Recovering spent cartridges

[Mahatatain]

What rules to other GMs use for recovering spent cartridges?

I've always assumed that if you have time to look for your spent cartridges that it should be relatively easy to find them (depending on what kind of terrain your firing from). However I fired an AK-47 for the first time at the weekend and I was very surprised at how far the ejecting bullet casing flew and I've now realised that recovering spent cartridges isn't as easy as I first thought, particularly from an assault rifle.

What guidelines do people use?

[Rainbow Six]

Would it be feasable to attach some sort of canvas bag or similar to a weapon to try and catch the cartridge cases as they are ejected?

[Mahatatain]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

Would it be feasable to attach some sort of canvas bag or similar to a weapon to try and catch the cartridge cases as they are ejected?

Brass catchers like you describe are bound to be common in T2k games but I'm not sure how practical they would be in real life and whether they would interfere with reloading a fresh mag.

My extremely limited experience of firing an AK-47 would suggest to me that the angle they were ejecting at means that a canvas bag wouldn't work, but I'm no expert.

[helbent4]

Andy,

Didn't T2K v1 have something about recovering spent brass counts as an action? It's something snipers would probably do if they have the opportunity.

Regardless, recovering spent brass has never seemed to be a priority in any game of T2K I've played or ran. Granted, that's a kind of meta-game way to look at it but in a way it's probably something that (over time) most units who are on the move won't find it worthwhile to worry about (even though brass should be worth something in trade). Units that are actually re-loading cartridges might be more diligent in policing up spent brass than others.

Tony

[B.T.]

I don't remember where it was, but I have seen a picture of austrian troops on erxercise 2 or 3 years ago. They really fitted some kind of small bag to their Steyr AUGs. Although the idea behind it was not polluting the environment, it seems to work with the AUG. If it works with it, why should it not work with other rifles?

If a party wants to collect the spent brass, I suggest the following:

1. You must have the time to search for the spent cartridges. If there is no time (enemies looking after you, or the party has to move on quickly), let the PCs grab a fistful of cartridges as an action.

2. I would suppose, that you will not find every spent cartridge (Unless you would really spent a lot of time with searching the ground underneath every bush in the area!). Therefore I assume, that 50% are lost, if you just pick up, what you find. If the party wants to spend some time after the firefight (Some minutes, depending on situation), let there still be a loss of 20 - 30%. One should also take in account, how the underground lools like: If the party did not move a lot and were firing from an ambush in a building, the picking up of cartridges would be a lot easier, compared to a firefight in some kind of wood.

If they were fighting in mud or swamp, don't let the spent cartridges be found

[Targan]

I agree with BT's post. I think a Scrounge skill check would be most appropriate (do they have the Scrounge skill in V2 and 2.2?). The level of success combined with the skill level should determine the amount of spent cases found (perhaps with a small randomised element as well). Also modifiers should be assigned for terrain/cover/weather conditions etc. So a character with high Scrounge skill who rolls a really high level of success should find 100% of his spent brass, possibly modified downwards by a dice roll and/or environmental modifiers.