The NVA were, well, smart about it, though. I read loads of Vietnam War memoirs and learned how they used to set traps for helicopters. Like they would gather around a casevac and wait for the helicopter to try and land before opening up and trying to take it out. That's just one example.

At the same time those helos were susceptible to small arms fire, so you didn't even necessarily need specialized equipment to disable one or kill the pilot.

Probably there were a lot more emergency extractions done by helo back in those days compared to today. Also, I guess the enemy today just isn't nearly as smart or determined as the NVA was. I mean, today we have absolutely no equivalent to the Siege of Khe Sanh, in terms of a major military action accompanied by an international political play coming from a unified military leadership.

Even look at the Tet Offensive. The North Vietnamese government was basically willing to sacrifice the entire Viet Cong in order to shock Joe Sixpack in the US. I don't think we've seen anything with the psychological impact on the public from our current wars.

No equivalent to the Vietnamese tunnel networks either.

Not to say that conflicts in the 90s were anything like present-day wars, every military uses equipment 30 years behind tech curve. That's just how military industry works. Even now. US Army still uses M14. Those drones aren't cutting-edge tech.

just +1.

How can plots be that stupid, honestly....

Besides, the topic is derailing.

I'm reading 2nd ed books atm, and to be honest, there was a lot of poor products. I guess we mostly tend to remember the great ones.

What afraids me is that nobody seems to be able to give me ONE great plot book/campaign of the 4th ed.



Another point: if people says SR is less popular now, I've read that CLG sold it's full 15 000 5th ed first prints. When you sell quickly your first pass, I guess it's a sign of a game beeing popular, no?

15K is not that much. And how long did it took them to btw?

I didn't play till the end but the Seattle Missions were going well enough for me. If only my gaming group had not split up by Real Life™. Ghost Cartel was an interesting run too.
War, definitely was not a great book and that was around the time I stopped playing, maybe others can remind of good/great 4th edition plots.

Don't know. I've read that in a french rpg-paper. It's likely that their 2nd printing will have erratas inside.

In France, a book is a huge success at 3000 books. So I guess you're financially more than ok with a 15000 book sellings.

Put this in perspective. The Shadowrun Returns kickstarter sold at least 38,276 copies in a single month, and has had much, much more in the way of sales on Steam since. 15k is barely a blip.

Hell, the My Little Pony comic issue last month sold just under 20k copies.

I feel really sorry for the folks who bought those first printing 5th ed hardcopies. It's a damn shame that they paid what, $60 for -that-.

The Stonewall IS a T-Bird...

Eh, you realize that the Vietnamese had been fighting more than ten years non-stop by the beginning of the Vietnam war, had SOTA weapons (including warplanes) and "military advisors" with experience fighting Germans in WWII and Americans in the Korean War? As opposed to a bunch of unshaved zealots with fifty year old AKs the US is fighting now? Which further goes to show how external support makes guerrillas relevant.


I am not a fan of premade adventures, so I prefer setting books. Emergence or Corporate Guide were rather decent ones.



I'm somehow getting the impression that you wanted to present a counter-argument about the Stonewall's propulsion system, but all I'm seeing is its classification (which has been that way since Rigger Black Book). Yes, it's a flying rock and not just a flying brick.


BTW, another impression I'm getting is that repeating unsourced claims made by some military figures about their critics is kinda dumb if one just complained about unsourced claims by biased sources.

The classifications (Tank and T-Bird) are not mutually exclusive, Fatum...

This is senseless. A T-Bird is a class of a vehicle. You won't classify a copter as a tank, even if it's an armoured one.

*cough* Helitank *cough*

The Stonewall is a LAV Main Battle Tank. Always has been.

Also, as far as people reacting to deaths, you don't have to hide them. Just make them seem 'normal', part of everyday life. 70,000 people dead in Italy seems like a lot. But in real life the past five years the death rate in Italy has been well over half a million a year. 70k is a mere statistical blip in comparison. I am certain super intelligent dragons can figure out how to disguise deaths as due to mundane explainable causes.


-k

The Banshee also has a minimal speed of 360 km/h. So it cannot operate for more than one hour, and as little as 15 minutes at top speed. It's either a 100-200 kilometers raid into enemy territory before returning home, or the 300 kilometers hop, followed by either a four hours full stop waiting for the tanker truck, or just one hour for a heavy-lift helicopter. Nothing impossible, but some forethought required.

My point was, people don't necessarily have fond memories of Harlequin or Universal Brotherhood because they were great as adventures. They are nostalgic because that was when they started Shadowrun and were still discovering the game. For any player who started SR in the last decade, Ghost Cartels may be that first epic campaign they'll remember in a few years. On the other hand, the gamemasters who mastered Harlequin when it first came out have been playing Shadowrun for more than two decades. By now, they're experimented enough to know what they want and how to do it, write their own adventures rather than relying on one published they'll probably find flawed upon reading.

It worth noting that you mention Renraku Arcology Shutdown, which wasn't an adventure, but a sourcebook. The actual campaign was Brainscan. I am under the impression that there are more people who (fondly) remember running the arcology, but never played Brainscan proper.

Well, Brainscan left a lot to be desired.

SYL

Not to mention they blatantly had Chinese and Russian advisors popping in and fielded some equipment that was excellent for the time and place. Consider the AK 47 vs. the M16A1 jam-o-matic which originally shipped with incompatible ammunition, as well as their recoilless rifles.

Accurized refurbished M14s. I mean, it's more than a 50 year old weapon system. It's also a visual and physical symbol of postwar masculinity, stoicism and pain tolerance stemming from agrarian lifestyle, social cohesion, and courage of convictions. Consider that people can pay around $2K for a new M14.

I wish that instead of destroying old M14s, Garands, or what have you, they would give that stuff away to private citizens as surplus. That way we could all enjoy the beneficence of the federal government.

They do, actually.

http://www.thecmp.org/

They haven't started getting M14's because they're still in service as designated marksman weapons, so there isn't a huge surplus stack of them lying around. But the Civilian Marksmanship Program has been selling surplus rifles for very, very reasonable prices to get them civilian hands for over a century now. They used to have a ton of M1 Carbines and M1903's, but those are mostly sold through now, as are most of the Garands.

Harder to get surplus rifles these days since the registry's closed and all of the main battle rifles the US has used for the last half century are classified as machine guns. :/

Maybe they could, although death statistics are a lot more sensitive than you think. But as it were, they turned a whole metroplex into their personal hunting grounds in broad daylight since Big Al doesn't give a shit about humans.


As for the Stonewall, here is what the old Rigger Black Book had to say on the matter: http://s22.postimg.org/xuveooolt/Clipboard02.jpg But seriously, just look at the artwork...
LAV is a class of vehicle based on their propulsion, MBT is a class based on combat role. Vehicles can be both, and seemingly without making serious compromises. Even stall speed is only an issue when leaving the standard no-in-ground flight profile, sayeth Rigger 3.

stall speed is only interesting in the situation that you need to climb to maximum height in the minimum of time. if you are a ground fighter, operating more like an over armored helicopter than a fighter yet and never actually leave the airspace below 100m, then fuck stall speed, you'll never get there in the first place. hell, technically, once you hit stall-speed, all you do is engage the downward thrusters and hover up there like a helicopter would if he actually could get up to that height in the first place.

I'm still not convinced - after all, a copter is a category based on propulsion, too, but you don't call Mi-24s tanks or IFVs - but let's not be pedantic, this is not the point. Point is, a SR army has invincible tanks that can goddamn fly, which makes blitzkrieg breakthroughs potentially catastrophic. Which again speaks a lot against static frontlines.

As for adventure books, I don't get your fascination with these. Running premade adventures is like buying Lego and only constructing what's drawn on the box. The thing is, Arcology Shutdown (and the whole Deus arc), Universal Brotherhood or Bug City were good setting elements that left a lot of room for your own adventure ideas. The Dragon Civil War, in my opinion, as it is presented in the books, is not.

Can't sell them. IIRC, the 1968 GCA made that illegal as they were designed as machine guns.

Oh, right. I always forget that the M14 is select fire, becuase there's no bloody reason for it to be.

I read in the Vietnam War memoir "Green Knight, Red Mourning" ( http://www.amazon.com/Green-Knight-Mournin...ht+red+mourning ) that the M14 in full auto, when fired into someone at point blank range, was capable of nearly ripping a man in half.

It's a video game. You can't compare at all.

Some of the buyers may have played the Megadrive RPG or the XBox/PC game.

Some might have been Shadowrun GM but have no gaming group anymore.

Some might be player at the game (hence not buying books).


For 1 book sold, you have around 5 guys benefiting of it. In a video game, it doesn't work the same.

That's only sales to distributors. Actual retail sales aren't tracked through those numbers.

The fact that I can still find copies of SR5 on shelves is proof that all 15,000 copies weren't picked up by gamers.

SR5 was released to much hype, and it's common knowledge that the first release of a RPG core book sells the best, so distributors would be more willing to take a risk on them. So, you can't measure the actual popularity of a game based on distributor sales.

Just remember that such VTOL maneuvers eat fuel like nothing else
(The critical altitude is 75 m, BTW. The reason given is that anything below that counts as ground effect, i.e. technobabble)


A helicopter can't reach 75/100 m?

How about PDF sales, can we measure using those or are distributors stocking those too?

Some quotes:

Thought that the second print run hit the shelves in late November...would expect to see them on the shelves...??? Of course, your point re distributor sales is still valid, as I doubt all copies on shelves were actually sold prior to the second print run becoming available.

It's not like the second print run has any special features to sell it... like, you know, errata or corrections.

Hint hint.

Well then, if they had to print extra unerrated books, wouldn't that mean that the first batch had been sold?

No, it just means that they were not organized enough to produce a corrected copy when they had the opportunity to do so.
Just another symptom that is CGL.

i meant the height where a VTOL like the banshee/stonewall has to worry about it's stall speed.

It means that the first batch sold out or nearly sold out and when they had the opportunity to send a second batch with errata and clarifications they failed to do so.
One does not exclude the other.

Organizational Failure... Pretty common with CGL.
You are correct in that they still could have sold out the 1st Printing.

The civilian M1A is one of the finest rifle's I've shot. SHTF time I'm grabbing my M1A over my M4-gery, assuming I have ammo for it.

Which I usually don't, since its so fun to shoot.

I really prefer the M1 carbine, myself. Smaller round, yes, but they shoot amazingly well, barely any felt recoil and very natural pointing.

Same problem with ammo, though. .30 carbine has gotten way expensive.

Modern warfare and weapons are fun, but let's angle the discussion back in the direction of Shadowrun.

No, there is a ground effect for helicopters and airplanes that improves performance. However it's not 75 meters, it's roughly the rotor diameter or wingspan.

Under what circumstances does a second, non-corrected printing occur without the first printing being at least mostly sold through?

Looking at the reviews on Amazon, there seem to be a good number of people complaining about pages falling out of the book. For the people who took the plunge and bought the book, have you had that experience?

I have a hard cover copy I got (discounted). I do not see or hear any of the typical "poor binding" indications like I have had with other gaming products (older BattleTech and some of the Classic BattleTech stuff). I've read different sections repeatedly, opening the book almost once per day.

The only thing I see as odd is the stiffness of the pages when it comes to turning them which I'm attributing to it being a new book.

I have the hard copy leather bound with the gilded pages. The book looks very nice and holds up well. I've been using it since September. It's content aside my only complaint is the Embossing hasn't held up. I can barely read "Shadowrun" on the binding any more because most of the embossing rubbed off from heavy use. Every thing else about this massive book shows that it will take a beating. I have a second group with players new to Shadowrun who are very impressed with it's presentation and appearance.

As far as pages falling out both my second and third edition paper back Shadowrun books had this problem after six months of game play and I imagine it's probably no different for the Shadowrun fifth edition paper back. It is a massive tome with over 450 pages!

So far, no binding problems with my regular 5th edition either.

Mine has no problems. If anything it seems to be one of the best bound books I have, though only time will tell on that.

OK....30 carbine FMJ...damage code 9M or 6S?

This was a big thread for SR3R. I don't think we came to a conclusion.