Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I'll take a look at the bulk rules. To be honest, I've never used them. I'm a little reluctant to start using more rules because I already feel like a lot of my GM'ing effort is being frittered away on doing actuary stuff. I'd much rather spend that time creating a good story for my players. Wherever possible, I try to streamline rules to make them more GM-friendly.
I'd rather honor the spirit of the law than go by the letter of it. If the bulk rules are simple and easy to implement, I'll go with them. If not, I'll have to think on it some more.
How a weapon is carried is an important factor in determining whether or not it is a hindrance. Unfortunately, a lot of players don't take the time to describe how their PC is doing so and there's really no place for it on the standard char-sheet. The other trouble I have is that some of my players add and/or switch weapons after every firefight and keeping track of who has what when gets to be a real burden for me. My players have done very well for themselves during the course of the campaign and they are always capturing weapons and ammo. Every one an a while, something fairly dramatic will happen to thin their stocks but, usually, they are coming out on the plus side of any gear transactions.
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I tend to agree with you here, I'd rather play the spirit of the game than the rules of the game - frankly, excessive use of rules or an over-abundance of rules bores the crap out of me and makes the game deathly dull. However, the Bulk rules aren't that much more to add, mostly being concerned with how easy (or not) a weapon is to conceal and with who can bring their weapon to bear first when two opponents have the same Initiatives. They are a measure of how 'handy' the weapon is to use and store so to speak and as such, I think Panther Al's rules are worth looking at in greater detail in that regard.
The way a weapon is carried definitely makes a huge difference as has been pointed out by a few people here already - I remember being smacked in the back of the head on a few occasions from a poorly secured M79 when going to ground. Even if the PCs are carrying a securely stowed sniper rifle while carrying an assault rifle in hand, that long barrel on the sniper rifle can get caught up on all manner of things while they're crawling through the undergrowth. This is a situation where the weight isn't as much a problem as the overall size of the gear and weapons are.
I think part of the issue here is also, how many weapons the PCs can collect. For sure any survivalist thinking PC is going to pillage the dead for gear but (at the risk of extra admin work for the Referee) this is were you need to think about the condition of recovered weapons in an effort to make taking them less appealing.
For example, are they worn out/rusted up/suffering corrosion, did they suffer light/medium/heavy damage during the fight, have they already taken damage that has then been poorly repaired, did the enemy survivors recover whatever they could before bugging out? There's nothing like dodgy ammo for inconveniently lodging a projectile in the barrel or causing a ruptured case in the chamber.
Obviously you can't overuse these things but it might be worth considering some use of them if it can curb some of the looter's zeal for collecting every single weapon they find. Another option is to have the enemy use rifles that use different ammo to what the PCs already have and have it in short supply so there is little value in stockpiling said weapons (e.g. the enemy blazed away most of their ammo stocks so there's precious few rounds left).