The secret is to get rid of the barrel and put little wings on the bullets. Then no one can identify the gun! And I can call these babies pigs. Selling 'em for a million bucks, right here, right now.

or replace the barrel every job

Frangible Ammunition....No Slug, No Evidence
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/sys...s/frangible.htm

http://www.corbon.com/
Glaser "Saftey" Slug FTW.

I hope that was sarcasm.

Shotguns would work. Not a whole lot of rifling to be had there.

Plus with custom handloads it'd be impossible to trace even by trying to track ammo sales of that type.

I saw the results of a custom load once where the crazed hand-loader had taken a short 3/8 inch bolt with the head cut off, surrounded it with thin finishing nails, and stuffed the whole affair with a carrier of some sort into a shotshell. The ham steak he shot this at was quite dead.

I imagine this tore up the shotgun barrel something fierce, though.


-karma

Interesting, seems like I'm the only one who Houseruled the other way:

There is no Caseless Ammo.

This was done mostly for game flavor I like the visuals of shell casings littering the ground after a fire fight. It actually grew out of a player contradicting me in the middle of a post fire fight description, nothing will get you an unfavorable house rule in my games faster than interrupting GM expository.

There are some other benefits. It also makes the characters a little more careful about using their guns. It also gives you a reason to use a revolver other than "it just looks cool".

Not really. Brass-catchers aren't particularly complex.

~J

bustedkarma: Could you fix that quote? I don't want people to think I'd actually quote an ammo sales pitch by COR-BON, other than to make fun of it.

Corrected Sir.

Thanks.

i'd like to take this opportunity to introduce the idea that most swords, regardless of their culture of origin, are just swords. nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand who get in a swordfight aren't going to win or lose because of the quality of their weapon.

butbutbutbutbut

Katanas are KEWL because they are NINJA so they havve to have better stats
KEWL IS good like Thor shotting civilians

It didn't fly into his eye. It flew into his arm. Otherwise, I agree, but mfb does have a point: the quality of the weapon is far secondary to the quality of the combatant. I do not think Birdy knows what he is talking about. Even slightly.

I cannot lift this.

Grow stronger!

Or get a pair of cyberarms. Whatev.

Guy Chabot de Jarnac and Francois de Vivonne de la Ch�taigneraie may disagree.

You see, Jarnac and Ch�taigneraie participated in the last ever sanctioned trial by combat in France. Jarnac was a rank amateur while Ch�taigneraie was among the best swordsmen in France at the time.

Jarnac, having no possible chance of winning decided to hire a professional trainer to give him some advice. Jarnac had choice of weapons and he and his trainer took advantage of this. Jarnac chose a sword and shield combination that would allow him to pull off a single feint followed by an attack to the hamstring. Jarnac practiced this one technique to the exclusion of all others until the day of the duel. When the duel came he blocked and feinted just as he had trained, goading Ch�taigneraie into leaving his hamstring vulnerable. Unable to stand on both legs, Ch�taigneraie continued to prosecute the dual with one good leg but Jarnac pulled off the same attack again and took his other hamstring, leaving him unable to stand at all and winning by default.

Ch�taigneraie refused medical attention and a sneaky underhanded and downright unsporting attack that allows an amateur to defeat a master has been called a Coup de Jarnac ever since.

A Coup de Jarnac usually requires a specific choice of weapons and had Jarnac chosen any other set of weapons he would most likely have been slughtered. A Coup de Jarnac also requires the ability to identify a fatal flaw in your opponet's technique that can easily be exploited. Jarnac accomplished this by hiring a professional who had seen Ch�taigneraie duel several times. Most amateurs won't have access to this knowledge and will simply be slaughtered while trying to apply a universal "crane kick" type solution.

Of course, in this case it isn't supperior bade choice alone that makes the differance but the choice of a blade that lends itself to a specific cheap technique and the perfection of that cheapness that leads the amateur to victory.

What I'm trying to say is that certain weapons lend themselves to specific (possibly cheap) tactics and it is these tactics that win a fight, not necessarilary the weapon itself. Likewise, some weapons are completely unsuited for certain tactics.

that's the exception that makes the rule. sure, if you are a master of a particular weapon, or you get advice from a guy who is, you might be able to pull off an awesome trick in certain circumstances. but that's a one-time deal. in most fights, it doesn't matter. the most you can say is that a particular weapon is the best for a certain set of circumstances, which i'll completely agree with. overall, though, swords is swords.

Cool. You grab that epee, and I'll just take this nodachi here...

sure, as long as we meet in a cluttered, narrow alley. i'm not denying that certain weapons are advantageous in certain situations. what i'm saying that no single weapon type is ZOMG TEH BESTEST EVAR because it's been folded with water a thousand times or whatever.

the discussion on techniques is interesting, but it's very tangential to my basic point. i don't mind discussing it, but i just want to make sure people aren't misunderstanding me (any further than has already occurred): any sword which has been competently crafted for the purpose of cuttin' people is going to serve well anyone who knows how to handle it. i make this point in response to an earlier exchange regarding the quality of european cavalry sabres versus katanas; my point being that using the weapon that can endure the most extreme tests of flexibility, durability, resistance to chipping, etcetera, isn't going to of significant aid to most fighters. yeah, it's nice that your sword won't break until the 1,000th hit as opposed to the 900th. but that only matters to two people: the general outfitting his troops, and the poor bastard whose sword is on its 899th swing. in the vast majority of cases, katana versus sabre--or whatever combination you choose--is going to be decided by who has the most skizzles, not who's got what weapon.

This is of course why everyone should buy a 27 piece sword block from Cutco.......

I'm going to have to hurt you for that. Seriously.

Japan did have metal armor although it usually consisted of lacquered and laminated leather plates with iron plates protecting the most vital areas. Iron helmets were not uncommon. However, like most people samurai didn't go around in full battle armor 24/7, they reserved it for actual battles. Generally speaking, the katana was not the primary weapon of a footsoldier. Spears were largly prefered along with a host of other weapons.

However, there were few acual battles during the Edo era after Tokugawa took power (the time period that much of the relevent fiction takes place in). This is also a time when many "flowery" and impractical styles of swordmanship sprang up and the whole warrior-philosopher thing became popular. Swords were carried as symbols of rank rather than as practical impliments of death (although they still served the latter function at times). The samurai were still warriors but without any wars to fight they had to find new ways to remain relevant (the paradoxical nature of being both a ruling class and an irrelevant one would catch up to them when renewed contact with the west sparked the Meiji revolution).

Only if the weapons are pies.

I like apple.

Make mine apple.

shouldn't you be making hyzmarca's apple?

Well, assuming that with non-lethal weapons, and the limited accuracy at any significant range, I figure that we'll both end up getting pies in the face.

That being the case "my pie" is the one hyzmarca is holding.

Let me rephrase that -- almost nobody. Only the very top-tier warriors in the battle were going to have metal armor of any significance, and even then, the metal coverage was limited; compare that to the European battlefield where iron was common enough that footmen could be equipped with chain mail, and every bloody inch of the top tier was covered in plate.

After the Tokugawa period, such armor went essentially unused, so at that point, it really does get to the point where "nobody" is wearing metal armor.