Last night, I was playing Hitman: Blood Money. This post is going to contain SPOILERS for that game so don't read it if you haven't already played it through.

I've got the impression that a lot of the people involved with Hitman are eastern european. In any case, I sense a certain fascination with American southerners in Hitman: Blood Money. So far, I've counted 3 levels that take place in the south. In two of the three I'm seeing a lot of the "revolting hick" sterotype.

Anyway, there's one level where Agent 47 must go to a wedding in Mississipi and kill the bridegroom and the father but not kill the bride. There are many civilians attending the party as guests and they're all wearing suspenders and baseball caps. However, unlike in most of the other levels in Hitman, all the male civilians at the wedding are armed with .38 cal revolvers. Should you be seen doing anything bad, not only do all the security guards rush and attack you, but all the male civilians do as well. This actually makes for an EXTREMELY challenging level.

I had been able to complete all the levels in the game up till then pretty elegantly without gaining any "notoriety" points, but on that level I was forced to fight off an enormous swarming hoarde of security and armed civilians. It was very difficult and I had to use strategy as well as gameplay skill to the utmost in order to survive and ultimately the slaughter was Tarantino-esque. Normally in these levels even if things go wrong and my character gets into a firefight with security guards ammunition scarcity is never an issue. However, in this level, my character burned through his entire supply of .45 ACP (over 100 rounds) and .300 Winmag (20 rounds) AND was forced to resort to using additional firearms found on the premises. After the level my notoriety jumped from a perfect 0 I'd been maintaining all game to about 50 out of 100 just from that clusterf*ck.

Hitman: Blood Money is similar to Shadowrun in terms of the premise. The main character is hired to do assassinations but sometimes extraction of information or sometimes protection through shadowy contacts. He has the opportunity to customize his weapons and buy gear in between missions. This lead me to think: couldn't armed bystanders really complicate a Shadowrun campaign in much the way the armed bystander zerg rush messed up my Hitman level?

I grew up in New York City, where I think it's fair to say most civilians aren't armed. If a bald genetically engineered assassin were to initiate a firefight in New York City, or indeed if a squad of guys with leather jackets and permed hair and uzis were to do so, most people would probably be horrified, flee, call the cops, or what have you. Whenever I ran any sorts of Shadowrun games I guess I assumed that in general most bystanders would behave in that way if they witnessed the runners doing something violent. So while I might have the occasional NPC show up with a shotgun and a Marines tee shirt in order to mess with the players a little for the most part civilian bystanders were harmless besides for the fact that they might alert the authorities or potentially be witnesses.

However, now that I think about it, there are also places in the world where bystanders would indeed be more likely to open fire on anyone they saw committing a violent act in clear violation of the law. For example, I've heard that in Texas when that guy climbed a church tower and started sniping people that many Texans had rifles in their vehicles and actually pinned that guy down in his tower. A situation like that could certainly mess up a runner team. Perhaps the runners have their sniper up in a high place to oversee a meeting taking place in an alley. The meeting goes bad and the sniper starts to support the team by sniping out the enemies in the alley. However, some civilians unrelated to the meeting who are standing somewhere else just see a guy sniping down from a high place. They grab their rifles and suppress the team's sniper, causing the team to be in a worse position.

Indeed, I get the impression that in SR's Seattle many civilians are supposed to be armed because they're all paranoid about crime. A cultural shift between today and the time of SR would be the only thing necessary for civilians to be more likely to suppress runner teams who commit violent acts in public places.

What do you think? If your GM had more Texas-style civilians pinning down your team, would you find that believable, or would you cry foul? Would you find it funny/challenging, or arbitrary and pointless?

I would cry foul as "texans" don't do that.
people mind their own business, what will prompt NPC's to "get in the way" is messing with them. make a stray bullet hit the "good ol boy's" truck, and then its believable, heck he'll even chase you down.
but if you have a guy shooting out of an elevated position, the citizens aren't going to interfere because as long as they don't they are fine. as soon as they interfere they might get messed with.

edit: now if they were all in the same diner? at the same party...they all knew each other...
those are accetpable situations where people come out of the cattle mentality and fight back. you have to make them "want to"

I just played that game to(on easy) and it was my first hitman game and i thought it sucked heh. But on to your main point. Those wedding attendee's werent just townfolk or whatever. They were more like familia. They were all part of the crime family the bride's dad and groom were in on. Thats like taking out a mob guy and his boys attacking you. Or messing with a gang and the whole flock descends on you.

I think it is extremely rare that your average citizen that has no ties to the victom would help out at all, for fear of being injured, and for fear of being sued. No good deed goes unpunished.

I think what you may want to look towards are people who have goals/missions of their own and who the runners are accidentally interferring with. Like say some terror group is going to blow up a bank and take the money but the runners are already there trying to get at a single deposit box or to extract somebody. This would obviously piss off the terrorist group.

or the runners are setting up for a job doing whatever when another group rolls in and starts causing trouble thus screwing up the run for the runners.

I guess that stuff is normal and not like what you are talking about.... Just go with bob the off duty security guy who desperately wants a raise or his 15 minutes of fame.

Think about street reporters who are one man news shows for pirate matrix channels or whatever. He spots the runner team doing something and records it and then the channel he works for or whatever puts a bounty on their heads for information or capture and lots of crazies come out of the woodworks.. Yeah...more real time. The Street reporter see's some shit happening with the runners and he broadcasts(via matrix/"bullhorn") to everyone in the area a reward for trying to stop them just so he can get some cool news worthy shots and drama. An instigator.

Try to come up with motivators for people to want to do that stuff and it will be easy.
Duty, Instigator, Toxic negative emotion/chaos freak, greed, fame, sinless, unemployed.

well . . certainly GANGERS will start reacting to people starting shit up in their part of town . . especially the bigger ones will . . if you start shit in a bar, hell, that allmost every last single time started an all out brawl which made the GM VERY angry because he had to stat up 10 to 20 NPC's fast . . Yakuza, Mafia and the such are supposed to actually guard those who pay them to do so, so i would imagine they would enter the fray most likely . . you start shit in the orc underground? buddy, you have a whole world of trogs coming after you as soon as they notice you not belonging there o.O . . but usually, NPC's/Civillians/Practice Targets or whatever you're calling them won't do shit as long as they don't get involved in one way or the other . .

I'm going to disagree here a little. While I agree the "MYOB" mindset would probably prevail in most cases, I think it depends on a lot of factors. Apathy and complacency may run rampant in SR, but you also have consumer weapon outlets like Ares' "Weapons World", meaning a lot more people are armed, which implies a lot more people are conscientious about the possibility of violence and think about when they would and would not use violence themselves. I don't think that it would be that unusual to see an armed bystander with a hero complex who gets involved in a violent altercation, especially if its obvious which side is legit (i.e.- the one's in uniform are probably the "good guys") or if it appears to the bystander that the runners are killing other bystanders (was that young girl they just shot in the head an innocent victim or a technomancer or free spirit, or maybe a shedim?).

Plus I think it adds a cool dynamic element to a SR fire fight, which I have used quite often.

The low cost of smartlinks and body armor makes the citizens of any sprawl like seattle dangerous as hell. Do not fear the heavy pistol of the mugger, fear the shotgun of the active NRA-UCAS member. If he hits, and he comes out of "neutral" territory, you are in pain.

Vigilante Laws exist for a reason, anyone who does that would get told to not get involved, and if they continued they would be charged. the only exception is if the legit authorities obviously could not handle the situation.
for example coincidentally I live in texas and in a restaraunt one patron was being rather rambunctious and rude etc... when an off duty policeman came over and asked them to leave they became violent and knocked him out cold. until then everyone stayed calm ignoring the guy, but after that three guys pounced on him beat the crap out of him and dragged him outside where they sat on him till the cops arrived.
had they acted before the patrolman was assaulted they would have been arrested, but since they came to the aide of the authority figure who actually NEEDED assistance they fell under the "protecting those in need" and the severity of his injuries were explained as "self defense."

Lots of laws exist for lots of reasons. As it turns out that doesn't stop people from doing stupid stuff.

Note that I didn't say anything about the appropriateness of an armed bystander's response. You are correct in that they tend to be treated as heros if the authorities are in obvious need of help, but treated as criminals if the authorities are in control of the situation.

But then again most civilians who carry a firearm do so specifically because police can't be everywhere and control every situation, right?

I'm just picturing a run taking place outside an elementray school and its recess time...
"bob...what are all those kids poitning at us?"
<pow pow pow>
"OMG DUCK!!!"

Quite a funny picture, I agree.

I kind of picture "Weapons World" like a ToyRUs anyway...

There are no "vigilante laws", there are just laws against assault, battery or murder. Look up your states deadly force rules. It's pretty much assured that you are allowed to use deadly force to protect yourself or others from death or serious bodily harm (though the situational rules in NY or CA are often insane). It's quite likely that you can use deadly force to prevent a felony against yourself or others. Very few places allow deadly force for petty theft, etc. Texas has interesting rules about night time however.

A shooting in public is pretty clearly someone who is in the process of committing a violent felony that involves the death or serious injury to someone. Most people, even if armed, would tend to work on getting anyone they were with out of the scene ASAP. If they were by themselves or had a good shot they might well get involved, or they might not. If you block there path out. . .

Nine times out of ten, the guy shooting from an obvious elevated position is someone who wants to die and wants to take as many people as possible out with him. In that situation, everyone is in danger. There is no such thing as being fine unless you have perfect cover. When he runs out of easy targets he'll start going after the hard ones.

The incident that WR mentions is the The University of Texas shootings. The Main Building of The University of Texas at Austin has a clocktower with an observation deck. On August 1 1966, Charles Whitman visited that observation deck with four rifles, three pistols, and enough supplies to last him a while. He started shooting at everyone in sight. Response was slow due to confusion but once everyone know what was happening every police officer in the city was on scene. Whitman was using waterspouts as makeshift gunports, affording him a great deal of cover and making it almost impossible for police and the civilians who had joined them to hit him from the ground. The police gladly accepted help from the civilians and deputized many on site. Four police officers and a deputized civilian went up the tower and two of them shot Whitman to death.

Of course, there has been a shift in the attitudes about the role of citizens in law enforcement since then.



Not just night time.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/17/...in3517564.shtml

I saw this discussed in great detail elsewhere. General assessment is that the guy has to show some really good reason why he was required to use deadly force. You can detain people for the cops, but you can't kill them. If they had been breaking into his house that changes, but in most non-insane states breaking into an occupied dwelling allows the use of deadly force to stop them. And if had been at night he it might have been more clearly legit, but he really needs a good lawyer badly to make a self-defense case.

I love the letter that suggested it might have been acceptable if he'd shot them in the legs.

Of course, by "love", I mean "further lose hope in humanity as a result of".

~J

The Texas law on defense of property of others is quite clear. If they were attempting to escape with the loot then he had the legal right to shoot them dead. Moral platitudes aside, the law is the law.

And apparently there was a plain clothes cop that witnessed the burglars enter Joe Horn's property and possibly move toward him aggressively until they saw the shotgun, at which point they turned to run as he opened fire.

Of, come on now, don't tell me that you don't love that scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day where Arnold blasts the security guard in the kneecaps and tells John Conner "He'll live". Why, shooting people in the kneecaps is even a major component in the NES Terminator 2 video game.


You know, really funny thing can happen to turn the tide of a battle and turn bystander shooters to your advantage. If your chasing a victim whom you need to kill, for example, you can just flash a fake badge, proclaim yourself to be an undercover cop, and kill him with impunity. You might even be able to "deputize" a couple of armed bystanders who'd like some excitement in their lives and gain some much needed assistance.

Or who doesn't love this scene?


See? kneecaps are not only practical, they're religiously acceptable!

They showed up as green rings, as opposed to orange rings, on the map, though. So they're tagged as "civilians" by the game. Also, it really ties in with the "hick" sterotype that the Hitman people seem so preoccupied with. Remember how even Hitman 2 had the hick assassins in the first level where you're supposed to be taking out cult members?

Oddly enough for me that was one of the easier levels. You can sneak around to the back of the house and shhot the father as he's walking around in the graveyard, from the other side of the water. For the son you just wait in the kitchen and geek him when he enters. Had so much more trouble on most other levels.

In SR the idea is an interesting one but not sure how effectively even a horde of civilians will be able to stop a group of highly trained well armed and armored criminals.

As SR makes impossible the very common situation that lots of really well trained and equipped guys get killed by a lucky punk with a .22 or a rusty AK, that's largely true in SR RAW.

I don't know about that. The .22 won't do much, as they'll probably have enough Body to soak, but a few people firing 11S bursts at someone will bleed off their combat pool pretty quickly in most cases.

~J

I've never played Hitman (hell ... I just started playing Deus Ex for the first time a couple of weeks ago). Are they worth getting? And should I get all four?

Also, how close is the movie to the games?

if you wanna sneaky black-ops style killing then yes, the games are well worth their money . . more or less single player practice for runs . . if you don't like that kind of gameplay but want a more assault like style, then hell no, you won't like that game *g*
didn't see the movie, would probably be pretty sweet if vin diesel were playing 47 ^^

In SR4 a .22 can be dangerous in the hands of a lucky punk.

As for the Hitman games, I didn't play that much, but I think that this review explains perfectly what I felt each time.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. The sort of people that go out of their way to jump through Uncle Sam's hoops in order to be allowed to concealed carry are often in the "don't" category. It's certainly true that there are those who have a "I carry for my safety and that of my family" mindset, but there are a great number of us that instead have the "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" mindset, which results in quite a bit more gunplay, annually.

I can think of times random students ran to get guns to stop a college school shooting, times a random old man in a grocery store opened fire to stop a crazy man from stabbing his wife to death, times a random small business owner got his gun from his car to stop a disgruntled employee (from another store) from stabbing someone to death, and plenty of other cases.

Yes, in each of those cases a great number of people either did nothing (out of fear or shock) or outright ran away from the violence that was disrupting their everyday life. But all it takes is one person (preferably with a gun) to run towards the violence, instead, to really ruin a bad guy's day. And in Shadowrun, sometimes the "bad guy" is the PC.

Heck, even Food Fight specifically pointed out several of that Stuffer Shack's patrons were armed and willing to go down fighting.

I'm a big fan of the Hitman games, so I'll try to give you a very genuine answer.

The games aren't too strong on character development. I think that the 47 portrayed in the movie was definitely banging around in the game designers' heads, especially considering the events portrayed in the beginning of Hitman 2 and the character background as written up in official materials, but the game lets you play either as the ultimate ghostly mostly nonviolent stealth assassin or simply go in Rambo style and massacre everyone. Up until Blood Money it was often easier to play Rambo style and doing the complicated and precise thing with disguises and zero collateral damage was more a matter of doing it because 1.) you preferred that style of gameplay and 2.) the best features of the game engine were set up to facilitate that. But in terms of just completing the mission either approach could work.

So, the movie could be very close to the games, if you play like 47 from the movie. On the other hand you might play 47 like he's Rambo and then that all goes in the crapper.


I think that the Hitman Trilogy is definitely worth picking up, especially if you can do so at discount. The first Hitman game was revolutionary and awesome for its time but a friend of mine has described it as "flawed genius"; nowadays it pretty much is more fun to play the later games where the concept is better implemented.

I should emphasize that Hitman is really a thinking man's game. Although there is capacity for big shootouts, the game spends more of its resources on disguise, stealth, and interesting level design which interacts more with a stealthy approach to play. Hitman would be a mediocre shooter, but what's unique about the Hitman franchise is the very well-developed stealth and infiltration aspects, and I find that I need to think a great deal about each level in order to come up with an effective plan of action along those lines. Having said that, I should point out that there are multiple ways to complete each level. Each level isn't just like a giant puzzle where you need to find the single "right" answer. It's more like each level gives you certain tools in terms of environment and NPCs and you use the tools as you see fit to try and accomplish the objectives.

Hitman trilogy contains Silent Assassin (2), Contracts (3), and Blood Money (4). Silent Assassin and Contracts both share the same engine. I had a lot of fun with the engine playing Silent Assassin closer to when it first came out, and although certain aspects of the gameplay are difficult (guards see through your disguise and open fire on you a bit more readily than you'd expect in real life) once I got used to it I found the levels to be very satisfying and well thought out.

Blood Money seems to use a more advanced engine and I think it's absolute poetry. I am finding peoples' reactions to you are much more in line with what I'd expect them to be in reality. I think the weapons behave more realistically in Blood Money than in the earlier games, and are better balanced. There's a lot of features added that resolve some silly issues that arose in the earlier Hitman games. For example, in Silent Assassin you could choose to take a rifle with you on a mission, but you appeared in the level (always concealed at first) holding the rifle and social camoflague was almost impossible while holding the rifle. However, in Blood Money, if you take your W2000 sniper rifle with you on a mission 47 has the genius never-heard-of-idea to put the damn rifle in a case instead of waving it around in his hands on the street. So now it's possible to actually take a rifle into the level while concealing it as any normal human being would think to conceal it in public.

So I think that the Hitman games are excellent. I've never had a more satisfying stealth experience in a video game than with Blood Money. Should you get Hitman Trilogy I'd actually recommend playing the games in order, from Silent Assassin to Contracts to Blood Money. This would let you appreciate the game the most. While my honest opinion is that Silent Assassin is a wonderful game, I expect it would be something of a let-down to go from Blood Money to Silent Assassin, since that would just serve to highlight all the problems that were fixed in Blood Money but not in Silent Assassin.

Well, that was pretty comprehensive. Thanks.

As someone who lives in Texas, I find this thread somewhat humerous because it strikes to a certain amount of truth, yet not even close to the truth that the visual many have of the state and it's inhabitants.

Texas passed a concealed carry law several years ago with the push for passing of the legislation coming after a crazed gunman ran his vehicle through the front window of a Luby's restaurant and proceeded to walk through executing all he could find. Many witnesses stated at the time that if they had been armed, they would have been able to save lives. Now, many Texans do have the ability to get licensed to carry concealed pistols, but the majority that I know do not (or have the license, but only carry when they feel the need). Texas does have a law allowing the transportation of loaded longarms in vehicles, but this is mainly due to the size of the state. While East/Central Texas contains all of the large urban areas, most of West Texas/Panhandle is still relatively sparse with many dangerous animals around such as snakes, mountain lions, and coyotes. Farmers and Ranchers were given permission to carry their rifles and shotguns to protect themselves and their livestock from such predators. But, a firearms law passed by the state affects all of the state, not just small sections of it.

Where does this fit in with the original post? Basically, while it may be legal for civilians to carry firearms and weapons, it isn't neessarily true that it is a common occurance. Though in a game like SR, I think the occurance would be much higher than in real life, and runners should act accordingly.

As for the Joe Horn case, that is something that is still being debated and will be decided by the Grand Jury. Being from Houston, I get to hear a great deal about this case, and many in the area have formed their own opinions. Some are calling him a hero for defending his neighbors property, others a cold-blooded killer. A minority consider him a racist and say that the entire thing was a conspiracy (yeah, Mr. Horn asked the two men to rob the house as he sat in waiting for them... give me a break). Personally, I am just waiting to see what the result of the Grand Jury will be. No matter what, I believe that there will be a change in Texas law due to this incident.

As a side note concerning Texas, I was told of a study done by the U.S. Army in the 80's in which a communist invasion of the United States was proposed, with troops coming up from Central America/Cuba and using Galveston Island as an invasion point. The study was to determine how far the Communist forces, consisting of at least one brigade of mobilized infantry and tank units, would be able to make it into Texas before U.S. military forces would be able to stop them. The answer, according to the study, was that the Communist forces would only make it to the half way point between Galveston and Houston (approx. 20 miles) due to swampy terrain and the civilian populations access to high powered firearms and explosives. As a fifteen or sixteen year-old teenager, I found that study to be hillarious back then, now I find it somewhat sobering.

Blood Money is very much worth playing, best in the series imo. Haven't had any getting stuck in stuff trouble personally, and I love how there are multiple ways to finish the level, quiet or loud. The opera house is pure genius.

The opera house is probably my favorite.

See, most of what I do in my life is actually fueled by my sense of irony. The only music I take seriously and actually like is classical opera. I first heard "The Magic Flute" when I was in 4th grade and was totally overwhelmed and electrified. It's like that quote from "Pretty Woman" about how some people hear opera and are immediately captivated and those people are the true opera lovers.

So I practically had some kind of orgiastic meltdown when I got to listen to Tosca in a meta way while playing a game. I think I enjoyed standing around waiting for things to happen while listening to Tosca way too much.

That particular scene from Tosca has always been one of my favorites. Back when I was in 5th grade I had a CD, "Opera To Die For", which was a compilation of all sorts of dramatic death scenes from opera. Of course, it had the Tosca scene, and it was one of my favorites. I loved the orchestral flare after Tosca throws herself off the tower. Man, what a pump up!

New York gun laws are basically the same as Jersey, to the best of my knowledge; registration of anything concealed carry. Longguns are basically unrestricted (except for automatics, and the like). Not sure about handguns you want to use for non-concealed carry, though. My dad does business in both states, and has a concealed carry permit (jewelry business, comes with the territory, much to chagrin of my mother), although he said he wouldn't even bother trying to get one in the City. From what he told me, you essentially have to have written authorization from the Police Commissioner / the Commissioner's office. That said, I've heard that if you ever get into an incident and identify it to an officer (even if it didn't involve the firearm), they'd rather just bring you to the station until they can work everything out rather then just turn you lose on the spot. Gives a new incentive to get a tazer, eh?

For the Sixth World, I see private firearm ownership as minimal in the AAA-rated security zones, and increasing exponentially up to the Z-zones. People in corporate farms are probably either under private protection, or so blinded by their affluent lives that they don't feel they need one. Plus, I doubt Renraku wants you living on their property with Manhunter when they have a perfectly functional corporate army. Places like the devastated parts of LA are probably closer to a warzone then anything else..

Some corps may activey advertise carrying (and of course, buying!) guns, such as Ares. Some countries may still have mandatory military service, so the population may actually be trained in the use of longarms. And it could be that by 2070, Switzerland still has its citizen soldiers stash their military issue assault rifles at home. Imagine pulling a run there or in some Ares gated community, where just about every second (male in some cases) citizen has access to and military training with an assault rifle at home. A runner team mistaken - or framed as - an attacking gang could end up in a world of hurt in some neighborhoods.

Generally, I run it so most civilians seek cover, and don't play hero, even if armed, but the closer to teenagers one NPC is, and the more testosterone he has, the bigger the odds he'll want some piece of the action.

Also one can not discount the various crowd scenes that seems to show "kind-of sort-of but not really" concealed carry as being rather common in the Sixth World, now whether or not it is legal or simply something that Lone Star uses to shake down an occasional bribe or two is debatable.
"

I'm thinking back to the scene in Predator 2... A bunch of gangers decide to roll a suit on a train, but he pulls a gun (light pistol) from his briefcase and being trying to threaten them. The gang boss pulls out this hand cannon (ruger super warhawk-esque) and makes some, I'm baddasser than you type comment. And then the gangers notice that everyone else on the train car is pulling out their own guns. And... before bullet start flying, the predator attacks, slaughtering everyone on board.

That's kind of how I feel about near future settings were laws are frequently bent. Anyone might be packing heat. And all it takes is one of them getting ticked off enough about something to take action. After all, popular media is full of example of people taking the law into their own hands, right? Imagine what it'd be like 60 years in the future.

The extreme example of this is a "motivational poster" for depicting a bunch of school kids on a bus pulling pistols. It says something like, "SHADOWRUN Yeah, its like that."

I've visited 2 non-chain gun shops in the Las Vegas area and in both of them all the staff were wearing pistols, so good point re Ares.

Per some crime reports I've seen, in California you have some gun stores gun where the staff are not armed per company policy. It's the most insane idea I've ever heard of....

There are some states in the US that have open carry laws. In Wyoming, for example, you need a permit to carry a concealed pistol, but it if you wear one on your hip and avoid banks, federal buildings and schools you are good to go (theoretically). While it is not a frequent occurrence, its not entirely unusual to see guys carrying openly, especially during hunting season (because you never know when you might need a Glock 37 to finish of your elk... or something...).

I'm sure there are cultures/societies in SR that would have similar views.

I've always been under the impression that in Shadowrun Seattle well over half the population was armed with a weapon of some sort. If you have access to the Neoanarchists Guide to Real Life, read the section with the designer firearms, you will certainly get the impression that they are literally a must have like your smog filtering respirator. Whether or not that means these people would spontaneously join a gun-fight or not is really up to the GM, but it's certainly a curveball you can throw your players to liven up your game. My advice is don't make it a consistent element, but use it just often enough that it's something that the players need to be aware of when planning and account for during legwork.

Actually the last I checked open carry was legal in a bank but not a church (Without written consent from the minister.), and with a conceal carry permit there are ~13 types of buildings you are not allowed to enter with a firearm, a courthouse is legal, but a courtroom isn't for example.

But yeah, I figure that the Sixth World and Cyberpunk in general isn't really the future per say, but rather the worst of the past wrapped up with the shiny bow of technology.

Shadowrunners are supposed to be elite and generally elite in combat specifically. If your sniper holes himself up in a tower for an hour he is going to take some serious heat until he goes down. Now a hit where people move in an just lay waste to everything I have a feeling that anyone who is worth their weight in salt would just run, and those that don't would also probably run. I mean if there is about to be a gang fight going down with multiple people on both sides carrying firearms the sensible thing is to bug out.

Now you go and pull some shit in a place where people are invested in the area then it is a little bit different. If you assignment is to destroy the only water supply in town you might receive more opposition then gunning down some gang members. Still anyone with training seeing what an SR team could do would probably have the sense to stay well alone. I mean a grunt seeing a black ops in action (6 dice vs like 12-15) would know that if he didn't drop him almost instantly his life would be a pretty short one.

To which state are you referring? It varies quite a bit.

At least in current day Seattle, open carry is effectively illegal (technically it's at police discretion, but it's considered threatening) but concealed carry is licensed and common. Armed bystanders intervening in dangerous situations is not unheard of, though it tends to be exagerated.

Wyoming

The amusing part is trying to write up Agent 47 as an NPC but sticking to the rules.

Ravor- As far as banks go, that might be true in theory, but in practice you'd have to be pretty dumb to open carry into a bank...

Also, I'm not sure if the limitations for open carry are exactly the same as for concealed carry. I looked through the state laws again and the limitations on CC are pretty clear (interesting point on the courtroom btw) but its hard to find anything explicit about OC.

Out of curiosity, why the interest in Wyoming gun laws?

There is no problem with openly carrying in a bank. The problem comes from drawing in a bank, which is really something that you shouldn't do.

Brandishing aside...

What you can do legally and what you can do socially are different. People get nervous when they see a gun on anyone that isn't in uniform. They don't tend to ask whether or not you have a permit or what you intend to do. They just call the police.

The last thing you want is for some jumpy bank teller to trigger the silent alarm because you like to walk around like a wild west gunslinger. Its just a bad idea...

If you're concerned about people getting nervous because you're openly carrying but aren't wearing a uniform then there is a simple solution to that. Very simple indeed.

I'm a Wyoming native.