Just be careful if you get a Mauser. the company sold the rights for rifles to a swiss firm a few years back. The modern Mauser company makes optics and AA guns. Otherthan that they go back to the turn of the 20th century. spanish troops in Cuba and the Philipines werearmed with Mausers.

The advantage of these over modern sniper rifles is that they are tougher. Remember there are penalties if you run around with a 'sniper' rifle. The SMLE and it's contemporaries were the assault rifle of the first world war.

Well, Main Battle Rifle, but your statement is correct.

The Sturmgewehr didn't come out until 1943 or thereabouts. That was the first Assault Rifle, and is what gives the modern weapons their name.

quite right, I stand corrected. I was thinking of the general weapon held by the average trooper and being lazy grabbed onto the modern term.

of course the 1914 British infantry's rate of fire with a SMLE could almost be assault rifle quality-but that was the men more than the weapon.

(German troops who made frontal assaults against these soldeiers suffered such casualties so quickly that they reported they had faced mass machine guns, they couldn't imagine rifle fire that rapid or accurate.)

The original "Mad Minute".

"Money" Johnson, my NPC of choice, has a SMLE (Holland & Holland made Sniper varient) named "Anne", and a Mauser KAR-96K named "Glenda" that he hunts with.

He may hunt big game, but sometimes the Elephant Rifle is a touch too much.

And sometimes, just sometimes, you need to do that very same Mad Minute!

Seems to me that it all depends on the game you're playing. Not all of us go for Matrix-ridiculous. There's also the idea of subtlety, a game most runners don't seem to understand. While the usual gangbusters are shooting the front door in with a Panther assault cannon to grab a data package, some of us like to play in other styles... perhaps espionage, street level gang wars, etc. etc.

Where legality is heavily enforced and chaos isn't the norm, it also makes sense.... of course, these same groups don't normally face off against .1 essence razorkids or anything, either, and flechette rounds make sense because we're not all invading the corporate barracks so much as avoiding violent hobos and the stereotypical clown gang downtown.

Its not always about purely statitistical advantage so much as how the setting and the game run. The meta-game inherent to Shadowrun bores me to death, so I rarely use it unless I'm forced to do so. Just been around it too long, and I get sick of all the trenchcoat mafia runners bristling with enough weapons to alternately hang blinking neon signs off of themselves.

A sporting rifle fits in well in less grandiose stories, and for stories that involve a baser element of the genre. Military grade gear all over the place is just silly, and often takes the game into shopping trips that are maddening. A few stories above about such things, with the nice story about the gentleman hunter being nicely typical. I don't know what kind of runner team brings a pile of illegal weapons into the airport or whatever, or takes legitimate transportation for that matter, but it illustrates the idea of simplicity and planning ahead pretty well.

...just the nonsensical ramblings of an old man.

My group went on a Suborbital flight from Sea-Tac to LAX. One had a legal SIN, and legal guns attached to his SIN.

Aside from flying without luggage, they wouldn't have blinked twice at that, aside from demanding that he put his guns in a lockbox (Which they did.). The lack of luggage part got him "Randomly" selected for questioning, and a full-body cavity search from Bertha the Troll.

As for Military-Grade Gear, I can see Pistols, Machine Pistols, SMGs, and mass-produced, old Assault Rifles (Such as AK-97s) being common to gangs. They are today, in "Peaceful" Canada no less, and we're nowhere near as bad as Shadowrun is. (I got to see a bunch that were turned over to the local armoury in Northern Ontario. I'd hate to see what the cops collect in as violent a place as Winnipeg where I currently live!).

We're talking older, mass-produced items here. Uzi-IIIs and Ceska Black Skorpions for Drive-Bys, and AK-97s for base defence! Lower-end gangers are happy to have a pistol of some sort, even if it's just a Streetline Special churned out by a Microlathe somewhere in the Barrens! And none of these would be in good condition either. It takes training and disipline to maintain weapons properly, even something as simple as an AK.

Gangers with Ares Alphas are right out. Or any of the other new toys out there. Colt Goverment 2066s? HA! Colt Goverment 1911A1s is more like it!

MAYBE Philipean Knockoffs of Chinese Knockoffs of Russian RPG-7s in VERY limited numbers in BIG gangs, for those special occasions. ("Alright Spikes! Today we're knocking over a tractor-trailer full of BTLs and other drugs Lone Star is sending off to be destroyed!").

Sniper Rifles with gangers, hell no. But, get a semi-decent SIN, and you could easily get a Sporting Rifle of some type for "Hunting" at Wang's Huge Gun. With the Bi-Pod and Scope!

Of course, that could cut into the gang's food, and, more importantly, beer and chips money!

From a simple rules perspective many people here have stated many very good points, so I’ll refrain from repeating those.

From a RL and atmosphere perspective, though there are a few things that have yet to be discussed:

The thing with a great many military weapons is that they favour price and a very basic functionality over real quality. They are designed and manufactured with the thought in mind that your average soldier isn’t going to be exceptionally skilled, so fine-tuning his or her weapons is going to be a waste of time. Those same weapons will be churned out in huge numbers, and so has to be quite cheap, and they’ll take a great many knocks and some rough treatments and so have to be quite sturdy.

What some might call an old fashioned rifle (the Mauser, the good ole’ Danish Kragh, and a great many others) were more designed for precision and had greater expectations of the users skill, simply because they had to: you can’t put down a lead curtain and every single shot has to count for more.

This same idea is applied to today’s manufactured sporting rifles (as well as other guns). There is a long tradition, particularly in certain provinces in Germany, for making combination guns, two side-by-sides shotgun barrels and a rifle barrel mounted between them. Needless to say the sights in the rifle barrel were exquisite, and you only have one shot with it before you have to reload, but if you use a gun like this, you should be confident that that is all you need.

The Shadowrun rules makes little or no concession to these facts I think. The range of sports rifles and sniper rifles are better, but I'd personally like to see some effect from the better sights, barrel stability and general quality that you get with these weapons.

I have to disagree a bit. Outside of the old SovBloc, most weapons are as good, if not better based upon a shorter stock barrel, than their WWII counterparts. A US marine of any type currently has to qualify with their M16 at 500m with iron sights, as an example. The old SMLE had Royal Marine Commandos firing 10 accurate shots per minute minimum, and most could do better, at 800m with iron sights. The idea that these "production weapons made assuming that your average grunt is a putz" simply doesn't jive with the really of the excellent standards maintained by most weapons manufactured under current industrial methods and modern computer-driven machinery. Yeah, the AK is kind of butt except for rice farmers but the Finnish version of this weapon is excellent in both accuracy and reliability because it was made with higher standards of quality and much better machinery.

Besides, a lot of the issues with SovBloc and other low-standard weapons are because of thier crappy ammo as much as the weapon itself. All those bubbles in the lead, low-quality propellants, and other imperfections added to barely-trained troops just makes an already "Eh! *shrug*" weapon look even worse.

Right, the quality of the weapon and it's use depend on the nation's outlook. The AK-47 was designed, accroding to no less source than Kalishnakov himself, to barely hold togewther. the idea was a lot of motion for troops in a dirty environment oR who were not skilled to maintain their weapon, so the AK-47 and all it's children are designed for reliable over power and accuracy and this can be seen to this day in the spray and pray . By comparrison for the last century or so the US military has prided itself on marksmenship. Modern Afghan's have been shocked by the 'one shot one kill doctrine' In Vietnam early m-16's jambed badly when not givern amazing amounts of care.

From personal expeirence. I've have both types of weapons. The Mataba 6 was the most amazingly accurate hand gun I've ever fired. but it was so damn finky that it wasn't worth the grief. After mabe a box of ammo (50 bullets) it was starting to jamb.


For runs i prefer subtly. not having to pull a trigger makes the best runs, but if the hammer goes down, you need to know what you're doing to get out.

The way I see it one compelling argument for why the SR firearms rules would be better if they were more "realistic" is because I feel you could get a lot more character depth and development out of gun choice if real world firearms like the ones discussed in this thread could be represented. If everyone's running around with a Colt Commando but your character is using a M14 like that guy in Black Hawk Down, there's a real characterization right there.

It just occurred to me that if "sport rifles", "assault rifles", and "sniper rifles" are all considered totally different and irreconcilable categories by the game system, it would be tough to re-create Golgo 13's custom M16 which he uses for sniping. Since that weapon would seem to be equally described by all those categories.

When it comes down to it, it's always "The Right Tool For The Right Job".

And, as I've heard one veteran put it, "The best weapon in the world is the one you put your hand on when it all falls into the crapper.".

The main thing that I see Shadowrunners doing is that they're going to have their weapons of choice custom modified to meet their own personal needs. They have the time to do it, after all. When working one week a month pays the bills, gotta fill up the rest of the time somehow. They start out with what they want, then work at making as perfect FOR THEM as possible.

Very few weapons of any type shoot well "Right out of the box" after all.