A bit of Advice

[Collective_Restraint]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Isn't that a common artifact of D&D games?

Damn, you just ninja'd me ! He did specify his players are coming from a D&D background, where hundreds of hit points can make guns a mere nuisance for high-level characters.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Isn't that a common artifact of D&D and certain video games?

Perhaps so.

But I'd still expect the default expectation to be 'guns are lethal' and only if someone specifically told me that they were not all that dangerous in a given game would it even occur to me.

If someone tells random people with no gaming experience that they take the roles of modern special operators in a game, I think most of them would expect that being shot was something to avoid.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Perhaps so.

But I'd still expect the default expectation to be 'guns are lethal' and only if someone specifically told me that they were not all that dangerous in a given game would it even occur to me.

If someone tells random people with no gaming experience that they take the roles of modern special operators in a game, I think most of them would expect that being shot was something to avoid.

Yeah well I suspect you have enver worked in customer service ;)

After doing that awhile you really get a low opinion of "average" intelligence and common sense.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Uh, do you think that there are any real people in the world who can read, have access to a computer and disposable income enough to buy game books; but aren't aware that guns can kill people rather quickly?

No but I can evidently count at least one that can read, has access to a computer, money for game books and isn't aware/accounting for the fact that gun damage is treated differently under gaming circumstances. :)

Surely being shot is something to avoid, but under certain genre conventions and even gaming systems, the lethality varies. Players should be aware of that lethality level before they vote, especially if they are coming from a system that allows them to impersonate a porcupine by absorbing arrow fire casually. :)

Nymdok

[davidtmoore]

Yeah, I played a tank (Troll merc, I seem to recall) in a Shadowrun game and took a point-blank bullet to the chest from an expert marksman. Didn't even bother to dodge and still walked away with light bruising.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

Yeah, I played a tank (Troll merc, I seem to recall) in a Shadowrun game and took a point-blank bullet to the chest from an expert marksman. Didn't even bother to dodge and still walked away with light bruising.

A Troll in my GURPS conversion of SR can fairly reliably take a round from a standard handgun and keep functioning. They're big. Especially if they're wearing even low-level body armor, they can shrug off a lot. So it's not so much a system thing, as a "capabilities of PCs" thing.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

Yeah, I played a tank (Troll merc, I seem to recall) in a Shadowrun game and took a point-blank bullet to the chest from an expert marksman. Didn't even bother to dodge and still walked away with light bruising.

The only way to hurt a troll in Shadowrun was to stick a grenade down his shorts.

But you know if I was deciding which campaign to run, I'd lay out the possibilities in front of the players and see which grabs their interest.

[Voren]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The only way to hurt a troll in Shadowrun was to stick a grenade down his shorts.

Vehicular laser fire and point blank shots from an assault cannon certainly don't do the job reliably. But I digress...

Let me put in another vote for GURPS Action. Templates, distilled rules, and easily shared assumptions.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Icelander

But I'd still expect the default expectation to be 'guns are lethal' and only if someone specifically told me that they were not all that dangerous in a given game would it even occur to me.

If someone tells random people with no gaming experience that they take the roles of modern special operators in a game, I think most of them would expect that being shot was something to avoid.

My experience when doing that or similar ideas is that peoples expectations of what they can do in a game tends to vary wildly, possibly in relation to how many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies they watched as a kid. Even presuming you can find someone interested in the above genre who's never been exposed to video games (where they generally go with the "huge sack of HP" style of character) most people ARE capable of separating fiction from reality.

They know guns are dangerous in reality.

But a game isn't realer than the movies, and a lot of people don't find "BANG YOU'RE DEAD" very fun (at least, not when it happens to the main character). This can color their expectations.

[Landwalker]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'd still expect the default expectation to be 'guns are lethal' and only if someone specifically told me that they were not all that dangerous in a given game would it even occur to me.

I'd expect the default expectation to also include "Swords are lethal" and "Crossbows are lethal" and "Flaming jets shot out of somebody's hands are lethal," and all of this is essentially true in GURPS but hardly the case in D&D (Burning Hands or whatever is a first-level spell with a pretty low damage cap, and even PCs at the lowest end of mid-level scoff derisively at the notion of unenchanted swords and bolts being anything more than a minor inconvenience). Playing enough D&D will tend to... skew the default expectation somewhat. If they were coming to GURPS from a background of nothing, then I don't think they would have trouble with the premise that getting shot by a TL5 musket will probably kill you. But since they're coming from D&D, they probably associate "RPG PCs" with "Limited Invincibility".

Cheers.