All material herein is (c) 1999 by Peter Millholland. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Why a Firearms Creation Guide? If you've ever wanted to have a heavy pistol that does something other than 9M damage, or a weapon that had some personality to it, but didn't want to just fudge numbers and hope for the best, then you understand the why. Shadowrun, for all of its fun, lacks any means of making "by the book" weapons and the mere handful given in the few sourcebooks doesn't do the system justice. In order to keep within the bounds of FASA-published weapon specs, I attempted to reverse-engineer baseline weapons like the HK 227 and the Browning Max-Power. It's not perfect; the more exotic the weapon, the more the chance that the numbers in the book and the numbers in the Guide will not add up the same.

The Process

How does one go about using this firearms creation guide? I have endeavoured to make the process as simple and balanced as possible. This guide is not designed for making special, unique, one-of-a-kind weapons, nor does it include rules and options for some of the more esoteric style of Shadowrun weapon (ie, lasers, Narcojet weapons, "squirt" guns, etc). This guide is designed with production model weapons in mind, whether state of the art or behind the times. While it is not specifically designed to handle heavy weapons (machineguns, mortars, grenade launchers, miniguns, etc), it certainly could be expanded in that direction (hey, what are sequels for?). In its most simple form, this guide flows something like this:
1. choose the type of weapon
2. choose the ammunition
3. choose frame options
4. choose ammunition options
5. choose recoil options
6. choose targeting/interface options
7. calculate weapon specs

How Best To Use The Guide

I found that the file is rather too large to be effectively used on-line, so printing out the information is recommended. I have adapted the format of this file for use with Netscape (sorry MSIE users). First of all, you need to select some options in order to make the pages print out correctly. These can be found under File, Page Setup. Make sure you have "Black Text" selected, or you will be sorely disappointed in the outcome of printing (white text on white paper looks terrible, trust me). Secondly, the main file with all of the design options should be printed in "Landscape" mode. You can change the printing mode right before printing by selecting File, Print or clicking the "Print" toolbar button and then clicking on the "Properties" button. All other pages should be printed in the "Portrait" style.

Continue

A Word on Carbines

What is a carbine? Is it a submachinegun firing a rifle-sized cartridge, or is it a rifle firing a pistol-sized cartridge? The answer is both. Most carbine designs are reverse-engineered from an existing design in order to give more flexibility for a specific purpose (the CAR-15 is a good example of an M-16 being redesigned to SMG size for covert or special ops). This guide treats carbines as the SMG-sized weapon firing a rifle-sized cartridge. This is not done to accurately reflect the real world, but rather to simplify matters for the bulk of SR players and GMs who are not weapon experts.