Archaic Articles of Interest
-- My Shadowrun stuff has been back online for quite a while, but people may not realize it
-- Most of these were written during SR2-3. Obviously many things have changed since then.

Military and Security NPC Stats

Shadowrun Vehicle Countermeasures

Shadowrun Intelligence Agencies
-- Also see my general article on intelligence.

Military Musings (five part series) - Download as a zip file.


More Dumpshock Threads of Interest

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=22789
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=33203
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=32094
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=11137
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=2063
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=4455
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=25851
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=2153
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=34696

What would people want to see in a military sourcebook for Shadowrun 5e? Specifically, one oriented around translating the shadowrunner roles into special ops (i.e. not playing Pvt. Nobody painting rocks and rules for successfully completing field day). Significant design questions are in listed in bold.

What are the key points that need to be touched on, the players that need to be described (i.e. what corporations and nations are of relevance and interest), and the bits of canon related to the military that need to be explained (read: retconned)?

I keep pretty up to speed on the SR4e releases but don't have a few of the PDFs (notably, 10 Mercs). I have basically every sourcebook published for 3e and below but the game setting is nearly unrecognizable these days so I'm not sure how applicable stuff like Fields of Fire would be anymore.

What are the key publications (aside from SR5e and 5e Arsenal equivalent) that we can assume a buyer of a Shadowrun military sourcebook would already possess? That is, what material would need to be repeated or iterated on.

Shadowrunners as special ops is an obvious direct translation (albeit with a better fallback job and health benefits) but mercenaries seem like a very popular concept as well. This would probably require some classic Shadowrun Magic ™© to putty over the obvious logical problems that would arise, but nothing too serious. People have mentioned the (IMO quite good) Only War as a good starting point for a metasystem to drive this kind of thing. However, I've always really liked the game-within-a-game aspect of how BattleTech handled mercs.

Does 'designing' your unit (merc, corporate, national) with a metasystem sound appealing? If so, would you want it as a fairly detailed metacharacter with stats or as a narrative element that basically is just used as a shorthand way of describing various units and adversaries?


The military in Shadowrun exists in a bizarre nether-realm that bounces between Tom Clancy and useless set dressing (much like in Hollywood blockbusters). Depending on who was doing the writing the military is either the ultimate deus ex machina or upgunned corporate guards. Even the gear is schizophrenic, with early miltech being so bad-ass it didn't even get stats (e.g. the Stonewall hovertank) and it still getting the absolute best of the best in some areas ('mil-spec' armor) for no clearly discernible reason.

What is an appropriate power level for the military in Shadowrun? Ultimate bad-asses or mallcops with artillery support? Note that IRL many military units are basically mallcops with better PR.

Speaking of equipment, Shadowrun has always been terrible at handling the big guns because of the dice mechanic. SR5 may address this to some level, but I'm not sold that a military sourcebook would do itself many favors by getting too "in the weeds" for strategic weapon systems beyond what is absolutely necessary (and doing something about Thor systems is probably germane).

Should this be the book of tank guns and tacnukes? At what point are you comfortable just handwaving the level of firepower as an abstract dice roll for "Mass Destruction"?


The smaller PDF supplements seem to have gained a lot of traction, as they break down writing and editing requirements into far more manageable chunks and you can market them to smaller audiences that my not want or be able to digest a full 120+ page sourcebook.

Would a series of 32-48 page supplements be more useful than a monolithic sourcebook?


Key Gaming References
Shadowrun
Arsenal
10 Mercs (need to read this, but it's cheap so no problem)
Way of the Samura (maybe?)
Fields of Fire (ancient but still interesting for the vibe it puts off)

Other
BattleTech Field Manual: Mercenaries
GURPS Mass Combat
GURPS Special Ops
GURPS Tactical Shooting (and the ultra-tech updates in Pyramid #3/55)
World of Darkness: Dogs of War (pretty much a turd sandwich but the stories were cool)
Twilight: 2000 (well, not really, but some interesting ideas buried in the muck)

Foxhole. The word you're looking for is "foxhole." "Flagpole to foxhole" is a well-turned, evocative phrase. "Flagpole to fighting hole..." not so much. OK, now that I've gotten my linguistic snobbery out of my system...

I would be quite interested in a detailed unit-creation system. Have different types of units give different bonuses: commando units give +Infiltration, combat infantry gives +Dodge, combat engineers give +Demolitions, etc. Maybe +1 Initiative for each member of your unit within X meters.

Units should have, at minimum, their own Positive and Negative Qualities, to reflect things like better or worse officers, supply lines, morale, that kind of thing.

I think there's a decent chance your target demographic will have bought SR5's Augmentation equivalent. Augmentation is virtually certain to be, if not free to military personnel, then at least heavily subsidized and incentivized. When wires, bone lacing, and muscle replacement make a tangible difference in the effectiveness and survivability of your troops, you want your troops to have those things.

The power level of the military is going to depend heavily on what type of unit you're facing. RL militaries run the gamut from reservists with bare-minimum training and equipment, all the way up to high trained, disciplined, and motivated Special Forces with the latest and greatest gear. The 1024th Conscript Regiment is going to be a very different beast to fight than SFOD-D.

Tanks are viable for getting actual stats. Tactical nuclear weapons... less so. The PCs could conceivably be a tank crew, or the four commanders of a tank platoon (it is four tanks to a platoon, right?). When you get into weapons designed to kill thousands at a stroke, that's beyond the scope of the game. Roll 10d6, and everything within <hits> kilometers dies.

On the issue of supplements vs. splatbook, I need more details. Why and how would you split the subject up?

Oh man, I would SOOOOOO love to get involved in this.

One thing I've been doing since SR2 as a GM is coming up with skill packages for certain backgrounds. For example, a UCAS Combat Contoller would have a different package than say a CAS Army 18B, which would be different from a UCAS Navy DEVGRU Operator.

One of the issues with SR4 (maybe with SR5 too) is that the character gen rules tend to force overspecialization and penalize a former Special Operator for picking career appropriate skills. I think something that should be included in a supplement like this is some sort of Skill Package system that costs a flat number of skill points but gives a complete skill list at the appropriate ratings for all the skills (or all the SR equivalents) that a particular Special Operator would have. Most players using the normal chargen rules will have skip out on skills like Instruction or Parachuting because they won't have enough points to cover the more common use skills like Automatics or Infiltration. Hell, I find it almost impossible to build a realistic special operator in SR4 for under 500 points, and that's even considering his overall attributes will be lower than they should be.

I've already done entire skill packages in GURPS for CCTs, PJs, the whole US Army 18 series (and those in CIF units), SEALs/DEVGRU, Centra Spike/Torn Victor teams, and CIA SAD SOG units (I've only done Ground Branch so far). I've got 1000s of pages of research on all of these units, plus some personal experience (I've never served in spec ops, but spent several years in the Army as a Mech Inf dismount, most of it at the JRTC at Ft. Polk).

In addition to Skill Packages, I think this supplement should include an example of the sorts of tactics you would see Military/SF/SWAT type guys use when doing things like clearing rooms, movement to contact, reacting to near and far ambushes, etc.

I also like the idea of PDF only splatbooks as opposed to Large Format sourcebooks. I think you can turn them out quicker and whet people's appetites for more rather than put all your eggs in one basket and hope it sells well.

THIS!

Did SR5 fix the hopeless way hardened armor worked in SR4? Without fixing that AFVs just can't be done in any intelligent fashion.

Key point 1: National Armies. You can just translate and slightly update Pegasus' work on the Bundeswehr from German War translation Fronteinsatz. It comes with outfit splatsheets for a special forces scout and a (dwarf!) grunt. I'd then like to see one more civilised army (maybe Japan's?) and one fringe army (Argentina? Amazonia? Empire of Zambia?). The Bundeswehr description, especially with equipment spreadsheets, can just serve as a template. Other armies might get smaller summaries - UCAS, CAS, Aztlan, Russia, France/Euroforce, the usual suspects.
Key Point 2: PMCs. MET 2000, Tzunami, 10K Daggers, combat, inc. Those are entire armies each, with six-digit manpower, exterritorial corporate status, their own differentianted branches and worldwide renown. The Fucking Mary-Sues probably need to go in too, since they can hardly be ignored, though I personally wouldn't mind a thing if they were all eaten by the Seadragon, and they are a few weight classes below even a slightly damaged Belltower like either MET, Tzunami or Combat. Then smaller merc companies - and please, with a focus on non-American companies. Give me Argentinans, South Africans, a drug lord's force from the Golden Triangle or renegade Malaysian Communists operating in Oceania. And definitly at least one Russian, one SE European, and one Portuguese unit, since those are the hotspots for merc activity. Maybe shine some light on whether or not the Megas rent out their standing armies when not needing them. It is known MCT does, at least (see the Tshimshian conflict, or Saitho's occupation of California).
Key point 3: Merc hotspots. Where are wars happening? Why are wars happening there? Who is fighting? There's sme fanmade stuff out there that might go in, like Fatum's Yakut war, but there are also plots ignored for the War Where Nothing Happened or Dragons Gone Wild IV. Things like the situation on the Balkans, the Yakut uprising, the Phillipine pacification, California (which never got even a bit of spotlight), China (which was as ignored as California in 4E), Africa, or Yucatán.

What needs explaining is how powerful national armies still are, what they can and can't do, and how they, PMC megacorps like MCT and Tzunami, and megacorp standing armies interact. Shadowrun needs to decide whether it wants to be 80s Cyberpunk - weak to nonexistent state forces in favor of a hardline Reaganian private enterpirse focus, or governments as slowly dying, but still dangerous juggernauts, as in Ghost in the Shell (where, incidentally, the main characters are all government agents, government-created AI, or government-created superhackers, and military-intelligence-industrial complex structures take the place of Megacorporations). There needs to be a definite ruling on this.

Further, the situation with PMCs after Aztlan needs to be resolved. MET2000, Tzunami and Combat each are committed in several places, without possible reprieve to waste all their men on The War Where Nothing Happens - MET2000 is partially state-owned, so the German government has a huge stake in what they do, and IIRC it's likewise with Tzunami and the Japanese state. No way they threw all their forces into the Bogotán front, because they would never have been allowed to. Germany cannot afford to keep their toxic dragon prison unguarded, and neither can Japan afford to withdraw forces from it's remaining colonies. If anything, several megacorps have very vested interest in those two PMCs keep doing their jobs.

And for the love of Ghost, put in maps with every region covered. Nothing is worse in a book about military campaigns than having literally no concept of the territorry they're taking place on. This is what led to the most ludicrous claims in recent books, like ship-borne artillery strikes on Bogotá.


The core rulesbooks. Making possession of 4e splatbooks and PDFs mandatory is expecting a little much. Plus, putting in equipment and stuff will open the book to a wider audience, I think.


While that could be nice, it should be hard and fast rules, nothing super elaborate. Rules for managing a mercenary company - resupplies, rules for acquiring bulks of military weapons, ect - could be very useful, though.


Except for 'pet units' of the government, mallacops with (more or less of) an attitude. Generally, PMCs should be better armed, equipped and motivated, but have a worse reputation. Of coruse, national militaries descended from former superpowers - Britain, France, UCAS, CAS, Chinese states, Russia - also has WMD and nukes, and well-fed national militaries like Aztlan's might even have built new nukes and other WMD. Also, national militaries have a distinct advantage in heavy units like warships, tanks and whatnot. Few PMCs would bother operating more than one or maybe two carriers. Even the Fucking Mary-Sues only have two. Also, please keep the tone neutral. While the heavy helpings of American patriotism in some recent books were rather unpalatable, neither should there be swings in the opposite directions. However, take your cues not from either modern military FPS games nor Tom Clancy. Not only are those highly ideological, they're also horribly bad sources, as can be seen in EuroWars Antiques.


Tanks yes, ship/huge vehicle combat rules maybe (with a variation of Megadamage, sice that's really the only workable solution), stats for orbital weapons or nukes, no. Nukes and weapon sattelites are pure plot devices and should be treated as such. Also, rules should be thoroughly tested; we don't need another book where the surest way to sink a carrier is not a nuke, not a thor shot (both the carrier is likely to soak), but a bag with a LOT of grenades.


No, but it would probably be more likely to be produced, so I'm for it if that makes the publishing of such a book easier, FWIW.

Three more key gaming references:

Shadowrun
Mercenaries chapter of SOTA 2063

Cyberpunk 2020
Stormfront 1 & 2

Take it up with the Marines, I stole that phrase from the 2012 U.S. Marine Corps S&T Strategic Plan

I want to see how the cooperation rules work in SR5 before going too far down a path like this, especially as players will probably just pick something they are already good at. I've never been particularly fond of the tactical networking rules in Shadowrun (or GURPS, for that matter) so that might be an angle to look at - especially as it might help avoid the issue of "well, with this sourcebook how come my criminal shadowrun team can't learn the same SOPs?"

Aye. I really like the concept of a unit meta-character, but it's easy to talk a big game on the subject (look at how 'meh' Pondsmith's system ended up being in CPv3) and end up with something not worth the GMs time. Although my old gaming group spent a LOT of hours on the 'group design systems' from various Rifts book back in the day (e.g. the traveling circus and mercenary point-buy systems).

Never been sold on the military promoting or subsidizing heavy cybernetics simply from a cost-benefit perspective (and didn't seem to be supported much in the limited canon sourcebooks and novels). It appears that SR5 may have addressed the problematic cost issue to some degree, though.


From what is being published now, a division by major topic would be:
-
1. Silent Death: Special Operations. Shadowrunners backed by major powers, perhaps even posing as criminals for deniability and resource access (notably, information sources like Shadowland). Requires some discussion of what special forces are and are now, how they differ from freelance teams, training levels. Will probably require bringing some things down to earth (like 'typical' Ratings). Even 'Tier 1' operators are not supermen, Tom Clancy and videogames aside.
2. Kills to Pay the Bills: Mercenaries, pirates and militias that do most of the killing, but get none of the respect. Range from war tourists to entire private armies working for the highest bidder.
3. Sixth World on Fire. Regular military forces that are part of organized, uniformed organizations in the service of megacorporations and stable nations. This would be a bit more general and deal with background information to create a military or ex-military character that doesn't feel like it was written by either a recruiter or an anti-war activist. Bios of the major relevant military forces and a region-by-region look at the bit players (that part may be too damn annoying to unwind, so maybe just the Americas for this one).
4. Heavy Metal. Gunships, tanks, and other bang-bangs where you roll a bucket of dice and turn unprepared shadowrunners into chunky salsa. Probably a bit more organized then throwing a bunch of random vehicles in a box and shaking it around, I have some material I wrote WAYYYY back in SR3 days that is more about what makes a vehicle "military" versus just taking whatever has the most Armor and putting a cannon on it.
5. Warzones. I don't know what direction they are taking SR5 setting-wise, so don't know what this will cover. I would like to revisit some plot threads that got buried from Shadows of North America though. Basically, regions and plot threads to hang a military-based campaign on. Probably includes something about Desert Wars (although IMO that belongs in a media book).

Shadowrun has always been about the specialist who has, at some level, role protection from the dirty outsiders. The exact role of the Street Samurai seems to have been pretty hard hit, but even that exists after a fashion.

I'm somewhat of two minds about the skill packages of special forces. Shadowrun itself has never really settled on if shadowrunners are snot nosed newbies showing in the Barrens with a duffel bag and pink mohawks, or they are supposed to be salty veterans of the streets who don't bat an eye at shooting a security guard square between the eyes (or if the difference is just backstory and for some reason everyone falls within a fairly small range of competency at the start). There's also the issue that the perception of what special forces do, and their capabilities, is often rather disconnected from reality. This has been brought up in some armed forces journals, where it's actually beginning to cause some rather nasty ego inflation in the "special" forces and pushback from the units they nominally hail from.

Certainly, if you haven't had a chance to check out GURPS SWAT or GURPS Tactical Shooting yet do so. Both go into turn-by-turn tactics along these lines. Some aspects of this wouldn't really gel with the abstract SR system, but even a fluffy description can be useful. I wrote up a near-future soldier loadout using Tactical Shooting, Ultra-Tech, and High-Tech for Pyramid #3/55 and Han's had a great article that updates Tactical Shooting to the general tech level that Shadowrun is at, so I recommend checking it out.

Is there already a translation of this Fronteinsatz book? I'm sure as hell not going to try and run it through Google Translate even if I could get a copy

A generic TOE is probably useful, but I'm leery of nuisance detail. The players presumably have far more agency in their organization than is typical, which would put them outside normal chains of command ("Sorry, sir, my orders are signed by the CG." Translation: "Go pound sand, butterbars.")

I hate to say it, but current Shadowrun canon is - to put it mildly - an impenetrable black hole of nonsense and pet projects (I'm not sinless in that, for damn sure) that I want to be detached from if at all possible. I've often wondered if just focusing on the events in the Americas would be a better use of time instead of half-ass globetrotting which just exacerbates the current timeline issues and one-off area notes. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but there's a LOT of canon spread out over dozens of books, adventures, and novels.

Major North American Players
UCAS - Not clear how the Ares situation is supposed to shake out in 5e, but they seem like an obvious example where the line between national and corporate military is so thin as to be a mere formality. Also pretty relevant for 'default' Seattle campaigns.

CAS - Seems to be a clear national military. The CAS in general seem to be bystanders to a lot of Shadowrun events though. Never was really clear one what story purpose they served, especially as a lot of freelancers assumed they were just the hillbilly UCAS (even when writing for SoNA I never quite got the 'angle' that made them special).

Tir Tairngire - Regular military that got forcibly transitioned to cops. Rife for all sorts of shadow wars between the Peace Force and Security Directorate.

Salish Shidhe - Fairly recently fought a nasty small war with Tsimshian (that got sort of forgotten in the canon). Country has no unifying political or social elements so is probably just a series of local militias in practice. Maybe divided into lodges by component tribe? Would love to do more with the Salish as it's my home area and I wrote that chapter in SoNA ~

Sioux - Supposedly competent and professional military that hasn't done jack squat in decades.

Aztlan - Now a battle-hardened force that has learned some damn hard lessons in Sixth World insurgencies and asymmetric warfare. Probably more dangerous now then they ever were before.

Amazonia - Was locked in a spiral development path with Aztlan for magical and military supremacy. Learned a lot of lessons, but based on War! I'm not sure if it learned the right ones. Game mechanics in 5e may provide an explanatory mechanism for how a primarily Awakened defense force would organize.

California Free State - Every man and dwarf for themselves. VERRRYYYY interesting shenanigans now that Hestaby isn't around to pick on the poor elven crusaders hovering to the north. Might have to get their shit together before Sperenthiel becomes the national language. Place sounds a total shithole in the canon though, a North American failed state if there ever was one.

Pueblo Corporate Council - The best mercs money can buy.

AMC/Athabaskan Council/TPA - Who? Yeah, exactly.

Tsimshian Protectorate - Huge potential here. It's next door to Seattle and the fallout from their war with SS has not been discussed. Probably the worst off NAN country in many respects.

Hawai'i - Just kidding. They supposedly do have a surprisingly large aerospace force, though (at least, back in the '50s).


I'm hard pressed to see how these could be rationalized without some degree of retconning. Personnel costs alone would sijnk these, if my back of the envelope calculations are even close to right.

In the opening vignette they all drown because their rusty hulk of a ship finally breaks apart and they all considered themselves too badass to wear any unstylish POG bullshit like life preservers. Ooh rah devildogs!

Aye, this can be a simple way to update some regions too. My concern here is that everyone would want bizarre "ethnic themed" mercenary units ("Oh, this is the Nigerian merc unit of all jackal shamans." or "Oh, that's the Chinese merc unit with a bazillion geomancers and inscrutable physical adepts.")

I doubt that anyone would be willing to commit to something like that, especially as this is often the line developer prerogative (and hence can change). I think that a military book could help set the parameters but it doesn't need to be the final word on if Westphalian nation states are dead or not.

War! is a bit of a pickle. A new edition and timeline jump allows a lot of sins to be forgiven, though.

Payroll and something about the four 'Bs' (beans, bullets, bandages, batteries) are probably all that most people would really grok. I was a logistician so that stuff is really quite fascinating to me, but the sharp end of the spear is where most players are going to be.

PMCs can maintain a surprising amount of heavy duty hardware if there's a market to use it! I suspect that most national militaries can't afford elaborate appropriations either (they are probably managed like a business unit in many cases). I think there is a profound underestimation of maintenance costs and support requirements in general that leads to stuff like never-before-seen merc units floating around with their own small carrier battle groups. Using old ships would just exacerbate these issues, not allow them to waved away.

I'm American and a former Marine, myself. But I like to think I have a rather more clinical and game-oriented view of the subject. If anything, I'm a bit worried I may be a bit too much on the cynical side to appeal to the Call of Duty inspired Shadowrun fan.

Interesting note, when we were writing the updated GURPS Ultra-Tech, David and myself played with some abstract 'mass damage' mechanics to make handling millions of points of damage easier to manage and visualize (e.g. from nuke detonations). Ended up being a bit of a cluster because of competing detail requirements, but it might work in Shadowrun.

I am honestly not sure if Shadowrun, even 5e, can really handle extreme damage cases without falling apart though. Will require some brainsweat and disagreeable abstractions to be sure. Which is why I personally would rather just try and deal with more tactical level firepower (and honestly, the Thor stuff got way out of hand from what the proposed systems are capable of - the Shadowrun version is as over the top as the Cobra Zeus system in the new GI Joe movie, the real thing - based on the RAND study at least - is probably more like a strike-anywhere 500-lb bomb).

Sadly not. It's only a few pages though.


The problem is, North America is, for all intents and purposes, the Europe of the Shadowrun world. It's an island of peace, with none of it'S nations overly imperialist, most isolationist to soem degree, and all of them weary and disinterested in making life difficult for anyone abroad or each other. While such a general stability makes for a good environment for the economy and people to live in, it maks for a very useless setting for anything war-related (just check out War! entry on Albuquerque. Shadowruns happen! Mercenary campaign hooks galore!) However, since I doubt disregarding North America will help the book's (or series of PDFs') sales if North America and it's relative uneventfulness - there was the 2055 and 2064 coup attempts in the UCAS, but those were hardly large military campaigns, and there is the perpetual dicklength comparison between the Sioux and UCAS, and Aztlan and CAS, but nothing ever really happens ther either; Tshimshian and SSC was a brushfire war with no consequence (really it was more a series of border skirmishes), and California has been handwaived away as a possible American Balkans too. Compared to the Perpetual War in Southeastern Europe, Africa, Central Asia or the Chinese Remnants, North America is a black hole of no mercenary activity. Hence the globetrotting approach. If there was to be a war there, you'd need to start one, and that would wreck many of Shadowrun's core settings, so it'll hardly fly.


I never got the impression the UCAS military was very corporate, to be honest. Not from the Retired NCO archetype in Sprawl Sites 2E, not from Just Compensation, not from Colloton walking all over Renraku to prove the Military is better than Japanocorps, not from System Failure, and neither from more recent books. If anything, authors recently have taken to misinterpret the UCAS army for the US Armed Forces in Shadowrun, complete with several carrier groups and a budget larger than that of a major developed nation. Aztlan has an army that is nigh indistinguishable from Aztechnology Corporate Security, and Germany's forces depend heavily on MET2000 PMC troops too, and I think there's some similar agreement between Japan, MCT and Tzunami, but the UCAS have never been a nation whose army was largely corporate.


PMCs of this size are a product of Reaganian/Thatcherist thinking that anything works better with privatization. While this is an economical assumption that time has proven wrong at least to a degree, it's at the core of the idea of the Shadowrun economy. Megacorps would be just as economically unviable as mega-PMCs, yet we have to accept them for setting purposes. The GitS model of military-intelligence-industrial complexes and slowly fading but still dangerous nation-states is much more realistic, but at odds with the very core of Shadowrun, which is 80/90s Cyberpunk, primarily Gibson's Bridge and Sprawl trilogies.


I approve of this and would buy the book only for this.


That's the other extreme (and you forgot the mandatory all-Indian New Dog Soldiers, who are all warpaint, feathers and shamans and use cavalry made of magical horses), but the "They were the nth Devil Marmots in the UCAS army, then incorporated and now are the bestest [unit type] mercenary unit in the world!" approach to creating mercenary units in 10 Mercs was rather tiring. Some units in there are good or at least usable, and one original unit is great fun (THUNDER CORPS!!!). But a more widespread approach that more accurately reflects where battle-hardened you-cannot-go-home-again mercenary types come from in the 6th world would be in order, I think. That 7 of 10 mercenary units coem from the region where armies have the least combat experience in the world is rather ... odd.

As for the bizarre ethnical angle: I'd personally just want units that have a distinct flavor (could be an Arab unit specialising in shallow water operations, could be a Austro-Hungarian unit an NBC focus because of the devastation in SE Austria, Hungaria and Slowenia due to the Jihad, could be a Chinese all-naval unit or African elite mountaineers. It just shouldn't have all units' histories start with "When the US Army broke apart, these guys were too awesome to bow to Canada, so they set up their own army with blackjack and hookers and now are the bestest ever!".


There will be no timeline jump.


Sure they can, but there won't be a maket for 12 carrier groups, I think. Especially because the cost to maintain even one is immense, one of the many failures of the Fucking Mary-Sues. However, given the setting's Thatcherist core, I can deal with this easier than with something like the FMC, especially considering such PMCs are partially state-owned. And nation states, unlike corporations, have a much more dependable and fleecaeable income source - their populace and small businessess.


Not every American writer is Tom Clancy, and I'd suppose the more experience they have with actual deployments and actual service in the Corps, the less GI Joe-esque their portrayal of war and army life becomes. A neutral view is all I'm really asking for. I just can really do without the kind of flag-waving exceptionalism so prevalent in recent books.


Neither am I. There's no perfect way of doing this, I think, but Mega Damage worked better than Shitloads Of Dice do.

Probably a lot more going on than outright warfare. At the very least North America would be the playground of the merc security team and monster hunters.

Both are good locations to do something productive with. The Border War just sort of fizzled away into nothingness, but people forget this was out-and-out warfare between the NAN and even involved chemical warfare. California as a patchwork collection of warlords and cantonments would actually be a big step up in that all-important "playability" category. I just read through the old California Free State book yesterday . . . yeah hard to jive that with what we have in 2070 that's for sure.

The Americas are a bit of a large playground, and you still have the Yucatan, whatever Denver becomes, Columbia, and who knows what's going on elsewhere in Atzlan or on the CAS borders.

Focusing some detail on a few warlord states and corporate interests in the broken areas of the world is exactly on the money though. Especially since that's where you can really play with morality and the ideas of "just wars" in areas that have been broken down by 20-50 years of constant conflict, disease and poverty.

To be more exact, I got the impression that the UCAS and Ares forces were a revolving door and worked hand in glove most of the time (e.g. Burning Bright).

The Sprawl officer is noted as being low level and seems pretty jingoistic Hmmm .. will have to think about the latter. My hands might be tied by canon if the UCAS is running supercarriers to uh .... well ... do whatever it is they do with a bunch of supercarriers and one area they do force projection.

It's hard to outright kill off the ideas of other freelancers. Reinterpreting them through shadowtalk or outright ignoring them is often preferred.

That's probably why they are mercs actually. Fairly safe recruiting areas, no major supply issues if you are legitimate, lots of potential recruits from the national and tribal militaries spoiling for the "glory" and "excitement" of real war (you know, like in the Blood Bounty simsense games! Yeah, that's the ticket chummer, sign right here...). Have the opportunity to secure funding through participation in various "Real World" reality shows and combat gladiatorial matches (also helps weed out the riff-raff). Special forces with nothing to do and inadequate compensation (which can include 'respect') may also go merc - or be reorganized as mercs as a privatization scheme or because of no military budget (they just have to pray to the spirits that they don't skip the middle-man).

A unit that specialized in gambling and prostitution sounds exactly like quite a few contemporary US ones

From the last time many of these conflicts and areas were described, there may be a 15-20 year in-game gap. Hm, I thought that there was a 1 year gap from 10 Mercs and late-4e supplements.

They have two based out of Seattle (the Koontz and the Schwartzkopf, both supercarriers), and one more and a landing ship called Wolverine out of Ellis Island. And what do they do with them? Parade them around and feel like they still matter, I guess. The same reason Britain has carriers.


I could get behind THAT.


No, not really. In fact, the UCAS and ares parted on bad terms and Colloton spent most of Hardy-era SR4 courting Aztechnology and other, darker Magic.


No, Stormfront smoothly translates to 5E. There's a gap to many warzones but not all of them.


Zero experience. I recon most contemporary PMCs take only experienced people on their payroll. Besides, the established major mercenary bases are Portugal, Macao, Dubai ... not North America. I'm seriously not sold on this.

Also, the sequencial publishing opens up publishing modules for different regions. I'm still not sold on North America as a mercenary playground; most of what you describe is Shadowrunner work not needing PMCs. But I'd really love to see an updae on China anyway. Or an actual look on Africa beyond "there be black people, poverty, and crap".

Some threads of interest:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=29737
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=22852
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=37854

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=92629
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=77774
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=88472

Foxhole is an Army term. For those of us who were Marines, it's a fighting position. Foxes hide. Marines don't.

Megacorps have both.


In what comes to Tsimshian - see System Failure, p.109. MCT packed up and left, the Tsimshian tribe lost the power, and the Haida are now the power brokers in a nation that is factually under the SSC control.


Also, canonically the national armies get the best stuff - like, remember how anything over Rating 6 is said only to be found in militaries? So it seems that the governments are less influential precisely because they're pouring an nonproportional amount of their budget into the military - think about the costs of equipping just the infantry with military-grade armour (and hey, it's military-grade because the military uses it!)
Still, a dozen supercarrier groups in a nation state Navy in the 70ies seems a bit too much. Maybe some legacy ships that are too new to cut for needles, but too old and unneeded to actually keep combat-ready and up to date?

Ares Macrotechnology and Federated-Boeing were rather introduced as the good old Cold War military-industrial complex, before PMC were a thing. Ares had a USAF Major as CEO and a marine (or ranger, depending on which book you read) in charge in Seattle. But in SR early days, they were just selling weapons and satellites. The retired NCO archtype made a point of the governments being the only ones with the heavy stuff like stealth bombers. Knight Errant really were just cops and security guards, and Ares (small) military contingent belonged to Ares Arms.

The Chicago situation is the first time the lines were blurred, but the context is very specific, during the Haeffner administration, which had very close and personal ties to Ares Macrotechnology. As people discovered PMC in Real Life, Knight Errant was retconed to include military operations. But if you ask me, the full extent of Ares influence ought to be in the intelligence community, rather than in military operations, with the NRO and NSA relying on AresSpace assets, and Guantanamo now run as an extraterritorial corporate facility (I know Gitmo detention facility did not exist when Cyberpirates was written, but I like the idea).

No matter what, Conspiracy Theories made a point of removing much of the influence Ares may have had in the UCAS government. I'm not sure if the author had something against Ares specifically, or if it did not like the idea of the UCAS being a corporate puppet.

The Neo-Anarchist Guide to North America mentionned the Wolverine as a "light carrier" with Staten Island Carrier Base (not Ellis Island) as its home port. Bug City describes the Wolverine class with these words: "Typically, Wolverines are armed for sea combat, local air superiority, and the occasional ground attack. However, Wolverines also have been used to ferry regular army and, of course, marine troops and their transports." I don't how intentional it was to have a USS Wolverine back in Michigan lake.

Runner Havens introduced the USS Colin Powell as the nuclear supercarrier based at Everett Naval Station. According to Rigger 3, it is the class-namer. Seattle 2072 says the USS Koontz now is a tourist attraction.

I always had the impression that the UCAS ought to be the remnants of the US after overexposure to the worst Washington corporate lobbies, New York banks, Boston lawyers and Chicago mob has to offer, while the CAS would the part left exposed to Bible Belt hardliner conservatives and Texas oil interests.

UCAS isolationism would result in oversized UCAS armed forces never actually deploying anywhere, but still flexing their muscles every time the corporations ask the State Department to threaten someone with a UN Security Council resolution, while preparing for a MAD scenario against the NAN.

CAS isolationism would result in oversized CAS armed forces never actually deploying anywhere, serving as one giant and expensive training and recruitment center for oil companies contractors, while preparing for high-intensity warfare against Aztlan.

I would like to see a sourcebook finally address the fact that the majority of the elven population was about 20 years old when the Salish Council opened its border to metahuman immigration, and under 24 when Tir Tairngire was founded. The army that fought in Redding in 2035 must have been a mix of human, ork and troll veterans with a handful of spike babies, and a lot of young elves with no combat experience. By 2064, you would still have a military hierarchy clogged with the elven "heroes" of Redding now in their fifties. Not sure those would have went away with the old governement.

Dirty Tricks has a chapter dedicated to Tsimshian. It focuses on the political process, and war reparations the Salishs-Shidhe asks for. The issue of what happened to the soldiers and members of the security services of the former police state is not really address. Since MCT already paid to have them trained by military advisers, I can picture the corporation hiring some of them for dirty works overseas as a cheaper alternative to Japanese employees.

There are some points in North America where war could flare up, easily. CAS and teh PCC are doing one heck of a dance just now, and teh NAN-UCAS treaties are held up thanks to Denver.

There's a lot more going on than people normally see, I think.

Dirty Tricks

Plots of Interest

• UCAS/Sioux border is a "powder keg looking for a spark." (p. 77)
• Sioux/PCC alliance may drive the CAS and UCAS together. (p. 78)
• President Colloton pushing back at the influence of Ares. Rah rah. (p. 78)
• Texas wants to invade the PCC (p. 89) after it was sold former New Mexico and Texas land by Aztlan. (p. 87)
• -- Shadowtalk hints it was for 1 nuyen as part of a plan to turn the CAS against the PCC.
• Sirrugh's storm has devastated south Florida. Refugees heading north are straining resources. (p. 89)
• CAS Supercarrier CSS Kitty Hawk used for rescue operations as part of shakedown cruise. (p. 88)
• Food blight (magical? nanites? nano-virus from petroleum-spill eating strain? Yeah, it's magic.) wipes out Aztlan corn crop (Aztlacoya blight) (pp. 88-89)
• -- Sirrugh also destroys producer of 80% of Aztlan food products - NatVat. (p. 87)
• -- Stuffer Shack is in trouble. (p. 89)
• Shedim infestation in New Orleans. (p. 89)
• Aztlan military morale is "in the shitter" at the Austin garrisons. Major supply problems. (p. 92)
• -- At least an entire division of Aztlan troops redeployed to Amazonia after the sale. At least a quarter lost when their transport ship sunk. (p. 76)
• Alabama is the largest steel producer in the CAS, second to Pennsylvania in North America. (p. 104) (Not sure how that works, but Shadowrun has never paid attention to this stuff).

CAS Military Assets
-- Note: CAS is the last nation on earth to use imperial units of measure. (p. 91)
-- Media blitz pushing the CAS as "the last bastion of the real America." (p. 93)
-- According to shadowtalk, CAS has the "world's only submersible carriers." (p. 91). Seems to contradict War!

• CSS Kitty Hawk - currently conducting rescue operations in aftermath of Sirrugh's magically enhanced hurricane in Borinquen. (p. 89)
• -- Note this is where NatVat is. (p. 79). Not clear who controls it then, Atzlan or the CAS.
• Carrier Strike Group I based on out Newport News, VA. (p. 91)
• Texas maintains a brown water navy consisting largely of torpedo boats. (p. 91)
• CSS Atlanta stationed in Texas (old flagship). Unstated where in Texas. Part of Battlegroup Atlanta. (p. 91)
• Texas Air National Guard is now based in Grand Prairie. (p. 91)
• Texas Rangers have at least two divisions of heavy armor around Austin. (p. 91)
• CAS Army has a division of light tanks in reserve around Austin. (p. 91)
• Sons of the Alamo and large number of militamen traveling to Amarillo. (p. 93)
• Magical research facility in the Smokies of Virginia. Specializes in spirit remote sensing. (p. 103)
• CAS Army based out of Alabama. (p. 104)
• -- Redwall Arsenal operated by Areas Heavy Industries and Ares Arms. (p. 104)
• -- Maxwell Air Base is a CAS base largely operated by Ares (p. 104)

Tsimshian Stuff

• Owes four trillion nuyen to the SSC. (p. 122)
• -- SSC is charging 39.6% interest on uhh. it's not clear. As written they are charging interest on ... payments?!. (p. 123)
• Sovereign tribal Council occupied the capital of Kitimat in December 2064. (p. 112)
• -- Officially rejoined the Native American Nations on January 5, 2065. (p. 112)
• Several Salish tribes support assimilation into the SSC. (p. 123)
• -- Remember that the Salish are the western tribes, not the entire collection that makes up the SSC.
• Large areas are completely deforested and many lakes and rivers contaminated with heavy metals. (p. 123). Somehow this doesn't seem to leech over to Salish territory much.
• -- Fraser River pollutants are a problem in the SSC. Trying to get the Shasta Shamans to return and help clean up. (p. 114)
• -- "[E]ighty-five percent of the land in Tsimshian is all but dead/" (p. 110)
• Combat trained toxic shamans a big problem. Hiring runners to take them out and spare their own casualties. (p. 123)
• Haida National Defense Force is a mixture of Awakened and mundane cops. (p. 125)
• -- SSC provides support (and manpower?) (p. 113)
• -- Many members of the Defense Force are Salish-born citizens. (p. 114)
• Sioux angling to grab Tsimshian as a Protectorate by forcing another STC intervention.

Just a little point that's been bugging me:
The idea that mega-corps have "standing armies". There is no way. Standing armies cost giant piles of money, and don't make money. Having worked in several "non-profit generating areas", such as IT, Validation and Security over the years, I know exactly how corporate outsourcing works, and this stuff would be outsourced. Sure they'd have security, but again, the cheapest they could get away with, and most of the lower level stuff would be handled by outsourced renta-cop agencies. They would pressure the host nation-states to provide security for everything that wasn't super secret, at tax payer expense, and hire mercenaries for anything that needed a real military force. Let MET-20000 deal with training, equipment, and all the logistical crap it takes to keep an army running.
My point is, other than Aztechnology being both a company and an imperialistic country, most large militaries involved in corp stuff would be mercs. Just like now

Not if they also function as a PMC.


Megacorps are inherently less effective than smaller companies, and have many attributes and functions of a nation-state, not a corporation. It's best, I think, to think of them as very imperialist, opt-in citizenship, corporate organsied nations, rather than profit-focused, shareholder value worshipping companies like today's corporations. A megacorp is not what would make today's short-term profit oriented Western oligarchs happy.

Also, with the level of espionage and violent action, megacorps will want to keep security in-house to minimize loyalty problems as much as they can.

There's only so much business available, even in Shadowrun. Modern day PMCs are only profitable with REALLY sweetheart deals and because many of the owners are using them for stuff other than to make money.

I'm nonplussed on this though, Shadowrun economics has always been driven by rule of cool. It's cool to imagine Coca-Cola armored battlegroups getting attacked by Pepsi gunships in a dispute over StufferShack distributing.

Shadowrun megacorps are free riding on the public services provided by the nation states. However, they are parasitic and will have to provide many of the functions of government eventually if they keep doing their level best to maximize profits.

The standing corporate armies seem pretty small scale. There's a lot of off-hand references to "divisions" of this and that, but the actual number of uniforms that make up that division can be a lot less in Shadowrun. I don't think many people (even some veterans) really grasp how many people and resources are tied up in a modern division once you include both the tooth and tail elements.

Certainly, SR corps are also involved in black market businesses to some degree (Aztechnology especially, being essentially run by Ghost Cartels, and MCT, being owned in parts by the Yakuza). Also, given the enormous danger from paraflora and -faune, business opportunities for mercs should be significantly higher in SR, and I see no reason why the Megas should entirely pass up on them. Most of them (all but Evo, Horizon and Shiawase, in fact) even own one or several private security companies. Also, keep in mind most municipal police was privatized, becausye Shadowrun is such a Thatcherist world.


They're too large to be purely parasitic. While the governments still exist, they live in a symbiosis with the corps by now. For instance, financial trade is significantly more regulated in SR thanks to the megas, who want stability, not short-term profit. Also keep in mind all megas play the long game - Lofwyr and Celedyr literally don't give a damn about the bottom line if it suits their longer-term goals, and most corps have a supernatural, immortal or otherwise non-human element in their boardroom (MCT has Ryomyo, via the Watanabe-Gumi; Wuxing has Chinese Magics, Horizon has the Consensus, EVO has Buttercup, Shiawase has the Empress, Aztechnology the Blood Mages and a heap of unholy knowledge, NeoNET has Celedyr, Saeder-Krupp has Lofwyr and Ares has Bugs). Sure, they want to make profit, but aside from all the possible profit they sink by being such a large organisation, they also are less interested in pure profits than most contemporary corporations are by nature of who runs them.



They once were small scale but, driven by Story needs and bad research, have significantly expanded. In SR3, Saeder-Krupp operated several supercarriers for .... lulz, basically. Or maybe in case Lofwyr wanted to cross an ocean and have a pad to take a nap, I dunno.


The dimensions of major armies are something all RPG writers are notoriously bad at grasping.

Though the old Seattle Sourcebook mentions corporate military vessels belonging to Aztechnology and MCT, Corporate Shadowfiles had the Big Eight military forces at best regiment-sized. Aztechnology had no military force at all, and used Aztlan national army. Fields of Fire lists MET2000, Tsunami and the like as "organizations," not corporations. Before that, Deutschland in der Schatten description of MET2000 was the first time you had an actual semi-private military forces, but it still retained a strong link to the German state. The idea of Desert War was already around, but as far as I remember, Shadowbeat trid program mentions a company-level event (which match MCT description in Corporate Shadowfiles of maintaining military company almost only for Desert War). From an operational point of view, a company or a battalion wouldn't allow a corporation to do much more in a crisis zone than evacuating high-value employees. Such small units would be little more than a glorified SWAT with air projection capabilities (even more so in a cyberpunk setting where cops had full-auto weapons and body armor... but reality caught up since). Then Knight Errant went military against the bugs, while Aztlan retconed the balance between corporate and national forces. In Year of the Comet, 2,500 Ares sent in California is considered as "pretty large for a corporate military presence" Since then, as the PMC rose in real life, strong corporate military became the norm. But maybe it's a change that actually also took place between 2050 and 2060.

Unlike the stock market-driven companies of today, megacorporations can make long-term investments. For them, the only point of outsourcing would be 1) saving on downtime for both gear and personnel 2) deniability (but we already know how they outsource that part, don't we?). In the military, decent training is going to eat a lot of the downtime anyway, and Desert Wars would allow to make a profit of it for some part. Reserves does save on personnel downtime, but less so on gear.

Currently, PMC makes benefits primary for three reasons 1) they hire experienced veterans whose selection and training have already been paid by government money 2) they hire additional cheap cannon fodders in poorer countries 3) they still rely on national armed forces to provide the heavy armor. Things the SR megacorporations cannot rely on. So far, air transport is the only field that appear to be sustainable activity. Sea escort in high-risk areas may be another one, but it's a bit soon to tell. Those who still have to hide from Aztlan governement, to put it another way.

Then there's the rules of cool.

Incorrect. The name "ghost cartels" specifically refers to the other south american cartels who were not involved in ORO/Aztechnology and the election rigging.

You're right. Non-Gost Cartels then. Still are cartels.

So the point is, they are not long term investments unless you send them off to plunder the Ottomans. They are very expensive to start and very expensive to keep up. Unless it's your business, it's a crappy business to be in.
An ARMY is numbered in the 100,000's. For big countries it's in the millions. Navy as well.

An aircraft carrier has an active, on ship staff of 5,000, with more than that off ship dedicated for care and maintenance of the ship and planes.

So, you invest a few hundred million in a carrier, and a few hundred million more into the planes (billions in real life, but we don't want to get into that), for the privilege of paying monthly salaries for 10,000 guys, plus millions more every year for service contracts on the ship, planes and all of the onboard equipment.
Then you have to protect your gigantic investment with AA ships and anti-sub, which will end up costing as much as the carrier did.
So, you spend billions of dollars to start, and billions more to keep it going. For one ship.
Where is the pay-off? What does your company gain from this investment?
Your stuff is protected by treaties with your host nations and the corporate court, as well as UN treaties and all that other crap.

I'm not saying mega-corps wouldn't maintain some kind of a standing force, but it would be more like a ranger battalion and a special forces group, and probably a few armed cutter sized ships for shipping in dangerous areas, not an ARMY. Leave that crap to tax-payers.

Agreed on all points. However, the design space for interesting mercenary/military missions is smaller than the sum total of jobs they could perform in the Sixth World, especially considering how crapsack the world is. I'm also a bit leery of biting off too much on this if just getting back into writing for Shadowrun. Shadowrun could really use an update of the old Lone Star sourcebook (mercs under color of authority) but that's quite a bit different in concept than updating Fields of Fire (mercs toting light machine guns as guns-for-hire).

Shadowrun goes back and forth on this. I used to get all aggravated at the plot holes and contrivances this caused, but I'm now a Canon Buddhist.

The supercarriers keep coming up. I think they are best explained as floating bases, not just a landing deck for a few dozen aircraft. Which makes sense in Shadowrun when you can't rely on your land bases being in your control from one year to the next and guarding them being a huge cluster when you can no longer operate the assumption that people are not going to be popping off assault rifles into your parked vehicles just for giggles.

So probably don't actually carry that many strike aircraft (and the ones they do will be mainly drones with a piloted jet riding herd since you can't trust teleoperation for crap) but do have their own lighters (small transport ships), a fission/fusion reactor, and enough point defenses to ward off all but the most determined strikes (and be large enough that they can take a pounding and still float). Actual operating crew can be a lot smaller, but the total crew is probably very large as they are also operating as a logistics nexus and strategic command and control node.

Forgot to add in the CAS notes that they are noted as having submersible (probably semi-submersible) carriers as well. The ubiquitous satellite surveillance aspect needs to be fleshed out more. I also do remote sensing as part of my research, and there are some head scratchers that can be cleared up.

Even if the writer is military it's hard to communicate the essence (beyond "you get to have power armor and miniguns! RAWR!"). And, frankly, the real military is mostly boring as shit or 99% absolute bullshit to deal with, and that's not much fun to game ("Oh, you want to have downtime so the mage can do whatever? OK, your characters are assigned to work detail by the CG to paint rocks outside the HQ. He says he doesn't give a shit you are special ops, everyone else is off guarding the border and there's no money for training this month so tough. You all get a nasty sunburn and a heaping helping of jack shit else. One month later ..."). So the guns and chrome Tom Clancy stuff gets played up most. That's certainly what I'm looking at concentrating on, as even the special ops bubbas have a lot of frankly boring training and duties that is passed over with a rock music montage sequence.

Shiawase does own Desert Storm Security. The name sound smore marketable to operate in crisis areas in North Africa or Middle East rather than patrol downtown in North American or Asian cities, but it was originally introduced as a standard private security company in The Neo-anarchists' Guide to Real Life, specialized in automated defenses. The fact it was first mentionned as a Shiawase subsidiary in Corporate Download may suggest it previously belonged to Fuchi Pan-Europa. Though I also considered the possibility of it being a spin-off of Shiawase Atomics security.

Though Evo doesn't have any known security business, Corporate Download did mention as Yamatetsu only significant military assets a fleet of 40 ships used to patrol shipping routes. As I said above, I think anti-piracy may be one of the few market that may have real business opportunities. Their size is not specified, but 40 patrol boats with a crew of 15-20 is I think credible enough even for someone who don't believe in large corporate military forces.

I agree. This makes total sense. A mega-corp having a small fleet of armed ships to protect critical shipping makes sense. A mega corp keeping a standing army of any size in case they need to (I'm not sure what they could do with force that they couldn't do with money and PR but lets say..) invade Poland is like you employing an appliance repair man, and auto mechanic and a plummer.

Yeah I'm starting to create a canon compilation like I did for the space stuff (i.e. like the CSA stuff, above). It's a bit of a cluster but will be nice to see everything all together.

A game centered around a patrol boat conducting anti-pirate raids and defense seems perfectly gameable and provides a mix of adventure opportunities, from ship battles with heavy artillery to assassinations, to rescue missions and intelligence gathering, to firefights at the pirate base. All with a heapin' helpin' of moral ambiguity if desired (the surrounding area has been despoiled by the corporations, the pirates are all barely teenages, half the combatants at the pirate base are untrained women and old men).

I'd be down for that game
Maybe also occasionally helping an errand boy for grocery clerks collect a bill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFvAaO9j8M

Well, the alternative corps face is this: either hire merc companies, or keep in-house military. The second option is cheaper, because a department of silly walks does not need its own IT service, HR, accounting, insurance, and whatever else supporting departments a full company requires. Plus, a merc company is supposed to generate profit, so not only will it have more employees per combatant standing, it'll add at least 10% to the costs above that. The benefit of mercenary corporations is the ability for the employer to expand the standing force quickly during an escalation, and then get rid of costly assets again. Mercs could also have a benefit of cheaper workforce, but with global corporate presence, the corps can hire where the labor is cheap just as well.


I was under the impression the other elements of a carrier group handle point defense.


Evo has highly augmented Evo Marines (Corporate Guide), produces both heavy armour (YNT Pushka Okne Tank), SOTA fighters (YNT Kanyuk Interceptor, both War!) and carriers. Let me quote the description of a Shibanokuji-Class Aircraft Carrier: " this floating city has a ship’s complement of over four thousand and can carry, service, launch, and recover eighty aircraft", "Yamatetsu Naval Technologies has sold its flagship to over a dozen nations, nearly every megacorp, and a few private contractors". Evo owns at least one, to which the entrance to their Sadko underwater arcology is anchored. Apparently, it is also a submersible capable of traversing anything but the deepest trenches (Ballast Tanks 2)

Mercenaries are skilled labor. At least, the kind of mercs that a corporation would be willing to hire. They probably also need to have some sort of bonding and licensing process to be seen as legitimate (meaning that the megacorps have leverage on you). Sure, you could scoop up a bunch of gutter rats at cut-rate prices from some warlord but what good will that be when they face a serious opponent? If you have a bunch of "security" troops that initiate a death blossom at the first sign of trouble (that is, just unloading in the general direction of a threat real or imagined) that's going to give your PR and HR guys heartburn. You don't want that. You want a group that the megacorps have by the short and curlies, who can at least be a roadbump for determined special missions troops (shadowrunners), and won't get bored and ransack that isolated research station you posted them at.

The carrier has to pull its weight. Also, it's generally cheaper and simpler to have one monolithic naval platform than lots of smaller ones.

I believe other nations/corps having submersible carriers contradicts statements about the CAS navy in Dirty Tricks. But that's Shadowrun

Most of the rules material in War! is ok. I personally don't see what is exclusively military about their morale and leadership mechanics though. Seemed like page filler. SR5 also gives an opportunity to do something about the rather ridiculous (low) costs for military hardware and the fact that Armor and Body for vehicles are all over the map.

All the more reasons to rely on house troops.

If so, pray tell, why do real carrier strike forces contain screen ships?

I believe it's just a rules error, almost all watercraft in War! have Ballast Tanks because apparently the writer did not bother to check out what it does.

Most of the rules material in War! is of about the same quality as the bit above, but the leadership rules were nice, even if they should've been in the Core.

I played with some math shooting stuff at stuff here, and it didn't seem like Armour and Body were ALL that off. Although, sure, the heavier-armoured targets got ridiculous, it's either no damage at all or destruction in a single hit.

Agreed, and I never said that specializing is bad. Indeed, it is the core foundation on which any sort of team is built.

What I said is that Shadowrun (SR4, more specifically) forces players to OVERSPECIALIZE. In order to have the acceptable number of dice for a specialists primary skillsets, he/she will run out of points before being able to add background specific skills that may not come up very often in SR, like Parachuting and Instruction for a former 18-series or Diving and Pilot Watercraft for an Ex SEAL. In many cases, in order for the player to have enough points to even purchase a single rank in those skills, he will have to significantly sacrifice capability in his primary specialties/roles.

Try to make a US Army 18D (SF Medic) in SR4, and make sure all of his relevant skills and attributes are represented at the appropriate levels. Even with zero implants, zero gear, and zero magic, you at still looking at 550+ BP...and that is without ANY GEAR/CYBER/BIO/MAGIC!

The point I was trying to make is that in order to make a Special Ops type character and have a sheet that accurately reflects his skills, you either need SR5 to be EXTREMELY generous with Skill costs or you need to have a system of skill packages that cost a flat amount of "skill points" and give you more skills at a higher rating than if you had selected them outright. Of course, the character should end up with a number of skills that might have little use in Shadowrun, but at least they would be appropriate for the character in question.

It's easy to hire quality mercs as temp labor. You can keep them on long-term contract but that doesn't mean you invite them to the company picnic. There's still a role for your corporate samurai types but they don't need to be everywhere. Licensed mercs are legimate, legal, and available at every price point.

Short answer? They give your overall fleet more flexibility, give ships you can assign captains too (seriously it's a thing), are there to physically screen the carrier, and also provide some point defense. Doesn't mean the carrier is unarmed or can't do some of that work themselves, especially since it will have the power to spare for EW and DEWs. Modern carriers have anti-missile defense too. Hell, we're being pretty optimistic that such ships can even survive with all the stuff spirits could do and ways you could hide a cruise missile until it's too late.

Probably. But that doesn't mean it's easy or even appropriate to retcon at the moment.

It's a bit more problematic with the range of values (notably, of Armor) that don't seem to correspond to the art, the size of the vehicle, or its role. Then there's the Cuanmitztli which is a whole can of worms I don't want to get into right now. (There's also the bit where you assume all naval vessels have hulls that are 2 meters thick (War!, p. 171) but that's fixable.)

Most military personnel are competent at their jobs, not experts. They can, and do, fail when performing under stress. That's part of the friction of war and you assume it as part of operational planning. Even special ops troops are not subject matter experts in everything under the sun. A lot of the schools they go to provide familiarization and orientation. A skill Rating of 2-3 goes a long way, and they only need Rating 4-5 in their core competencies.

That said, there might need to be some form of 'intensive training regime' rule. If they addressed some of the combat skill bloat this may be a non-issue. I quibble at the sheer number of skills given to some of the templates in GURPS Special Ops, but that is indicative of what happens if you have someone who has dabbled in a LOT of things, is minimally competent at them, and you have a game system with skills split all over the place.

Corporate Guide
Set in 2072.

Also adding a few bits to the space thread from mentions in here.

Corporate Forces of Interest (p. 18)
Lone Star
Knight Errant (Ares)
Dassault (Aztechnology)
Desert Storm Security (Shiawase)
Knights of Rage (NeoNET)
Minuteman Security (NeoNET)
ParaShield (Mitshuma)
Red Samurai (Renraku)

Also:
Reaction-Teams (Tyr Inc)


Aztechnology

• Soldiers are heavily indoctrinated. (p. 74)
• Guerreros are Aztechnologies "elite, best of the best, warriors" (p. 73)
• Many implanted embryos as part of population growth program may be cloned from the most loyal Guerrero's. (p. 74)
• Divided into four warrior orders. All are trained in non-lethal combat and blood sacrifice. (p. 73)
  
  • Ocelmoheh (The Jaguars): Bodyguards
  • Cuacuahtin (The Eagles): All Awakened. Unit commanders in regular and corporate forces.
  • Otontin (The Brave Ones): Stealth, infiltration, and assassination. Always act alone.
  • Cuachicqueh (The Shorn Ones): Highly augmented black ops teams.

Renraku

• Red Ninja are undercover agents. (p. 145)
• - Classically trained in ninjutsu. (p. 145)
• Red Samurai are the high-end corporate guards. (p. 145)
• - Trained to deal with shadowrunners. (p. 145)
• - Warrior order, requires a blood seal. Carry a traditional katana. (p. 145)
• - Must draw blood if they draw their blades. Take vows very seriously. (p. 145)
• - Only the CEO and board can give them orders. (p. 145)
• Operate in squads of five, with one being a mage. (p. 146)

Ares

• Strongly influence by military culture. Use lots of military slang for business. (p. 50)
• Employs mercenaries to "reach out" to warlords in the Balkans. (p. 57)

Evo

• Yamatetsu Naval Technologies (Yamatetsu NT) is Evo's military manufacturing arm.

Maersk
(Corporate Guide, p. 204)

• Contracts with NeoNET for Matrix security on ships.
• Contracts with Tyr Inc. for physical security and response.
  
  • Reaction-Teams - highly equipped, augmented, and trained. Called Fardrengir (presumably nickname).
  • Will hire freelancers if needed.

Nope. It's that EVERYONE other then the owner and a few core people are contractors. When there is no work, there is no pay. And the retirement plan sucks. Plus, other then a few high-end contractors running PSD jobs for Gov or the wealthy corp type, they tend to hire cheap. and you get what you pay for. For example, this article: http://blogs.militarytimes.com/battle-ratt...bastion-attack/

"The British, as overseers of Camp Bastion, had responsibility for guarding the base. Instead of placing their own soldiers in the towers, they delegated the duty to soldiers from the Pacific island of Tonga. Before the attack, several Marine officers raised concerns about Tongans falling asleep while on post, the story adds."

But at least the 200 million in destroyed aircraft didn't cost anyone senior their jobs. That would clearly be a disaster.

Yeah. That's sort of the definition of a sweetheart deal. And not all contractors are badly paid. The trigger puller and bodyguard types make a good chunk of change. But you bet your ass the contractor (assuming it was private) got paid top dollar to put warm bodies in those watchtowers.

The Land of Promise
Set in late 2074

• Prince Conall Taylor is a Ghost operative. Serves on the Board of Military Advisors. (pp. 15-16)
• Ranks of the Ghosts are decimated by infighting. (p. 17)
• Mistich Farad stalk the wilds still. Grown cruel without Ehran. (p. 17)
• New Peace Force uniforms include kilts. (p. 17)

Seattle 2072
Set in 2072

UCAS

• Naval Station Everett home port of the USS Colin Powell. (p. 88)
  
  • Battlegroup consists of the supercarrier, two destroyers, three frigates, and a Coast Guard tender.
  • Vice Admiral John Lienhard commands the supercarrier group. (p. 144)
  • 500 personnel at the Station, another 7,500 assigned to the station (i.e. ship crews)
  • USS Koontz is a part of the tour.
  • UCAS Congress wants to expand the station.
• Fort Lewis home of Joint Task Force Seattle and the Metroplex Guard.
  
  • Brigadier General John E. Darcy is JTFS commander. (p. 144)
  • Colonel Roland Dane is commander of the Metroplex Guard (p. 144)
  • Exactly four mages in the Guard pre-Arcology crisis. JTFS has at least forty + specialists. (p. 144)
  • Fort houses about 6,000 troops. (p. 144) (Apparently includes numbers for JTFS and Guard).
• McChord Airfield
  
  • No information.

New Seattle
Set in 2060

UCAS

• Naval Station Everett (p. 48)
  
  • Listed as Everett Naval Shipyards in New Seattle.
  • USS Koontz was a supercarrier.
  • Was commanded by Rear Admiral Jennifer McNair.
• Fort Lewis
  
  • No information of use.
• McChord Airfield (p. 57)
  
  • 4000 meter runway
  • Metroplex Guard operated two fighter squadrons and a tanker squadron.
    
    • Squadron A: 18 F-B Eagles.
    • Squadron B: 18 Eurofighters
    • Tanker Squadron: unknown
  • JTFS brought in two squadrons of tanker and cargo transports from Scott AFB, Illinois and a group of RE-25C electronics surveillance aircraft.

How to play as them in a game, and how to play against them (Making them enemies for Smugglers, Shadowrunners doing a border crossing, or even as enemies). Merceneraies should be part of each as well.



My group and I don't own anything SR4. For a new edition you're starting over.



Yes, definitely. My group would probably most want to play as Tir Ghosts, Mercenaries or Salish-Shidhe special forces.




I think players only want to be bad-asses. Most people expect the military to be a step-up from mall cops, no matter how untrue it is for most countries.



No, but it could be a good book for Panzers, Stealth helicopters, etc.



No, but it wouldn't necessarily be less useful either.

Well, if the Runners are playing "Special Operations Team," then to start everyone's going to need to be at least as competent a shooter as a Pvt. Nobody grunt. So it should be noted that unless the whole team are combat monsters, this group is going to have to be prime runners, and these jobs are not for your average newbie Seattle sprawl group. Advancing the character generation somehow would be the first step, I think.

The players that need to be described are going to be basically everyone with a military, which means all the major nations of the world, the militant Megacorps, mercenary groups large and small, extranational and extracorporate non-mercenary militant organizations (IE: terrorists and rebels,) that operate in places where the players might go to play Spec Ops for Hire.

Bits of canon that need to be explained: Some assjack has to explain the bit from SR4 suggesting a submarine extraction in Bogata. That just needs to be explained away. Other than that... Well, it's easy enough to say that the past (and probably the present) are chock full of misinformation, so take everything with a grain of salt and literally nothing is a suitable replacement for doing your own recon. (What you sprawl types refer to as 'legwork.'

Other points that need to be touched on are Spec Ops roles for less combative character archetypes. The Face's role in a special operations team, for instance: it's probably going to be his job not only to speak whatever the locals speak, but also to negotiate with them when negotiation is called for, and interrogate whomever needs to be interrogated.



Well, you can expect anyone interested in an SR5 version of War! to have the SR4 version of War!



It does, and it should be robust enough to let a GM quickly create an enemy type on the fly, and draw out the combat-relevant stats of normal members of that unit, specialist members of that unit, and vehicular stat blocks for that unit as well. Because at some point, somewhere, your players are going to do something stupid like mount a frontal assault on a large enemy patrol that you intended for them to hide from, and you need the numbers to determine just how badly they get their asses kicked (or just how much ass they kick.)

It will need to touch upon parameters such as the unit's training (are you facing a bushman militia or hardened UCAS special forces?) morale (will these men cut and run under fire, or will they fight to the last man), the unit's objective (search and destroy missions are a lot different than holding a position,) the unit's rules of engagement, what level of combat readiness they are at, etcetera...

It also needs to touch upon their equipment, and not generically either, because the players are going to want LOOT, GODDAMNIT. Even if they're military regular special forces, they're going to loot the bodies, so you need to be able to tell them what they get, from Kalashnikov rifles and pickup truck technicals from the bushman militia to the kind of insane shit that Ares Firewatch will be bringing to their Charlie Foxtrots. To that end, the War book will need, at bare minimum, stat blocks for all the guns, drones and vehicles that have been printed thus far and are likely to be found in regular and semi-regular combatant use (you won't need stats for a purse-popper pistol, but you will need stats for favored sidearm type weapons,) along with a quick blurb on any special functions any of those weapons have, and a reference to the book in which they can be found.



Depends largely on the military in question, what that unit's role within that military is, and what their combat readiness is. A unit of airborne assault troops belonging to a Megacorp or a militant, still-effective nation such as the UCAS or Russia will have all the goodies when they're dropping from helicoptors onto a target, including those helicoptors. Attack them in an operational base and only the soldiers on guard will be fully outfitted, the rest will be lucky if they have a pistol on them, they may not be armed with anything more than knives until they can get to the armory, and even then they'll grab a rifle and a few mags rather than take the time to get into full gear. Attack them at their home base when they're cycled back from combat and the guards will be in half gear at best, nobody except officers will have even pistols, and they'll generally be sitting ducks.

On the other hand, a bushman militia might well be outgunned and outclassed by particularly effective mall cops.



I'd suggest that really heavy weapons, such as light-to-heavy tank weapons, autocannons, assault cannons, rocket launchers, etcetera, should have a minimum level of damage applied to anything that lacks Hardened Armor. And it should be a lot of damage, too, ranging from "a heavily-armored human might survive this if he's lucky" to "not even a troll soak-tank stands literally any chance of surviving this." Basically, for most, getting hit at all by these weapons should be a "HoG or make a new character" moment.

Of course, actually hitting someone with a weapon like that won't be easy, which is why for engaging man-sized targets, vision systems that can see through walls or other cover and a nice, reliable targeting reticule are must-haves. Alternatively, you could load canister rounds (don't pack the oomph of a main gun round, but get the saturation needed to really ruin a guy's day,) or explosive rounds (also good at ruining someone's whole day.)

Hitting someone should still be easy for someone with an assault cannon, at least as much so as hitting them with a rifle should be. The arrival of one of those beasts in a street fight is a complete game-changer.

Strategic scale weapons (cruise missiles, artillery bombardment, nukes, fuel-air explosives, thor shots. etcetera) should be Hand of God or New Character moments. No rolling unless you're a Great Dragon in dragon form or a heavily-armored combat vehicle with hardened armor, or within the same, or otherwise in a bunker. These shouldn't be used against PCs very often unless the GM is a jackass, or they do something very unwise and knew the stakes up-front.



They're part of the setting, so they should be in the game somewhere. Perhaps a peripheral splat called "Worst-Case Scenario" or something, that can give WMDs a (nukes, Thor Shots, gray goo, Great Dragon attacks,) their proper due. Tank guns should definitely be in the War book, though.



I hardly consider 120 pages to be monolithic, but 40-50 pages for a supplement to cover more esoteric factors of warfare that can be left out of the main "War" supplement would be good. Something like...

War: The guide to Camo-Collar Runs, including stuff on what sort of Charlie Foxtrots a Shadowrunner team moonlight as Special Ops for Hire can find themselves hired to dance, the general state and level of military units with a few good sample units for a GM to grab stats from on-the-go, common battlefield weapons, vehicles and drones, etcetera. This one should aim to be about a 120-150 page book. It should also have a nice big glossary of military jargon the players and GM will want to know.

TO&E: Your guide to the militaries and Irregulars of the Sixth World. Basically, this book should have a Table of Organization & Equipment for all the major and distinct players (The UCAS, Russia, Aztlan/Aztechnology, Amazonia, Australia, all the Megacorps, the big merc units like MET2000,) and some generic ones that a GM can grab on-the-spot and possibly season a little to taste to represent alternate threats the GM hasn't had time to stat out beforehand. The book should have stat blocks for the building blocks that constitute those units, (infantryman, support gunner, combat mage, special forces operator, military hacker, military drones, military vehicles,) located very near to those units' TO&E, so the GM can cross-reference them quickly and throw together anything from a patrol to a platoon. 50-60 pages sounds good. If it rolls, walks, runs, or otherwise moves on the ground and wasn't in the main War book, this should have stats for it. This book should aim to be about 50-60 pages long.

Air Support: A guide to combat above the ground, from ground-support aircraft designed to ruin the lives of everybody on the team that doesn't have any of their own to air superiority vehicles, but also taking orbital assets into account - orbital laser/THOR strikes are one possibility, but so is the fact that everybody on one side may well have satellite imaging and recon giving them clear, up-to-date battlefield positional data and so forth and so on - and of course, the importance of jamming such if you don't belong to that team. It should have lots of stats for airborne vehicles and weapons systems, and they should be statted up such that anyone who finds himself on his own two feet facing down anything from this book is going to have a bad, bad day. Should probably also have TO&E blocks in the same format as the TO&E book for airborne units. This one should aim to be about 40-60 pages long.

Bloody Waters: A guide to warfare below and on the waves, including such things as hot sub on sub action, naval-scale weapons, surface-to-air defenses against all the nasty things found in Air Support, and information on using platforms on the waves to ruin the days of anybody on land near shore, but it should also have things such as river patrol-craft and small water vessels, as well as some details about subsurface installations like those underwater arcoblocks, because sooner or later the players are going to steal a military submarine and fire like, all the torpedos at one of them. It should also have information on people fighting in the water, frogman style. This book should have TO&E blocks, in the same format as those in the TO&E book. Also, it should explain how in Ghost's name anyone suggested getting a submarine to Bogota without the influence of mind-altering substances. Because seriously, gonk. This book should aim to be about 40-60 pages long.

FutureTech: the guide to experimental warfare, including such things as the Ares BattleMechs and other experimental vehicles and drones, prototype non-laser energy weapons, military nanotech and augmentations, Mil-Spec Matrix gear (in more detail than the main War book can go into, but in less than the Matrix book goes into, but with larger numbers (especially the price tag!) than the Matrix book,) experimental ammo and weaponry, information on the Emerged in combat scenarios, and so on and so on. Basically a Gear Porn book for the things the players should salivate over the thought of getting their hands on, and depending on how much you want to write and how large the pictures are, this one should be between 40 and 70 pages.

Grimoire of Battle: the Awakened guide to warfare, should include things on how magicians of the standard traditions fit into wars, perhaps a few traditions evolved by militaries for militaries, spells which specifically have and were designed for combat scenarios, Adept powers, Metamagics for both, as well as details on what the magician and adept's roles in combat are, taking into account the highly individualistic nature of the Awakened and trying to make that fit into the extremely conformist structures that are militaries. Stat blocks for Awakened soldiers/officers are, of course, a must. This book should aim to be about 30-50 pages long.

Caeleste Umbra Bellum: All the weapons, platforms and vehicles in space which are armed to murderize each other and stuff on the ground that they keep telling us exist in Shadowrun. Should cover things such as the hazardous conditions in orbit and on the surface of the moon and mars, life in those places both on armed and unarmed platforms, some information on Shadowrunners in those places (they do exist; Orbital DK is proof!) what sort of jobs one might take, both legit and otherwise, the equipment they might use to do them with, the hazards they face, and such. Should include the TO&E format and stat blocks collocated with them. This book should aim to be about 50-60 pages long.

Antiques of War: A gear porn book for older stuff, much like Gun Heaven 1 was, with a military bent. Euro Wars antiques go in here, too. Depending on how much attention gets lavished on it and how much old stuff they dig up out of older editions and/or invent from whole cloth, could be anywhere from 40 to 80 pages.

And, for the love of Ghost, have whomever is writing these things do their fucking homework. Don't make glib suggestions specific to certain places without first checking to see if it's even remotely possible (submarine extraction from bogota, I'm looking at you,) don't make retarded mistakes like suggesting that guns won't fire in space (they fire perfectly well in space thanks to the propellant having its own oxidizer and having the ballistic profile of a laser over the weapon's effective ranges,) or underwater (they fire underwater, but crappily; worse firing into water from above it,) and so forth and so on.

You don't have to hire Tom Clancey, David Weber or John Ringo to do consultation (though that would be awesome,) but whomever is writing these things had best be, at minimum, an informed enthusiast who has the time to read up and consult veterans, preferably they should be a veteran themselves.

Agreed.  The SR4 system is just fine at representing a former 11B or Marine infantryman, inside the allotted points and rules

for character generation.  I was specifically talking about how hard it is to use those rules to represent someone from the

Special Operations community.




Agreed! So let's look at what one of those SF characters should look like under SR4.

Let's build an 18D (Medical Sgt) who is about average on experience (5 or so years regular Army, 5 or so years as an SF

Operator) and is part of an ODA that focuses on Airbone Infiltration.

First off, Attributes.  At a bare minimum, you are looking at straight 4s.  I've met and worked with a good number of 18

series guys, and every last one of them was intelligent, VERY fit, extremely strong-willed, charismatic (see ROBIN SAGE for

why this is important for SF operators), nimble, and very physically capable.  They HAVE to be all those things.  SF Selection

weeds out those who don't meet that standard.  So right there, you are at 240 BPs (over the max allowed 200 pts at chargen,

and 60% of your total 400 point budget).

Now let's do skills!
Let's go with rating 5 in specialties, 4 in common SF Core skills, and 2 in those other skills they should have familiarity

with.

I'll use this notation: Skill (Rating) [BP cost]

18Ds are some of the best Combat Medics in the world so let's start with that.
First Aid (5) [20]
Medicine (2) [8]

Now, let's do the fitness/physical skills.
The physical fitness requirments for SF guys are extremely high.  I feel confident that any of them could compete at the

Collegiate level in athletics, but we are going be a little conservative here.
Running (3) [12]
Climbing (3) [12]
Swimming (3) [12]

It just so happens that we can get a 6 BP discount by buying up the Athletics skill to 3.  I think that is thematically

appropriate, despite the fact that the Athletics skill group includes Gymnastics, which is not a normal part of the SF

training pipeline.

So let's do this:
Athletics Skill Group (3) [30]

Okay, now combat skills.  All of the 18-series guys get very comprehensive weapons training.  They all must be skilled in the

Armys most common small arms (ARs, SMGs, LMGs, Shotguns, Pistols, Grenade Launchers), as well as have passing familiarity with

hand grenades, shoulder-fired AV weapons, and vehicle mounted weapons.  When it comes to melee combat, most 18-series guys

will have a small amount of training in blades (knife mostly) and unarmed combat.  NCOs can choose to futher advance their

hand-to-hand combat skills, but it won't be universal across a whole unit.

I think the Firearms Skill group is appropriate here.  So we end up with this:
Firearms Skill Group (4) [40]
Thrown Weapons (1) [40], for Grenades
Heavy Weapons (2) [8], for Grenade Launchers and Machine Guns
Gunnery (1) [4], for vehicle mounted weapons
Blades (1) [4], for basic knife trainin
Unarmed Combat (1) [4]

Outdoor/Wilderness Skills.  These skills are some of the most often neglected by SR players who gen up former SF operators. 

The truth is that every 18-series NCO will be VERY proficient at Navigation and fairly proficient with Survival (mostly

courtsey of SERE school).

So we have this:
Navigation (3) [12]
Survival (2) [8]

Social Skills.  One of the primary missions of ODAs is to make contact, work with, and train native forces.  A core part of

this is cultural training, including extensive language training.  ODA team members need to be able to socialize, fit in with,

and bargain/deal with these native forces, an normally must do so in a language that is not native to the operators

themselves.  In addition to that, all SF team members are experienced NCOs and have attendend extensive Leadership training.

This gives us the following:
Etiquette (3) [12]
Negotiation (2) [8]
Leadership (3) [12]

Stealth.  Sneaking around is certainly an important part of training, though I would be willing to consider a lower rating to

be marginally acceptable.
Infiltration (2) [8]

Technical Skills.  For an ODA who's specialty is Airborne Infiltration, they should have a decent score in Parachuting

(courtesy of Airborne and MFF schools).  And while heavy Demo skills are the forte of the 18E (ENGR Sgt), all ODA team members

must have a passable level of skill in basic demo and explosive breaching.  One of the missions of SF units is to train and

lead native forces.  All SFers are not only specialists in their own skills, but they are top not teachers/instructors.  And

while combat/tactical driving is not common across all ODAs, they do all receive basic ground vehicle operation training.

So we end up with:
Demolitions (2) [8]
Instruction (4) [16]
Parachuting (2) [8]
Pilot Ground Craft (1) [4]

Perception.  Yeah...these guys have very sharp senses and are trained to pick out minute details.  While your 18B probably has

the best Perception skill in the whole ODA, everyone should have this skill up to at least rating 3.

Perception (3) [12]


Here is the whole skill list:

First Aid (5) [20]
Medicine (2) [8]
Athletics Skill Group (3) [30]
Firearms Skill Group (4) [40]
Thrown Weapons (1) [40]
Heavy Weapons (2) [8],
Gunnery (1) [4]
Blades (1) [4]
Unarmed Combat (1) [4]
Navigation (3) [12]
Survival (2) [8]
Etiquette (3) [12]
Negotiation (2) [8]
Leadership (3) [12]
Infiltration (2) [8]
Demolitions (2) [8]
Instruction (4) [16]
Parachuting (2) [8]
Pilot Ground Craft (1) [4]
Perception (3) [12]

So a single skill at Rating 5, one skill and a skill group at Rating 4, 4 skills and a group at Rating 3, and the rest at 2 or

1.  And with Attributes, no Dice Pool that exceeds 9 dice.

No, that doesn't sound over-powered or munchkiny to me.

But yet that is 226 BP of skills, and 240 BP of attributes.  And that is before you spend any points on anything else like

Gear, Race, Positive Qualities, etc.


If I show up to a con and want to get in on an SR4 missions game with this sort of character concept, what can I do?  If the

GM doesn't let me break half a dozen chargen rules, I can't build him.  So I have to dump skills that are core to the concept,

but likely won't come up or come up often in the game.  So I dump Gunnery, Blades, Navigation, Survival, Leadership,

Negotiation, Demo, Parachuting, and Medicine.  Then I have to do silly crap with my Attributes just to make my character fit

into the rules.  What I'm left with is a character that might be mechanically capable inside a normal Shadowrun game, but

wouldn't remotely resemble an actual experienced SF Medic.

I don't have the SR5 book yet, but I'm betting the character gen process is just as limiting when trying to create believable

characters that have a wide breadth of knowledge rather than an ultra-focused set of skills/abilities.

THIS is why I would suggest a skill package system.  Something like Pay 200 BP and get a package of skills that are pre-picked

and have a set rating, and would cost you 230+ points to pick individually.  It's the same concept as the Cyberware suites.

The simple answer is you can't play someone with that level of ability as a starting character. It's the same reason I don't show up at a 1st level DnD game and say "My concept is a 20th level wizard, why can't I play one?" Not everything is a playable concept at character generation. You can't play a multibillionaire owner of a megacorp. You can't play a great dragon. There are a lot of things you can't do as a 400 BP character.

You can come quite a bit closer to that concept if you use Karmagen (Updated Rules) in 4th Edition.

Yea, I made that guy, plus a little extra because I used skill groups when possible, using karma-gen and still had 99 points. Which I could use to munchkin out a couple of skills, or to buy a butt-ton of cyber, or make him an adept.
Karma-gen rewards generalists, use that.

Or spend almost all of it to get his edge up to 6

edit> and still have enough cash left to get the Lonestar Swat cybersuite, and a couple of guns. Without any negative qualities. Not bad.

Indeed... My guy was an unaugmented Spec Ops Operative, and He turned out amazing. Of course, most of his skills clocked in between 8-12 Dice, so no uber DP's. But he was a solid build who could cover an amazing number of things when required to do so.

Or 636 karma, according to my calculation, though this would mean extra cost to acquire the needed knowledge skill (which may vary a lot, depending on broad you consider knowledge skill to be). However, both of us has yet to account for Edge, which Special Forces should have plenty (as Edge is not only the Luck factor, but also the Get-out-of-this-shit-alive attribute).

The thing is, a special force operative no longer is a starting character. Five years in a regular unit is more like a typical starting character background. All the karma won during the subsequent five years in SF would come on top of chargen.

As a side note, these days most SOF would have Armorer 1, with a Picatinny Rail specialization

The problem with the simple answer is that it's (a) bollocks, and (b) cuts off a wide slice of Shadowrun's likely character background histories.

I kind of like his "Skill Suite" solution, actually. You give up the ability to minmax your skills for getting the generalist range of skill that a character ought to have to be able to survive and do things that aren't "kill this guy and steal his stuff."

Really, a generalist who's rolling 10 dice on a bunch of stuff, and has an edge of 6 for when he really needs to accomplish something is a great starting character. Cyberware is cheap and effective, and after a couple of missions, he'll be a really good character. The edge will make sure he survives to get there.