Guns and knockdown, What most of us didn't know Options

[evil_bacteria]

To quote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, by David Simon:

"Hollywood tells us that a Saturday Night Special can put a man on the pavement, yet ballistic experts know that no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet. Regardless of a bullet's weight, shape and velocity and regardless of the size of the handgun from which it was fired, it is too small a projectile to topple a person by the impact of its own mass. If bullets truly had such power, the laws of physics would require that the shooter would also be knocked off his feet in similar fashion when he discharged the weapon."

However, later on that same page:

"Although the popular belief that many people fall down upon being shot is generally accurate, experts have determined this occurs not for physiological reasons, but as a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do."

So instead of relying on the damage inflicted as opposed to the victim's Body, maybe it should require a Willpower Test to remain standing after being shot.

[Heath Robinson]

I would think that it's more shock and the sudden and unexpected application of force, generally to a point higher up the body. You can't really predict getting shot and the force is applied so abruptly that you simply cannot brace yourself against it. A standing human is a careful balancing act supported by the muscles of the individual, if the balance is off by more than a little then they're going to fall as they cannot compensate fast enough. Even rocking backwards onto your heels will cause you to fall unless you expect it. A short, sharp impulse applied to the central body is probably going to disrupt the balance of the target sufficiently to initiate a fall, even without the effects of shock from getting hit.

I apologise if I come off as aggressive, I hate to see disinformation spread.

[Faelan]

Falling down after being shot makes sense. It's called using micro terrain, or rather making yourself a harder target to hit. Instinct kicks ass.

[evil_bacteria]

I would think that it's more shock and the sudden and unexpected application of force, generally to a point higher up the body. You can't really predict getting shot and the force is applied so abruptly that you simply cannot brace yourself against it. A standing human is a careful balancing act supported by the muscles of the individual, if the balance is off by more than a little then they're going to fall as they cannot compensate fast enough. Even rocking backwards onto your heels will cause you to fall unless you expect it. A short, sharp impulse applied to the central body is probably going to disrupt the balance of the target sufficiently to initiate a fall, even without the effects of shock from getting hit.

I apologise if I come off as aggressive, I hate to see disinformation spread.

See, I'd think so, too, but Simon's book was written based on spending over a year with a squad of homicide detectives, so I have to assume that he knows more about the subject than we do. I mean, what do you or I really know about the physics behind people getting shot? He interviewed detectives and medical examiners.

Falling down after being shot makes sense. It's called using micro terrain, or rather making yourself a harder target to hit. Instinct kicks ass.

Again, if that's so, then a test regarding the person's Body just doesn't make sense. It should use Willpower or Intuition.

[Faelan]

My point is that knockdown does not make sense, rolls be damned.

[Cantankerous]

To quote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, by David Simon:

"Hollywood tells us that a Saturday Night Special can put a man on the pavement, yet ballistic experts know that no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet. Regardless of a bullet's weight, shape and velocity and regardless of the size of the handgun from which it was fired, it is too small a projectile to topple a person by the impact of its own mass. If bullets truly had such power, the laws of physics would require that the shooter would also be knocked off his feet in similar fashion when he discharged the weapon."

However, later on that same page:

"Although the popular belief that many people fall down upon being shot is generally accurate, experts have determined this occurs not for physiological reasons, but as a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do."

So instead of relying on the damage inflicted as opposed to the victim's Body, maybe it should require a Willpower Test to remain standing after being shot.

I suggest that the gentleman's never been shot. I have, by a medium caliber hand gun and between the sudden shock and the IMPACT (it felt roughly like being hit with a baseball bat by a VERY strong person...a thing I also had happen) I didn't so much "fall down" as get ejected from my feet.

It may not be simple mass alone, but there is no "learned response" here either. The body is a self preservation unit, when a sudden overwhelming injury occurs to it, IT reacts completely on it's own without learned response having jack shit to do with it. I suggest that the "experts" who have determined that physiological reasons don't apply have their heads up their fourth points of contact.


Isshia

[Shrapnel]

I propose that regardless of real life physics, firearms in Shadowrun should pick people up off their feet, throw them backwards anywhere from 2 to 10 meters, and perhaps remove a limb or two in the process.

This is Shadowrun, after all... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ninja.gif)

[psychophipps]

I suggest that the gentleman's never been shot. I have, by a medium caliber hand gun and between the sudden shock and the IMPACT (it felt roughly like being hit with a baseball bat by a VERY strong person...a thing I also had happen) I didn't so much "fall down" as get ejected from my feet.

It may not be simple mass alone, but there is no "learned response" here either. The body is a self preservation unit, when a sudden overwhelming injury occurs to it, IT reacts completely on it's own without learned response having jack shit to do with it. I suggest that the "experts" who have determined that physiological reasons don't apply have their heads up their fourth points of contact.

Isshia

I strongly suspect that it's just like burning yourself with your coffee or getting hit in a fight. Your body's first reaction will be to jerk away from it as violently as possible. This is why, I assume, that the majority of people shot in the front will fall backwards as shown time and again during police videos (even if caught off-guard). Of course, a nice shot that sufficiently disrupts the target to render them an immediate non-combatant will tend to look like their strings have been cut more than anything you see in the movies (besides Saving Private Ryan and Children of Men, of course).

[Daier Mune]

i remember they did this on Mythbusters. they hung a side of pig up on some kind of ballance point, and fired various caliber weaponry at it. the best they could do was make it sway a few inches, but nothing was able to knock it down. i agree that its more of a factor of the mind reacting to the gunshot wound, and less about the body reacting to the force.

[Rail]

There is one big difference between the typical gun shot wound victim and your average runner and antagonist. Body armor. With rare exceptions, anytime my players or my characters have been shot at, they have alwyas had some sort of ballistics protection (cost of doing business I guess). Granted, I have never been shot while wearing a vest, but it does spread the energy out over a larger area (akin to being hit with a baseball bat, or a truck, depending on who was speaking about it).

The wonderful thing about roleplaying in general is how some systems absract things for us, so we don't get bogged down in detail. You could make the argument that it should be a willpower check for a penetrating or armorless shot, and a body check for an armored hit, or accept that the rules took that into account without breaking it down to every possible situation (even if they don't, assume and error on the side of fun).

[Zen Shooter01]

The fact that the knockdown factor in gunfire is not simply a function of overwhelming force, like getting knocked off your feet by a truck, pops up periodically as if it's innovative and surprising news. No, it's not overwhelming force picking up the victim and flinging them. It's shock, surprise, not being braced against the blow, pain, and the force of the blow. But the fact remains that people who get shot tend to fall down. If that wasn't true, the firearm would not have caught on.

The current SR knockdown mechanic is a trade-off more in favor of playability than realism, but it works OK for me.

[Heath Robinson]

i remember they did this on Mythbusters. they hung a side of pig up on some kind of ballance point, and fired various caliber weaponry at it. the best they could do was make it sway a few inches, but nothing was able to knock it down. i agree that its more of a factor of the mind reacting to the gunshot wound, and less about the body reacting to the force.

The weight of the leg and the tensile strength of the meat and the fastening mean that the leg experienced a force opposing the swing. In contrast, a person falling gets positive feedback from the strength of his legs and gravity, causing the fall to grow faster. In layman terms, when you're hanging it's like you're on the inside of a ball and when you're standing it's like you're on the outside of a ball.

One is a hell of a lot easier to fall off.

[Cantankerous]

The weight of the leg and the tensile strength of the meat and the fastening mean that the leg experienced a force opposing the swing. In contrast, a person falling gets positive feedback from the strength of his legs and gravity, causing the fall to grow faster. In layman terms, when you're hanging it's like you're on the inside of a ball and when you're standing it's like you're on the outside of a ball.

One is a hell of a lot easier to fall off.

THIS gets in to the area of what I'm talking about. There is no "learned response" idiocy involved in autonomic nervous reflexes...and THEY are what takes over when you're hit by hyper velocity metal with very, VERY, little regard to the mass of said metal above and below certain threshold points. The insane idea that you fall down because you believe that you should is simply not defensible to anyone who stops and thinks for a moment about how the autonomic nervous system works and why the human body operates as it does. Again, I can almost bloody guarantee that the guy who wrote the article the OP read has never been shot.

Isshia

[Heath Robinson]

THIS gets in to the area of what I'm talking about. There is no "learned response" idiocy involved in autonomic nervous reflexes...and THEY are what takes over when you're hit by hyper velocity metal with very, VERY, little regard to the mass of said metal above and below certain threshold points. The insane idea that you fall down because you believe that you should is simply not defensible to anyone who stops and thinks for a moment about how the autonomic nervous system works and why the human body operates as it does. Again, I can almost bloody guarantee that the guy who wrote the article the OP read has never been shot.

Isshia

I wasn't actually talking about autonomous reactions, the positive feedback effect is the same one that makes a stick accelerate sideways as it falls from standing in its end. The resultant force from the fact that the leg is still attempting to support the body and the effect of its weight is that a force applies to reinforce the initial force. My main point was that standing is inherently less stable than hanging due to weight and the way that force vectors add, magnifying a small initiatory force into an unavoidable fall, hence the reference to the balls. When you're on the inside of a ball you tend to end up in the same place eventually (assuming some kind of damping), on the outside you tend to head off in a random direction with the least provocation.

[evil_bacteria]

THIS gets in to the area of what I'm talking about. There is no "learned response" idiocy involved in autonomic nervous reflexes...and THEY are what takes over when you're hit by hyper velocity metal with very, VERY, little regard to the mass of said metal above and below certain threshold points. The insane idea that you fall down because you believe that you should is simply not defensible to anyone who stops and thinks for a moment about how the autonomic nervous system works and why the human body operates as it does. Again, I can almost bloody guarantee that the guy who wrote the article the OP read has never been shot.

Isshia

You know, I'm sure he hasn't ever been shot. You're probably right about that. But what exactly makes you such an expert on physics and human psychology that you can dismiss a professional's report of expert theory as "insane"?

Also, what does OP mean?

I propose that regardless of real life physics, firearms in Shadowrun should pick people up off their feet, throw them backwards anywhere from 2 to 10 meters, and perhaps remove a limb or two in the process.

This is Shadowrun, after all... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ninja.gif)

That's the most reasonable response I've heard so far!

[Kerris]

I heartily agree that Shadowrun should not follow real life physics in this case. Cinematic combat has no use for physics.

Also, OP = original poster

[Siege]

I've heard descriptions of shooting victims range from "got hit by a sledgehammer" to "I didn't even know until I was shot until I saw the blood staining my shirt".

I, thankfully, have never been shot and hope never to be shot.

However, while a bullet impact may not, in and of itself, be the sole factor of a person being knocked down, I think it is inaccurate not to say that it would be a significant factor in a person ending up in a prone position. And as another poster mentioned, it really doesn't take a lot of force to topple someone who is already off-balance - the entire sport of Judo revolves around that idea.

As for the rest, put two experts in a room and you'll get three opinions.

-Siege

[kzt]

There is a video out there of a guy standing on one leg with his hands behind his back wearing a level IV vest who is shot by a 7.62x54mm FAL at point blank range. He doesn't even sway much. It's just not that much force if it's stopped by your body armor. OTOH, it could knock down some people if they are off balance, and if it isn't stopped by your armor it could do all sorts of crap.

[tweak]

I thought most fatalities due to bullet wounds was due to blood loss. Now, I think, we have to consider where the person was shot. If someone gets shot in the knee with a shotgun, I'm pretty sure they're going to fall. Of course, I do not think it's reasonable to bring an anatomy book to a game. Instead, just do your best to keep the game interesting. In a cinematic game, there is nothing wrong with someone being knocked down with a bullet. Just be consistent.

[ShadeRavnos]

I thought most fatalities due to bullet wounds was due to blood loss. Now, I think, we have to consider where the person was shot. If someone gets shot in the knee with a shotgun, I'm pretty sure they're going to fall. Of course, I do not think it's reasonable to bring an anatomy book to a game. Instead, just do your best to keep the game interesting. In a cinematic game, there is nothing wrong with someone being knocked down with a bullet. Just be consistent.

Most fatalities of gun shot is due to shick and the fact that a bullet doesn't travel in a stright line thru the body most of the time(in fact it's very rare) they're designed so that when they hit the bullet actually turns and starts to tumble thru the body turning the flesh in it's path in to mush(so says my criminology instructor)

And I also think that real world physics should not be brought into a fantasy RPG... It causes to many arguements and detracts from the fun.

[kzt]

And I also think that real world physics should not be brought into a fantasy RPG... It causes to many arguements and detracts from the fun.

If you want to make that case the game must be internally self-consistent, with all possible rules questions able to be settled by the rules, without expecting people to rely on any outside knowledge of how the real world works. If the GMs answer has to be "that's obvious" or "use some common sense" or "that doesn't make sense" or "because I say so" the game can't make that argument. SR certainly isn't a game that can claim that strong a set of rules.

People's activities in a game based are on their model of the world. They will fill in the holes based on their understanding of the real world and the literature the world is based on. You have to be able to supply a complete model if you really intend for the sun to actually be carried through the skies by horses of fire over the flat earth floating above underworld. You have to actually tell them this and get them to understand that this means there is no real horizon.

[Cantankerous]

You know, I'm sure he hasn't ever been shot. You're probably right about that. But what exactly makes you such an expert on physics and human psychology that you can dismiss a professional's report of expert theory as "insane"?

It completely ignores human bodily response (the autonomic nervous system) and relegates every aspect of it to learned response. That is rather bizzare at the VERY least.


Isshia

[psychophipps]

It completely ignores human bodily response (the autonomic nervous system) and relegates every aspect of it to learned response. That is rather bizzare at the VERY least.


Isshia

Well, there is a point to the "I learned to fall down so I did" argument. There have been a huge number of casualties where the soldier/police officer/etc was given a pretty minor wound that really shouldn't have taken them out and they went into shock, passed out, stopped fighting, etc. As immediately deadly direct-fire casualties are relatively rare in respect to overall casualties, I would have to say that there is indeed a strong psychological element to the overall effectiveness of individual gunshot wounds.

[Siege]

There is a video out there of a guy standing on one leg with his hands behind his back wearing a level IV vest who is shot by a 7.62x54mm FAL at point blank range. He doesn't even sway much. It's just not that much force if it's stopped by your body armor. OTOH, it could knock down some people if they are off balance, and if it isn't stopped by your armor it could do all sorts of crap.

I gotta look this one up - SAPI plates in particular and body armor in general just diffuse the impact and spread it out over a larger area. Softer kevlar and the like just snare the bullet without actually blunting the impact.

At least, so I understood the concept.

-Siege

[Cantankerous]

Well, there is a point to the "I learned to fall down so I did" argument. There have been a huge number of casualties where the soldier/police officer/etc was given a pretty minor wound that really shouldn't have taken them out and they went into shock, passed out, stopped fighting, etc. As immediately deadly direct-fire casualties are relatively rare in respect to overall casualties, I would have to say that there is indeed a strong psychological element to the overall effectiveness of individual gunshot wounds.

You don't go into shock (except in RARE cases) because of what you see that has happened to you. Often times the way shock affects the nervous system is by something akin to overload shutdown. It isn't that you don't feel the gunshot wound until you notice the blood, but that your conscious mind doesn't process the information because of overload shock. Often it is the return of perception of the wound, because of the overload being processed, that is WHY the person now notices they've been shot when they didn't before and they look in the area (or feel the blood flow there first in a concealed area) because they are beginning to perceive the wound as the overload works out.

I've seen a damned good deal of wounding in my time and can't place a single case where a significant wound was "pretty minor" except in appearance. How in the blazes can it be said that a wound shouldn't have taken them out if it was severe enough to cause shock? Shock is a physiological, NOT a psychosomatic condition. The human body is actually a VERY tough instrument. It can take a tremendous beating and keep going, or take what looks on the surface to be a next to nothing wound that, because it has caused severe internal injuries or because of the simple proximity to a nerve plexus, takes down IMMENSELY tough people who wouldn't be even slowed down by what looks to be FAR more severe wounds.


Isshia