Gun and Firearm mechanics

[twztdwndpipe]

Anyone Know any usefull ones? Somebody come up with any good ones? Nice methods?
I was curious also if anyone had Firearm mechanics that worked in reality. Like, if you get shot in the head your dead. Legs are crippling and reduce movement speed. That kind of stuff. Anyone?

[mjbauer]

I read somewhere that Millenium's End does, but I haven't read the book, so I don't know for sure.

I've made some similar posts about gun fight mechanics and it seems to me that what is out there is pretty lacking, and there doesn't seem to be much interest in creating something detailed and realistic. I can see why though, it's a lot of work and in the end all the complexity needed to simulate reality makes a gunfight slow, tedious, and complicated (more like competitive mathematics than a chaotic, adrenaline filled fire-fight).

My past posts:

Guns and Ammo
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=27660.0

A Combat System for Firefights
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=27716.0

Using Hearts as a Combat System
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=27957.0

After these posts I went back to the drawing board completely and haven't come up with anything that is fully satisfactory yet.

I think the "answers" you would most likely get here are things like "What part of realism are you interested in?" and "How is that important to the goals of your game?" I used to hate posting here because I would ask a question and get a dozen questions in return. It was the polite way for people to say "you aren't asking the right question." I think in the end they were mostly right. It comes down to the story that your game is trying to create and realism doesn't always make the best story.

Find out what kind of story you want your game to produce and then back it with rules that help create those types of stories. If you want realistic stories, creating mechanics that mimic real physics, ballistics and physical limitations, might not actually produce them. I know that seems counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when you think about how stories and movies portray reality. Even documentaries and non-fiction books have to be edited.

I'm still trying to figure all of this out myself, so if you have any break-throughs I would love to hear what you come up with.

[contracycle]

Milleniums End does indeed have (very) detailed mechanics, and the Bablyon 5 RPG used a somewhat streamlined version.

My own homebrew system did much the same job.  The only requirements are that some sort of hit location determination is always used, and that damage effects are adjusted by, or specific to, location.

I'm not sure why you think such a system must necessarily be different in speed or complexity than any other.

[Marshall Burns]

People are going to look at me weird for saying this (probably especially Vincent) but the best gun rules I've ever read are the ones in Vincent Baker's kill puppies for satan.

Basically, what kfps does is go into how guns are completely un-fuckin-predictable, and how guns make things confusing and make people get stupid. It tells the GM all this. Now, this is a game with a ton of GM determinism (nice word for "fiat," which I am using to imply that it's not a bad thing and it actually works), so the vagaries of guns aren't really up to dice much; mostly just the GM. This works because the GM is given a very clear agenda, which informs how he makes his judgment calls.

GM determinism, guided or not, probably isn't what you're looking for, but I recommend that you read those gun rules anyway, because they'll help you think about guns.

(Also, buy kpfs. It's only a venial sin.)

-Marshall

[chance.thirteen]

Millenium's End is an attempt at setting a simpler version of BRTC's stuff from Time Lords and SpaceTime. I prefer the latter even for inspiration because the top end math never gets chopped off.*

*What do I mean? In "realistic" fire arms systems, they often equate, not realte damage a human experiences to penetration the round can do. In ME's case, they ended up with high powered weapons that do lots to a human, until you put on body armor, then suddenly they aren't effective. Nasty high end weapons have plenty of penetration capacity to exceed low end protection. EG 50 caliber MG round or sniper round isn't going to be much stopped by a kevlar vest. Likewise, the Hero System does fine until you stand behind some drywall, and suddenly rounds that could kill, don't. It's a matter of  compression of penetration ratings via a curve, but not taking into account how to layer two ratings.

My personal interst re: firearms lays in how to best represent that you were sorta aiming at a region, then seeing where you actually hit. You are almost always aiming, but allowing a very small location to be the target with wandering from there usually results in too fine an accuracy. I personally am looking at something where the player rolls more than one hit location die, getting more the more they hit by, and selecting from there either based on a chosen large location (like torso), or just plain from what was rolled (if you roll 4 locations, maybe one is close to where you wanted to hit). Then i just need to add in something about a centered of mass hit vs a grazing wound.

[mjbauer]

People are going to look at me weird for saying this (probably especially Vincent) but the best gun rules I've ever read are the ones in Vincent Baker's kill puppies for satan.

That's exactly where I read about Millenium's End. I was looking to post Vincent's gun stats (in this thread) but couldn't find them and ended up on that page instead. I like the idea of using "aspects" for guns, it's brilliant.

[Callan S.]

There was a non specific game suplement called killer crosshairs, that had a transparent mat with segments marked off, that you could lay over the silouette of a target. The segments allowed you to roll and determine deviation - if it misses the picture, it misses. If it hits some part of the picture, that's the part it hits. It was made by the guys who made blue planet, but it's probably out of print (but hey, the idea is duplicable...)

Beyond that there's the meta discrepancy that people in firefights aren't usually sitting there, contemplating how realistic it is. They are usually goingfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckshit! Even trained soldiers run through the practiced routines, rather than think. Only gamers seem to want to judge (creative denial, prolly).

What comes to mind is some sort of diamacles sword style real life position - perhaps a water baloon above every players head. Ideally the GM can press a button at any time and it will instantly roll something and may upon any press, drop on a players head. The GM then wacks buttons alot, particularly if anyone looks like they are thinking.

Heh.

And on the other hand, I have no idea what the original request is really about. Sometimes "I want it more realistic" means "people aren't taking it seriously or doing X, and I think they will if it's more realistic"?

[trick]

These are some really good posts here.

I've noticed that systems can to in two different ways regarding realism: precision and accuracy. Here's the difference:

Let's say you're trying to estimate the freezing point of water (0°C)

• One experiment comes up with 100, 100.2, 99.9, 99.9, and 100 (°C).
• The seond comes up with the values 5, 2, -1, -3, and -3 (°C).

The first experiment was more precise, all the numbers were within 0.3° of each other; however, it was wildly inaccurate. In the end, I think that everyone would agree that the second one is more useful.

Unfortunately, 'realistic' RPG systems often take the first route. They come with highly detailed stats for balistics and hit locations and windage and completely ignore things like like shock and fear and confusion. This has the effect of making it seem realistic, when in reality it's not even close. Had you looked at the above experiments without any prior knowledge, the first one would have looked better, they're closer together; but no mater how good they look, they're still completely wrong.

[chance.thirteen]

A very good observation. I loved playing Phoenix Command. It sold me on the feel of a realistic deadly firearms conflict game. You felt like you must be a gun nut just for playing it. Even at its most detailed bullet penetration and path, its .01 second ticks, it still simplfied shock and locational damage and penalties. It also was a very precise system based on imprecise extrapolation from some accurate data, or so I am told.

Despite loving it, I still think the "sold me" on it's feel was the most important part. So a moderately inaccuarate rule set that focuses on the elements the players want to experience and get fired up about will do the job.

PS, I loved BTRCs variable dying wounds rules from the earliest games. That's part of the feel of a firefight, not knowing for sure how bad a wound is.

[twztdwndpipe]

Hmm,
Well lets see.

I'm trying to go for some type of survival horror. I like scaring my PCs.

One Hit kills would be good. For PC or Npc.
Hit Location and Targeted Strikes would be good.
Different types of fire arms.
Firearm upgrades and different assembly's. i.e. Different scopes, stocks, clips.
Firearm skills.
and a simple d6 or so system. Single Die preferably.


Main types of enemies would be Zombies, and mutated creatures. My npcs wouldn't have guns so a different system based on that would be good.

[trick]

I loved BTRCs variable dying wounds rules from the earliest games. That's part of the feel of a firefight, not knowing for sure how bad a wound is.

I hadn't thought of that. That's a pretty good idea.

[trick]

Another point, following up on my first post. A system doesn't have to be accurate to be fun. As long as the players buy into it and they know what to expect, that's all that really matters. A particularly striking case of this is 'hacking' rules in games. None of them are accurate, at all, but some people still have fun with them. As chance.thirteen said, I think the 'feel' is the most important.

[chance.thirteen]

For those looking at "realism" for firearms, related to a game design, I highly recommend Guns Guns Guns by BTRC. Two reasons:
1) it uses engineering levbel crunch to create consistant values for guns that do correlate to the real world
2) it has a huge section on how to take that realistic value and convert it to many known game systems. For a designer, this was eye opening to see how various games alter a sort of linear scale of damaging energy into their own game systems. This sort of thinking helped point out how Hero Games uses a log function (well ok X2 "power" every 5 pts in a power) and yet fails to account for adding up low values, whereas DC Universe makes the math and thus the effects of many low end values on a single high end value more obvious.

No, I am not Greg Porter, nor his minion. I'm just a fan.

(The math I speak of in hero: 1d6 could be said to represent "1 force". Said force doubles in in game value every level, so a 3d6 power is X8 as powerful. A 6d6 power is X64, or X8 as much as the 3d6 power. A 1 Defense thing is able to stop 1 power level. However, if you are trying to model reality, 3 level 1 defenses only equal X3, or not enough to stop a 2d6 attack, let alone a 3d6 attack which would take X8 defense to stop.. Hero stacks these values, which it should not.)

[Creatures of Destiny]

*What do I mean? In "realistic" fire arms systems, they often equate, not realte damage a human experiences to penetration the round can do. In ME's case, they ended up with high powered weapons that do lots to a human, until you put on body armor, then suddenly they aren't effective. Nasty high end weapons have plenty of penetration capacity to exceed low end protection. EG 50 caliber MG round or sniper round isn't going to be much stopped by a kevlar vest. Likewise, the Hero System does fine until you stand behind some drywall, and suddenly rounds that could kill, don't. It's a matter of  compression of penetration ratings via a curve, but not taking into account how to layer two ratings.

Sounds like an AD&D style "Armour makes you harder to hit" with "Weapons versus armour" and a separate damage roll would work how you describe.

[quote author=chance.thirteen link=topic=28119.msg264870#msg264870 date=124
My personal interst re: firearms lays in how to best represent that you were sorta aiming at a region, then seeing where you actually hit. You are almost always aiming, but allowing a very small location to be the target with wandering from there usually results in too fine an accuracy. I personally am looking at something where the player rolls more than one hit location die, getting more the more they hit by, and selecting from there either based on a chosen large location (like torso), or just plain from what was rolled (if you roll 4 locations, maybe one is close to where you wanted to hit). Then i just need to add in something about a centered of mass hit vs a grazing wound.
[/quote]


Why not use two dice on a croshairs and place it over a target sketch. Skill could either allow rerolls, or allow the player to modify the roll. There was a system lie this for vehicles only in 40K years ago.

[chance.thirteen]

Sounds like an AD&D style "Armour makes you harder to hit" with "Weapons versus armour" and a separate damage roll would work how you describe.

I don't want to chime in with an argument, but no, this directly would not do what I am looking for. If I am going to go all crazy with the firearms accuracy (and to be fair, unless playing a published game with its own detailed rules, I haven't fully used all of this yet) I would have a penetrational value for a weapon, with a general trauma multiplier for round size and so on, which would diretly lose penetration based on the armor of an area, with a potential glacing factor multiplier for the armor subtraction, then I would seen how deeply it penentrated on what area of the target, with possible independent trauma vlaues by level (so far I have never done more than 5 total levels all the way into and out of a target). The to hit portion might reduce the effective penetration only if ther was a lingering targetting needed, such as for energy weapons, and the rest would be the result of a shallow target location, eg the edge of your arm, or the edge of a vehicles trunk.

The only genre where I could see this actually adding much would be giant robots, if you wanted a super realistic feel, or anything in powered armor such as Appleseed.