Hi guys its my first time around so go easy on me.

I am looking for a site or pdf/doc that gives me guidelines to convert weapons from the 20th century like the venerable AK-47 to SR4 stats.

The reason is that iam going to use the SR system for a campaign and that part is a little tricky.

Anyone can help?

There used to be a site that did that for firearms in SR3 and earlier editions, but it's pretty much dead as far as I know. Yeah, just tried to Google it and it's not even loading. You may have more luck with it if you keep trying, I don't know. It's Raygun's Shadowrun and Firearms site. Other than that, I don't think anyone's gone through the effort, let alone for SR4.

Thanks for the help.

The problem is that I am going to GM a X-COM campaign setting in 2025 and I wished to use weapons from today for the campaign and I dont have a clue how to convert weapons from today for the SR4 system.

Most of the weapons are pretty much 20th century already, with the exception of smartlinks and other accessories. If you check out the weapon listings, you'll notice that the stats don't change much within a category, with a few exceptions. You should be able to substitute the real-world weapons for something in the appropriate catagory (e.g. Okay, that looks like a light pistol, so we'll use standard light pistol stats...), if the equivalent isn't already obvious (Use AK-97 stats for the AK-47, use the Ruger Super Warhawk stats for a Ruger Super Hawk, etc.)

Hmm ok but correct me if I am wrong but the SR system (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc) dont see to use a logic progression for their weapons.

I mean there are several light pistols and different damage ratings and no way (at least for me) to define what a 9mm bereta and a 7.65 pistol (both light pistols) would have for damage rate.

Most weapons capacity are measured by the ammo type they use, 9mm, .38 and etc and the system dont cover that level of detail.

Shadowrun has never had accurate rooms for, well, just about anything really. It's an abstract system that has certain names applied to certain rules to add flavor to them, but in the end they're designed for gameplay reasons rather than real-world accuracy. Guns are one such example. Toxins and drugs are another very notable one.

Don't get tied up on realism with them. Tweak them a little if you absolutely must, but just because a pistol is called an FN 5-7, it's not actually stats for an FN 5-7. It could have just as easily been called a Wuxing ABC123 instead. It's just a title for the associated rules and adds color to the game. As long as they're not completely shattering your suspension of disbelief (such as calling an assault laser cannon an FN 5-7), just kind of shrug and accept it for what it is.

Use Rayguns site if it is still up, I cant get on it for some reason. Before it went down I did manage to get all the stuff onto a PDF. There is a guy here that has Rayguns site on a PDF, cant remember his SN for the life of me. Will drop a response here again once I figure it out.

Ok but that really dont help me much

I really just dont wish to level all the weapons the way I see the SR4 system does. I think that diferent light pistols with diferent damage rates would be more accurate for a X-COM game.

Best to look at what Raygun did as there are plenty of short barrel .45ACP hardguns out there and SR never been good about thinking about weapons like that, or even the heavy assault rifles like the AR-10, SR-25 Carbine and HK417 7.62mm NATO rifles. He pretty much did all the work one could think off and then some, and you would have to throw in a little more rules to allow the use of side mounted accessories like IR markers, laser sights and HID weapon lights. and here is the link to 10Gauges little PDF, now if your going to use SR4 the site is also useful as he has all the calibers in tables and set to SR3 damage, and with that you can refer to SR4 BBB or whatever revision on how that would pan out.

PDF of Shadowrun and Firearms

What happens is the the PCs, not being dumb, will look at the data you give them and ignore everything but the best guns. So I'd suggest not spending too much time on making a range of guns when the players won't even finish reading the description.

In my NSHO the biggest flaw of SR guns is that they make pistols far too good. There is a huge difference between the damage that a pistol does and carbine or rifle does. And if I remember right the rifles and heavy weapons are far more damaging in X-COM than pistols.

Shadowrun uses a very granular damage scale for firearms. Any change in the damage stat represents a huge change in the actual power of the firearm.

For example, a 5.56mm rifle has roughly 2.5 times the energy of a .45ACP handgun, but is only one point higher in damage.

This means that even though a 9mm handgun is noticeably more powerful than a 7.65mm handgun, both fall in the "4P" box.

And that is the type of problem I am trying to avoid.

Although generally speaking the X-COM organization would have a already selected pistol and rifle type for their troops, I intent to make the PCs to sometimes had to work with whatever weapons are available in the moment, like when they crash with the transport and have to switch to other weapons they encounter on the way just to survive. That is why I wish to classify in SR4 system other types of weapons with different DVs even tough they are the same for game rules.

That's all very well, but you are using the wrong set of mechanics to run the game,

Essentially the issue is that characters have an about 10 pts of stun and physical damage. Since armor, on average, stops damage only equal to 1/3rd and body only 1/3rd you get a rather narrow range where weapons fit.

Since, by definition, a successful attack has net success that increase damage and well designed characters can often reliably get 4-5 base hits vs a reliable 2 by the defender that means the average defender can soak 3-4 damage max and that the average attacker is going to do DV+2.

This means that if the DV is greater than 8 it will drop most characters with one hit. DV of 4+ the second hit will, on average, drop most characters. A DV of 1 means it is often fully soaked by an average character. A DV of 2 means you'll need many hits to stop someone (which is the range where I think pistols should live).

With autofire it gets a lot more lethal if the shooter knows how to soak the recoil. Narrow long bursts have a +5 DV, so if the recoil is soaked an average attack will do on the order of base DV +7.

If you know what the average body and armor you plan on the PCs and threats to have you can do this yourself, but you'll end up with a range of about 6 points from DV2 light weapons that can kill you with multiple hits to DV8 heavy weapons that will often kill with one hit.

If you try to fit 3 different flavors of pistol in there there isn't much space for a few flavors of rifles or light/medium/heavy machine guns.

The only way you can do this is to drastically re-write the Shadowrun game mechanics.

Lets say you double DVs to give yourself more space to work. A standard light pistol now does 8P, Heavy pistol 10P, Assault rifle 12P. Now a 7.65mm can be 7P, a 9mm can be 8P, and a .40 can be 9P.

But now you have to adjust the body stat, armor stats and resistance tests and wound tracks

Which makes you adjust build points.

Which makes you adjust the other stats.

Which makes you adjust skills & skill tests.

Since you have essentially made a new system from scratch by this point, Why not just find an existing system that already has that level of detail?

(One comes to mind, but it might be rude to plug one game on the mostly-official website of another.)