The regular DM for our Black Company campaign was sick. We had been planning on running a SR4 campaign eventually this fall, but i was the only one (other than the sick DM) that had actually read any of the BBB. So was GM by default. Unfortunately i only had about about 7 hours notice, 4 of which were to be spent with SO and mother-in-law at the farmer's market. Add in that the campaign would likely be run by someone else, and it was one-of time.

So the senario is they were some time back stranded in Hong Kong by a run gone. I roughed together a rigger (approx. 400), somthing that the run would need someone to have a bit of skill in, and realized i probably didn't have time to make a char for everyone. So one person got the rigger and everyone else picked one of the sample chars (picked: the ugly troll, the Street Sam, and Street Shaman). I printed off the 3 sample chars (less than optimal, no room to write) and proceeded with the 15 minute overview of the IC history of the time between SR3 to SR4 and game mechanics (TN 5, Skills+Attr and dice pools, Edge, wireless Matrix/commlinks).

So they meet up with the fixer. They are to pick up a car w/cargo at a drop point in a public garage, drive it to another garage and drop it off there. The wrinkle is that there is someone else that is expecting to pick up the car. I had the fixer give them the 'keys' to the car since i didn't want to force hacking into the equation. I figured a data chip that you slot into the commlink would be an appropriate form for a car key.

So they head off to the garage. They wait at a noodle shop across the street, and send the Rat Shaman in w/Improved Invisibility + Infiltration. The shaman whiffles the casting, ony 1 success, but having taken a box of damage he says screw it and decides to go with that back by his mundane skill. It's a public garage anyway.

So he goes past the oblivious attendant and strolls up to the 3rd floor where the drop-off will occur. It's mostly empty (only 3 cars, none even close to description of target car) as this is a Reserved section for businesses, and it is evening. He looks around, notices the security cameras. Then waits. A couple of shady looking guys show up (they don't notice the mage) and wait in the shadows at other end of the garage. Mage goes astral and notes one is somewhat cybered, the other is awakened (adpet, but not enough successes to tell mage that).

The mage is afraid to use the commlink unless absolutely nessasary because of the Gremlins flaw. Instead mage decides to zip back to noodle house in astral and manifest in private if possible to call for backup. Not sure if this is fully legal in SR4, but i can't be bothered to try look it up. Mage heads back to find shady people kicking the crap out of a business man that looks like he was trying to get in one of the nice cars that was parked there. Mage decides this is no business of his. Thugs toss man in trunk and drive off. Why did i do this? Flavor. Plus to give a reason for the cameras to be haxxored, becaues they weren't asking about how to do it and i didn't feel comfortable enough with the rules to explain.

The rest of the team shows up, but waits out of site in the stair well. Target car shows with escort. Driver parks and leaves in escort car (neither sees the mage). Mage doesn't act immediately. A second car pulls in. A guy gets out the passenger door and looks around and sees through the Invis and the Infiltation. Gig's up. Surprise is rolled, which is NOT a Rat Shaman's strong suit. Mage is surprised and then also rolls last for init. He does manage to avoid his urge to flee though.

The new comer draws a silenced pistol and plugs the mage. Suprised so no option to Dogde. Mage rolls very well on the soak and only takes 3 boxes, screaming in pain and thus alerting his comrades. The shooter then runs towards the target car.

Next init, the team in the stairwell roll very well on init. The Sam first pops out with the LMG and attempts to hose down the shooter, rolling 3 hits. Caught out in the open the shooter and facing the nasty end of a Big Freakin' Gun, he had decided to turtle and use Full Defense, managed to counter with 3 dodge hits to save his butt. The troll then comes out and takes a shot at the shooter with the Ruger 100. Critcal Glitch. I point out he can spend a point of Edge to fix that, but with only an Edge of 2 he wants to save it for defense (the player typically has defensive mind set). Sooooo, since the shooter was near the back end of the target car i rule that the troll pulled hard right on the shot and hit car puncturing the fuel tank which then begins to briskly leak on the floor. (no folks, no 'splosion )

Next the rigger pops around the corner and take as shot at the shooter, and finally a connection. The shooter soaks all but a box or two. Next is the driver of the car that showed up. He reaches into the backseat and pulls out an AR. This guy i made a bad ass, and though the rigger (the only one to do damage, and easiest for the driver to aim at) has good cover at the stairwell entrance this guy still has a good pool of dice and rolls very well. Six hits. The rigger's player hears the thunder rolling (hey, what's a little metagaming between friends ), and decides with two other shooters he's going to try out this Full Defense thing that worked so well for the shooter. It didn't work so well for him, though he managed to bring the net hits down to 4. But i was nice and rulled that the wall of the stairwell could add some armour (hey it was APDS ammo anyway), so after the soak he only took 7 boxes.

It was kinda funny actually because the rigger's player thought that the rigger had died, he didn't realize the condition monitor boxs weren't Body, but 8+(Bod/2).

Next up is the shooter, but he had used his Full Defense. I wasn't sure if he got to move or not, but i just had him drop prone to try stay alive till he could shoot again.

The shaman, having seen the driver blowaway a sizeable chuck of the doorframe and still hit the rigger figures that's threat #1. He considers overcasting the Manabolt, but chickens out and goes for top of stun (Force 5). Takes no drain, but rolls poor on the cast and the driver rolls well. Resisted.

More meyham ensues as the Sam Critical Glitches with the LMG at the shooter and shows the lesson was learned by burning her single Edge to keep from completely shredding the target car. The team then manages to wound the driver who backs the car up to pick up his prone buddy and it looks like they are going to run.

This encourages the shaman to grow a spine and overcast the Manabolt at Force 10. Rolls well, lots of hits on casting and only eats 2 boxes of P drain. Driver rolls poorly, and it's game over for him. The shooter, was by then bleeding profusely all over the front seat floor of the car he had arrived in.

It was late (we got started late by the time i printed out the PC sheets and stuff), so we called it a run.

All in all it was fun, and it has been decided that we will push up the SR campaign a bit by running alternating weeks with the Black Company D&D (not my preference, i don't like alternating, would rather just finish out the Black Company first).

P.S. I didn't mention Combat Pool, and nobody asked about it. Nobody cared.

As a note: you can move while on full defense. In the Defense Modifiers Table (p. 151) it includes Defender Running (+2) as a modification to your Full Defense roll. Thus, the shooter could have moved for cover while on Full Defense.

Sounds like a good time was had by all. Excellent

Basically, just subtract one die per bullet after the first. So the first short burst would have a -2 (three bullets fired) then the long burst would have a -8 (2 original bullets + an additional 6 bullets) as I understand the mechanics.

short burst - long burst: +2, +6
long burst - short burst: +5, +3

The burst fire rules use only the word first or second "burst", not long/short burst regarding recoil. It is not like in SR3, were you added the total bullets fired per phase. In SR4 bursts are counted alone per simple action.

Does it say you can't do 2 long bursts in the same pass? The way I read it was that a Long Burst is still only a simple action so you can do 2 if you want unless it implies in the description you can only do 1 (and I don't remember reading anything like that).

But without the book on hand, IIRC:
2 bursts (-2,-3)
2 long bursts (-5,-6)
1 burst + 1 long burst (-2, -6)
1 long burst + 1 burst (-5, -3)

EDIT: Apple beat me to it. He is on a roll today.

I guess my interpretation of the quotation you provided is that all they're described is a -1 per bullet beyond the first. Plus the phrase "Weapons that fire more tha one round in an Action Phase suffer from an escalating recoil modifier..." seems to mean that subsequent simple actions to shoot should be cummulative with the original simple action to shoot's recoil as per semi-automatic weapons. YMMV.

IMHO you do not really add:

It was the wording of the example that got me though:

My take on it is that the modifiers are cumulative (-2 for the first short burst, and an additional -3 (totalling -5) for the second short burst). This seems to fit in with the rest of the rules.

sucks that I missed that, sounds like fun was had by all... Lemme see if I can guess who was what.

Jerremy= Troll
Mark= Mage
Jeff= Rigger
Heather= sam

Rigger and mage I'm not 100% on it could be the other way around. The mage seems to act like Jeff but I can't see him wanting to tackle a whole new spellcasting system.