[TW 2013] Body armor and Trama plates

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by NanbanJim

Targan and the others have said it quite well, but I couldn't help put my 2 cents in.

Michael, there is a way to make the campaign more "advancement" style: Make it what we called in Shadowrun a "gutter campaign," where the PCs start with nothing and you carefully mete out slightly improved gear to them by ensuring their opposition would only likely have limited gear.

A good way to do this may be with the PCs as refugees stuck in a pogrom (work camp) in a para-rural area of a higher gun-control state, say, the western bulge of Illinois (a quick Googling of "Illinois map population" told me that). In a twist of irony, the clan in the "Big House" have all caught something airborne and rather terminal (the vector for this can be a campaign element), and so while they have the bullwhips, the beating sticks, due to local law and personal need they never were all that well armed to begin with--just lucky. A couple pistols a rifle and shotgun or two would be the "big guns."

That setting is ready for the PCs to make their break from their weakened guards... and the disease could also keep the PCs from getting that far.

Add in some personal motivations, eg the PCs families were all sold to similar local pogroms (hobby farms/ranches, maybe a gravel pit and/or peat mine). Perhaps all of these were seized by the lackeys of Chicago "philanthropists" who, after the end of real central control, "stepped in" and offered to help those city dwellers starving and stranded a way to get 2 meals a day and a roof... in what turned out to be slave labour (or indentured servitude with no effective law enforcement to ensure the release after term).

This removes urban PD from the equation. National Guard may patrol on occasion, but would generally want to GTFO by this point in time as fast as possible... and potentially trigger-happy, since there's nothing worth them protecting out here (these pogroms would barely dent the governor's needs), but handfuls of people (the Philanthropist Network) very interested in keeping prying eyes away.

After freeing a half-dozen pogroms, they'll be lucky to have any longarms with even assault-rifle ergonomics, much less select-fire capabilities. Explosives would be Molotovs, improvised explosives (eg fireworks, dangerous enough in their own right), and perhaps some dynamite from the mines. You control whether or not they get better gear (and if it's available, remember they have to pry it off from someone already using it). And yet even if you don't provide better gear, it's believable enough.

If you want to "upgrade," you'll have to deal with bandit/slavers by lead or trade, assault the NG patrols (which should probably be a moral quandry, especially if they capture an NG survivor who can explain that, "hey, it's not personal, we just learned to shoot first or die for not doing so, I got a wife and wait, aren't you Uncle Denny from Becky's side of the family??"), or...

Well, the list goes on, but that's months of campaigning down the road.

That's one way to merge classic tabletopping with a modern availability curve.

Also in the U.S. and Canada civvies have access to semiauto variants of military weapons. These, civvy explosives and planning can make an entertaining group.

[Degrath]

When I deployed in 2011 with the US Army. I was issued as part of my basic kit an IOTV (Improved outer Tactical Vest) with 4 SAPI plates (front, back, 2 sides). The IOTV had removable front and rear ballistic throat protection, groin, lower back/ kidney and shoulder guards called DAPs. Without the plates it was the equivalent to a flak jacket.

After about 2 months in country I had removed all the optional components from the IOTV to lighten it up. After about another month or 2 I got rid of it all together and wore only a Plate carrier with my 4 sapi plates in it.

I saw many people take multiple 7.62 hits on the plates and they were almost never fatal. Though in nearly every case they lost consciousness and or had minor to severe internal injuries from the impact.

We were told a single plate could stop 3 rounds near point blank, though after one hit the plates would need to be replaced.
I would think for game play mechanics each hit should reduce the armor value of a plate and anything over 3-4 hits would negate it completely.

[CDAT]

Originally Posted by Degrath

When I deployed in 2011 with the US Army. I was issued as part of my basic kit an IOTV (Improved outer Tactical Vest) with 4 SAPI plates (front, back, 2 sides). The IOTV had removable front and rear ballistic throat protection, groin, lower back/ kidney and shoulder guards called DAPs. Without the plates it was the equivalent to a flak jacket.

After about 2 months in country I had removed all the optional components from the IOTV to lighten it up. After about another month or 2 I got rid of it all together and wore only a Plate carrier with my 4 sapi plates in it.

I saw many people take multiple 7.62 hits on the plates and they were almost never fatal. Though in nearly every case they lost consciousness and or had minor to severe internal injuries from the impact.

We were told a single plate could stop 3 rounds near point blank, though after one hit the plates would need to be replaced.
I would think for game play mechanics each hit should reduce the armor value of a plate and anything over 3-4 hits would negate it completely.

When I deployed in 2003 for the ground war we got flack jackets, later in Bagdad we got Interceptors with out plates. At about the year mark we got front/back plates. For my second deployment in 2008 we got vest with front/back plates before we shipped out, in 2009 got front/back and side plates before we shipped out. They did not have enough plates to let us keep then when we got home. So you could go with any of the above I would think depending on the priority of what your players were before. I was EOD so not a t1 unit, and for ground war not high priorty, from 2004/5 on we were high priorty. I am now a Police officer and have had the opertunity to go to some body armor shoots. The sapi is rated to take two hits from a .30-06 AP. After the shoot we took the vest and shoot it some more all said and done it did not fail tell about ten rounds of AP and even then still had lots of spaces that would stop the rounds. The second thing about Sapi plates is they are NOT a stand alone plate, for them to work correctly they need the soft armor. That is a cost saving system as my work plates do not need it but they are more expensive than the sapi. The other thing there have been different types of vest that could hold plates, the Rangers had them in 1993 in Black Hawk Down, in 2003 some of the bases that we took over had Iraqi plates, some of my guys used them tell we got our own. The first plates that I know of were steel and used in Vitnam with helo crews, to heavy for people on the ground. As they got the tech better they made stronger/lighter steel plates and that is what the rangers used in 93', some police still use them as they work and are "cheep" they are heavy is the main issue, but can take multi-hits better than the current. There is also a new polymier plate out there that can take multi-hits better and is lighter but is last time I looked almost 10X the cost.