If you run your game like that sure, but it lacks logic. If a gang will do this to obviously armed people, then anyone who passes through unarmed or seemingly unarmed (looking weak) would be killed even faster; their possessions would be taken and their body parts sold to whoever will pay. Attacking people who are walking around obviously better armed is such a dangerous proposition that anyone who does so on a normal basis will be at a disadvantage to those who let them by. This sort of behavior is fairly well documented in nature, human and other.

As with anything, it depends.

A gang that would have "faced down" a group of assault-rifle armed runners might think twice if the runners were instead passing through with anti-tank cannons and similar weaponry.

If the group you're facing has the capacity to reduce your entire neighborhood to a glowing slag heap in the space of a few minutes, it's probably best to not bother them.

Of course, this is just another case of "don't try to escalate against someone who can escalate far more than you can." only with gangers vs runners instead of runner vs corporations.



-k

To be honest the way weapons work inside the world of Shadowrun I'd pretty much never let my targets see me, if i could avoid it. A gang could pretty easily mess even the most hardened street sam up with just a little planning, and the right kind of ambush. That's-to me-where the knowledge of local terrain and the neighborhood come in handy! But yeah, in my experiences most gangs when they assault somebody are no different than any other militaristic group. Advantage of numbers, surprise, etc..

It's not that they don't ever see anything.

If they're just passing by and like 99% of pedestrians ignore anything that isn't immediately important to them, they might fail that perception check entirely.

If they do pass that perception check, they'll see a long blurred object. This might alarm them, it might not. Most likely they'll note it, think, "Huh, weird", and pass by because it isn't obviously relevant to them so they don't want to get involved.

Note that I'm talking the average pedestrian on the street in a mid to low class area.

Trained security folks are of course going to act differently.



-k

You have to consider in some areas of the barrens, the gangs are the law there. People pay them for protection. So they have to provide it, else they find themselves viewed as weak by the competition and people wonder why they pay the racket money to them if they do nothing to protect them.

After all most SR gangs have access to the same hardware as the runners (or in many cases better gear as needed), they have to maintain face. Usually someone will ask the runners to put it away (not necessarily nicely.. though the Yakuza does tend to be painfully polite) , and it can escalate from there depending on how the runners react.

The first rule is keep it concealed unless ya want bad attention. Even in the worst locations, obvious weaponry usually draws a lot of bad attention to you.

You set yourself up to be seen as a threat, it's only logical to expect the locals to treat you as one and take you out. Law enforcement has rules, the streets are not bound by the check first, shoot later policy. If it's not in gang/outfit colors and packing serious heat, ID it as a possible threat and move assets into place. If verified as a threat or if considered too risky, drop them hard so the next bunch of wanna be runners know better.

Yeah I get what you're saying, and like I said I'm divided. Even my kids know what weapons are. And the oldest is only 11. My wife pretty much abhors weaponry of all sorts (Makes my M4 a slight point of contention as you can imagine...) and she can pretty clearly identify them. No I get you're saying most people aren't looking for them, and that there's a lot going on here to distract someone from even looking, let alone getting a clear look when they do-which may be all the edge you need when moving a weapon through a populated area. (I've always said if you look like you belong, most people just assume you do want to belong.)

Hmm. I don't know. I definitely don't think I'm disagreeing with you, rather just trying to organize my own thoughts on this.

These are excellent points. However much the runners may or may not be more capable on an individual level than the people in those neighborhoods - depending on the runners in question - there are an awful lot of them and not that many runners.


Yeah, I was thinking about this with the SWAT team's response to LMGs: really, if you're outdoors [and why would you be using an LMG indoors?!], you're just going to get a sniper rifle round to the head from a police drone a mile above you, anyway. I'm not sure I have a very good countermeasure to that, beyond not having these sorts of conflicts in the first place.

Incorrect. It banned the receivers... not automatics. Big difference... barrels, bolts, ezw. can all be made new... but if the receiver wears out.

As for the rest... that's your opinion, commerce clause has historically even conservatively been held up to allow regulation of INTERSTATE commerce. (I agree it's a bad law... but don't put up things as fact when they are merely your political POV and against the TOS for this board). Even pre-FDR, the courts held up similar laws that banned the commerce of items across state lines (Interstate... not intrastate). I'm only stating this for Dakka's benefit as he's not US and asked for information, not to start a debate.

um, NFA considers the reciever or anything that can convert a firearm to automatic as a "machine gun", which is what I was referring to; perhaps I should have kept with strict NFA definitions even though they are misleading...

Courts around FDR's era started to reinterpret the constitution, its amendments and how documents even function, because without such the fed would be limited, as intended. The way the constitution is supposed to work things that come later change what went before, this is how the 21st amendment repealed the 18th amendment, it came after; as such whatever is in the body of the constitution is changed by all amendments, meaning if the commerce clause allows regulation of commerce and a later amendment says the gov can't restrict something, then none of the powers, including the commerce clause can be used to restrict whatever that later amendment protects. Otherwise there is no point in amendments. Opinions are not all relative and personal, some are supported by fact and logic. I am putting things up as fact only when they are fact.

Daylen, please read the Terms of Service of the board... it's not that I don't agree with you. This isn't the forum for it. Stick to the UNDISPUTED facts.

To paraphrase an instructor I had years ago "Because nothing on this block is cover against sustained fire from this weapon, not the cinder blocks, not the walls, not the furniture especially not the cars. Once daddy 60 starts the lullaby people find some place else to be."

Now as to the care and feeding of heavy weaponry there are some tricks to get by. The first and best is look like you shouldn't be fragged with, a corporate security unit for a extrateritorial corp has the right of way in most cases and won't look out of place on the streets of Seattle in 2070+. Sure it attracts attention, but it won't go to "instant sniper round to the head" range while your walking, make sure your fake sins and licenses are up to snuff and try not to cook off until you have to.

Frankly while I sympathize with situation where you want stealth and subtlety over caliber or volume the guns wouldn't be in the game if there wern't a time and a place and a use for them and to not have big guns be a viable option just encourages people to play mages who can cook off panther canon equivalent damage while naked and with no concern for ammo.

I think a lot of people's real-world comparisons are overlooking that SR is a world where crazy monsters with magic powers roam around, gangs of undead attack people, and packs of feral dogs can sometimes breathe fire at you. In the real world, walking around with an assault rifle would be really weird and always call attention to you, because why do you need that? In SR, that's not really the case - as evidenced by the fact that ordinary, average citizens can get a license to openly carry assault rifles, just like IRL you can get a license to carry a pistol (in some states).

The distinctions are only two:

Can I hide it?

Is it Restricted or Forbidden?

So the difference between an AK-97 and an Ares Alpha is that the Alpha is Forbidden, so you will in fact get stopped if the police see you with it. The difference between an AK-97 and a pistol, though, is just that the pistol is more easily hidden.

Now, also, ARs in Shadowrun are apparently concealable, albeit with some difficulty. So you can make a character who can hide an assault rifle under their coat, but you can't conceal a machine gun. However, just walking around with a machine gun displayed openly is not worse than just walking around with an Ares Alpha (or some Forbidden pistol) displayed openly (which is not to say it won't get attention, just that it won't get more attention).

And if Mama-Deuce starts singing?

+1 to UmaroVI's post.

Mama Deuce is the Browning M2?

As far as SR3 there is no permit for Assault rifles.

Then lightly armored vehicles find some other place to be. Her song is only nice if you are behind her, from the front...

Yes. One slang term for the Browning M2-HB is "Ma Deuce". Ms. "I will slot you up fifteen ways from Sunday with only a single round, and I fire 550 per minute for as long as my belt lasts for."

In SR4, a good portion of assault rifles are license-able.

Well in rl many are too.

But most do not use them, they are big and hard to carry compared to pistols.

Pistols are still going to be primary arms for many, long guns in general are the things you keep in the trunk/closet for when things hit the fan.

I can see a handful of folks having them, but most will still rely on the old pistol for carry and shotgun/hunting rifle for serious home/vehicle defense tools if needed

Oh, I agree completely. It's just that everyone seems to draw that line on a different section of sand!

If Heavy Weapons Troll has to reload Natascha, shit has hit the fan. But we haven't been in a firefight long enough for that yet, thanks in part to her prodigious rate of fire and also in part to the prodigious running rate of Trolls.

For the real shitstorm fights, I'm building a drone out of a Ballista ML.

Funny enough, I made "Heavy Weapons Troll" for my Shadowrun Demos, and (s)he was very, very popular, even despite not having a Gatling Gun. ("The Panther Assault Cannon, it's a 20mm Cannon that's normally fired from a Bipod or Tripod, but the Troll can carry it around like a Hunting Rifle." "SOLD!").

Realistically an assault cannon (or any MMG/HMG) would've been a better choice than the Vindicator, but it's a Pink Mohawk game and there's just so much to be said for the intimidation/cool factor (and that's before Custom Look).

I think I run nearly the only Missions character that actually has and employs a minigun, even if only occasionally.

He's used it far more often as an intimidation tactic than actually firing it, though. On several occasions the chameleon stealthed Steel Lynx it's mounted on has materialized, the barrels spinning up, followed by Old Man Jones issuing a succinct yet unequivocal bit of advice to the folks it's pointed at: "Don't."




-k

Depends very heavily on location. YMMV, but in my game world (and it would seem, a lot of other folks's) walking around with one in an A-C neigbourhood will get police attention, and even if the paperwork checks out will result in the PC being asked to stow their toy unless they can give a very persuasive reason as to why not.

I think that your reasoning lacks logic.

It's called risk vs reward. If the gang leader decides that the hard-to-get-hold-of F gun of doom would look good on his bike or make a nice trophy to set up at the entrance to their hq, he might be willing to lose a few guys to liberate it from these arseholes strutting around his neigbourhood like they own the place.

The adrenaline kick from taking on real opposition rather than harassing the local homeless guys and pensioners is an added bonus. Unless gangers are bored out of their skulls, tormenting a pensioner strolling their bag of soy-snack groceries home is hardly a challenge, and I doubt they would get any money from the dowdy clothes or could be bothered to cook up the soystuff. As to selling body parts downstream to Tanamous or whatever, YMMV but if that were really so lucrative there would be no homeless or frail pensioners left in the Barrens, and no homeless anywhere.

That depends on where the individual ganger falls on that "crazy to competent" scale of SR gangs.

If the gang itself is transitory and filled left, right, and center with mentally unstable drug addicts "lets all go try and take out the troll sporting the chain gun as a personal sidearm" does sound like a good way to spend a tuesday night. But the sort of gang that would really be a threat to said individual needs co-ordination and tactics things that a more established gang will have but will be more reluctant to try that fight, because said LT will have to lead it personally if he doesn't want the gangers capable of actualyl doing the job to tell him to do something vulgar and physically impossible, which elads to a challenge to his leadership.

Frankly I have a hard time seeing a well organized gang giving a frag what Shadowrunners in their turf are carrying as long as they are able to pay the protection money. They might throw on a "open carry" fee, but money with minimal risk is what gangers are all about. If gangers were less risk adverse or more inclined to sacrifice and ahrd work they'd be Shadowrunners or wageslaves. All of it just sounds like a back end way to limit what the runners can carry in neighborhoods where no one has any real reason to give a frag.

Just my two nuyen.

Well gangs will make it clear to the runners on their turf to keep it subtle if they are locals paying them or what not. Aka put the damn cannon in a box vs walking around looking like a strike team or such and drawing in a lot of heat.

The cops and guard will respond to the barrens when heavy ordnance is deployed, on the grounds it could very well be a strike team being blown by random violence. If you get a report of anti-tank missiles in use or military vehicles, you can bet the guard gets upset too. One they are forbidden items, two they want to make sure what is going on

Why do they want to know?

Winternight, bug city (Ares doesn't always say hey... umm we got a firewatch team with a nuke out in redmond hunting a nest), etc.

Heavy weapons are going to get more than the cops after you, gangers/oc don't want said cops paying a bit more attention in their turf (makes business a bit difficult and that hurts the bottom line), the locals don't like it because they are the ones usually caught in the crossfire.

If a runner team unloads heavy weapons in a populated area without concerns for collateral damage (remember full auto means only a couple more rounds hit the target... many are wild shots, or over penetrators..) expect word to get out and they can find themselves with contacts not returning calls, crash pads being harder to find, etc.

SR is dangerous, but heavy weapons are for when you know the drek is going to hit the fan... and your actions will not cause more harm (preferably outside the city limits... where those stray rounds are not going to kill someone's little girl because you had to have the full auto cannon of doom)



Oh and there is a reason to fire a MG inside... sometimes you don't have a full auto shotgun for clearing the hallway of cyber crazed German Shepherds pumped full of combat drugs.. (when the sec team on site has the hardware pointing inward and are in a panic... odds are you want to just go home)

See i frankly don't get this, in places where the gangs are the law they are going to be the only law otherwise they are unlikely to care as a simpel call to the police takes care of the problem.

Again we come back to this simple problem, restrict everyone to pistols all the time and there's no point in not playing a mage. Explosives are their own bag but gunshots is gunshots in 2070+ Seattle.

It's not a simple call to the cops.

It's the cops coming in to a Z zone with force, or more likely the army. That is heat they don't want to come calling.

We are not talking about a squad car with maybe two officers, we're talking the heavy citymasters with a full squad in each with air and astral support. They may not stay long, but anything that looks at them wrong is going to get shot because it's a z zone and they know they are fair game as well to every street monster out there

Regardless.. there is a reason there are not more mages/shamans. Drain, it's not just poof all fall down.. it's poof, oh crap.. you fall down too and the survivors end you fast.

And just like the troll with the Heavy, the same solutions work there too. All you need is a marksman with long arms 3, a hunting rifle, and a good location.

And that is the key, there is no real point to carrying heavy ordnance unless you absolutely need it... and in which case it's usually better to send word to the feds and let the military drop the hammer on it.

After all your average runner team isn't about to go up against an obsidian scalled great dragon with blue flaming eyes and rune engraved scales now are they? Hell no, they look for the nearest ticket to somewhere else.

And again, the point of a Z zone is the cops don't go there, period, if they were to go there they would go there rolling for bear, but the whole point of a Z zone is they don't care. In a non Z-zone the gangs aren't policing the territory as much as they are protecting their interests hence the call the cops comment.

You seem to want it both ways, in a Z zone you have the gangs replacing the police, i just don't see that.

So once again for the last and final time: The barrens only exists in setting because the rest of the city doesn't care what goes on within, unless it spills out of the barrens the law doesn't bother with it. That is the only sort of environment where gangs could nominally become responsible for providing order and in that environment there is little incentive beyond GM clamp down for the gangs to try and regulate what is carried by people passing through the territory unless they are going to actively try and take it from them.

A ganger saying "Uh you need to put the assault canon away, dems da rules." is pretty much pure GM dickery.

Heavy weapons = powers that be taking notice because that spills out of the barrens rather easily.

When you have groups like winternight and the like out there, you can bet yer hoop word getting around of heavy weapons showing up or heaven forbid used in the barrens things start happening. You wind up with more snoops if just showing up to find out what is going on, if used expect military drones at first and likely based on the activity response so it doesn't spill out into main street.

And the locals don't want either, because the powers that be... don't care if they get splattered while making sure runners with no clue don't cause damage to main street. so they will act in their own best interests.

do you have any reference for your claims?
just asking...

You mean like how the Z zones are described.. they respond to heavy violence in them, if it proves enough of a threat they go in. Otherwise they buff up the patrols/etc along the borders making it harder for organizations to get goods in and out... meaning you throw down in the barrens and you slot off all the OC syndicates and gangs by making their day to day business get harder to do. Something they don't want at all, so yeah they going to make it clear ya want to keep it packed or out of sight because you are screwing with their accounting department if ya bring down heat.

A good read is the old target ucas book, specifically SPDs bit on law and order. Or the older books detailing law enforcement and the like in SR.

Sounds like it would be more of a benefit to gangs to not cause a commotion with someone who is heavily armed, since doing so might, as you say, "bring down the heat".
If they attack the person who is not actively hurting them and a firefight ensues, then Lonestar blocks them off or comes in with heavy stuff, either way it causes problems.
If they DON'T attack the person who is not actively hurting them, a firefight might not ensue, then business goes on as usual.

Which one sounds safer? possibly loosing personnel and business and buildings? or letting the team of runners, with the troll who thinks a Vigorous makes a good sidearm, pass unmolested, but probably watched.

Drop them from range with a sniper, if they don't put it away.

Do you not think that the squatter across the way will not tell his buddy that Joe the troll was walking around with a fragging rocket launcher in broad daylight.. and maybe a snitch gets word to the powers that be that there are some serious heavy firepower groups in there up to something?

And you can bet the law will take notice and beef up security at bit, more checks/drones... etc making life difficult for everyone.

Much like the US reacting to things in mexico... beefing up patrols/watches at the border

Then again that troll getting hit with the sniper rifle may just blink and mutter something about the damn bugs in this place.




-k

Much like the US reacting to things in Mexico? you mean like selling guns to the gangs and doing nothing about the boarder?

If runners can't take care of a squatter sniper without trouble they suck.

Gotta love trolls that can shrug off rockets.

Now I want pages and citations from Mort because chances are I've read all the same books as them and got an entirely different read.

The syndicates and gangs in Z-zones do not operate as a Z-zone police, no matter how much you want to believe that.

And no I don't think squatter will pass on the troll with the assault canon until much much later if at all. Because if you see said troll you likely want to be minding your own business. If you don't live or operate in the zone you don't linger, and if you do linger your going to have to make arrangements or deal with the locals eventually. It's not like the Mafia maintains a 24/7 "Trolls with big guns in places we don't like" hotline ala crimestoppers.

Plus i'm not sure if the border analogy holds like you think it does considering how porous our border is supposedly these days, which si subject to who's reporting it, but I don't want to delve too far into RL stuff.

The Z zones are literal anarchy where might makes right and law enforcement fears to tread, this notion that the syndicates and gangs then impose their own law on that enviroment taking considerable risks vs rewards to do so is silly. Especially since who do you think sold the troll that vindicator in the first place.

I take Mort's sentiments as those of a player or GM justifying why runners can only carry light weight hardware or be a mage, hacker or rigger, and the gangs as a way to enforce this on players who want to have heavy hardware, but don't know how to beat the GM at his own game.

Deckers can have heavy firepower. The Simsense Video Game starring Bull has his default weapon being a Panther Assault Cannon.

SPD's bit is in Target: UCAS

It refers to how the metroplex responded to the mob war in the barrens. They didn't go in but they set up a lot more defense at the edges to keep it from spilling out.

If you can find it the old street sam catalog had a good bit on from Wedge on running the shadows, and in various other books.

Key thing is : keep it low key and quiet.

Because you make yourself a target, either because they want what you got or because they perceive you as a threat (to them or the bottom line)


Though to be honest, most of the 4th edition books rarely paint the setting as well as the older ones, but to put it bluntly as a player (never GM'd since 2nd edition ) : If ya stand out like a nail, expect the hammer of god to pound ya into the ground.

It's simple, heavy armed people = a threat. Now that threat can be dealt with by words, magic, or a well placed sniper shot or two (and most runner teams will have a hell of time with a sniper in urban environments... too many possible shooter locations at med+ range)

Street Samurai Catalog.

Heavily armed people = POTENTIAL threat. And speak for yourself on teams not able to deal with urban snipers in the barrens. That is what rockets, sniper rifles, mages, riggers with heavily armed flying drones and some other equipment is for.

Well one book i read, which described the situation pretty detailed, as far as law enforcement goes was 3rd ed New Seattle.

Situation was described like this:

"E-Zone: The star only reacts if a citizen with SIN is the victim of a crime and alarms the authorities, if the violence is observed and broadcast by the media or if the violence spills into higher sec zones.

Z-Zone: the star doesn't give a shit what happens in a Z-Zone."


So my take would be that you can bring and use anything you want, as long as adjacent zones with higher sec are not affected.

Then to put it bluntly shut up and stop telling other people how to play. Despite your somewhat tangential view, a single troll carrying a panther canon does not a mob war make. I know it's hard being wrong but there it is. A Z-zone is one of those places where the heavy ordinance does get taken out of the box specifically for even in second edition that was the case. Want to be an all pistols all the time guy? Groovy, but if that's all there was to the game the Super Warhawk would be the heaviest thing a shadow runner would ever be showed as having.

There have been dozens of references to law and disorder and Z-zones and gangs in Shadowrun, from nearly as many writers, over nearly as many years. If any two of them agree, I'd absolutely plotz. Add to that the intentional vaguenesses of the setting, and different GM interpretations, and you have a setting nearly as complex and self-contradictory as real life. MortVent could hand you chapter and verse and the two of you would still have different interpretations, because you're each going to apply your own logic, based on your own life experiences, to the framework presented there.

What each of us are sharing, here, then, isn't canon, even if it's based on canon: it's all interpretation. We're each sharing our interpretation of the game world, based on our reading and our own personal extensions on that reading. You're not going to get canon from MortVent, because MortVent cannot provide you with canon on something as subjective and vague as, "How will gangs in Z-zones respond to shadowrunners?"


Whoa, hey, come on, guy. MortVent's talking about his game, and his table, and I promise he's not planning to come to yours and make you do it his way. I see him sharing his experiences and interpretations, same as everyone else, and not telling other people how to play, any more than any of the rest of us are. I'm not a moderator or anything, but as one poster to another, we could probably stand to bring it down a notch.

I would agree with you that gangs and organized crime controlling the z-zones don't act like police, their motives are much more selfish. But I would agree with Mont Vent in that the Star will be keeping a surepticious eye on the barrens via snitches and possibly drones, and will react if a full-scale riot or war breaks out or if someone was foolish enough to use a tank/combat chopper or that sort of level of serious military hardware. Why? Because nobody in Seattle wants a syndicate or gang or terrorist cell (aka runner group) to be living on their doorstep with that kind of hardware to hand.

As to how the gangs deal with a heavily armed bunch of runners coming onto their patch, depends on the size and resources of the gang. A small, poor local gang will almost certainly not take the runners on, although they may try their luck at getting a "carry licence" beer money stipend, and take a few face saving potshots before slinking into the shadows if the runners decline. A bigger better funded gang will probably want to know what the runners are intending to do in their patch, and after a few mental guessculations on how much the PCs are earning for the job, ask for a bribe, perhaps offering to tell the players exactly where their target is in return. Most if not all gangs would think long and hard before taking on a well-armed runner team, but they will have home-ground advantage and attitude, and should be willing to let the runners pass through peacefully if they can save face and make a bit of easy cash on the side.

Gangs will err on the side of caution, but my risk vs reward comment was pointing out that the SOTA equipment and 'ware that your average runner team has is probably worth much much more than the gang could get than from robbing every soft target pensioner in the entire barrens three times over, and that gangs will not be bothered turning over every unarmed pensioner for a few new yen, then slink toothlessly away from any well-armed well-heeled payday that stomps by.

Sorry, just went back and saw you said exactly what I just said. I was in no way suggesting that runners shouldn't necessarily worry about what they are carrying in z zones, but the local gang might want a bribe for the privelage.