So we have been playing shadowrun and Ive noticed my players havent been keeping track of their ammo or the number of bullets in their guns. Its kinda frustrating because it feels like those action movies where the guns have limitless ammo and it takes away from the realism of a gun fight. So I came up with an idea. I have a couple decks of playing cards so instead of having them write down their ammo and grenades I was going to hand them the cards. Gun carries 30 rounds? Here are 30 cards to represent your clip. You have 6 grenades well you get 6 diamonds to represent your grenades.
I was also thinking of using non d6 dice to act as a placeholder for their magazines/clips instead of handing them a hefty stack of cards. So if you have 12 magazines for your machine gun you can just flip it down to 11 once you use up a magazine.
Are these good ideas or am I just being a sperg?
that works.
>it feels like those action movies where the guns have limitless ammo and it takes away from the realism
Almost all RPGs are designed to capture the feeling of fiction, not to simulate reality. That's literally the point.
If you're a gamist, you need to track ammunition as the resource management minigame is a core aspect to the game's challenge.
If you're a narrativist, you need to track ammunition as dwindling resources and one bullet left moment adds far more drama to the game than mag-dumping like Rambo ever could.
If you're a simulationist, you need to track ammunition to keep the simulation alive.
If you believe any of these things are real you only need one bullet.
Cry harder D&Drone. You know I'm right.
Give the frick over. In reality, most people will want to track ammo for a blend of these reasons, but it's a reasonable abstraction.
If you're a homosexual, you have to rely on gay -ists to support your point, instead of just making your own argument.
Keep crying D&Drone.
Do you not track arrows/javelins/sling stones in D&D anymore? Are there no more rules concerning ammo recovery?
>At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield.
PHB p. 146
Black person here just lacks the attention span to read through the PHB.
Point out where I disagreed with you.
You can't, because I didn't disagree with you, I just called you a homosexual for not building your own case.
Consider learning how to read.
>2022
>muh gaming triangle
Jesus frick...
It's never been debunked in any scholarly way, and time has only gone to prove it more and more true.
5E is an incomplete game and the people who like it are subhuman trash.
In fairness, it's a lot like feminist or Marxist critique in literary circles. You might not like those viewpoints, or think they were in the author's mind when he wrote, or believe life should be organised by them, or whatever. If you put those "lenses" on when you look at a piece some interesting things might occur.
With that in mind, there's nothing to "disprove" as there is no assertion being made. It's just a tool for examination like any other.
Sounds pretty complicated when compared to "keep a quick tally on a piece of paper" sitting at a table, or "mark it down on your digital sheet" when playing online, but why not? As others have already said, combat tends to be over before your usual mags actually hit empty (assuming your players know what they're doing), but it's still important to know where you're at.
There are systems that have "roll x and you need to reload", "roll y and you're out of ammo" mechanics. Shadowrun does not. You buy ammo in batches of 10 and you keep track of it.
Games that are properly balanced usually have limiting or restrictive aspects to make up for a gun's range and effectiveness. Reality isn't typically so cut and dry, but maybe you'd know that if you had a better grasp on reality.
Are they firing more than 10 bursts or 5 long bursts before there's enough of a break for a move-equivalent mag change? That's a LOT of combat passes. Are they burning more than a half dozen mags? That's a lot of targets serviced. If not, why care? It can be assumed they have sufficient ammo within reason. (Grenades, heavy weapons need not apply.)
Some of these complaints could be structural to the kind of game you're running. Talk to your players about how cinematic they want it to be. Shadowrun may not be for them, or bend the rules to fit the fun.
Yeah I don't think we ever had the issue of having to reload since combat was shorter than that.
There are literally rules for reloading, so it's not supposed to be infini-mags.
If your fights are lasting enough rounds (both senses) to need frequent reloads, you're doing it wrong.
If they're engaging in sufficiently long fights that this is an issue, you clearly haven't scared them with HTR enough. Protracted gun battles are not a good career move. I encourage you to remind your players of this through gameplay.
Take the ammo tracker sheet from all flesh, segment it per your players and then just check it off as they fire and frick them when their gun goes dry, which after a few sessions should teach them to keep track of their own ammo.
It's funny, because I'm a long time Unisystem fan (AFMBE, ConspiracyX, homebrewed settings) and I've never had a combat last long enough to reload there either. I can't imagine throwing enough zombies at the characters that they have to reload, or wouldn't charge into melee or retreat.