I’m thinking about running a campaign set in a fictional analog of Earth circa 1890 probably using Knave 2e or Cairn as a base. I can bash together some rules myself (and I have some ideas), but I was wondering if anybody has firearm rules they like.
Into the Dungeon: Revived has firearm rules, and will have a new Gunslinger Feature in the next release (Dec. 2023).
I had not heard of that one. The firearms rules seem pretty simple; just ignore armor.
Sometimes I wonder if using different rules for firearms is silly. I’m not sure a bullet is necessarily more fatal than an arrow. Maybe they are by the 1890s.
The rules I came up with for Knave 2e probably need more baking. They’re not very elegant imo, but they do allow a single shot to be fatal
• Pistols do 1d6 damage
• Rifles do 1d8 damage
• Damage dice explode
• All damage over 6 is direct damage
1 Like
There’s also longer reload and noise.
1 Like
Some time ago there was a paper going around in the historical reenactment scene show tests both on ballistic gel and historical stuff showing that a modern gun bullet (no high calibre or such) had a similar kinetic energy to a crossbow’s bolt or a rapier thrust. And, no matter the energy involved, a hole in the head/heart/other very important bit, takes you down all the same,
Personally, I just place firearms in the somewhat high-damage tier of whatever ruleset I’m adding them to, add some rules for reloading (which was traditionally a mess up until the World Wars), the noise (which is still a mess) and maybe misfires (another painful thing for earlier models).