Quote from: Shipyard Locked;724058How about: Abstract enough to move quickly at the table for the benefit of newbies while just barely realistic enough that most reasonable gun-people and action movie aficionados won't feel uncomfortable hand waving it.

EDIT NOTE: Actually, I sort of want to see the differing opinions on gun combat here play out to their fullest, so I don't want anyone to feel like they can't argue in favor of their favorite complex system if they truly feel that it does gun combat best.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;724060Well, OK, as a frame of reference consider this old thread on WotC's boards about d20 Modern: http://community.wizards.com/forum/non-dd-tsr-and-wotc-rpg-discussion/threads/2234471 (the gun stuff starts a little later in the thread but then takes over the conversation)

Long story short, d20 modern gun combat is riddled with apparently unanticipated problems that make it both unrealistic and broken. This has made me curious about what it takes to simulate/approximate gun combat in a tabletop rpgs appropriately.

For the feel of pure action/adventure, I have to give kudos to d6 Star Wars. I do not know if the d6 RPG rules maintain that feel.

For playable realism, I have to say Traveller 4 (especially with firearms made with FF&S) and Mongoose Traveller with Cyberpunk 2013, Cyberpunk 2020, and Cybergeneration over the former.

Now, d20 Traveller has a system that is complex, but plays a lot better than it reads. If you like, PM me your email address and I will send you a copy of T20 Lite so you can judge for yourself.

I prefer simpler systems where there isnt alot of mechanics in the way.

Most bare bones basic was Gamma World where you point and zap.

Star Frontiers added for me about the right level of complexity with cover and range rules.

Boot Hill is on the to check out in depth list still.

I put a lot of effort into streamlining the Phoenix Command system down into something that I don't find too complex to keep moving around the table quickly, but still is over the top of CP2020 on realism, but it's the kind of system where it's realistic, a gunshot wound could easily put you at combat ineffective for a month or more, even without the insane lookup-tables that Phoenix Command needed and with a d20-based combat and skill system tacked over the top of it.

For something purely playable and still realistic, I'd go with Interlock (CP2020) at the top, and T20 just below that.  I don't have the direct experience with running T4 to make a recommendation, but I'd trust Jeff in his assessment of it.

EDIT:  David Johnson, I'm ashamed that you would even mention Edge of the Sword.  Terrible.  T E R R I B L E.  I got much better use out of More Guns! for 3G^3 than EOTS.

Quote from: Brad J. Murray;724075Unfortunately it involves a lot of tables, and I think dropping some of the detail would make it more fun for more people, but hell tables are fun too.

CT is two tables, armor and range matrix, but usually one has them memorized; but that might be a lot? Not that I think that the combat is totally realistic, but the abstraction is acceptable.

Part of the whole argument is somewhat skewed by people's perception of what is real, generally speaking, bullets "stab people to death". However, people often have other influences, such as Hollywood, which treat bullets unrealistically, like people flying backwards from being shot.

Quote from: dragoner;724061For me, from what I have seen, I liked Classic Traveller the best, it is rather elegant in being quick and deadly, though for some people I know it falls too close to being too abstract and too deadly. But basically it is a (2d6) to hit with mods, then straight weapon damage. It is also adapted into a board game with Snapshot, which is not so bad. Neither satisfy the crunch fiends though.

I will second the Classic Traveller opinion regarding best, with Savage Worlds as second, but Corps and EABA get good recommendations as well.  Gurps is very good as well, but it's a bit too complex with all the options on to make it a good simulation.

My issue is that a lot of systems seem to confuse detail, death spirals, or even lethality with realism.  I want a system that can handle the guy you empty your gun into who proceeds to knife you near to death, finally dying from the first bullet you put through his heart.  I also want it to handle the guy who dies after getting shot in the foot, having gone into shock at being injured.

I want tactical options that matter, suppressive fire that works; and a cop and robber shooting pistols at each other from ten feet away with no one getting hit.  I also want snipers able to hit targets over a mile away.  I also want results that match experiences I've had or seen while hunting.

And I want it to be simple and quick to play  

After all that I tend towards abstract over detailed because abstract can be interpreted to match the wildly varying results of gun combat.  Both CT and SW seem to fit all this the best.  Objectively I think SW might actually do it better (though quite cinematically), but CT manages to nonetheless feel like a better system.

Top Secret S.I had a decent system as well.

For gritty highly realistic gun combat, at least in be Wild West genre its hard to beat Aces and Eights.

CP2020 will always stand out, to me, as THE good firefight rpg. Cool, fun, extremely lethal and still very simple and smooth to play. It'd be a great system for more modern tech thrillers too I think, if extremely lethal w/o high-tech armor & cyber. Love that system.

GURPS would likely be in second place. Less lethal, but still dangerous, and the fun thing about firearms in GURPS is that while it doesn't take a lot of training to be kinda decent with them, it does take a lot of training to be all action hero/western hero with them.

Quote from: Brander;724123I want a system that can handle the guy you empty your gun into who proceeds to knife you near to death, finally dying from the first bullet you put through his heart.  I also want it to handle the guy who dies after getting shot in the foot, having gone into shock at being injured.

An ordinary old hit point system will do this. He hits 0HP, he drops, exactly why who cares, he's down. You don't to simulate the whole physiology, just the effects.

Of course if you want that, then you will also want that most shots miss. For example, looking at NYPD data, only about 15% of shots fired by police officers hit, this is despite the fact that 88% of incidents happened within 7 yards; only 38% hit within two yards, and this drops off rapidly with further distance.  [source]. (Interestingly, the more police there, the more each officer fires, and the less often each hits). As far as I recall other studies, suspects tend to fire more rounds and achieve about half the hits.

So really you could just say your character is "trained" or "untrained", if they're trained roll 1d6, get 6 and they hit; if they're untrained roll 1d12 and if you get 12 they hit.

There are statistics involved showing how remarkably few people drop and are helpless the moment they're hit by a single round, but I think you get the point, which is:

Nobody wants to sit there waiting for their turn to miss. So you don't want to be rolling for each round, you need to abstract things somewhat, like D&D's one minute round covering a series of strikes, only one of which has a good chance of doing significant damage.

Or you could choose to roll for each round and have them hit more often, but they're you're simulating a movie or something, not reality.

And of course, if you have physical reality, why not legal and psychological? And then we get into self-defence shootings being looked into by homicide investigations, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and all that kind of thing.

Nobody wants realism. They think they do, but they don't. Keep it abstract and unrealistic.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;724154Nobody wants realism. They think they do, but they don't. Keep it abstract and unrealistic.

This really can't be stressed enough IMO.

What people actually want is versi-whatchacallit. Stuff being vaguely believable.

Just in case anyone's interested, RuneQuest 6 has a free expansion on firearms, from black powder to phasers ... I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but it seems like a solid set of rules. Handy for anyone using anything BRP derived (for example, you could take some ideas out of it for Call of Cthulhu if you find your investigators are the types to get into extended gun-battles ...). Also just worth a look as a medium crunch effort at modelling fire-fights, with an attempt at capturing something both playable and semi-realistic ....

http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/resources/RQ%20Firearms.pdf

Not a gun expert, but Cyberpunk 2020 was kinda fun/believable.

Quote from: artikid;724160Not a gun expert, but -

You don't have to be. Usually they miss, so what they do when they hit really is not as important as getting them to hit in the first place.

I'm a stone partisan of GURPS, and felt the way it handled guns in its 1st edition was OK, but from 3rd edition on I've felt it just damn cumbersome.  I was, recently, in a rather painful high-tech campaign where three of the characters were gunslingers, and sat through way too many debates on how things were working, crunching through firearms minutiae, and so on.  (Heck, I created a gun-aversive martial artist to avoid having to LEARN the damn 4th edition gun rules.)

I haven't seen too many other systems, but there must be a better way to build that mousetrap.

Stargrunt II.