While it’s not likely a group of characters is going to carting around a cannon or Gatling gun, I don’t think you can have a game in this time period without acknowledging the possibility that they’ll get their hands on some heavy artillery. It’s a thing I didn’t want to spend a ton of time on, because of how rarely it will come up, but there needs to be a process there just in case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The various Without Numbers games have a framework for things like grenades and mortars, so mostly I used that. The most important thing is to get the feel right, which means wide-scale destruction that someone survives mostly by luck. If you get hit by cannonfire, I want the effect of everyone around you being blown to bits, even if your PC status gives you some extra protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all artillery has an area of effect and requires a Luck save to avoid. Shock damage is usually meant for melee combat, but I think it represents well the small damage someone might take by avoiding the main blast. Shock should also works well for “spread” effects like using grapeshot or a shotgun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing I’ve pondered is misfiring. I wrote misfiring rules for artillery a while ago, and they’re a little specific and complicated, allowing for rerolls and requiring skill checks. More recently, I wrote a misfire table for “new science” devices which is much simpler but doesn’t allow for as much character interaction. For now, I’m going to keep them as is, but it’s possible in the future artillery might just get a similar “misfire table” if artillery proves cumbersome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there’s armor, which isn’t much of a thing for the time period. I’ve limited it to just “light” and “medium” armor. Since most guns have full armor penetration (some models like the derringer or muskets only have armor piercing at short range), armor isn’t going to be useful as often. So I keep it simple and move on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, to wrap up equipment, there’s everything else. The gear, the services, things like that. These can be interesting because it really tells you what kind of game you’ll be playing. If individual meals and services and priced out, you’re probably expected to spend a fair amount of time making decisions about what you’re eating, when you’re sleeping, etc. I prefer a more generic “lifestyle” charge which puts all that in a lump sum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve had mixed success with this so far in other games, but I want it to work so I’ll keep trying. Players tend to get enough money pretty quickly that it doesn’t matter much, or they hem and haw about the details trying to get a few dollars shaved off the cost. While the second issue can be rightly ignored, the first is pretty common after a level or two. I think it’s just a reality of how rewards work. If you want players to be able to afford cool guns or whatever, at some point they’ll just take a chunk of that to pay for boring things like food and housing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kind of a rambling post here, but we’re about to get into the good stuff: Edges, what I’ve changed, new ones, and my philosophy on how they’re supposed to work. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While it’s not likely a group of characters is going to carting around a cannon or Gatling gun, I don’t think you can have a game in this time period without acknowledging the possibility that they’ll get their hands on some heavy artillery. It’s a thing I didn’t want to spend a ton of time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,7],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-equipment","tag-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/august.lfkwriters.com\/gaming\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}