Hey mates, how are you dealing with fireweapons in the western so far?

Prepare? Limited ammo? Let's focus on pistols and combat rifles, like a Peacemaker and a Winchester 1873 to work as an example.

From what I've seen with other Western-styled games, all of the guns use Limited Ammo, just in varying amounts.

The question is: how realistic do you want to go with the ammo counts? For the Peacemaker and Winchester 1873, we could go Limited Ammo 6 and Limited Ammo 15, like in real-life. The problem I see in this system is that most fights tend to end quick enough that limited ammo could be a non-issue in combat. Unless you start tracking individual ammo counts or there's a situation that doesn't allow the players to grab more ammo, I could see it not be an issue. If it's fine to you, that's good.

Now, if you want the players to have to reload ever so often, you could limit the Limited Ammo count based on some arbitrary number. In that example, I'll assume 3 shots are fired when a character fires. Thus, the Peacemaker would have Limited Ammo 2 and the Winchester has Limited Ammo 5. We still have a possible problem with the Winchester, but the Peacekeeper is small enough that there might be a reload needed in combat.

Of course, if you don't wish to track ammo at all, nothing wrong with just not putting Limited Ammo counts and having Despair count for running out of ammo. Hollywood tends to get the number of rounds in a gun rather incorrect a lot of the time. ?

Well, the revolver on page 91 is (bold mine) " general enough that it could work for a six-shooter out of the 1800s , a sidearm in a steampunk universe, or something straight out of our own era. "

The prepare quality is not really that good for small arms, since it's just one manoeuvre to use it—it's not one manoeuvre before each use.

Limited ammo is ok, but it's not exactly the most fun quality for small arms. It's boring! I prefer to use the "other negative quality" that has you run out of ammo with instead of just . Just a reminder that a reload costs 25 currency.

As for rifles, the suggestions on pages 199–201 are a good starting point. Base rifle, I'd say, would be: Ranged (Heavy); 8 damage; crit 3; Range (Long); Cost 950 currency.

If you want it to be a bit cheaper, you can add Limited Ammo 3 (and change the price to 850). Yes, I know I said that LA is boring, but that's for sidearms. Personally, I go for the three threat out of ammo with Ranged (Light) weapons and Limited Ammo for Ranged (Heavy) weapons, since they almost always have a larger capacity. This makes it more reliable for the user and that is one of the many benefits of rifles.

2 minutes ago, satkaz said:

From what I've seen with other Western-styled games, all of the guns use Limited Ammo, just in varying amounts.

The question is: how realistic do you want to go with the ammo counts? For the Peacemaker and Winchester 1873, we could go Limited Ammo 6 and Limited Ammo 15, like in real-life. The problem I see in this system is that most fights tend to end quick enough that limited ammo could be a non-issue in combat. Unless you start tracking individual ammo counts or there's a situation that doesn't allow the players to grab more ammo, I could see it not be an issue. If it's fine to you, that's good.

Now, if you want the players to have to reload ever so often, you could limit the Limited Ammo count based on some arbitrary number. In that example, I'll assume 3 shots are fired when a character fires. Thus, the Peacemaker would have Limited Ammo 2 and the Winchester has Limited Ammo 5. We still have a possible problem with the Winchester, but the Peacekeeper is small enough that there might be a reload needed in combat.

Of course, if you don't wish to track ammo at all, nothing wrong with just not putting Limited Ammo counts and having Despair count for running out of ammo. Hollywood tends to get the number of rounds in a gun rather incorrect a lot of the time. ?

Keep in mind that each action is not one bullet, but your best time to possibly land a hit. The Limited Ammo quality just represents how many attempts you may make before having to reload.

In addition, all your LA numbers, aside from '2', is too high to be worth worrying about, CRB200: " However, remember that combat encounters generally only last four or five rounds, so if your Limited Ammo rating is higher than that, running out of ammo won’t come into play. So, unless each shot costs money, don’t give weapons high Limited Ammo ratings. "

6 minutes ago, c__beck said:

Keep in mind that each action is not one bullet, but your best time to possibly land a hit. The Limited Ammo quality just represents how many attempts you may make before having to reload.

In addition, all your LA numbers, aside  from  '2', is  too high to be worth worrying about, CRB200: " However, remember that combat encounters generally only last four or five rounds, so if your Limited Ammo rating is higher than that, running out of ammo won’t come  into play. So, unless each shot costs money, don’t give weapons high Limited Ammo ratings. "     

For the LA numbers, it was an example of how far one wants to go between displaying real-life (at least ammo capacity wise) or going for a bit of simplification. I wouldn't use those numbers myself.

I'd much rather take your idea of how sidearms and longarms work in that sidearms don't need ammo but threat can make them run out while longarms have Limited Ammo that's pretty small. For example, I'd say the Winchester is firing roughly around 5 rounds per turn, so that's why it's Limited Ammo 3.

To me the choice is, do you wanna track another number in encounters or not? Reloading is just a Maneuver which is no big deal, so it's not like Limited Ammo imposes much of a penalty. Really a houserule about how many encounters worth of ammo you can carry is what I'd be more inclined to bother with, which doesn't have to be tracked during the encounter.