Gun Construction Kit or similar resources?

[PTTG]

I was thinking earlier that I don't really want to use all of ultra-tech, and I don't need the hundreds of historically-accurate firearms in high-tech. What I want, as a GM, is a set of tables that lets me make guns of arbitrary detail and quickly. I imagine that the Space star system generator is an excellent model; it's based on reality, but each step allows for more detail and more GM control of the final product.

Such a system might work like this:

1.) Select the skill to be used (pistol, rifle, shotgun, exotic...)
In any TL8 game, this might be all you need; you can use the template for a perfectly ordinary pistol (rifle, or shotgun). If, however, you want to do something more complex...

2.) Select the subclass of the weapon (rifles become assault rifles, hunting rifles, sniper rifles, for instance). This only reflects large changes in the way a weapon is used, or differences that even the most naive moviegoer would recognize, such as the difference between a revolver and a semiauto pistol... or possibly (if the system includes such things) a recurve and a compound bow.

3.) Select the TL of the weapon
This suggests modifiers to the weight, damage, etc. of the weapon. This is a loose guideline, of course. It might include _variant_ historical charts if the GM wants to make very balanced but unrealistic TL variations, or if they'd like to make most TLs rather similar.
This step also includes the first real measure of the mechanisms of the firearm; the GM can choose to make flintlocks, breech-loaders, muzzle-loaders... compressed air guns... lasers... In each case, the system can suggest stat modifications.

4.) Select a specialization for the weapon
Having made a generic gun of a certain type, this step provides major modifications that change the way the gun works in smaller steps. You can modify damage, range, rate of fire, ammunition capacity, accuracy... GMs seeking to simply make a better or worse gun can simply change the stats, of course, but this step also includes considerations such as higher rates of fire increasing malf rates, larger caliber increasing cost... Of course, such changes would be at a premium if a PC is making a custom gun, while something that mooks get would be mass-produced. This step is what makes an AK-47 different from an M-16, or a desert eagle different from generic 9mm.

5.) Select quirks for a weapon
Minor features, such as mounting rails, detailing, presumed history. If you want to fit your fictional gun into your player's world, this can provide that information in this step. If a PC wants to get theirs plated in gold, this is the step for that too.

At any point in this process, the gun can be used, or the GM can keep going to make a less generic item.

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So, does this exist, and if not, would GURPS users be interested in such a project?

[vicky_molokh]

The two options I keep seeing are the Ballistic Spreadsheet and the Guns Guns Guns supplement (which provides instructions for getting GURPS stats).

[Varyon]

Vehicles was for 3e but works fairly well. Note that most firearms tend to be "low powered" or "very low powered" in that system. Acc and MinST have to be converted (for Acc, just halve it; for MinST, just adjust for scale - in 3e, ST was linear, but in 4e, it's quadratic), and you'll need to come up with Bulk and Rcl based on similar weapons.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Vehicles was for 3e but works fairly well. Note that most firearms tend to be "low powered" or "very low powered" in that system. Acc and MinST have to be converted (for Acc, just halve it; for MinST, just adjust for scale - in 3e, ST was linear, but in 4e, it's quadratic), and you'll need to come up with Bulk and Rcl based on similar weapons.

S. John Ross has also had a bare minimum list of generic firearms for modern action games on his website since the middle 1990s (Edit: link). High Tech is also very easy to adapt that way, since the list of guns in that book and appropriate for any one place and time is not vast. If you want to pick one revolver, one automatic, one bolt-action rifle, one semi-automatic rifle, and one shotgun then declare "these are the only weapons available in my game," one can do that in 10 minutes.

I don't think that it is reasonable to expect a design system to both allow arbitrary simplicity and to give plausible results for any imaginable weapon quickly.

[DangerousThing]

For my SF game I just pulled some guns out of High Tech and changed them a bit. I wanted to keep the damage the same as present day weapons for civilian weapons, but with different names with a more Tesla-Punk feel to them.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I don't think that it is reasonable to expect a design system to both allow arbitrary simplicity and to give plausible results for any imaginable weapon quickly.

Certainly not any imaginable weapon. I don't imagine that it would be easy to make a discarding-sabot 16-barreled bee-gun (in revolver format) and simulate it accurately. Still, for most uses, I think it could be pretty easy to get the basic "if you shoot them in the head, they'll probably die" rules down, even if we ignore the exotic.

I appreciate the feedback. I think I will start playing with this, because a friend of mine wants to do a Fallout themed game and PCs posessing unique guns sounds plausible... I'll share what I put together here.

[Joseph Paul]

Quirks and perks for guns to liven up a list of stats with funny names. I am pretty sure that we all have our favorite stories of guns that had an objectively lower Malf or ones that just performed better and either as a class or just an individual weapon.

One of the Tri-Tac games had a gun generation sequence. Mostly random which made it quick to generate the stats and then decide what to keep and what to toss. It represented what was on the market not necessarily what the technology could do. Keeping a couple of duds on the list to give PCs headaches with might be interesting.

[Ironsight]

I'm not certain if they're the sort of thing you're looking for, but there are some gun creation rules which seem to work well in the Edgerunners armor and weapons sheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...SLXJza1E#gid=7

[ClayDowling]

What I do as a GM is just use the very shortened lists in the basic set, or Action. Two of my players are gear heads, and they picked very specific guns out of High Tech. Everybody else is using the shortened list, since detailed gun traits don't really affect the story. Also, if those other players are shooting, things have gone very sideways.

[lwcamp]

I have a web page that does something like this
http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Equipment/...s/GunStuff.php
If you input the cartridge ballistics, it will spit out some mostly-GURPS stats (mostly, because damage is given as average damage rather than in dice plus adds, and Pi damage can go below Pi- and above Pi++, listed by Pi-2, Pi-3, Pi+3, Pi+4, etc).

You can also make custom muzzleloaders with a given caliber, barrel length, etc.

Links take you to pages that describe the physics and the calculations that are being performed, if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Luke