I'm looking for some examples of systems that do ammo without keeping track of each bullet and each shot.

The game I'm working on is fairly gun-centric but I'm trying to minimize book-keeping. I don't want to ignore bullets entirely (ie: no unlimited ammo). I like the chance that someone could run out of ammo mid-fight and need to reload, that adds some tension to the game and requires a little restraint, I'm just not sure exactly how to accomplish it.

Burning Empires uses an Ammo Check.

At the end of each exchange of fire, you test to determine your fire discipline. Difficulty of the test is determined by how many shooting actions you took.

In The Books of Pandemonium, each weapon has an ammo score, which tells you how many firefights it's good for. A shotgun has an ammo score of 2, so after 2 firefights, you pat your pockets and realize you're out of shells.

The idea of running out of ammo in the middle of combat is a cool idea, though.

Maybe a combination of the two is the solution.

- Give guns an ammo score where they have to be reloaded at the end of a certain number of rounds regardless.
- Have a mechanic built into each attack roll (maybe like a critical miss) which means you've run out of ammo mid-fight.

Hiya,

What's not clear to me is what you mean by "tension." Is it life-or-death tension, in that a character could bloody well die if and when he runs out of ammo? Or is it colorful tension, in that it's fun simply to duck behind a pillar and go klick-klack with a new clip once in a while during the fight? These are totally different things.

Give an example of exactly how you see me (for instance, as a player in your game) having fun with out-of-ammo tension. Then you can rely on some excellent advice heading your way from those who've replied already.

Best, Ron

What kind of realism are we going for here?

If you are simulating something akin to a modern military then 'Fire Discipline' would be a valid skill. After an amount of time dependent on your Weapon's Ammo Score (as an example) you would make a Fire Discipline Test, or it could be a set amount of time where everyone makes the test but the difficulty is based on Weapon.

In a Stat+Skill system this would be (Nerve/Cool/stat used to not lose it) + Fire Discipline.

Ammo rating would be a factor of the weapon's payload and rate of fire. A muzzle loader would clearly always fail once used since it has 1 shot. An AK-47 in the hands of an untrained fighter would also be likely to fail since it can full auto, where as a blot or level action weapon would be easier to conserve ammo with.

Ron wrote:
Hiya,

What's not clear to me is what you mean by "tension." Is it life-or-death tension, in that a character could bloody well die if and when he runs out of ammo? Or is it colorful tension, in that it's fun simply to duck behind a pillar and go klick-klack with a new clip once in a while during the fight? These are totally different things.

Give an example of exactly how you see me (for instance, as a player in your game) having fun with out-of-ammo tension. Then you can rely on some excellent advice heading your way from those who've replied already.

Best, Ron

For the klack-klack: A small amount of tracking - have two tick boxes. On a natural one, either a box gets ticked off, or there is an ammo roll made.

That way you know when your half way through your ammo (which helps with that situation you described and wondering where to put the bullets), but your never quite sure when the last bullets will go.

This mightn't be exactly what you're looking for, but something I've done before is have separate "gun cards" with tick/boxes for ammo (and a few clip sections to a page so reloading doesn't mean stopping combat to get your eraser out). Weapons with burst fire you'd treat a burst as one box (3 bullets/burst, 27 bullets/clip = 9 boxes) It does mean keeping track of every shot but in a way that doesn't break the flow of gameplay and you've also got the advantage of having weapon stats handy on the card instead of either writing everything on a character sheet or referring to source material constantly, and I've had players just throw a weapon to another who is out of ammo by simply passing the card across the table.

I think tension is more pronounced when you have a player thinking "shit I only have three bullets left but if I can get into cover over there ..." rather than "shit if I roll a 1 I'm out of ammo even though I haven't fired a shot left"

In savage worlds, PCs track ammo bullet by bullet, but NPC allies do it differently. Their weapons have an ammo rating: "very high" "high" "medium" "low" or "very low" and the level decreases after each firefight. However, they also have a chance to lose another level of ammo during the fight if they draw badly on initiative, so it keeps up the tension.

Also, I recall a similar discussion in which someone said there were only three interesting ammo levels "enough ammo that I have to watch how much I use" "one shot left" and "click. (empty)", so you might want to think about that too.

Gurnard wrote:
This mightn't be exactly what you're looking for, but something I've done before is have separate "gun cards" with tick/boxes for ammo (and a few clip sections to a page so reloading doesn't mean stopping combat to get your eraser out). Weapons with burst fire you'd treat a burst as one box (3 bullets/burst, 27 bullets/clip = 9 boxes) It does mean keeping track of every shot but in a way that doesn't break the flow of gameplay and you've also got the advantage of having weapon stats handy on the card instead of either writing everything on a character sheet or referring to source material constantly, and I've had players just throw a weapon to another who is out of ammo by simply passing the card across the table.

I think tension is more pronounced when you have a player thinking "shit I only have three bullets left but if I can get into cover over there ..." rather than "shit if I roll a 1 I'm out of ammo even though I haven't fired a shot left"

whiteknife wrote:
In savage worlds, PCs track ammo bullet by bullet, but NPC allies do it differently. Their weapons have an ammo rating: "very high" "high" "medium" "low" or "very low" and the level decreases after each firefight. However, they also have a chance to lose another level of ammo during the fight if they draw badly on initiative, so it keeps up the tension.

Also, I recall a similar discussion in which someone said there were only three interesting ammo levels "enough ammo that I have to watch how much I use" "one shot left" and "click. (empty)", so you might want to think about that too.

So here's another question..

Do you have a limited number of magazines?

In the gun-fu source material, sometimes you're combat-reloading in kick-ass ways that are basically purely cosmetic, and don't actually mean you can't shoot for any meaningful amount of time (think of the final big battle in the textile mill in "Wanted" where there was always a loaded pistol flying through the air when he needed one, or in "Equilibrium" where he tossed out the bottom-weighted magazines and just slapped the guns onto them and kept shooting). Other times, it's click-click I need to duck behind this pillar, exchange some pointed banter with my opposite number, and then come out reloaded and blazing. Finally, there's the "crap, I get one shot, period. Make it count or I'm dead", or perhaps you're completely out, and you're finding another method that doesn't involve shooting to kill them/relying on the gun abandoned out in the kill zone/needing your buddy to throw you a gun or a magazine.

The first example is that long battle where you're never rolling a 1. This can't happen with a limited number of mags, or at least it can't happen for very long.

The second example works either way, limited mags or no.

The third example pretty much requires it. You have to be able to run out of mags to be down to your last bullet.

Wolfen wrote:
So here's another question..

Do you have a limited number of magazines?

In the gun-fu source material, sometimes you're combat-reloading in kick-ass ways that are basically purely cosmetic, and don't actually mean you can't shoot for any meaningful amount of time (think of the final big battle in the textile mill in "Wanted" where there was always a loaded pistol flying through the air when he needed one, or in "Equilibrium" where he tossed out the bottom-weighted magazines and just slapped the guns onto them and kept shooting). Other times, it's click-click I need to duck behind this pillar, exchange some pointed banter with my opposite number, and then come out reloaded and blazing. Finally, there's the "crap, I get one shot, period. Make it count or I'm dead", or perhaps you're completely out, and you're finding another method that doesn't involve shooting to kill them/relying on the gun abandoned out in the kill zone/needing your buddy to throw you a gun or a magazine.

The first example is that long battle where you're never rolling a 1. This can't happen with a limited number of mags, or at least it can't happen for very long.

The second example works either way, limited mags or no.

The third example pretty much requires it. You have to be able to run out of mags to be down to your last bullet.

And to add to the complexity, I'm not exactly sure how to limit the number of stats for each weapon.

Name
Type (pistol, rifle, submachine gun)
Size/Weight
Range
Ammo Capacity
Ammo Type
Damage
Cost
Mods/Accessories

I'm thinking of doing this:

Name
Type (Determines size & range of weapon)
Ammo Capacity (Possibly also determined by type)
Damage (Maybe Determined by Ammo Type)
Cost
Mods/Accessories (Maybe you can't attach things to a gun, some come with scopes or grenade launchers and some don't)

I don't know. Swords are so much easier to deal with game-wise.

Not to try to pour smoke into the room, but here's perhaps another way to examine your question:

Do you want to use ammunition as a resource?

or

Do you want to use "out of ammo" as a purely random occurrence?

or

Do you want running out of ammunition to be based on how good a character is at dealing with it?

If you want to use ammunition as a resource: You simply must keep track of it as a resource. How tightly you want to keep track of it is up to you. You can track each bullet (this gun holds 5 rounds), or use a less demanding method (this gun holds 2 "gunfire exchanges"). How tightly you monitor this should be reflected in how accurately your mechanic system simulates your reality.

If you want to use "out of ammo" as a purely random occurrence: Decide how often you want it to occur, then model a mechanic to do this for you. You could impose a flat 5% chance each time you attack, or a 20% chance for it to occur at an inopportune time during the coming combat, or anything else. You could dictate that only 1 character will run out of ammo in a given combat, and have everyone (including NPCs) draw straws for it... it's up to you.

If you want to use ammo checks: Looks like someone has touched on this already. Fit the check into your mechanics as best as you can, then decide if certain weapons and/or situations make it more likely, or less likely, for a character to succeed/fail in the check.

Any of these options is perfectly acceptable, as long as the mechanic is doing what it is supposed to do. And the only person who can answer that question is yourself.

mjbauer wrote:
I'm thinking of doing this:

Name
Type (Determines size & range of weapon)
Ammo Capacity (Possibly also determined by type)
Damage (Maybe Determined by Ammo Type)
Cost
Mods/Accessories (Maybe you can't attach things to a gun, some come with scopes or grenade launchers and some don't)

I don't know. Swords are so much easier to deal with game-wise.

This is simple a tip that works on fixed dice number systems (not dice pools) that allows for exact ammo track without pen/paper/eraser.

Say that for each shot you have to roll 2d6, and say you have 6 bullets in your gun. Place 12d6 in a cup and pick 2d6 in that cup each time you shoot with the gun.
No more dice? Reload and put 12d6 in the cup again.

Bossy wrote:
This is simple a tip that works on fixed dice number systems (not dice pools) that allows for exact ammo track without pen/paper/eraser.

Say that for each shot you have to roll 2d6, and say you have 6 bullets in your gun. Place 12d6 in a cup and pick 2d6 in that cup each time you shoot with the gun.
No more dice? Reload and put 12d6 in the cup again.

Give players bonuses for reloading. Call it 'dramatic reloading', or something similar. When they run out of ammo, they have to do some crazy maneuver to get more bullets in their gun, but it makes them so cool they get an extra fate point, or Aim Point, or whatever. It'll make tracking ammo a lot easier, as players will feel it's a bonus, not a penalty. It will also lead to more over-the-top gunfights, as people actively want to run out of ammo.