Here's why to mention the fact that the majority of legal bullets play tattletale even if the ones your runner gets will already be scrubbed. They will tell on you if you try to steal bullets from a guard and use them. Mr Johnson has a new way to betray your team if he offers them supplies in payment. You can play counter-ops by using bullets tagged with the marker of some rival corp. There are several ways such information can be used to devious ends.
Exactly. Even if the GM agrees that your illegal source will wipe the tags (so they are NEVER traced back to them!), the legal bullets you encounter have this stuff! And if you just buy in a shop with a fake SIN, you're risking a paper trail unless you pay extra for caseless and have a caseless gun.
Players can go 'we'll just get caseless', or they can go 'my cop source is smart enough to wipe it so my usage doesn't get him fired' or say 'I'll go cased, but tag eraser and let the decker check if we missed anything and if so hack and format + reboot device', and honestly a GM should consider that plenty because of the following:
- The GM is the final referee, but should act wisely (p231)
- The GM should use, not abuse, authority (p231)
- The GM should establish what elements the players like and what they're comfortable with, to create a game they can enjoy (p232)
The GM is NOT the players' enemy. Any GM that disagrees with that statement needs a rather severe tongue-lashing.
But it does open up plot opportunities, so as long as the GM is fair with the players, I don't see the problem with this new system. The corps wisened up, just like they did with the Matrix, and we have to deal with them making our job harder... "For years, the streets managed to snag and use caseless rounds in order to stay clear of the law tracking them, but ..."