Call for Playtesters: GURPS Guns

[Kromm]

Calling all firearms freaks, in or out of game! We are seeking playtesters for GURPS Guns, by David Pulver.

This 30+ page supplement is not a gun-design system – please bear that in mind before applying and, if you are accepted, during the playtest! – but it is systematic. It offers step-by-step rules and guidelines for translating real-world firearms data (caliber, muzzle velocity, barrel length, etc.) and technical terminology (demystified here) into game terms, for everything from holdout pistols to howitzers, starting at TL3 and going up to the eve of TL9. Plug in some easily researched facts about a weapon, and these rules will generate GURPS stats consistent with those found in existing works, most importantly GURPS High-Tech.

Being familiar with the firearms and associated rules in High-Tech is essential. Awareness of GURPS Gun Fu, GURPS High-Tech: Adventure Guns, GURPS High-Tech: Pulp Guns 1, GURPS High-Tech: Pulp Guns 2, GURPS Low-Tech, GURPS Tactical Shooting, and all the other supplements that have firearms in them would be useful: More data points means a better fit. We definitely want a squad of number-crunchers with big GURPS libraries to verify that, yes, this system works for the majority of real-world guns in High-Tech (and, ideally, other recent releases).

The playtest is currently scheduled to run for at least a full month, starting on November 28, 2024 and ending no sooner than January 2, 2025. If a thorough shakedown takes longer, we're prepared to extend it by a couple of weeks. (Any longer, and there might be problems with the next four playtests we have scheduled!)

Please apply only if you have High-Tech (and hopefully some of the other titles named above), are willing to research real-world guns to verify that this system gives roughly the same results that those books list for them, and can commit to at least a month (including some time over the winter holidays). Preferential playtest slots will be given to those who have spent at least $50 on PDFs from Warehouse 23 in the past calendar year, though this is not a requirement. For more, see the general playtest information page.

Prospective playtesters should email Roger Burton West at pt-guns@firedrake.org with [GUNS PLAYTEST] in the subject. Include your preferred email address for the closed playtest mailing list, your name as you wish it to appear in the published supplement, your Warehouse 23 email if it's different from the address for the list, and a few words on why we should pick you: qualifications, experience, current gaming group(s), etc. Please use this format:

deadeye@shootinglessons.com
Ann Patrick
annie@gunmail.com

I am a longtime GURPS player who has run historically based campaigns, especially in the Wild West and World Wars, since the 1990s. I have everything you listed and more. I also collect 19th-century revolvers, shoot competitively, and do my own gunsmithing for fun. I should be free over the winter because, where I live, it's too cold to spend much time shooting!

We look forward to hearing from you!

[Farmer]

30+ pages! Crunchy from David Pulver! Guns!

Exciting :-)

[Kromm]

One of the most common GURPS questions is not about the rules as written. It is, "How would you stat <gun>?" Needless to say, GURPS Guns tackles this head-on. We like the system a lot, so we're looking not so much for text reviewers as for feedback from people who will:

1. Consult GURPS books for real-world guns that already have stats.
   
   
2. Research hard data for those guns – no opinions, feelings, judgment calls, etc., just actual numbers from manufacturers, military and law-enforcement sources, and the like.
   
   
3. Plug those data into this system to generate stats for the weapons.
   
   
4. Compare the generated stats to those already in GURPS.
   
   
5. Where things agree, say, "The system works." Far more important, where things do not agree, show all work, highlight specific differences, and suggest where things might have gone wrong so that David can tweak the system.

The idea is to fine-tune the system to the point where real-world data for a totally new gun never seen in a GURPS book can be translated directly into game stats that don't seem wildly out of line with existing stats. At the risk of sounding negative, there are two things we really don't need on this outing:

1. Arguments that, in the case of conflict, the system is right and the existing GURPS stats are what's wrong. For the purpose of this playtest, if stats are published, they are correct, and the challenge is ensuring that GURPS Guns generates them. "We have always been at war with Eastasia."
   
   
2. Comments that veer off into firearms design. It's fine to dream up a gun that doesn't exist or start with a gun from fictional sources, specify its data or find it in a fictional technical manual, and see what the system spits out. Requests for changes that would make it easier to design custom weapons will be ignored unless they also make it easier to adapt data to gun stats.

Think of this as future-proofing the game to work in the constantly evolving world of firearms, and ensuring that future writers of late TL3 through TL8 historical content that includes guns are assigning sensible stats.

[The_Ryujin]

*Autistic gun-nut noises* Welp, I'm in for this.

[Phantasm]

So tempted... but it still fails to fill the niche I'm looking for: speculative ultra-tech guns for which there are no real world stats (such as many EM guns in calibers Ultra-Tech doesn't cover), or worse fictional guns for which the stats make absolutely no sense (like a two-and-a-half pound needle derringer I saw once).

[whswhs]

It sounds like a fascinating project. But though I'm interested in the physics of guns, and have done some reading about it, I don't know enough to be a productive contributor, and I certainly don't know the real world performance stats for firearms. But I look forward to seeing the results!

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

So tempted... but it still fails to fill the niche I'm looking for: speculative ultra-tech guns for which there are no real world stats (such as many EM guns in calibers Ultra-Tech doesn't cover), or worse fictional guns for which the stats make absolutely no sense (like a two-and-a-half pound needle derringer I saw once).

Yes, TL9-12, TL(x+y), and superscience guns are best left to a design system – and a long, complicated design system at that. Maybe another time . . . The focus here is on translating verifiable data for real TL3-8 weapons into GURPS stats.

Which said, if a "tech manual" for a series of novels, a TV show, a movie, or another RPG provides suitably concrete physical data, this system should be up to the challenge. Whether the resulting GURPS stats will – when used with the GURPS combat rules – produce results as deadly, effective, or whatever as the weapon is portrayed as being in its setting is a whole other matter! That's often a function of suitable "campaign switches" for gun combat and "cool factor" (dramatic, ethnic, heroic, whatever), not plausible gunsmithing. Those things aren't part of this system because they are innate not to physical hardware but to creators' imagination, and thus more topical for a short GURPS Gun Fu supplement.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It sounds like a fascinating project. But though I'm interested in the physics of guns, and have done some reading about it, I don't know enough to be a productive contributor, and I certainly don't know the real world performance stats for firearms. But I look forward to seeing the results!

All of which goes for me, the prospective editor! The closest I've been to guns is shooting some handguns, badly, at a range, and having an uncle who is the president of a gun club show me his literal vault of guns. I'm good with physics but useless with guns. My role is largely to make sure that the GURPS stats make sense next to other GURPS stats.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

It offers step-by-step rules and guidelines for translating real-world firearms data (caliber, muzzle velocity, barrel length, etc.) and technical terminology (demystified here) into game terms, for everything from holdout pistols to howitzers, starting at TL3 and going up to the eve of TL9.

[font colour change by yours truly]

When you say 'up to howitzers', would that include autocannon and cannon? Such as statting guns like the 73mm smoothbore main gun of a BMP-1 and any alternate armaments Soviet fighting vehicles of the era could have, aside from the already accounted for Mi-24V, BRDM-2 and T-72A?

Just an idle query, not having anything to do with my upcoming campaign about bribing Soviet base commanders, warehouse administrators and garage mangers into stealing a lot of military ordnance in the chaos of 1990-1991...

[acrosome]

Wow, I would be so interested in this, except that there is no way that I could make any sort of time commitment right now. I have all listed titles and more, as well as a small library of (often obscure) firearms data.

Sigh.