The only woman in a class I've been in was my Gunsite 250. And she was the Gunsite marketing director taking her yearly free class, so she had a pretty good grasp on the fundamentals....

We had 2 girls on our high school trap team. Loved trap shooting...it didn't hurt that they were hot either.

They were naturals going from first time shooters to being really excellent. If I remember one of them actually got a 100 patch, breaking 100 blue rock in a row, the only members to do better than 50 in a row.

As a general reply, I really want to thank y'all for everything in this thread; it has really helped me nail down aspects of my first-ever SR character backstory.
Of course, being a newbie, I declare that 'Allo is ex-mil, a former Stryker-type driver who had his ride blown out from under him.' I wanted to explain his chrome (the limbs and eyes were gone anyway), why he has some rigging skills/interests, and part of why he feels most comfortable when wrapped up in some form of armor.

After reading many of the posts, I feel much better about his firearms and pilot skills being about 2 across the board; he also wasn't that experienced when his unit (which was in a megacorp force) was hit. Still, I'll be adding a few mannerisms regarding neatness and preparedness, due to his few years of military service.

One of the things I was always curious about Corporate Military and Lone Star types was how they got around the evils of Ritual Magic. Now, I cannot be sure about the Militaries, but in the old Lone Star book (SR2?) it heavily hinted that all Lone Star personnel have a sample of hair/blood/whatever taken upon joining the force that they store in magical boxes that stop them deteriorating (I like to call it a fridge...). This is put in place to stop any Cops going AWOL. I imagine that the Military would use a similar system (“Son, if you ever get yourself captured by the enemy, wouldn't you rather have our Mages be able to track you down? Yeah, thought so. Now hold your arm out straight, this wont hurt a bit...�). I can also imagine that most Corps would keep this information even after the Soldier/Cop leaves the force. How would anyone go about getting around this little annoyance? I ask mainly because in my weekly game I want to have a LoneStar Sniper go bad, starts popping Humanis members, and I would quite like a better excuse than just hand waving it away.

First thing before advancing your Career Choice of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LAW would be to have such things swapped out with maybe a sample of some rabid dog that runs around in the city.
Or rewriting the Database-Entry so whoever looks for your Name comes across the Sample of someone who got in your way once or twice. If you can't do it yourself, have someone else do it.
If it's good work, it will be close to impossible to undo those changes. Believe me, they won't go through thousands of ritual samples to compare it with gene-tests to see which one is yours.
And even if they do, that will take months or even years. Probability of making other ritual samples useless in the process would be high too i guess.
Else there's allways things like Murky Link and Astral Chameleon or something like that. And wasn't there that one Gene-Ware-Treatment that means no matter what, your Body matter dies in a matter of minutes if removed from your body and thus becomes worthless for gene-tests and such stuff? Does that work on ritual samples too?

I would imagine that as part of the contractual agreement, and the severance package, you request those items be returned to you; It would be sort of a formal acknowledgement of your separation from the organization. If they were categorically UNWILLING to release those materials to you, then a) you're really not retired and b) that's pretty ominous, don'ty'u think? Now, for people who knew SERIOUSLY secret stuff, they might have permanent storage in the original contractual agreement, but then most of THOSE kind of people aren't allowed to quit voluntarily anyhow. That's MY take on it at any rate. But the DIGITAL version of that patern would be kept since data's free, so you're full file would obviously be available to them (read: Negative Quality "Records On File").


Epithelial and blood cells (Which are dead anyway), but things like bone marrow would be exempt for example. Painful to extract but... as an author I like quite a bit described, the assasin pulls out a plunger and stabs it into the fresh corpse's temple then extracts a sample of gray matter and as the reader pings green they look at their fellow assasin and say "The brain never lies." Just food for thought.

Reality and fluff might agree, but the rules, as they do so often, disagree i am afraid.
If it says in the description/rules that your bodyly matter becomes useless for such things, then that's the way it is in game in effect.
Else i am ready to agree with you, as my own medical knowledge is close to non existant i guess. I'm more concerned with stuff like:"where do i have to hit him to make him hurt like hell?"

And this is why it's best not to bring too much reality into any RPG Thank you for stating this much more succinctly than I was about to attempt.

The way they describe the Star keeping the samples fresh is with Mystical Mojo, so I imagine that it might supress things such as gene-treatments? Plus who the hell gets a gene-treatment that costs 45K and has an availability of 16F before they join the Military!? And why the hell would the Military then accept you when you have an obviously highly illegal Gene treatment in you?

Genewipe: This treatment is a major genetherapeutic procedure
that inserts a tag into the body’s neurotransmitters that triggers
accelerated cell death whenever these cease to receive regular neurochemical
signals from the body—causing epithelial cells and hair
to decompose more rapidly when they are removed from the body.
As a consequence, biological trace evidence left by characters with
this treatment irrevocably deteriorates after five minutes (rendering
it useless for genetic profiling or ritual samples).

I guess it depends on how you define Trace Evidence. Examples of typical trace evidence in criminal cases include fingerprints, hairs, cosmetics, plant fibers, mineral fibers, synthetic fibers, glass, paint chips, soils, botanical materials, gunshot residue, explosives residue, and volatile hydrocarbons (arson evidence) says Google. I would not consider things like Bone Marrow Trace Evidence, would you?

I agree that some of the Corps might say they would give you your samples back when you leave, but honestly when do the Corps ever tell the truth to the plebs? Especially a certain Corp whose name rhymes with Cosmetology. And plus the Corps basically make their own laws, whats to stop them from putting in a little clause that no-one knows about that renders certain contract points void?

Scientology? or what do you mean? @.@
*shrugs* i can't find the treatment i am talking about due to being unable to find my books . . if i lost them in that last crash i am going to be cursing the whole way to the shop to get hardcopy analogus text-files <.< . .

Also, on one of the german boards i am frequenting someone asked on input on what kind of ware would be befitting of an ex military/paratrooper kind of character.
I suggested some stoff for the tendons and ligaments, maybe some muscle stuff and bone strenghtening to take the brunt of the landing from the body, especially the joints.
Enhanced or smart artwinculation, bone lace and/or bone density, muscle replacement or biomuscles . .

Ewww, Hardcopies.

Edited my post.

At least Hardcopy does not go bye bye when your HDD does so <.< . . and i can hit people with them!
Why would you not? How many people do actively join some kind of military to get away from something?
Specifically things like the Foreign Legion and ESPECIALLY things like Mercenary-Units who need people that can not be connected to something by such things.

Depends on the unit... There have always been special units for dirty work, willing to accept anybody. Actually, that could make a pretty good story: you're not a former soldier who turned to the shadows, you're a runner who had to disappear in the army for some time

Yeah, but dont those units generally have such things installed *after* initial training/hiring. You know, *after* they have taken that nice little DNA sample off you

Neat thread, here's my take.

Maybe I'm spoiled being both former military and playing with people who are either former military themselves or grew up around a military base I've never had a problem with people getting the military mentality wrong. Nor have I ever had anyone who wanted their former military char to not give military tells or mannerisms. I've had several that became very anti-military in their demeanor post military life (made a point of never ironing anything, trashed their pad at every opportunity etc) but I've known real life former military like that. Personally I will never make a bed again ever. But on the balance most of the things worth taking out of the military that didn't change who I was or what I was I kept. I kept my sense of team work, I kept my discipline, I kept my desire to do a job that actually matters and to help people.

So in other words, I would never require, or berate someone who didn't play my idealized military character, nor would I require someone to be former military in order to justify a high weapons skill, it's a game after all and by their very nature Shadowrunners are exceptional people.

As to militaries taking ritual materials. For the rest of my life I will likely have my DNA, finger prints, photo, and other biometic stats and helpdesk ina military database or file cabinet somewhere. That doesn't help them get me, additionally just because someone worked on something classified doesn't mean you keep them locked up forever you get into a never ending cycle of people you can't let out, and then you've got conscripts who have to be watched. it's just more effiicient to let them go and make horrible examples of them shjould somethign go down.

For former military characters I highly recommend some variation of sinner and records on file. But to each their own.

IIRC, you don't need that to do ritual attacks. You could do it with a fingerprint card and a picture, if the mages are good enough. Ritual magic is essentially the equivalent of a magical nuke. But it takes a significant amount of time of some very specialized magicians to effectively carry out a ritual attack. So don't do shit that would makes someone say, "hey, why it's Mr. ExCop who is fucking us over. Why don't we spend a few hundred thousand nuyen and a week of the time of our ten level 5 adepts to wax Mr. ExCop." Because if you do you are dead. You suddenly burst into flame and collapse as a heap of smoldering charcoal briquettes.

AWOL is just one way (out of many) to exit a company/corporation/army...

"Why are you running the Shadows?" is question 1 of my top 10 questions I make my players fill out about their character. Why would I have a ten question 'exam' to allow people to play in my campaign? Two reasons: It makes them think seriously about their characters beyond the stats on a sheet causing them to give more depth in their role playing and it tells me more about the background/motivations of their characters.

If they are going to demand me to GM a damn fine Shadowrun game for them, then they are going to play it well too.

All my ex-military characters in my campaign are not standard jocks with guns. Each one has legitimate reasons for being out and each one has had to make major adjustments in coming from the chain of command orderly structure of the military to the chaos and lawlessness of the streets of [fill in your favorite urban war zone here].