Hey all...

Let me lay out some background info. I just moved, found a new gaming group and the group fell apart.
It's currently being put back together, but it's quite a bit smaller than it was and other options have arisen.

1 of these is Shadowrun 4th edition
Up until now, the group has played 4th ed AD&D. MY old group and I played a bunch of different systems and some of the other players have played other systems.

One of the guys got his hands on the SR4 core rule book. None of us have ever played SR, let alone SR4.
Myself and another player have played other systems, the GM has played White Wolf and AD&D, the other players have never played anythig.
So it was an interesting session the other night.

We're using the pregenerated templates in the book to start and then we'll create characters when we're comfortable with the system.

Right now we only have the core book.
Looking through it, I can puzzle most of it out and having read a bunch of the SR novels, I have a decent grasp of the environment.
I chose the Comabt Mage character, he looked interesting. Looking him over, I have a couple of questions about his equipment.
1st, WTF are Mage Sight Goggles used for? Mages can only cast LOS spells using natural vision, so what advantage do the goggles have? They were pretty expensive, so I'm assuming they grant some sort of advantage.

2nd, If the Yamaha pistol is a muzzleloader, how do I have clips for it and is it only a 4 round clip giving me one burst or is it a 10 round clip giving me 10 bursts of 4 shots each?

Also, any books we should look into picking up?
One guy looked and is interested in Street Magic and the Arsenal book

For the love of all that is holy, forget that the pre-gen characters even exist, they are steaming piles of shit that didn't even follow the book's own rules the last time that I checked.

However with that aside, Fourth Edition is a fairly solid rule set provided you are willing to stick with much lower dicepools then Dumpshocker would lead you to believe, once dicepools start creeping up the game begins to break and turns into bad anime/superhero crap. I personally reconmend average Dicepools of 6-10 before equipment (And go easy on the equipment.) as it will encourage more realistic play and make sure that tactics will win the day.

Mage sight goggles use fiber optics to allow you to see (and cast) around corners. At a small penalty, of course.


The (m) on the ammo for the Yamaha Pulsar means magazine, not muzzle-loader. There are no muzzle-loaders in the base book. It's a 4-round internal magazine; and the SA stands for Semi-Automatic, meaning you can't fire bursts. It's a taser, though, so bursts wouldn't be that effective, anyway.


Arsenal is probably the best to pick up. However, don't pick up *any* of the advanced books until you've got a firm grasp of the base book rules and equipment. You'll save yourself a lot of headaches that way. Once you've got your feet wet, then you should start with Arsenal, and then pick up the books pertinent to your character types (SM for mages, Unwired for deckers, and so on). Do *NOT* pick up Runner's Companion until you've got the hang of all the other books first.


I agree with Ravor. Check out the Sample Character Thread that we made, the characters are much better developed.

LOL..
The fact that they are pre generated leads me to believe that they are extremely basic views of what you can do. They are made "crippled" to encourage new players to read through the rules and familiarize themselves so they can do a better job generating a charcter.

I haven't looked through Dummpshock, I went straight to the forums to ask someone.

I also found some neat tools to help us out.

So what's up with the equipment and which books should we look for next?

That's what I was hoping for, but I got confused when I read that only natural vision could be used in regards to LOS. Is it because the light is traveling through fiberoptics and not transmitted through a camera?

And if that is the case, would I be able to use a mirror to do the same thing?

You can look at some reasonable (lower) powered characters here.

The mage sight goggles use fiber optic cables so that the mage can cast spells while looking trough them. The cable is 2? meters long, so you can do stuff like stick it around corners, under doors, through vents, etc and then blast the people on the other side.

The fubuki is roughly based on this technology. It has 4 barrels, each barrel holds 10 rounds, giving you a total of 40 shots before you need to reload. Bursts are regular 3 round bursts with all 3 rounds coming out of the same barrel. In theory, you should have to replace the whole barrel of 10 rounds at the time; they would come pre-loaded from the factory. Of course, the SR4 developers didn't read how metalstorm works too closely, so didn't give exact guidance here.

Ahh...

Much Better. Thanks.

Since we've started with the chars from the book, we may not want/be able to switch.

And another question popped into my head.
I haven't had enough time to read through the book thoroughly.
I've played Cyberpunk, they had a medic and cybertech skill.
What are the SR equivilants?

First aid, medicine, and cybertechnology skills are probably what you are asking about. Take a look at the skill list on, erm, page 111 I think.

Ignore what Cain said about this as he seems to think you're talking about the Yamaha Pulsar, a taser.
The Yamaha Sakura Fubuki is a muzzle loader with four barrels that hold 10 round each.
It uses the standard burst-fire number of three rounds, but only narrow bursts (the DV increasing ones) and treats the recoil as if it were fired on semi-automatic (0 recoil for the first shot in a pass, 1 for the second). The only exceptions to the rules in the core book for number of rounds for automatic fire in the game are in Arsenal.

Arsenal would be my choice of the first book to add to your library as well.

About these guys trashing the pre-made characters, most of them are quite playable, particularly the combat oriented ones. People here seem to think (Warning: Hyperbole Ahead) that unless you can throw 15+ dice at a test you might as well not even bother. Some are better than others, with the worst being the Smuggler and the Technomancer (which a noob probably shouldn't be messing with anyway, IMHO). They will work fine for helping a bunch of noobs learn the system, though.

Finally, welcome to Dumpshock. Hope you've got thick skin.

Actually, Xd12c was pretty spot on when he said they were very basic character builds. In every edition of Shadowrun, that has been the case - you have always been able to make significantly better characters than the archetypes by building them from scratch.

Some of them, the Combat Mage among them, are actually fairly playable (although it also illustrates how common errors are for such characters, in this case listing clips for a muzzle-loading gun).

Others, though, are pretty botched, such as the Bounty Hunter and the Weapons Specialist.

And they aren't just bad from the "You need 15+ dice" end. They are bad in the sense of lacking essential gear (many of them don't have even a basic DocWagon contract, or any fake ID), or not being any good at their stated roles (the Bounty Hunter is not only bad at hitting anyone above grunt level, but is also bad at finding people, which is his main function).

There. Finally found the thread with the improved archetypes: here

Excellent, thanks for the help.

Though I am still confused on my ammo.
How should I be translating the Clips? 20 10rd barrels? Or 20 sets of 40 shots each?

Careful discussing clips. Our friendly neighbourhood gun enthusiasts might go off on one about clips =/= box magazines or something!

Without going into too much detail about gun mechanics or the devs interpretation thereof, my understanding of the Fubuki is that the barrels are mounted one above the other, and sequential shots come from different barrels. Thus after firing 6 shots, two barrels will be depleted from 10 to 8, while the two others will hold 9. Reloading the thing before completely emptying it will lead to some wastage, which cannot be ameliorated by only refilling one barrel. Look forward to much book keeping with that gun, or apply a more cinematic mechanic.

Ammo is priced for every ten rounds (bullets or equivalent, not intervals of time), so it isn't too hard to work out how much has been spent and see if this is enough for 200 rounds, or 800. However, unless the fit seriously hits the shan you're not going to get through even 200 rounds before you decide you want to start again with your own characters.

Also remember that at least one of them has a piece of cyberware bundled into his eyeware that simply is not allowed to be implanted that way in Fourth Edition.

Ok First up Welcome to Dumpshock and more importantly to Shadowrun hope you like the game.

Second up just to let you know I am part of the offical Catalyst Demo Team in so much as I hold a title of Shadowrun Special Agent going here Find games and signing up you can find me listed as Casazil Shadowrun Special Agent # 251.

Once you sign up there you will get e-mails for when i'm running games and where coming up this weekend Nov. 1st I'll be at Sci-fi City and next weekend I'll running some games at Florida Fall Fantasty I'll be running on Firday at 7 pm and all day Saturday from 9 am till around 11 pm.

Your welcome to join me at either or both events and I will do what I can to help you learn the game.

Questions may be asked here as people here know alot about the rules (heck I ask questions here heh) or you can feel free to e-mail me at Casazil.

Hope I can be of help.

Thanks!
I will shoot you an email later...

I don't know if I'll be able to make the events, but I'll definitely check it out.

Ya know, it's funny you should mention that. To my knowledge a "clip" is just a strip of metal holding ammo that is usually fed into the weapon through the breech, on the other hand a detachable box magazine or "mag" is actually an enclosed feed mechanism that attaches to the weapon. But hey, far be it for me to pick nits, oh wait, that's right I'm in training to be a gunsmith, so , on this subject it's kinda mandatory.

Clip: http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/Mosin_clip.jpg

Magazine: http://www.tactical-life.com/online/wp-con...8/05/glockk.gif

I'm impressed that you've managed to keep from spitting blood over the misuse of the term clip!

I wonder where the confusion of the two terms first came from... I remember the A-Team referring to magazines as clips when I was growing up, but that can't be the first example the good folks of Dumpshock can think of.

I think it is just a case that the two terms are close enough that in most cases everyone knows what you really mean.

More to the point, I can't imagine a situation where confusing the two terms could possibly mean anything.

Only if you're actually taking a test on it. Mostly, I just like the way people cringe when someone says something about it. I'm not trying to be combative or anything, in fact I usually try to be helpful, but, I still have to amuse myself. That tends to be hard to do when no one is in range.

M1A1s used clips, then, right? And a glock or AK uses a magazine?
If that's the case, what the hell do you call the grouping of ammo for the fubuki?
It WOULD classify as a clip, it's just a barrel that's preloaded
I'm not sure there would be a feed mechanism...

1. Yes. Though keep in mind that some old battle rifles that took stripper clips also had detachable box magazines, like the Enfield.
2. You know, I'm not real sure. I wouldn't classify it as a clip, because a stripper clip is just folded sheet metal.... well hold up, I just quick searched yahoo, kinda, I just visually scanned the search results.... They kept referring to them as preloaded barrels.
3. By feed mechanism I meant the spring constantly feeding the rounds up to be stripped from the magazine.

Ok Tachi, I know nothing about guns and I'm curious, if a clip is just a strp of metal with some rounds how said rounds get loaded into the firing mechanism?

I'm not an expert, but if I'm right the clip goes into a guide?
The lever is pulled back, cocking the gun
The trigger is pulled and the lever is pulled back again
When the lever is pulled back again, it advances the clip and loads another round
and cocks the gun for another shot.

Like I said, I'm no expert, but I think that's how it works.

Then you get into semi and fully automatic weapons which usually work on some sort of blowback method
The exhaust gasses from the firing of the round recocks the gun and you need a magazine with a feed mechanism
to load the next round in.


How'd I do?

Looks good to me, Xd12c. There's also the clip used to load internal magazines. Rather than loading a single round at a time, you can use the clip to press several rounds in together. The clip itself usually stays outside the gun, guiding the bullets in and then being discarded. Watch Enemy at the Gates for a good, clear look at how this works.

[Link to movie clip]

I don't think there are any weapons in SR4 that use honest to god clips, though I could see a player constructing one for a muzzle or internal magazine weapon(though the gun might also have to be modified to accept them).

The Yamaha Sakura Fubuki is a muzzle loader which means it's very slow to reload during combat, but it holds 40 bullets so that's rarely a problem unless you use the burst fire a lot(assuming it fire from different barrels you'll clear out three barrels in 10 bursts).

Careful with your terminology here, there are several weapons that can be referred to as an 'M1'

There is the M1 Garand rifle which was fed with a rather unusual system called an 'en-bloc' clip, which is loaded into the rifles internal magazine.

There is the M1 Carbine (and M1A1 and M2) which are all fed with detachable box magazines.

and there is the M1A basically a civilian copy of the M14, also fed with detachable box magazines.
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'magazine' just refers to a place where ready ammunition is stored. So, to be exact, most firearms have magazines; To be fully pedantic, what is usually called a magazine would be more exactly be referred to as a 'detachable box magazine'. The magazine is not fixed to the weapon (like on the SKS rifle, which has a fixed box magazine) and it is box shaped, as opposed to, for example, the m870 shotgun which has a fixed tubular magazine.

Other magazine samples are the drum magazines found on some sub-machine guns, the helical magazines found on the Calico family of weapons.

---------

The metalstorm weapon have no feed mechanism, as there is no need to feed the next round into the barrel. The next round is already in the barrel.

Ha. Two for one answer.

Not bad, except that "clips" are stripper clips, you're thinking magazine still, unless you are referring to the few guns that keep the clip and eject it with the last round, though, I think you just referred to the bolt as a lever. Stripper clips are usually stamped sheet metal with the edges bent inward to hold the shell's rim, or, like that weird assed en bloc clip. You pull the bolt all the way back, load the stripper clip into the guide (on top of the breech in most bolt action rifles), then you push the rounds down through the breech into the internal mag. You then remove the clip, cuz there's no rounds in it any more, they are all now in the gun's internal magazine or it's detachable box mag. The Stoner AR variant rifles used clips to, though they just used them to speed load detachable magazines.

Two posts are now one, and who says I don't know magic.

Maybe I am reading this wrong:
Ammo: Refers to the amount of ammunition
a ranged weapon can hold, followed by the
method of reloading in parentheses: (b) means
break action, © means clip, (d) means drum,
(ml) means muzzle-loader, (m) means internal
magazine, (cy) means cylinder, and (belt)
means belt feed.

I thought in game terms a clip was an external/detachable magazine, like a magazine that dropped out the bottom of a pistol or rifle, whereas a magazine was an internal version where ammunition is loaded directly into the firearm (like, say, a pump shotgun with a tube feed).

You have it right as far as Shadowrun game terms. The recent discussion has been about the real life terminology of those components.

Yeah, we went from books, mage goggles, and a futuristic pistol to real world gunsmithing

Back OT, what does Arsenal cover? Just more equipment or does it contian more (complex) rules?

Both. There are new guns (mostly rehashes with different off-the-shelf features), new vehicles (mostly new functionality with a few grade jumps filled in), new rules (modifications, accessories, more "life in the shadows" mechanics), and new toys (drugs, armor, manatech, sensors).

I might add rules for drugs, explosives, martial arts, advanced combat modifiers and hazardous enviroments?
There's a reason for it being called a Core Book.

I have a question about Technomancers. A really basic one, actually.

Logic is supposed to set a TM's System attribute. The main thing that a System attribute does is set the highest rating that a program can be run at, a limit on how many programs can be run on a node, and how many programs can be run before you experience slowdown (BBB, p. 213)

However, on page 233, it explains that Technomancers are limited in the rating of their Complex Forms by their Resonance, and that Complex Forms can never cause slowdown, no matter how many are being run at once. So what exactly is a Technomancer's System rating for?

The only thing I can really think of is that System also limits the number of nodes, agents, or drones that you can subscribe to at once. So yeah, it seems like it would be the dump stat out of a technomancer's mental attributes.

Actualy system does NOT cap the maximum rating of programs, it response that deos, system rating determines the maximum number of programs that can be used simultaneously without response being reduced by excessive workload (so indirectly affecting the program rating).
Technomancer's complex forms are NOT capped by response but they still suffer the response reduction if they run too many at once.
Also there are certein streams that use logic instead of willpower to resist fading.

Response caps System, System caps program ratings. System is also used to determine the program load response modifier. (SR4 pg. 212)

TM complex forms are caped by resonance (only). They can have all run at once without suffering program load. (SR4 pg. 234)

I might be wrong but seeing how system is not a program but an attribute and how many piece of gear have higher system than response I would say that response does NOT cap system.

So, TM's don't really need Logic (or System, for that matter) very much at all then? Interesting.

Correct, if you are using Rules as Written, Logic does very little for a Technomancer.
The Matrix Rules as Written have multiple problems - especially in regards to Technomancers.

Actually, I'd say this is one of the better things about the Matrix rules; Hackers already can get by without Logic, and TM's are forced to spend vast amounts of points in attributes already just to compete with Hackers. It's almost balanced. Almost.

I wouldn't go that far. Outside of dedicated summoners, there's not much that a SR4 Otaku can do that a decker can't do better.

That's just peripheral nodes, I think.

I stand corrected.
However I still think that it is Response and not System to cap the program rating.

I stand corrected.... AGAIN.

Ohh I DO hate you all guys (girls not)!!!