The Culture: Your Gun Rules Suck Because You Don't Know How They Work

Rules for firearms in Tabletop adventure games are dogshit. Just ask anyone who's done time in the sandbox or the jungle walking the line.

This is not acceptable anymore. This is not 1974. This is not 1984. This is not 1994. There are MULTIPLE CHANNELS ON YOUTUBE ALONE that can show you, in detail, all about how these things work and how getting shot fucks over targets- hard and soft alike. You have no excuse for not knowing how this shit works anymore. You retards, on the other hand, still write rules based on bullshit and Boomer memes and wonder why you don't get players to behave like their mans ought.

That's ONE CHANNEL talking about ONE SUBJECT (including a common Boomer Meme).

You don't have to go to Phoenix Command levels of 'tism sperging to get it Good Enough; Spycraft made a good attempt over 20 years ago, and few have bothered to try since because they're willfully ignorant fuckweasels that take pride in not knowing jack shit about How Things Fucking Work.

Before that, believe it or not, Classic Traveller actually got how injury in combat actually works more or less correct; it does, in fact, induce a Death Spiral if you don't have the adrenaline kick in AND you're not injured in a mission-critical manor (e.g. losing a leg). Again, ask anyone that's done time in the sandbox walking the line- or don't, and go look up the channels on YouTube alone that will explain what getting shot does to you.

You want to know what I figured out? The old games, because they're informed by the experiences of men that got shot and stabbed for real, do a better job of handling this stuff properly.

Within a given conceptual framework of abstraction, what is the manner to most accurately represent what a firearm does and how it does that? I bet almost no one even considered that to be a question to ask. Sure, you're doing a game where massed combat is built into the rules so you're running on an abstraction of one-minute combat rounds. Smoothbores muskets and cannon fit into that fine, but more than that gets wobbly

But, whatever it is, you are down to this: Did You Hit Him? Did You Hurt Him? Is He Out Of The Fight? That's a a No/NA/NA, a Yes/No/NA, a Yes/Yes/No, and a Yes/Yes/Yes. Your guns rules need to resolve this in one or two roles; Silhouette does this, D&D does this, Classic Traveller does this, and far too many of your shit designs fuck it up even if you can get it down to that few rolls.

Like it or not, we need to see that How We've Done Things has limits. Tabletop in particular needs to abandon Fat Sacks Of No Sell Points for anything that isn't superheroes or their horror counterparts due to cognitive load issues; Vidya can, and should, do likewise.

"But I-"

Don't care. Oh, and if you think you can feel smug about melee weapons or pre-modern missles, they're just as likely to wreck you and there's video of that now in abundance also.

If you're going to try to justify your existence as a game designer, you need to do something most don't: engage with how things really work, then come up with abstractions that properly represent that reality while maintaining low cognitive load on the users at the table. The older games get this done; new ones, outside of the OSR set, fuck this up routinely.

"Why does this matter?"

Your man will not treat a Glock 19 and a Colt 1911 as fungible items because they are not. Your man's proficiency with firearms has far more to do with putting in time at the range shooting under instruction than anything else--even the pros routinely take courses and train--and being physically fit than anything else. 9mm NATO is not 9mm Short is not 9mm Largo is not 9mm Makarov, but they are all 9mm centerfire handgun cartridges; they perform substantively different from each other, and from other handgun cartridges, in both handgun and longarm platforms (yes, .45 Colt from a Single-Action Army is going to not be as hot as from a Winchester 1873 with a 24" barrel) and shotguns need to be aimed.

And when he gets shot, it's going to make a big difference if he gets winged by a retard with a pocket pistol in .32 ACP vs. a solid chest shot by a 5.56mm NATO cartridge from a Mossberg Patrol rifle.

Spend some time doing the real thing. Your designs will produce better abstractions if you do; same goes for a lot of other things you lot routinely fuck up.