Reloaded Ammunition: T2K hazards
While I personally don't use reloaded ammunition in my games except for niche calibres as I think the projectiles and primers would probably be more scarce than the ammunition itself, we might want to look into the possibilities in such ammo.
Now, the esteemed reloaders here might want to chime in.
The infamous Turkish 1941 7.92mm Mauser rifle round immediately springs to mind when thinking about poorly stored large scale military chambering (thank you Daniel Thompson for the correction) . Unlike the careful reloads done by nearly all private reloaders these factory loads are infamous for having widely varying pressures and have been known to blow up semi-automatic and automatic firearms and the lighter other types of firearm. Note that many military weapons are designed to be able to bear some high pressure rounds if accidently loaded but if fired enough through the weapon even they will eventually fail too.
So, what's the problem with this stuff?
First off, if the players are swapping brass for rounds (we used to use a 1:10 round:brass ratio) then they might be getting various odd stuff indeed. Primers might be poorly seated, the incorrect type or home made. The projectile might be of the wrong type for a variety of reasons leading to varying accuracy and in some cases even to pressure spikes in the chamber if it is incorrectly sized or weighted. The cases might not properly reconditioned leading to splitting or warping. The propellant is undoubtedly sourced from post-war manufacturing of varying power ranging from the damp-squib to the massive overload that destroys the gun and blows the firer's fingers off. I once saw the aftermath of what happened when a heavy-bore hunting rifle let go and the bolt drove back into the firer's face and it wasn't attractive.
So, as we can see you're taking your life in your own hands with this stuff. It might let you down in combat or actively maim/kill you at worst.
The problem from a game perspective is this is pretty sucky stuff to do to the players, what with the radiation, bandits/military, hunger and so on they have it hard enough as it is. If you think about this aspect you want to warn the players in advance through foreshadowing. Add an extra individual into the combat and have the players find his weapon featuring a stoppage after the fight. Have a friendly person warn you about the ammo from a certain supplier. Give them a chance to be wary. I'd also limit this as to make it extremely rare or they'll just avoid it from then on and that feature of the game will disappear. One game effect is that if your PC's have in your opinion too much ammo than this crap can start to appear and they'll stick to military rounds they trust and offload what is probably garbage. However if you go this route you must be scrupulously fair and have the individuals/events they source this junk off suffer the full effects, if not more so, in combat.
By the way, getting crap ammo off a trader is perfect way of sending the players into a vendetta-driven detour to catch the bastard if their favourite sniper rifle suffers damage.
Players are not numpties who just jam any brass into their weapons. They have their weapon skill to spot bad brass that is visibly defective and also they should have the same skill to notice if the power is varying. Misfires and other mishaps are immediately obvious of course. Give the players either weapon rolls or MEB rolls for 1st edition when they first look at it and you can assume they do check it out unless you're playing a firearms newbie.
A simple table is easy for bad ammo:
01-02 Misfire
03-04 Jammed round
05-19 Functions normally
20-20 Catastrophic failure
You can add variables, some rounds might be just a little crap and give a minus on this table. Some rounds might be death in waiting and add a tiny bonus.
For automatic weapons this is simply unworkable in practice. make an adjudication.
Note that in many cases this ammunition might still have saveable brass.
A final note, some ammunition might be remade to match standards as well. I leave that up to GM adjudication.
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