"Guns. Lots and lots of guns..."

[Elizabeth]

Kenny, explosives are some of my best friends, and in LARP world some are called traps. In order to do stuff with them, you need to have the requisite trap skill/props/etc. There are Accelerant trap rules in the core ruleset, that's a great place to take a look for a skeletal understanding of traps.

[Jacob]

You should also read up on the "By My Voice" method of effect delivery. By and large, though, explosives will be something plot either gives you to use, or gives you to run away from. Please don't build a character thinking that you will be able to explode every problem.

We all know: you don't blow it up. You burn it. Burn it with fire.

[Mike Natale]

I saved a bunch of articles about customizing Nerf weapons and converting them into something much more realistic for larping purposes. I look forward to using it. While the firing guns for 1 damage infinitely is nice, it certainly does take away from the leathality of the situation. Sounds like a good balance to me.

[Steve]

I like the look of this system. Guns are leathal and scary, but you don't have unlimited ammo, so you have to think before you pull the trigger. This reflects real guns pretty well and keeps the game balanced for the non-gun-users.

Also, Mike, I'd love to see those articles. mind sharing?

[Jacob]

GAH!

Please bear in mind: Internally modded guns are not legal for OR. You can cosmetically modify them as you like, but tweaking darts, springs, or firing mechanisms is not ok. The new guns are borderline terrifying OOG already...

[Merana33]

I'll be honest, when I read that we're sticking with the 1Attribute/shot mechanic my initial reaction was "Ugh. Time to come up with a new character concept."

My huge concern with the 'spend an attribute for each bullet' mechanic is that it's entirely possible (and very -VERY- likely if there is ANY sort of wind to deflect darts/disks causing misses) that you can end up with absolutely NO combat ability on Sat. Night if you dont have a melee weapon.

In my mind this makes a gun only character completely non-viable from a gameplay standpoint unless you just want to be "Bruno who just shoots guns" and has no other skills.

Suggestions/concepts:
(these are just ideas and not nessicarly intended to be taken as a package concept)

Perhaps a mechanic where 'missed' shots can be reclaimed after a minute of rest. This would help mitigate a windy day rendering a firearm useless.

Maybe having the attribute+firearm points determine how many rounds you are allowed to have on you at one time, or per battle. You do purchase bullets by the Box these days after all. The logic being that after a fight you go and reload.

A limit of how many rounds you can have loaded at one time. A skill could be purchased to increase this count. Perhaps even extending to additional 'clips' or speedloaders.

Food for thought:
A standard Police issue G17 Glock 9mm pistol has a magazine capacity of 17 rounds. A police officer typically carries two spare magazines on their duty belt in addition to the one in their service pistol.
So a typical 'beat cop' can shoot 51 rounds at a moments notice if required.

The standard Nerf type gun these days that can hold more than 1 shot holds between 5-7 shots on average, about par with a modern day revolver. Outside of clip fed Nerf guns, they also take a LONG time to reload. Remember the belt fed weapon that Squad 2 had in LE? How long did that take to reload during a fight?

[Steve]

When I read "more realistic for larping" I was thinking about the Maveric mod where you cut off a small piece of plastic so the whole barrel can come out for reloading instead of it only coming out halfway. Makes it look more realistic. Technically that is an "internal" mod, but it doesn't efect how the bullet flies. I didn't even think about tweaking the darts or springs or whatnot.

[ken]

The general consensus on guns was there was no way to:
1) Make guns scary AND
2) Make sure the output of the damage meshed well with our other combat archetypes (magic, melee, etc).

At the end of the day, we wanted to provide a fun system for a horror larp and not a realistic scenario for firearms useage. Also, this isn't a line-fight or firefight game. We don't want shield walls in OR (notice you see a profound lack of the shield skill so far), and fighting should be serious and scary. If it's just all bullet-storm all the time with mosquito bite bullets, that defeats the ambiance we were going for. Sure, we have combat and plenty of it, but that's not actually the main goal of the game we're working so diligently on.

We knew that some people might not like the system, but at the end of the day, we wanted to make sure guns provided the stopping power they needed to, without overly emphasizing them in the game world. If we find internally that we want people to shoot more bullets, those are very easy fixes from a game management scenario. We can introduce items that refresh marksmanship, for instance. What won't change is that firing a gun will do big damage AND it'll also cost you something to pull the trigger.

Anything else just didn't fit the theme and type of game the Staff thought was appropriate for OR. We also think gun characters are exceptionally viable. If you've got 5F + 8 Marksmanship... 13 shots per reset, where each one will probably drop most crunchies in the game, and with modern guns at a significant range? That's not all that bad... Especially considering how cheap Marksmanship is to buy.

-Ken-

[gaelicwolf]

[gaelicwolf]