Trolls and Guns, Trolls can only use modified guns - Why? Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Botch]

Well here goes, Trolls are BIG, so big that every gun they want to use has to be modified before they can pull the trigger. New grips, trigger, trigger guard, safety, etc have to be fitted. In fact just about the only parts of the gun that wouldn't have to be modified are the internal firing mechanism and the barrel. In SR (especially artwork) a troll with a firearm is usually depicted as carrying LMG, MMG or assault cannon. Why then are there no guns designed to used solely by trolls, after all, what is recoil to a being that weighs as much as a large car.

Below is an email I sent to Raygun for some help on RL physics

"Unusual as it is, I am running a troll orientated campaign. Yep, 5 out of 6
characters are troll sized (2 Fomori, 1 minotaur, 1 giant, and 1 Wakyambi).

Between them they have the skills and access to a gunsmith workshop to
create customised troll sized weaponry. If SR standard guns have to be
modified for a troll (massive hands, tiny gun) to be able to fire the fiddly little
things, why isn't there a range of hand-cannons built just for trolls.

My players have raised the fact that the power of a round is primarily limited by
the amount of explosive chemical available, thus more propellant equals
longer rounds. A troll has a much bigger hand compared to the other
(meta)-humans. From researching on the web (big thanks to Raygun) I reckon that the longest pistol/smg round is 25mm (might be wrong). Our house rule is that troll handgrips have approximately twice the dimensions of a standard grip. This would indicate that a troll sized clip could give a maximum round length of around 50-60mm which appears to be into the realm of rifle ammunition.

What, in your opinion, would be effect of building a handgun capable of taking rifle rounds, other than that the gun could only be fired by a troll. From your extensive tables suggest the maximum length would appear to include the .243 Winchester (6.16x52mm), .50 Alaskan Rifle (OAL 63.75mm) and possibly extend to .500 and .510 Whisper (OAL 55mm). Obviously there are recoil, accuracy and range issues associated with firing such a handgun. "

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First piece of help from Raygun

Well, I guess it depends on how you invision trolls. In a lot of shadowrun art, Trolls have a much larger ratio of hand size compared to humans, so I don't think it would be out of the question to assume that the average troll's hand would be three to four times the size of a human's. Taking that into account, it would be possible for a Troll to use a much bigger cartridge in a custom, through-grip automatic pistol. I would think that something like a rimless .50 Alaskan (OAL 63.75mm) of shouldn't be much of a problem, and the pistol could be of very high capacity; 20-30 rounds shouldn't be a big deal.

If you use a simple recoil-to-body mass ratio to figure out how much recoil a human can regularly stand, you can scale that up to Troll size pretty easily. There are tools on my website and on the internet that will allow you to do this.

For example, the .40 S&W is about the standard sidearm cartridge used by police in the US today. We can use handloading data from a site like Alliant Powder to get the information we need to determine recoil force and use the weapons on either my site or a manufacturer's site to determine weapon mass. For example, a human firing a Glock 22 would have a ratio of:

.40 S&W (ammo)
180 grain JHP (bullet weight)
1,025 fps (speed of bullet in feet per second)
10.9 grains 2400 (amount of explosive propellant)

Glock 22 @ 2.14 lbs (weight of handgun when loaded)
= 6.2 fpe (force of recoil)
divided by average human weight @ 154 lbs = 0.0402

A Troll with a .50 Alaskan pistol would look like this:

.50 Alaskan (ammo)
450 grain FMJ (bullet weight)
1,905 fps (speed of bullet in feet per second)
67.5 grains IMR 3031 (amount of explosive propellant)
Big Fuckin Troll Gun @ 8 lbs (reasonable guess)
46.4 fpe / 1,083 lbs = 0.0428

So if I haven't made a huge mistake, according to these simple figures, it would just about the same for an average Troll to handle the recoil from a .50 Alaskan pistol (putting out about 3,625 fpe at the muzzle) as it would be for an average human to handle recoil from a .40 S&W (putting out 420 fpe at the muzzle).

And that's just a handgun. A troll could likely handle a .50 BMG rifle a bit better than a human could handle an M-14. Yikes.

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So some useful RL physics there from Raygun, only problem now is game mechanics. What would you use as damage codes, range, etc. And finally just how would concealment work. Think amount it, a troll has massive armpits as well as pockets as big a lady's handbag.

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USEFUL LINKS

http://recipes.alliantpowder.com/index2.html
http://tss.dumpshock.com/html/tss-13/art13-g.htm
http://matrix.dumpshock.com/raygun/downloa...ads/recoil.html
http://matrix.dumpshock.com/raygun/firearm...s/navframe.html
http://www.glock.com/g22.htm
http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_common.htm
http://www.wildwestguns.com/Reloading/50_A...suggestions.htm