I'd rather a simple system that's easy to houserule than one that tries to have rules for everything from walking down the street to string theory. This is part of the reason why the only D20 system I actually like right now is Castles and Crusades. Very simple rules, no skills, no feats, no multi-classing ect. but it's very easy to tweak the system and make it your own. I guess it's just different takes on the same thing. You say lots of optional rules I shudder and think D&D with a stack of splatbooks up to my neck, when I say abstracton=teh winna! I'm probably just coming at it from a different perspective than you.

Edit:
For example in the C&C game I ran a while back I let characters split their primes, and I did multi classing by letting players pick from an expanded list of classes that included classes like "Fighter/Wizard" (Battlewizard) and "Wizard/Thief" (Nightshade).

I know of other DM's that use skill systems, feat systems, even a few who've made prestige classes. The entire point of the game is that you fiddle with it until it becomes something you're happy with. The basic system is robust enough to survive a great deal of tweakeing without the wheels falling off. In D&D by contrast try removing a single rule, say Attacks of Oppertunity from your game. All of a sudden dozens of feats are useless, you need to make up a new rule for withdrawing from combat (even if it is as simple as "If you withdraw your enemy gets a free attack"), and all sorts of other rule problems trickle down from this one single change.

You don't need tons of optional rules. You just need choice.

There needs to be mechanics that define the difference between things, and why some things are better at certain tasks than others.

Think of it like tools. If the rules say that you can use a screwdriver as a drill, a hammer, AND a screwdriver, but don't give you any penalties for doing that, why would you ever use anything but a screwdriver? IRL, it makes no sense to use a screwdriver as a hammer or a drill, but if the rules don't reflect this, everyone is going to do it.

Incomplete coverage makes playing expensive. There are ways to add coverage that can be bad, but in general, increasing coverage by itself is almost never bad.

~J

Well, with d20 they tried to give a basic, core system that had all kinds of extra aftermarket parts that you could slap on or leave off as you like. The problem is, at the same time they presented their game as "all about the player's desires" and basically created a culture in which whiny people that haven't ever DM'd before sit around complaining on the WotC boards that their DM (who works two jobs and has a family) won't "bother" to learn another entire book of addiitonal rules so that he can play his twinkinator.

The culture killed of the versatility of the rules. That need not be the case, but I'd wager that anyone that started on d20 would complain just as loudly that their Shadowrun GM doesn't feel like reading Toolset 15: Realistic Firearms.

So wait, let me see if I can get my head around what you're saying here.
You're saying that lots and lots of good rules....are actually better, than the same lots and lots of lousy rules? Is that right?
Man, that's deep. I'm gonna have to...wow...I mean, I need to think about this. Like, seriously.

I was going to write a reply to this thread and then I scrolled down and saw that mfb wrote it for me. I think I share his views exactly on this matter.

Or, having a good simulationist detailed system isn't automatically crappier than having a good abstractist simple system.

Since people were complaining that lots of rules were too difficult to master.

I'd rather have something and not need it, than need it and not have it. I'd prefer to spend my money on a rulebook that has a bunch of optional stuff already there, printed up in it, than to have to just make all that shit up on my own, basically. There reaches a point of diminishing returns when people attempt realism (through rules detail) in gameplay, for sure -- but I'd say there also reaches a point where it's just stupid to pay good money for a gamebook if every page is full of vague ideas and hints about how to run their game, and you're beat over the head with the "GM FIAT" thing.

At what point are you a sucker for buying a rulebook without any rules, or a gamebook without a game in it?

I'll be honest, in that I can't recall which book it was (Street Magic or the core SR4 book), but I seem to remember some 4th Edition stuff with a page or so dedicated to some optional rules, stuff in a grey-tinted box, all listed as optional. I recall similar in SR3 (for instance, a rule that didn't reduce Drain Force by 1/2, stuff like that). Just little boxes of text with some suggested house rules, optional stuff, "Do you want more lethal combat? Try this. Less lethal combat? Do this instead."

I love stuff like that.

I fully agree that non-gunbunny sorts might not care that a sniper rifle should be absolutely fucking ridiculous to try and clear a house with. I understand that folks who don't know about guns in real life might worry more about "cool factor" than "how guns actually work," and all that stuff. That's fine. I understand where they're coming from (being not-a-car-buff, I imagine there are people out there that have the same frustrations I do, but concerning vehicle/chase rules, and stuff like that, instead).

But I don't see what it would kill for a game company to put forth a little fucking effort and research, and introduce -- even, or especially, as optional rules -- a few little tweaks to make firearms more realistic. Particularly in a game where gunplay is what so many sessions come down to, like in Shadowrun. Melee combat, too, for that matter (instead of everyone having to house rule the cyberlimb melee damage compared to bone lacing nonsense, why not just list it as an optional rule somewhere to make it semi-official?). Maybe they're just afraid it would be like admitting their basic firearm rules have nothing to do with firearms, I dunno.

Changes to how rate of fire works (seriously, two shots in three seconds is pitifully slow, and I won't even get into autofire) would be a good start. A shift in some damage codes, maybe even a hit location system. Recoil being reworked, maybe. Stuff like that I'd love to see as optional rules, given just a page or two and called "ADVANCED COMBAT OPTIONS" or something.

I don't see what those little boxes of tinted text, full of optional rules, hurt. I'd rather get my ideas for house rules from the guys that made the game, than from other disenchanted players on a message board. I'm a canon guy. I dig canon games. I like to feel like my games are "real" or "official" by playing by published rules. Even if it's an optional rule (like blast damage in SR3), I can at least feel like it's still real, because it's right there in a book.

i'm reasonably certain we're here to discuss rules coverage, not edge cases in personal philosophies.

Ah, but the thread isn't primarily about house rules, is it? Most accurately, it's about what ought to be in canon so house rules are minimally or non-necessary. (See, mfb? (and the dunner)? It's completely on topic.)

Where canon agrees with our personal logic, no problem. Where there is a lapse in rules that agrees with our personal logic, no problem. But where canon disagrees, or where there is a lapse in rules that runs counter to our idea of how the game system should run: do we accept that there might have been a reason for the way those rules were written or not written? or do we automatically superimpose our own idea of how the game world should be?

If some of those rules in a generally well-devised system do not conform to what we think should be the case, do we re-consider our own opinions? or do we mark the writer of that section of the rules as "stupid"?

Not necessarily—sometimes rules just get tossed out there to see if anyone thinks the basic idea has merit.

After re-considering our own opinions, we mark those rules as stupid if they're still found to deserve it. They're more likely to deserve it if they're gratuitously expensive (in the not-cost sense), or if their design philosophy contradicts the design philosophy of rules in another area of the same system. A great example of this is the relatively detailed Electronics Warfare rules as compared to the abstracted-beyond-usefulness Sensor Rating. One belongs in a comparatively simulationist game, one in an abstract fast-play game. They do not belong in the same game, so some amount of stupidity somewhere along the line can be assumed.

~J

I know that's hyperbole, but most of what I've seen suggested on these boards is far from that extreme. The majority of "firearms realism" threads center around these particular issues:

1. Full Autofire rules need to be more representative of how automatic works/is used in real life.

2. Recoil rules need to be more detailed. As it stands, the PJSS Elephant rifle experiences less recoil than the Colt America L36 light pistol. WTF? Felt recoil influences firearm choices in the real world. It should do the same in SR.

3. Weapons of the same type use the same ammo... This horse has been in the torture chamber since 2nd edition. It's a cheap cop out that the devs formulated to keep them from having to do the smallest bit of research, and it is actually quite easily fixed. I've done it for 3 iterations of the rules.

4. Weapon damage ratings need to be internally consistent, if not consistent with real-world findings. Yes, there should be more granularity to firearms stats/dmg codes.

I don't expect the rule books to have a dissertation on terminal ballistics, but I do expect them to go through the trouble of making guns more than marginally representative of their real-world counterparts. ESPECIALLY in a system that focuses so intently on gun-battles.

Fringeworthy has rules for wind shear on individual shotgun pellets.

That said, the big issue is, like Critias and TheOneRonin implied, rules should not surprise you. Heavy Pistols uniformly doing more damage than Assault Rifles is surprising. Being able to fit two fighter jets in a Heavy Transport is surprising (but not nearly as surprising as being able to fit two Heavy Transports in a Heavy Transport!). An average person passing out after carrying 16 kilos for a few minutes is surprising.

So on and soforth.

~J

They already solved this problem, they just succumbed to the lure of the Devil and made it an optional rule. The staging-by-half-Power-dice rule makes close-range blasts Deadly without needing weird variable damage codes.

~J

You can actually chuck "real world" ammo classifications right out the window if you want to, and still be realistic about it, because (a) metric's taken over so everything will be a millimeter based designation, making it a lot easier for non-gun-folks to keep track, just "bigger number is better" (so the confusion about 10mm vs. .40 cal, for instance, is gone), and (b) all ammo is caseless now, anyways, which (combined with metric taking over) means you have a convenient excuse/reason for the diameter of every round to have shifted slightly.

Speaking only for myself (before I got "into" guns), that was always one of the biggest confusing factors to me. 12 gauge versus .45 caliber versus 9 millimeter versus...what, now? Ditching the American inch-based measurements would only leave shotguns out in the cold, other than that it would be a little simpler (the bigger the number, the bigger the bullet).

I see what you did there

Whoa! Is that for when Harry Potter joins the Royal Marines, comes back, and decides to just shoot Voldermort using magical cartridges?