Firearms Resources

[ThreeGee]

Hey all,

In the spirit of asking impossibly broad questions in the hopes of getting someone else to do my homework for me:

What resources would you recommend for understanding firearms, particularly in terms of relating them to roleplaying games? I would prefer links to websites, but good books would also be appreciated.

Honestly, I would not rate any games as 'good' in terms of their portrayal of firearms, but if you think something makes the grade, point it out.

Finally, if you have opinions or insight of your own to share, they are welcome to the extent they honestly reflect your experience. None of this 'I read it once in Guns & Butter Magazine' nonsense, nor 'I saw a guy get shot by a handgun and he flew fifteen feet through the air.' The former information is almost certainly wrong, and the latter is both biased and highly improbable.

In theory, I will be working on a modern-day horror-thriller based partially on 3g3, but I am going broad with this thread because I think a firearms resource list would be useful on its own terms.

Thanks,
Grant

[Mike Holmes]

I'm wary, because people will take any resource as evidence that they need to include the details that it points out in a game. But with the simple caveat of "use at own risk", I present what I think is the most interesting resource that I've seen to date.

www.firearmstactical.com/

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

I'd strongly recommend you start by reading the brief screed about guns in role-playing games in kill puppies for satan. Fortunately, it's one of the free excerpts on the game's web site, here.

I'm sure others will be able to point you to all sorts of statistics, absolute and relative, for all sorts of firearms. The important thing is to keep in perspective the difference between statistics and reality as you incorporate that information into your system.

- Walt

[ThreeGee]

Hey Mike, Walt,

That was fast. Anyway, Mike, I am familiar with firearmstactical.com. I appreciate that they focus on a scientific methodology. On the other hand, they are concerned with self-protection, not on firearms in general, so they are not especially helpful in terms of roleplaying games. However, for people who lack clue #1, that is a good site to digest.

Walt, Vincent's game has amused me endlessly, but I fail to see what it has to do with firearms. Guns have nothing to do with killing puppies for satan, so they get, what, a line or two?

Please allow me to take a tangent and point out this is the theory forum. If any info turned up on this thread is useful when designing a new game, great. If any of it is useful when playing an existing game, great. The point is not to regurgitate the same rules-lite stuff over and over, even if I am guilty of having done so myself, but to gather specific ideas that folks consider worth pointing out. Do you think the idea of shooting someone with a handgun at 100-yards is stupid, do you think the idea of emptying a clip in one second is stupid, etc. Say so and back it up with sources.

Later,
Grant

[Mike Holmes]

I assume you've read the FBI stuff on firearms tactical? Basically the articles that debunk the idea of "stopping power" etc? Those are interesting in terms of "real" reality. Lots of info there that's pertinent to what you're talking about IMO.

Further, how is "Self Protection" not the realistic way to look at firearms. There's lots of stuff there on firearms in this role. Everyone tends to think of weapons in offensive terms, but realistically they are rarely used that way. Yes, that means that if you have a game that's about hunting monsters, that I wouldn't find players acting offensively with weapons to be realistic. I always marveled at how the X-files avoided falling into the romantic notion of weapons as offensive power.

Having been a soldier, I can tell you that defense is three times as effective as offense, and always what you strive for, other things being equal.

Do you think the idea of shooting someone with a handgun at 100-yards is stupid, do you think the idea of emptying a clip in one second is stupid, etc. Say so and back it up with sources.

See here's the problem. In the articles I mention above, it states that people fall down when shot precisely because that's what they think they should do. There's the "real" reality, and then there's the "percieved" reality. Then there's RPG reality. Nobody would bat an eyelash if some Chow Yun Fat sort of character in Feng Shui were to shoot someone with a handgun at 100 yards. It's only "stupid" if it's not sensible in relation to what the game is about. As you mention, that's the point of Vincent's comments in KPFS.

It's just that people get confused in this. They see something about how it's not realistic that guns knock people down. So they want to make sure that in their game that guns don't knock people down. But, ironically, people do fall down when shot. So the game doesn't match reality. Now a designer could throw in rules for people falling over because they think they should, but how many people are aware of this fact? More to the point, in what sort of game is it salient? Sure, the guys who work on Phoenix Command should be paying attention. But few, and I mean few, other games should be concerning themselves with this sort of detail.

To the extent that one might need "somewhat" realistic rules, I point to all the games that do it already. Need ranges? BTRC has their firearms books. Heck, even GURPS suffices. Not at all "really" realistic, but it sure seems so until you educate people otherwise.

So, my caveat now extended into a full scale rant, I'll conclude by saying that by all this I by no means intend to imply that there's no place for such rules. But they tend to be included for the worst of reasons.

If you do want a "realistic" RPG on firearms, I'll mention Phoenix Command again, a game that certainly goes into detail (whether you buy into their model or not is an entirely different matter).

Mike

[ThreeGee]

Hey Mike,

Ranting is fine, but prejudging is not. You assume the worst possible intentions and take valuable time out of both our lives instead of just putting your thoughts out there, give or take.

Firearms as a defensive tool is certainly a good point. People who go looking for trouble frequently find it.

The Chow Yun Fat example adds nothing to the discussion because he could have been throwing playing cards or even lightning bolts and it would have been the same. The genre dictates that the hero is effective and the mooks are ineffective. When I want to simulate Hong Kong action movies, I will watch a bunch. However, I am talking about firearms. Real guns, real bullets, real people.

A good question is why people fall down. If it is all psychological, what about people who have never been exposed to gunfire, even in fiction? What about people who are flying high on drugs or adrenaline? Some of the FBI information deals with these issues, and that information can spawn interesting wrinkles in a game.

Does Phoenix Command go into theory? I lack a copy and only know about the game second-hand. Anyone can hack out charts and charts of numbers, but that is not interesting. I would be happily playing GURPS or Rolemaster and nothing else if that were all I care about. A better question is, do you buy into their model?

Later,
Grant

[Bankuei]

Hi Grant,

Perhaps this discussion could be a bit more focused if you clarified what you're looking for in terms of research?  Having read a fair amount of the stuff on firearmstactical.com, I've noted that much of the disparity in research comes about due to political and egotistical issues between researchers, not unlike any other thing in this world.  

By asking for firearms research in relation to roleplaying games, are you:

-Looking for military numbers and research?
-Looking for statistics as far as guns in general?
-Looking for information about implementing gun statistics into games?
-Looking for advice on creating "real enough" play focused rules for guns?

I think the only point that Mike is making is that "reality" even amongst researchers and research information is highly skewed.  The point brought up with Vincent's bit on firearms is that very little, if anything is predictable regarding guns.

Aside from 3G3, which you've mentioned, the only other book that I can highly recommend is the Jane's handbooks, which may not give you tons of details as far as performance, but certainly lists lots of neat info like, "Often gets jammed in humid weather" and cool "color" tidbits like that as well as the history, manufacturer, etc.

Chris

[ThreeGee]

Hey Chris,

Sure, any and all of that. Honestly, I did not think my question is so tricky. What resources do people think are cool? The Jane's guides definitely fit the bill. I wish there were an online version, though. Now that I think about it, janes.com does have some interesting articles.

Seriously, I am not interested in the usual nose to the grindstone stuff. I do not get paid to design to a deadline, and I feel like taking my time to brainstorm for the best ideas. Slayer has almost nothing to do with actual martial arts, but I did the research and I would like to think that comes through. If and when I design a game about guns, I want to have the same depth of understanding.

On the other hand, I am currently running a larp that is firearms-heavy and it is good to know what firearms are used by different groups. Unfortunately, it seems the answer is: it varies. Not even government agencies seem to be consistent.

Allow me to provide an example of what I consider a good resource: http://matrix.dumpshock.com/raygun/. Shadowrun and Firearms provides all sorts of neat info in addition to providing stats for a number of modern firearms. Of course, Shadowrun is a game first and a sim second, so the actual numbers are a bit funky.

Later,
Grant

[CplFerro]

Phoenix Command.  I doubt there is a more overall realistic, comprehensive, techy-crunchy integration of guns into gaming.  When asked to release the now out-of-print (but still available, through ebay etc) system to public domain, the designer replied that he couldn't, because it was still in development, as in for the US military to use in simulating combat.  So, unless you're writing a thesis statement for the FBI, all I can recommend in regard to gaming is:

www.phoenixcommand.com

[RobMuadib]

I'll play

In terms of websites, www.firearmstactical.com get my vote. I went with the "sectional momentum" concept that they put forth their material ((m*v)/area), for determining my PEN/DMG values in my game.

As for Games
Phoenix Command is quite detailed and interesting. Probably the coolest
thing they do to me is the weapon aim times, representing the differences of accuracy when shooting from the hip versus aimed, using proper firing stance, etc, etc for different weapons. Accounting for overall user skill, etc. Finely detailed weapon PEN & DMG values, wounding methodology (though some people don't buy into the model they use, but oh well.)

3G3- which you say you already have. One note is that Greg uses sectional energy, not sectional momentum to determine his DVs, and he combines pen and dmg for the most part.

Fire Fusion & Steel for the old Traveller TNE game, all kinds of weapon design including firearms, kind of wonky with the use of square root of muzzle energy, but for larger weapons, probably more accurate.

Reference Books
-----------------------------------------

Books, there's tons. The jane's manuals are great (or so I hear) but are insanely expensive for new editions (like $500+). Though you can find older editions for reasonable amounts.

Books that I have, Understanding Firearms Ballistics, Emergency War Surgery manual, for section on firearms wounds, other military medical manuals, like corpsman one. For damage effects, accuracy etc.

For info on bullets, cartridges of the world 9th edition. Muzzleloading, complete Reloading guide.

For info on guns, Gun Digest 2003, vital guide to combat weapons, military weapons of the 20th century, Illustrated books of guns, numerous military field manuals on weapons and marksmanship.

So for a couple of hundred bucks you can snag more than enough information to come up a with a reasonably detailed consistent firearms design/pen/damage/accuracy system.

So, if your serious, you can find a bookshelf full of stuff to pull info from. Of course, most people would rather be shot than use a system that incorporates all that details, data, and difference you'd derive from such research.

best

[M. J. Young]

Let me offer something a bit different, some articles by Charles Franklin (pen name for a retired marine). The first is entitled http://www.mindspring.com/~ernestm/wt&d/issue1/htwih1.html">Hitting Them Where It Hurts. It's described as "Hit locations and wounds from real-world data, with conversion notes for GURPS." Franklin has poured over actual combat casualty statistics, dividing soldiers shot into killed, incapacitated, and wounded, along with hit locations, with suggestions for how to incorporate this level of realism in play.

Another article, Keeping Their Heads Down, specifically "discusses the concept of the 'fog of battle' and includes rules for adding it to your firearm genre games." It's in a PDF of an ezine, http://www.mindspring.com/~ernestm/wt&d/issue2/issue2.html">The Way, the Truth, and the Dice Issue 2.

Franklin brings a mix of combat experience and solid research to his work; and while these aren't exactly what you're seeking, they might help you make more sense of how to apply what you do find elsewhere.

--M. J. Young

[Bankuei]

Ok, well, a very good resource that occured to me is the Knuckleduster wild west supplement, which not only gives you a good idea about guns and their evolution for that time period, but also went and interviewed about 2 or 3 policemen who were engaged in actual firefights.

As far as the first two questions listed, that will show up in your research.  As far as the latter two, the major questions that you'll need to address is what purpose your combat system will look to fufill on the cinematic/realistic/plausibility/gameplay meter, and how you want to rate guns and their effects based off of that.  

Frankly, when it comes to modeling realism, guns are about the only thing that has really convinced me to lean towards the "random roll" for damage, since so many crazy factors pop up.  You also might want to check out some recent threads on rpg.net Open forum, I recall seeing one or two threads regarding guns and realism as well.

Chris

[Sylus Thane]

3G,
My suggestion would be to just find an old soldier who actually saw a lot of combat and ask if you can talk to them about it. People who do studies and give information on their findings are great, but they can't beat a person who has truly used the weapons and seen the effects for themselves, unless of course the person doing the study is an old combat vet.

For me my greatest resource in regards to firearms and combat is my dad. Fortunately for me he is a plank owning (meaning first) Navy SEAL and police officer. So he really has been to hell and back and has a PO Box there to prove it. Also talking to his friends, strangely all former special military or policeman, has given me amazing true life insight to what really happens.
If you are interested I would be more than willing to share some of the things i have learned from him and others over the years.

Sylus

[ThreeGee]

Hey all,

Thanks for the references. I have already started thinking about how to apply some of it.

Sylus, unfortunately, I do not have a close relationship with any veterans who might have experience to share. If you care to relate any stories or wisdom, I would certainly appreciate it.

Later,
Grant

[Tonic]

I submit Terminal Ballistics.

The focus is mainly on the wounding part of the equation. Interesting read overall.