Reality-testing / Playtesting the Guns Default . . .

[Tomsdad]

So what are we thinking here? +10 in non combat mods will cancel out the -10 in shot difficulty, leaving just equipment and action mods as a bonus of +4 or +5 which pretty pretty much brings us back into 50% chance of hitting territory so that seems pretty reasonable.

For me if there is a problem its with the default. It is a bit all or nothing here, i.e it's either -4 or once you paid 1cp it's removed entirely.

Now in an RPG where we're generally just interested in distinguishing between unskilled and skilled it doesn't matter. But in this RL situation the grain gets a bit finer.

FWIW I think that the -4 default probably gets reduced in smaller quicker increments (and I suspect that even if you've never fired a real pistol before we've done some kind of hand eye co-ordination thing that starts us on our way in this even if it below the granularity of 1st point in GURPS skill)

This is assuming that Vicky you've never shot a rifle or rifle like thing either, because you might be getting a slight default bump from that as well (again even if it's below GURPS granularity).

Basically the current system is not really set up to model a person's first go on a pistol range in great detail.

Another thing is I also suspect that skill improvement over time taken in RL is not the strictly linear relationship of 200/100 hours per point that is on pg293, but more in fits and starts.

(but again there's likely not much to be gained in going to into that in 99% of games)