Arightly,

Shotguns have to be one of my most favorite weapons both in RL and while playing a runner in Shadowrun. My present character is a rigger that when not in his truck driving for the team is wearing a worn out straw hat like Tobby Keith, A full length duster and snake skin boots. His favorite weapon is a good old side-by-side shotgun. The first time reading through the rules as we were first getting into the game system I was impress that the game included shotgun chokes and rule for spread etc. As I read more closely I saw how unlike RL they were. So I have been on this kick working on a way to make shotguns a bit more realistic and yet still fun and an interesting part of the game system.

I present a method in my first post on this subject. The system maintained a very close resemblance to the game mechanic as present in the book but made it somewhat more realistic. See the below link to the thread for more on that.

http://invision.dumpshock.com/index.php?sh...wtopic=3126&hl=

Well in a continuing effort to come up with a simple but realistic system I present a table. Hmmm… a Table, some people love’em some hate’em but many game system use them so I would like to see what you guys think of this table for shotguns firing buckshot

http://my.stratos.net/~thedump/odds/sheet003.htm

The ranges across the top are in meters.

Down the side is the chock, I only did 4 different chokes, Full, Modified, Improved Cylinder, and Cylinder. You probably could do more but I though this was good enough to start with, the two most notable chokes left out are Skeet (between Cylinder and Improved Cylinder) and Improved Modified (between Full and Modified) but than again Hasting brand chokes tubes make like 12 or more different chokes between extra full and cylinder.

The chart contains the damage, plus to hit due to pattern size, and approximate pattern size to the closes 0.2 meters for each choke at range increments of 5 meters out to 60 meters.

The chart assumes we are talking about buckshot in the 04 - 000 range of sizes. There is a note at the bottom for using birdshot. I have adjusted power and damage level due to both range (ie velocity lost) and the fact that as the pattern spreads you will hit the kill zone of a meta-human size target with a smaller percent of the entire pattern. The spreadsheet I used to generate this table is a bit on the large and obnoxious side but the resulting table seemed to give a reasonable result.

This chart has not been play tested and I am sure I have over look a couple of things do to that. I would greatly appreciate any input, comments or suggestions.

Thanks
mcb

You see, on Dumpshock you have to either change the system and rules significantly to some end -- usually realism, sometimes superheroism or something else -- to get any kind of feedback. Then at least you might get a grunt of approval from some of the local gun freaks, and the screams of disapproval from several people who don't think the rules should be changed, at least not that radically.

A small change, such as what you're suggesting, doesn't provoke a lot of interest from either direction, because it's not radical enough. Also, there have been so many discussions about the shotgun rules that most people have already made up their minds and are not exactly open for anything new.

Personally, I'm too traumatized by the canon choke system to really consider anything like it. Ignoring that, your system gives results very similar to my current rules (4/4/5/6 TNs, 10D/7S/5M/4L at 20/40/60/80 I think it was, don't have the papers in front of me), but in a much more complex manner. It does help with the rather coarse dropping of the Damage Code, because yours is dependant on choke brackets instead of ranges.

It's nice if you hate the canon shot rules but want to fiddle with choke. Is there some in-game effect from the spread, or is that just for "fluff"?

I haven't got much else to say, since I'm one of those who aren't very open for anything new...

My system for fixing the choke rules basically consisted of changing the choke range from 2-10 to 10-20. Not totally realistic, but more so... and also a really easy change to implement when you have to explain it to the players.

[theartthief sneaks into this post]

<snip>

Don't even get me started on why a double barrel only does +2 power more the a single barrel.

With our game we decided that using a double barrel would let you fire two shots in SA mode or BF, all be it a short burst. This sort of made sense to me not from a real life point of view but from a balance POV. If you fire in SA mode you got two attacks at 10S but if fired in BF your got 12S with one attack. It really only make sense to use BF when attacking a target with armor were the extra power would make it more likely to punch through the armor. Otherwise your better off just firing the barrels in quick succession at a target an make to simple attacks.

Many modern double barrel shotgun are not capable of fire both barrels (BF) at the same time. Depending on if your shotgun has a double triggers or a single trigger.


Shrike30

We are actively playing a very similar system to yours. We change the choke choices from 2-10 to 10-30 by steps of 5. This gives you 5 selection roughly corresponding to the standard choke selections of Cylinder, Improved Cylinder, Modified, Improved Modified and Full choke. The spread and damage are still a bit generous compared to real life but is was a very simple change that made it a lot better than the way it is presented in the book

mcb