Re: GM-controlled Bad Luck points

"Peter Knutsen" <peter@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:46a20e47$0$21929$157c6196@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Simon Smith wrote:
>> Weapon jam rates:
>>
>> Real world weapon jam rates are, oh, let's say 1-3%, in the absence of
>> accurate information to hand. You could introduce this jam probability
at 
>> a
>
> Is that per shot or per fight? Is it for single shots, or for short 
> bursts, or for emptying an entire clip in a full auto salvo?
>
> A jam rate of 3% sounds unreasonably high to me.

I'm not sure what Simon is referencing here, but it sounds like a 'per 
event' percentage to me.

A lot depends upon how much detail you want visible in your game system.
In 
general, the chance of jamming is the combination of maintenance, ammo and

weapon design and with handling skill having an impact in some cases- 
another example is cap and ball revolvers, clock them on the peak of the 
recoil flip or risk the cap falling into the revolver's mechanism and 
jamming.

But it can be even more complex. Take something like the Martini-Henry
rifle 
around the era of the Zulu war. Single shot breech-loading lever-actuated
it 
is under normal conditions very reliable. However fire a number of shots 
through it, let the fouling and heat build up, put it in a hot and dusty 
part of the world, and you get jams. The chance starts off very small and 
then increases over time until it becomes common and finally all but 
certain.

Thus for any weapon, the reliability is dependent upon the exact
conditions 
that exist upon it being fired- and fired each time. Modeling this would
be 
work far beyond it's worth IMO for a table top rpg.

So your left with deciding upon abstraction method, often based upon an 
'overall' chance of jamming number. The simplest is just bury jams into
the 
game's rate of fire assuming the anything lower than max for the weapon
not 
only reflects usage issues, but jams and jam recovery. Thus you 'handle'
it 
without adding any rule weight.

You may want to see it reflected directly in the mechanics even so. I'd
like 
to know why, as that would best determine what was needed from the game 
mechanic.