From: wilder@mik.uky.edu (jeff wilder)
Subject: Re: Cyberpunk (was: SR: SRII combat mods)
    <wilder.711507993@mik.uky.edu> <NIGEL.92Jul21145224@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov>
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 18:39:40 GMT

In <NIGEL.92Jul21145224@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov> nigel@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov writes:

|In article <wilder.711507993@mik.uky.edu> wilder@mik.uky.edu (jeff wilder) writes:

|[lots deleted]

|   And that's part of the point.  There are bound to be exceptions, of course,
|   but *most* non-combat oriented characters are going to have no *interest*
|   in *becoming* combat-oriented.  All you are doing is making yourself a large
|   and easily removed target.  What the fuck are Samurai *for*, anyway?

|Upi brought Case up before...if I remember correctly (probably not but
|hey) didn't he pick a shotgun up at some point of the book and
|remember which end went bang?  I remember Sally (Molly? damned if it
|hasn't been a long time) being indisposed at the time.

|I distinctly remember Case buying a nasty hand-to-hand weapon before he
|met Sally and was really hankering for a pistol from a back street
|dealer...

|I'd say that you're star example knew which end of a gun was the
|business end and spent his 4 points in Firearms eh? 

You might say that...if you're in a hurry to be laughed at.

I've touched two firearms in my life:  a Ruger 9mm, and a .22 rifle.  I've
fired only the .22.  Yet I guarantee that I know "which end of a gun [is]
the business end."  I guess by your logic I've got Firearms 4, huh?

If you remember Case buying the Cobra, you probably also remember that he
was terrified by it.  If you remember him buying the cheap Chinese knock-
off of a Vietnamese imitation of a .22 pistol (or whatever it was, but that's
pretty close), then maybe you remember him being fairly clueless as to its
specifics.  (The fact that he bought (rented, actually) a tiny-caliber
weapon on the assumption that it might do more than tickle his tail speaks
volumes to me about his ignorance.)

A gun in the hands of anything but an expert, in a world like Shadowrun or
Cyberpunk, is more dangerous to the wielder than to his target, because it
turns the wielder INTO a target.

As for someone's earlier assessment that corps fire on non-armed characters
first, in the assumption that they're mages:  gee, I guess they musta missed
that nice cyberdeck, huh?  I know if I were a corp, I'd be much more inter-
ested in *capturing and questioning and *maybe* even converting* any decker
that might be worth the trouble.

And I know if I were a *decker*, I'd be much more interested in *being*
captured, than in being blown away because I was plinking away at an
armored guard.

One final point:  With regard to your hypothetical threat from a Samurai to 
a Decker...don't be surprised when one of your Decker "friends" makes life
VERY hard for you in the future.  Like, say, impossible.

--
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| Jeff W   uk06666@ukpr.uky.edu | Meddle not in the affairs of cats, for they  |
| Wilder   & wilder@mik.uky.edu | are subtle, and will piss on your cyberdeck. |
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