What tabletop games best simulate this?

I can’t think of an RPG that has updated gear sections. The last wave of in-depth military realism rpgs was Phoniex Command and Twilight 2000 in the early 1990s. I joined the Marines in 1998 and will retire this year.

The war on terror has changed personal equipment and Infantry weapons quite a bit since 2001. When I came in it was Vietnam era ALICE gear and 80s PAGST helmets and body armor. Only squad leaders had night vision. Radios were at the platoon level. Only snipers had optics.

Now every rifleman has magnified optics, night vision, a personal radio. Modern ceramic body armor capable of defeating multiple strikes from rifle caliber AP rounds.

The most recent version of GURPS High-Tech was released in 2007, and GURPS Tactical Shooting was released in 2011. Not super recent, but a lot better than early 90s.

Seconding GURPS. Include Gun Fu and Pyramid 57 for even more Gear Queer. SEALS in Vietnam and the old 3e Special Ops book provide guidance for statting the chaps who hold the tricked out guns.

People like to meme that because it's a generic system, GURPS does nothing well but it is actually one of the very best games for crunchy TIER-0 Special Forces Operators Operating Operationally on Operations.

How do I make my clip bigger so my assault machinegun is now full auto?

...

You suck your armorer's dick.

Dunno, that sounds kinda gay.

Will he throw in a revolver function so the shells do more damage?

Option's only available on the snub nose frame. Sadly.

What is the point of the forward handgrip like that you see on peoples guns in movies?

Helps you hold on to it better so you can shoot things better.

Stability.

It's easier to hold, ergo easier control, than a traditional stock. Most notably on automatics.

Helps you get a consistent grip angle. It functions as a locating mark on where to put your hand. The foundation of accuracy is consistency, making each and every shot with the exact hand placement, trigger pressure, grip pressure, the angle of your head against the stock, and how close you are to a magnified optic. A foregrip is just a way of making some of that easier.

Do not listen to these men, they are noguns.

Retire this year, you say?
Rest in peace, we'll miss you

>t. airshitter

None. RPGs are too abstract to make most of this meaningfully matter.

Ergonomics. Much like pistol grips and adjustable stocks, it is just another 100+ year old design intended to make the firearm more comfortable.

Is there a reason professional armed forces don't use it?

It costs extra and doesn't give enough benefits for the procurement cost as well as the logistic weight it carries.

Depends on the unit, depends on the weapon. Some did/do.

You see it more in forces armed for CQC, i.e.

They do, its pretty standard
Try again, fag.

What system can simulate this?

Game?

Phoenix Command

Cool, you found a picture of a real gun.

Most military games actually do it well because you’re barely allowed to customize your M4 at all and you’re called a gear queer if you do

40k

got any hot equipment books for that? I'll trade you a twillight 2000 burger vehicle guide.

And speaking of twillight 2000, it has a pretty cool setting, if dated a bit dated today

meant for

There's a WWII weapons supplement, two WWII tank supplements, a modern tank supplement, a light vehicle supplement, a civilian firearms supplement, an artillery supplement, and a supplement for special weapons like flamethrowers and riot guns.

Sadly the vehicle books, while detailed, only contain a very small number of vehicles.

that's the stuff, and I guess the point is that you're supposed to make your own vehicle-stat blocks.

I keep forgetting the damn links

For Phoenix Command? Ha ha ha good luck. I've tried. It's a nightmare in 2018, in 1991 it would have been downright impossible.

well what a shame, you'd think these games would come with a way to make your own stuff since they would know there are ridiculous amounts of real life equipment.

This is complete bullshit, as you probably know. This image mixes different versions, standard and advanced and optional rules. Come on, actually pick up the rulebook and look at it. If you can read a table and look up some numbers and roll a dice, you can play this. It's not complicated, it's slow due to the tables usually referring to other tables, but its not complicated. This image is as meaningless as if you stuck the old THACO table and part of the spell/level table from D&D into an image with no context.

If you try googling american soldier you will find that your question doesn't make much sense m8.

Genesys/Star Wars seems well equipped to do it, it already has a damn good autofire mechanic, and some great skill specializations for modding weapon.
Mythras/RuneQuest 6 has a free PDF for creating guns as well, and that's some pretty good shit.

Is their a non d20 version?

Part of Leading Edge Games' business model for Phoenix Command was to maintain a monopoly on weapons supplements. That might have worked out fine if the games had been popular and lots of books had been released, but the reality of the situation is that Phoenix Command didn't sell very well.

>Modern ceramic body armor capable of defeating multiple strikes from rifle caliber AP rounds.
*depending on impact location and remaining structural integrity/fracturing of the ceramics

It is super fuckin' neat-o stuff, though. I'll take it over steel plates anyday.

From the sense of a human body as a firing platform and referencing (though with the caveat that under varied circumstances the only required parts of that are for consistent sight picture [when using irons], and trigger pressure - depending on firing stance, position, range, etc. the rest are variable but you do want consistency) the primary purpose of a vertical grip/angled grip/hand stop/etc. on the front end of the weapon is creating a solid platform.

Regarding rapid follow up shots you want a quick return time on target. This means you want the weapon to move as little as possible. You get more positive purchase on one for pulling the stock back into your shoulder.

Beyond that it is personal preference and comfort. What works best for one shooter might not work best for another.

It is quite a shame. The firearm appreciating goblin inside of me really likes the minute stuff, because I got into firearms through mechanical interest first.

I've been working on a Genesys Destiny conversion (slowly) and have been considering doing something more real-world with it. But that'd probably end up just being John Wick inspired movie wank.

that's cheap, but it could have worked

Attempting to corner super niche markets is usually a bad business strategy.

Oh, that sounds interesting. I'm working on a Shadowrun conversion supplement with a guy on the Genesys subreddit who's been sperging a conversion into existence. It's not too bad.

>It is quite a shame. The firearm appreciating goblin inside of me really likes the minute stuff, because I got into firearms through mechanical interest first.

It's possible to reverse-engineer most of the small-arms equations from published material and use this to create new weapons. In theory this should be doable with vehicles and artillery too, it's just a loooot of work.

I can see Shadowrun really benefiting from such a conversion. I'm interested in seeing what FFG does with their other supplementary settings for Genesys. I'm needing to do a sit down and rework on what I've done with the Destiny Stuff to start actually building things in a practical sense. Abilities have eaten up most of the time. I haven't even gotten to weapons (or the fact that I think I need to pull a little bit back from the narrative nature for combat)

Yeah. I think I'd probably be better invested in building up my own list of features (broken down to include things like weight - including weight of recoiling parts, style of action, etc.) than trying to reverse engineer an existing game. Maybe one of these days, though.

It's already been mentioned but I'm seconding GURPS for High Tech and Tactical Shooting.

Well, you don't have to do ALL the work yourself: drive.google.com/open?id=0B4JCT2hEK1fLdV9HTU9UT3UzYkU

Netrunner is supposedly next after Terrinoth. I'm excited to see what both the community and FFG comes up with. Tom Cruise is making steady progress on 40k, the Fallout theme seems to be a hit, and I'm currently working on developing alternative magic options with various members of Genesys.

Sadly I think that (and Phoenix Command in general) are more granular/sim than I probably will ever want to run on an actual table. It is a fair list of considerations to start with, though.

I can see Netrunner being very useful to me. Other than wanting to see if the expanded magic in the Terrinoth sup I am not particularly interested.

Should ref not my earlier post. Oh well.

As a side query, how do folks like to handle suppression? In the fire sense not the quieter shots sense.

Playing Twilight 2k using GURPS and having a group consisting almost entirely of milsim enthusiasts was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.

It was doubly fun when my character was sitting in the turret of a BMP, it caught fire due to enemy action (BTR80 came roaring up and pumped some shots into the rear), and the automatic fire suppression system failed...

Lately I've been thinking about how I would design a game for modern military roleplaying. I feel that more 'simulationist' games put the emphasis in a wrong place (if you understand my shitty English). The whole "I fire my gun using XdY, with modifier A at that specific guy and hit him in location B which has armor C, doing D damage which ends up taking E health away" feels much too cumbersome for an event which lasts less than a second.

I think a modern combat game should be muh more fluid and focus more on tactical decisions. More like: "I fire my automatic weapon at the treeline until Steve reaches the house to suppress the enemy [make a simple roll to determine success or degree of success]." Making quick decisions, thinking on your feet, trying to make sense of chaos without getting bogged down with each and every attack roll.

Incidentally, I recenlt found the RPG Strike! A pretty 'narratively' game which I feel could simulate Spec Ops guys pretty well. Even (or especially) wihout the Tactical Combat rules.

As former military: I agree with your thoughts on game design completely.

And you showed exactly why I can't bear to ever try to play the more popular "military simulation" games already mentioned in this thread (Twilight 2000 2nd Ed, Phoenix Command, etc) ever again. But by God I tried, and gave them a chance.

The simulationist games are focused away from actually feeling like combat and more to the minute level of realism that is ballistic calculations. On the abstract it is highly "real" but on the practical side has nothing to do with what it is simulating.

There are a lot of games that if they want the feel of modern combat need to focus on maneuvers and realistic enemy reactions.

A large problem arises in needing steep buy-in from your players for that, though. Like, do you build in a rank system? Are they mercs and just doing their own shit? How do you motivate them to flank, move by bounding, and most importantly to understand covering fire to let your friendly player do the cool shit every once in awhile. That last part is the hardest to find.

>A large problem arises in needing steep buy-in from your players for that, though. Like, do you build in a rank system? Are they mercs and just doing their own shit? How do you motivate them to flank, move by bounding, and most importantly to understand covering fire to let your friendly player do the cool shit every once in awhile. That last part is the hardest to find.

The funny part is that you would think players would either already by familiar with these concepts or quickly pick up on them if they want to play games that realistically portray military maneuvers or just firefights in general. Sadly, in the games I played, all the players took their cues from action movies. Which made me wonder why they weren't just playing one of the more "cinematic" games in the first place.

>all the players took their cues from action movies
Yep. That's what you run into. Folks who grew up on late 80's and early 90's action films who did not follow it up with actually joining the military or whatever other level of practical firearms involvement one would need to get away from that image of what war is. It's great to get to do Last Action Hero shit, but I think the simulation games only really benefit a very narrow scope. You wanna play realistic sniping? Simulation is great because you're supposed to be accounting for all this stuff. Super sneaky infiltration and elimination/extraction? Also fits.

But you want grunts in the mud, knee deep in the shit you cannot simulate the level of chaos or function of an actual firefight at that level.

Oddly enough the game I have had the most luck with actually using military tactics was d20 modern. The players knew DnD, they were all enlisted military. Some still wanted to Seagal it up, but that shit doesn't actually work when they're dealing with enemies using squad tactics. Took them about two rounds of getting goofed on to get themselves straight.

>How do you motivate them to flank, etc
This was in Edge of Empire so not a milsim: I gave my players extra boost dies for using tactics and environment when fighting and when they were unsure how to proceed I gave them pointers how they could get advantage over enemy.
I even got my players who had no military experience to plan and execute textbook ambush to defeat superior foe that was supposed to become their nemesis.

>How do you motivate them to flank, move by bounding, and most importantly to understand covering fire to let your friendly player do the cool shit every once in awhile. That last part is the hardest to find.
Years and years ago a read a sourcebook (?) for a ranger-type rpg with very detailed 'guides' on movement, formations, bounding and so on. That, some other reading a Arma videos and tutorials gave me that idea about changing the focus (Schwerpunkt) of modern combat RPGs.

However, that would require players who:
A: are willing to put in at least some learnjng about how and why modern militaries do certain things (or already know this) and
B: willing to play characters who mechanically are vert similar. Two infantrymen in the same squad have very much of the same skills and equipment.

B can be somewhat mitigated by playing special forces characters, but even then, if you don't want tables of slightly differing assault rifles or slightly different armor vests or page long lists of equipment, abstractions means that characters will still be pretty similar.

When I ran Phoenix Command back in the day (as well as Aliens and Living Steel), I condensed the tables down and put them onto a GM screen which made combat run much more smoothly and much more quickly. The worst part about games with lots of tables (Rolemaster, I'm looking at you, too) is flipping through the books to find the table you need. Players doing a little bookkeeping lke filling out their aim time + skill accuracy level for their favorite weapons drops a lot of time as well.

Twilight 2000, particularly 2nd edition, works very well and is considerably simpler.

Nice. That is one of the aspects of FFG's narrative dice I really like. I can see that working out well.

At a 4-5 man fireteam level you can differentiate their kit at least a little, but these things still are there to better support their role.

Team Leader gets the radio which they can use to call support. Point Man gets a shotgun with a selection of ammunition, but always to include breaching shells. Grenadier gets the underslung. Automatic Gunner gets the SAW. If I add a fifth it's usually someone with a DRM.

But yeah, your A part is probably even more important. Because with B characters being motivationally different but mechanically similar is easier to overlook.

Must have been an interesting ride. Any good stories?
(FWIW, I think ALICE was first issued post-Vietnam, but your point still stands.)

1973 was the formal adoption of ALICE, Vietnam lasted until '75. There would have been test fielding(s) prior to its formal adoption, though.

And anyway. He's a Marine, they don't know how to tell stories.

>reverse image search
>zero results
>3264x2448
>""""found""""

>Operators operating operationally on operational operation

Bro. I enlisted in 01 and I had an ALICE pack until my second deployment.

I don't know what you mean by this.

So you own a gun and have no idea how to use it. Great; enjoy your suicide.

I think means that even when it introduces new gear, it takes the military a long damn time to phase out the old stuff.

>no idea how to use it
>that fucking brass deflector
Stay mad, sweet heart.

Which leads me to confusion, because I was referencing the adoption of ALICE (during the Vietnam War) and not her little sister, MOLLE, which is the only way I could fathom someone referencing '01 in reply to me.

>could have gotten it used
>could have rubbed something abrasive on it
>or colored it with a metallic marker
Not that guy but you aren't helping your position.

Bought it brand new. Why would i intentionally mar my receiver with a marker or smacking it with abrasives? Is it really so hard to believe a Veeky Forums nerd makes a range trip every othwr week? Hell, i dont even shoot my AR every trip, i mostly go to break clays. Anyone who has even held a rifle can tell you what a foregrip is for, its to make your grip more consistent and effective. Most people who actually shoot dont fully wrap their hand around it because putting torque below the barrel can negatively affect accuracy. Ill timestamp when i get home from work

Well, following the reply chain that got us here, I guess you sure do love bench shooting and not knowing anything beyond that.

You shoot clays off a bench? Damn, youre pretty good.

It's just a comfort thing.

I've found that morale mechanics, even if winged up on the spot, really help get the players in the right frame of mind. For random shmucks or criminals seeing one or two of their buddies go down should be enough to get them running and screaming for help. Trained people mitigate this somewhat. I think the main reason prople try to Seagal it up in tabletops is that the average D&D or equivalent monster has no strategy above "walk up and engage in melee until one side dies"

That shit's not goof for you.

Belt fed AR is cute! CUTE!

>implying any of my shooting is bench shooting
:3

That's actually a really interesting point. I don't remember the last time I saw a DnD encounter built in a manner that wasn't oriented toward total wipes. Enemies who get routed gives a good sense that they fear for their lives.

Now, how to direct that toward players.

In the latest campaign I'm running I've had almost every enemy group run away or surrender at some point. It pissed the players off at the beginning, but now they've learned that they too can run away from hard fights.

Now if only I can convince them that surrendering against certain enemies doesn't equal an automatic wipe.

If you'd gotten any enemy with rapport for honesty then getting them right proper cornered with an offer interesting enough you might be able to convince them to surrender.

But knowing players they'd rather blow themselves up.

As said, it's totally doable. Mechanically, you could try something like a SAN check, but if you fail you need to pick between the three instincts: fight flight or freeze.

Fight might involve going berserk and attacking whoever is near regarless of who it is or charging fervourously into an enemy to get mowed down, flight is being a pussy and kicking dirt and freeze has you seize up in panic. I'd recommend not letting players pick the same twice in a row, or roll 1d6 on a little table to get your malus. There was one Apoc World hack called The Regiment that did this, complete with checkboxes for stress damage.

Which is what he was saying, and I was explicating: that despite being Vietnam-vintage, ALICE was still in use until '01 (at least). MOLLE hadn't been introduced to High Society yet.

... is that a belt-fed .357SIG AR!? What kind of sick mutant mind devises such a thing?

I do not think that this should be solved mechanically. Taking away control from players like that feels wrong, especially if they are hardened spec ops troops.

The game or GM should make clear that retreating is a viable option in any fight. Whether that be due to ammo considerations, overwhelming opposition or simply because killing these particular guys is not needed for the mission.

Surrender or capture should be explicitly stated as not being a total party kill. "It's OK to surrender. You are the cool guys, you will not just be executed, you can still escape." My ideal Operator RPG even has a chapter on SERE to reinforce this idea. Hell, in shows like The Unit, it often turns out that getting captures was the plan all along and even helps with achieving the mission.

Oh user, don't get me wrong! I wouldn't do it if the players are elites, but if they're basically random lads with guns they better be OK with running away screaming. And the MGS-style captured on purpose before mission could be a rad way to start -- I imagine PCs faking death and using a morgue as their base of operations for the mission. I wonder if my playerd would be okay if surrender if all they got was their illegal guns confiscated and a boot to the ass out of where they're trespassing or just an escape from some country cardboard prison manned by 2 inattentive guys.

I like this. Albeit I would probably not allow a choice on a failed roll. I don't know how I'd work it in, but the instinctual response should be something that just happens and they have to overcome it.

Given that it is usually a personality thing, I would actually be prone to having them go roughly the same way more often. I'd also probably replace "fight" with "freak" in the GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER sense.

There is a difference between a tactical retreat and "half your fireteam just got brained, you have their brains on you" which I think is fair to represent mechanically.

I would compare failing a check of that nature under severe duress would equate to the same mechanical function as a character being knocked unconscious/near death and them being taken out of the fight. The details are still up to the player.

Surrender should always be a tactical decision.

You mean that isn't what GMs normally do ?
Unless constructed to be a suicidal murder machine or the fanatic and desperate, I'll have every enemies try to leg it or surrender/play dead once shit goes south.

Also my players have come to fear robots and the like.

No, alot of DMs get into the mindset that their NPCs are just walking stat blocks designed to be ground down to their last bit of health.

>Oh user, don't get me wrong! I wouldn't do it if the players are elites, but if they're basically random lads with guns they better be OK with running away screaming.
>There is a difference between a tactical retreat and "half your fireteam just got brained, you have their brains on you" which I think is fair to represent mechanically.
Those are valid points, but there still feels something 'off' for me. Perhaps added stress, or an added penalty. "Now you run away" doesn't fit fit the tone of modern combat for me.