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Author Topic: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs  (Read 16718 times)

GeekyBugle

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #30 on: April 26, 2021, 09:27:14 PM »
I'm in the "depends on the game" camp. For some games (e.g., Call of Cthulhu), I want a more abstract approach. For other games (e.g., The Morrow Project), I kinda like a more detailed approach.

For a Pulp game?
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Kyle Aaron

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #31 on: April 26, 2021, 11:20:51 PM »
My adult daughter's a paramedic and bit of a gamer, I just ran her through a Conflict scenario and we were discussing this thread.

She recently had a job where a guy had been assaulted with a crowbar. Both hands broken (defensive wounds), and the skull cracked, swollen - the intensive care paramedic couldn't intubate him, they had to take him to a hospital for an anaesthetist to do it. A crowbar.

She is the firm opinion that calibre doesn't mean shit. "You take one in the head and you're gone," she said.
"How about trunk?"
"Fifty-fifty. Half the time you're gone, the other half the time you're back after 18 months or so."
"Leg?"
"Your dancing days are over. Better hope you keep your balls."

Sorry, paramedics are brutal like that.
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GeekyBugle

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #32 on: April 26, 2021, 11:30:35 PM »
My adult daughter's a paramedic and bit of a gamer, I just ran her through a Conflict scenario and we were discussing this thread.

She recently had a job where a guy had been assaulted with a crowbar. Both hands broken (defensive wounds), and the skull cracked, swollen - the intensive care paramedic couldn't intubate him, they had to take him to a hospital for an anaesthetist to do it. A crowbar.

She is the firm opinion that calibre doesn't mean shit. "You take one in the head and you're gone," she said.
"How about trunk?"
"Fifty-fifty. Half the time you're gone, the other half the time you're back after 18 months or so."
"Leg?"
"Your dancing days are over. Better hope you keep your balls."

Sorry, paramedics are brutal like that.

Yep, that's correct when you're talking only about ppl. Not the same thing when it involves vehicles made of real steel.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #33 on: April 27, 2021, 12:23:44 AM »
Yes, that's vehicle combat. Another kettle of fish.
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GeekyBugle

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #34 on: April 27, 2021, 12:41:01 AM »
Yes, that's vehicle combat. Another kettle of fish.

More like a can of worms, but hey, I already opened it, no turning back.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #35 on: April 27, 2021, 12:48:11 AM »
In most roleplaying games - as opposed to pure tactical games - vehicle combat is irrelevant. That's because in personal combat we may have 1-2 PCs die, but in vehicle combat the whole damn party dies. When 1-2 PCs die, the players roll up another and the party moves on. When the whole party dies, the campaign ends - and maybe the game group, too.

The vehicle combat of most games forms a MARP - much-admired (or argued), rarely-played.
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GeekyBugle

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #36 on: April 27, 2021, 01:20:31 AM »
In most roleplaying games - as opposed to pure tactical games - vehicle combat is irrelevant. That's because in personal combat we may have 1-2 PCs die, but in vehicle combat the whole damn party dies. When 1-2 PCs die, the players roll up another and the party moves on. When the whole party dies, the campaign ends - and maybe the game group, too.

The vehicle combat of most games forms a MARP - much-admired (or argued), rarely-played.

I agree, but I will still put the rules there, it's up to the GM to use them or not.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #37 on: April 27, 2021, 01:27:42 AM »
One thing I'd encourage is "training scenarios." I'm putting this as referee advice in my game. Have the party run through training scenarios - just assume laser tag systems or whatever. They then get the feel of how the system works.

I just had my daughter run through one - a pair of PCs going into a building to take out a baddie. The baddie blew them both away. Now she can reconsider her tactics for the next training scenario. And once a few of those are done, into the "reality" - where the PCs can now die.

Do that for vehicle combat and the party will avoid vehicle combat :)
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GeekyBugle

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #38 on: April 27, 2021, 01:33:32 AM »
One thing I'd encourage is "training scenarios." I'm putting this as referee advice in my game. Have the party run through training scenarios - just assume laser tag systems or whatever. They then get the feel of how the system works.

I just had my daughter run through one - a pair of PCs going into a building to take out a baddie. The baddie blew them both away. Now she can reconsider her tactics for the next training scenario. And once a few of those are done, into the "reality" - where the PCs can now die.

Do that for vehicle combat and the party will avoid vehicle combat :)

LOL, that's actually not bad advice when dealing with new players or new systems.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #39 on: April 27, 2021, 03:06:12 AM »
It's especially useful in settings where there are no cure light wounds or raise dead spells.
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oggsmash

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #40 on: April 27, 2021, 06:03:12 AM »
My adult daughter's a paramedic and bit of a gamer, I just ran her through a Conflict scenario and we were discussing this thread.

She recently had a job where a guy had been assaulted with a crowbar. Both hands broken (defensive wounds), and the skull cracked, swollen - the intensive care paramedic couldn't intubate him, they had to take him to a hospital for an anaesthetist to do it. A crowbar.

She is the firm opinion that calibre doesn't mean shit. "You take one in the head and you're gone," she said.
"How about trunk?"
"Fifty-fifty. Half the time you're gone, the other half the time you're back after 18 months or so."
"Leg?"
"Your dancing days are over. Better hope you keep your balls."

Sorry, paramedics are brutal like that.

 Out of curiosity, how many gunshots does she see a year in your part of the woods?  I think her odds are a bit too skewed to death given I know a person who survived a point blank shot to the head,  a person who was back at work at a near point blank shot to the chest after 6 months, and several who function normally after shots to the leg.   Of course my perception could be skewed as the number of gunshot survivors in the USA from both civilian and military situations is likely astronomically higher than Australia.  Headshots do tend towards high fatality or vegetable status, but a surprising number of people do live.   People survive alot of shootings, but for certain there is a world of difference in surviving a shot to the head with a .22 and a 12 gauge slug.   Whether you want to represent this in a game or not is another matter.

   EDITED TO ADD:  I will also say sometimes people die from almost innocuous things like falling and bumping their head in their houses.   So I was not so much posting this to make an argument as much as real life can be a whole lot less predictable than we might want it to be.  I can also agree 100 percent with regard to combat effectiveness (which matters more in game maybe than actual survival) and probability of survival with no medical treatment gunshots are going to be combat enders.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2021, 07:43:00 AM by oggsmash »

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #41 on: April 27, 2021, 08:57:03 AM »
Out of curiosity, how many gunshots does she see a year in your part of the woods?  I think her odds are a bit too skewed to death given I know a person who survived a point blank shot to the head,  a person who was back at work at a near point blank shot to the chest after 6 months, and several who function normally after shots to the leg.   Of course my perception could be skewed as the number of gunshot survivors in the USA from both civilian and military situations is likely astronomically higher than Australia.  Headshots do tend towards high fatality or vegetable status, but a surprising number of people do live.   People survive alot of shootings, but for certain there is a world of difference in surviving a shot to the head with a .22 and a 12 gauge slug.   Whether you want to represent this in a game or not is another matter.

   EDITED TO ADD:  I will also say sometimes people die from almost innocuous things like falling and bumping their head in their houses.   So I was not so much posting this to make an argument as much as real life can be a whole lot less predictable than we might want it to be.  I can also agree 100 percent with regard to combat effectiveness (which matters more in game maybe than actual survival) and probability of survival with no medical treatment gunshots are going to be combat enders.

I think part of the issue in most games is how the damage ranges are made, as compared to what that amount of damage means.  Of course, the granularity of the damage compared to the target's ability to deflect/absorb it matter, but I mean specifically the range of the damage dice compared to expected outcomes.  To use a crude example, a crowbar wielded by a 30-year old slender geek is dangerous, but not nearly as scary as one by a 30-year old, 240 pounds of raging muscle.  Even if they are both proficient.  There's all kinds of scenarios where it doesn't matter (e.g. equally dead or get away), but others where it is the difference between minor bruises and death.  The same two people start shooting a .22 at you, proficiency is everything and after that survival chances get down to number of shots and where you get hit (i.e. how high the damage roll is).

This is one thing where I think the skeleton of early D&D is more correct than most later games.  Specifically, melee gets that bonus to damage from Strength but missiles get no bonus.  If you wanted to make that just a little more deadly and edge towards realism, I'd suggest a flat damage bonus to melee weapons and increase the range on missiles.  Maybe a dagger does 1d4+2 and a short bow goes from 1d6 to 1d8.  Even with the flat 1d6 damage option, use 1d6+2 melee and 1d8 or 1d10 for missile. 

Don't know what the gun values would be, but suggest that the system concerned about things enough to want to model them should have typical low-end damage values be higher than 1, leaving you with room to drop closer to 1 for the "lighter" weapons, whatever those are.  You might even have everyone ignore the first 2 or 3 damage points routinely.   A .22 might be modeled by using a range like 1d8 or 1d10 (assuming not using hit locations.  Someone might shoot you with a .22 and the hit would be so minor that it wasn't worth recording.  Or it might kill you. 

Of course, in a war game model, all that gets abstracted out into the chances to hit.  So it might be overly fiddly. 

oggsmash

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #42 on: April 27, 2021, 09:23:44 AM »
Out of curiosity, how many gunshots does she see a year in your part of the woods?  I think her odds are a bit too skewed to death given I know a person who survived a point blank shot to the head,  a person who was back at work at a near point blank shot to the chest after 6 months, and several who function normally after shots to the leg.   Of course my perception could be skewed as the number of gunshot survivors in the USA from both civilian and military situations is likely astronomically higher than Australia.  Headshots do tend towards high fatality or vegetable status, but a surprising number of people do live.   People survive alot of shootings, but for certain there is a world of difference in surviving a shot to the head with a .22 and a 12 gauge slug.   Whether you want to represent this in a game or not is another matter.

   EDITED TO ADD:  I will also say sometimes people die from almost innocuous things like falling and bumping their head in their houses.   So I was not so much posting this to make an argument as much as real life can be a whole lot less predictable than we might want it to be.  I can also agree 100 percent with regard to combat effectiveness (which matters more in game maybe than actual survival) and probability of survival with no medical treatment gunshots are going to be combat enders.

I think part of the issue in most games is how the damage ranges are made, as compared to what that amount of damage means.  Of course, the granularity of the damage compared to the target's ability to deflect/absorb it matter, but I mean specifically the range of the damage dice compared to expected outcomes.  To use a crude example, a crowbar wielded by a 30-year old slender geek is dangerous, but not nearly as scary as one by a 30-year old, 240 pounds of raging muscle.  Even if they are both proficient.  There's all kinds of scenarios where it doesn't matter (e.g. equally dead or get away), but others where it is the difference between minor bruises and death.  The same two people start shooting a .22 at you, proficiency is everything and after that survival chances get down to number of shots and where you get hit (i.e. how high the damage roll is).

This is one thing where I think the skeleton of early D&D is more correct than most later games.  Specifically, melee gets that bonus to damage from Strength but missiles get no bonus.  If you wanted to make that just a little more deadly and edge towards realism, I'd suggest a flat damage bonus to melee weapons and increase the range on missiles.  Maybe a dagger does 1d4+2 and a short bow goes from 1d6 to 1d8.  Even with the flat 1d6 damage option, use 1d6+2 melee and 1d8 or 1d10 for missile. 

Don't know what the gun values would be, but suggest that the system concerned about things enough to want to model them should have typical low-end damage values be higher than 1, leaving you with room to drop closer to 1 for the "lighter" weapons, whatever those are.  You might even have everyone ignore the first 2 or 3 damage points routinely.   A .22 might be modeled by using a range like 1d8 or 1d10 (assuming not using hit locations.  Someone might shoot you with a .22 and the hit would be so minor that it wasn't worth recording.  Or it might kill you. 

Of course, in a war game model, all that gets abstracted out into the chances to hit.  So it might be overly fiddly.

  This is why I like GURPS alot, that crowbar is INFINITELY more deadly in the hulking brutes hands, and the .22 getting shot in the oblique is a flesh wound but shot in the head or heart is instantly life threatening.  GURPS I always thought did a decent job of offering people get dropped a good deal more easily than they get killed outright.  I think D&D type games do a pretty poor job of modeling the serious nature of combat with regard to threat of injury or death once characters get to around 3rd level.  But i do not think it was ever the intent of D&D or D20 to make a game terribly realistic with regard to combat and more akin to comic book type combat, which I am fine with.   Sometimes I am in the mood for whether a bullet or one sword stroke can kill me, and I play GURPS.  When i want more abstract I play D&D.  I did think the 3e Conan game represented a chance of a mighty blow killing even a high level character in one shot pretty well, but that can be powergamed to death by a smart player, but I think a decent GM can curb that.

GeekyBugle

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #43 on: April 27, 2021, 10:54:02 AM »
My adult daughter's a paramedic and bit of a gamer, I just ran her through a Conflict scenario and we were discussing this thread.

She recently had a job where a guy had been assaulted with a crowbar. Both hands broken (defensive wounds), and the skull cracked, swollen - the intensive care paramedic couldn't intubate him, they had to take him to a hospital for an anaesthetist to do it. A crowbar.

She is the firm opinion that calibre doesn't mean shit. "You take one in the head and you're gone," she said.
"How about trunk?"
"Fifty-fifty. Half the time you're gone, the other half the time you're back after 18 months or so."
"Leg?"
"Your dancing days are over. Better hope you keep your balls."

Sorry, paramedics are brutal like that.

 Out of curiosity, how many gunshots does she see a year in your part of the woods?  I think her odds are a bit too skewed to death given I know a person who survived a point blank shot to the head,  a person who was back at work at a near point blank shot to the chest after 6 months, and several who function normally after shots to the leg.   Of course my perception could be skewed as the number of gunshot survivors in the USA from both civilian and military situations is likely astronomically higher than Australia.  Headshots do tend towards high fatality or vegetable status, but a surprising number of people do live.   People survive alot of shootings, but for certain there is a world of difference in surviving a shot to the head with a .22 and a 12 gauge slug.   Whether you want to represent this in a game or not is another matter.

   EDITED TO ADD:  I will also say sometimes people die from almost innocuous things like falling and bumping their head in their houses.   So I was not so much posting this to make an argument as much as real life can be a whole lot less predictable than we might want it to be.  I can also agree 100 percent with regard to combat effectiveness (which matters more in game maybe than actual survival) and probability of survival with no medical treatment gunshots are going to be combat enders.

Well, in my Saturday's game once an enemy caster ran for her life, jumped a fence, triped with it, fell on her head and died.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

Mishihari

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Re: Lets talk guns and granularity in RPGs
« Reply #44 on: April 27, 2021, 03:49:02 PM »
My adult daughter's a paramedic and bit of a gamer, I just ran her through a Conflict scenario and we were discussing this thread.

She recently had a job where a guy had been assaulted with a crowbar. Both hands broken (defensive wounds), and the skull cracked, swollen - the intensive care paramedic couldn't intubate him, they had to take him to a hospital for an anaesthetist to do it. A crowbar.

She is the firm opinion that calibre doesn't mean shit. "You take one in the head and you're gone," she said.
"How about trunk?"
"Fifty-fifty. Half the time you're gone, the other half the time you're back after 18 months or so."
"Leg?"
"Your dancing days are over. Better hope you keep your balls."

Sorry, paramedics are brutal like that.

Something seems wrong with that argument.  Let's try a parallel one:  "It doesn't matter if it's a dagger or a claymore, a blade through your heart will make you dead."  Certainly true, but it doesn't capture the whole situation.

It kind of gets back to the reason for using hit points / whatever.  Realistically, a lethal/disabling wound is the end of the fight, and possibly then end of the adventure for that character.  Prolly the most realistic way to handle that would be that each attack has a certain chance of disabling/killing the character, a certain chance of impairing their function, and a certain chance of missing or not having appreciable effect.  But most players don't think that losing your character out of the blue is fun, and many don't think that modeling impaired capability is fun either - any time it's brought up there's all kinds of whining about "death spirals."  So we mostly use hp/whatever as ablative plot armor - characters keep fighting unimpaired until they've taken enough ineffective near-misses that the player isn't shocked when they're killed, or in other words, their death is dramatically appropriate.

And for some reason, folks seem to find it easier to take the hit point approach with archaic weapons than firearms.  I've heard "Oh, but if a bullet hits you in the face you're dead."  Guess what?  Take a lance or longsword through the face and you're just as dead.

So if you're going for a hit point rather than a realistic approach, it makes sense to ask if caliber makes a difference according to how you're thinking about it.  Will being non-lethally hit by a large caliber weapon bring you closer to death in the mind of a typical player than a small caliber?  Sure, unless they're a paramedic.  So having large caliber weapons do more damage totally makes sense if you're using hit point.

It also makes sense if you're having wounds impair capability.  With a .22 in the leg, you may still be able to limp along.  With a .45 magnum, not so much.  Hydrostatic shock gets into this too.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2021, 08:27:34 PM by Mishihari »