Real-Life Weirdness

[adm]

Frankly, double barrel muzzle loaders are not rare.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended.
[snip]
EDIT: For clarity, the title I opted for isn't trying to make any sort of political statement, but rather is a reference to the following copypasta:

You might not have, but that linked article gets rather overtly slanted.

Interesting that no charges are pending either direction...

As for only one shot...

there are several ways a musket can be multiple use...

Double muskets are rarities, but did exist; I suspect more replicas exist than the originals . 2, maybe 3, barrel monsters. Usually custom. Flintloques generally only could go 2; percussion cap rifles could easily (if heavily) go 3, especially in .30-.35 cal.

One could double stack as well... a second touch hole, and a slight sleeve to keep the rear minne ball from blocking its touch-hole... Not reliable, but the surprise value...

or the 4 to 7 shot (by caliber) front-of-cylinder loading revolving rifles of the mid-18th C. Colt 1855, for example. I've handled a 7 shot .30 pistol (we were trying to restore it; the nipples were all fouled).

Or, of course, the possibility of a bayonet...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

You might not have, but that linked article gets rather overtly slanted.

I had a good deal of difficulty finding a source for the article that wasn't obviously pro-2A (most of them were from sites who's whole raison d'être is championing the 2nd Amendment), and eventually settled on the most neutral one I could find.

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Interesting that no charges are pending either direction...

The article was written only a few days after the incident, and the only suspect the police had been able to identify (the one who caught the bullet) was apparently still in critical condition - I'm not certain police are in the habit of filing charges against someone who may be dead in a few days. I can't find any updates on the story, as it lacks any mainstream media coverage (see above my difficulty in finding a neutral news source for it).


As for all the "but what about if the guy actually had <whatever>" scenarios, yeah, that's the type of fog-of-war mechanics I was talking about. The omniscient view afforded the players in many systems/campaigns mean the players would know the guy was armed with a single barrel muzzleloader (or a double-barreled one, etc), if it had a bayonet or not, etc; the reality was the would-be home invaders had no idea what was going on beyond a loud bang and a blast of fire. They may have recognized it as a gunshot, but would have had no idea if it came from a pistol, rifle, musket, or small cannon.

[L.J.Steele]

Not weird, per se, but a good source of story seeds:

The NYPD Property room

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/n...ost-found.html

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Reported as spam/ads.

How do they keep getting in here. I thought the board's password check was moderately robust.

[sjard]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

How do they keep getting in here. I thought the board's password check was moderately robust.

It is, but that doesn't prevent dozens to hundreds a day slipping through the cracks. We on the moderator crew do our best so that you usually only see, at most, a few a day on a bad day.

[Dalillama]

The body is under... the bombing range? A table purchased at a charity shop has a message painted on the bottom saying that the body is buried at a particular set of coordinates. These coordinates turn out to be a bomb testing range near a Florida Air Force base, so checking for a body is a bit problematic.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

The body is under... the bombing range? A table purchased at a charity shop has a message painted on the bottom saying that the body is buried at a particular set of coordinates. These coordinates turn out to be a bomb testing range near a Florida Air Force base, so checking for a body is a bit problematic.

Sounds like either a joke/prank by a previous owner of the table or possibly part of some "solve the mystery" game - maybe the players were intended to look up the location on Google Maps, see the Star of David off a bit to the west, and use that as a clue for the next phase of the mystery?

For campaign purposes, you'd want the body to be of interest due to it carrying some documents/MacGuffin/whatever, such that the PC's don't have the option of notifying the authorities to halt testing and dig it up (or, as I assume is the case in real life, the authorities simply don't believe there's anything there). Then they've got to sneak onto a military base, hoping there aren't any bombing tests planned, and dig up the body themselves.

[adm]

Don't forget unexploded ordinance, that may still go off...

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

The body is under... the bombing range? A table purchased at a charity shop has a message painted on the bottom saying that the body is buried at a particular set of coordinates. These coordinates turn out to be a bomb testing range near a Florida Air Force base, so checking for a body is a bit problematic.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Sounds like either a joke/prank by a previous owner of the table or possibly part of some "solve the mystery" game - maybe the players were intended to look up the location on Google Maps, see the Star of David off a bit to the west, and use that as a clue for the next phase of the mystery?

For campaign purposes, you'd want the body to be of interest due to it carrying some documents/MacGuffin/whatever, such that the PC's don't have the option of notifying the authorities to halt testing and dig it up (or, as I assume is the case in real life, the authorities simply don't believe there's anything there). Then they've got to sneak onto a military base, hoping there aren't any bombing tests planned, and dig up the body themselves.

As a cranky old guy, I'll note that I don't see the "N" or "W" the article claims in the picture. So it describes four different locations. The southern ones are in the Pacific and Indian oceans not near any land, but the the "N" "E" one is in India, north of Lucknow.

Which is the sort of insight you'd get in a campaign or an action movie. Cue the line crossing a map montage...