Neither should they think: "Damn... I probably took a Serious there, I only have 4 wound boxes left before I start dying."

People should underestimate how badly they're hurt fairly often, especially when lots of adrenaline or stimulants are involved.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to get away from that without resorting to "hidden" health tracks and obfuscating wound penalties. It makes a lot more work for the GM.

Oh, don't get me wrong--I don't like the idea either. Unfortunately metagaming is, as you pointed out, the inevitable result of players knowing exactly how many hit poi--er, sorry--boxes their charcters have left on their Condition Monitor. It's probably the lesser of two evils.

You don't need hidden health tracks. You just need players who want to roleplay instead of rollplay. It also helps to have a character who decides to sleep off deadly stun without medical treatment to roll 1ds and on a result of 1 he devolps an blood clot and has a stroke in his sleep, resulting in some physical and mental flaws.

mmu1, you are 100% correct. This is very true during combat. Most people who are stabed or shot doen't even know it untill the adrenaline wears off.

However, I was responding to Kagetenshi's scenario where a guard is knocked unconscious and is later revived to contrinue the pursuit. In this case, the danger has already passed, th ecombat is over. The wounded character should be assessing his wounds before charging headlong into another battle.

After the danger has passed, the adrenalin wears off, and shock begins to set in, wounds often seem worse than they actually are.

Regarding the shot-through-the-door incident, I lived in Houston at the time it happened. It was *all* over the news, with the Japanese embassy throwing a fit over the kid's death, and the locals throwing a fit about the fact that the kid shouldn't have been there in the first place. I'm sure it's not the first and only place it happened, but this wasn't an incident I "heard through the grapevine" so to speak. It was on the evening news every day for several weeks.

With respect to the "doohickeys" on the weapons, no kidding you only shoot someone if you intend to kill them (in fact, first thing I was taught was don't even *point* at something you don't intend to kill). The hollow point bullets and talons only increase lethality by what, 3-5%? The point is, these guys were... what I would call "conspicuously packing." The point (from these guys point of view) is to put out the word that you have weapons and that you're not kidding about it, and thereby to hopefully intimidate potential troublemakers into taking their trouble elsewhere. If you're the average gang-banger or robber who doesn't know a whole lot about firearms, which is going to intimidate you more? The security guard with a revolver, or the guy wearing body armor, and carrying a semi-automatic weapon with an extended clip, laser sight and "special bullets?"

And my point is that these guys were security guards legally carrying what was *not* legal to buy on the street; in that specific locality, clips bigger than I think 10 (or 12?) bullets were not legal, black talons and hollow points were not legal for your average private citizen, but these guys had them legally. ie, security guards *can* carry firearms (in states other than CA), and on top of that, they often have gear that other private citizens aren't supposed to have.

Security guards in California can carry firearms, and do so quite a bit (it may be more noticeable in Los Angeles only because of how many armed security personnel are in L.A. anyway).

A hollow point bullet is designed to release all its kinetic energy into the target. There are some uses for that:

1) The kinetic energy released cause massive trauma, usually more than that of normal jacketed bullets. A hollow point hitting an arm is more likely to tear off that arm than a normal bullet. However, since the bullet is not designed to penetrate, armour is more effective. This is reflected in SR rules.

2) Less chance of overpenetration, although it has been known to happen. But the chances are less likely. This is not reflected in SR rules.

"Extended" they may not be. "High-capacity" is entirely relative to what is considered normal capacity, which may not vary by gun. As an (exaggerated) example, if I use a shotgun that takes two shells, one in each barrel, I'm going to consider the eight-round magazine on a Franchi SPAS-12 to be high-capacity. The fact that it's the standard SPAS-12 magazine capacity is irrelevant.

~J

If you'd reread the page you linked to, they cite the incident being discussed as fact while discussing an undetermined but completely separate incident.

~J

Last I heard, Houston was not in Louisiana

Well then, you heard wrong



~J

Maybe not "high performance", but two days' hard walk in an hour? That's certainly high speed.

That being said, if we leave it up to the designers every magazine will be high capacity. Sounds better on the marketing literature, y'know?

~J

That's what misdirection for. You decide to off a J. You make it look like you were hired for a hit, even though you just didn't like the fact that he wore white after labor day and popped him.

EDIT- Was replying to tisoz but got lag from hell and Didn't see Mmu 1's post.

As has been said, offing employers is a gamble. If you kill off too many, then there is no income source. If you kill off too few, they get uppity.

In my games, offing the one-time Johnson for a perceived betrayal would probably go over very poorly unless there were extenuating circumstances. Offing a long-term Johnson would carry a much higher risk. Your fixer is going to take a hit of you interrupt one of his main income sources, and you aren't going to work for a while.

In short, it better be worth it.

To put it another way—it's probably a good idea to ask if the guy's one of the Fixer's regular contacts. If no, he's fair game. If yes, the bar gets set a bit higher.

~J

Again, not if the run is set up properly. The entire point is to prevent organizations with incredibly vast resources from being able to track back the actions.

~J

Or to make it not cost effective to track those actions. . . Actuaries can do wonders these days

Personally I see Johnson’s as a sort of fixer for the corps. Sure you are going to get the occasional one who is just some ticked off hubby who wants his cheating wife dead or a middle manager who knows the only way up the ladder is if the rung above him becomes vacant but if you ask me when it is an actual corp job then the corps are going to employ a Johnson from a list of trusted agents who have knowledge of the shadow community and a rep developed within that community. The corps also know that Shadowrunners like it or not fill a valuable roll within their culture and will pay and treat them as such. The first few runs are likely to be the ones you are most likely to get screwed over on since the characters don't have much of a rep and thus the team’s fixer is more likely to set them up with the Johnson’s who don't have a rep.

Everyone has to start at the bottom somewhere and lets face it beginning runners might have to deal with a Johnson who's knowledge of the shadow community comes from watching Dateline which of course is going to focus on the worst aspects of runner culture including the teams that screw the pooch and end up with half of Seattles Lone Star FRT's responding. The best runs never make the news. The runner’s world is a vicious one and only the strongest, smartest and fastest survive. I expect most fixers have rolodexes filled with the obituaries of dead runners they hooked up but I'd also expect that 99% of those dead runners were on their first or second run.

Once a team has pulled a few simpler runs without royal fuckups it is easier for a Fixer to justify hooking them up with a Johnson that he knows and knows well. A runner team, praticularly an inexperianced one is a great deal easier to replace than a well-connected Johnson and the fixer knows this, thus he saves his best contracts for the best teams in his stable.

A fixers rep might take a bit of a hit for getting a team fresh off the streets killed but imagine how much bigger a hit his rep would take if he hooked them up with one of Renraku's favorite Johnson only to have them bring an Ares Alpha and Light Combat Armour to a meet in a nice restaurant and gun down the bus boy along with a half dozen patrons when they try and take it away from him.

It would be even worse if in order to give the new team the job with the aforementioned Johnson he gave one of his best teams a job with the ticked off hubby who then gets cold feet and calls the Star on them at the last minute.

On the flip side if he hooks up the new team with a questionable Johnson and they go gun crazy and kill him or completely bugger the run it's not such a big deal either. The Johnson had no real rep with the shadow community and the Fixer can just refuse to deal with the team again while posting a warning on Shadowland that they are not to be trusted. If he’s feeling particularly nasty he might keep them on file just in case he gets a call from a Johnson looking for some fodder to serve as a diversion for a real run. The fixer really doesn't need to worry too much about the new team coming after him since quite often fixers are retired runners and probably has more tricks up his sleve than an hooker. Besides any fixer that gives out his home address or phone number to a new runner is just as stupid as a runner giving out his LTG.

At the same time since he gave a prime run to a good team that he trusts he can probably count on it being carried out quietly and professionally, which will improve his rep.

I think what Talia is saying is that there's little point in going after the runners in most cases for a run, becuase they don't have any info on who the Johnson is, so there's no point in moving against them. If it's likely that they do on the other hand, hell yes the corps going to go after them to get what they took back (or whatever ). Where in the case of Runners cacking Mr. Johnson, they do know who is wholly responsible, and can therefore take action, just like they would if there was reason to believe the runners employer could be traced through them in the case of a normal run.

That is what I was getting at, too.

I fail to see how Ares could not figure out that Renraku stole their prototype or extracted scientist X, when Renraku releases the product based on the prototype or scientist X's work (or scientist X gains acclaim for Renraku for making some breakthrough.)

I am pretty sure I recall reading how the corporate court could require Renraku to compensate Ares in some way to avoid corporate hostility over incidents like this. Usually the corps were said to offer compensation on their own to avoid a corporate court decision.

Whatever, it seems mmu1, and some others, envision their universe operating on different principles than I. When I join a group or game, I try to ferret out these assumptions. It is why peoples ideas of professionalism in this thread are varying a bit.

When SR first came out they pretty much said the Shadowrunners were not held responsible for the actions of other corps. If Ares hired a group to hit Renraku, Renraku didnt get revenge on the runners but Ares.

It had to do with knowing, but not proving.

You can know that Ares is behind it, but you can't prove it. Now if Ares used in house Spec Ops to do it, and one got captured there would be a line back to Ares. But if they use shadowrunners the line stops with them.

They even said that Corps wouldn't take out a sr team because they had the philosophy of using that team against another corp.

Now that was a while ago and we have all grown up a but. This idea in the real world seems a little naive. The corp with the same power as a govt. would take out the runner, her family, and hell, her dog too. But in the universe of Shadowrun, they don't do that. It is like watching a movie. you have to suspend your disbelief.

Corps usually know who went after them but usualy can't provide any substantial supporting evidence. Evidence matters. The Corporate Court won't make a judgement based on insubstantial allegations.

Public retribution without CC sanction would probably result in that corp becoming the Sixth World's Iraq. Not even a AAA can stand for long when all 9 other AAAs are legaly obliged to wage war agaisnt it.

The point of using shadowruners isn't anonymity; the point is deniability.