I'm looking for the human angle here. Also you can assume they aren't using suppression or a silencer.

I seem to remember that Lone Star were trained to listen out for gun shots from their standard issue weapons to provide backup. How would they be able to do that without knowing where the shot was fired? At least a behind or in front type directionality.

Generally we humans have trouble playing the direction of low frequency noise. What sort of frequency does a gun shot produce?

-Strobe

I think the runner's experience and instincts would count much more than a "reasonable knowledge of how sound works and how to work out directionality". Fortunately, the rules already take this into account very well with the Intuition attribute. So I'd mark it up as Perception + Intuition.

One hit is all that's needed to figure general direction. 2 hits tells you what location the shot came from. 3 hits means you actually probably saw it by chance and you know exactly who it was and who they were aiming at and what kind of weapon it was.

The guy with the highest total Perception + Intuition is the primary roller who will determine success or failure, but the others could roll their Perception + Intuition to provide helping dice. If one of the PCs has Audio Directionality (Professional Knowledge), I'd let them roll that + Logic to add more helping dice. If any player wants to roll Reaction instead of Perception + Intuition, I'd be cool with that but only for helping dice. Each hit in the helping dice adds 1 die to the primary roller's Perception + Intuition roll.

If PCs are on the other side of this coin, I'd roll 1 die for each damage rating of the weapon. Each hit represents one security guard, lone star op, curious investigative reporter, or equally undesired attention rushing to investigate the incident or detain the player characters.

Well the fluff on the Ruger Thunderbolt says any LS officer can recognize the sound of one being fired. I dont think it says they can pinpoint the sound of it. And thats hardly unrealistic. Alot of firearms all have a sort of.. unique sound to them. So if you hear one enough, by sound alone you can tell what weapon is being fired.

Pinpointing it from sound alone however at least with the human ear... just isnt posisble from one single shot. If your good/lucky you might get a general direction (Due East) But.. thats about it. If there is continued firing on the other hand you can eventualy follow the sound to it's source easily enough even by ear. Since especially with hearing augmentation you can filter out background noise etc and easily tell when your moving away from/getting closer to the sound.

The main reason LS gives owners of the Thunderbolt a hard time is because it's their standard sidearm. And LS as a company actually developed it. So since it's a 'signature' weapon for all LS officers they dont like others having it. But there's really drek all they can do if you've got the proper lisence for it. But thats what happens when your corp has an R&D department but no real manufacturing base. I think it's also mostly a holdover from SR2 when it first showed up. At that point while Ruger was making them, they were NOT available for sale to the public. SR3 I think by that poitn they were -just- starting to hit the public market.

That was part of the contract deal with Ruger. LS got sole 'buying rights' to the firearms for X number of years. After that Ruger got to sell it as it's own product. So orrigionally you could only get one by stealing one directly from LS. So by SR3 most officers just 'assume' you did even if tehy know you can buy one legitimately.

While this may be true, it would still need a computer check.

I love, love, LOVE it when people come up with awesome, creative stuff to do with AR and commlinks, but I don't see most people in the Shadowrun universe (including the runners) as necessarily knowing how to do a lot of this stuff or having the inherent instincts and foresight to prepare this stuff on the spot. I see most people today having more toys than they know what to do with and I don't see that changing anytime soon. So especially complicated, unusual, or just plain handy stuff requires a computer check. If you're a hacker or decent with computers, you can probably just buy off the hits you need for most of these checks.

If the PCs have all the hardware necessary or have done this triangulation trick before during a session, I'd put the threshold for this at 2. Otherwise the threshold would be at 4. Also, they'll need a program to do this but it won't be more difficult to get than any mapsoft. 5 nuyen per rating and it can be instantly downloaded when needed.

As for the "Uh... I recorded that" comments that PCs try to shrug off as common sense, yeah, that's a Computer + Logic roll. Hey, you really did record that. (But if the PCs are doing the triangulation thing, I would just assume this test is successful if the other one is, and so they only have to roll once.)

This doesn't fly. I don't have to tell my DVR to record anything that I'm watching - I can just hit the button 10 minutes into the show and rewind. Commlink recordings should be the same way. There is no reason that it shouldn't automatically record everything 30 minutes or more back from present. After that time, it's written over unless you choose to save it (think of it as short-term memory). If you want to, you can deactivate such a feature, but it should be recording everything as standard - that's how Big Brother would want it to work.

The stop and listen comment was for tracking a fire fight without electronic help.

-Strobe

Gunshots are just a broadband impulse (multi-frequency, short duration), usually in the 140-170 decibel range within a couple meters of the muzzle (depending on the cartridge and barrel length), just to give you an idea of the nature of the sound and the level of sound pressure associated.

Obviously, the environment is going to have an enormous effect on how difficult it will be to locate the origin of the shot. What's more, the muzzle blast is not the only sound that a gunshot makes. The bullet whizzing through the air at supersonic velocity makes a very loud (@155dB), tearing kind of sound sustained throughout the entirety of its flight until it drops into subsonic, then there's no more shock wave and as such, less noise (@115dB). So not only will the muzzle blast be reflected off of buildings, signs, cars, pavement and that kind of stuff within an urban environment, so will the "ballistic crack". Fortunately, the bullet noise is a very odd sound that most people wouldn't even recognize (as few films have captured it accurately; Dances With Wolves and Saving Private Ryan being two that I can think of that did a particularly good job), and the fact that the sound is very loud and originates from the bullet in flight means that people near the flight path tend to follow that sound instead of the muzzle blast, especially so if the firearm is suppressed.

There are electronics available now that are designed to triangulate the muzzle blast of a gunshot. They're used in high-crime areas in some cities here in the US. Since 9/11, I would expect these kinds of systems to have been installed in the downtown areas of many of the bigger cities. Obviously, they have to be set up where a gunshot is expected to occur. They can also be fooled by reflected sounds.

That has more to do with automatic weapons than the sound of a single gunshot, mostly the frequency of the rate of fire. It's easy to tell an AK from an M4 because the AK fires at about 600 rpm, whereas the M4 fires as about 800-900 rpm. Otherwise, the shots tend to sound pretty much identical as the powder charges, pressures, and barrel lengths are very similar. This would also be the case with the Thunderbolt, being an automatic pistol with an unusually fast rate of fire.

To a trained ear, it can certainly be possible to tell the difference from an average handgun to an average rifle with a single gunshot, but a lot of factors have to be taken into account in order to make that assessment in any way accurate. For example, .44 magnum revolver can sound an awful lot like a rifle shot if you're unaware of the distance to the shooter or you're unfamiliar with the environment the shot occurred in. It's generally very easy to tell the difference between a modern firearm and a black powder firearm, but I doubt that's going to happen in SR much. Shotguns also tend to sound fairly unique, as they fire at relatively low pressures compared to other modern firearms.

On the contrary, it can be very easy. It once again depends quite a lot on the environment. I've been more than a mile away from a fellow hunter and tracked her down from a single gunshot. Of course, she hadn't moved but a couple of hundred yards from the time the shot was fired until I made my way over to where she was, but it was relatively broad, open environment we were hunting in, with relatively few trees and hills to absorb or reflect the sound waves (pronghorn hunting in eastern Montana). The more things there are between and around the source and the pick-up, the more difficult it tends to get to find the origin.

Overall I think making up rules for this kind of thing would be a bit ridiculous. The GM should just set a target number based on what he thinks the difficulty should be and apply a perception check (or whatever the equivalent is in SR4).

Possible from a single shot IF your setup to triangulate. And its stil a very big 'if'. Since the If depends on a good many circumstances. If I was going to make it a threshold in an urban invironment and the team was setup with the proper equipment in advance. I'd say maybe threshold 2 if it was close, to threshold 4 if it was much farther away. Due to echo etc.

With the normal ear? Froget it unless the guy is relatively close when he fires. Again relative is abit of a big term. In an urban enviroment close means pretty close. On say.. a lake on a calm day? Well damn.. you can hear a gunshot clear across the lake on a good day no problem. Though at that point all you really know (unless you happen to see the person with a gun) is that by golly. some one across the lake somewhere fired a gun.

Err, it's trivially easy to know the direction IME.

What, no one has ever been in presence of a loud snapping kind of noise? And how long did it take you to face the direction that noise came from? A fraction of a second, right?

When I was doing military exercise, I always instantly knew the direction the shot were fired from (blanks of course!). The exact location of the shooter is quite something else, but figuring the general direction is about as hard to process as maintaining balance while walking. It's natural for the brain.

In fact, I bet most people will look in that direction reflexively before they have fully registered what is happening. A soldier would dive for cover first instead of standing looking. Of course he wouldn't be able to get adequate cover if he didn't immediately realize the general direction of the shots.

Unless you are running undergound with echoes everywhere or the gun shot is drowned in even louder noise, it's not much of a challenge. Years of evolution taught us to locate approximately the direction of scary noises so we can run the other way.

Once you look in the correct direction, spotting the exact location of the shooter depends on the circumstances. It can be impossible to miss to almost impossible to spot unless he fires again (which a sniper probably won't do).

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Bottom line, in most circumstances, I'm not even asking for a perception test : I'm just telling the PCs they heard gunshot in that direction. From that point, locating the shooter will or won't be a challenge depending on the situation.

So sometimes you succeed at your perception tests and sometimes you fail? What a foreign concept...

Accurate enough in most situations where you are the target.

If he fired at someone else "three building that way", you can start running in that direction if for some reason you like running toward an armed man. You should be able to pick up cues from the movement of the crowd if there is one. As you get closer you'll refine your perception if he's still shooting. The perception test tells you how good you are doing.

If he's not firing anymore by the time you arrive, get the forensic team, it's time to play CSI with the various recording and find that shooter on the grassy knoll!

I'm not saying you can automatically locate the shooter. You just pretty much always know the direction under normal circumstances. And it's actually a pretty accurate direction too if it's reasonably near.

Yes, your DVR example proves that the technology exists and its possible. Sure. I'm talking about the human element. Hence, the computer check. Most people don't even know what all the programs do in their computer. Even people who are more-or-less computer saavy don't know how to use search engine parameters beyond simple keywords. Or if they know how, they don't use them, even when they need them. And then they go on forums or chat with me to find an answer that took me three seconds to find in google. Some people can't even name more than 5 search engines off the top of their head.

I'm assuming this human element of the technical equation never changes.

Besides, I don't want to get into any arguments about it with my players in the middle of a game. If you want to use all kind of cool technical whazoos, take the computer skill. Then, in game, when a situation comes up when its necessary, you can roll Computer. Simple. No argument. It speeds up play, it makes sense, it gives technical proficiency to technically oriented character, players get to roll dice, it's cool.

It's just like I'm not going to let PCs say "I'm walking carefully to avoid any tripwires or pressure plates" without actually making them roll for it. Maybe they'll get a bonus or something, but they still have to roll no matter how good their narration is. Same deal with the AR and commlinks.

Of course, it works on the other side of the credstick as well: Sometimes the players don't know exactly what they would do, but we're pretty sure AR would help. They can roll their Computers for that, too. Their hits make a sort of AR bonus and we try to explain it as best we can. One example of that when a player with a terrible commlink, no hacking, and very little computer skills told his motorcycle to plot a course in case he needed to make a quick and stealthy escape. I thought that was cute and we narrated right by it but then later that scene, when he left, he got chased by a roto-drone and so then we rolled for the course plotting done earlier. We rolled the motorcycle's Pilot dice as helping dice for an opposed Driving test to get away. I only allowed it in the first two rounds, but he got a couple of extra hits from it. I'm very big on helping dice. I think they're the coolest part of the game.

Ehh.. it's not really a case of pass/fail on a perception test. It's the sort of time I'd ask when one is even needed. And if one passes. Just how much it could plausibly tell you.

Afterall techncially speaking if you go by pure RAW a single perception test coudl tell you the precise location of a shooter from a single shot 1000 yards away across a body of water.

Even with 'augmented hearing' this isnt, I feel even remotely realistic.

Maybe it is. Maybe you're surrounded. Maybe they really are out to get you...

I figured that, but some here are saying that a human can't find the source at all (with only 1 shot fired). What I'm asking is there a chance with SpatialR. or is it still a waste of time trying to find the shooter? Would some of you GMs allow a test roll or would you just state that the runners can't locate the shooter from only 1 shot fired?

I've never found dice rolling for its own sake to be cool. I think that these dice rolls are pointless and only add more chance for failure in what should be a routine task. I don't have rolls to open doors, make phone calls, or set my commlink on record.

Not really, theres a background option called Guts to handle that and Combat paralysis to be its negative incarnation.

Not all runners are the same and they very in calibre.

Not if you want to live, and from the game mechanics you need to take the "observe in detail action" (Simple) to do a perception test.

And just because you see the round land doesn't give you an absolute direction, if your lucky and there is no deformation of the impact you can get an idea of the general direction. ( As long as theres not a secondary shot coming or continuous fire.)

As for sound suppressors it does impact how you interpret the shot as the sound is softer and is more effected by range and environment. ( Hence its use.)

A silencer is even more effective at masking its presence, and is harder to determine location.

The biggest factor is range, if the shot comes from point blank of course your going to be able to determine where it comes from.

You wouldn't need a modified Ultra sound device, as theres a device in equipment list thats designed to do that specific sort of job.

Meet the spatial recognizer, which comes in two handy formats cyber and non-cyber depending on how much you value your meat self. ( +2 to perception tests to pin point sound location.)

Pair this puppy up with Sound amplification, sound filtration and dampeners and you can make those sniper wannabes regret shelling out the cash for their Walther MA-2100.

Even more fun as a rigger as you can add spatial recognizers to your drones which can earn a healthy modifier for those location tests. ( If the drones are in a better spot then you they can negate some of the penalties.)

I'm talking about tracing the bullet's flight path back to source. This will foil even 100% magically silenced weapons since the bullet still has to travel from the shooter to the target.

well, it's not something the sniper has a lot of control over. it's not his skill at sneaking that makes the location hard to pinpoint, it's just acoustics.

Ultrasound that would be this sensitive wouldn't be very good as any air movement ( From echoes for example.) would distort the trail from the original shot.

Besides there are two factors that can be tracked, flash and the sound of the shot. ( The mage would have to conceal both.)

It would also be simpler for the mage to hit you with influence to ignore the shot itself.

Not likely. It still takes the human brain to process and act uppon data like that and then set about issuing orders. Not too long, I agree. But still too long to do a lick of good before the damage is probably allready done. And a major rule of sniping, which would be ultra important in the world of 2070. Never fire from the same location twice. Of course in actual practice that seems to go out the window, mostly because you usualy cant allways just run around all over the place to find a new firing location. Thus making the rule rather impractical at times. But the moment you start to see a 'negative' reaction to your presense (IE incomming fire) you get the hell out of there. Especialy since when your dealing with the military, the counter fire can be... rather excessive.

One example from WWII in the pacific. One American base was constantly being harassed by a sniper. For the most part they ignored the guy cause he wasnt actually hitting anyone. Though one day he finally did manage to shoot and kill some one. This stupid bugger had also been firing from the same location for long enough that the amry guys had a good 'general' location for him. One they promptly opened up uppon with MGs, 20mm AA guns, Artillery, mortars, and assorted small arms and grenade fire.

The sniper did not survive the ordeal.

You see alot of the same thing with Vietnam where they used napalm and artillery strikes to get snipers.

So with the right drone network you could have counter fire hosing the general area within a matter of a few seconds after the shot was detected sure. But it would still be a pretty general area. And if it's an urban environment. That's really not good enough for you to start directing that sort of firepower at it. Because unless your in a flat out war where you dont care how many civilians get killed in the process. Your going do have alot of collateral damage. And you might very well not kill the sniper. That was another issue in WW2. Same deal, but in cities? Dear lord. Every time they blew up a building they oftne actually provided snipers with -more- cover to hide behind. Not to mention they often failed to kill them. Which is why all sides quickly adopted snipers of their own. Snipers were ultimately the most effective counter to other snipers.

The other thing to consider with any 'bullet tracking system' is that it both has to be very sensitive. And also simultaneously able to tell the difference between a bullet and... well something thats not. And to properly get a 'fix' on the firing position you need at least three seperate detection devices so you can triangulate. Also while the calulations behind the trajectory path might be blindingly fast. Representing it in tearns the human mind can understhand (Such as putting a drawing of the flightpath on an AR HUD) also takes effectively at least one second to do it, and a few more seconds for the brain to put all the pieces togeather.

Also some people take abit longer to do this. Giong back to another real life sniping example. There was one diary from a Vietnam sniper I once read where he talked about the reactions three VC had to his sniping. He was doing it at extreme range, and it wasnt a case where he'd allready had a chance to 'range' eveyrthing before hand. He miscalculated on his first shot and missed (a near miss but still a miss) and the round kicked up some dirt near the feet of one of the guys. Now by this point he's arcin the shots and I guess he was firing from far enough away they either didnt hear it, or think the fire was directed at them.

So this guy just points at this thing to his budies. And they just sort of.. gawked. SO he fires again.. and misses. Took him four tries to hit one of the guys finally. But they just kept pointing to all the 'puffs' like iddiots. The two survivors only suriving really because when their budy went down they finally realized they were being shot at.

I would absolutely agree that the final shoot/no shoot order would come from a person. I also think that getting the drones moving ASAP is vital. The instructions the attack drones get would be something like "Go to point X-Y-Z, observe, wait for orders."

Relatively easy. It's just setting the filters.

Triangulation is only necessary with passive systems. Active systems like radar can plot the round's position all by themselves.

In a VIP scenario, the close-in security would only need an alert signal. Suppressing the sniper is not their job. Getting the principal to cover is.

Other security forces would not need to know the entire trajectory, only the originating point. Paint an AR bulls-eye over the estimated firing site, and let them do what they do best. Counter snipers would be LETHAL in this situation, because it strips the sniper of his biggest asset, secrecy.

In game terms, this would give a big bonus to the perception roll to find the attacker.

So, if one of my security traps was an Automated Assault Gun Turret, hidden, but linked to trigger from a Sound Detector (which the book says can triangulate the direction of any sound and filter out for select sounds, SPECIFICALLY gunshots), you'd have a problem it?

You fire a gun, get blasted by the turret. Seems simple to me. We still have to roll to see if the sensor detects the sound, of course.

Not entirely have a problem with it. It depends on the explanation how such a thing is setup. Afterall I'd have to for example wonder why such a system automatically hoses any source of gunfire with total indiscrimination. Every corp has physical security, and with extremely rare exception all that security carries guns.

Which means if it's a sec guard firign on you they'd get hosed down and my job is done for me aint it? Of course thats where stuff like the IFF safety link in CC comes in. But such a system has it's own drawbacks. You can simply steal or spoof a transmitter, or if your close enough to the person it wont fire becuase it risks hitting a friendly.

If on the other hand the corp sec in that building is specifically instructed NEVER to ever fire a gun etc I -might- buy it. I say -might- because it's still software interperting a sound. Which means it CAN still mistake a sound for a gunshot. Even when that sound isnt. Afterall even the human brain can mistake fireworks for example for gunfire. Which menas that security system just hosed down anyone near that source. And that can really make a bad situation worse if say.. the bang came from a falling fuel tank or happens near containers of some highly volatile stuff.

So yeah.. I guess in the end I really seriously would have issues with you using such a system. Because soundfiltration while it does work.. is NOT perfect. Even in 2070 it can still screw up. So long as somethign properly represents that however I suppose I've got no huge issue with it. And i mean it could allways be a case where its activated later since 'anything that moves in zone 12 is assumed hostile'.

It really all depends on how and when it's present. And I probably would begrudge a GM who didnt at least give PCs a chance to find out about a system -somehow- before hand. I mean yeah. I'll setup really nasty boobytraps for PCs but I'ev allways given them at least 3 chances to some how find out before hand about it because it's jsut so damn likely to kil lthem. It's not 'realistic' perhaps. But it =IS= fair. And at least the vast majority of players dont like having their characters ultimately killed off because the GM setup stuff they never had a chance to knwo about and react to before hand.

if only one shot was fired, it will be next to impossible to tell. the shot will ring/echo around and you will get lots of false positives on which direction. This is true in real life. That is why snipers are "one shot one kill" type people. after a while (time consuming) people can get a idea of which direction based on fall of body, which direction the body was facing, and the where hole is, etc...

I would do a single test, with a threshold of a very high number, dropping the threshold number by many each shot fired (not silenced) past the second.

For instance (this is off the top of my head), one shot = 20, each additional shot is -4, with a minimum is 2. One single roll for the threshold. And on bursts, each bullet shot in the burst drops the threshold.

so a sniper fires a single round... one roll of your audio perception, threshold of 20..

so for a gun battle between a few gangers ... one roll of you audio perception, threshold of 2..

this is just to determine which direction...

like I said this is off the top of my head, so it probably could use some tweaking...
dog

Ever been in a urban area and heard a helo come in? I hear one about one a week coming in to the roof pad, and I KNOW it's coming from the NW. (Because of the 130 foot tall new hospital and the high tension wires.) However my ears insist that it's coming from the SE because there is a very large building that blocks the direct path to the NW and the building across the plaza is a large flat reflecting surface. So I'm hearing the echos until the bird is just about flaring for landing.

You'll get the same effect from a gunshot, though it's a lot easier to miss the sound of a single gunshot than the helo in typical urban noise.