Full Version: Simplified Firearms
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
| Heavily simplified gun design rules with a few examples are always better than a table of guns. |
We'd lose too much if the design system was primary at the expense of specific gun names ("examples"). I'll live if gun design rules never get printed - it's easy enough to just make new guns up based on the existing ones like I did for my complex ammo rules. On the other hand, if the books didn't say "Ares Predator" or "FN HAR" anywhere, Shadowrun would be much less cool than it is now.
On the other hand, gun design rules would be cool, and using the gun design rules as a way of compressing the list of guns would also potentially be a good idea.
Holy SHIT! I can't beleive no one caught this...or at least no one specifically pointed it out.
| QUOTE (ixombie) |
| Shotguns are notoriously short-ranged, more-so than an SMG, but you could give one a scope and then it would have the range you'd expect of a sniper rifle. |
<emphasis mine>
This is the pinnacle of hilarity...
This is the pinnacle of hilarity...
You mean you've never used buckshot to snipe?
Nahh...the range on it is just too short because I don't have a 12x scope mounted on it. Once I get that Leupold for Christmas, look for me dropping ducks at 800 meters...
| QUOTE (Jack Kain) |
| Your system is fatally flawed, no weapon specializations and it lumps shotguns in with sniper rifles. Will you reduce all melee weapons into one per skill. Have a knife deal the same damage as a katana because they are both blades? Spell casters get to pick from a wide array of spells Hackers/Technomancers have a load of programs to pick there tactics. So why take away the gun bunnies ability to pick a weapon that fits there style. When I was building my Samurai Face. I mulled for a long time over what weapon he'd pick. There was the classical Aries Predator, the Rugar had its appeal but the SS limitation held me back. I also planned to hold a melee weapon in my other hand so I could switch combat styles freely The high tech cherry blossom caught my eye too. In the end I went for the Styler TMP. He could fire in SA to save ammo or go as far as full auto if needed. A gas vent and a smartlink then he was good to go. I also figured he could conceal a machine pistol but not an AK. What about concealiblity. Machine pistols are automatics but are little bigger then pistols. What about flavor and atmopshere. Your system lacks flavor and atmosphere. When the thug pulls out a Heavy Revolver as opposed to a holdout there should be a mechanical difference. The gunslinger who keeps a streetline in his boot so he can get past MAD detectors. The choice of weapon a gunslinger picks says alot about there style. The statement made about an Aries Predator is vastly different then that of a light pistol. You system reduces the choice of a gunfighter, the choice of his soul. To three options. And don't give any of that, "there different guns but use the same stats" bull. Flavor and atmosphere require that the hand cannon deal more damage then the hold out. SIgh I don't know I rant, you appear to be standing alone out there. |
...hear hear. Much of KK4.3's concept is centered around her Bushido Cowgirl style. Her Warhawks are styled after the RL Blackhawk which has a decidedly wild west look and feel. It wouldn't be the same if she packed a black lettered "Generic" (remember those products?) "PISTOL".
Similar for my hacker Violet. She has several different pistols for different situations, from the palm size "Lemon Squeezer" for those discrete affairs to the Ubiquitous Ares Predator (loaded with EXEX) for heavier field action.
And I have a character who uses Aresx Predators exclusively preceisely because the market is flooded with them. Because of that they are cheap, everone has one, and he throws his guns away after every mission. He buys predators in bulk form his fixer. Hell, he's sure that bums pick the guns he throws away up, rob a quicky mart with them, get caught, the guns to to evidence, where they are "lost" to some cops black market contacts, and eventualy he buys them again.
But that was the point of this thread. Flavor should not be sacrificed for (virtual) simplification.
But that was the point of this thread. Flavor should not be sacrificed for (virtual) simplification.
The problem is that, without a huge range of damage codes, there's not a lot of variation available.
You have: Damage. Range. Clip. Rate of Fire. Concealability.
You can play with those numbers, but you can't adjust damage all that much - holdouts have a range, light pistols, heavy, etc.
So you're down to playing with range (only a couple guns do that, but it's cool when they do), clip (most guns do that, it makes a huge difference to me. However, a lot of people seem to abstract ammo, which defeats that) and RoF.
I think the designers did a pretty good job, with the exception of maybe the Predator and the Alpha always being the weapons of choice in their range.
I have Ultramodern Firearms for d20 modern. The fluff in there is *awesome*. But it doesn't have any *mechanical* bits. And I don't think it can. The only thing they did to add it was create a instability mechanic, so that you could add features, that also added risk.
Hopefully Arsenal will have a system of adding bits. And really, every gun designed should boil down to "a heavy pistol with X added and Y taken out" for balance. But the fluff is important in between....
You have: Damage. Range. Clip. Rate of Fire. Concealability.
You can play with those numbers, but you can't adjust damage all that much - holdouts have a range, light pistols, heavy, etc.
So you're down to playing with range (only a couple guns do that, but it's cool when they do), clip (most guns do that, it makes a huge difference to me. However, a lot of people seem to abstract ammo, which defeats that) and RoF.
I think the designers did a pretty good job, with the exception of maybe the Predator and the Alpha always being the weapons of choice in their range.
I have Ultramodern Firearms for d20 modern. The fluff in there is *awesome*. But it doesn't have any *mechanical* bits. And I don't think it can. The only thing they did to add it was create a instability mechanic, so that you could add features, that also added risk.
Hopefully Arsenal will have a system of adding bits. And really, every gun designed should boil down to "a heavy pistol with X added and Y taken out" for balance. But the fluff is important in between....
| QUOTE (Chandon) |
| We'd lose too much if the design system was primary at the expense of specific gun names ("examples"). I'll live if gun design rules never get printed - it's easy enough to just make new guns up based on the existing ones like I did for my complex ammo rules. On the other hand, if the books didn't say "Ares Predator" or "FN HAR" anywhere, Shadowrun would be much less cool than it is now. |
That's not what we'd be losing though.
Currently, each weapon has a type and a write-up that includes damage, AP, Mode, RC, Cost, Availability, and so on. The type determines the range, and that's on p. 139, and the rest of their vital statistics are on p. 309. And what' the result? We don't have any more weapons options than Counter Strike.
Sure, it's Shadowrun Flavored because the CT get Ares Alpha and the FN HAR while the Terrorists get the AK-97 and the HK XM30 (instead of the M4A1 Colt and Steyr Aug for the CT and AK-47 and SG552 for the Terrorists) - but seriously who the fuck are we kidding?
By shifting the Damage Code (6P, -1 AP) to the Range Table we'd be freeing up two columns of space in the weapons descriptions. And holy crap, we'd be able to put those to work. Imagine for the moment that we took that 2 columns of space and turned it over to a "similar models" segment. The Ares Alpha could have similar models like the Shiawase No Dachi and the Amazonian made M115 Assassino. The FN HAR could have similar models like the Swiss manufactured Riposta Arma Veloce 68 (RAV-68) or the knock-off Ubangi-4 from the Central African Empire.
In short, we could seriously have:
- Three times as many different weapons.
- The ability to smoothely integrate the fact that NPC thugs show up with a bunch of different weapons without having to micromanage things.
And we'd get a weapon design system out the other end. Rules are at their best when they can be extrapolated from intrinsically. Whenever you have "specific weapons", or sreally specific anything, that extrapolation can't happen. At least, not easily.
General rules kick specific rules in the ass in every way all the time. They are easier to use, are useful for more things, allow for more depth of flavor text and rock the house all over the place. Seriously.
-Frank
Frank Trollman -
Moving the similar weapon stats to a single table (like the range table) would work fine, and if that resulted in their being a "Similar Weapons" column, that would be *awesome*.
I'm just pointing out that whoever's doing the typesetting needs to make *damn sure* that what happened to Spirits doesn't happen to firearms - we need to gain a "Similar Weapons" column rather than losing the "Weapon Name" column.
Moving the similar weapon stats to a single table (like the range table) would work fine, and if that resulted in their being a "Similar Weapons" column, that would be *awesome*.
I'm just pointing out that whoever's doing the typesetting needs to make *damn sure* that what happened to Spirits doesn't happen to firearms - we need to gain a "Similar Weapons" column rather than losing the "Weapon Name" column.
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman) |
| General rules kick specific rules in the ass in every way all the time. |
There are two counterpoints that need to be considered.
Some people are too lazy to actually figure out how to derive the specific rules from the general rules. It's like memorizing formulas versus deriving them in math - some people seem to like to memorize the formulas.
The second thing is something that I consider to be more relevant - a continuous system has an obvious relative maximum whereas a descrete system may have multiple relative maxima based on your optimization parameters. Err, I mean that it's easier to min-max a design system than a weapon list... i.e. no-one would ever chose the Ares Viper Slivergun if you could build it using design rules because they could build a weapon that only fired ExEx ammo instead.
There is always an optimum level of complexity, complex enough to make it worthwhile but not so complex it is wasting time. Firearms are exactly at that place to me.
Now if you want to give your character a "RandomArms X11" and use the rules for a Pred 4 I don't see any problems. It would be no different to saying you have an "anodised Pred 4", it is just fluff.
Now if you want to give your character a "RandomArms X11" and use the rules for a Pred 4 I don't see any problems. It would be no different to saying you have an "anodised Pred 4", it is just fluff.
| QUOTE (cx2) |
| Other heavy pistols: Remmie Roomsweeper: has option of standard or flechette ammo Slivergun: Flechette heavy pistol |
...I would have included that the Ares Viper is also capable of Burst fire. Yeah the target gets an additional two dice to his body + Armour pool, but several net hits means they usually end up having to shake down double digit DV.
Another addition I would make to this list is the Super Warhawk. You may only have 6 shots (so you carry two with a couple of speed loaders) but each is at a base 6DV and -2AP . Loaded with EXEX makes it quite formidable (+2/-2) for something you can conceal under your longcoat. It is also certain to at least knock down (if not out) the oppos when loaded with Gel Rounds.
Disadvantages, no barrel mounted accessories & single shot (though the RL weapon it is patterned after is a double action revolver).
Both very good points. I was only really pulling the list from memory off the top of my head, and wasn't trying to be too complete. I also never looked too closely at the slivergun. I realised afterwards I missed the super warhawk, but couldn't be arsed to add it.
| QUOTE |
| There is always an optimum level of complexity... |
For gun DESIGN, 3G3 from BTRC is about right for me. I have a thing for exponents and logarithms
For play, I thin the current stats are the bare minimum I'd go with, though the rules on their use... well maybe those could be tightened up.
Let's not confuse tightening with clarifications. Tightening the rules is removing GM discretion in matters, clarifications is removing holes and clearing up ambiguous text.
By tightening, I meant fixing it up in such a way that they won't fall apart under use. Ever drive a car with loose lug nuts? But that's just a miscommunication; I think we're on the same wavelength.
You are correct that there always needs to be room for GM discretion. And the current rules are not bad but sometimes a simpler alternative would be nice. Hence, this thread.
You are correct that there always needs to be room for GM discretion. And the current rules are not bad but sometimes a simpler alternative would be nice. Hence, this thread.
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