I have a player who is great at gunplay, and does raises like "Raise 12: I shoot Mob NPC in the knees/legs." He's specifically trying to avoid killing wounds, when he can help it. For some of these raises, I would like to say "The shot goes to the abdomen of the Mob NPC; he goes down and is dying." Assume the stakes are not about resolving a conflict non-violently, but about something else such that this violence is a means to that end, like stakes of "Stop the angry mob in its tracks from doing X".

So when can the GM fairly modify the outcome of the raise? Would making his shots less fatal requre of me a block or taking the blow? I'd love some guideline so I'm not simply nerfing his skill at my own whim.

Personally, I'd let him have his Raises and just let Fallout handle the rest.  Guns can be really deadly if a conflict goes on, regardless of the actual Raises or Sees, and I try to twist my player's actions toward failure or accident as little as possible.

Regards,
Daniel

I personally think that if the player raises "I shoot Brother Jacob in the kneecap" then if you're going to respond with "The shot goes into his gut instead" then you have to be 'turning the blow'.

It's a very subtle distinction.

I'm not sure if I follow; do you want his "I shoot him in the kneecap" Raise to look worse than the player intended?

You could Take the Blow with a bunch of low dice and narrate something like "The bullet shatters his patella completely, and shards of bone rip his femoral artery apart in several places. Blood is spilling out of him and he starts screaming from the pain."

And this is the old west where medical care is primitive - shooting sombody's kneecap off can lead to severe blood loss, infection and more, so I wouldn't consider it "non-fatal" anyway.

Mebbe might want to discuss this sort of thing with him. 'cause I see this could be going both ways.

Me, for instance.. My character was a helluva shot, and tended to shoot for not immediately lethal areas as well. But me, I was waiting for the day when my GM would shove a whole mess of dice forward, instead of giving. I wanted that internal conflict, caused by Dove's talk or shoot "there ain't no middle ground" mentality. At the same time, I wanted it to be both unexpected and mostly avoidable. I wanted the choice to be between giving and getting shot all to hell. I took the time to communicate this to my GM, and I knew he'd never drop it at an inappropriate time, so I was good with it.

On the other hand, if I'd not really thought about it, and simply wanted to use my shooting dice without having to worry about killing someone, and my GM took the blow just because he could, and because he wanted to, I might possibly have felt a little betrayed. (Probably not though; I'm pretty sim in a "realistic consequences" fashion, and when the bullets start flyin'...) My intent would be getting perverted, and while it's by the rules, and entirely the sort of thing the rules are meant to explore, if I wasn't expecting it or wanting it, I might be displeased.

Talk to your player. Make sure he understands that a bullet to the big toe is systematically just as likely to be fatal as a bullet to the brain, and the game is meant to play that way. Find out what he wants out of the game, and the reason he's shooting for the kneecap. Maybe he wants to be the white-hat, and you've not given him a good enough black-hat to shoot dead, dead, dead.

In something like this, I think you need to be clear on who has authority to say what.

If the stakes involve someone dying, and the conflict is resolved in favor of the dying side, then that someone dies (or needs a followup healing conflict).

A player (or the GM) may make a raise, declaring a gunshot.

The target of the gunshot may reverse the blow, block the blow, or take the blow. The player controlling the target decides which option to take. If the target takes the blow, the wound is potentially fatal.

If a player says I shoot Dick (an NPC) and wants to kill Dick, the GM may say "Yes." And then Dick dies.

A player may not make a raise that's a gunshot intending it to be non-lethal and having any guarantee that it is non-lethal. The best he can do is make a small enough raise that the GM can easily decide to block or reverse the blow. So the player may shoot, hoping the wound is non-lethal.

I think if it's not clear if the raise is talking, physical, fighting, or shooting, then the participants need to clarify that (and I'm generally assuming that if you shoot into the air and say something, that you have made a talking raise, not a shooting raise - though you might be bringing in gun dice or shooting trait dice - and I think such a raise would not qualify as escalation to shooting).

Frank

DevP, why do you want to make the player's Raises more fatal than the player intends?

If I was a player and I'd gone to some trouble to establish that my character was a good shot, I'd feel cheated if it turned into a gut shot instead, assuming we're at very close ranges. The GM would have to give me a pretty persuasive explanation as to why my expert shooter suddenly became widly inept. I mean, a kneecap is a small target, and it's believable that I might miss entirely, or hit the thigh or shin instead, but to me off by a couple feet at short range is just silly. Now, if there was another NPC nearby, and you Blocked or Turned The Blow with "the NPC standing near you yells 'no!' and tries to grab your arm, throwing off your aim and causing you to shoot the mobster in the chest," then I could understand.

I suspect there's some particular issue that you want to get at with these moments of unexpected lethality, and if so, there may be a better way to address it.

One problem with just relying on Fallout for mechanical fatality is that we're assuming these are generally "mook" NPCs, like the ones that build up big mobs of people. And in any case, Vicnent has made pretty clear that NPCs do live/die at the whim of narration, which is why these raises are all valid:

"Raise 12: I gun down two of the armed robbers."
"Block: Your shot hits one of the bodyguards instead."
"Raise 20: The villain shoots your (NPC) trail guide in the head, killing him instantly."

There's some good but somewhat contrasting advice here:

I personally think that if the player raises "I shoot Brother Jacob in the kneecap" then if you're going to respond with "The shot goes into his gut instead" then you have to be 'turning the blow'.

The best he can do is make a small enough raise that the GM can easily decide to block or reverse the blow. So the player may shoot, hoping the wound is non-lethal.

Player, raising: "I shoot him in the knee!"
GM, taking the blow: "He falls down."

Leave it to fallout to sort out who lives and who dies.

That's my advice.

-Vincent

Vincent,

Perhaps this a problem specific to dealing with a mob (using the rule where the GM gets 2d6 for each person). If the Dog is facing down 8 people, should I really be tracking fallout for each of them?

Does the mob have a leader whose stats you're using? If so, he gets the fallout. If it's just a generic mob, do the players care about the fallout? Do you? If not, then the players get dice for a followup conflict (and if there isn't one, who cares). Remember that individual mobsters may have died as a result of sees or raises.

Frank

DevP wrote:
Perhaps this a problem specific to dealing with a mob (using the rule where the GM gets 2d6 for each person). If the Dog is facing down 8 people, should I really be tracking fallout for each of them?

The good news is, we are avoiding the "sorta-not-really-gunfighting" condition! I think we have a consensus that gunfighting dice means that there's a bullet that's travelling at a some person. I'm definitely okay with players getting their gun traits / gear dice for shooting antagonistically at a rival's feet (or something), but that's not an escalation for us.

Also, this:

"I rolled a 20, so the mob's dead, even though individually its members got no worse than scrapes and bruises. They'll never mob again."

Putting aside the avoiding the "gunfighting but sorta-not-really-gunfighting" condition, one thing I'm unclear on.
When you use a block, you can block the opponent's action.
For example: Raise: "I trip him," Block, "but he rolls back to his feet quicker than you can say Kung Fu!"
Raise: Raise: "I shoot him in the head to kill him dead," Block: "but he dodges,"
so what exactly is wrong with:

Raise: "I shoot him in the leg, so he doesn't die," Block: "and he falls off the roof to his death."

Assuming we are dealing with a situation where it's legal to let someone die without breaking the fallout rules (like a mob), and the players are onboard with the idea that a block can be used to block the intended goal whatever it is, is there something wrong with this?
By this route, the player who wanted to be sure to not kill the guy should be making a high raise, 'cos that's what helps him get things to go the way he wants them.
Am I being a potential jerk not seeing anything wrong with this?

Darren, that's totally by the book. That's exactly how I play, mostly.

It seems to me that Dev's group has set standards for raises and sees that don't allow that, though. Which is also totally by the book.

-Vincent

I'd be bothered if you did that to me as a player. Let me see if I can explain why. :)

It's not stated in the rules, but my feeling based on all of one session is that a Block or Dodge would normally leave us status quo - I try to do something, it doesn't work, nobody takes any fallout. Turning The Blow means that I tried something and got an outcome that was clearly bad for me. Taking the Blow means that I tried something and got an outcome that was bad for you.

As a player, if I tried to do something and you used the dice to Block or Dodge but narrated an outcome that left me worse off than I was when I raised, I'd feel like there was something hinky going on.

There's an example in the book of a Raise and Block in which the player raises "I shoot him" and the GM blocks with "a different NPC jumps in the way of the bullet and is killed."

So it's by-the-book for a Block or Dodge to leave the PC worse off in certain respects.

I don't see the example leaving the PC worse off. He certainly hasn't mentioned a definite desire to preserve the different NPC's life.

The key thing is about what matters to the player, and are you taking that away via GM Fiat (rather than the system). It's like "Say yes or roll the dice". When the player himself is clearly invested in avoiding the killing, the GM should say yes or go to the system in some way. Of course, if the group is comfortable with the GM taking NPC lives a bit more easily, then that's all good. That just wasn't the tone of play for us so far.