Firearms in Rubble and Ruin

 (Banner art credit to Jeshields*)

One of my goals with Rubble and Ruin is to create a game that uses elements of our real world in a fantastic or fantasy way. So, we don’t have spells and magic weapons. But we do have +1 swords. It is just that a +1 sword is made with superior material and therefore gives its wielder an advantage in combat. Likewise, we don’t have wizards casting spells, but we do have dangerous and hard to find weapons, the most common of which are firearms.

When I was a kid, the word “gun” referred to a piece of military ordinance, what many people today would call a cannon or artillery. A handgun or a longarm or a rifle or a pistol or a revolver would all be called firearms. I’ll stick to that usage here. (As an aside, there are people who go ballistic when you call a pistol a gun—but most of these people don’t understand the fluid nature of the English language—and I don’t really care about their opinions, but I feel it is worthwhile for people to become familiar with the technical terms for the common items in our world.)

I have written another post about old-school gaming and firearms. It can be found here. 

Background

Guns kill. Back in the 1990’s I used to hang out with a firearms examiner for the Illinois State Police. And one of the things I learned from him was that most homicides were the result of a single shot from a .22 caliber weapon. In other words, a single shot from a small pistol or rifle is enough to kill a person. But that doesn’t mean that a single shot typically will. The shot has to hit and damage a part of the targets body that is essential for life. Most shots, fired in anger, miss their target. And many that do hit, do not create a lethal wound.

Armor is Binary. Technically, we would say there is a sigmoidal response for bullets interacting with armor. This is a really fancy way of saying that if armor is strong enough to stop a given bullet, it will do so almost completely. And if it is not strong enough, it will have almost no effect. So, if you are wearing typical melee armor and someone shoots you with a low caliber weapon, you might as well be naked. Likewise, if you are wearing ballistic armor rated for small arms and someone shoots you with a military assault rifle, you might as well be naked. But if you were shot with a low caliber pistol in a location protected by the appropriate armor, you will be (almost) completely unhurt.

The Rubble and Ruin setting. The game is set twenty-years after the fall of a near-future world. It is our world, but technology has continued to develop until the year 2065—we have some cybernetics and a lot of biological modifications—very cyberpunk, but if the cyberpunk genre was developed in 2020 and not 1980. A lot more biomedical modifications and AI and a lot fewer mechanical modifications. Then the wars started. For 15 years, those people supporting the oligarchs fought against those people supporting their countries. Think, the technical developments of WW2 but for three times as long and starting in a much more technically advanced place. But in 2080 it comes to an end and the survivors get on with rebuilding the world.

The Mechanics

Damage. There is an old problem that goes all the way back to Aftermath! and Morrow Project. If we use fixed damage for firearms, we need a really well resolved hit-location system. Aftermath! had 30 locations and Morrow Project had even more. In Mythras we have only seven; There are two arms, two legs, abdomen, chest and head. This gives us some level of detail, but not as much as Morrow Project. Likewise, D100 games have never used fixed damage.

Another issue is the temptation to increase the number of dice rolled for damage as the weapon gets more powerful. In Mythras Firearms (which was published after Rubble and Ruin so I couldn’t use it anyway) a heavy rifle does 2d10+4 damage. That would average 15 points of damage. That would, on average, completely destroy any limb hit on a normal person. But firearms don’t really do that. A high-powered rifle might destroy a limb, or it might deliver a minor flesh wound. 

Intensity levels. All the way back in the original Chaosium Monograph version of Rubble and Ruin I introduced the idea of Risk. Levels of Risk increase the range of damage delivered while keeping the amount generally uniform. (Uniform here is math-nerd speak for following a discrete uniform distribution—each possible damage value is roughly equally probable—as in 1d6 or 1d10.) For Rubble and Ruin, I use the Intensity table from Classic Fantasy. This is not exactly uniform, but I felt it was better to have one system used throughout the Mythras family of games than to have a bunch of slightly different systems.

So that same snipper rifle (from above) in Rubble and Ruin, taking a well-aimed shot and using high powered ammunition will only deliver Intensity 10+2+2 = 14, or 2d8 damage. This will average 9 HP, which will—on average—disable a limb. But sometimes it will completely destroy the limb, and other times it will—occasionally—only graze the limb. Not so cinematic as other systems, but more aligned with real observations from small group combat.

Two Armor Types. In Rubble and Ruin, I use an idea I first encountered in the game Aftermath! There are two types of armor, Melee and Ballistic.  Mythras uses Armor Points (AP). Let’s say your character is hit, the GM roll location and determines that you are hit in the right arm. You check and determine that your character has AP 2 leather on that arm arm, so if you were hit for 6 points of damage, you take 6-2 or 4 HP to the right arm. Same way we’ve been doing things since Runequest 1 in the 1970s.

In Rubble and Ruin, you simply have two types of armor, melee and ballistic. Armor points have always been AP, and ballistic armors are denoted as BP. Melee attacks work as they have always done. But ballistic armor is slightly different. Ballistic armor reduces the Intensity of the attack, changing the range of the resulting damage. So, if the aimed, high powered snipper rifle hits a character on a location protected by Kevlar it will do IN 14 - 6 or IN 10 damage. This results in a roll of 1d10 – by the way, the intensity damage table is on R&R p.69. I always have a hard time finding it.

Putting it all together

Expensive Bullets. In R&R bullets are expensive. People spent all of the Global Wars shooting at each other and that used a lot of ammunition. And that was two decades ago. Black powder is making a comeback in the larger enclaves and surviving countries, but out in the rubble, ammunition is rare.

And ballistic armor is expensive and has additional encumbrance. In early game, most characters do better not worrying about BP. If there is an encounter where someone has a firearm, treat them like you would an enemy wizard. They will have a few big, dangerous attacks. As the game progresses, the PCs will have more firearms at their disposal, but they will also tend to fight more dangerous opponents.

One caveat is that I often see players who want to run a character that sits in the back of battle shooting. This is very difficult to do, rules as written, in the early game. You just can’t afford it. Sure, everyone wants to stay away from dangerous combat and just occasionally shot at a bad guy. But in R&R your characters don’t start rich, so you have to take the risks and get into the fight.

Cheap bullets. There is no reason why a GM couldn’t run a game where ammunition was inexpensive. If this is done, play will naturally shift to a different style. Characters will focus on BP armor, wearing less AP, and fights will be less hand-to-hand and more tactical, focusing on using terrain and cover to the best advantage. This matches what we see in real life. A modern firefight with small arms focuses on hiding and getting good shots on your opponent more than anything else.

 

Thank you for reading this. I’ve been wanting to explain why I built the game the way I did for some time now—and I’ve finally gotten around to it. I would love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to leave comments below.

 

* Jeshields’ patron has a lot of great art, I recommend it. https://www.patreon.com/c/jeshields/home