Fixing the Fantasy of Fantasy Gaming

[TheFlatline]

Loading was somewhat slow (slower than a smoothbore musket, anyway), but wikipedia cites 1 minute, and I think it was faster with patched balls.

A skilled marksman could take around three relatively aimed shots per minute with a civil war era rifle.

You get pretty damn fast if you practice consistantly.

With pre-patched balls you can fire three shots a minute with a Napoleonic war era musket. It's hard fucking going though. But you get do aimed sustained fire at 100 yards.

Demonstration here, after a TV episode thing (ignore that bit): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvc86ggLUY4

Good stuff starts at 0:40. Disclaimer: I know all the people in that video.

The problem was period training was pretty shitty, and doctrine called for minimization of the disruption to formation caused by reloading, it was generally better to hold your fire and give them a bayonet charge.

Related link:

3 rounds through a British military rifle (Brown Bess) in 46 seconds. If you allow a full minute, the guy would get an extra 5 seconds per shot roughly to aim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJMbxZ1k9NQ

[Molochio]

Loops back to my sentiment that guns should ignore armor. We have guns today. No one wears full plate.

[Starmaker]

Loops back to my sentiment that guns should ignore armor. We have guns today. No one wears full plate.

Duh. That's the problem. If it's fantasy (see thread title), people would want to wear full plate and not look stupid.

[violence in the media]

Loops back to my sentiment that guns should ignore armor. We have guns today. No one wears full plate.

Duh. That's the problem. If it's fantasy (see thread title), people would want to wear full plate and not look stupid.

Given the zillion or so types of materials that you can make armor out of in D&D, how long would it honestly take for someone to write up a kevlar equivalent or retcon an existing type to apply to bullets?

[Parthenon]

Why should you give a fuck whether full plate realistically reflects bullets? Or if theres a kevlar alternative?

If its cool, and fits the theme then full plate should have bullets bounce off it. I want to have my Captain A shield bounce bullets off it, and to have a reason to have guns like:

Its fantastical, not trying to make modern soldiers with old tech.

[tzor]

Loops back to my sentiment that guns should ignore armor. We have guns today. No one wears full plate.

That's two completely different issues; the decline of armor among milirary "officers" and the improvement of modern weapony. (The knight was in fact the equivalent of the modern military officer.)

Contrary to every fantasy fanboy's dream, armor adapted to the musket. If you go to a museum that has armor (the Natural History Museum in New York or even the Tower of London) you will find armor with dents in them, often near the chest region. It was sort of like kicking the tire, the armor maker would fire a musket at it at point blank range just to show the buyer how good it was. (Of course it wasn't occupied at the time.)

Of course, that armor was damn expensive. By that point you basically see that type of armor used by kings and eventually they had the common good sense to stay off the battlefield completely.

(And by the way, the armor for the horse was even more expensive, offers aren't expected to walk, you know.)

And no armor could even be made to be canon ball proof.

Eventually mobility was prized over armor and a fast horse over a sturdy one. Besides, the later were needed to pull the canons. Shortly thereafter armies started to engage in trench warfare. It would take medicine another half century to even begin o catch up with the hell that man invented in late 19th century warfare.

Today, everyone's got ... well the mobern equivalent of the breastplate. It's called Interceptor body armor (IBA).

[Koumei]

If you go to a museum that has armor (the Natural History Museum in New York or even the Tower of London) you will find armor with dents in them, often near the chest region. It was sort of like kicking the tire, the armor maker would fire a musket at it at point blank range just to show the buyer how good it was. (Of course it wasn't occupied at the time.)

I recall hearing that this dent was the proof that it could stop a bullet, which resulted in the term - wait for it - bulletproof*.


*I am not implying this made that armour 100% bulletproof, always immune to the shots. Just that we can thank it for the term.

[MGuy]

Loops back to my sentiment that guns should ignore armor. We have guns today. No one wears full plate.

Duh. That's the problem. If it's fantasy (see thread title), people would want to wear full plate and not look stupid.

Given the zillion or so types of materials that you can make armor out of in D&D, how long would it honestly take for someone to write up a kevlar equivalent or retcon an existing type to apply to bullets?

That would be stupid and useless. This is a fantasy game. This part of this thread doesn't even matter. In Wow Armor stops bullets like arrows, thrown axes, etc and no one really, REALLY cares. I'm waiting more for the part where we get to redoing weapon/armor mechanics as a whole.

[Molochio]

My personal opinion regarding guns bypassing armor bonuses is not so critical that the deliberation of firearms in a fantasy setting need be ground to a complete halt.

Some people want bullets to bounce off of a target like small pebbles while others would prefer that guns actually kill stuff and that is fine. Both views have a place in fantasy.

[tzor]

Guns are like Katanas ...too many fanboys.

Aside from my first campaign where the high level monk wanted to bring in his M16 of sharpness from another campaign ... and I actually let him ... I generally have no problems with guns as long as you realize that they are weapons, they had their faults and good points just llke any other weapon and just like any other weapon, realism and D&D just don't mix so accept my Rule 0 and move on.

(Somewhere I have a copy of an old Dragon article from the very early 80's on guns and I think canons.)

[Judging__Eagle]

Guns are powerful in their base dice; but anyone using them is going to have problems at first. People with martial weapon training can learn to use a firearm after a week of training (fighters take 1 day to grasp weapons); people without martial training need a level to learn how to use the iron fire-spitter without a -4 penalty.

After that, it's a matter of having the PCs keep themselves stocked in ammo.

I recommend trying a Necromunda/Warp Cult ammo system. Rolling a dX after every round of firing from a started or full magazine. Different weapons have different "reload" ratings; if the roll is under the rating of the weapon, it still has some more ammo/fuel/etc..

Having ammo get "spent" in a carefully ordered manner is... not how I've seen any other game really play out. Even in FPS games, you fire a few rounds, then check your ammo.

Checking the magazine's contents before firing only should happen if the magazine is going to be emptied in a single round. Make the ammo check; the difference between the roll, and the weapon's ammo check value is representative of how many rounds you can fire in total.

[Leress]

Why make gun usage so complicated? Doing that will just make it so most don't want to deal with it. Really that crap shouldn't even matter when dealing with magical guns. One shouldn't be worried about ammo clips and the like. It fires magic bullets and it's unlimited if you want it to do more craft it. The same would apply to bows and crossbows.

All that bookkeeping is just going to take up time and get in the way of actually playing the game.

[MGuy]

If no one is really going to adjust weapon mechanics as a whole you might as well just put gun damage on the same level as a crossbow and leave it alone. There needs to be more variations between one weapon and another in order to truly give any number of weapons any true distinction without causing certain weapons just to be plain better than others.