I have a few tips that I do not think that most shadowrunners use.

One, burners. A burner is a prepaid cell phone that you can throw away when you either burn threw the time or think that number is hot. By doing this, you will give big brother more trouble giving you a wire tap,and still have the ability to talk across town.

Two, changing barrels and firing pins.You should change the barrel and firing pins of your gun after every run you use it.This will help you get out of big brother's radar.

Three.Use common weapons.If you use this tip with tip two, you change your "basitic" finger prints into smears. As you are using common weapons that look to be completely different guns.

A runner who use say a costume built hand canon that will kill a "tank" and don't change the firing pin and barrelling.Will both leave marks that will say that one person did,because of the rarity of the weapon and the rifling patterns/firing pin mark.

The problem with that tactic is that all barrels are registered before sale by 2064 since most are moving to that now. Buddy of mine bought a spare barrel and faced that. It's not common practice now, but in 60 years it very well may be. The trick then is to make friends with a mage that has modded the fashion spell to alter your rifling. Or use shotguns.

But in shadowrun you have underworld markets that can sell you illegal weapons. You also have data bases that do not share that of information. Would Ares tell Cross who it sell it's barrels too?

It doesn't work that way. If the UCAS says "you must provide sales records for barrels" then the companies will, or else the barrels are not legal and it's illegal to carry them around on UCAS soil. Also, if you have an unregistered barrel you go to jail anyway. Nothing gets accomplished.

Did I miss the part where if I am Ares, I am an legally speaking a country. I make my own laws,I keep track of my own records.... And then you could buy guns off the street,cause no shadowruner breaks the law....

If I get busted for illegal barrels,I am sure the punishment is not the same as if I get busted for killing 10 people. Also it is about making sure that people do not contec your runs to each other, more than it is about fallowing the law,as the last time I looked the only reason you would need to hide like this is because you were breaking the law in the first place.

Don't leave your brass behind.
use caseless ammo, or a collector.

many common SMGs (like those made by H&K, for example)
can be fitted with a brass collector (Basically a bag over the ejector port.)
The downside is it takes another action to fit a new bag whenever you change clips, but it's worth it.

and if you're using Armor-piercing discarding sabot ammo, there's no rifling marks on the projectile...

Better yet. Just don't shoot anyone.

The cellphone idea is one that i've close to always been aware of ever since watching Enemy of the State.

"I want taps on there 10 most frequently called numbers, and then taps on their most frequent 10" I decided to look at my mobile and look at my last dialed list 15 long spanning 3 months...........

Bet you that the UCAS passed all sorts of laws that allowed the government to ignore those pesky gun laws in the interest of national security.

Why would the Star arrest the purchasers? If they are selling on Ares soil, the Star is going to play with themselves, while those guys sell in broad daylight. Legal action how? Covert support? You mean there is actually going to be an increase in covert activity that will rely on the "illegal" barrels that I sold? Where do I sign up?

shape earth doesn't work on processed materials. for something like that, i'd require a specific spell--Forge Barrel, or somesuch. your average mage, even with a Shape Processed Metals spell, shouldn't be able to create a gun barrel, unless they have a strong mental image of what a gun barrel is and how it works--enough knowledge, basically, to forge a gun barrel out of the appropriate materials without magic.

Hi. Please don’t take this as a personnel attack or the start of a flame war, but I thought I’d point out a few things.

First, I like the point about using a “burn phone” and I would expand it to include any equipment. A runner should be willing to drop any piece of equipment any time it becomes more of a liability than an asset. I doubt you’d find too many deckers who are wiling to throw away their cyberdeck or riggers who would abandon a highly modified vehicle. But your basic weapons and equipment should be replaceable and therefore ditch able at a moment’s notice..

The bit about replacing the gun barrels probably isn’t as useful as you’d imagine. When you fire any firearm with a rifled barrel, the rifling makes marks on the outer surface of the bullet. These marks are kinda like fingerprints and can be used to determine if a given gun fired a given bullet. A match found in this manner can be used as evidence to support a case in a court of law. But here’s the thing, most Shadowrunners are SINless, meaning just having a firearm makes you guilty. The police don’t have to prove anything to a court because the SINless don’t have any rights. The police can shoot an armed SINless person dead in downtown Seattle at high noon in front of 100 people and 10 cameras and they wouldn’t get in trouble. Hell they can probably get away with shooting an unarmed SINless person in the same circumstances.

But say the shooter has a SIN or has powerful connections that make a court case necessary. The police still need a whole, undamaged bullet to be of legal use. A bullet can easily be deformed by hitting body armor, bones, cybernetic implants, or any other hard surface. Special bullets such as dum-dums, hollowpoints, explosive, EX explosive, flechette, glazer, gel rounds and APDS all leave deformed or otherwise unusable bullets after firing. If a whole, undamaged bullet is recovered, the police still only have half of the information they need. They need to recover the gun and fire a test bullet. Once they have a test bullet, they can compare it to all of the other bullets they have and see if there are any matches. If there are matches, then they can say with some assurance that this gun fired this bullet which killed this guy.

Now before someone comes along and says that they don’t really need whole, undamaged bullets, let me just say that you can make a match to a partial bullet or a fragment. This kind of a match is not at all conclusive and a good defense lawyer would point out that this is not enough to convict if not get the evidence thrown out altogether. The police might use evidence from a bullet fragment as a means of refining a case; focusing in on a suspect and trying to find better evidence they can use to get a conviction. Or, they might use this evidence in addition to a lot of other evidence to build a solid case. But a bullet fragment alone isn’t worth much.

Now, the next bit you spoke of is changing the firing pins. Firing pins make distinctive marks on the ejected brass from a fired bullet. This means that the ejected brass can be matched to a firearm and this can be used as evidence. The same limitations apply to this form of evidence as to matching rifling marks except that brass usually doesn’t get deformed enough to destroy firing pin marks. However, in Shadowrun all firearms are available in versions that fire caseless ammo (BBB pg276). The only rules difference is that caseless ammo doesn’t leave spent brass behind. I would assume that the smart Shadowrunner would elect to go caseless.

Now if you’re looking for a good tip:

1) Carry a spray bottle full of a chemical degreaser or of a weak acid. Spray this on blood and you’ll probably make the blood unusable as a link for ritual sorcery or as a source of DNA.
2) Use a metal file on each of your fingertips to remove the fingerprints temporarily. The skin will grow back and look normal after a few days. In the meantime, none of your prints will match those you might have on file. You could also use a drop of superglue on your fingertips. It dries in about 10 seconds and will stay stuck to your skin for a few days, marring any prints you’d leave. Of course, you’ll be leaving small traces of cyanoacrylic at crime scenes but that can hardly be used to identify you. For a more permanent solution, try scarring or burning off your fingerprints with acid.
3) Go visit a barber shop and grab handfuls of cut hair off of the floor. Scatter this around crime scenes. Do the same thing with random carpet fibers, rope fibers, thread, dirt, rocks, etc. That way, the CSI types have to search through hundreds of different clues to find the one that you might have left behind at the scene. The old needle in the stack of needles trick.

Also be aware of what kind of game your GM runs. Sometimes you may be wasting your time coming up with clever ideas to outsmart your GM's clever ideas.

Unless there's new stuff in the books I don't have, there are no existing rules for crime scene investigation and cops keeping files on your crimes. Not trying to say that the cops of the 2060's are the "Other Game" equivalent of monsters that just sit in a dungeon and wait for the PCs to come a long and relieve them of the tedium of life but...Like I said it depends more on what kind of game your GM runs than RL comparisons.

It also depends on where you run. Barrens? Ha! You could shoot the crap out of the gang nextdoor and sign your name and the Star isn't going come looking for you. Downtown? Different story...

Happy hunting.

i dunno. say they've already got enough of other types of evidence to put you away, if they find you. they've got you linked to certain incidents through other factors, and they've got bullets fired from the same gun at all those incidents--two plus two equals that's your gun, or at least a gun used by one of your associates. a little legwork might possibly come up with names and descriptions of the runners who did those runs. from there, LS might be able to track you down and arrest you. the evidence wouldn't need to stand up in court; it'd just need to be enough for an arrest warrant. removing that one possibility from the arsenal of ways to find you that LS already has is definitely worth thinking about.

I've typed that a few times in the past, yes.

I was gonna say something about the rights of the SINless but I didn't wanna steal your thunder. No offense, BTW.

or maybe they have a mile long dossier on every one of us...

anyways, there was a news posting on slashdot not to long ago about the effect of the CSI show on jurys...

and about those SINless, yes they have rights. so gunning down a person like that on the open street may be a bad idea (unless he was openly threatening people around him and so on). still, the cops would be less then interested in a case where a sinless was found dead somewhere. they are second rate people anyways...

Would it help if you only used lead non-jacketed rounds?

Re: Buying Gun Barrels

It frankly isn't particularly difficult to make an entire gun, much less the barrel, if you have a halfway decent machine shop and a modicum of howto knowledge. Making a Barrel, which is one of the simplest pieces, should be a TN 3 or maybe even 2 B/R test if you have a gunshop (Kit wouldn't work, you'd need some bigger stuff than you can lug around).

Tips for Shadowrunners?

1) You don't get experience for killing things.
2) There isn't treasure behind every door.
3) You can't take your weapons everywhere.
4) A single Ork or guard could kill you.

Thoughts in response:

(1) I would have thought the best plan would be being able to use any pistol, not concentrating in Predator to a high level. Then, try and change guns every run or two by buying a whole new gun. Dispose of the old one by getting a thin file and rasping the hell out of the inside of your old barrel to destroy any chance it will be tested, then pull the gun to bits and dispose of the bits off different bridges in the greater Seattle area.

(2) All the forensic evidence in the world means nothing if you can make the evidence disappear, or screw up the chain of custody, or taint the original evidence, or pay a police officer or prosecutor or judge. I'm a prosecutor and I'm constantly glad I don't have to conform to US law about the admission of evidence. A smart runner could derail the impending freight train of doom that is the Lone Star CSI team with a simple short run or a large shiny bribe.

(3) Let's be honest - no player has the time or the interest to sit around and think of every single possible way that a forensic team could find them. There just isn't any way to figure out every possibility, and still have much fun with a game. Better to just have a general understanding with the GM about where the line is.

The understanding I have with my players is that I won't be rediculous with CSI techniques used against them (or cows from space, for that matter) and ruin their fun, provided they don't go nuts and do excessive things. For example, if they leave a ritual sample at the scene (like a large pool of arterial blood) and they've stolen a hideously expensive prototype gizmo, they will probably need to spend a few thousand on wards and shamanic magic help. If they do a run and their photographs are taken by lots of cameras which they noticed and didn't care about, their contacts will avoid them for a couple of weeks and they'll want to lay low till the heat dies down.

Protecting against every possible forensic technique and doing runs in full-body sealed suits and breathing through respirators is not practical and is not condusive to game play, because you can easily ruin enjoyment through guarding against everything.

Tips for (newbie) shadowrunners:

1. don't use your only residence as a meeting place (is it just my crew that brings everyone to their house when they first meet? I can userstand it if you've gotten to know the guy...)
2. Don't bring in a gun when you can see the metal detector (aarg, what's wrong with them?)
3. Consider carefully every life you take and every witness you spare.
4. Don't piss off team members who know where you live and have access to explosives.

Corollary to corollary to #4: Though letting them think you live somewhere else is fine. Especially if you never liked the neighbors there anyway.

~J

"Guy once told me if you're gonna be out making moves on the street, have not attachments, nothing you are not willing to walkout on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner." Neil McCauley, Heat

Okay, i got some advice for ya.

First, have more than one apartment. you got one place where ya live, and another where you can lay low, like after a run. change your 'lay low' apartment every month if ya can.

If you can afford it, rig up some kinda storage unit (permanent squat?) where you can keep your back-up gear. change of clothes, spare gun, ammo, armor, medical gear. Stuff you can go get in an absolute emergency.

Cover your face when your tresspassin on corp property. if they cant see your face, they will have a harder time findin you later. a respirator is good, as it helps protect against gas as well. also dont leave any material links.

on guns: practicality is issue one. dont carry it unless you need it, know how to fight without it. conceal it whenever possible, invest in concealable quickdraw holsters. you dont want to have a visable piece in public. Pistols are best, unless you know for a fact that your about to be in a big firefight, then get the best gun you can use. have a hidden compartment in your car for the big guns.

Cars- get a morphing liscence plate and a decent transponder library. drive something non-descript. cheap cars are good.

Know who on your team does what. Everyone should be able to do more than one job, in case someone gets injured. everyone should know first aid.

use encryption on your radios! and when you do talk, use code-words. the other side has radios as well, and will try to listen to your conversation. you should try to listen to theirs.

after a run, do NOT party. first thing you do, check for bugs. you may have a tracer on you. stay alert, and be ready to move. you may have been followed. change clothes, wash your hands. change your shoes/boots. hide any wounds you have after they have been treated.

Security cameras: many times, these are not connected to the matrix, and may very well be on an adjacent building or structure. These probably go to a CCSS rigger. Look like you belong, either with illusion that fools video, or by actualy looking the part (a better idea where possible). looking like your a bored employee makes fast-talk a lot easier.

use non-lethal force when possible. use silencers. the only gernades you should use under normal circumstances are gas and smoke. and dont use em unless you have a good throwing arm.

leave evidence that points to someone else. for instance, if you need to smash a place up, leave some holloweener gang symbols spraypaintd about. it will confuse the issue.

be professional. this means be polite. be polite until you need to hurt people. then be polite again right afterwards. show respect to your contacts and employers. polite people get paid more than rude people.

bug your own apartment. check the bugs on a regular basis. this way if anyone breaks in you will know who, when, ect.

always assume that there is at least a watcher spirit, unless you mage tells you otherwise.

Non-lethal force leaves the possibility of someone you've already taken care of being there when you get back. It is a viable option sometimes, but hardly the objective in and of itself that some people claim.

~J

I prefer using non-lethal force on a run for two major reasons.

1) It gives you more control of the situation when things get ugly. Once you take down your opponent, you can then spend a moment to rationally determine if he's worth eliminating for good or merely someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the former, shifting Deadly Stun to Deadly Physical takes no time or effort at all considering the target is unconscious and unable to resist.

2) Lone Star, security forces, and other similar opposition tend to respond very poorly to their comrades being murdered by criminals. If you had only KOed that cop rather than killing him, chances are you wouldn't have half the force hunting you down trying to get a little payback.

Basically, it's better to be safe than sorry. Plus, from a metagaming point of view, it's a lot easier to knock someone out than kill them anyway. Capsule Rounds with Pepper Spray or DMSO/Gamma Scopolamine will take just about anyone down (if not from the bullet itself, then from the chemical a few seconds later). Ditto for someone throwing a couple of punchs with Shock Gloves (Moderate damage plus Serious damage with each blow) vs. a pair of Swords (Moderate damage each blow). etc.

There is no problem that cannot be solved with the judicious use of enough violence.

~J

If you want to get technical, go see a Street Doc and have him graft synth-flesh to the ends of your fingertips.

It would be a temporary fix, but it would get the job done.

-Siege

Know your GM. If you take care to leave people alive and stable, some will treat that as a cosmic plus to what you have to deal with afterwards. Others will add that many people to the list of those trying their best to make you dead.

Ditto fpr leaving evidence at the scene. Some will consider a mission well run the end of the story. Others will start to play CSI: Seattle.

You could always just steal guns to get past the whole registering thing.

Don't give explosives to Troll. Never, ever - if you are another shadowrunner.
If you are GM, give them lots of explosives

tips:
1) always check the crazy rigger/demolition expert`s trunk before going in his car.. make sure there arent a few 100 kg of C4 in there..

2) NEVER. EVER let an otaku stay over, NEVER EVER let said otaku jack in from your house.. what he calls `just playing games` will get some big rough men to `come over to play`next evening @ your living room..

3) beware of "friendlies" with no skills in throwing but large amounts of grenades.

4) Hellhounds are not `misunderstood but basically cute and cuddly`they dont want friends.

5) beware of mages that look at your area, count the nr of enemies, the nr of friendlies and seem to go Hmmmm....

DS

Wrap the mage in flame-resistant, ballistic fabric every time he goes astral in the creepy R&D lab.

It cuts down on the explosion radius and makes cleanup that much easier.

-Siege

By the same token, if you regularly kill people assigned to take you down, the individuals actually doing the looking are going to become rather demotivated.

~J

See my quote above.

Trick is, it's beyond the abilities of most players and most characters I've known to apply violence both judiciously and in sufficient volume (and, for that matter, beyond the ability of most people in real life). However, there are times to leave no survivors. Zero body count is another tool like any other, and there are times when it is not the right one for the job.

~J