Buying equipment in special ops/military type games

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

But that is not my point. My point is that neither the ability to get a hold of a given piece of equipment, nor the effectiveness of it in combat can be realistically measured by money.

Fair enough. But how would you solve this problem that only you seem to have?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Fair enough. But how would you solve this problem that only you seem to have?

Make a scale with accessibility points. Subtract demand points. What you get expresses the ability to get ahold of a certain item. Modifiers can be put in as desire. For instance George Macdonald Fraser once had a mission to deliver one of the few PIATs in Burma to an outpost (it was wanted to blow up barges), but PIATs would have been common in Europe.

The actual effectiveness of a weapon or piece of equipment can be measured elsewhere.

One might think money is just abstracting that whole process. The problem is that a special forces team might go outside the government issued equipment and buy from private sources, in which case you are dealing with the straightforward civilian market as well as the barter economy of the military scrounger's market. Money is real in the first and only abstract in the second.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Make a scale with accessibility points. Subtract demand points. What you get expresses the ability to get ahold of a certain item. Modifiers can be put in as desire. For instance George Macdonald Fraser once had a mission to deliver one of the few PIATs in Burma to an outpost (it was wanted to blow up barges), but PIATs would have been common in Europe.

The actual effectiveness of a weapon or piece of equipment can be measured elsewhere.

One might think money is just abstracting that whole process. The problem is that a special forces team might go outside the government issued equipment and buy from private sources, in which case you are dealing with the straightforward civilian market as well as the barter economy of the military scrounger's market. Money is real in the first and only abstract in the second.

Indeed - money only works as an indicator of supply and demand where it is allowed to - where you have effects based pricing (common in RPGs and has even made it into GURPS in several places) it only reflects some aspect of perceived utility (typically damage output), whilst in the real world, any kind of command economy (including military logistics) also knackers market signalling.

In the real world, cost and military utility are only vaguely related and a team doesn't have an equipment budget for a mission, they have the kit that is on their TOE, plus anything else they can beg, borrow or steal from their network (usually various layers of formation). A special ops unit has probably hoarded all sorts of stuff over the years, quite a bit of it stolen from various places, whilst a line infantry unit run by a martinet, excessively audited or otherwise handicapped by regulations may be limited to its TOE on everything. Even in defence procurement cost tends to get sidelined by a variety of considerations - there's the cliché that your equipment was made by the lowest bidder, but things like pork barrel politics can no-sell that whole idea (just ask the crew of the SMS St Istvan*)

As for the PIATs, I'm guessing that there weren't many in Burma because someone in logistics had noted the paucity of Japanese armour (in all senses of the word) and decided that they weren't needed out there, without checking if there might be any "off label" uses. The same mindset that lead whole regiments of British tanks in 1940 lacking a single HE firing weapon: even those weapons that could fire HE (mainly the 94mm howitzer equipped "support" tanks) not being issued with any because it was outside the standard scales of issue.


*For reference, she was an Austro-Hungarian battleship, built in a yard that had no business building something as demanding as a battleship for reasons best summed up as "political". She was never entirely the ship she should have been as a result.

[Dej]

I'm looking at something similar spec ops in Infinite Worlds.
I've started out following loadouts, giving a basic set of gear then options. So 3 choices of pistol to go with their standard loadout.
I've then borrowed from the Stargate roleplaying game the idea that rank gets you extra picks.
I'm not sure how this is going to work, but I'm hoping it will stop the doctor from carrying a case of grenades just because he had spare cash.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

If you want to run a realistic campaign, people in legal professions don't' get a lot of opportunities for self-expression. They can sometimes have their own side-arm if a procedure is followed but your rifle would likely be stock with a few approved options within budgetary restrictions. Same with your uniform/armor, safety equipment, the kit you carry on your belt.

This is all perfectly correct, for an established special operations unit within a well-organised service.

If the characters are within a unit that is being created and/or there's a national emergency, things may well be a lot looser. G:WWII p. 69 mentions British WWII commando snipers sometimes using civilian hunting rifles.

[dcarson]

Start of the Gulf War quite a few people bought civilian GPS systems and platoon commanders often cleared out Walmart for things like water bottles.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This is all perfectly correct, for an established special operations unit within a well-organised service.

If the characters are within a unit that is being created and/or there's a national emergency, things may well be a lot looser. G:WWII p. 69 mentions British WWII commando snipers sometimes using civilian hunting rifles.

Early WW2 special forces were a right zoo, especially in the British forces where anyone who could impress Winston's magpie eye could get licence to pursue their dreams. This proliferation of semi-regulated private armies is why you could have people like Mad Jack running about with longbows and claymores without getting a medical discharge (psychiatric). Later in the war, the surviving amateurs were rounded up and corralled into what we would now think of as actual special forces units.

Admittedly the Germans did things rather differently, and the Brandenburgers (for example) were professional from the get-go. Their enthusiastic amateurs seem to have taken darker paths...

[safisher]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

My point is that a prize Kanenobu costs more than a sten gun but most commandos will want to take the later to battle and leave the former in a museum. Even though in fact both are military equipment.

Sure, but the issue is how to run it in a game. The money here doesn't have to be cash, it just represents an amount of haggling, horse trading, access to unvouchered funds or a alphabet sourced untraceable govt. credit card, or a doting unit commander, loose unit acquisition policies, friendly former unti members who own their own milspec uspply business, etc. This specifics aren't important. It's what it represents in agreed-upon meta-game terms to the players that matters.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by safisher

Sure, but the issue is how to run it in a game. The money here doesn't have to be cash, it just represents an amount of haggling, horse trading, access to unvouchered funds or a alphabet sourced untraceable govt. credit card, or a doting unit commander, loose unit acquisition policies, friendly former unti members who own their own milspec uspply business, etc. This specifics aren't important. It's what it represents in agreed-upon meta-game terms to the players that matters.

Aren't they? They add quite a bit to the game that would not be there.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Kale

What about Carousing and the price of a few drinks for the Quartermaster? :)

For you Trekkies out there, I'm reminded of this episode from Deep Space Nine with Nog working out a series of trades for the supplies they need:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki...River_(episode)
That's practically an adventure session in-and-of itself!

Reminds me of the episode "Progress"
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Progress_(episode)
Quark has too much Cardassian yamok sauce & tells Nog to get rid of it.