Some games are not written to be read by lawyers looking for wording loopholes, etc. Look at what they were trying to accomplish and judge accordingly.

Obviously with longshots they wanted to give lucky players and advantage when they didn't have the skill. It doesn't make sense that they wanted spending edge to accomplish the impossible.

You can argue it all day long, but when I'm DMing or playing with adults we expect certain things. If you want to play in a game where you can fire .22's into a muffler to do a called shot to the head of a guy driving the Citymaster feel free.

Personally I think that's stupid.

and you should tell us about your feelings. they're quite relevant.

anyway. the point i wanted to make, i made in my original post.

Another option is to just don't force him to make the decisions of whether a -26 dice pool can be long shotted, then two weeks later try -16, and another week go for the -29. It's possible for gamers to police themselves without the GM ever having to step in. Alternatively, write a house rule down, then everyone knows exactly how things work.

For instance, I think we can all agree that the longshot test rules were not intended to let someone shoot blindliy up in the air and hitting a guy 16 blocks away they can only see through a blurry camera whose location they don't know. However, somewhere between "possible" and "damn near impossible" lies "believable." For every group that believable level is going to be different. Leaving the longshot rules open allows each group to decide on their own personal level of believability.

Sure, if you take the game as written and use it as a bible you're gonna have problems without self-policing. It's not a design flaw, it's a design choice.

Personally, I expect GMs to write down things, especially their house rules.

I know that I do, and have that list available to all the players.
It get's revised as needed.
Currently, it only has one of the tweak rules on it.
Other games, the list has been quite long.

Your armor should count as a penalty but not based on it's value but it's coverage. If you are wearing armor and are behind cover then the highest cover penalty is what applies.

The movement penalties during taking aim should be a high threshold on the roll.

If the penalties go negative then it subtracts the edge as well. You have to have at least one dice left to make a roll.

it was a joke.

If you look at my sig I have a web page full of house rules. Check it out!

I, too, would like some consistency. Especially since the converse is, "A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" (Emerson).

SR4 is full of foolish inconsistencies.

So does that mean your mind is too little to handle them?

"Force the players to make it up" is not a design choice, it's laziness on the part of the game designers. A consistent, solid ruleset prevents rules-lawyers and munchkins from pulling a fast one on you as a GM. It makes games run smoother for both players and GM alike.

"The rules are fine because the GM has a great big stick" is a fallacy. The rules need to be fine because of some inherent property of the rules. It's a bit like saying enriched uranium is safe; just because it can be used properly doesn't mean you want everyone and anyone to have it.

As for called-shot silliness, let me point you to my sig.

Re: rules tightness: I disagree. But, you already knew that and don't care any more than I care about your opinion.

Re: longshot sig: obviously that shot is allowed, because the GM (author) determined that it would be how the players won. It's also not the same as your example, because in this instance a hole does exist, in a fully buttoned up CityMaster that hole doesn't exist.

I try not to railroad like George Lucas did though, so my players will rarely find themselves in a situation where they'll need to try and take down the Death Star with a single shot (unless through some massive train of screwups they've put themselves there). And if they do, they'll probably try to convince me to create a GMPC because none of their characters is Luke Skywalker. And of course, if a Death Star showed up in my SR game (this is an SR board, right?) then things are well past the point of canon and whatever happens is my own damn fault.

And I'll reiterate my response when he first said it: I'm glad he doesn't want to play in my games. In fact, I'd go out of my way to prevent it, as weve never gotten along. Trying to tell me that a guy I don't like doesn't like me is a wee bit pointless.

And again, this all falls on the deaf ears of "I'm never wrong" Cain. I was wondering how long it would take you to live down being bluntly proven wrong, and I can certainly understand why you try and restart the conversations rather than bumping the thread with your shame to the top. LOL!

I just had a fifteen minute back and forth with my 2 year old daughter that reminded me of you two (SLJames and Cain). I had taken the peel off her banana. She was insistent that the peel be left on the banana, and just could not understand that it was already off and couldn't be replaced.

Guys, this banana has already been peeled.

Debate the topic please, even if it is a dead horse. It's apparently at least an interesting dead horse. Please refrain from personal attacks.

Meh. Shadowrun has never been totally balanced. Also, guns (and various other projectiles) kill people. End of story. If you don't like that, use fucking cover or don't be seen long enough to be shot at. And if it seems retarded then don't do it, rules or no rules. Otherwise the GM has my advice to laydown this universal counterpoint: "Rocks fall, you all die."

In the end, though, combat is deadly. Even more so with all the high-tech accessories that come with the firearms and bows in 2070. Armor helps, but it only covers so much, and it should only be for that "OH SHIT!!" moment when you get caught in that unfortunate wrong turn. Unless its hardened milispec and in that case what the fuck are you doing in that, Mr Walking Target?

Its Shadowrun, not Battletech.

I've yet to meet a game system that I haven't been able to abuse.

A game system should be able to adequately define how the system works. It doesn't have to be unbreakable. I personallyl prefer game systems built with some bend in them.

It's hard to make a system that reflects reality in it's mechanics, but to also expect the system to reflect waht's not possible.

A SR Team is in a pitched gunbattle with US special forces in front of the US capital. Fighter bombers are called in as additional backup because a company of Army regulars has been anniahlated by a Shadowrunning team. They drop a stick of 500lb bombs on the Team but Nero the Elven Gunbunny dual weilding pistols quickly shoots each one once and they explode 100m up saving the team. The jets circle around again and shoot missiles at the team. Nero shoots them all down with his pistols again before they get the team. They then quickly leave to meet at the White House with the VP of the United States to be thanked on a job well done and to get 10,000,000ny each and a suitcase nuke that they wanted. Some people like this style of game and some do not.

Personally I like the game where the PC gets rapidly beat down by mall cops with stun batons when he's caught hacking into the soda machine...

The rules allow for both and I've played in both of those two games and the game is better for allowing both depending on the DM.

Nope, I was Nero sorry... Our next mission if we ever play it again is to plant the suitcase nuke inside of Aztecnology's main HQ and blow it up.

Personally I like the lower level street games where my PC does two weeks in jail for possession of narcotics because I like the +1 whatever from dipweed from time to time. And Long Haul pills are nice too.

Just because you destroy a Citymaster by bypassing armor (unlikely due to its high body, he'd need to spend closer to 3 points of Edge) doesn't mean that its going to stop moving. There is such a thing as inertia and a destroyed armored vehicle moving at 50kmp/h will crush you just as easily as an intact armored vehicle moving at 50km/h will.

You are assuming in the SR world, there is such thing as inertia or that a destroyed vehicle will continue moving. I do not make any assumptions the rules do not state. If I do, I will make it clear that those assumptions are House Rules.

So, if I throw the banana peel in front of the Citymaster and roll edge, can I destroy it?

A citymaster is a civilian Armoured Personnel Carrier. It is designed to be invulnerable to everything up to at least light machine gun fire (so say I). So there is no way at all someone can fire a small arm and kill anybody inside, unless someone else left the door open, or it is a citymaster convertible.

Now, if someone wants to disable the citymaster with the usage of edge, they might try to shoot down the heavy billboard hanging above the street, or shoot the garbage truck approaching from the sidestreet so that it will crush into the citymaster...

Let me show you my cyborg gorilla that drives a mech. He has the coolest robotic t-rex with lasers you've even seen for a pet!

And that flexibility is the reason I often write of "we do" and "we don´t" despite a current ban on houserules. Most rules of SR4 make sense if you apply them with a bit of common sense. IE. I´m not allowing unskilled use in all cases where the skill would allow it. You can do simple tasks you might just get right due to other skills, but not everything. You can take that shot if a few dice are missing, but not the banana-trough-exhaust-trick.

Whether nearby people are endangered by a crash is way too situationally dependent to make a hard and fast rule for it. I typically decide based on whether the driver wants to hurt them or not (give him a drive test), whether the nearby people are surprised or not (usrprise test), what angles the fight was happening at and who was turn or not, and whether the people can get out of the way or not (dodge test).

Likewise "will it add anything to the game" is a factor. If crashing and burning, killing several innocent organ grinders is not going to matter, then don't worry about the rolls and just continue the game.