Basic weapons.
Gang arsenals

I was thinking about gangs and violence in 2050s & 2060sand availability of money to such. And how this would impact there weapon selection.

An Ares predator is good value on the street, it ill last a long time and looks good and is easy to get. Any punk can probably have one within a day. Regular ammunition is also easy to get and probably all a ganger would use. But even this is 20 nuyen for a box of 10. (Remarkably expensive compared to today’s ammunition prices is what has been said hear) at that price I would expect a ganger to consider ammunition conservation. A fire fight can easily cost more than a meal.

What about grenades. They start at 30 nuyen each and are not always available buying them on the street your probably paying as much as 3-4 days eats.

This got me thinking about the old mainstays of gangs that have been being used for hundreds of years. Improvised melee weapons are easy to figure but what about improvised fire bombs.

What else would you see gangers using when nobody has seen fit to give them financial backing

Edward

Molotovs for sure, and the Terrorists Handbook.

Toss in a gang member with chemistry 4 and a copy of the neo-anarchist's cookbook. They'll have low grade napalm, thermite, unstable explosives, and other generally more hazardous variants of explosives. I, of course, mean hazardous to the users.

Chains, crowbars, 2x4s, baseball bats, golf clubs, other miscellaneous poles laying about (usually in dumpsters).

Guns are usually shot at the beginning then ignored until you find somebody hiding in a corner who happens to be good at running.

A sword if you can find another ganger with one and kill him/her.

Basically, lots of blunt objects and very few edged weapons (outside of knives).

If you feel like getting really creative... Spray paint, shoot, shrapnel + paint explosion.

For flavor, Go-gangers with spears (or combat knives on the end of poles) that can be used as lances. Blunt versions (or just the poles) could be used for initiation and/or status within the gang ... or not.

All kinds of blades (short of quality swords, etc) would be available to gangs. Axes and machetes would also be common, as would long knives and even kitchen-type ginsu things. Hatchets are cheap and easy to acquire, as are hammers and picks of all sorts. Any different kind of club or sports implement that could possibly used offensively (and some defensively as armor), bricks, pipes, car aerials, fence posts, etc.

But they've all got one thing in common ... they're all willing to upgrade.

Just walking into a DIY store today nets an amazing amount of offensive weaponry.

Hatchets and wood axes; various kinds of pick; knives of assorted sizes and designs; chisels to make a stabbing weapon...

There's this thing, it's some kind of a tiling tool I think - a haft about a foot and a half long with a slightly backwards-pointing right angle at the end. Sharpen that up for a kind of shortened kama (Japanese sickle axe).

For the somewhat bizarre, what about a petrol-powered strimmer? Take the safety guard off and you get a weird but nasty weapon to shove in someone's face. Chainsaws, of course, remain popular if not overly effective.

For 450 nuyen (after street index), it's hard to go wrong with an UZI III, and of course there's the ever popular Street Sweeper shotgun (always fun), loaded up with whatever stray handful of pointy crap they find on the sidewalk.

[canon:off]

"Hi, my name's Killer, and I'm a drug deal. I carry a stash of beetles worth over five thousand nuyen with me, and I run a joytoy ring worth double that daily. To protect my assests, I turn to my trusty... crowbar."

Gangs are the ones with AK97s loaded with CopkillersTM explosive ammo in the trunks of their 100,000¥ cars, and a Savalette Guardian stuffed in their pants. Everyone else is a wannbe.

If you play in my face to face game, the typical gang has enough C-12 to wipe out a Lonestar building in one crash and is not unknown for having grenade and missile launchers. Nothing like making you feel bad when they have more firepower than you do.

I like Stun batons for my gangers.

To quote myself from an earlier thread:

I challenge you to find an example of a nuyen price of an SR good the price increase compared to current (or 1998) USDs can be reasonable explained by inflation.

The fact that the currency unit has changed pre-empts it pretty damn effectively.

Compare it to lifestyle.

Figure the average person pulls in enough for their lifestyle + change (the higher up you go, the more change) per month. I'd put gangers at Low, so having a trusty firearm they've saved up for + ammo isn't out of reach. Plus whatever freakish loot you want them to have.

Not a match for a shadowrunner by any stretch of the imagination, but that's why they're gangers. If you want gangers that'll be a challange to the PCs your best options are a gang with patrons, a gang with an insanely good source of loot (who knew someone could repair that abandoned Citymaster?), or starting the PCs much weaker than average.

Kanada Ten: So I take it you agree with the fact that inflation cannot reasonably be used to excuse the price of any item in SR, you just object to the absolutes? The first bit of your message is confusing. The 2060s nuyen prices of common goods could be numerically equal to current USD price regardless of whether there's hyperinflation, massive deflation, or just plain no change in real aggregate prices of consumer goods.

Well, considering you can get the equivalent of a survival knife for less than $10 USD (450 nuyen in-game) and a good combat axe for around $150 USD (and 750 nuyen in-game), we can safely assume all the prices are fubared.

In the early iterations of the game, the designers thought you couldn't fire a gun and run at the same time. I think you're expecting a little much of these guys.

I mean, really— do research and find reasonably sane prices? Why, that'd just make too much sense.

Glad I never looked into SR1 much... I might've decided to kill them and save everybody the pain.

Melee weapons and light pistols. MAYBE a light smg.

Maybe a light SMG? I don't know if you guys have heard, but the Crips aren't exactly hurting for firepower. So long as it's cheap and available, they cab get it, and that includes heavy pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles. The skill to use them effectively, on the other hand, well, not so much.

If you hold less with the urban gang paradigm and more with the dirt poor, third world sprawl idea, watch City of God or Black Hawk Down. They can still be very heavily armed.

Easy use the Ganger creation rules in SRComp for your NPC gangers. After all, we are not discriminating against NPC gangers right?

Huskarl axes. I imagine a replica, today, couldn't possibly run you more than four or five hundred, and that's still pretty pricey.

Re trauma patches: only a stupid GM won't just change the price. It was a pretty obvious oversight, but the game's more than full of them. It's really nothing new.

What about gang armor? In SR3 it sure seems suicidal to run around in just a leather jacket. I'd probably give mine armor vests (probably pretty battered) and maybe vests w/plates for serious encounters.

Really well funded gangs in my campaigns have access to cyberware to go with their tricked out SMGs and assault rifles.

Personally, I wouldn't be inclined to give them armor, and when I did, just simple vests. Because of its cost and its expendable nature, and because there is a certain social stigma attached to it in that world, it's just not the kind of thing you see in common use with gangs. I'd save armor for the professionals.

I tend to agree. However, armored clothing can be stylish in some areas, and most gangs will have things like Armored Jackets that they save for rumbles against gun wielding zombi.

Additionally, there is a style of game that I enjoy where gangers carry knives and ninja are everywhere. Then it's a chainsaw in the trunk and machine pistols for the turf wars.

I'll admit, I can see ridiculously oversized FuBu and Ecko Unlimited armored jackets in the 2060s. And I am nauseated.

The idea of a reach 2 combat axe is amusing to say the least. Maybe in the hands of a troll. I don’t know.

Obviously the larger gangs like the Halloweenrs tend to get the occasional corporate gratuity including heavier weapons and deal in chemicals chips fencing and such like to fund themselves. I am really wanting info on the small time gangs.

What mechanics are ther for Molotovs, fertilizer bombs, explosives made in a backyard laboratory the anarchists handbook calls for (barley counts as a kit).

Edward

Edward, the Huskarl (or Huscarl or Housecarl or Housecard, depending on whom you ask) axe was gigantic and used to devastating effect. It can exist. Not much of a personal weapon, but it's still possible.

Was the Huskarl the decksweeper used for boarding actions, or am I thinking of a different axe?

IIRC, they are probably talking about 'Saxon Housecarls' (spelling may vary. Who were the elite warriors of England during the Norman (French) Conquest ~1066.

IIRC they were usually equipped with heavy axes with around 3-4 feet of haft.

And they shot bolts of lightning from their eyes, and balls of fire from their asses. That's why they got conquered by the French.

An example of a Reach 2 axe might be a Haliberd.

I think most people would categorize a halberd as a polearm. But it does have an ax on it.

It's a pretty moot point, since Pole Arms in SR refers both to all rigid melee weapons with a Reach of 2 or more (ie. everything wielded with the Pole Arms skill) as well as the particular weapon type which is a sub-group of that. Not only are Combat Axes used with the Pole Arms skill, but the definition of the weapon Pole Arms in SR3 says they often feature an axe-like blade. So call them whatever you want.

I think a major question here is how big of a gang? If this is a group of toughs who happen to live on the same block, we're dealing with preds, knives, maybe an SMG or a shotgun. If it's a mid-sized gang, there'll be a wider variety of SMGs and Shotguns especially, and maybe a few more heavy pistol. Remember though, the goal isn't accuracy, it's intimidation and total damage value. Rapid fire and shotgun spread are very good, so they'll be popular. The fact that the pred looks vicious is going to make it a big favorite, but with cyber so unusual, pred 2's and 3's aren't going to be nearly as common. With the big gangs (like in Lone Wolf), we see plenty of SMGs, assault rifles, explosives, grenades, just about everything you can think of. Maybe an occaisional mage, or perhaps even a rifle or two for the one guy who isn't so stoned out of his brains he can actually shoot straight.

Non-deadly weapons are going to be very unusual - no intimidation value. Big, stupid melee weapons like axes are going to be very unusual - Easy to get caught with them, distinctive (so the star can track you down), hard to sell, and severely limited by the users skill (or lack thereof), although a few distinctive characters might have them. Concealable melee weapons, or weapons that can be disguised as non-weapons (chains, for instance), will be standard issue. With guns, the ease with which one can get (or lose) a weapon is important. Also, intimidation factor is HUGE, most of what gangs do is show off for each other. Looking badder is better than being badder. The ability to point and click is also very important, most gangers aren't trained, heck, they're barely even literate, so the less skill necessary, the better.

This has come up before:

Ganger Stats

I think that might have been for a fairly high-powered game, though.

Except that USD could have been exchanged to UCD at any fathomable rate. For example, at the time of introduction of the current version of the UCD, one USD could have bought you a hundred billion UCD (hyperdeflation, I don't think that has ever happened), or you could have needed a hundred billion USD to get one UCD (hyperinflation, more common than you'd think).

The canonical base exchange rate between UCD and NUY is 4:1, CAD to NUY is 3:1. They can be found here. The rules on how they shift are delightfully broken. I'd link a thread from the old forums where someone totally broke the economy with them in a few months or years, making trillions in the process. However, the Jive forum Search command, being true to form, cannot find a single message in the Shadowrun forum with the word "rate" in it.

UCAS probably decided to switch to a value almost the same as Canada's before the merger, it would keep the northernerns from complaining about the change and give the rest an illusion of a pay increase.

Therefore, to properly gague infalation, it must be based of the modern Canadian dollar instead of the modern US dollar. So, how many bluebills does it take to buy a box of cheap Chinese import ammo?