Occams Razor

While those of us who are looking at the technology based headers are paitently waiting for our turn in the sneak-peek department I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts about how they think guns will be handled since OR's been described as a modern/near future game.

Personally, I'm hoping to play a gun-centric character. What would a security guard/cop be without his trusty pistol by his side. How the mechanic is implemented is rather relevant to my interests.

As far as mechanics go, I've seen a lot of different systems take their shot at implementation. Some good, some okay, some down right awful.

The Isles has a system where a firearm can be shot for uncalled damage for no cost every 15 seconds. If you wanna do called damage you have to spend attributes to do it. For a system that's trying to replicate black powder weapons, this isnt' bad. Guns feel a little underpowered with it however.

Lost Eidelons system of spending an attribute per shot worked for the steampunk feel, where things were very melee-centric. My biggest gripe with this implentation (and why I ended up playing a healer) is that you are VERY limited on shots. Unless you build your entire character around doing nothing but shooting, you'll find yourself out of shots in no time flat, especially in the early stages of the game. Not really a viable combat style, more of a garnish than anything else.

Lovecraft Legacies system was a little of both. Guns did some pretty significant damage, could fire as often as you'd like, but you were limited on how many rounds you could carry. And the NPC's would scoop up stray rounds as often as they could. The big limiting factor was the fact that most of the real nasties took minimal damage from bullets and were best suited to betting 'hit with a stick' or shot a LOT. This works with a smaller player base, but when you get numbers like we had this year it gets a little over the top. I dont think I ran out of ammo -ever- this year.

The setting of Occam's Razor being described as very "shadowrun"-esque I'm expecting guns to play a pretty big part of the weapon styles. Not a whole lot of people walk around with swords in the modern day outside of Ren-faires after all.

So I'm anticipating a system that's somewhere in the middle of the three I've outlined here. Gameplay balance is everything and it's a pretty fine line sometimes. I just dont want to see such a key aspect of a modern game diluted to an afterthought.

What are peoples thoughts on how you hope to see guns implemented? Ideas, pros, cons, etc.

Personally, I've only used pistols at a LARP once (at LE), which was both fun and new for me. At Lost Eidolons, I can definitely understand why shots were so limited, as you said James.

I like the idea that the Isles has guns with fairly unlimited use for uncalled damage, as an idea. I did discover however, when playing a mage who could throw uncalled damage with packets, that I don't really like the idea of uncalled ranged. I found that too often I would throw the packet and the target would look at me and make a motion for me to repeat the call. After about the fifth time, it became a tad obnoxious to call out "uncalled". I forsee this happening with darts as well, so I hope for the sake of my own out of game sanity that if there is an unlimited use skill, it would be something like a "1 Damage" call. Then again, the uncalled packet attack in that game was something that only one header eventually had access to, so it may have just been that no one remembered there was a magical archery skill in that game.

I agree that in a modern/slightly futuristic world that guns would be far more common than melee weapons, since anything large enough to do some serious damage would be a tad conspicuous. That and that guns are simply more devastating when wielded correctly.

My hope would be to see something in the middle of all three. Having a few shots for uncalled/"1 Damage", before having to take a minute or two to reload, with the option of spending Attributes for a more "trained"/devastating attack ie. "4 Damage". The ability to buy extra ammo in the game for more free shots before resting would be interesting as well.

That is of course my opinion, having used guns as a single character who was a healer/scholar standing in the back with little interaction with the front line. I'm interested to see what other people think as well, and to see how the guns actually work.

I've never played a LARP with guns before, but I'm excited to see how it plays out. I have played games with arrows though, which were very distinguishable from spell packets. When getting hit by a packet, I knew that there had to be a call with it, and I would ask for clarification if I didn't hear one. Most arrows came without a call, so if I got hit by one and didn't hear anything, I would take 1 dammage.

One thing a few other games do with magic users is have cantrips of sort. Like, Aralis has every 10 seconds, you may throw a packet for 1 damage by Fire (or other appropriate element. depends where you got the skill). It gives casters the ability to actually stick around an assist in a fight after they've burnt through their abilities (weaponless caster is a legitimate strategy). As someone who will not be using any melee weapons at all, I'd personally like to see some kind of ability that would let me stick around in a fight after I've burned through all of my marksmanship.

I think the firing guns as many times as you want strategy is great for Lovecraft Legacies and the feel it has, but I don't know if it would work quite as well at OR. I'm suspecting guns will have a lighter punch than they did in LE (3 damage for pistols, 4 damage for rifles maybe, like end game perhaps?) just because guns are a little less scary in modern times (yay modern medicine). That and less deadly bullets makes things easier to stat/in the event of PvP, the people with guns don't hilariously murder the other PCs super quickly. It also lets you fight against things with guns and feel less like the correct strategy is to just run away. At LE, the correct strategy for fighting against pirates was to sneak up on them and kill them before they could get any shots off (it's what worked for me at least). Fighting them head-on was really risky because a gun shot from a rifle could drop me/a decent number of PCs (at least in the earlier part of the game).

As a melee fighter, my ideally statted mook with a gun looks something like this: 3-5 hp. 1 avoid that can be used only on bullets (makes it so they can take more than one shot before falling over, but don't make them impossible to kill from a melee perspective). 1 or 2 cool/flavorful abilities besides shooting people. As an NPC, having an ability or two is always nice. An agony or a disarm are pretty useful but not back breaking. And the bullets provide plenty of damage. With these stats, if a mook with a gun gets caught out of the safety of the line and they go toe-to-toe with a guy wielding a sword, the guy with the gun won't win automatically just from having a lot of hit points and damage. It'll be a relatively even fight, assuming the PC doesn't spend all of his or her stats trying to take down the pirate. And if the mook gets into a duel with a gun-toting PC, then the PC is going to (going by the LE system of attributes = bullets) expend a decent amount of effort trying to shoot down the NPC. And in the line, the mook is still really useful. They have plenty of damaging bullets to pepper the front line with and some useful abilities.

The following is the official Occam's Razor stance on firearms at the present time, regardless of what the pre-alpha sneak peeks say:

Underlying Facts:

1) Occam's Razor is a boffer LARP. Accurate representation of modern firearms is virtually impossible.

2) Occam's Razor is meant to be fun for people with various combat styles, ranged and melee alike.

3) Occam's Razor is, to a very significant degree, a horror game.

4) The following rules may not apply at all times--you will be clearly instructed when there are exceptions. Whisper Hill is a strange place, and technology behaves oddly in various locations.

5) The following rules were drafted after lengthy discussion (I'm talking, like, hours, see http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/12/13 for an illustration) and play testing (and attendance/running of various LARPs by various parties for various years). We even shot each other with (nerf) guns just to bring you guys a better game.

Assumptions:

1) Guns should be scary. It's a core part of the "feel" of the game.

Logic:

1) Guns are scary. That means guns need to do significant damage. Guns doing little damage mean people can get shot 3-4 times and think "I'll need to see a medic when this mod is over" as opposed "I AM SHOT AND DYING AND I CANNOT SAY THAT OUT LOUD BECAUSE I AM SHOT AND DYING."

2) Guns are a viable fighting style. That means guns need to be able to drop a target with one round most of the time or a melee fighter will rock a pistolero each and every fight.

3) Unlimited ammunition detracts from the "managed resources" aspect of the horror genre.

4) High volumes of high damage shots are unbalanced as compared to the Paranormal aspect of the game. Or most of the game in general, really.

End Result:

1) Handgun will be a General Skill available to all PCs.
2) Marksmanship will be a 5 rank General Skill available to all PCs at the rate of 2 CP per rank
3) Expert Marksmanship will be a 3 rank Skill available to certain specializations at the rate of 3 CP per rank.
4) Handguns will do 3 Damage, Rifles will do 5 Damage. Flechette Pistols will do 4 Damage, Flechette Rifles will do 6 Damage. Heavy Weapons will be Bad Bad Things.
5) Discharging a firearm will cost either F or 1 point of Marksmanship, barring other factors. And at times and with certain weapons there will be other factors.

All told, it's entirely conceivable to build a starting gunbunny that has 30 or 40 shots per weekend. That's 90-240 Damage, based on your choice of weaponry. Do you get to spray and pray? No. Do you get to fire a hail of withering death? Yes. Just not all the time.

Addendum: While firearms and skills may seem to do slightly less damage than in LE, please note two things:

1) Players start with an average of 2 Vitality and 1 point of costume armor, not 2.
2) PCs now have a maximum Vitality/Armor (of 10).

Your average peep will still be dropped by you average shot from a gun. Which is as it should be.

Also, generally (not always) PC skills will allow 3 Damage for 1 Attribute. Those that currently deal 5 Damage for 1 Attribute are likely to be toned down by the time the rulebook sees print. Though there are likely to be exceptions (such as skills that don't affect the majority of targets.).

Yes, I do see how unlimited shots might detract from the horror/OH GOD WE'RE ALL ABOUT TO DIE aspects of the game.

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"Flechette Weapons" are guns that fire Discs instead of Darts.

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Only those in the Technological Genre will have access.

while i was thinking about guns in larps a horible idea came into my head and iwas just curious if this is a modern game how will explosives be handled while obviously the average person cant just go down to walmart and pick up some dynamite (that i know of) if your determined it isnt hard to get your hands on low yeild explosives (more than enough to kill a person if its next to or on them) and with the right conections and enough determination you can get your hands on some prety devistating stuff.basically im just curious if explosives in general will be something ill have access to and/or have to worry about (as much fun as getting blown up sounds) or if there will be some skills in game that allow you to interact with explosives.(i like things that go boom )