Yeah, Mine too. *shrug*

Exactly, unfortunately old faithful is hard to model in a game. I would carry one simply because the M1911 frame is the most comfortable pistol I have ever had the pleasure to hold or fire. If you need more punch get a .460 conversion kit and say hello to serious destruction.

I agree... The only pistol more comfortable to me is my Ruger 22/45 Target Pistol. I love it.

While I love my 1911A1, I feel my USP .45 is much more comfortable and I have far better groupings with it. I've never had any failures with either in a couple hundred rounds but they've been in clean conditions with only maybe some minor dirt if I went to the desert.

Yeah HK USP fires nice, but for me I had a problem getting my thumb to depress the magazine release without cocking the gun to the side and then having to realign everything. It is why I avoid most double stacks.

This hidden mode has got me thinking a little bit.

Maybe the solution (if your problem is that every 3rd security guard is actually a spider /sigh) is that decks should an upgrade path for Samurai? The worst deck is 49K, set the 4 stat to sleaze, up it to 5 with software, don't necessarily treat logic as a dump stat and hey presto you're now rolling 8-9 die on opposed rolls to avoid detection.

The deck can even be cyberware so you don't have to cart it around.

9 dice isn't exactly what i would call impressive. i could see that being somewhat worthwhile if you manage to loot a crappy cyberdeck, since a 49k cyberdeck certainly isn't going to be sold for nearly that much unless you have a *very* impressive face in the group. (that said, i wouldn't say no to even a 15k windfall either).

but there's no way i'd blow 49k on a reduced chance of getting detected just so that i can get +2 dice on a firearms test.

Could you not slave other devices to it too? And wouldn't it also protect them from attack if/when they did get detected. Still, it is marginal, I agree.

Might be nice to see an option to spend karma on a piece of equipment, not alot as equipment can be highly disposable, but maybe you could buy edge for a piece of quipment so when you use that item you could spend the point of edge to get the reroll failures/add edge+6-again and ignore limits etc. on any roll you make using that item.

Burn the edge to make sure you somehow get the item back again in the same way you'd burn edge to not die yourself etc.

Something to represent that - while it may not be technically the best - it's the best for you.

I have done something similar in other games, and it works very well. Your lucky knife, really is your lucky knife.

I can sort of see this as it is not dissimilar to binding a device like ED did as a pattern item, however I would be careful as you mention buying edge for the piece of equipment.

Are they really buying in to make it their own special item or are they trying to score a few extra points of edge at a lower point cost.

IE rather than paying the difference for taking your Edge from 5 to 6 for general edge use, buying in 1 pt Edge for your 'favorite' gun may well be cheaper.

Which is not necessarily that unbalancing as it is sort of an Edge specialization, but also how does the item recover edge? When the player does? Every 8 hours? etc??

The item certainly should not automatically get an edge back if the player gets edge back for an action not related to the function of that particular piece of equipment, but could for actions related to it's function.
(Pulling off a daring trick shot with your special pistol to save a hostage while exposing yourself in the process springs to mind)

Granted you do risk that spent karma because if that item is lost/stolen/destroyed, you are out that investment.

Sure, being a decker is a way out of the box the rules wrote themselves into - one of the few viable ones. However, it is also very expensive, especially for beginner characters, and will drag them down massively in their core competency. And, if every non-magical character is forced to become a decker just to be somewhat able to defend themselves against matrix attacks, the decker, again, becomes more or less futile. Not that, as Jaid wrote, 9 dice will get you very far when you have to refend against some 5 successes.

Plus, you do not need every third guard to be a decker. You only need one or two deckers on site, who alpha the group decker's deck and then go to town on the mundanes' de facto unprotected wares.


When it's hooked up to the matrix for the newest update (because hackability is awesome). To stay with the spirit of the rules .

well, that particular deck you could slave a grand total of 3 devices to it.

and it would still all be detectable far too easily for comfort.

The Cheaper Edge issue is solved by having the GM decide when it can be bought, and increased along with deciding when it can be replenished.

Probably have

1. 'training time' with the item to be allowed to buy the Edge - i.e.: an off the shelf pistol is not your old reliable, not until it's been through hell and back with you
2. buy edge 1 rather than edge 6 would be cheaper yes, but the payout is worse as spending edge then only nets you +1 dice rather than +6 (the other uses of edge notwithstanding)
3. recharge...when you do something badass with the item (and don't spend your natural edge on it maybe?), recharge once per day/week or once per run as an arbitrary timer?

It's just an idea at this point, I can see the concerns though.

I am ok with the concept of having your weapon be in hidden mode if its wireless and there not being a true rules drawback beyond the role-play aspect; I'm really alright with that. The issue that I have is that the example that the 5E book uses on p.228 is misleading.

I'll give you that most neer-do-wells (read criminals and gangers) don't always have a logic score above 2, but in this case I would think that the ork would have had his gun in hidden mode when he jumped the decker in question; which means the decker would have had to 1. see if there are hidden icons, and 2. perceive and identify the hidden icon BEFORE he starts throwing data spikes. Any GM (or player) who's skimmed over the matrix rules would come to the conclusion it doesn't make sense not to have guns in hidden mode (I came to that conclusion, and I originally started the thread to see if there was something I missed).

As someone who has taken way to many college courses and read far too many game system rulebooks, I will say that those sort of rules example stories are quite helpful in learning and applying the game mechanics. I just wish they had included that in the example, because otherwise bricking devices would seem even easier to do (fewer tests before you actually start doing matrix damage).

the default assumption in SR5 is that people are dumb as rocks when it comes to the matrix, unless they're a hacker. everyone else is too stupid to even attempt to comprehend the implications of turning wireless on for everything, and are dumb enough to believe in a world where they have a huge agency entirely devoted to punishing hackers for hacking, but where hacking doesn't ever happen anyways.

Except the Missions first adventure the opposition generally have the 'Wireless Off' note.

So...Missions have wireless off at least so the guards there have some basic sense.

missions is almost like an entirely different setting. they have to not be stupid there, because the missions team actually has to sell a product that functions on it's own. hence, missions not only had errata (sorry, "FAQ") first, but their errata is also correcting some of the actual problems in the game instead of being largely inconsequential.

Not that it's applicable 100% of the time but I'd imagine it's illegal to have guns in hidden mode.

I have a very hard time imagining that gun owners would be any sort of supportive of even the idea of mandatory wi-fi beacons being on their firearms. To be frank, the professional firearms carriers would be even more so, what with under cover police officers, plainclothes security, and the like. Imagine the killing (literally) hackers could make by trolling around town and randomly photographing people with firearm pings along with pictures and a bit of digging in public social media sites.

Great deterrent if you detect that a random homeowner has several firearm icons in their home. However, since a bricked firearm is useless...

I guess it depends on how frequently you think people are doing Matrix Perception tests for hidden icons and then spending time working out which ones are which and where they are (then potentially dealing with the Wrapper program).

Stop and search at security points? Sure, could be troublesome (esp. if you're using a Wrapper) but just walking around?

That's the great thing about Dystopia: What you want doesn't matter. If the powers that be say you need to have it on, you need to have it on.



Of course under-cover police wouldn't need them on, but your average schmucks would and everyone else who doesn't have it on is fine until the gun gets found on them..... even if they have a license on them.



I don't follow. In general you will be walking around with your gun, your license and your SIN all broadcasting. What money is there to be made? If you're suggesting that hackers can use the wireless on function to gain access to someone's PAN, then yeah....... they're supposed to have a point afterall.

I agree. Shadowrun is about a vastly more violent world where people carrying and using firearms is far more common (than even the present-day US). This is made pretty clear in numerous sourcebooks (even if some are overblown - some of the 2E ones claim 70%+ of adults carry guns in most cities - I'd only buy that was true for Seattle, myself, and that's only because literally every single person in Seattle is a shadowrunner, right down to the guy who runs the Stuffer Shack and your local dog-walker), so there's no way it's illegal to turn on hidden mode, especially as it won't stop the cops shutting down your weapons - at worst it would slow them down slightly (because your legal weapons are connected directly to your SIN by their licenses).

I'd buy 70% when there are Devil rats prowling the gutters, gangs like the Halloweeners tearing up downtown, and all sorts of other awakened nasties around, something which Ares will remind you of at every opportunity before asking if you've got the latest model Predator yet.

I'm with FuelDrop on this - I honestly expect pretty much everyone to be packing whatever they can get their hands on for self protection.

It might be Dystopian to say that the Corps control your life and prevent you from owning a gun, but it's way more Dystopian to say the Corps own you and don't give a devil rat's ass if you own a gun, because it doesn't matter if you do.


So yeah, the way I've always viewed Shadowrun, every Tom, Dick, and Harry carries a gun, because it's a crazy world and as much as the Corps sell their bullshit story of looking out for you, everyone knows that if you get mugged in the street, odds are good you're dead and the perpetrators never get caught, because your life or death is not worth anything. LoneStar or KnightErrant shows up, goes through the song and dance, then hits the nearest Stuffer Shack for a hot soykaf and immitation donuts, because the case isn't just closed, it was never opened. You get carted off to the morgue, your meat gets sold to the highest bidder, and the world continues revolving placidly in the dark.

~Umi

Yep, that pretty much sums up SR... or NJ, take your pick

Please. New Jersey is a worthless hole, but its not because of the crime. Homicide rates there are much lower than a lot of other places in the US.

You wanna get geeked? Go to Louisiana. No, seriously. New England isn't anywhere near as bad as the Deep South.

~Umi

I live in Louisiana. Homicide rates are astronomical here, but if you look at statistical averages, it's largely and unsurprisingly concentrated in certain demographic distributions. Sadly, if you're a young, poor, black male, you have an incredibly high chance of dying due to violence with a skyrocketing probability if you're also involved in the drug trade.

This where I get the disconnect with firearms licensing and firearms needing to be pinging 24/7. Nobody cares enough to bother with licensing guns to individuals and keeping up the infrastructure that this licensing would require. With two crashes, the flavor-of-the-month police force, and the megas being outside of the ATF restrictions for serial numbering their misc tools o' death, you can easily see the powers that be saying, "Fuck it!"

They care enough that you need to have your SIN pinging constantly so they can tell if you're a citicen or not. I can't see why they would care so much about this, but not give a shit about whether you have a gun.

I'm not saying that you can't carry a gun, and you're all 100% right that most people probably do, but that doesn't change the fact that it's one more form of control to ensure that you are broacasting it, and your licence and your SIN.

If nothing else it gives the cops something else to fish for bribes.

So you either ping your gun 24/7 or you have the wi-fi permanently disabled with a soldiering iron and maybe get stopped and flash your license (it's really a permit to carry a firearm, but I'll stick with license as the descriptor) for the gun then. No muss, no fuss. "Sorry officer, you know how curious those damn kids get..."

To be frank, I see the vast majority of folks buying guns tearing all that wi-fi pinging crap out simply because it's smart to do so what with all the crazy shit going on in SR. You're in the bank, it gets robbed, you get killed outright because your gun pings, well...that you have a gun. You're at the park and some eco-terrorists attack. You die because, well...that damn wi-fi signal done pinged you as an immediate threat. You go into Target late at night and get tackled by security because you forgot about your pocket pistol pinging away to God and everyone that you have a gun.

It's fucking retarded and there isn't enough people in SR that could possibly give a shit. To track all the licenses and all the firearms linked to them takes infrastructure, manpower to run that infrastructure, you get a whole new way to track people and now the need to actually do so, etc. There is absolutely zero benefit for anyone to have that shit when you think about it. You either ignore it and people honk about what could have been prevented. You have it cranked to 11 and people will honk about their rights being violated.

Yeah, yeah...wrap program. Bull-motherfucking-shit. The idea that you have to buy two things to make one thing not suck is fucking idiotic. Buy something that doesn't suck in the first place.

Remember, the corps that make this shit give two tugs of a dead dog's cock about local juris-my-dickshun. They can crank out non-pinging firearms by the truckload and The Star and KE can take a long walk off a short pier. They can either park a long line of officers around the Ares showroom 24/7 to arrest anyone that walks out with a non-pinging firearm every day of the week or they can simply say "Fuck it! Let's grab some donuts and fight real crime."

Now that the rant is over, it's your game. It's been pretty well established by now that the thought process involved in SR5 making an iota of sense in many respects has been seriously challenged. I personally see having to ping "Rape me!" in a two-block radius 24/7 or the police get called to "assist with your wireless connectivity" as one if the most extreme versions of this idiocy. You're a big-type person and can make your own decisions.

As an aside, for those of you thinking of high security areas and/or like the idea of the 24/7 pinging thing, I can easily see CorpSec and LE calling a non-pinging person getting an ass-whooping being called a "tech support" call.

Desk Sergeant: "So how was your shift, Watanabe?"
Officer Watanabe: "Oh, you know. Normal shit, Sarge. Had a couple of domestics and really nice tech support call by the stadium when some 'Weeners started a fight outside a bar at closing..."

Every 4th person in the Shadowrun universe isn't a decker just because every 4th person in your roleplaying group is. There are no script kiddies anymore, the new matrix protocols made all but the richest, most well connected get on the matrix straight and narrow. This is why wireless can be on all the time. If you're not a shadowrunner, you will almost never come across someone with a deck, and if you do they have better things to do than brick your gun for giggles.



If anything the robbers have turned it off so they can go un-detected. Now if they get caught there's one more felony to keep them behind bars. Perhaps turning it off is beyond your average slack-jawed convenience store crook. Suddenly 80% of gun crimes just started solving themselves.....



Hmmmm, so there's an incentive to not carry a gun which seems like perhaps good policy no?



We're not talking about a world where walking into Target with a gun would be an issue, in 2075, it's expected.



The problem a lot of you guys have is that you just can't get your heads around the fact that the world Shadowrunners live in is different to the world everyone else lives in and that the mechanics of the system cater to the runner's world view. Yes, it's not smart to have wireless not on silent when going on a run, but if you just carry one to rub to make you feel like more of a man like the other 99.9% of the population it makes no difference. If anything you want everyone else to know you're packing.



Government still govern. I'm sure if the UCAS said to Ares that you can only sell guns here if you have wireless enabled you'd be damned sure they'd do it. If they don't some other arms corp will just fill the void.



You've played Shadowrun right? The cops don't know how to fight real crime. Being a presence is all they do.



If you're a Shadowrunner you are not Joe citizen. Feel free to not have it on, but when you get caught with the gun that isn't broadcasting feel free to deal with having to perhaps bribe the cops whose sole function it is to scan pings and look for bribe opportunities.

But they clearly do not say that, because that would be an important thing to note, and it isn't noted. Arresting people for wireless off or hidden guns is something a ref can choose to do, but it isn't an inherent part of the setting (or a likely one, imho).

pretty sure there are different licenses/permits irl for gun ownership, carry, and concealed carry.

i would expect the same to be more or less true in shadowrun. owning a gun doesn't give you legal right to carry it with you. carry permit doesn't give you legal right to conceal. but you *could* get a license for any of those things (bearing in mind that it will probably require you to register a specific gun, and that just because you have a legal right to carry or have a concealed weapon doesn't mean nobody will call the cops on you for it, it just means that when the cops arrive you won't get arrested for it).

Throwbacks are legal to own right?

If so it can't be illegal to carry a gun that doesn't ping constantly.

They say throwbacks exist, the legality is not mentioned.

Given that the people most likely to use this option are trying to circumvent detection/law enforcement it probably is dimly viewed by the forces that be, though if you have your license for the device tied to your SIN and are broadcasting this it should not be too bad. (IE. Permit to carry an antique weapon for example)

Carrying a weapon that is not pinging without some kind of permit to back why it's not pinging could lead to fun explanations if caught.




Why yes, I am a antiques collector, Officer. I specialize in 1920s-1930s gangster memorabilia like this fine Thompson .45 Machine Gun.

There are only two states where you need to get a firearms license before you can purchase a firearm. Most states allow the non-licensed purchasing of firearms with background checks only being mandatory for most jurisdictions when you purchase a handgun as handguns are far and away the most common firearms used in crime due to their portability and ease of concealment. Permits to carry allow for any type of carry on your person (and often allow for carry in your car as well, which is usually also banned without a permit) and many states allow for unlicensed open carry (non-concealed carry).

The issue, again, is "How much time and energy is UCAS and/or local LE going to put into this stuff?" If every single person that legally purchased a firearm had to go get a license you now have to have a clerk sitting there, a criminal background checking system, IT to back them up, servers to hold the information, spiders to protect it, and LE presence to enforce it. Now some of those same people want to get a permit to carry, (valid only in the UCAS... read: the Seattle Metroplex as it's surrounded by other nations with their own laws on all sides... and also not in CorpSec owned/controlled areas) so you have to support those clerks as well. Then you have to equip your officers with the means to detect these breaches in required wi-fi connectivity. Then you have to have tech support for them because they're cops and have pretty much zero interest in learning how to use the detectors, etc. etc. etc. with more and more infrastructure being purchased, installed, maintained, upgraded, gutted when the contract runs out and a new Corporate Security Company takes over, etc, etc, etc.

Now, I can easily see the Megas and the Metroplex doing this...in select areas. The required manpower, infrastructure, maintenance and all the other assorted money dumps above means that nobody has a vested interest in go this far with the police state shenanigans. Remember, the UCAS is a mere ghost of it's US glories with the balkanization of the former US. There isn't a budget for this crap what with Seattle dealing with NAN insurgents, Megacorp mechanizations, gangs, an orc underground, shadowrunners, the technomancer threat, BTL dealers, human trafficing, etc, etc, etc.

Now add that the megacorps can do whatever they please in their own property. Sales tax? Fat chance there! Mandatory safety mechanisms and wi-fi? Ha! The sale is made on Megacorp property, free of UCAS legal restraints and they could give a damn what happens when a by all means considered reasonable checked out Joe Citizen walks off of Corp property and reenters the UCAS. Now, that said, they would work with local CSC assets and the like to be sure that the anti-corp terrorist and cannibal The Butcher of Bellevue can't just walk into an Ares showroom and walk out with a SOTA railgun, but they're not going to care much about an otherwise law-abiding Joe Blow walking out with a non-pinging Glock. Now add that there will actually be a market for non-pinging weapons because of the aforementioned reasons, even the decsendants of former-Americans don't like the idea of Big Brother sniffing at their asses 24/7, and you can see where this policy is basically a complete waste of time.

Not that governments aren't well known for wasting their time, of course. It is your game, after all.

Bingo... It is not illegal to not broadcast a gun. Case Closed.

But this is no longer the case in SR, pg 367 lists any item with a R restriction as requiring a license, this covers the majority of weapons (not counting flat out forbidden types which need special reasons of course).
So if Citizen Joe wants to get that Ares Predator, he needs to apply for the appropriate license to do so.

Gone are the days of walking into a legitimate gun show and walking out with a weapon without some kind of check, though the black market for this still thrives nicely...

Most people carry a weapon, how many are legally doing so is another question.

Are the cops searching for hidden weapons? Probably not, again as you mentioned they are not all deckers.

But AR IS commonplace so they can see everyone's SIN and online items along with any appropriate licenses they are supposed to have for said items.

You get in trouble and it is found along the way that you have something you are not licensed for or not broadcasting you have some explaining, and maybe bribing, to do....

It's sort of like the early days of seatbelt laws, the cops were not allowed to stop you for not wearing one, but if they stopped you for something else and saw you didn't have a seatbelt on....another ticket

It comes down to control, they can keep an eye on the average citizen who keeps everything online and pinging like good little sheep.

But Runners and those on the edge don't play that way, but then we weren't expecting a fair shake from the KE/LE anyway.

Ultimately though, you'd just need a firearms license for all your non-forbidden gun needs. And even then, with a good fake SIN, you can get away with those too. If you show up as part of an Ares Firewatch team I don't think KE will question your SMG.

So, average Joe just goes and gets his firearms license, which states he understands proper storage and safety, and can then get his Ares Predator. Carry/conceal would be separate license in this case but also includes the first part.

All that infrastructure already exists. In SR4, it was stated that upperclass areas had drones that went around checking people's SINs. If you weren't broadcasting, or a scan sent up flags, along came KE to ask you some quesations and perhaps cart you off to where all the non-SINed individuals go.

Why would they care what your tax file number is but not whether you're carrying a gun.

As per the throwback question. All guns are restricted, it isn't really mentioned in throwbacks if they have the same legality codes. I guess you should assume that it is the same but it's not a big stretch that as they are not made anymore that perhaps they are not meant to be used anymore (i.e illegal).

Point #1: Ok, that makes sense.

Point #2: Because all police contacts are potentially armed. It's cop survival 101 today and I seriously doubt that it won't be the same in the twenty and seventies. It doesn't matter one little bit one way or the other if they have a gun pinging because to live through your shift in a world of Shadowrunners, NAN insurgents, Halloweeners, hookers with oral slashers "for protection" whacked up on stim, and Corporate Extractions all contacts are considered armed until you have confirmed otherwise. A 9-inch chef's knife won't ever ping and it can get you dead just like a non-pinging double-barrel lopped-off buck-it. To be frank, counting on some potentially violent intruder to be a good little citizen and have a pinging firearm is a good way to get yourself killed as a police or corpsec officer.

Remember, if it's not pinging, and the citizen doesn't have a license for the firearm nobody would ever know unless the carrier fucked up somehow and flashed it to someone or walked passed an actual security apparatus set up to detect non-pinging firearms at ranges that are way shorter than a 100 meter radius. There is no airhorn connected to these non-pinging firearms that will blast out a big ol' toot every time a cop car or foot patrol passes within 50 meters of them, after all.

Point #3: Hit up a firearms sales website and see how many throwback guns are out there even today and how many people collect them. 'Nuff said. To a cop, it won't make one little bit of difference either way because the main thrust of my counter for point #2.

Except it's all but impossible for a private citizen to get a handgun in NJ, let alone a CC permit for it.