Over at theRPGsite, there's a Shadowrun thread that some people here might be interested in.

Cool. I use some of the stuff he/she has provided so far in my games.

I love AH's comment. Its so.... true?

Interesting posts.

His solution to magic use is much like mine: only use it when necessary on a run. The Cleansing and the new variable trace (can't think of the name) metamagics can help with that.

He's right on about the PANs leaving traces everywhere. Limit the gear and go wired as much as possible. For communications, there are probably disposable commlinks just like there are disposable cellphones these days. Aside from that, old fashioned radios should be small and cheap and should work just fine, provided there aren't too many walls and such between the team members.

Ammo is still a problem. If all of it is marked by the manufacturer, then going to private makers wouldn't solve the problem either. As that fellow pointed out, the Corps will probably know or be able to track down the maker anyway. Making your own might help on a single run because it would be unique. However, the second time you used it, to include at another location on a single run, they would be able to link the actions to you very easily due to that uniqueness. Swapping out barrels and firing pins after a heavy run would probably help and would not require buying a completely new gun.

Good thread. Good analysis (IMO at least) of how forensics go in SR. I agree that the fundemental tenet of Shadowrun, what makes is a playable game, is that there is no real forensics being done. If there is no added incentive for a corp to get you (i.e., they want to retrieve a physial sample you stole), there is no reason why anyone would attempt to hunt you down. Justice for justice's sake is not profitable.

Edit:
Also, me and my gaming group, mostly after watching a few CSI episodes (unrealisticness of it all notwithstanding), ame to the conclusions that there are so many forensics tricks and ways to identifiy you, that no matter how careful you are, a sufficiently determined investigator WILL track you down. Thankfully, in SR, the cost threshold at which point it becomes too expensive to track you down arrives very quickly.

Think i hear the corps knocking on my runners back door

I prefer to think that the role (and indeed, the name) of CSI has changed over the intervening 63 years (or 53 years) between now and 2070 (or 2060).

Specifically, it no longer means Crime Scene Investigation. Now it means Crime Scene Instigation.

At least informally. CSI dosen't have to actually investigate the crimes and use forensics evidence. They just have to "find" forensics evidence that backs up whatever the parent corp wants to say.

Ex:
Investigator: "Boss, these guys capped forty people, women and children, when they hit that orpahnage. We need to make a kill, fast, of people will panic."
Boss: "Right! CSI, remember those 'runners that we caught last month that did a run for us after we put those kink bombs in their heads?"
CSI: "You want them to have done this, right?"
Boss: "Right! Think you can handle it?"
CSI: "No problem. We got samples and everything, won't take but a day to put together an open-and-shut case."
Boss: "Good. HTR?"
HTR: "Yes, boss?"
Boss: "Geek 'em. No survivors. Anyone who surrenders was "shot while resisting arrest". Get it done in under a day."
HTR: "We ride!"
Boss: *sits back smugly.*

This article in a nutshell is a direct quote from "Heat":

Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.

So I don't actually know anything about the process of manufacturing ammunition, but would it be all that crazy to say that a 'runner with a Shop of some sort (probably an Armorer's Shop, I guess) could make their own ammo? Raw materials would likely be more difficult to trace than manufactured ammunition, if not nearly impossible. Although that would make his/her ammo completely unique I suppose... Hmmm... perhaps you could either make ammo that is as close to an exact copy (or a perfect copy if you could steal the proper data) of a more common type of ammo, but has no markings. Or maybe you could change the way the ammo is made slightly every time, though that would likely be more expensive and the ammo would still share the fact that it doesn't have numbers on it. Anyways, like I said, I don't really know anything about the process of making ammo, so feel free to shoot holes in it if you wish.

y'know. a lot of factories overseas often run unofficial third shifts to make goods they can sell on the black market. why would ammunition be any different?

or just buy it from a country that doesn't have such laws. I assure you most don't.

lead slugs aren't hard to cast, but I doubt ex ex or sticky shock would be whithin the range of a home setup...

APDS might not be too hard...

Happydaze eat your heart out.

Well the main problem with identifying ammo seemed to be the numbers on it, and those are on the bullets themselves, right? Not the casing. So it seems to me that you would only really need to manufacture the bullet part and you could get the rest somewhere else, probably alternate what types/how much you use, every bit of misdirection helps. And like I said, if you could steal the right data I bet you could find out how a big corp manufactures theirs, might lead to an easier/more efficient process and you could attempt to copy them.

Or I guess you could just buy it off the black market/foreign market like Fix-it said. Though that's considerably less interesting to discuss.

There is a realization that I believe is inevitable in the maturation process of the Dumpshocker: the realization that Ancient History is not God.

Dedicated, detail-oriented (in some respects), and willing to put forth a great deal of effort, certainly, but as much as I indulged in it in my youth, and as much as I do believe he deserves a great deal of credit, he nevertheless gets more than is reasonable (though I don't see that as his fault).

~J

I didn't know he got any recognition. I just thought he was a guy with too much time on his hands, who provided somewhere for us to spend the time... which we have too much of... on our hands.

Wow. Not often an IE gets denounced as being Not God (which is true), then the denouncer gets cast down as a heretic.

AH liveth in interesting times.

Well, I readily admit I'm not perfect.

I search for "burn thee heretic" in google and found a page of lyrics from some band called Nile.

Technical Death Metal, if you're into that kind of music.

Nah, there's noone called "Shadow" in it.

Sounds more like a quick synopsis of the team's latest frag up of a mission.

While the thread is now quite off topic I still have the compulsion to throw in my 2 cents. That and my pants are still in the dryer and I need them to finish before I go to bed.

Really any runner is hosed, always. In the future there are too many ways to 'catch' you. Most of them involve sweeping the secret corp facility that just got hit and using ritual magic to annihilate anyone who left behind hair, skin cells, whatever that isn't already in the corporate database as being on the OK list.

The trick always is letting your players have fun. My players want to customize their own guns and have signature weapons. That's fun for them so I don't nail them to the wall for it. Maybe a little for the guys who just powergamed superior firearms but nothing major. And really CSI is almost completely BS. Watch the discovery channel for police dramas. There is no magic machine that tells you that there's a trace amount of potato on the guys shoe that was traced to one specific field due to the herbicide used or whatever. Most criminals are caught because they are extremely stupid, have a direct and easily traced connection to the crime (ie they stole their roommates computer or murder their mom), or by sheer dumb luck on the cops part.

I generally play it that it's simply cost in-effective to go after Shadowrunners, and even if you don't care about the cost Runners live in a very scary segment of the world populated by very scary people. While the accountant who's wife just got blown away would love to go after the runners responsible he's going to know no more about how to find them or people who could even point him in the right direction then I would know how to contact an international arms dealer and get a stolen soviet tank delivered to house. Think officespace when they're trying to figure out how to launder money, most runners have a criminal background, they've grown up living this kind of stuff, they may not be smart but they are criminal smart or they'd never survived long enough to actually go on a shadowrun.

Of course none of this applies if your players are just truely retarded.

For what it's worth, I was watching Forensics Files the other day. They did use a pretty nifty machine to analyze the chemical compounds in a sample of wood used to cremate the victim, discovered it had titanium as a trace element in it. From that, they were able to track it back to the exact tree the wood came from - which, coincidentally enough, they were able to connect to the killer, because he had used wood from the same tree earlier in the very same night, to light a bonfire for a bonfire party.

Nifty, eh?

I generally start out with three basic assumptions:

1) Most people are products of Systems that govern their lives
2) Contrary to popular knowledge, the Systems do not work
3) Nobody knows this.

So, yes, the systems are more advanced, more throrough, more prevalent, and more lethal than they are today. They just aren't any more reliable.

A concept I've been playing with.

In addition to it not being cost effective to go after runners, I figure the Things That Go Bump In The Night run into the same problems modern day intelligence services run into when looking for people.

My explanation is information saturation. Everyone leaves trails everywhere, everyone has a camera, everything has a computer. Especially since encryption is a commercially available program, and relatively inexpensive at higher(6) ratings, this means that in order for an inteligence service to track down all the information the runners have left lying about, they need to sift through a truly massive amount of crap. At the same time I figure that they run into the prohibitive cost of human intel.

None of this makes it impossible for Runners to get caught or be tracked down, obviously. It just means once they leave the high sec area tey hit, with restricted access and extensive sensor networks, it becomes incredibly dificult and expensive to track down someone who is making a concerted effort to not be found, especially when you factor in their highly paranoid, highly skilled nature.

Course, if the runners grab something of extreme value(paydata about how Ares whacked big D or something) they're freaking dead. This is why an important part of Running is knowing whats too hot for your evasion capabilities(not that the Johnson will let you know ahead of time) and turning down the suicidal runs.

Just my thoughts, something I hadn't seen mentioned in the frequent, "Shadowrunners should be caught" arguments.

Also important is the Deadman Contingency.

IE: "Should I die, for whatever reason, the sensitive information we stole gets broadwaved." Think about it. It's bad if Company X gets conclusive proof of Company Y's big bad deeds, but it would be much, much worse if the whole fragging world got it. So it's a simple message to all involved: Don't shoot the messanger, or the whole world gets the message loud and clear.

I am going to toss my opinions into this discussion. First and foremost however, I will admit I am a believer in the fact that runners can get caught and will if they screw up. It's not a catch and release, and the hunters aren't without teeth. So what you want to do is run smart.

First thing to remember is that there are eyes everywhere. Video cameras, astral entities, drones flying in the sky, even people. There are examples of this in media, such as Dark Angel with their aerial drones patrolling the streets. If you want, you could even make them fly higher so the people can't see them (think the black helicopters that fly in whisper mode so you don't hear them until after they're gone). Next there's Minority Report's advertisements that recognize you based on your eyes. Enemy of the State using satellites to watch what happened in certain areas. Also, there's Global Frequency where, yes they had a center collaborating data (which I can see most corps having), but in one comic, .001, the team had to track down Miranda Zero after she got kidnapped. Footprints on the carpeted floor, a paint smear left behind, things like that helped them paint a picture of the kidnappers. But let's not forget the cameras. By using the feeds (yes, some they had to hack into, but I can see investigators getting access to), they were able to track the vehicle as it drove away.

People talk about costs, but let's just look at that. The initial collection you need people for, collecting all the evidence you can get, taking some witness reports if there's any available. Then you get access to all cameras in the area, let a computer analyze the feeds and do facial matching. An SK or frame/agent (I only know SR3, not SR4) could do that job and only page for human assistance when it gets to a point it doesn't understand or when its job is done. It's the same with evidence analysis, let the computers run a series of tests on it and then it'll upload its results to a central database.

So, even if your decker blanks out security feeds in the building to let your team in without being noticed, you've still got security cameras on the surrounding buildings, the various webcams that are on buildings for personal use or watching the weather or so forth. You'll still show up on those.

Next, lets look at the physical evidence available. Bullets can be traced as the article said, and striations would be able to be tracked as well as any bullets of a certain series could either lead you to a runner (bulk purchase) or a fixer (a number of different criminals using the same series of bullets). The way you would do that is trace the route from the factory to its intended destination. Along the way you'll possibly find the loose link (and it is possible some companies have tracers or some other locater in different packages unknown to their employees to try and find those loose links and fire them before they become a problem to the bottom line or company name). Any pictures or information they have of you can also be used to shakedown their known suspects to get closer to you. IE: They bust the fixer who supplied you with bullets, they can either write them out of the system or perhaps cut a deal with them to find out who you were, if you cost them a lot.

Hair, blood, fingerprints... those have your DNA and some identification so a compilation can be made there and linked to any databases of that corp, any public databases and any databases they have hacked (which is something some people don't think about). If you have a SIN, even a fake SIN, you need to have at least something that matches in case of checks. Depending on what you use the SIN for, it may just be a fingerprint. But then that fingerprint will now be accessed by any indexing search of your prints.

Let's see what we've got so far; they may have your picture, and that is running against all their cameras as a facial recognition in case you ever come into their sights again. That costs them little to no money, after all. Airports and Casinos use this feature to help deal with problem people today, but the technology isn't perfect yet (but it should be by 2060-2070). Then they've got DNA and fingerprints on file that could be run the same way along any scanners they have. Not to mention that they can squeeze down on all the informants as well as corporate employees to try and find you.

That last one is something to think about. If I have any visual means of referencing you, a picture or a composite sketch as an example, I show that to all my employees and tell them to be on the watch for you. Not only does that go to a ton of different businesses throughout the city (perhaps to the bar you drink at, or the supermarket you shop at, or at the restaurant where the Johnson wants to meet for your next run), it could be that one of my employees goes there and sees you and then they call it in. Without you knowing, I could have my FRT on your ass, ready to take you down. And it cost me little to no money in tracking you down. Perhaps that's a good reason not to do runs in your own backyard.

Now, just so it doesn't seem like I would do anything to get runners, a few ways around the system. Sure, you loop onsite cameras, maybe loop surrounding cameras, but more importantly is to deal with trace elements. Wear armor that covers your entire body and also wear a helmet or do something to keep your hair, eyelashes, etc from falling. Second, get onsite in a way that can't be traced, such as boosting a car and driving to an area with no cameras and setting it on fire before switching to another car or approach from the sewers or a maintenance tunnel so that you can disappear underground (there's still the possibility of being tracked, but its less than on the street). For those of you with a SIN, you may want to visit the building ahead of time both to case the joint but more importantly if they find your fingerprint or hair, you can claim it was left from when you visited earlier. And taking a hint from Boondock Saints, carry some bleach or whatever to destroy blood that you do leave behind so that they can't get DNA from it. Wear gloves so there's no fingerprints either. Use caseless ammo to not be tracked by ammo as easily. THese are just some off-the-cuff ideas.

I think one of the often unspoken reasons why all shadowrunners aren't fragged due to extraterritoriality. In movies, shows and games like Dark Angel, Minority Report, Enemy of the State, Deus Ex etc. The government is strong, unified and capable, but due to extraterritoriality (eugh. that word!) the corps don't share information with other corps, and the less the government knows about their operations the better. Shadowrunners are basically hopping borders, and are subject to different jurisdictional laws. This means that if a runner is caught in Saeder Krupp refinery A, he is going to be raped by a hell hound and no-one will bat an eyelid, but once he's back over the fence, he's safer than he would have been today, not to mention when he jumps over into Shiawase Nuclear processing plant B.

To take that one step further, the reason shadowrunners aren't fragged is because the corporations feel the infrastructure that would threaten shadowrunners so much would also threaten other corporate assets. Shiawise doesn't want cameras on every street corner or someone might notice the trucks going from the nuclear reactor swinging by the municipal dump, or the group of thugs who, after beating an Ares exec within an inch of his life, report back to a Renraku employee.

Remember, when the rubber hits the road, it is the corporations who are the bad guys. Shadowrunners are just the steel treads that get worn down in the process. Ineffective forensics work means corporations can continue to do what needs to be done to make money. They can continue to put pressure on the government, on the little guy and yes, on each other (although the lattermost is a zero-sum game for the megas). That's why shadowrunners exist in the first place, if you remember, to fill a niche the corporations created in a world the corporations broke.

Sorry it took so long to jump into my own thread...


The way I see it, there is no practical way for runners to avoid using commercially manufactured ammo or guns. Now, what they can do is protect themselves.

Now, cheaper ammo from fly by night third parties are less likely to be recorded. You know, black market rip offs of name brand bullets. Of course, using these exclusively is going to leave a data trail of it's own as far as criminologists are concerned. On the other hand, there is much less likely to be a record of who purchased it. Same thing with knock off guns. On the other hand, sacrificing quality is never a good idea.

Now, guns and ammo go missing all the time. Sometimes they are sold legitimately to off the book merchants in places where such deals are legal, and who that guy sells to is up to him.

The thing is, buying from your fixer is actually a bad idea. See, he's a businessman with intrests outside of your safety. Undoubtedly a lot of his stock is provided in trade from the corps off the books, and they know exactly where it goes, and the fixer gets a kickback. Also, the fixer undoubtedly provides the Johnson with a complete dossier on the Runners he puts up for a job, well before he offers the job. Johnson can easily put two and two together, and when a few months later they find ammo from their factory on one of their sites after it's been hit... well they already know everything.

Buying from a black market gun runner is safer, but not perfect. He's breaking down large lots, and even if you dump your ammo after the run, the next box you buy is probably from the same lot. If the Corps talk to the Gunrunner, which they will eventually get around too, he's likely to know quite a bit about his biggest customers. Never go to the same source twice in a row is the answer there.

No, the real answer is to shop around, boost what you can. Stolen ammo leaves much less of a trail. Just don't leave too much evidence at the scene of the theft. Swap ammo with gangers... you DO have a working relationship with the local gang, right? Anything you can do to muddy the trail, which includes passing your leftover ammo after a hot run to the same gangers to dispose of. They've got alibis, you don't chummer.

Now, let's talk Gats... Guns chummer, guns. Now, most of the time you can't trust your life to a cheap knock off. On the other hand, getting too attached to any peice of hardware is a bad idea. Disposable is the name of the game. More, don't even stick to just one type or brand. That's called an MO, chummer. If you always use a predator, eventually somebody will notice. Sure, using the most popular brand on the market provides some camoflage... some.

Here is the thing, though. Undoubtedly that Gun you got, it's got a record in some corp datafile. Before it ever leaves the factory it's fired and the ballistics are recorded right alongside the serial number, and that number is tracked. Thank the Fed for that, once they started this system, the corps stuck with it, tradition is a powerful thing, and the data is useful. Now, no matter how careful you are, that gun can eventually get tracked back to you.

Forget firing pins, chummer. Caseless is standard now, brass is antiquated and using it is like leaving a fucking signature at the site. Might as well carve a Z in the wall and wear a mask and cape. On the other hand, each gun leaves two seperate signatures on the bullet. First is the grooves on the bullet from the rifling in the barrel. Getting rid of that is as easy as swapping barrels or adding a silencer. More to follow on that, however. Secondly, many of the big gun manufactures put a little something into the feeding mechanism that 'stamps' the slug as it's fed. This is crude terminology, most aren't so blatent as to stick an actual stamp... most. Often it's just a feed throat design that notches or otherwise scars teh outside of teh slug... and these are fairly distinctive as well. An expert could name the make and model of the gun, and in a few cases link the bullets as surely the rifling does.

Of course, some say that's paranoid speculation. Is it paranoid? I mean, how much do YOU trust your average megacorp?

Now, most barrels these days, at least at the top end, aren't even steel anymore. No, they are ceramic coated carbon fibre tubes that are highly resistant to wear and tear, heat and other damages. Some lighter calibers stick to high stress thermoplastics, though these wear faster. All this makes runners reluctant to get new barrels, as they are costly and difficult to make. When they do, they are in for a nasty nasty shock. Those barrels are a known denominator just as much as the stock barrel on the gun is.

Only, any half competent armorer can make new barrels out of metal bar stock, with the right tools. Make them yourself and you're golden. Sure, they won't hold up as long, and the gun is likely to be a smidgen heavier, but hey! you were planning to toss it or melt it down after the run anyway, right? Whatever you do, don't leave it at teh job site, however. Barstock can be traced too, just not as easily. Of course, you'll want to test your barrels before taking them into the feild, whatever you do.

Now, silencers put their own rifling marks on slugs, as surely barrels do. Manufactured silencers have all the issues of data trails as stock barrels do, worse because shadowrunners are unaware of it. Most runners will ditch a gun before they ditch a silencer due to the difficulty of finding blatently illegal hardware on the street. Ironically, a silencer is easier to make for an armorer than a barrel, which we just recommended every shadowrunner do, even if by proxy.

As for the 'feed marks' issue? Generic replacement parts, using a fine stone to polish the feed mechanism and more all work wonders. It's the assemblage of parts, not the parts themselves that make the marks, so sometimes simply dissassembling the gun completely and reassembling it can make enough alterations to cloud the issue.

Better yet, stick to highly frangible ammo, often mistakenly called 'explosive'. This reduces, but does not eliminate ballistics traces on the bullets, and when combined with a healthy paranoia and a certain degree of fire discipline (i.e. not shooting more than you need too...) can significantly reduce your ballistics profile to almost negligable levels. Of course, this goes back to 'where do i get my ammo'...

As always, professionalism and a high degree of paranoid anonymity is the Shadowrunners key to survival.

Fixers in the traditional sense don't have "stock". They've got info, and they can hook you up with someone who'll sell you more guns than you knew existed, but they don't have them themselves. I know the idea has gotten corrupted somewhat, but Fixers generally shouldn't be buying crates of AKs and ammo—if anything, they might take possession of them briefly as a transfer service.

~J

I suspect that depends on the fixer in question. Some fixers probably don't touch hardware at all, running strictly a job source agency if you will. Others probably have their fingers in many pies.

NPC's are people too ya know?

Fixers may double as things other than Fixers, but just as arms dealing doesn't involve selling delicious pies even if some arms dealers happen to run a bakery on the side, the work of a Fixer mostly doesn't involve physical goods.

~J

Ah, but do arms dealers sell DEADLY delicious pies? Some would argue yes.

"Why is there a pie in here? Behind wards, five layers of bullet resistant glass, and with about a dozen hellhounds between this door and that case?"

"It's experimental. It also has a buyer already, so don't even think about it."

"Looks tasty."

"Yes, it should."

I'll dispute your overly narrow definition of the Fixer if you like. Ulitmately it comes down to the individual GM's perception of the guy. Me? I've always seen them sort of like Danny Aielo's character in the Professional. He provides the job, any support that's needed. It doesn't matter if he has the guns on the premisis or if he gets them from his own 'source'... the latter is more likely. Either way, he provides stuff, and he gets that stuff from somewhere.

Sometimes that somewhere is straight from the source, in which case the runner's datatrail is almost certainly compromised to some extant.


Or do I need to point out page 283 of the BBB says, under fixer 'Gear'...



EDIT::: OR does BBB mean third edition?

p283: Gas grenades through Camouflage Clothing. No Fixers visible.

~J