What's the best system for a campaign where muskets are the standard weapon?

I never seem to hear anyone suggest a new-world setting. I think it would work pretty well, just throw in injun settlements along with some skinwalkers & wendigos at intervals.

I'm doing something along those lines except low-low-low fantasy

What do you want exactly? There's at least a couple dozen different games taking place in that period.

High lethality and a good injury system. Ideally there'd be no hit points at all.

Open D6 is my go to system for simple lethal gunfights.
Any particulars on the setting?

Grounded in reality except for the existence of not!dinosaurs, giant predators, maybe sahagins

Not even a meme answer. GURPS has good rules for that tech level.

>Don't want players to survive a musketball to the face
Guns are lethal to the point that some people think guns are unrealistically lethal. The answer for which is a Pyramid article titled "Survivable Guns", which mostly increases armor penetration and lowers flesh damage.

>High lethality, good injury system
GURPS has "HP", but they're meat points based on the bulk and strength of a character. "Realistic" rules says max HP is 1.3x ST. There are rules for damage based on type, e.g: crushing is 1x, cutting/piercing is 1.5x, impaling is 2x. Bleeding during battle and many other injuries are part of the basic rules, which you are free to ignore or include at your discretion.

>Grounded in reality exception the fun shit
Yep. GURPS seeks to have "heroic realism" as its baseline, sometimes told as "plausible verisimilitude". Statblocks are available for many critters, and there is a fan work, the "Natural Encyclopedia", which is basically just statblocks for animals and monsters. Its formatting leaves something to be desired, but whatever.

There are also plenty of worldbooks and genrebooks which you might plunder for your setting junk. There was a 3rd edition book specifically set for Napoleonic settings, so that might be up your alley.

Check out the general when it's around, ask for Lite, which is a free, forum-postable subset of the game.

D6 and BRP would work best then, they tend to fall apart at super heroes and uber beings, but for a somewhat exceptional humans they work very well.
The Mythras version of the BRP for example has plenty of options for combat, normally in the first session you get the hang, and ever the most obtuse player get it after a few games.
D6 does scales in an elegant and simple way too.

How to make GURPS not that lethal:
- buy HT, even if you're reduced bellow zero HP, you can stay conscious as long as you passed your HT roll, you don't die unless you're reduced to a negative multiplier of your HP, but you need to roll to stay conscious
- don't wast your points on HP, even a 10 HP (which is the basic) character can be really hard to kill.
- buy armor, even 1 point can save you, especially on torso and head.
- buy combat reflexes to not get surprised and stunned
- buy high pain threshold, it lets you negate the shock penalty after getting hit (you can ignore this rule if you don't like it)
- do pay attention to your position, facing and posture, a crouching posture makes you harder to hit.
- you can avoid ranged attacks by dodge and drop, but it leaves you prone.
- use cover and tactics.
- get the Luck advantage to get two more rerolls (it's a meta trait)

You can also use the Survival guns optional rules, there are action rules in the supplements and a lot of advantages that can keep you alive, GURPS is perfect for historical settings.

Witch Hunters, maybe.

I recommend Mythras/Runequest, earlier editions have a gun supplement and the combat is deadly and gritty.
Also the fact that you learn "fighting styles" really prevents the resource sink that usually comes with specialising in multiple weapons.

>less lethal GURPS

Players start the game on the understanding that they are playing the 7th Dragoons of Wherever, rather than just individual. That way, they can form a story for the regiment, but *when* their PCs die, they can roll another one from the regiment and continue the story.

You maintain a sense of identity that extends beyond character death, and it fits thematically with the war-around-1800 theme.

People survive being shot all the time, idk what youre on about "hurr i dont want my players to survive".

people regularly survive being shot with low-caliber bullets in the modern surgical age.

musket balls were large. less likely to hit you, admittedly, but if they did, you were going to be in some pretty serious trouble. if it was peripheral, you might get away with an amputation (and hope you survived infection without antibiotics). otherwise you were pretty boned.

musket ball for reference

Warhammer fantasy role play 2ed has firearms and is very gritty when it comes to combat.

DESU, if I want legal combat in my games I usually don't crack up the numbers.
Rather I let people roll for infection five minutes after the wound without first aid in pre industrial settings and an hour in post industrial ones, cuz advanced medicine.
Then I look for disease rules and pick something that should fuck up an average human after a week without treatment.
You can take antibiotics but they mess with STR and END or their equivalent a little for messing up you Flora.

Didn't those go at around 400 m/s with half an inch diameter ball of lead ?
I need to calculate that.

In gurps has specific examples. Assume a 10 hp human

A modern gun doing 2d pi damage, with modern surgery capable of saving a life on one or two rolls vs diagnosis and surgery, healing 1d+ hp per treatment, and doctors being available in minutes to hours of the shot.

A dragoon rifle deals 4d pi++; if you're not outright smeared or popped open, first aid might stabilize you, but you're gonna be exposed several times over to infections you can't be cured of, and then treatment will only heal 1d-3 or so each time.

Okay I kinda calculated it and got around 800-900 Joule for a musket shot, which is a good step stronger than todays pistols, but is simply eclipsed by today's rifles.

Renege kids, if you want to kill something harder, go faster, not heavier, unless you penetrate the Target.

the faster you go, the greater your chances of penetrating the target, then a lot of your energy is lost.

i think if you looked at how much of the energy is actually transferred to the target, a slower and heavier ball is probably more damaging than a fast one that goes straight through

Yeah that's the thing, in modern warfare you necessarily don't want to kill your target, rather than cripple them and have him out of the fight, his buddy who drags him into safety and somebody with first aid training. Here penetration is rather common.
Compared to hunting, where you can officially use hollow points and turn innards to mush with them. Here bullets rarely penetrate

As the others have already suggested, GURPS is what you want.

If you're looking for 18thC, you got some options. My go-to is Colonial Gothic, which itself is set in 18thC America with a horror theme. It also has expansions dark fairy tale, and lovecraftian horror.

If you want details, i'll be happy to go into it. Its literally my dayjob. Pic related.

Honestly, I love WHFRP, but it does melee better than shooting, even with copious houserules.

How the fuck do people manage to create such a straigth barrel on an pre-industrial gun ?

Its essentially the same process today, if more primitive. Its forged over a barreling form, either as a sheet, in lateral slats, or in canon a ruban (ribbon barrel, pic related). After they are forged into one solid tube, and defects are worked out, it it bored smooth with a mandril.

Its slow, but efficient.

And here is the barrel boring/reaming/truing mandrel.

Colonial Gothic!

Low Fantasy in the Colonies. Muskets and powdered wigs galore.

BRP/Runequest has Renaissance D100 and Clockwork & Chivalry as spinoffs. The former is a more generic game set in the late 16th-mid 17thC with some rules for magic, and is free. The latter is an expanded version with more rules, supplements and a focus on an alternate ECW where Paracelsian Alchemy, Satanic Witches and Roundhead clockpunk warmachines are added to the Pike&Shot battles.

Even if you end going with another system, readng the books could give you lots of ideas if you want a 1600s era campaign.

your day job is performing pre-modern surgery?

Highwaymen have to take what backstreet medicine they can get, and Gropey can indulge some of his many, many fetishes.

And shooting muskets, marching, demonstrating field tactics, cooking... And when I am not in silly clothes, I am reading and translating requisition forms and cataloguing hundred of rusty bayonets.

Pic is me demonstrating a decompressive craniectomy on a brave British solider, Walter Melon. Unfortunately, his condition was delicious.

I prefer using a pigs head, but I can't do that for school groups anymore.

Thats my hobby, not my job.

>Pic is me demonstrating a decompressive craniectomy on a brave British solider, Walter Melon. Unfortunately, his condition was delicious.

I refuse to believe that you are a real person.

I think gropey is the only Gipsy I like.
Also I have my doubts Nea and him aren't the same.

Almost without fail, you show up in interesting threads and make me laugh. You do that shit for a living. You've given info about SCA stuffs, in which I grew up. You're a cool dude, Gropey.

I am not. I am a figment of your imagination.

Nea?

I'm just here for a good time.

Not Entirely user. Battletech grognard, certified Lightsaber trainer, does combat choreographies and you guys look alike.

Well, that makes sense, thanks.

What is the non-ACW reenactment scene like in the US? Aside from good old Knyght Errant and the odd picture posted to an A&A discussion group the overwhelming majority of stuff of that general nature visible from this side of the pond are SCA and ren faires, especally for medieval portrayals.

>certified Lightsaber trainer,
"Certified"? Not to derail, but who the hell is the authority that is "certifying" lightsaber trainers?

>you guys look alike.
Goddamn. Tell him im sorry.

While I am SCA (actually born an SCA baby, as both parents are participants), on our east coast, we have a thriving community of late 16th/early 17thC Early American Colonial (And Spanish, down in Florida), F&I/Seven Years war, and of course Revolutionary war. These are tend to be significantly higher quality than ACW, which is absolute trash 99.99% of the time. There are even Viking groups in the northern half of the country near the odd excavations where we found nordic artifacts.

We also have many smaller national groups that do non American-soil history. Roman, Both world wars, and all manner of others. They are just not as big as they are not our local history.

The middle and west of the country is fairly barren outside of some isolated groups of the above non-american history, and "frontier culture" style meetups.

Ran a campaign there. Post revolution, pre-1812 USA is great for adventuring. You have a strong power stretched thin, the army is strong but slow, you have tons of natural conflicts (old powers, natives, political power grads), and it's a time when personal combat like players are in used blades, bullets, and bolts more or less equally.

No prob. Its just one of those things that so rarely is relevant, even most black powder enthusiasts don't know.

I was aware that there were some Viking groups, both the society I first joined and our esteemed competetion have branches in the US, some of which have since declared independance as you chaps are wont to do. I know a couple of other people who have done other periods as well. It's just they tend to be very small and completely drowned out by SCA/ Ren Faire online noise, so I didn't know how popular or high profile any of them were.

Nice to know there is an active pre-ACW community doing things right though.

Song of Swords

>he society I first joined and our esteemed competetion

Regia Anglorum?

Busted. Yep, I'm an anti-fun auth nazi.

It's pleasantly surprising just how many US groups kit guides for that period will include links to us.

Nothing wrong with standards. Most groups try to enforce actual historic accuracy. Hell, my SCA household has dress and camp standards. Shame others into being better.

Dungeons and Guillotines

I don't use this word often, but that is pretty epic.

Veeky Forums never ceases to amaze

>I prefer using a pigs head, but I can't do that for school groups
>anymore.

You're only hit by the ball the second your HP hits 0

>I prefer using a pigs head, but I can't do that for school groups
>anymore.

I'd play it.

It pays the bills.

Life is suffering

Like... A luck meter? Thats one way to do it I suppose. Not a fan myself.

>RIP Walter Melon

Walter is a good chap. Sorry to hear he is gone.

The brave lad died fighting for his king. The seeds of rebellion had been sown before his time, but he stood for Britain, and all those who prospered from the fruits of her labour. Walter Mellon was England, through and through! For Gourd and Country!

I'm doing pretty much explicitly that, and have been for 4-5 years now.

Is the same with a crossbow darth that is poisoned?
1HP loss is at least one scratch or poison does not add up.

*dart, fuck me
You can say most of the damage is absorbed or dodged but at least 1 Hp is physical or too many things in the game go to shit.

>Post revolution, pre-1812 USA is great for adventuring.

Fucking a right. Mad Anthony Wayne and the Legion of the United States. If that Spanish spy Wilkinson hadn't dismantled all of Wayne's reforms after Wayne died, the US would have been fielding battalion level combined arms tactical formations decades before anyone else.

...

>Like... A luck meter? Thats one way to do it I suppose. Not a fan myself.
System I played way back when had Luck for health. Luck was a derived stat (based on athleticism and a couple other things) but also on a die roll. Every session the Dm would roll behind the screen and while the players would know roughly how much they might have they wouldn't know exactly.
A lethal attack that hit and bypassed armour reduced your luck by one. At 0 luck you were mortally wounded. Autofire was the only real source of multiple one-turn hits and rightly feared.

It's a relative thing. A hit that does 2 damage to a 10 hp guy is the same as a 20 damage hit to a 100 hp guy.

That seems needlessly complicated and abstract.

I'll take location based minor/serious/mortal wounds.

Second this. Ran a Napoleonic Fantasy campaign for two years and still very satisfied.

The loyalist soldier of the King's American Legion, Walter Mellon, will now be canon in my Colonial Gothic game.

I can't tell if the sabre is being held backwards or not. The perspective and twist of his wrist seem strange.

Fate

I'd look at Mythras. In BRP, muskets tend you simply kill you. Mythras characters don't die as easily, but they'll go down just as quick and in a more stylish manner. And it makes carrying a sabre a really good idea.
Only thing missing are rules for gangrene and horrible infections.

It really wasn't. In practice it took our GM less than a minute each session on a bit of scratch paper.
We knew we could afford to get shot roughly 0-4 times a session and planned accordingly.

It's extremely lethal in standard setup. Unless you apply a hefty amount of cinematic rules, being one-hit killed is pretty much standard situation when you are facing even semi-competent enemy. God forbid a 3-to-1 ratio or anything higher, because you can be literally trampled to death.

He is preparing a swing, while commanding troops behind him.

>Fate
Kya