[Namikaze]

Really?  Hold outs are the part that is getting someone's goat?  The old saying is true I suppose: you can't please everyone.

[Csjarrat]

Yeah, tbh the hold-out options are nice. an elan would have been good but at least you've got the streetline for MAD detectors.
my biggest gripe with RnG is that most of the guns you'd want to use are way out of avail ratings so you can't start with them. for a lot of people I suspect that means you'll never get to use them at all.
As a GM its ok because at least you can stat the baddies with them, but i do feel a bit miffed with the avail ratings over all i have to say

[Kincaid]

Yeah, tbh the hold-out options are nice. an elan would have been good but at least you've got the streetline for MAD detectors.
my biggest gripe with RnG is that most of the guns you'd want to use are way out of avail ratings so you can't start with them. for a lot of people I suspect that means you'll never get to use them at all.
As a GM its ok because at least you can stat the baddies with them, but i do feel a bit miffed with the avail ratings over all i have to say

Really?  I figure most people go cheap on their first gun (say, get an AK), start the game with the right contact, and then splurge on the Raiden after run #2.

[Csjarrat]

Most PBP games don't get past the meet with the Johnson mate, let alone the 2nd run!

[Cronstintein]

That sounds like a pbp problem, not a system problem.  I believe the general expectation is that you will use a character for multiple runs.

[Csjarrat]

That sounds like a pbp problem, not a system problem.  I believe the general expectation is that you will use a character for multiple runs.

yeah clearly, i was just expressing my opinion that i'm a bit miffed that i'll probably never get to use them as a player. As GM i'm happy though. Baddies use whatever I want them to use :-)

[DeathEatsCurry]

The book is great but Im wondering (and this has probably been brought up before) what they were thinking when writing the modification paragraph. Not only are there a lot of unclear things, it's so... Sparse. Comparing it to 4e Arsenal (which isnt nearly as good a book as thos, mind you) Im missing a whole bunch of mods, ranging from the most basic (extended mags, shortened barrels) to the more exotic and cool (ammo choose systems, chameleon coating). Were these kept out for some kind of purpose, since I cant imagine most of them being hard to convert.. Its not really like this would fit in any other book, except maybe under the book containing vehicle mods.

Oh well, least I get to crotch shot people with Gauss slugs.

[firebug]

The book is great but Im wondering (and this has probably been brought up before) what they were thinking when writing the modification paragraph. Not only are there a lot of unclear things, it's so... Sparse. Comparing it to 4e Arsenal (which isnt nearly as good a book as thos, mind you) Im missing a whole bunch of mods, ranging from the most basic (extended mags, shortened barrels) to the more exotic and cool (ammo choose systems, chameleon coating). Were these kept out for some kind of purpose, since I cant imagine most of them being hard to convert.. Its not really like this would fit in any other book, except maybe under the book containing vehicle mods.

Oh well, least I get to crotch shot people with Gauss slugs.

It is a little worrying.  What I think happened though, and to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if this is why the book took so long to print, is that there's so many chapters in it that they had to cut back certain things.  Run & Gun isn't huge...  But I think they were still reeling from the shock that is the five-hundred-page beast that is the core book.  The chapters generally make sense...  A quick in-character intro, then weapons, then armor, then tactics, then new actions and martial arts.  The environmental dangers is not always useful, but still good to have.  The entire chapter on explosives though is...  Oddly indulgent.  It goes very indepth on a rather narrow subject.  It wouldn't seem so out of place if the rest of the book didn't seem to restrained.  I assume they had way too much material that people had spent a long time writing, and then probably spent even longer trying to find out what to cut from the book.

That's all a guess though.  I'm hoping later books will include more of those old standby modifications.  Chameleon coating on weapons is a pretty big deal, IMO, so hopefully it comes back.  But unless they make a Run & Gun 2 (not entirely out of the question) I can't see what book it'd be in. 

[Namikaze]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a section in Run Faster just about runner gear.  Chameleon coatings, for instance, aren't restricted just to weapons.  Some of the other items, like extended magazines, are so easily done already they might not have thought that it needed explanation.  1 magazine + 1 magazine = extended magazine.  Double price, +1 concealment.

As for some of the more exotic modifications, I think the explanation there is that in 4th edition, there were A LOT of goodies to play with, many of which probably didn't get used all that often.  So rather than wasting book space with items that people don't use often, they might have opted to spend more time in other areas.

I don't know that I would have spent so much time on demolitions, but that's a decision that's out of my hands.  And to be honest, demolitions really can only go in a book about making things go boom.

[RHat]

Most of the mod chapter got used a lot, though.  Getting rid of the stuff that was used and useful along with the stuff that wasn't wouldn't make a great deal of sense.

[SlowDeck]

I don't know that I would have spent so much time on demolitions, but that's a decision that's out of my hands.  And to be honest, demolitions really can only go in a book about making things go boom.

Add that on to my earlier comment about space being best in a space book and my current thinking martial arts may need to be expanded more to clarify some things... and, really, there's a lot that got crammed in that really would have been best with their own books.

[RHat]

I don't know that I would have spent so much time on demolitions, but that's a decision that's out of my hands.  And to be honest, demolitions really can only go in a book about making things go boom.

Add that on to my earlier comment about space being best in a space book and my current thinking martial arts may need to be expanded more to clarify some things... and, really, there's a lot that got crammed in that really would have been best with their own books.

Except that that stuff doesn't really justify its own book - and while a space PDF might be interesting, it would be a bit niche (though an extreme environments book could be a good thing).

[Namikaze]

Well there was a book for 4th edition that was exclusively about extreme environments called Hazard Pay.  Based on what I've gathered from talking with people online about their games, almost none of the people I spoke with ever used it for anything other than fluff.

So I'd be surprised if we saw another similar write-up.  Though, it would make an excellent PDF piece like Assassin's Primer and Coyotes.  Hell, it could be written by Orbital DK and just talk about the Zurich station.  I don't think anyone knows anything about what's really going on up there, or what the station is capable of.  In Storm Front we got a little taste of the station's capabilities as far as weapons and such - but that was it.

In any event - it's good to see the extreme environment stuff somewhere, even if it doesn't get as in-depth a treatment as it did in 4th edition.  I still would reserve judgement until Run Faster comes out though, as it's likely to do more than just introduce variant rules.

[SlowDeck]

I don't know that I would have spent so much time on demolitions, but that's a decision that's out of my hands.  And to be honest, demolitions really can only go in a book about making things go boom.

Add that on to my earlier comment about space being best in a space book and my current thinking martial arts may need to be expanded more to clarify some things... and, really, there's a lot that got crammed in that really would have been best with their own books.

Except that that stuff doesn't really justify its own book - and while a space PDF might be interesting, it would be a bit niche (though an extreme environments book could be a good thing).

Even just an extreme environments book would be better. Mainly because there's a lot of question about space, including Mars, that need to be answered before that equipment can really be useful. And a lot more about the 6th-world ocean. And having all of that information in a single place really is almost necessary for usability; having to track down whether a suit from Run and Gun would work on Mars through what might become four different books would be extremely time consuming and a hindrance to running anything off Earth. Which means some of the plothooks introduced in Storm Front are, essentially, potentially useless.

[RHat]

Space is out for a lot of Shadowrun games anyways, though, because of the way it boxes out the Awakened - you pretty much need a no-magic game to make that work.