Gonnes of the Realm
A quick peak at the gun rules I use in my game
My Flooded Realms home game has black powder guns in it ss such, I have written many gun rules. These gun rules have been edited and changed several times, as this game has not always been on the same system. The first official session of The Flooded Realms happened back in 2019, and utilized Pathfinder 2e right after its release. The initial worldbuilding began in 2015 and was for Fifth Edition dungeons and dragons. In that time I’ve ran it for Pathfinder, 5e, OSE and finally ACKS. Now, with ACKs II I will be running for that system as well (hopefully this will be the last one!). In that time, I’ve used various methods for Guns in the various systems. Some I wrote myself, some I stole, some existed in the system itself. For most of the game’s life, guns functioned as magic items. They were basically wands that had a damage number and a save associated. This system worked well for a long time, especially during the Historical Era1 of the OSE and ACKs version of the game. However, now that guns have proliferated, rules must do so as well.
Whenever writing guns rules, there are a few questions I ask myself. One, do I need to write them? Or can I use something off the shelf? Two, What do I want to accomplish with the feeling of the guns? Do I want them to be perfect simulations of what the time period guns were like? or do I want them to be better or perhaps worse? These questions often feed into each other. In this case, I must contend with the fact that Guns of War the ACKS gun book already exists. While I don’t personally believe a Judge (or any other type of game master) is beholden to use every supplement for a system they chose to run, I do believe that they should have an answer for why they choose not to. It helps when players ask “well why are we using X supplement, I don’t like the way it works and you don’t use Y supplement?” These are valid player questions.
For myself, the main reason I don’t whish to use Guns of War is that guns are too standardized in it. There is a wide variety of actions and bore types, but all guns do exactly 1d8 damage and have essentially the same range (Rifling reduces the penalty for shooting at longer ranges). I dislike this homogenization as it makes gun choice boring. Just get whatever is rifled and has the lowest misfire chance. I want there to be more differences between various guns. Secondarily, there are no Scatterguns, which I think is a shame. While the Blunderbuss wasn’t widespread until the late 17th century, which is after the period Guns of War largely focuses on, they were extremely important Naval pieces, and the Flooded Realms is obviously a naval setting. Lastly, Guns of War was not written for the ACKs II one minute combat rounds, so all the reload times would be adjusted. This is a minor point, but if I’m going to make that kind of an edit anyway, I’m more inclined to use it as a skeleton for building out my own system.
As for the second question, Guns for this game should be archetypal. That means they should be exaggerated versions of their real world counterparts. They should function as one imagines in day dreams, not as one imagines while writing a technical manual. Dragoon Pistols should turn the one wielding into a veritable whirlwind of death in melee, but be functionally useless from across a room. Wall guns should allow for Alain Quatermain levels of accuracy at range. Blunderbusses should harm crowds, or blow a single person completely away. However, they should also not be the end all be all of combat. Melee options should still be useful without a pistol, and a person with a musket should be at a major disadvantage in melee.
So with this in mind, what I did was peruse Guns of War as the skeleton of the rules, and made some adjustments where I thought a change would better suit my vision for how guns should work in my game. This includes adding new proficiencies and creating tags, similar to other ACKS II weapons. One of the major changes is that firing mechanism (wheelock, flintlock, matchlock etc) is no longer listed in the gun description, nor is smoothbore vs rifling distinguished. By this point in the setting’s history, the smoothbore flintlock dominates and leaves other variety’s as historical curiosities or in use by people who have looted or stolen older guns.
With this in mind, here are the rules. You’ll note there are no prices listed, and that the gun types are very generic. A future post will rectify both with a listing of both specific examples of each gun and their prices (as well as prices for Gunpowder and Shot). This is just a quick look at the rules we are currently using.
The Rules
The Shallow Sea has reached a level of technology roughly equivalent to the end of our own sphere’s Age of Discovery. This means that flintlock firearms are common, while crossbows have largely fallen out of favor (bows remains in use, as they have mobility and speed advantages). Pistols, Long guns, and Scatterguns are common sights both on land and aboard ships. They have the advantage of relative ease of use (any class with broad missile weapon proficiency may use them), at the cost of being cumbersome in melee and with a chance of misfiring. All firearms have a misfire chance, when a creature misses an attack with a firearm if the unmodified roll was in the range listed, the gun has misfired and a turn must be spent clearing the breech and reloading before firing again. For any weapon with One-Shot the opportunity to use that weapon is lost. Fire arm Types:
Long Gun: Long guns are guns requiring two hands that fire a single projectile. They generally have better range than other gun types, and may be reloaded in combat (if the wielder is not engaged).
Pistol: Pistols are hand held firearms. Most cannot be reloaded in combat, as they are of the “twist barrel” variety and must be fully disassembled to effect a reload.
Scatter Gun: Firearms designed to fire shot (multiple small projectiles) as opposed to a single one. Worse range, but can riddle a target with holes, or affect multiple targets.
Special
Bayonet: May have a Bayonet affixed, and used as a melee weapon for the listed damage value.
Cleave: The weapon is limited in the number of cleaves it can perform in a round. The limit is listed after the Cleave tag.
Cumbersome Reload: Weapon may not be reloaded while the wielder is engaged.
Lingering: Once ignited this weapons continues dealing damage for the listed number of turns before going out.
Long Reload: The weapon cannot be fired on consecutive combat rounds unless the character remains stationary or is mounted (equivalent to slow).
Improvised Ammo: May loaded with any hard material (stones, ceramic, silver-ware, coins, etc). However, on a misfire the gun explodes, dealing the listed damage to the wielder and anyone with 5’ of him.
Matchstick: Must be ignited by an external source. May be done as an action in lieu of moving.
One shot: The weapon may only be fired once in combat, owing to its extreme reload time.
Point Blank: Must be fired in melee.
Scatter: On a successful attack, the weapon hits all creatures within 10’ of the primary target for the listed damage. The creatures may make a Save vs Blast. A successful save minimizes the scatter damage (i.e. a weapon with 1d6 deals 1 damage).
Stock Club: The weapon may be used as a melee weapon, the damage is listed.
Supported Fire: The weapon is too long to be fired unaided by a gun rest (usually attached to a fortress wall or a bi-pod/tripod if deployed in the field)
Firearm Proficiencies
Bayonet Use: This character has trained with a bayonet. Damage with a Bayonet is increased to 1d8.
Drilling: A character with drilling is skilled in the maintenance and care of firearms. The misfire chances of guns in Damp conditions are treated as Dry, and Wet is treated as Damp.
Pistoleer: The character may ignore the cleave restriction on pistols. He still must have easily accessible pistols available to fire and drop per each pistol cleave he wishes to make.
Scoot and Shoot: The character has practiced moving and shooting. He may fire a firearm with Long Reload on consecutive rounds, even if he moves.
Author’s Note: Misfires
The misfire chances are based off of those in Guns of War. However, astute readers will have noticed that now a misfire only occurs if the character misses the attack. This means that early level characters with bad Attack Throws will misfire more than higher level characters. This is intentional, and abstracts higher level character’s better weapon maintenance. It is worth noting that a character with an 11 attack throw misfires exactly as much as any character does using the standard percentage based misfire chances. Doing it this way means that resolving a gun attack is now only a single dice roll. I also prefer the fiction the dice tell with this method. Using a flat percentage misfire chance means you can technically “hit” your target (rolling successful attack), but still misfire and thus miss. This is arguably more realistic, as a shooter could line up a perfect shot and pull the trigger, only for a mechanical failure to rob him of his success. However, we do not model this with other weapons. Bows do not have a chance to snap, swords do not have a shatter chance, even though these were also common occurrences on battlefields. With this being said, misfires are a unique challenge of guns, therefore I wanted to include them. In the system of checking for a misfire on a missed attack, the dice tell the story “I missed because I misfired” as opposed to “I would have hit, but I misfired.”
What to look out for
This is just a small taste of the direction I am planning on going with this substack. More posts that have to do with the game I actually play and the setting, with a smattering of opinions throughout. The next post should be a wider look at the Shallow Sea, a specific region in the Flooded Realms where the bulk of my campaigns have been run. After that I have a special ACKS II Domain play article in the works that should prove interesting. For now though,
Sail On,
-ShockTohp
Footnotes:
1 Each switch in system represented a change in Era. The Pathfinder version of the game occurred early in the setting’s history, while OSE and ACKs were the most recent. In this time periods, guns were relatively rare artifacts from an older Golden Age (the Pathfinder Era). As such, reliable guns were rare enough that I could easily determine the specific effects as a magic item. Moving forward, thanks to the actions of the players in this Era, guns have proliferated again. This removes some of their mystique and means I must once again systematize them.