Run & Gun, Preview #2

Mostly pointers from a quick glance.

Yep, but a damn fine read.

Kudos to the writer of this chapter.

Bull forgot proper usage...

"Yep, that about covers it. Their dangerous, and people
who use them often get sloppy, which results in excessive
collateral damage. And people losing their fragging arms."

Wonder if that might have been predictive text error on spellchecker?

Good catch.

Pretty typical CP-style "long tooth" commentary. Not seeing anything that really stands out when compared to anything I've read since "Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!" 20 years ago.

To be honest, the description of weaponry, if for the whole team, is too light and it's too heavy for an individual member.

Modern rifles are strongly pointing towards carbines and short-barreled ARs because of the extreme prevalence of both mechanized forces and those forces deploying in urban combat. Newer bullet loadings are actually optimized for these weapons to bring their performance closer to the assault rifles they're replacing.

Police snipers are largely engaging targets at less than 50m, 50-100m shots are relatively rare, and 100m+ shots are pretty much unicorn farts. In dense urban areas with limited resources, intel, and a desire to reduce collateral damage to limit law enforcement responses, a 'Runner can get by with a full-size SMG/carbine just dandy as everything from your door-kicker gun to your typical-range precision rifle with a bit of optics swapping. If you want more "oomph" from your weapon per-shot, upgrade to a chopped version of a battle rifle, don't go with a larger dedicated precision rifle with far less versatility.

As far as individual load-outs, the pros (aka Tier 1 SpecOps) roll with a longarm (Carbine/rarely a Shotgun/rarely a LMG), a handgun for backup, and a good knife for most missions. Mission-specific equipment (breaching gear, surveillance equipment, demolitions, etc) is determined as-needed per man for each mission. So we're basically looking at main weapon, backup weapon, melee weapon of choice.

Mages are typically walking Main Weapons, so they tend to roll with a handgun/PDW and a melee weapon. Riggers are probably linked to their Main Weapons so they typically are loaded out pretty much the same. Weapon-based Melee Adepts swap their tool of choice for their main weapon so they can go lighter with a situation-correct firearm as a backup in case they need to add to the distance firepower as they maneuver to close distance and have some fun and a backup melee weapon. Gunbunnies will typically have the loadout as described above.

That all said, it's your game. Carry what you want your characters to have.

In the interest of full disclosure, I had a great time with a character that carried eight (yes, you ready that correctly) Cav Scouts with laser sights (yeah, yeah...check out the Ruger LCP w/ laser sights for a laser sighted pocket pistol that you can buy right now) in custom concealable holsters that also included a slot for a spare magazine (paid twice as much for each), an MP5 TX, a TC Centennial (a single shot long-barreled target handgun), and a pair of custom-gripped Extendable Batons on his runs.

Eh, I suppose that works well enough as an introduction to the ideas of combat for someone who's never played a modern combat game before.

The lack of any detail on explosives there is a damn shame, but given how shitty the rules for shaped charges are, I don't blame the author for not wanting to make them seem desirable in the fluff. A discussion of less than lethal combat and area control weapons like flashbangs would have been a pleasant surprised.

Add that Explosives = Instant Terrorist for all intents and purposes and your proverbial Can o' Worms swaps for a 55-gallon drum right quick...

Not hugely enthused by a chapter like this. There's not really a lot here in this preview that seems useful. the tips seem to be 1. bring guns, but not too many, 2. bring armour, but not too much, 3. try to avoid fights if you can and finish them quick if you can't, 4. don't underestimate the opposition.

Ummm...well duh?

How about some hints or tips on how to make the mechanics of 5th ed. achieve these goals? Perhaps a quic analysis showing that an Armour Jacket is great generally for glancing stuff but shouldn't be relied upon because [math].

How about some essentially character building or advancement advice or something to make the fluff text more directly applicable.

Because 'Bring armour suitable for the job' is a nice platitude. But...ummm...what armour is suitable for the job? How do I tell? What armour isn't suitable? What are alternatives if weight allowances or social pressures prevent certain equipment?

Interesting exercise: look for the parts that are specific to the 6th world. Not the brand names or the lingo, but the parts that take into account stuff like magic, cyberware, drones, metahumanity and so on...

That's what would have been interesting to have. Things that are obvious to a 6th worlder, but not to a regular 2014 RPG player. Not things that are already obvious to a regular 2014 RPG player.

That's an interesting question, and about all I see is 'mages, carry a backup gun in case you get tired'. With absolutely no mention of the times or reasons where it would be a very bad idea to use magical attacks.

Because no Shadowrun book have ever been like that. Books with nothing but math are boring.

Indeed... Unless you are a Math Geek, I guess...

Uhuh.

And when I say replace the fluff with maths then that would indeed be boring.

But seeing as I said some math to support the fluff I don't see how you came to the conclusion that the fluff should be excised. The math can't support the fluff if there's no fluff in the first place after all.

I'm pretty sure this is a fluff chapter. They have always had the occasional fluff chapter or part of a chapter. Most products usually have half half, with IC fluff followed by ooc crunch. This is just a preview so there is a good chance there will be crunch after. Plus it's only a few pages. Making the complaint, cause it is a conplaint, that there was a few pages without math makes little sense.

Which happens to be the exact opposite of what my groups have done. Many of the mages in our groups were more than happy to let technology do the heavy lifting unless magic was suddenly something that gave a tactical advantage. Sure they had stun bolt, but it takes a whole mess of tazing to get your trigger finger tired enough to make up for even one flubbed drain roll.

Not to mention that a tazer doesn't leave astral imprints or piss off watcher spirits and wards.