What exactly is an Automatic?

Adventures in Firearms

I'm a self described "gun guy". I'm also a RPG guy. Sometimes these two sides of me are somewhat at odds with the other. Having taken several shooting classes and practicing and teaching self defense and martial arts has given me different view of combat as compared to what I see in most RPGs, especially 5^th edition Shadowrun. I've played SR since 1^st edition, and have always loved the world and feel of the world they have built. I have an on again off again relationship with the various rule sets that it's been played with, but this is the first time I've thought about making a Home Rule Set for firearms. I may mess with combat in general later, but there are some parts of the firearms rules that out and out stink.

My first grump: Clips.

Holy Crap, how hard is it? Clips are the metallic devices that hold loaded cartridges (not bullets) on the left. Magazines like on the right are boxes that hold loaded cartridges and are placed into weapons. Technically, these are detachable Box magazines, as there are also Internal Box magazines that are usually charged with clips and are not able to be removed as in the SKS  (Yes, you can get detachable MAGAZINES for the SKS, but it's not common, nor the original design of the weapon).

Every time I see this in the main rule book, I sigh. PAY someone who gives a shit about firearms to help you with the firearms part of your game. Better yet, pay someone who shoots and is knowledgeable about it.

"Automatics"

WTF are automatics? Honestly. I think it's basically a way to have a gimme skill and not have to worry about having all sorts of combat skills but being flexible enough to have a concealed machine pistol and an assault rifle in the trunk but only one skill to spend between them. Basically saving skill points for characters, but giving them flexibility. Well, I hate to disappoint folks, but if you know the care and feeding of an Uzi (a submachine gun) you may not have the foggiest how to run a Beretta 93 (a machine pistol), much less a SCAR (as assault rifle). Now, I know, certain concessions have to be made in games. Here, let me suggest some changes that make sense.

Machine pistols vs Sub Machine Guns vs Pistols

It is generally accepted that there are two kinds of hand guns in common use. Revolvers  and Pistols. Simply put, a revolver stores it's ammunition in a revolving cylinder and a pistol uses a magazine. Revolvers are either cocked by the trigger pull , or by manually moving the hammer to the rearward position. Pistols are called semiautomatic because they fire one shot for each trigger pull and loading of rounds into the chamber happens because of their mechanics and inertia of the fired ammunition. For the record, there are no firearms generally called "Automatics". Yes, I know about the Mateba. It's a mutant. A cool mutant, but it isn't covered in the game anyways. It would break it.

Machine pistols are usually burst fire or sometimes fully automatic capable pistols. The Beretta 93  is a selective fire pistol that has an almost identical manual of arms (how you use it) to it's older brother the model 92. My problem with "Automatics" being it's own beast is that in real life if you can run a Beretta 92 (A Pistol), you will be able to run the 93 (A Machine Pistol). Glock has a similar full auto fire capable model the Glock 18  that, other than a selector switch, is identical to the 17. Some machine pistols like the above Ceska have folding stocks, or like the Stechkin have a stock that can be attached, in the case of the Stechkin using it's holster to attack to the pistol grip.

Submachine guns, a phrase coined by the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun, are firearms that usually shoot pistol caliber ammunition. Most are select fire, meaning they are capable of semiautomatic, burst fire, or fully automatic operation. They are generally shaped like short assault rifles with a pistol grip and forward magazine. Their shape varies wildly such as the Mac-10  that feeds through the pistol grip in the manner of the pistol, or bullpup style (Action sits behind the fire control group) such as the P90  or even the PPSh  that's shaped like a conventional rifle (no pistol grip) but is select fire and fires a pistol caliber bullet.

In rare occasions, submachine guns that are quite small, like the Ceska Scorpion  or Mini Uzi  are considered machine pistols mainly because they can be held in a pistol sized holster.

In even more rare occasions, extremely short barreled assault rifles are sometimes considered submachine guns like the Krinkov . This is basically because of the very short barrel effecting the range so dramatically and the relative size as compared to the service rifle that it's derived from.

With the above exception, all three classes fire pistol caliber ammunition from a magazine. Pistols and Machine pistols are almost the same thing. I'd class Machine pistols as a feature of some pistols, not a distinct class in Game Terms. In fact I'd go so far as to say that in the future of Shadowrun where the arms race is so severe and firearms are much less regulated or at least more pervasive, most pistols would have at least burst fire capability. It's a simple mechanical design, and the increased emergency firepower available would be a great benefit.

Submachine guns generally have longer barrels and are fired from the shoulder unless you watch too many movies, so generally they are easier to fire because of their longer sight radius and more stable support as opposed to pistols or machine pistols held with one or two hands. Most submachine guns are very similar to larger assault rifles, often being derived from them as the above Krinkov.

My Suggested House Rule

Choose several high end pistols to have the burst fire machine pistol feature for an additional 100 Nuyen and the select fire feature for another 250 Nuyen. It's not expensive tech. Weapons listed as machine Pistols are treated as light pistols. Ignore the Machine pistol range table, as it's identical to the light pistol entry anyway.

Continue to use the folding stock or attachable stock rules as written, both for recoil compensation as well as concealability. Decide if any converted pistols have available attachable stocks or even folding stocks.

Availability should stay the same, as I said, this would likely be a common feature of pistols in the future of Shadowrun.

I think it won't break the game, and here's why.  Thematically, real shooters will likely have pistols for concealable firepower or as sidearms and "Automatics" (submachine guns or assault rifles or Longarms) for when the tough gets going and the pink mohawks come out.

Machine pistols will allow Shadowrunners the ability to put the hammer down when they need to even if they snuck them into a dinner party.  The thing that will prevent things from being Over Powered is the dismal range of the pistol and the relatively low ammunition capicity.  If a GM allows you to have a select fire Ares Predator and Six 33 round magazines concealed in your cummerbund, then he deserves whatever happens.  Part of why I did this in the first place was to add more realism.  You couldn't realistically carry that much ammo very easily.  I can carry a full sized Long Slide M&P 9mm and so long as I choose the right shirt and pants combo, you won't see it.  That's with a simple in waistband holster, and off the rack clothes, not custom tailored gear.  If I were to add a couple magazines, then things get sketchy.  4 more?  Not gonna happen, and those are half the length of the 33 rounders.

 Realistically, they should also have shitty control (increased recoil) in full automatic, but I'm not sure how much I want to mess with that.

I don't think the (relatively easy) availability will mess with anything either.  If anything, if will make them more desirable for folks to have, much like machine pistols currently enjoy, so not really breaking that.

I think the only thing it will mess with is now having to allocate skills to the Pistol skill.  It's a sacrifice, but an important one, I think.  For all the cries to avoid min-maxing, "Automatics" seems like a bullshit way out that allows people to have their burst fire side arm and eat their AK98 Cake too and still leave skill points to allocate to sneaking or perception.

That's my first Shadowrun 5^th edition Hole Rules suggestion.

I'll be addressing different pistol sizes and concealability in my next addition.

Shadowrun Character Concepts

What follows will be links to character concepts I am working on.  I have a few in mind, but if you would like to see how I'd approach something, I'd love to see your ideas.

It should be obvious, but just because they say military, doesn't mean they are current, though depending on the campaign they could be.



Cyber Characters:

Battlefield Medic:
-Special forces medic.  Cyber and healing.

MacGuyver:
-Lots of skills built around the Jury Rigger quality.

Cyber Special Forces:
-Delta Force mixed with wired reflexes

Line Soldier:
-Entry level soldier.  A good starting place for a runner.

Combat Decker:
-They make these?

The Driver:
-Patterned after THIS BMW commercial / video and the Transporter.  (The BMW series is called The Hire and is quite good if you can find them all.) 

Drone Wrangler:
-My first foray into drones.

Ork / Troll Heavy Weapons Specialist:
-Self explanitory.

Elite Sniper:
-Also self explanatory.

Augmented Face:
-Cyber and Etiquette collide.

Cat Burgler:
-Cyber thief




Magic Characters:

The Shootist:
-Built for showdowns at high noon with a high REA / Ini and Pistol skill / accuracy.

Cage Fighter:
-MMA for the 6th world.  Strong, survivable, fast.

Combat Mage:
-It's a tired description, but if the combat boot fits...

Combat Mystic Adept:
-Same as above now with more Adept.

Souix Wildcat Adept:
-the Wildcats are arguably some of the best magic special forces out there.

Magic James Bond:
-Mystic Adept with an enchanting focus.  

Adept thief:
-Sneaky adept

Magic Face:
-Magic and Etiquette collide.

The Beginning of Red Bear

This is some Fan Fiction / character concept that I made and posted in a subREDDIT I created called /r/ShadowrunFanFic .  I was limited by the amount of characters I could use, so it was a fun challenge to tell a story and make it good, but keep it short enough to submit.  I enjoyed making this, and I hope you like it.

The Beginning of Red Bear.

Shattering glass marked the entrance of the runner. It had been a quiet night at GlobalDyne's urgent care facility. That is until the ork dressed in all black came through the door.
He moved with unnatural ease, even while dragging the woman behind him by her chest gear's drag handle. His shotgun swept the people in the waiting room. They were mostly sniffles and sore throats, and seeing the gun most of them scattered out the front door, screaming.
Blood trailed her dragging feet as he pushed his way past the cowering receptionist to the back. Damon Martin was taking care of a patient in a treatment room when the screaming started. It wasn't his dream job, but it was where he was placed after going to Nursing school, paid for by GlobalDyne.
GlobalDyne, a minor but up and coming player in the International gun market, had started up a factory in Seattle, and this urgent care clinic had been established to care for the increasing workforce the factory had.
Damon had seen a few accidental gunshots from the R&D lab, and even on one occasion, patched up a few guards after a successfully repelled shadowrun.
The door swung open and the Orc leveled the weapon at Damon. "Where's the doc?" The voice sounded like rocks in a clothes dryer. Damon had seen the doc leave out the back door, and wondered at the moment why he hadn't followed suit.
"Your entrance scared her away. What the hell do you think you are doing?" Damon wasn't an imposing dude, his usual demeanor was far from it. But he was a big guy, 5'9, maybe 105 kilos. Soft, but there was a lot of muscle there too. He also taught a Filipino martial art called Kali five nights a week, so he could handle himself. That alone gave him confidence. Someone crashing into HIS clinic gave him more.
This guy was a bit different than the usual ganger though. His arms twitched slightly from the wired reflexes that supercharged his reflexes. Hallmarks of a inexpensive street grade install. The better units had little to no perceptible tremor.
"Don't try to be a tough guy, my chummer here caught a bullet. If she dies, so will you." The barrel of the short shotgun looked big enough to put Damon's fist in.
Sweating a little, Damon pointed to a treatment bed in the trauma room. "Put her down there and keep outta my way."
He busied himself with everything he knew he needed. Real doctors were barely needed anymore for anything less than surgery or bizarre infectious diseases, with everything being nearly automated, but knowing what to hook up where was still crucial. The Orc did as he was told and gently laid the woman on the table and retreated to the doorway. "I figure you got maybe 5-10 minutes tops. My Decker runnin' cover is blocking the emergency signal from here, but those folks will have called someone I imagine. That's harder to stop, Neh?"
Damon ignored the Orc. Airway, breathing, circulation hadn't been taught in 70 years. The joking tactical trauma version in the 2070's was: Ventilation, Hydraulics, HVAC, Processor. Look for bullet holes first, check that the heart still works, check respiratory, check neuro.
It was obvious from the blood spot on her chest where the main wound was, and Damon looked at the hastily applied dressing the Orc had placed. It was doing it's job for now. He needed to see if there were anymore wounds. An oxygen mask on high volume was placed quickly before Damon took the trauma shears from his pant loop and went after her clothes. Up one leg, and across and down the other. Most tactical belts like the one she wore would be tougher than hells to cut, so he unfastened it and drug her pants out from under her leaving her in some rather fetching yellow boyshorts. There was a graze wound on her leg that could wait, so he moved on to her torso.
His shears made quick work of the nylon straps on the sides of the chest rig and the undercoat as well. She had traded weight for protection and had opted for trauma plates with ballistic backer instead of full coverage armor. It made it easier to remove, but the wound Damon saw had entered just to the side of the plate and turning her over, had exited just to the side of her spine on the same side, incidentally destroying a well installed breast implant in the process.
He moved with a practiced quickness. The monitors went on fast, and he hit "Large Bore" on the AutoIV unit he'd placed over each arm. Her vital signs were there, but weak. He removed the portion of the bed by her chest wound, and positioned the Autodoc^tm at her side. He removed the dressings and aimed the laser aimer at her wounds. The Doc went to work and he kept the unit fed with the items as prompted by the screen.
Damon chanced a look at the Orc. His eyes were half closed, and for the first time Damon noted a thin trail of blood coming down his hugely muscled right arm. "You're hit." The orc looked down. "Huh, I got a pain editor. Won't feel it till later."
"Well your dumb-ass could bleed to death before I get her fixed." He jerked his thumb in the Woman's direction. "I'm in Doc mode, so, put your fragging gun down, and I'll patch that."
The Orc placed the gun in an improbably large holster on his thigh and rolled up his sleeve. There was a through and through wound, and Damon easily patched up the holes with trauma patches.
His work done, he turned back to the woman on the table. Her vitals had stabilized, though the scans from the Autodoc^tm had shown a potential neuro impairment.
"She's doing OK. The doc will be done in a few. It does show some neuro damage on that left side. They musta used armor piercing explosive rounds. They didn't detonate inside her, but against her rear plate. That's why she's not a quad."
"Quad?"
"Quadriplegic. Who were you running from? Corp? Cops?" Damon grabbed a water from the fridge and took a long pull, then tossed another to the Orc.
"Gangers, if you can believe it. Fraggers ambushed us while we were planning a run. Pretty sure we were sold out. Thanks for the water."
Damon turned to the beautiful and very naked woman on the treatment table and made sure heat mode was on. She had striking black and red hair, cut short and matted with blood. He grabbed a bottle of warm saline and poured it on, scrubbing her hair and face with gloved hands and antiseptic towels.
He checked that the drug dispenser was on "Sedation" and did his full physical exam. She had no other broken bones, or wounds other than the leg wound which he patched up easily enough.
"You're gonna need a van to get her outta here. She won't tolerate sitting very easy." Damon had knelt, gathering up the discarded gear from the floor and stuck it in a duffel he'd found in the locker room.
"That's not going to be so easy." The Orc looked nervously toward the front door, the huge shotgun in his hand once again.
"Why's that?" Damon stood, looking in the same direction.
"Decker says gangers are 2 minutes out."
Damon kicked a mayo stand full of supplies. "Frag!"
He knew what he had to do, but loathed doing it. He'd spent all his adult life in the corp, but these gangers wouldn't see him as a non combatant, rather a witness. All the nights spent with Cagedfire learning, communing with Bear, hiding his magic from the Corp.
It had come to this. This woman needed his help, and had little time. She would have healed suitably from the Autodoc^tm, and maybe there would have been some impairment until she got it fixed, but now, they were in a time crunch.
He pulled the talisman from under his shirt and kissed it. The silver bearclaw shone brightly in the high powered lights of the medical room. It's work done, he'd moved the machine from her side and raised his hands.
"What are you doing?" The Orc's voice was threatening.
Damon turned, his face a mixture of his own and bear, the power of bear flowing through him added to his fearsome appearance. "Shut it!"
He turned back to his patient and chanted, his words strung together, seemingly without breathing. Slowly his hands fell to the woman, toughing her gently on the thigh and sternum. A faint glow came from his hands and dissipated into her. His chanting continued for what felt to the Orc like several minutes, then abruptly stopped.
He looked down at the naked woman, sweat poured from him, and he gulped air in huge breaths, his hands clenched into fists at her side. He wobbled for a second and the Orc caught him and helped him into a chair.
He sat with his head in his hands, when he suddenly heard an unfamiliar feminine voice. "Where the Frag are my clothes?"
Damon and the Orc turned to the woman sitting on the bed, her leads and lines tangled and hanging. She checked her self out. "And what the Frag happened to my Bleeding Tit?" She pulled off the bandage.
The hole was closed, but the implant was still clearly deflated leaving her lopsided.
All huge grin, the Orc ran to her side, and took her hands in his. "You took a shot to the ribs. I brought you here, and this guy patched you up. But now the gangers are coming, and we gotta go."
"I still feel like dreck." She looked at her arms and shook her head.
"Uh, let me get you some clothes. Uh, also, you will. You're not close to 100%."
He disappeared into the locker room.
He heard the woman through the door. "Who is that guy. Why is he helping?"
Damon could hear the chuckle in the Orc's voice. "Well, I stuck a shotgun in his face. He was just the nurse on duty here."
After returning with a handful of scrubs, Damon unhooked her from the lines. "My name's Damon. I work here. The corp didn't know about my magic, but now that they will from the security tapes, I'm tossing my hat in with you. You mind?"
"I always fancied a healer in the group." With that she hopped off the bed and would have fallen if not for Damon and the Orc. Damon handed the woman the duffel bag of her things and shouldered his own from the locker room.

The cerimonial first post

I have been playing this game since 1990.  Old school first and second edition.  Then I graduated high school, did the "grow-up" thing and had a family.  The whole time I kept my books.  Everyone I gamed with grew up too.  Fast forward to last year and Shadowrun gets some attention again.  I hadn't really thought of the game much, but I like to write short stories in my spare time, and had used Shadowrun as a favorite background for a few stories as I found the setting amazing. 

I bought and finished Shadowrun Returns in just a day or two, then pre-ordered 5th edition.  And waited.  And waited.  Finally it was received, and I immediately began rolling several characters.  I do this in new game systems because I think it's a way to generate new NPCs for games as well as figure out new game mechanics and uses for gear as well as get a feel for the power available to new characters. 

My 10 year old son was looking over my shoulder as I made my first 5th edition character and was interested.  He'd joined me and a couple friends a couple months ago on a Rifts adventure and had a good time.  This time though, he was interested in the game that for me "started it all" in terms of playing RPGs and capturing my imagination.  I had played D&D once, Robotech a ton, Cyberpunk 2020, Battletech, Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, and a few more that I am forgetting for sure (it WAS 20+ years ago), but it was Shadowrun's combination of tech and magic that held my attention and imagination.  He rolled a  character, a decker, and we learned a lot about decking in this edition.

I hadn't played since decking was all wired (Hell there was barely an internet, mainly BBSs and stuff that I knew of, let alone the idea of wireless computing.) and decking was a mini-game played when the other players went out to grab Taco Bell at 12:30am so we learned quite a bit.

That's where I am at now.  Freshly inspired and all creative.  I'll be trying to make additions to this blog as I get the chance. I plan on adding character concepts, character's I've made, fan fiction, new gear, house rules, random thoughts, things online I've found that are helpful, and... well you get the idea.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by.

Nex Quietus