RPM:Rules/Firearms
Firearms
In Fate there are many different ways that we can model things such as firearms. This is my proposal for handling them in the Royal Pride of Musketeers.
Rifles are common in the army and pistols can be found among the wealthy or connected. This is to say that they’ll be fairly common in the game but not available to all the NPCs.
Any character with ranks in Shoot is assumed to have the appropriate firearms. For narrative reasons each character should denote if they have a rifle or a series of pistols or both. (Musketeers often kept up to six pistols loaded at a time due to the slow reloading time.) When discharging a firearm there is no chance of misfire unless there is an appropriate aspect to compel against, e.g. the scene has the “Downpour of Rain” aspect.
Making Firearms More Interesting
Using a Stunt
Ankur decides that he’d like his character, a double-pistol wielding Musketeer, to take a feat to represent the double pistols that he uses. He decides to create a Personal Hardware stunt called Double Pistol Shot. For this stunt he chooses Weapon:2 to represent the extra damage from double-handed shooting. Since you get to pick two items from the list in Personal Hardware, Ankur adds a +1 to Shoot when he is outnumbered.
Becky, on the other hand, wants her character to be an excellent sniper with her rifle. She decides to create two stunts, Long Range Sniper and Calm Shot. Long Range Sniper allows her to use her Stealth for attacks with her rifle as long as the target is more than one zone away from her and she is hidden from notice. Calm Shot gives her a +2 to Will rolls to Create Advantage when creating an aspect related to sniping, e.g. “You’re in my Crosshairs” or “Lining up a headshot”.
Spend Refresh on Gear
Gadgets and Gear. This method is like creating a mini-character in the form of a piece of gear. It will have a Function aspect and a Flaw aspect. You then add a number of stunts to the gear with each stunt costing one point of refresh. The minimum cost for a piece of gear is one refresh.
Christina decides that she wants to create “Her Father’s Musketeer’s Pistol” that has been passed down to her. She creates a Function aspect, “True Aim for the Realm” to represent that when push comes to shove for the realm this pistol pulls through. For a Flaw aspect she decides that her brother isn’t pleased that she was gifted the gun and thus it is “Coveted by my brother, Dean” to represent that her brother is constantly trying to steal it, my hook or by crook. She needs a stunt for her pistol and decides that since her father was known as a merciful man she'll have the pistol will give her +2 to Overcome rolls with Rapport to convince opponents to surrender, provided the opponents know of her father’s renown. She talks with the GM and they agree that more often than not opponents will likely have heard of her father.
