I ask because to me, it seems like it might work quite well for a game of spys/espionage. I mean, proficiencies could represent fighting styles and firearms proficiencies and so forth. Skill packages could be arranged into Agency and Operative types. And the list goes on.

So has anyone tried this, and do they have any of their notes?

Thanks in advance.

I haven't tried it, but certainly I'm thinking about it.

On a somewhat related note, I'm thinking of running a game in Elizabethan London, which brings up the question of firearms. Has anyone thrown together rules for pistols, arqubuses, blunderbusses, muskets etc?

MikeSands wrote: I haven't tried it, but certainly I'm thinking about it.

Has anyone thrown together rules for pistols, arqubuses, blunderbusses, muskets etc?

Herr Nils wrote: I have some, but they are in Swedish, because my English is terrible.

I have put a PDF on this site.

www.rollspel.nu/~arsmagica/Resurser/ELDVAPEN.pdf

Scroll down to the pictures.
The name is the Swedish name with doesn’t have to be corresponding to a equivalent English name.

The weapons are from the 14-16 century

Laddning = The reloading time is in minutes.
AV = ATN
Skada = Damage
Räckvidd = Range

My values doesn’t correspond to the bows in TROS. Because I have changed them to.

Herr Nils wrote: I have put a PDF on this site.

www.rollspel.nu/~arsmagica/Resurser/ELDVAPEN.pdf

I haven't read the firearms rules in the link, but I thought this would be worth mentioning...

It turns out that a lot of people don't fully appreciate the lethality of early firearms. Most people, it seems, chalk the bloodiness of the American Civil War(ACW), for example, up to poor field hospitals and unsanitary conditions.

It turns out that a simple musket ball is a VERY deadly item. Modern (jacketed or non-jacketed) slugs are deadly, but they aren't the same for several reasons

1: For lack of a better description, they're more of a piercing type of damage where a musket ball is more blunt. It's the differnce between hitting youself with the hammer or hitting yourself with the nail. :-D The damage isn't localized either - more on that...

2: Many modern slugs tend to "mushroom" and deform, but they usually stay in one piece. In the case of jacketed slugs, they may pass completely through the body leaving a line of damage, but not massive wounds. Musket balls, on the other hand, would "shatter" upon entering the body and/or hitting bone. The fragments were often jagged and incredibly difficult to find in the mess they left behind. The effects of having a bit of lead inside your body (even after you'd healed) could be quite nasty indeed. Some modern slugs are designed to fragment upon entering the target, but they are somewhat less common. I may be wrong here, but I think hollow point rounds are designed with this in mind. Also, a few years back there were the "cop killer" bullets that mushroomed in such a way as to cause catastrophic damage and penetrate bullet-proof vests as well. Those were quickly banned, I believe. Maybe someone else can provide more info on hollow points and the "cop killers"? Seems like they were called Black Talons or something...

3: Due to their larger size, mass, etc. musket balls are devastating. I'm sure most of us have seen old photographs of dismembered corpses from the ACW. I had always assumed these were victims of cannon fire, but I've recently learned that these wounds were caused by rifles/muskets. They literally blew the limbs off. Sorry to be so graphic, but I think it illustrates the point. When one of these musket balls shatters inside the target, the effect is similar to a shotgun blast from inside the victim's body. Not to mention the damage caused by the entrance of a half inch diameter lead ball entering the body at a high speed. (Not sure of the actual caliber of musket balls, and I'm sure it varies widely.)

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in here and let you know what I've learned about early firearms. I know that this is all from the ACW, but I'm sure it is of similar value with regards to weapons from before that period.

While early firearms were horribly inaccurate and took ages to reload, the one shot you had time to get off was often a deadly one.

Hope this helps!

Brandon

PS: It's also worth mentioning that the ACW saw the use of early "modern shaped" slugs as well as cartridge rounds with the primer, powder and slug all in one casing. There was a wide variety of weapons in use during that war, probably due to the fact that many soldiers brought their own weapons from home to fight with.

PPS: I'm not a student of the ACW in particular, so I'm probably wrong on various points. Corrections, additions and acusations of outright lying are welcomed. :-D

Rattlehead wrote:
While early firearms were horribly inaccurate and took ages to reload, the one shot you had time to get off was often a deadly one.

Yes, I agree with that. In fact, I would say that with an un-rifled barrel and ball ammunition the chances of missing a target would increase exponentially with range rather than in a linear fashion. For example, rather than being twice as likely to miss at twice the range, your chances of missing would be multiplied by some factor.... and no, I don't know specifically how accurate various firearms were so I have no idea of the factor. I imagine that you could model the inaccuracy of early firearms fairly well by assigning each weapon a "Chance To Miss" multiplier. You'd have to calculate them out, but once you had these numbers you could take the range in feet and multiply it by the Chance To Miss factor and that would give you an indication of the odds that you'd miss the target. Maybe this could be used to calculate to-hit numbers for early firearms?

Hmmm.... I may be getting off track here. Does this make sense to anyone else? I have been known to talk out of my ass.....

Brandon

Rattlehead wrote: I imagine that you could model the inaccuracy of early firearms fairly well by assigning each weapon a "Chance To Miss" multiplier......

Brandon

A few notes on bullets:

The black talons were a specific type of round, and I *believe* they are still available in some places, with a very specific and restrictive license. I've seen one... They're nasty.

Not all rounds are as clean as you think. The M-16 round has a known tendency to tumble upon entering the body. Cases have been documented of a bullet entering the body at one point, and leaving through the back at an entirely other point. The path of destruction has included shredded organs, shattered bones, etc. Something about the size, weight, shape, speed and spin of the round has this effect.

...and we'll not even mention the effects of DU shards within the human body.

toli wrote:
The standard musket was never considered a marksman's weapon (as far as I can tell). I read a contemporay quote (from 1500's or 1600s I think) that said that the man killed by the musket ball aimed at him in particular was the most unlucky man on the battle field. These early firearms were almost always used in mass formations...because no one could hit what they were aiming at.

toli wrote: In fact, "Read, Level, Fire" not Ready, Aim, FIre" was the standard line call in the British army until almost the 1900's (if I am not mistaken)

MrGeneHa wrote: Just give unrifled muskets a very low "+1 ATN per X yards". Say +1 per 2 yards, if they're that inaccurate (less accurate than a throwing knife at very long ranges).

Just raise the TN of the Ref roll. Or change it into a skill roll. Or both.

Shadeling wrote: I ask because to me, it seems like it might work quite well for a game of spys/espionage. I mean, proficiencies could represent fighting styles and firearms proficiencies and so forth. Skill packages could be arranged into Agency and Operative types. And the list goes on.

So has anyone tried this, and do they have any of their notes?

Thanks in advance.

You adapted the TRoS rules to the BattleTech universe? Now that sounds cool... I'm a long time BT player and I've always loved it. I have the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Mechwarrior game, but I can never get anyone to play it... :-(

Any chance you can post your adaptation? Hey, that's an idea.... Maybe there could be a page on the TRoS web site with various people's adaptations?

Brandon

id suggest buying palldium books "Compendium of Contemporay weapons".... very useful, and easily converted to other systems... also, having a quick look into something like ninjas and superspies might be useful...thats about the only spy like modern game i have played... i don really know anything about spycraft

Hmmm...Mechwarrior plus Riddle of Steel.
The thing that truly terrifies me about this is the thought of an Elemental swinging a big sword and jsut how amazingly scary that would be with tros mechanics.

Psychopompous wrote:
Not exactly... I adapted it to BattleTech, which is somewhat futuristic, but retains many modern elements, like firearms.

It worked great :)

Shadeling wrote:

Psychopompous wrote:
Not exactly... I adapted it to BattleTech, which is somewhat futuristic, but retains many modern elements, like firearms.

It worked great :)

Any chance you can send me any of your conversion notes...?

I'm going to contradict my earlier post here. I think a modern TRoS campaign would need lots more rules. IMHO, of course.

I began thinking about trying to roleplay a "Saving Private Ryan/Band of Brothers" WWII campaign in TRoS, and it doesn't seem to work with the current very simple missile rules.

What rules are there for called shots? Use of cover? If the only part you can (or are trying to) hit is the head, there should be a significant penalty. It wouldn't be hard to write appropriate rules for this, but they aren't there yet. Currently, it's a puncture attack to Zone XIII, no penalty.

(There would be a penalty from inability to aim if your opponent popped his/her head up and down from a fox hole).

Scopes would increase the total possible MP (Missile Pool). But it would be impossible to reduce prep time while using one.

There are no rules at all for firing at massed enemies (ie enfilading fire).

Covering fire seems like a maneuver, with mechanisms resembling Beat (you're trying to create shock so the opponent can't fire back). But there would be a small chance of actually hitting the opponent.

Explosive rules would resemble the damage rules from falling.

Finally, a game focusing on missile combat would depend much more upon maps than TRoS currently does.

Gene Ha

Have you read the rulebook? :-)

Called shots? In there.

Cover? Check.

Aiming? Yes. (and if he's popping his head up and down then you simply can't do it. Easy).

Firing at mass enemies? Easy to fudge, far easier if you just pick a target and if you miss that, the Seneschal ajudicates who else it hits/might hit instead.

You've already answered your own questions on the rest. :-)

Brian.

Hey Brian!

Yes, called shots are in the rules. ALL shots are called shots (there is no "aiming for center of mass" general purpose shot). But that's the problem. In TRoS it is NO harder hitting someone behind cover than someone NOT behind cover. If only my head or one arm is sticking out, it's no harder to hit than my whole body. The only advantage of cover is that you can 'force' someone to aim for your head or arm or whatever. (Well, you can also try to hide, but that only lasts until YOUR first shot).

"I'll fire my pistol from cover so he can't shoot me in the thigh." There needs to be expanded missile rules on this, even if you don't use a modern setting.

For instance, it's much harder to hit the head than the torso with a pistol or a crossbow (thus the real world rule of thumb, "aim for the center of mass").

IMHO, all missile shots default to the torso. Apply an MP penalty for other locations. Simple. BUT, there is no rule like this now.

Also, it is possible to be shot while peeking from behind cover. Police and military training assumes this. If you peek around a corner, do it VERY quickly. If you do it again, don't do it in the same spot (lean down, for instance). If your target is peeking from behind cover, let the bullets skim off the wall. But I actually think the rules cover this pretty well (except skipping bullets off the wall, but I don't think arrows do that quite as well ;-).

For an unaimed snap shot you get only your Wit in MP, and any penalties the Seneschal deems appropriate such as -2MP for target movement (imho, again).

Gene

Actually, it does cost an extra MP to fire at the head, as per the optional rules in the appendix. Check it out.

Jake

I completely forgot about that one!

Thanks for all the help,

Gene