So, I was able to attend some local simunitions training for civilians, which is a very rare and special thing. I shoot competitively, but I was able to experience some Creepwoodrun during an active shooter scenario. Below is an exerpt of a write-up I did for myself.
[ Spoiler ]
During the first town hall meeting scenario of the day, I was partnered with a student, who I will call Bob, playing the armed citizen, and I was playing the role of a minor in his care. After the politician entered the room and began speaking, someone in the crowd became agitated, approached the podium, and opened fire. The armed citizen tried to pull me to safety behind some cover off the the left of our seats, but I was already going at a pretty good clip, and he tripped over me. I spent the whole rest of the scenario cowering behind cover, hearing the POP POP POP primers going off of the sim guns being fired, the sounds of sim rounds impacting the walls, and I could smell the gunsmoke. I have a very active imagination so it was actually very scary to me. I think it was the scent of gunsmoke that really got my mind going, because I smell it every time I shoot in competition, and of course with real primers detonating it smelled absolutely real. I remember feeling trapped because I felt I was too close to the shooter to break cover and run for it without being hit, and thinking, "My god, he's so close! Hasn't anyone hit him yet!?", as I kept hearing POP POP POP POP POP. Since I was flattening myself behind cover I couldn't see what was going on either, which also made it scary.
Later on, Bob told me what had happened. As we got clear of the seats, he tripped over me, he fell on onto his back, and he tried to draw his Glock and get up to engage the shooter. However, he could not get up, and didn't know why. Another student told us that Bob's head bumped on a table that he had fallen under, and that's why he hadn't been able to get up. So, finding himself unable to get up, Bob opened fire from a prone shooting position on the active shooter. Bob is a big, big competitor and he's a fast and deadly accurate shot, but this time, he fired like ten rounds, and managed to hit the bad guy once or twice. I think he only hit the bad guy in the hand or something ridiculous like that. There were all these paint spatters on the wall to the right of the shooter. The huge volume of misses from someone who is capable of shooting very well is an amazing testament to how accuracy can go to hell under stress.
As the second scenario rolled around, I played the role of the armed citizen, and Bob was my minor relative. The setup was very similar. As the disturbance started to get bad (it only took a few seconds to go from bad to worse!) I nudged Bob and told him, "Get out of here!", and he did. I had a plan all laid out in my mind from years of playing SWAT 4. I would continue to sit in the audience, and I would wait for the aggressive man to produce a firearm. When he did, and pointed in at someone else, I would stand up so I could flawlessly quick draw like I do in competition all the time, and bellow in a manly Chuck Norris voice, "Drop the weapon!". And then, when he turned on me, or opened fire on the politician, BOOM HEADSHOT, just like when I hit steel in competition.
Except that's not what happened. In the first place, by the time I nudged Bob and told him to get out of here, everyone else was already in the process of running away, and there was movement swirling all around us. I must have looked ridiculous just sitting there observing the aggressive person.
I knew that I couldn't legally shoot the man unless he made the threat of deadly force, so I just sat there, being careful not to touch or go for my Glock. I saw the man draw and I started to get up, but before I could do anything he had already opened fire on the politician. As an aside, I was so wired at this point in time that I totally neglected to check what was happening behind me or look for other bad guys, and arguably I didn't really have time.
So I drew as quickly as I could, but since I was working with an unfamiliar holster and and gun, my grip was terrible. It was way too low, so my Glock was pointed slightly downwards and I for a moment I saw the shooter in my rear sights, and I never acquired my front sight during the whole scenario. I meant to yell, "Drop the weapon!", just like in SWAT 4, after getting the guy in my nicely aligned sights, but things didn't work out that way. Somehow I just yelled, "Hey!", instead, as I pointed in, with terrible/nonexistent sight picture and crappy grip.
I saw the shooter start to point in on me. His extended arms seemed to be rotating towards me in slow motion, his Glock in his hands looking so menacing I felt like I was watching the turret of a tank turn towards me in slow motion. I think he was maybe ten feet or so away from me, and as I tried to aim better at him, I knew once he started pointing at me that I would be able to hit him. It just felt right. I fired maybe 4 or 5 shots, and hit him 3 times. They weren't really good hits but I did hit him, in the pelvis, somewhere else, and then somehow finally in his right shoulder. I must have been subconsciously continuing to adjust while shooting. He returned fire on me and fired multiple shots, but he didn't hit me, except for one graze across my left upper rib cage. He went down after I hit him in the shoulder. I guess he felt that my other hits wouldn't have been incapacitating, which is fair enough. Go me for continuing to fire until the threat was neutralized! I actually can't believe I hit him with the grip that I'd had. I feel good that I can apparently trust my instinct about whether or not I have a shot, even under less than ideal conditions.
A moment later, behind me, I heard someone who sounded like a cop tell me to drop the weapon, so without looking back, I immediately dropped the Glock, and complied with the officer commands. Go me for not getting shot by the cop!
Well, I have gone to the mountain, and I have seen Creepwoodrun.
My critique of Creepwoodrun is that if the player characters are the "bad guys" and they're the ones executing the raid or attack or whatever, if anyone is going to be Creepwoodrunning like I was, it's going to be the guys who are getting hit, and not the player characters. If anything the player characters will bust in with guns drawn, a plan, good firing grips, and they're going to be more accurate, pulled together, and situationally aware than the people who they're rolling, i.e. corporate security or whomever. If you actually wanted to go and implement Creepwoodrun in, say, SR3, you could simply rewrite/enhance the surprise rules to assign Perception and TN penalties for people who are considered to be surprised or off-balanced. Figure out a way to implement, in terms of the rules, how a security guard who is in the middle of pouring himself a cup of coffee when the windows blow in can't just roll init, use a free action to drop the coffee pot, and then be blasting away with his carbine without penalties.
Phoenix Command did something a little like this where it would cost you actions, basically, to turn and face a particular direction, or to assume a proper firing stance. The gunfights tended to play out like extremely slow and mathematical sessions of Rainbow Six 3 for PC. But to my knowledge they didn't specifically have rules for being off balance in the way I was in the sims scenario.
My other thought is that LARPing with airsoft would be terrific. I don't LARP, and I honestly wouldn't, because I'd feel kind of silly doing so in the context of "high fantasy". But I think I'd have a lot of fun doing some kind of modern-setting airsoft or paintball LARP.
