The cost of gear in games has been fairly consistent with occassional runs for rare equipment. Thursday I was a at the gun range and had an interesting experience that at once made me think of SR.

Several years ago I bought a Mataba semiautomatic revolver for $1,200. This was Togasa's gun in Ghost in the Shell. Amazingly accurate .357 magnum whose mechanism absorbed all recoil wonderfully. For various reasons I sold it about 2-3 years ago for $1600. I showed a profit. Nice.

Thursday I was talking to a guy at the range about italian guns and when I mentioned "The Italian Monster" he said they were impossible to find now. He got on line, there's a gun shop, and within their network they had NONE available and many requests. The last time one sold was a few months ago for $4,400!

With this in mind look at those old characters and wonder what is the cost for an Ares Predator I? Colt Manhunter without a reactive trigger? A wrist phone? Wrist phone with picture screen?etc

Honestly, I've always hated that about 'SOTA' rules and firearms. As a shooter and collector of guns myself, I have firearms that are 60+ years old that shoot just as well as they did new. Hell, the Colt 1911 pistol has been essentially unchanged in design in over a hundred years now, and is still regarded as one of the finest full-size semiautomatic handguns in the world.

Does it still go bang every time? Do the holes appear about where the sights were? Ok, then it's good to go.

Most of the SR gun rules are inane and are written by people who appear to have never actually fired a gun, much less ever gotten decent training in how to use a gun in combat.

Togasa Tax? Maybe it's a similar to the Takumi Tax on AE86's.

I say this knowing nothing about firerams collecting or anything like that.

DLN's husband has a SMLE that dates back to the 1930, the design was unchanged from WW1 through Korea and his works just fine.

I often wonder what it would look like if those of you with significant firearm knowledge were to completely house rule the whole shebang. I seem to vaguely recall that you tried to do that once Snow Fox.

It's hard to do because there are a series of interlocking ideas that underlie the game that are "highly questionable". You end up having to redo a whole lot of stuff, and I'm not certain what the effects of doing that would be on playability and enjoyment.

This assumes too that the people writing this really know as much as they think they know, and can then translate that effectively into game mechanics.

There's some family "Moose Guns" that walked home from World War I in Canada that work just fine today.

You can even get ammo for them at Canadian Tire.

Well, any old SR electronics will be pretty much worthless.

As for guns, remember that there are three advancements in SR that at least partly invalidate most old guns, universal ammo, caseless ammo, and smartlinks.

First universal ammo, most guns of a specific broad type use the same type of ammo, which allows many special types of ammunition to be made and have a large enough market to be profitable. Ammo for many old guns will be very hard to find.

Caseless ammo is another big one. With the exception of revolvers and shotguns, virtually all SR guns will be caseless, which presents a number of benefits. Once again, old ammo is hard to find.

Smartlink is another big one. Not only are guns that don't have/are incompatible with smartlinks sub par, a gun with an old smartlink will be inferior to a modern gun.

Simply put, technology in SR has advanced to the point where old guns just are not as good. That said it wouldn't be hard to make stats for old guns.

An aside, I once made a an adventure where Colt was making a new model pistol designed to wipe the Predator IV off the market(yes, I know that's Ares competing with itself). As a promo, a small number of hand crafted high quality M1911s were made as collectables. While the run was to steal some of the paperwork on the new pistol, they made a tidy profit selling some of the M1911s they got in the process(the reason the new gun was desirable is they managed to build it with an internal silencer and electronic firing as "ergonomic features", which allowed them to sell them to civilians._

Yeah, my 'deer rifle' these days is a Mosin-Nagant m1891/30. Puts holes in anything you care to point it at out to 400 yards or so, and is overengineered to the point of indestructibility.

Heh, my dad owns a Kongsberg Colt, a licensed Norwegian copy of the 1911. It still goes bang and sends the bullets where the sights point.

So, I'm wondering what the OP had to do with this 'debate' about how good old guns are? It seemed like the question was related to rarity and prices, not functional obsolescence at all. Don't stop a gun nut from bragging, I guess.

I haven't looked at the Avail/prices on any of the many 'old guns' from the recent splatbooks. Do they reflect 'collector' prices/rarity in some cases, or is it all 'old bargain bin' situations?

I think the gun rules are written by people who favor entertainment and good game design over realism (remember that you're playing a game with elves, trolls, and dragons )

Old guns going obsolete reflects that regardless of the shooting power, without all the technological advances that make modern boom sticks so easy to use (see above post for details) it's hard to retain the competitive edge. Sure your old hand cannon can still fire a heavy load, but you'll have to spend that little extra bit of focus on counting your ammo instead of just aiming and relying on the bullet counter to tell you.

As far as cost, there are a number of trade professions that would be profitable for someone who invested the time and money to get them going, but most Shadowrunners lack SINs, and focus their expertise on other areas than collecting rare guns and selling them for profit.

Seriously though, do old guns get weaker, etc.? I didn't know this was even an issue. Not that the OP even mentioned it at all, but I don't know if I've ever seen SOTA rules for things like DV/AP/range of guns, though I've definitely seen them for things like commlinks and programs. I thought the Obsolete feature only affected exactly what people have mentioned: smartlnks, electronics, etc.

They don't get weaker per se, but armor gets stronger so they penetrate less and do less damage . .

And yet, if you happen to be shooting someone who is wearing no armor whatsoever...?


It's bad design to say that old guns get weaker. This simply isn't so. A few center-mass rounds from a Colt M1911 will kill an unarmored asshole just as dead in 2073 as it did when John Browning first introduced it in 1911. Assuming you're not using one from the 1911 production year - or, if you are, that you're using one which has been well cared-for and hasn't been shot to the point that it's just worn down (Why in Ghost's name are you shooting a priceless antique at someone?!) - it should do just as much damage as an Ares Predator IV. The Colt .45 ACP is a powerful round.

The Predator is, of course, the far better weapon, simply because it carries a lot more ammo and has an integrated smartlink and all that, whereas the 1911 isn't going to have any mounts for accessories (or if it does, they're going to be Picatinny rails instead of anything modern,) and it won't have any of the internal features that a weapon needs in order to use a smartgun system, like the magazine counter, or the ability to eject the magazine with a thought. But if all you need is something that puts a 5P hole in someone seven times in a row, it'll do the job just fine.

So, I just checked Gun Heaven, and none of the Vintage guns are weaker. …Can someone tell me what you guys are even talking about, then?

Indeed, rule of cool b(that give up the flying bodies of Hollywood) and (relative) ease of play has been the cornerstones of SR since the beginning.

I figured the SOTA fees were for maintenance and continual tweaking to get the very best performance. Not just sending bullets down range, ferex, but doing so in a very, very small Minute of Arc (MoA). Tweaking those sights and scopes and Smartlinks that get banged around in action. Smoothing out those twitches in that Wired Reflexes when there's a software conflict with Reaction Enhancers.

Sorta like the difference between a regular oil change, and a tune-up.

So let me ask a stupid question: what about the "vintage" firearms made with SR's modern technology, but looking like old ones, ie. that "Old West" shotgun and Colt SAA replica (I don't remember, Savalette Deputy or something like that)? Even now, there are replica guns made in modern calibers, ie. Uberti's SAA clones in .357Mag and .44Spl.

What specifically about them? They'd be modern (2070) guts with a certain look. They might cost a little more, but that'd be part of their normal list price.

Since SF brought it up already my husband and one of my brothers have SMLE's- a bolt action rifle with a 10 round magazine. The standard at the time was 15 bullseyes in a minute and I am told it can still be done so the weapon is still good for that, but working the bolt takes so much more work and talent than a modern rifle that the thing went out of style. My husband bought his for $100 about 10 years ago but says now he cannot find them for less than $300.