I have GMed Shadowrun before and never had this problem. A player of mine decided to play a Gun Bunny. "No problem," Said I, thinking that he would clone the Sample character in SR3. He didn't. Building the character with priority he set his nuyen at A and bought four of almost every gun in the BBB. He was restricted the same as all the rest to the availability 8 and under. Still the man (ork actually) is an arsenal all by himself. Obviously he doesn't' carry it all. He had enough money for 4 lifestyles of varying levels. One is a secure storage for his guns (he bought the security separately)

I have been, traditionally, a more realistic GM making my players count their rounds in fire fights and such. I was forced to short him on the total rounds he wished to purchase, just to keep my sanity. I have allotted him two full load outs for every gun.

Now, do I let the player play this guy as is or does he suffer a fire at armory. I'd rather not take his guns away, but really:

Cyberware

He has the skills to use it all too.

Edited to correct the link

Why is this a problem, again? He has a lot of guns and the skills to use them - so what? So does every other Sam or Gun Bunny, he just happens to have a ton of extras he'll probably never use.

In fact, the only problem I'd possibly have with this as a GM is how bad and sub-par his choices were, and make some suggestions to make his life easier in the future... Tons of guns, most don't have smartlinks, no recoil compensation that I can see, no gel or EX rounds for any of them, no scopes, no underbarrel grenade launchers... This is amateurish.

As an aside, if it were me, and the GM told me I could only buy two ammo loads for each weapon I owned, I'd tell him where to shove it...

Sounds like a complete waste of NuYen to me. Let him keep them.

I don't see any problem?? Let him play the character, owning extra guns doesn't do you a lot of good. He only can use one at a time (assuming he isn't taking penalities for firing two weapons at once... which are harsh). After a while, he'll probably regret the character on his own. Look at his cyberware list!?!? He took Priority A in resources and yet has no cool cyberware to speak of. Just bone lacing and smartlink? Really, just make him keep up w/ the guns, it's no big deal.

Indeed. I'd suggest reversing the ruling on maximum ammo, for everyone's sanity. Either way it'll get fixed soon, as basic ammo is cheap and available.

~J

Why is having loads of guns a problem?
It's not as if he can use - or even carry(!!) - them all at the same time.
Why limit the number of bullets he can have?

In any given firefight he can only use a couple of guns, so all you have to do is keep track of which weapons he uses and how many bullets he fires. You don't have to worry about how many rounds he has left until he starts running really low on them.

Since you've only allowed him two full loads per gun, he'll run low on ammo very, very quickly.

Having extra weapons is not a bad idea. Last gun you used get to hot? Destroy it and unpack the next one. Honestly he shouldn't be punished for that kind of thinking.

Besides, from the sounds of it he has no initiavtive boosting cyber. That balances everything out nicely as at best (without an edge) he can only have 2 combat phases.

I can't tell you how many times I've had a character basically "buy" coffin cubby somewhere with the only content being a change of clothes, an armored jacket, a clean cell phone and pager and a clean gun with 3 clips and an unused fake ID all in a duffle waiting for me if something goes wrong.

As with everyone else, I fail to see a problem here, other than the GM's arbitrary, and quite silly limit on ammunition.

Pfft. I basically did the same thing just recently, though I only snagged one of every small arm simply 'cause I had a buttload of cash leftover and nothing to waste it on. The sad thing is that my character doesn't have the skill to use 'em all. They're most just there as part of a collection.

I'd be more concerned that his only implants look to be Titanium Bone Lacing and a standard Smartlink. I don't see any reflex enhancements, and he really should have gone with a Smartlink-2 since its only 1,000-nuyen more and, as of the errata/faq, is backwards compatible. He's going to be all but a dead man if he's forced into a gun fight if all he has to rely on is Reaction+1D6.

I'm going to "me too" everyone else. I don't see a problem with all the guns (except that it's going to be a long time before the PC gets to use every gun, what a shame. )

It's not unusual for my PCs to pick up spare weapons, radios, and other items to help out other PCs who are equipment-deprived. Of course, that's mostly as loot, not in character generation, but.

Yep, let him. Then he has to hide them when trouble arrives. or he gets a rep as a terrorist for some high-level terror outift. or a smuggler for the Cascade orks, or his appartment gets looted and all the guns are taken and sold/used by some local gang,

hey maybe he just *likes* guns.. I have a player like that.. leave him be.. guns are a good moneysink.. esp when he starts buying collectibles..

now why did you limit his ammo? who cares if he has a stadium with 6000 000 000 000 000 rounds.. if you want to babysit him, just tell him before every run he has to give you in writing which guns he is carrying with him..

DS

Just enforce encumbrance limits. If you want to be strict about it, just enforce the Canon SR ammo weights.

Or ask him what he is thinking by doing this. Maybe he's being smart and buying bribes. After all some guns have a hefty street index, what better way to buy a gang lord then offering him a several thousand piece of gear.

I'm with the rest of the folks, don't see an issue here. Clarence Worley said it best!

Other than the player being a moron I don't see a problem...

Just to chime in here, I too am confused about what the issue is with owning that many guns and to top it off, all availability <9. So what? When it comes to job time how is that going to pose a problem? He can only carry so many, and can't really shoot more than one (or two) at a time, not more than any other Shadowrunner.

To be honest, you'd have more trouble with a mage or someone toting a Sniper Rifle that some over-zealous gun freak.

Please help us understand!!

Aww...the GM's scared.

The Neo approach works (I guess) if you're intending to do kinda like they did, fire and forget. You run out of ammo, you drop it. Not like the guns they carried cost them anything. They had billions of virtual guns on virtual racks. Its more a flavor thing I guess than a really effective tactic in SR. Gun sensors are alot more discrete in SR, so you don't get the "Oh crap" effect like they did in the Matrix when walking through the metal detector. More like you walk into the building and security team just opens fire on you even though you haven't pulled anything out yet.

Yes this GM is scared. You see using the guns isn't the problem, having the guns isn't the problem either. Its selling them at the standard street mark up thats the problem. The first thing he wants to do is make deals with all sorts of fixers to unload these items. Rake in tons of Nuyen (his charisma and negotiation are high enough to get the best deals). And then use the new Nuyen, (more than the allotted 1,000,000 at chargen) to buy stuff for his character, now without the limits of availability 8/level 6.

I'm more worried that the player has found a way around the character creation processes limits to boost his starting gear.

I know, I know. As GM I can make life difficult for the character trying to sell his goods. But I've always played SR "tight" with strict adherence to dice rolls and rules. In other words I don't cheat, but I have a player who has discovered and exploit that I can only beat by cheating.

so what, the guns are now second -hand.. ie worth less than new..

and to buy anything in game you nee dto pay street index.. and that matters a lot
1 000 000 ny isnt nearly so much when you have to pay the index AND find the goods AND pay hospital costs for installing ware AND you need a lot of time.. you need to sell each individual gun.. you really cannot pay for ware in guns...etc etc..

DS

No Toturi, what he needs to do is use this house rule I made.
It goes like this:
click spoiler as rule is lengthy

So, don't cheat. Tell him out of character that you're not going to put up with that kind of bullshit in your game.

Or, if you don't want to go that far, then stay completly within the rules. Let him try and move all those guns. Sure he can, but it's going to take time, and probably several different fixers and contacts. What's he going to do with all that money? Get more cyber? Well, read up on the rules for surgery risks, healing time and all that other good stuff, and make him deal with that too. Does he have the proper contacts to get any of the real whiz stuff, and then have it installed? That's the downside to doing things like that after chargen. He's also probably going to have to get the stuff on the black market, so he'll be paying the street index on it too. That'll chew through all his nuyen pretty fast.

And more for ways that the GM could screw with the player, so where did he get all those guns in the first place? If he's got permits for them, I'd say that unloading them all into the black market would mean that sooner or later, one of those guns is going to get used for something bad, and maybe it was just one or two, but he didn't manage to erase all connections, and some get traced back to him.

Personally, I would just tell him no. That kind of dick headed meta gaming should not have a place in any pen and paper game.

I'll fourth him! The hassle of selling them all is so not worth it. Hell, the hassle of rolling all those dice to sell them isnt even worth it.

I think what really makes my inner VEGM laugh is how the only guns with smartlinks are the 4 AKs. He drops the cash and essance for a NORMAL smartlink (seriously, who gets non-alpha smartlinks now adays?) dosent bother to get a SL in so much as a pistol.

And now that I look, even if he sells all those guns at new market price, he is only getting like 75k back.

However, as I had a charcter I put tougther that had 14 browning max powers, I cant say much. But then having 10 safe houses each with a spare gun, is really handy.

The thing that gets me is that Scarecrow237 doesn't even know for sure that this is what the player is planning. It is just a supposition.

Even if it is what he had in mind, he certainly sucks at implementing it. He'd be better off with cases of the same type of gun, or as others have said, alternate items like cars ... as well as taking the Connected Edge.

Why don't you sit the player down and discuss his character. It really looks to me as if he just wants to play a dude with lots of guns.

Hey don't forget gun collectors and such have way more guns then this guy has. Make unloading them onto the market a shitty procces. Have the market already flooded with weapons, or Lone Star may be cracking down on the blackmarket. Maybe have one of his weapons malfuntion while the fixer is using it or trying it out, making his stuff look like junk. There are infinate options, I wish my GM problems were this easy.

Screw it, once word gets out on the street that this little nobody is trying to set up an arms ring, rival gunrunnners will take note.

The big ones might see some profit to be made (and a chance to squish possible competition in the future) and send a team to steal all this stuff, while he's away on a run of course (the other team did their recon).

I can't say crap though, because I bought 4 of each gun once too. (The character wanted to set up a security firm)

Yes, punish potential arms-ringers because god forbid a player should ever try to do something his GM doesn't want him to do.

If the player is doing it as a means to abuse chargen, then yeah, by all means drop the hammer on his dumb ass.

If he has some other, less ridiculously meta-gamey purpose behind his purchase, then let him go through with it. Have fun with it, but tell him " the next time you have such and such an idea, run it by me so I know what's coming. GMs tend to not react well when surprised."

Are you sure that is what the player actually plans to do? I mean, if he's planning to become an arms dealer, he didn't really need to pick up all of the weapon skills for his guns (in fact, B/R skills would have been more useful for that). Plus, his mix of guns is not really optimized for selling. Many of them have a Street Index of less than one. He may be a guy who just likes having lots of guns.

And if he does it, so what? This stuff takes time - make him pay for it by missing out on the action that the others are involved in. His entepreneurial spirit may wane when he has to miss runs because he is too busy selling two of his AK-97's. While he's dinking around setting up all of his little deals for a thousand here and a thousand there, the other PCs will be out doing 20-50K runs. Bet they'll be buying that high-rated gear long before he is. And even if he gets some decent gear, he'll still be behind the sammie who more wisely spent his starting money on some decent 'ware.