I'm writing the player handout for my next game. I've just written the following sentence:
"We're actually keeping track of ammunition this game."

But I'm afraid I don't really have a good way of doing that right now. What sort of system do you all use? Spreadsheet with check boxes? Computer spreadsheet/program? Tokens? Some mechanical counter?

This might help.

Not the right game, but I've used it for a variety of systems.

my players keep a tally themselves.

I'm actually thinking of investing in a box of those hand counters they use to track attendance numbers

I think i might have better compliance if my players can get the viceral *click!* everytime they pull the trigger in game.

But till then, spreadsheets are my front runner.

I trust my players to keep track of their own ammo, too.

Now that I think of it, would it be useful to add an ammo tracking sheet to the cheat sheets?

I think it would, I trust my players to keep track of their ammo but I want to make it as painless as possible for them to do so.

Most of the time, I just ask the players to keep track of that kind of thing. Except when the characters are panicked/not used to combat situations or generally not cool-headed. In those cases I tend to count several shots for 1 shooting action and keep track of it personally.

As for the way to do it, most of the time I just use pencil and paper.

I take the "Do you feel lucky punk?" approach.

I make notes during the game anyway, so if it's important I can often reconstruct it. If it's important and I can't we simply roll a dice.

I think bullets run out whenever the story demands it. However if you have been firing three rounds of supressive fire then you run out on round four.

Make life easier for yourself. If however you feel the itch then I can recommend scrapping Shadowrun combat and just running combat in say Advanced Squad Leader or Phoenix Command.

-Chrysalis

problems arise with different shooty modes in one weapon . . SA, BF, FA . . now how many times did i do what?
but usually we keep track of everything ourselves too . .

"Keep track of your ammo. You lose track of your ammo, you had loaded a short magazine, and it's now empty. I don't care if you only got a single shot off, you only had the one in the chamber. How does that work? Magic."

*grin* I was about to suggest that very same ammo sheet, CanRay. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is probably the only game where bullet count is as important as the story. Or rather... the important part is knowing when you're OUT of bullets.

Rule #1 of zombie horror survival: Always save the last bullet for yourself.


I use that sheet for almost every game we play, -if- i am concerned about how much ammo the characters are packing.
Generally my players carry so much around in shadowrun that i don't need to even think about it. "Conserve your ammo, Trog. There's like to be a lot of them," says an NPC. Player's Character replies, "I'm not running out of ammo -this- century, chummer," and pats his bulging pockets.

Ah yes, nothing quite like the Rambo-Way of Ammo . . sling the belts around yourself untill you can't walk straight anymore, then drop one off *g*

I'm usually very liberal with ammo tracking (I've only had a couple of real running gun battles) but the next game were playing is survival oriented. Even getting regular ammunition is going to be an adventure onto itself.

So, looks like spreadsheet check boxes it is. I was kinda hoping there'd be a more exotic solution but hey, that's me making problem where there aren't any.

Oh by the way, I hope you're being funny Chrysalis, I've flipped through those books exactly once and my eyes started to hurt. I want to count rounds not calculate correalis effect and morale modifiers due to unseasonal weather.

One fast and easy, though very expensive solution to keeping track of ammo is to have each player bring a firearm and a number of high-capacity magazines equal to the number of magazines his character has. Load each magazine with blanks (equal in number to the fictional weapon's capacity) and whenever the character fires the player also fires (into a designated box full of sand or water just to be safe).

The problem with this method, other than the neighbors calling the police to report all of the gunshots and cleaning up the brass, is potential hearing lose from the noise so use ear protection.


Other than that incredibly cool yet incredibly impractical method, a dry-erase board is the only way to go. Plain paper won't work because they're going to be refilling their magazines and using different types of ammo. The amount of erasing needed is just too tedious for regular paper.

For best detail I recommend having an assortment of markers with eac color representing a different ammo type. Draw a rectangle and fill that rectangle with lines of the appropriate colors to represent the ammo stack. Also have a little box to represent the chamber. Each virtual magazine is marked with two letters representing the character who holds it and the weapon it is in if any. As the magazine feeds the weapon erase lines from the top of the magazine and draw them in the chamber as necessary. This gives you a running tally of every magazine as well as every chamber. Revolvers are represented by a several chambers and loose ammo in each character's position is can simply be written as a number.

I used to just keep a "round expended" tally for each player on a piece of scrap paper.

If you're going to count rounds, remember to count 1.) ammo weight and 2.) number of magazines. Few things are sweeter than a player getting pwnt because he has 500 rounds of ammo for his rifle but only 5 30-round magazines.

Frankly, if you're in a Shadowrun where reloading anything save a Revolver is needed, you've screwed up very badly.

Unless you're the distraction, then you screwed up accepting the 'Run in the first place.

If it's a real issue, I'd suggest mixing hyzmarca's ridiculous idea with a little sanity, and pass out poker chips. Each time the character fires, have the player toss the appropriate amount of chips into some form of receptacle.

Currently I track ammo via players with sheets. But its slow and annoying and I hate it, so I'm thinking about changing a few things

A) Adding some number to something to account for ammo costs. Maybe you buy ammo like lifestyle? So mages only firing normal bullets pay 100 yens a month or whatever, but street sammies with automatic weapons pay more. And if the street sammie just hands over ammo to the mage, he has to pay for the mages 'ammostyle'.

B) Players run out of ammo for whatever they are shooting whenever they roll a glitch, in addition to whatever else happens, whether or not they spend edge, until the end of the adventure/you'd have a chance to really get some more ammo.

Actually I played in a legendary campaign set in the Vietnam war called Charlie does not surf. Phoenix Command is the only game I know that takes into account spalling and penetration. It is just very very slow without the software that does the modeling. Yes, I am being funny.

Poker chips is actually a pretty good idea. You can make separate stacks for each magazine, have one position for the weapon's chamber, and use different color chips for different ammo types. It would probably be faster than a dry-erase board.

Now, wait a minute, Hyzmarca's idea is the pwn! Just go to Master Shooter's Supply in Las Vegas, where they've got a box of AR15 mags sitting on the floor near the counter, and get a bunch of ammunition. Pass out loaded mags to the players representing their character's equipment and have the players remove rounds from the magazines as they fire! Wow, talk about atmospheric.

I like it. But then, I'm kinda crazy. Style over substance, baby.

All of these fail in that nobody can actually keep track of ammo in a fight. For that matter, almost nobody can keep track of it is a high pressure simulation, like a shoot house with an instructor following you. Which is why the general recommendation is reload any time you get done shooting at someone and have a few seconds.

Oh come on. What is fail about having a bunch of rifle magazines on the gaming table with little 5.56 cartridges rolling everywhere that actually correspond in some way to action in the game?

Yes, you can; it is called Smartlink. For those without Smartlinked weapons, you could always call for a memory test to see if the character's know how much ammo is left, but that just bogs down the game.

Out of game, keeping track of ammo is important for various reasons.

Not really. Aside from being a 'tax' on street sammies, and maybe it miight be important in some very occasional runs in special circumstances, the

'how much ammo do you carry into fights' thread revealed that no-one runs out of ammo, ever.

I leave my players to keep track of their ammo. They all know that if I catch them cheating their gun misfires and blows up their hand (Unless they spend on edge). I only keep track myself when I suspect a cheater, which I haven't yet, but I often pretend to.

"Maximum Barrel Life exceeded, please return to service facility for replacement to allow further weapon operation. OK?"

Currently we use potato chips, before the run, each player transfers a number of chips to a ziploc bag equal to the amount of ammo carried. Every time a shot is fired, the player eats a chip.

This has the unfortunate side effect of turning our once pacifistic face-decker into an aggressive shooter (as he puts it, he needs to eat too).

Even non-smart guns have ammo counters in Shadowrun. If you've got smartlink, and AR, you literally have the video game ammo counter on your HUD.

Yea, and the chip in your clips means you have 29/30R 3R/1APDS/1S&S on your HUD and not just the current clip.

Indeed. I do think that SR4 with its AR would feel a lot like living in a FPS/MMOG game today, all sorts of menus and chat channels, IM and mail and vent available.

Actually if you think about DNI and knowsoft, it might even be possible to just know the amount of bullets left.

Poker chips sound like an excellent solution to my problem, they stack, they're easy to keep track of, they come in attractive colors. I'm also tweaking the power level so I expect that there'll be a great deal more shooting and less "I called shot to his face and roll YES dice pool". We'll see.

If not we could use the Advanced Squad Leader rules and use the chips for... you know, poker when the GM is busy trying to figure out if the riggers HEP round produced significant or profound spalling...

Players should help the Gm by tracking their own ammo. If they don't, I think there are some obvious glitch scenarios.

Thanks for the AFMBE ammo sheet, fellas. Nice for those of us not familiar with it. I suspect that there will be a SR4 specific one appearing on a Shadowrun resources website we know and love very soon. I look forward to that.

mmm... I would like to share some of my recent gaming experience, related to the topic of ammo and ammo counts;

a. most players in my games keep track of their ammo somehow, basically with notes on paper.
b. that being said, almost all combat situations are very stressful for the characters and their players, so sometimes they forget to cross out their spent bullets because they are too worried rolling damage resistance rolls. I mean, almost all combats where the runners did not ambush the opposition, said combats are not stressful and usually are over by the end of pass 1.
c. I do keep track of everyone's ammo counts, in my head, while rolling the opposition dice, and I really don't know how it sticks in my memory. I suppose I relish the pleasure to tell the runners the "careful! you have only two bullets left in that smargun clip".
d. "clic!" happens quite a lot in my games.

The latest example, last saturday one team was hired to destroy a cargo of chinese Kong chips which was coming to Seattle's harbour. They ended up getting a small boat and assaulting the cargo freighter. The guys with Pistols (hacker, orc samurai, mage) did not have any problems; after all, the hacker was really wounded after some cybercombat at the triad's system and spent the whole lenghty assault hiding behind cover and taking some potshots with his predator; he even hit his marks a couple times. The mage did not have the time nor the inclination to use his Ares Viper, he spent the whole combat blasting away with spells until he dropped the triad's troll. The orc sammy shot a couple times with his predator, but after the assault he got involved in some melee combat with multiple opponents, so he had to resort to his spur and let it loose close and personal. Now, the last runner, a troll samurai ate through a couple ingram smartgun clips (suppresive fire, plus some autofire passes on the freighter) AND a couple Mossberg clips; basically a couple full bursts on the chinese troll adept. A quick calculation says that about 150 rounds were spent in that single combat, counting the triads scorpions fire... Great fun!

Cheers!

Max

You mean you're not going to use real magazines full of bullets?

Of course we'll be using actual magazines! That's a fantastic idea! Oh yes, and we'll check our weapons out from the armory along with the M4/simunition receivers load them full of simunition lipstick rounds and shoot at local nationals for added realism!

Brilliant! Next weeks game we'll be replacing the typical damage track with simply throwing players out of a moving vehicle. The speed of the vehicle will reflect the amount of damage the player needs to soak! Hooray!

Shooting at local nationals might be a bit excessive.

I think that the GM has really got to keep track of the ammo rather than the players. There's so much notations that need to be made anyway of everyone's combat pool and so forth that the ammo is just another notch on the scrap paper. If you don't wanna book keep use real magazines.

Doc, don't you think you're over-reacting to the idea of just having a few loaded magazines on the table? What you're proposing is closer to LARPing Shadowrun using MILES or something.

EDIT: Maxhunter, if I were one of your players I'd just say that my character loads tracers as the first three rounds he slides into the magazine. That way there would be visual cues when there's only 2 and 1 rounds left.

I'd like to think this is all very tongue in cheek. Perhaps I'm seeing sarcasm where there isn't any.

I'm also trying to mentally justify having actual magazines at my gaming table for any reason. I'm not being at all successful.

"Because it's cool." That's the only justification you really need for anything.

But they look so comfortable safely stacked in my wall locker...

I used to run an elven phys ad that used paired Ruger Thunderbolts. Talk about burning through ammo. He was fast enough that he was spending one of his phases every turn to reload both guns. However, the four shots of 14S (SR2 at the time) every phase when loaded with EX explosive rounds was well worth the time he spent reloading. Generally though, fights didn't seem to last past a second combat turn.

As for tallying ammo in general, I make everyone keep track of what they have on them in terms of clips and what they have left in each gun. Beyond that, it just becomes more trouble than its worth.

The smell of cleaning solvents with a hint of gun oil, or alternately the smell of powder residue is very evocative...

It's at this point that I further lament living in Canada.

We can only have pistol magazines that have 10-rounds max, and rifle mags that are 5-rounds.

Trust me, lots of SMLE owners are pissed a that! Oh, and hey, look at that, it's one of the most common "Hunting Rifles" in Canada!