ak-73 said:

Yes. It is. I want Hollywood rules for DW and I'll be sticking with all the remaining cinematic aspects of the rules (I have another system I use for realistic contemporary games). That's what I'm aiming for. A shotgun that has sufficient spread at 3m to hit separate locations is Hollywood, as is one capable of delivering multiple hits at 10m. Hitting seperate locations at 1m, yet being unable to deliver multiple hits at 3m is no longer Hollywood, or realistic, and is simply moronic. Cinematic systems should take reality and enhance it, rather than reversing it.

@KommissarK:

If you read my post, you'll notice that I was referring to DH, not DW. I've been running my 40k Inquisitorial game without the dodge mechanic in place (except against suppressive fire) since (and indeed before) the game came out, and it's really not a problem. It ensures combat is as dangerous as I want it to be, and it halves the length of combats. People use cover more. I know that the dodge mechanic is not tied to range, but -unless they aren't moving- it's certainly *not* 20% to hit someone 2m away than it is 3m away, so I don't use PB modifiers unless guns are pretty literally being levelled at the back of people's heads. As someone with a reasonable amount of games design experience under my belt, these aren't changes that I made just to be 'petty': I made them for thematic and play-style reasons, and they work. DH was a rule system that I wanted to adopt for my 40k game, but I was not willing to embrace every aspect of it (especially not the very broken psi rules, or the idea of Acolytes being paid monthly...)

DW is another matter. We *are* now playing a very cinematic, heroic game, we use a round-robin GM format so that everyone gets to play, and we are trying to minimise houserules in order to standardise things. Hence the question in the case of the shotgun scatter rules being bought up on the FFG forum, rather than just being houseruled. However; having spoken about the shotgun scatter rules at point blank range and not at other ranges with the other GMs/players, we've *all* decided that they were whack and elected to houserule. I'm just now stunned that nobody else ever looked at the Scatter rule and decided it was utterly incongruous.

The idea of the scatter hitting multiple targets was a misread on my part, and not a rule that I'd want to try to bring into play.

Madness and superstition? Makes shotgun patterns start wide and narrow down? I'm really not buying that. Although I'm happy to let a lot of the science past, this one hits the 'WTF?' filter because -as stated earlier- the RAW for Scatter neither reflects reality or cinema, and I don't want shotguns in my games to be a weapon that is used merely at 2m range or less.

As a final point: Realistic != Slower and Abstract != Faster. The speed a game system runs at is down to the elegance of design, and realism has nothing to do with that. Rolemaster (or Marvel) is not a realistic system: It just runs like a dog and has a bunch of tables and charts. Whereas RoS is a far better representation of realism, yet runs faster than d20 (which is as abstract and unrealistic as it's possible to get). Adding realism to any game does not mean it will run any slower (ie: dropping the active dodge mechanic from DW speeds it up) if it is done correctly. And adding a bit of realism does not have to make a game any less cinematic, either. In this case it's making it more cinematic.

@Psyx

Yes, I know you were talking about DH, and I do recognize that is your game, your house rule. So what do you give to professions that "rely" on dodge as their defensive mechanic? Do you let them swap Toughness and Agility advancement tracks? My point is some professions "need" their dodge, and taking that away is not something that should be done lightly. You state you did put effort into that decision, so its fine.

Once again, I think the intended goal with the "scatter" mechanic is to represent the greater damage when hit by everything that is fired, and a weakening of the damage past medium range, as the projectiles have "scattered." Its not representing an increase in damage due to the scatter, but rather due to a lack of scatter at short ranges. I apply scatter damage to the initial location hit in my games. Also, I do believe that scatter should apply up to short range (but no further). As a house rule, I think my earlier idea of +5 BS per range category beyond PB is reasonable. Still, all scatter weapons really should have 0 pen.

As far as abstraction vs. realism, people have had that discussion all day before, and I'm not too interested into getting into that. I do think there are exceptions on both sides, but I will stand by a belief that an abstraction of reality is generally faster in an RPG system, over a system that painstakingly tries to mimic reality. And personally I think it is most important to keep the action moving.

Psyx said:

They don't. They are the same at each range band, only at point blank range, you do more damage to the single target that gets hit.

Alex