Is a custom handgun with “Hi-powered” and “Big” too much? Depending on your view they could be the same thing, or it could mean something like a large caliber pistol (Big) with a high-quality cartridge (Hi-powered).
My buddy’s character could do 6-harm with a handgun out of the gate.
I think conceptually they might be different. A .45 ACP is a big, slow round, while a .44 Magnum (similar bullet weight, 50% faster) might be both big and high-powered.
That’s a good example where I was going.
Yeah, I have a PC who can do 7 harm with his Killer weapon, a big, high-powered rifle. Thing is a beast. I can confirm that it makes you look at NPCs through the crosshairs. I think of it as the Cobra Assault Canon from Robocop.
One thing I started out doing was, the Killer could take out a few NPCs at once with a Big, High-powered rifle. Later we’ve switched that over to taking on one at a time, if the Mix It Up goal is just, ‘destroy fools.’ So he can destroy one fool and take control of the room, make others flee, etc, but he can’t just fire his Cobra Assault Rifle 4 times rapidly and kill 4 people. He can always bust out an area / autofire weapon to deal with lots of enemies at once, and that gives the area / autofire tags meaning in our game, so he gets to make some tactical choices. Still, he can destroy a lot of opponents with relative ease. I’ve used NPC Pushers on him to good effect, had someone else drive him over with a car, trying to escape, and survive thanks to some bad rolls. He’s not super-OP versus, say, a spider tank. But in single combat it’s time to kiss your NPC goodbye. A pistol means the character has to watch out for sniper fire and wrestle-happy cyber ninjas.
That’s a good balance. It keeps it from being a slaughterfest where a group’s just…gone. Taking Milspec with a BFG would certainly be flipping on Beast Mode, I’m sure. I don’t see anything wrong with that, though. Our group’s really great about not seeing death as the only penalty. Having friends, goals and beloved places and things threatened/harmed is usually worse. It gives me fantastic options besides “Um, you get stabbed…again…”, which gets boring.
A smartlinked minigun with HE-APFSDS rounds might be a calling card, yes. 🙂
Fin-stabilized out of a minigun? Not feeling it, sorry.
I would add the tag +PimpCannon before I added something like +Big and/or +Hi-powered…
Magnum Pistol/Revolver is already in the game and the game is based upon a narrative style not stacking bonus wankery.
Now that I’m home, I can clarify my previous post a bit.
One of the hardest things I’m finding to do with the PbtA games is to keep my innate preference for crunch out of the picture. If you’re coming at The Sprawl from a traditional gamer’s perspective you can easily find yourself tossing in a random +1 to a Move here, a +1 Harm there, and quickly find your players (and yourself) turning right back into a bonus hunters instead of focusing on keeping it stripped down to the bare essentials with just enough dice rolling to keep the results and plot twists up in the air. Once you lose the focus on the narrative, you lose a huge part of what makes The Sprawl such a great game.
Remember that tags are descriptors in addition to their game effects. A +big pistol is going to be, well, big. Probably won’t conceal all that well. A big bullet probably means fewer shots between reloads—normally not an issue, but if you make a move like use up their resources (“You’re down to your last magazine…”)
Hi-powered might mean special ammo—maybe even handloaded. It’s probably going to have more recoil. Produce more wear and tear on the gun.
Ask your Killer, it’s their custom weapon! Maybe they’ll tell you it’s a giant Hellboy-style revolver that they can only shoot because of their cyberarm, custom made for them by their gunsmith contact.
Mark Phipps I believe this is specifically in relation to the Killer’s “custom weapon” move, not just randomly giving out tags.
So you know, there are 7.62mm sabot rounds. We had them at the ammunition depot at Ft. Bragg. I thought it was odd, but Special Forces and Delta are there so who knows? Also, if we can wire brains to a Nintendo 3000, saboted small arms aren’t a stretch. 😉
Also, it’s not wankery to customize your handgun from things on the list. It’s what they’re for. As a fan of the PCs I don’t mind them carrying the Fuck Off 5000 assault shotgun and such.
To add, however, fin-stabilized under 25mm isn’t a thing, AFAIK. So Mark is correct. Of course, we’re back to cyberpunk tech so who knows and as Mark said, getting that deep into the weeds isn’t what PBtA is about.
The 7.62 sabot rounds were pretty much tossed aside as a failed experiment. Turns out that hundreds of plastic sabots getting tossed around out of various gun barrrels and Blackhawk helicopter air intakes aren’t a good mix…
And thanks to everyone that pointed out that the discussion is about The Killer’s custom weapon. Not a real fan of those two tags so my brain kinda skipped over those customization options when I was considering my response. Haven’t run the game yet (but love what I’ve read!) so some details have yet to sink in.
Mark, it’s crazy (yet understandable) the amount of “Oh, shit! FOD!” aircraft ordnance creates. The salt rods flying out of rockets were the devil for years.
Anyhoo, I like the tags for custom weapons. It’s cool to have your big, special, sexy doom-gun. Of course, it’s special and rare, so take care of it! You may only have one.
In an attempt to control the carnage, I’m trying to reel in the +1 Harm options as each hop is actually a really big step up in lethality.
There should be a law that no player shall introduce a weapon to the Sprawl that they aren’t prepared to be shot with.
From a gameplay perspective, its a bad idea to push the harm envelope. It just starts an arms race that ends with disappointment. It’s a totally legit for an MC to take anything the characters have and use it right back on them.
From a fictional perspective… once tech like this is handcannon is on the street, it won’t be long before every sprawl ganger looking to move up in the ranks will be toting a knockoff version.
Meet a couple of mooks armed with these and a botched Mix It Up means someone’s going to be Acquiring Agricultural Property.
Charles Moore Strangely enough, that’s one of the first things I mention to my players. ‘I match anything you put on the table. You want a mil-spec slaughterhouse? I’m willing to go Full Retard if you are.”
I’m very lucky insofar as I can give my players access to nukes and they won’t get stupid. In a Shadowrun game a player got a million nuyen and gave it the widow of a man who was murdered by some very bad people. In a Gods of the Fall game one has a very powerful sword they only use when absolutely necessary, even when they’d trounce enemies otherwise. If that weren’t the case I wouldn’t be so giving.
Ben Liepis Should give them the context of what I had to do for that mil. Or how quickly I gave that super sword up to the rightful owner.
Trust in your GM. Giving up your sword will be worth it…