Monday, June 29, 2015

The Second Best Gun Rules in the Business

GURPS Technical Shooting and/or GURPS Gun-Fu.

Covers realistic or movie shooting in exhausting but highly playable detail. Great verisimilitude , researched enough to keep the experts happy and with and enough detail for the gun nuts in your group.


The Best Gun Rules in the Business

The Best gun rules in the business come from  Kill Puppies for Satan a game in which I describe as you are Beevis and Butthead grown up, a total loser who worships the devil

Its a gross crazy game, unplayable to me  but an amazing design.

The gun rules from the defunct web page  with the cuss words edited out.


  • the whole point is to kill. a gun that won't kill somebody in one shot isn't worth selling to children, right? so absolutely every single time somebody pulls a trigger, somebody might die. you, me, random strangers, the downstairs neighbor, there's always a chance. make sure your pcs know it.
  • on the other hand, there's no such thing as a sure kill. i know it's a special case, but jfk's brains were on the trunk of the lincoln and they didn't declare him until four hours later. people get shot in the head and fall down and stop breathing and go on anyway to live normal happy lives. not most of the time, not much of the time, very rarely in fact, but it does happen. if your pcs want to be 100%, make them use a   of bullets.
  • nobody knows what's going on in a firefight, and accuracy in the real world is  well . take this poor diallo guy. those cops shot 41 bullets at him, he was standing in a for fuck sake doorway, and a. they only hit him with 19 or something and b. they thought he was shooting back. nothing like flying bullets to make you stupid. you don't know where you hit that guy, you just know he fell down. you don't know where the shots are coming from. don't give your pcs tactical information, tell them what they see and hear and make them   sort it out.
  • every bullet goes somewhere. roll the shot, miss, shit happens, but do you know where that bullet is now? in a stone wall? through a window and in old mrs merrihew's toaster oven? lodged against the rib of a passing dogwalker? make your pcs remember to ask what's going on on the far side of their targets.
  • bullets don't kill you by magic, they kill you by tearing big pieces out of you. they splatter blood, they blow off fingers, they unhinge jaws and elbows, they make you puke your shredded guts out your mouth and nose. there's no such thing as a clean kill. make your pcs gag.
  • dying sucks. sometimes you pass out and never wake up, sometimes you scream for an hour, sometimes you piss yourself with pain until fucking tomorrow. you shit yourself. sometimes a lateral headshot will make your brain swell up and cut off its own circulation and leave your brainstem alive, heart beating, breathing in and out, perfect for organ donation but dead dead dead. your best bet whatever happens is to get to the hospital, but who knows. make your pcs scared to  death of death. (let alone that they're going straight to hell, and demons are going to pour  lye into their eyesockets for the rest of time.)
  • different guns are good for shooting people under different conditions. a glock 19 is good for shooting people under normal, reasonable shooting people conditions like when the  jocks have been pushing you around for four nightmarish years and you can't   take it anymore, plus they're wicked reliable. a pump shotgun is good for making that noise before you shoot people in   half. a colt 9mm submachinegun is good for when you want to kill everybody in the room but you don't really want to kill the people in the next apartment, while an m16 is good for when you don't care who the fuck you kill. make your pcs use approximately the right gun for the job (but definitely don't expect them all to be gun geeks).
  • oh, and if your pcs don't want guns or want them only to use on animals not people, they're super cool (remember satan's guidelines). tell them right on from me.

Friday, June 19, 2015

What I Play and Run and what I'd Play and Run Instead

In case in anyone is wondering what systems I use  when I have a choice.

Unisystem , Classic and Cinematic. Typically Angel but sometimes any of the others in the series

GURPS

Some flavor of D&D , Retro-Clone or Pathfinder

These are pretty generic systems and as such cover most of my gaming needs pretty well.

Assuming these didn't exist I be using

Basic Role Playing. Its a great system and super well supported

Palladium Fantasy or 2e D&D if allowed

Hero System , maybe.


Monday, June 8, 2015

A Shout Out to Drivethru RPG for Job Well Done

I wanted to say a few positive words today about Drivethru RPG.

Lets start out by saying I don't have an affiliate account with them or have any products on sale there, I'm just a customer. A very happy customer.

I'm not a  a big fan of buying PDF's, its a necessary and good part of of our hobby  but its just not my thing . Still when I want to grab another PDF (not the Manor #8 which I also bought there) there was a minor glitch. They took care of it quickly , courteously and professionally.

That company has demonstrated a track record of customer responsiveness  since their founding  and as such   I can recommend them or any of their affiliates without hesitation.

You won't be sorry.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

On Beer .

Not really  germane to gaming  or me since  I am pretty much a teetotaler but XKCD gave me a big laugh with this one.


Friday, June 5, 2015

In the Manor of Old School Grappling a simple review of the Manor Issue #8

Of course as you might guess, the title of this post was supposed to be  a pun. It refers to The Manor Issue #8 and  its  top notch grappling rules but since the pun sucked I changed it for more clarity.

Let me start out by saying I'm not a huge fanzine guy and to be honest I don't buy that many PDF's and I seldom review them anymore .

Like many people I'll download most anything free and legal but  usually Barnes and Noble gets my book money. However   once in a long while  I  do splurge on a PDF.

This time I am quite I did.

Now to be honest I bought this issue of the Manor for one thing, the article  Old School Grappling by Doug Cole  and Peter Dell'Orto 

The other stuff was fine, an article on hirelings, a preview of Strange  Stars some  and stuff for Torchbearer a game that I don't play but ah the grappling rules . They were worth the price of admission alone.

Simply these are the 1st easy to play, easy to use , universal OSR grappling rules that work fast and efficiently with almost any old school system or retro-clone.

This rules are thought out well enough that they could be used with Searchers of the Unknown without too much trouble and that game is so minimal  basically all you have a stat block!

It would be a bit silly granted since the grappling rules would be 10x longer than the game but it would work pretty much out the box. They use HP for degree of grappling and while I haven't played them yet, no doubt in my mind that they are faster and more thorough and scale better than they current systems.

Heck they probably could be made to work with 5e or Pathfinder just about as well.

That is impressive work.

As such I can recommend highly  the issue as for the price of burrito and soda you can get a great rules set and support the OSR.

The gentlemen did great work if and if you are unhappy with the grappling rules in your favorite game as most of us are, than you'd do well to grab a copy.