The Firearms Design system in the Cannon Companion rulebook was in many ways a welcome addition to the game system, and in many ways a letdown. It's great that there's now an official way of creating new guns for use in a Shadowrun game; that new diversity is a good thing, and we've wanted it for years.

What was disappointing about that rule set is the fact that it really only caters to one-off firearms construction. It is intended to simulate the actions of a gunsmith PC or NPC creating a new gun from scratch. If you're trying to expand the range of mass-market guns in the Shadowrun world, it falls down badly.

The main reason that it's not useable for this purpose is the seemingly exorbitant cost of relatively simple guns designed under this system. For example, replicating the Ceska vz/120, a light pistol, will cost 635¥ under the Firearms Design system, where the Ceska only costs 500¥. This is one of the least extreme examples; on the other end of the scale, replicating the Ruger Super Warhawk (a 300¥ gun) costs 1010¥ according to this system.

This is easily explained by assuming that the Firearm Design system is intended to indicate the cost of building a gun from scratch, by someone without the resources of a munitions factory. It doesn't include the discount inherent in mass-market firearm manufacturing, so it's impossible to replicate canon guns for anywhere near the same price.

The Firearms Design system is still a very good system for limiting what absolutely is and isn't possible when it comes to firearms design. It is still a good system for gamemasters (and even players) who wish to design new guns for their game world - those that are being built and sold by armaments corporations, not made from scratch by an individual gunsmith. The only thing that needs to be changed when it comes to weapons generated under this system is the price.

The Bulk Production Modifier

This is a factor applied to the final cost of the gun, after the markup from DP to nuyen price. It only applies to guns that are manufactured and sold on a mass-market basis within the gamemaster's game world. Each type of firearm has a different Bulk Production Modifier, reflecting the fact that different classes of guns are constructed for different reasons and promoted to different markets.

The table shows the Bulk Production Modifier for each type of firearm.

Pricing Your Merchandise

When you have designed a weapon using the Cannon Companion design system, calculate the Design Point cost and apply the 5x markup as normal to calculate a price in nuyen. Then multiply the nuyen price by the appropriate Bulk Production Modifier to get a final sale price for a mass-market gun.

Sarah designs the SCK Perforator, a new machine pistol that's just hit the market in her Shadowrun game. The final DP value is 300, which gives a sale price of 1,500¥. Sure, the prototypes and first limited release Perforators might have cost that much, but soon it'll be just another gun. She multiplies the 1500¥ by 0.63, the Bulk Production Modifier for machine pistols. Characters in Sarah.s Shadowrun game will be able to pick up a Perforator for 950¥ - much more reasonable than 1500¥, and comparable with the Ares Crusader (950¥), the Ceska Black Scorpion (850¥) or the Steyr TMP (900¥).

Building the Bulk Production Modifier

If you're interested in how the Bulk Production Modifier was derived, here's how I did it: I took a canon SR gun and worked out how much an identical gun costs when designed using the Cannon Companion firearm design system. I then worked out what percentage of the Cannon Companion price ("design price") was actually used for the price of the canon gun. For example, a Ruger Super Warhawk, 1010¥ by Cannon Companion rules, is sold for 300¥ - 29.7% of the design price.

I calculated a percentage like this for every gun from SR3 and Cannon Companion (excluding those guns which could not be replicated by Cannon Companion rules), and averaged out all the percentages for each type of gun. This average percentage is the Bulk Production Modifier for that type of gun.