From:	David Buehrer dbuehrer@******.carl.org
Subject:	Heavy Armor
Date:	Fri, 26 Feb 1999 11:22:22 -0700 (MST)

Elling Polden wrote:
/
/ Problem here is that this goes bouth ways. Lets take the ole Buldog
/ Stepvan BC. It is a unrestricted civilian vehicle, costs maybe 60 K,
/ and you need armorpiercers to even harm it. Any runner that is not
/ stupid would get one, and tadah! they are prety close to unstoppable.

IMO any runner that *would* get one would be stupid. If they use a Bulldog
then they turn the spotlight on themselves and they aren't in the shadows
anymore. The Bulldog marks them and makes it easy to ID their handy work.

The point of being a shadowrunner is to stay in the shadows. That means
buying equipment that you can take into the shadows with you. That means
operating in the shadows.

As you pointed out using something like the Bulldog will bring the
wrath of Lone Star (or a corp's paramilitary assets) down upon you.

The smart thing to do is to get an inconspicuous Ford Americar that you
can ditch if you need to without losing much.

Also, if you jump into the spotlight Johnsons will stop hiring you.
They want shadowrunners, people who are subtle and can pull off a job
with a minimum of fuss. If you shadowrunning with a Bulldog and heavy
weapons you're going to attract a lot of attention that Johnsons don't
want.

/ Thus our friends in the Star have to bring
/ in the realy big guns to even be a challenge to the runners. More
/ effective armor causes a kind of a inflation in weapons. Not because
/ players are munchies, but because they have to get bigger guns to
/ survive, and the GM must bring in bigger guns to be a threat to the
/ runners.

My advice to any GM who has players that do this is to not play the
escalation game. Let them have their big guns and toys and roleplay
the consequences of their actions. Johnsons will stop offering them
jobs. Contacts will start to distance themselves from the PCs. Lone
Star will be prowling for them, forcing the PCs to move around and
hide. If they cause enough mayhem Lone Star will come gunning for
them. But Lone Star won't take the direct route. They'll track down
the characters and ambush them, capturing them alive, taking away their
toys, and tossing them into prison where the challenge is staying alive
and making their escape.

If you play the escalation game and kill the unruley PCs, no one really
learns anything.

-David B.
--
"Earn what you have been given."
--
ShadowRN GridSec
email: dbuehrer@******.carl.org
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/1068/homepage.htm