Rules Coverage, How much is enough? Abstract or Realism? Options

[mfb]

[Talia Invierno]

[Critias]

You talk like a therapist. Are you about to ask me how I feel about my parents?

[Talia Invierno]

Since you bring it up, did you want me to? :spin:

[Kagetenshi]

[eidolon]

Crit, I'm with you on the grey-box optional rules stuff.

I also thought I might add that I don't have anything against rules being more realistic or even better. By my own argument earlier in the thread, if a non-gun-nut picks up a rulebook and it says "guns work in such and such a way", that's how they work for that gamer, whether they're accurate and/or realistic or not. My only issue is that it seems like there comes a point where the gun-nut wants fifteen pages on the effect of a three mph wind on a .45 round fired by a tired man on Thursday. That's just too much. :)

[Critias]

Nah. Most of us just want guns in-game to make some sense, when compared at a glance to guns in real life. Stuff from SR3, for instance, that always rubbed me very much the wrong way (most of which hasn't been fixed in SR4)...Stuff I'd like to see:

Rifles that do more damage than pistols (or at least not LESS damage) (bigger bullet, longer barrel, less damage?).

It taking less than four grenades, point blank, to kill someone (without the optional Power-for-Staging rule in SR3, grenades to Mod damage, tops, meaning three of them, completely without any soak successes, at point blank, will still keep you one box BELOW Deadly damage).

Regular ammo that doesn't cost two nuyen a shot, regardless of weapon (I can pick up two hundred and fifty rounds of .22 ammo for my rifle at Wal Mart for about ten bucks, 100 for my 9mm for twelve, and by-the-case 7.62 for my AK, 1000 rounds for $175).

Sniper rifles not being more effective than shotguns or submachineguns at close-quarters fighting (the sniper on SWAT teams stays outside the building, fellas, it's everyone else that goes in).

Automatic fire being more scary, not less scary, than semi-automatic.

Like someone said on the original Firearms thread (by which I mean the one that's three days or so old) -- as written, it's a lot like eighteen wheeler semis that are faster off the starting line that crotch-rocket racing bikes, or subcompact cars that can hold more stuff than pick-up trucks. There's just stuff that's very glaringly wrong, to an awful lot of us.

[TheOneRonin]

[Kagetenshi]

[eidolon]

Yeah, it was massive hyperbole. On the whole, I don't have a problem with better rules. I would have absolutely no issue with errata coming out that say, fixed auto-fire, if it replaces the rules that already exist. (But that may not be likely to happen, due to the desire to not contradict rules in the BBB. If more rules come out, they will have to be consistent with what already exists, and that won't solve anything that you have a complaint about.)

If you don't replace the rules that are there, then you create a bloated system of inconsistent, contradictory, conflicting, or confusing rules. That's what I'm against. I'm not against fixing glaring flaws, I'm against trying to fix flaws by adding more problems. Treating the symptom, in other words.

In order to make a good set of optional rules, they have to have a few things, I think.
- They must be clearly and unequivocally optional.
- Thier use must not constitute a challenge to the basic rules.
- The optional rules must not shift the power base, or if they do, they must contain additional changes to address any shift in balance.

This next bit isn't really directly related to that, but is part of the discussion as a whole.

Another problem I have with rules that are "too" realistic, is that the game loses some of its versatility. If the core rules become too realistic, then it becomes difficult to play, say, a cinematic game. You create a situation in which you limit the ways a game can be played, and that's a bad thing. Add other ways, sure, but don't take away if you can help it.

[mfb]

that isn't necessarily true. it depends on what you mean by cinematic.

to me, the perfect SR game would be one that is horribly, grittily realistic--but where people with cyberware or magic can do awesome cinematic things. it makes the cinematic stuff that much more awesome, because regular people can't do it. if you make a game system where everyone can do awesome cinematic stuff, what's the point in getting cyber or using magic?

[eidolon]

Hmm, yeah, using a nebulous word like that probably wasn't the best idea. I'm not explaining that last bit well. I'll come back to it if I come up with something better.

[mfb]

well, my standard definitely isn't the only standard. the SR4 devs wanted--and made--a game where anybody could do cinematic stuff.

[Wounded Ronin]

I think that having realistic weapon rules would actually add more variety and interest to the game. Truth is stranger than fiction, and all that.

I feel like if grenades did D damage and the damage code you encountered was based on how far you are from ground zero that would result in more strategy than grenades that don't incapacitate you even if they explode at your feet. With the former there would be more strategy you'd have to work with as player characters, such as having your squad be spaced apart instead of bunched together, not letting guys with hand grenades get close enough to throw them, fragging rooms before entering actually being valuable, and so on.

I feel like if automatic fire and damage codes for firearms worked better you could work on an actual squad level strategy for your team instead of your entire strategy being a guy with a sniper rifle and a heavy pistol who rolls base 12 dice. If weapons are more realistic and I've got a 4 person squad I have to decide what kind of gear they should get. Are we going to go with two LMGs, one designated marksman rifle, and one grenade launcher? Should we bother bringing an assault rifle instead of a LMG under the circumstances? Do we want two grenade launchers instead? I think that's more interesting than having your character essentially be a superhuman anime character with a pistol.

Realistic encumberance makes things more strategic as well. How much ammo does the team carry? How much can they carry? How does this affect our planning and execution of the mission? What gear do we bring and what gear do we leave behind and what is the opportunity cost of the big radio in terms of how much 7.62 NATO I can bring? If I carry a gigantic block of C4 because we're supposed to blow something up maybe I can't carry enough ammo for my machine gun to use it for very long at all. In the real world encumberance and gear is a realistic consideration and I think it would really enrich the gaming experience.

I just think that a game becomes so much more mentally stimulating if you try to be realistic. Reality is so rich and already has so many ways of going about things articulated by actual practice. It's so much more rewarding than what you'd get if you just tried to sit down and make something up that you thought was "balanced".

[Kagetenshi]

[Aku]

what if, instead of incorporating "real world" ammo (9mm, .45 cal etc) which, honestly, confuse the heck outa me. They/you adopted a "type x" designation, based on damage code. So all "type 1" ammo can be shared across all weapons that use them, and so on for various types?

[Kagetenshi]

The solution I've proposed over in SR3R is that weapons within a class share ammo if they have the same damage code with that ammo (and the weapon's description doesn't explicitly say otherwise), and a few classes share ammo between each other under the same conditions. Those classes are:

Light Pistol and Machine Pistol

Heavy Pistol and SMG (this is associated with a suggested reduction in standard Heavy Pistol damage code)

Assault Rifle, Sporting Rifle, Sniper Rifle, LMG, MMG, HMG

~J

[Critias]

[TheOneRonin]

See, I don't get all of the confusion. A caliber designation is just a name. If you have a system that matches "name" to damage code, then it shouldn't matter if that name is ".308 Winchester", "7.62x51mm NATO", or "Snarblesgrupp Type 3". It's just a fucking name.

To gun-buffs like me, a term like "5.56x45mm" means a lot of things. But to a non-gun buff shadowrun player, all it has to mean is: 6P, -4 AP.

Then, all you have to do is stat things like this:

Colt M23
Ammo Type: 5.56x45mm
RC: 1
Mode: SA/BF/FA
Ammunition Capacity: 30(magazine)
etc.

[Critias]

I think the confusion (from my own murky memories of not "getting it" while reading GI Joe comics, but also mostly from taking my wife and mom to go shooting) is that the names are numbers, and most people want numbers to automatically mean things.

When my mom didn't like shooting my 9mm, she didn't understand how me offering her the .22 was in any way supposed to be an improvement, or make her MORE comfortable -- 22 is bigger than 9, so I was trying to give her a meaner gun that fired bigger bullets!

After a few shots, when I stopped calling them that and referred to my 9mm as "The Glock" and the .22 as "the cowboy gun," she was fine. People just automatically attach values to numbers, I think (which is why I think an all-metric system would, in theory, cut down on some of the confusion).

[Kagetenshi]

But 9 is almost 41 times larger than 0.22!

~J

[Dashifen]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kagetenshi]

Actually, since the first book I've thought that a great plot twist for the series would be the SAS raiding the school, gunning down the students and teachers from outside their threat-identification range.

Maybe not exactly right for the target age group, but still would have been neat.

~J

[Aku]

note: i am not feigning total ignorance in regards to weapons, i really am (despite watching lots of history channel and military channel stuff, this stupid about weapons)

The problem i have, even with an all metric (9mm for instance) is i still don't know WHAT sort of difference that would make. I beleive it's referencing the diameter of the round but, for all i know, it could be the length of the round (donno how that would impact jack, but like i said, near total, non feigned ignorance)

So lets say you've got a pistol firing a 9mm round, that does a damage of , 5p. You've got another gun, firing a 20mm round. well, that rounds over twice as big, so does that mean the damage code would be somewhere between 10 and 11P?

About the only thing i do understand, is that a 9mm fired from a smg should do about the same damage as a 9mm from a pistol, because the smg gives you rate of fire over the pistol, but it isn't spittin' any harder