For what it's worth, there are drugs that cannot be given transcutaneously so syringes would still be a thing. Of coarse the rules for SR don't include any of those (so far as we know from written descriptions) so the Sengir's question (why they are included in the gear listings) is still valid. I guess one advantage of syringes over slap patches is if you carry a variety of compounds and a syringe you can choose the drug (or pick your poison) on the fly. It seems to me like an option for medic characters. Also I think any mid- to high rating medkit would include them (and injectable drugs).

---------------------

I, like Cain, also adopted a system where common disposable items (like ammo) were rolled into lifestyle costs and not tracked in detail. IIRC we combined it with some of the SR3 rules for vehicle upkeep and SOTA to account for the "overhead" a shadowrunner had to shell out to stay in business. Their ammo cost was calculated based on firearms skill, since it stands the reason that maintaining a higher level of skill requires more training/range time/what have you. And, as Cain has described, it was quite liberating not to have to track all that junk.

Funny you mention that. I'm sure that the technology has improved since the day when I wrote the rule, but at the time those types of gun mounted lights only had several hours of battery life, and I think I noted this in my house rules, so if you were out all night using your light you'd need to change your battery, which means you needed to have noted a spare set of batteries on your character sheet or else you'd have a moment of comedic terror when suddenly you were enveloped in darkness at a horrible time.

I really like this concept. Paying money just to keep things "SOTA" didn't appeal to me, since a .38 cal revolver from World War I is not inherently less deadly to the person getting shot than an expensive .38 cal revolver manufactured today. Getting stabbed with a crappy mass produced World War II katana isn't going to be a lot better than being stabbed with some kind of katana-shaped blade made with modern alloys. (Unless you dikote it, but you could also dikote your antique katana.) When someone writes you a strongly worded letter attacking you logically over something you don't care if they are using Appleworks, WordPerfect 5.1 or Microsoft Office to compose the letter. The differences are subtle and arguably not enough to really show up statistically in normal SR 3 rules.

However, maintaining skill require constant training, vehicles need oil changes, etc. I really prefer the concept of overhead or maintenance. It makes so much more sense to me intuitively.

Nope, the gun lights are still just 1.5 to 3 hours in battery life in most cases. Of course, 500+ lumens will certainly "light up your life" and can easily blow out the vision of someone not ready for getting an eyeball full of Surefire love.

Interesting side note, you can get an idea of a person's training background by how they use their weapon lights. If they tend to "flashbulb" (ie use the weapon light just momentarily so they can see where they're going and get the general jist of where targets are before turning the light back off) then they typically had a military background. If they run around with the light on constantly, then they're very likely from a law enforcement background because sneaking up on folks is typically less of an issue. Needless to say, it drives me a bit nuts when I see (former) military guys in TV and movies using their lights on constantly, but it makes sense from a cinematographic perspective because you know your take won't be ruined by a random camera strobe from one of the lights unless the actor really screws the pooch.

Well among many other things I wish SR had developed and built on the SR3 system for subsequent editions was a more detailed treatment of low light combat and tactics involving use of lights including blinding and use of strobe mode. Should still work on anyone who doesn't have visual dampening.

One thing you can do with a syringe that you can't with a slap patch: Draw blood.

And yes, that can be useful for a runner. Ritual foci, DNA samples, Blood typing a target... there are options.

Also, don't ignore the intimidation factor. The doctor with a slasher grin on his face and a syringe full of something is far scarier and more likely to loosen tongues than if he were holding a slap patch.

Re: Tracking stuff.

Most of the time our group is willing to handwave little stuff if there's a good reason for your character to be carrying it (EG the smoker having matches or a lighter, the female face carrying makeup, the psycho in clown makeup and a purple suit having a knife, ect) and unless you used A) A metric f***ton of regular ammo or B) Hard to get, illegal and expensive ammo then we generally assume that you restock between runs.

For example: the 5 regular rounds that you shot from your light pistol can pretty much be assumed to be replaced between runs without rolls or noticeable expense. The 600 APDS rounds from the minigun? not so much.

In one of my SR4.5 games, I had a rigger with five different armed drones, each of which had at least one full-auto weapon. Trying to keep track of how much ammo he went through was impossible, so I just periodically made him buy several thousand rounds. As a small twist, if he ever rolled a botch or a critical botch, his gun ran out of ammo, and he needed to restock it somehow. So, I was able to keep the fear of running out in a fight, but without the pain of actually counting rounds fired. Like Method said, it's liberating.

With enough dice (and not even that many), glitches and critical glitches effectively become non-issues. For example, in all my years I've never seen a character using explosive rounds have them blow up on them.

~Umi

Same here. In fact, I think that I have seen maybe two or three glitches out of the thousands and thousands of rolls I've seen, but not a single critical glitch.

I've seen my fair share of glitches, but it's typically when someone is trying to default on something, or when they build a character with Gremlins or similar. It can really up the drama of a campaign to run with a "Mr. Unlucky", as long as they're able to compensate for the vastly increased rate of glitching.

~Umi

The question was not "why would anyone need syringes?", but "why would anyone need printed stats for syringes, breaklights, or gloves?". They're the kind of item you simply pick up at the nearest stuffer shack or order by drone delivery within the hour, cost 1D6 ¥ or just rolled into lifestyle costs.


PS: And if you really need to draw blood during a run and there is no conceivable way the players could be carrying syringes because they just escaped naked from prison, a simple Perception roll might reveal:
- First aid kit on the wall
- Didn't you just run past a dealer who is also selling paraphernalia?
- There's a sign "Report here for employee drug screening" on the next door..
If even that is no option, just punch the target and soak up the blood with something

I think its still a valid question. My response was geared more toward those who said that syringes would be obsolete in the 2070s. I can assure you they are not going anywhere, in RL or in SR. In fact I suspect they will become more useful in the near future...

-------------------

Tracking Ammo:

Some time ago, one of my players proposed a house rule to simplify ammo tracking but keep the danger of needing to reload during combat (and even increase the incidence of reloading). Basically the idea was to do away with ammo tracking but every time you rolled to fire a weapon you included a different colored die. When that die came up with a certain number you had expended the ammo in the weapon and had to reload. The first firing was safe- no ammo die needed. The second firing you had to reload on a roll of 1, the third on <2, the fourth on <3, and so on. We never implemented the rule, because while it achieves its goal it was maybe a little too abstract, and some didn't like the idea of needing to reload the second or third time they fired their weapon. I think the concept has some potential tho.

Or just make them use a Bigger Clip

I feel like that rule works better with more abstract rules for how many shots you fire. If you're just "attacking" with the gun rather than doing "short bursts" or "single shots" it's easier to say that in one round your attack represents several shots and that's why you have to reload.

LOL, what ever happened to fetishizing?

"Actually I have 12+1 since I reloaded with a round still in the chamber."

And then we sit down and come up with rules for impaired visibility when smoke comes pouring out of your barrel because you just dumped three mags at someone.

I've seen lots. All by me, I might add. Every single time I GM Shadowrun, I roll at least one critical failure; the smallest was on 3 die, the biggest was 13. And that was when it took all 1's to fail, so that was thirteen dice all coming up ones. My failure rate just got worse when SR4 came out.

This is an unbroken streak going back since I started playing the game... in 1989. Yes, that's an unbroken streak of fumbles, *twenty five years* long.

Maybe you need new dice.

Alternatively, maybe you need to appease the Dice Gods and beseach them to stop punishing you.

~Umi

I hear the Dice Gods like chicken... by candle light... with the proper incantations...

And foot rubs...

We tried an exorcism of my dice once... The last words out of my mouth before I rolled was: "There's no way I can fumble on 13 dice now!"

The computer gods can be appeased by the sacrifice of a bucket of KFC. Not sure if the same trick will work on the Dice gods but it's gotta be worth a shot, right?

We could always call in Leeroy - the chicken is strong with him.

~Umi

My funniest critical glitch was my Missions pixie attempting to default on firing a full sized Ares Predator with two dice.

The team later found her embedded in the drywall with the pistol.


-k

Technically there's nowehere near enough force in a bullet to cause recoil that strong, but hey, still a funny image.

~Umi

well, it was a critical glitch, so it's entirely possible that the force in question was generated from the entire clip cooking off at once

plus, we don't know that it wasn't loaded with ex-ex rounds ^^

No... You need Jo Boo.

In my case, I don't think a bucket will do the trick. We're talking near-extinction of the entire chicken race.

Hey, maybe that's why soy-chicken is so popular in 2070....

You would have been good, but then you had to go and talk shit. The Dice Gawds are the fickle, capricious gawds of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, not the endless love and grace of the New Testament Judeo-Christian God. You are officially their bitch...forever and ever, Amen.

I have a similar story, as I tend to roll rather poorly as well. I was running a D&D 3.5 game and the adventure was a complete cakewalk because of this tendency until the Paladin's player, Brian, had to go and talk shit in a similar fashion. "Man, this adventure is too easy! These chumps can't even hit me!" *DM d20 now charged with pure hatred and malevolence* To make it fair and to demonstrate that I wasn't just being a dick DM (I have never rolled that well before or since), I made 100% of the rolls after the first few Natural 20s and repeated maximum damage rolls in a row in full view of the players. TPK in near-record time without any shenanigans.

The NT isn't really a Jewish thing

My best critglitch story: PC gets a mug of beer thrown in his face. The player spends several minutes arguing that he should be eligible for a defense roll, until the GM finally tells him to just roll the damn dice and let the scene continue...the player rolls all ones. Not much actually happened, because the GM just wanted to get over the damn scene, but the player's expression was just priceless

So the beer went into his open mouth and he started coughing and spraying uncontrollably?

Sounds like the GM critically glitched on their "why the fuck am I even arguing about this, I should just let them roll in the first place" test.

- How It Should Have Worked -
GM: You get a mug of beer thrown in your face.
PC: Can I roll to Dodge or something?
GM: Yeah, okay. Roll just your Reaction.
PC: Two hits.
GM: You try to get out of the way, but sadly not quick enough, and you get a face full of suds.

~Umi

Huh, I'm with the player on that one. If a GM wants to inflict a negative action on the players character whether its be shot, humiliated, insulted, beer thrown in their face etc. The player should be given the opportunity to defend themselves. Its no different than if the GM says the X in a bar pulls a gun and shoots you in the face. No one would argue that rhe player should be able to try and avoid that, so why should the GM get to enforce other negative story effects without the player being able to defend themselves. How wold the story get worse if the player dodged the beer, if its a crucial plot point set it up so the odds of it not going off are slim to none, if its not crucial and you just want NPC x to knock the player down a peg accept the roll and move on.

GM: You get a mug of beer thrown in your face.
PC: Can I roll to Dodge or something?
GM: Yeah, okay. Roll just your Reaction.
PC: Two hits.
GM: You duck the spay and the beer soaks the orc ganger behind you, he pulls a knife and goes after X.

Hey, if George W. Bush can dodge a shoe...

The whole gear section (and especially the countless everyday items) are another missed chance to clean up the Shadowrun ruleset. Listing dozens of minor items is a waste of wordcount and could easiyl be fixed by Sengir's idea or giving characters FATE-like aspects - just thinking of "Professional Shadowrunner" with the meaning "has the everyday gear he needs to do his routine 'runner shit". But no, both options would be too modern, too deep into gamedesign, or just not grognardy-SR-Missions-compatible. It's a shame.

Well, the player in question tend to be tiresomely argumentative in just about any game, so the GM probably felt the player shouldn't wiggle his way out of that one. Just like his constant "why are you attacking me, the other guys are far more of a threat" in TI tends to result in the rape train taking a tour through his systems

Just saw something on a coworker's desk which relates to my complaint. This is volume one of two of the business customers catalog from Conrad, which is more or less the German Radio Shack equivalent (and an AA battery for scale):
http://postimg.org/image/dp67dw48x/

If stats for "trivia items" were really needed, we'd need a two-volume sourcebook, each volume the size of the pictured book, just for electronics and related stuff. Then there are pharmaceuticals, we don't have the "Red List" (compendium of just about every drug and similar substance) here, but Amazon says it clocks in at 32 x 23 x 6.6 cm. Or maybe the player's latest overly complicated plan absolutely requires a glass of pickled onions, looks like we need another sourcebook just on foodstuffs.
Obviously, no RPG ever tried to print such exhaustive-yet-still-incomplete lists, because it is the very nature of RPGs that the GM makes up narrative details as they fit the flow of the game. Now, if the GM is assumed (and in fact required) to be able to handle a glass of pickled onions without a sourcebook, why not trust him with with to do the same for light sticks?


PS: Just to be clear, I'm not saying the section on drugs with game relevant effects should disappear. But I wouldn't need detailed rules and prices for Aspirin vs. PCM vs. Ibuprofen.

To be fair, with cyberpunk games, part of the joy is the precise and weird equipment, cyberware and so on (this is why Tri-Stat and the like tend to produce very "dry" or un-cyberpunk-y-seeming "cyberpunk" games). So a balance needs to be struck. Not sure SR5 struck the right balance, though - too many finickity pieces of gear, not enough brand names and cool stuff.

Exactly.

Hm. Well, on the one hand, my initial reaction is that that depends on whether the player obviously intended to scale the castle wall with a grappling hook, and whether the character obviously would not have forgotten one if not for being controlled by someone with no immediate "presence" in the world. On the other, I'll admit that my position is starting to look alarmingly like "use good judgement", and if we can assume good judgement a whole lot of rules and guidelines can just get tossed out the window to begin with.


Mm. Groups will be groups—I guess part of the reason I'm inclined towards closer accounting is that sometimes it adds to the game to have strict accounting (for example, partway through the mission a Big Bad flees into the Pitch-Black Caverns of Doom™—does the party have enough light sources to risk pursuing, or is discretion the better part of valor?), and it seems to me that varying between strict and non-strict accounting too much creates a third alternative worse than the other two (either the players are left uncertain as to when to be sticklers and when not, or the GM is forced to tip his/her hand so the players can be strict when necessary, or you get weird time loops where at some point in the middle of a mission people suddenly decide what gear they've had since the beginning—often with access to information they wouldn't have had, and it's not always easy to identify what exactly that is even if the players want to be sticklers about that).

So I guess my advice is to consider the ludic possibilities of resource constraints created by itemized carried gear before dismissing the whole business. Though I'll admit that if I were going to build out the gear list to handle more of these situations, disposable syringes and rappelling gloves would not have been my first thought (light sticks are more defensible, being consumables that serve an extremely significant function). Though FuelDrop's point about using them to extract rather than inject is food for thought.

~J

One of my favorite games of all time is the text based abandonware "Wilderness Survival Adventure".

It was a very simulationistic take on survival in a Sierra Nevada type environment.

However, since it was all text based, you would sometimes do retarded things that would really hurt you. Like, maybe you spawned with a pot you could use to boil water once you made a fire. This is a really valuable and important piece of equipment when you consider how hard certain things become if you're simply missing a pot.

In the game, I would put down the pot to boil water all the time, and then I would leave it behind by accident. Because there were no graphics showing the pot was still on the ground. Miles later I'd want to boil and drink water to raise my body temperature and I suddenly couldn't because I left my pot.

In real life you probably wouldn't forget your pot like that. In a game you can because of the nature of a game.

I guess what I'm trying to say is hilarious stuff like forgetting your grappling hook is also just part and parcel of doing things in a game instead of going out into the wilderness and doing a real survival or training activity or going some place and doing CQB or urban SERE training in the flesh.

"Use good judgement" is basically my rationale for tossing out detailed gear lists in the first place.


Don't get me wrong, light is an important factor in many systems, especially for combat. However, as this was the start of an adventure, the whole game threatened to come to a crashing halt because we forgot one piece of gear. Light was more important as a plot device, because you needed it to move the plot forward.

Basically, I advocate handwaving "plot device" pieces of gear whenever possible. Duct tape, for example; it gets used a lot in games, so I assume you always have a roll in your trunk. In Shadowrun, I sometimes even handwave vehicles-- if you have a Middle lifestyle of better, you have a free car, so you don't have to describe taking the bus wherever you go. The lifestyle descriptions say you have one, so you have one. However, since it's a handwave, it has no useful stats: it's Lojacked, so if the cops come after you, they'll shut it down; and if it gets into a fight it will go up in a huge explosion. The important thing is that the characters have an easy way to get to the meet; unless there's some important plot reason to make the trip there difficult, it's best to not make it difficult.


Like I said, I haven't totally abandoned gear lists. I do try and restrict it to significant items, though. For example, I make players buy guns and ammo, but I don't make them buy extra clips nor do I count each round used. They're assumed to have enough clips for the ammo they're carrying, and either they buy ammo in bulk every so often, or we fold it into the lifestyle rules. I just want to avoid people feeling shafted because they forgot a minor but key piece of gear.

It's just not the same with slap patches as stabbing a syringe into a bottle of drain cleaner and then into someone's neck, threatening to squeeze the plunger.



-k

One thing I have to say is that actually carrying a firearm around daily and being on forums with high-speed/low-drag types really changed my perspective on gear for my characters. I used to go off on crazy gear lists but just being around those guys has shown that you can carry damn near anything you need in something as low key as a ScottEVest with some quality holsters for your firearm and it's accessories. Toss a plate carrier with MOLLE pouches on top and maybe a light rucksack (bergen for your commonwealth chaps) and you're ready for war.

Yeah, my three steel lynx's with MMGs that were laying down APDS at cyclic on a dragon for the better part of a minute was damn expensive. The misses and ricochets tore the hell out of the building he was in. Of course, as soon as someone stunned him with an AV rocket and his armor spell dropped... Despite some 7.62mm holes he still made a nice bedspread.

That's why you ask for a bulk discount.

Honestly, for my characters, I tend to buy so much ammo at chargen, I never need to buy any more for the duration of a normal campaign. A few hundred rounds is enough for a non-primary shooter, and even shooters usually don't go through 500-1000 rounds in the length of a regular game.

I've only been a hardass about ammo once, and even then, I wasn't counting every round. The rigger I mentioned earlier went through so much ammo, I periodically made him buy ammo in 10,000 round lots. He was a little fond of multiple full-auto weapon fire, so we agreed it was fair.

Ricochets with AP MMG ammo? What was this building, a hardened bunker?

~J

think he meant ricochets off the dragon.

I can't seem to find a good picture. Just so I can say "I want that."
Human skin floor rug, sure (as creepy looking as it sounds). Tauntaun? Sure.

Dragon? Not so much.

digged my everything is a moment away by matrix order concept eh?? it's like real life, except drones are more common & accessible