jump up into peoples' refineries on its own! If you want to get that oil out of the ground, you have to make deals with people who have the infrastructure and human capital to get it out of the ground and to market. And more often than not, this involves cutting a deal with a company like Exxon. And the majority of the companies like Exxon are remnants of Standard Oil.

So when a country like Saudia Arabia announces that they ar going to have a national energy company that will handle all of the oil extraction - they're really just demanding some kickbacks from Exxon. And since Exxon is making Billions of dollars, they're willing to do that.

Let's take a look at Exxon's Descrption of their relationship with Aramco and Saudi Arabia. Or maybe we should just look at the funniest part:

Exxon has billions of dollars invested in Aramco. When Saudi Arabia makes money, some of it goes to the king, and some of it goes to Exxon. And that's the arrangement all over the world.

So the world's governments can just have 90% of the world's oil reserves "in the ground". At the "one-for-me-one-for-you" rate that Standard Oil (New Jersey) is giving them, that still means that Exxon gets the biggest piece overall.

-Frank

The Tribal Council, and the standard is typically 50% or more by blood. If there is no advantage to someone claiming membership they are likely to be fairly relaxed about this.

The council tends to care a lot if there is a significant advantage to be gained from being a member. Like tribes where being a member gains you a share of the casino profits. Lots of people who claimed they were members of the Sandia and Isleta pueblos suddenly had to dig out their parents and grandparents birth records to get the checks, and it turned out that many of them really didn't qualify.

Look into how one claims membership in the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. The tribe is pretty happy only having a few hundred members to divide the many millions a year in profits from Foxwoods and seems to be pretty suspicious of people who suddenly "discover their heritage". I suspect they were a whole lot less interested in your genealogical history in 1972 if you wanted to throw yourself into doing the hard work of rebuilding the reservation and doing the various projects to build self-sufficiency.

The tribal governments also tend to really care if you start to rock the boat politically, and start looking into whether your grandfather and grandmother really were members.

No. Shady bannanna dealers are nothing to joke about. The number of kids I've seen starting off on a satsuma, thinking they can handle it. The police do nothing about the shady bannana dealers down my street. And now they have all these cheap banannas coming in from the Windward Isles.

Kids! In my day, if my father had caught me with so much as a cucumber...! And that's not even a fruit!

No, actually modern-day (that is, RL) USD has always been eqv. to the Nuyen in SR at a 1:1 basis (usually to cover such vagaries as "gear not in the rulebook").

The standard ammo in shadowrun is pretty much the equivalent to full metal jacket militairy rounds. Shadowrunners on the other hand is just as likely to be using EX-EX or even APDS as normal ammo.

Really, even at 30 bucks for 20 rounds that's still almost twice the cost as in shadowrun.

Yeah that was pretty much my point...

Actually this makes sense. If the Megacorps are each a nationality unto themselves, they wouldn't necessarily be included in the per capita census data.

Maybe. But they give "megacorporate affiliation" numbers for their citizens. Still, I suppose rather than assume sloppy thinking about economics in SR (!!!) I'll assume the income numbers are for nonmegacorporate citizens.