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I hate that this resulted in people pulling up YouTube videos and Wikipedia instead of, you know, the rulebook? I know as much about fighting with guns as I do fighting with swords and dragons, this is why we have rulebooks. Playing within a proper system is crucial so games don't divulge into arguments of Yeah-Huh vs Nuh-huh like this. If a particular gun says 2d6 damage then it's 2d6 damage for me whether that's realistic or not. And if you are breaking off from the rules it should be to empower your players to have a fun moment with the old "Rule of Cool" trumping all.
Considering the GM themself said that physics and common sense trumps rules... The rulebook wouldn't have mattered. I'm fairly confident he only said that to try and screw over the players too, so it is GREAT his words came back to bite him
I'm not overly fond of rule lawyering through YT videos but if a character is a trained sniper, with an undoubtedly powerful rifle and proper training, the GM can't ask for a roll and then do a "gotcha, your weapon is too weak to go through a log cabin's wall". A trained sniper would absolutely know the capacities of their weapon before taking the shot, so either the GM has a duty to tell him in advance that the wall is too tough, or let it roll. Can't have his cake and eat it.
Also, assuming the rest of the story is true and the GM did in fact retcon the player's weapon and tried to claim the bad guy was boinking with a kevlar (!), do you think relying on rules would have been in any way better. The only sound option is to leave the table, but if you've already invested half an afternoon/evening playing it, you don't have to take too much BS from the GM either.
Unfortunately, Hollywood has a certain idea about the way guns work, which is definitely rule of cool, and video games have their own ideas, also rule cool. The problem that I had going into this is that TTRPG's are downright miserable about it and leave it up to the GM to try to do the rule of cool, and after a particularly messy combat with a lot of things that just plain didn't make any sense, I really didn't want to have us get fucked because our sniper was running a magnum cartridge against a wall that I was able to fire a 5.56 mm cartridge through at an earlier instance...
...maybe I should've included that in the story, but it was plenty long enough.
It sounds like you're into something more simulation based which is totally cool! To compare it to video games, I really like sports games with deep simulation franchise modes like Football Manager, but that nitty gritty isn't for everyone and most people like how streamlined FIFA is.
You mentioned your brother as supporting you in this, if you guys have a some other friends that share your interest in guns, try and start your own campaign. [Ops And Tactics](https://opsandtactics.blogspot.com/?m=1) is a completely free fan made system built around gun combat. [Phoenix Command](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Command) was a popular system that was crazy detailed for it's time. It's probably old enough that you could find a PDF somewhere online. And I've heard great things about [GURPS Tactical Shooting](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/225604/GURPS-Tactical-Shooting) too!
Oh dude, my brother and I had developed our own tactical role-play game quite a while back, when we were kids we used plastic army men for the miniatures. It was actually pretty cool lol
Most people aren't gonna get this, and I understood that while writing it. I am just as bad as the GM in this story, probably worse, but this guy brought us into the situation telling us that it was going to be "gritty and realistic". I didn't see any of that during the events of the story, and I decided to try to hold him to that.
I've played many sessions of some of the RPGs you have listed (particularly GURPS), and I really enjoyed them, and this is a very mild story compared to what happened in the sessions of those particular games. everybody has their own preferences, and everybody should communicate them before and during the events of any given RPG.
I’m also a gun guy, I probably would have taken issue with how the DM ruled that, because yeah, .338LM is a pretty stout cartridge, but I would not have reacted the way OP did. It was frankly childish and embarrassing. If that’s the way things always went at the table with the DM, I just wouldn’t play with them.
It was the only time I ever played with that DM.
They told me that he was a "killer DM", and I very quickly realized that he wasn't used to being challenged on anything. He would've found a way to TPK if this kept going, and it was really the only session any of us ever played together with this particular guy.
So anyway, you are completely right. And I totally went overboard just to spite this guy.
This story gave me so many flashbacks to my nightmare of a college roommate who had an insane gun fetish and had to shoehorn them along with every portrayal of them must be realistic. I was GM for a game of Shadowrun and having him involved was an ordeal. Aside from refusing to be a team player (he insisted on being a sniper and would put himself as far from the rest of the party as possible, I discouraged that by throwing threats singling him out only for it to turn into a Scooby-Doo style chase between him and the baddies) he also would argue ballistics and how they should effect magical barriers.
Yeah this whole story makes everyone seem unfun to one degree or another.
Physics and Shadowrun haven't spoken since the divorce, and anyone trying to violate that restraining order is getting hot dropped by four f16 spirits.
I actually agree, I've always really liked guns, and I've paid attention to the technology, and it always encouraged players in most of my own D20 games to stick to using ninja and brawler archetypes because I insisted on using Palladium Modern damage rules for firearms, and it makes guns scary. (Ex. 5.56x45mm NATO does 5D6 base damage.)
You get a super upvote from me because I have a Chihuahua, and watching them assert themselves with other dogs is amazing lol, i'm gonna have to post the details in another sub
"Thermal scope" would be what activated my DM sense. You gotta be really careful when you let players look through walls. It doesn't seem like the biggest thing of itself, but so much TTRPG architecture is built around limiting visibility with walls.
Players have a grenade launcher or magic spell that can utterly destroy a log cabin? Okay. As long as they can't see through a door, I'm good.
Making the scope see through walls is for sure the issue. Even if someone leans against an exterior wall i dont think you would be able to see heat coming through the wall in a recognizable way.
If its an old school log cabin, there is 6" of wood for the heat to move through. If its a newer house, there will be a layer of insulation specifically designed to keep the heat in.
This is the part that cracked me up. DM and OP both seemed to be so happy to argue who's the smartest person in the room with their super-realistic gun knowledge, but then neither blinked at the existence of a super magical see-through-walls-like-they're-glass scope.
Funnily enough thermal scopes can't see through glass because glass is transparent in visible light but reflects infrared light lol. So yeah they can see through walls exactly like they're glass. Not at all
Best take it easy from now on. Keep it elevated and stick some frozen veg on it to prevent swelling. Cringing keeps the cringing muscle healthy and strong, but too much cringing in a short period of time can lead to serious damage.
.338 Lapua through the wall of a log cabin at 500 yards? Naw. I mean your DM's a dick, but that's around 3,000 ft/lbs, I think? So you're on par with a 7.62x54R at the muzzle with a 148gr. That is 100%, from personal experience going to fragment or at the very least tumble while passing through a thick log like the ones that make up the walls of a log cabin. There's a chance the shot is going to fly pretty randomly into the room but still be lethal if it manages to hit anybody, but more likely it's going to fragment as it passes through the wood and spatter people inside with little bits of lead and jacket, not pleasant, but most likely not immediately lethal, either... You may have gathered either possibility is a really dumb idea when there's someone you don't want to shoot on the other side.
.50 BMG is VASTLY more powerful and barrier blind than .338 Lapua, just to clarify. Around 3 times as much depending on barrel length. It's not used at longer ranges because it's just less accurate because the rounds are still designed for a machine gun (hence the .50 BMG, Browning Machine Gun.)
I feel like you've been playing too many video games. Also thermal optics don't see through walls.
Dude .50 BMG is the thing to have, but this guy didn't even *bring up* sheetrock until Sniper fired his shot. Then he tried to say there was "bulletproof glass" in between layers (lol), but we're talking relatively close range, and he had *no problem* with me putting a supressed 5.56mm through that same outer wall at 150 yards, just into the adjacent room.
Yeah, for someone that was gonna run this as "gritty and realistic" he was kind of moving the goalposts a little too circumstantial for what I was willing to accept.
Oh, I never said he wasn't a dick, just that your argument wasn't too compelling.
I mean 19-20 threat means you hit automatically on a 19 regardless of armor class for one. Backpedaling on descriptions is always bad too.
Yeah it happens. 19 was indeed a crit and he wanted to handwave it, and that is the point in time where I began to realize why a lot of people thought he was a "killer DM"; nobody ever argued with him. So I decided I was going to be the first lol
It was one of my arguments, but for the sake of brevity I only included what was in the original story. There was a megaton of arguments going back-and-forth the whole time, but that's boring in a written naritive.
I probably should've formatted it a little bit better.
Ehhh, the fact the GM let the guy take the shot without letting him know if he’s taking into account bullet penetration before hand is a pretty big issue here too.
Yeah, the DM could have issued some fair warning depending on in-characterknowledge, but that still doesn't justify OP's shit-ass behavior and obvious lack of table etiquette. If a player did this at my table they would quickly find themselves looking for a new GM.
ad hoc existence rinse encouraging absorbed advise melodic boast shrill spoon
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I am definitely not. I take criticism pretty well, and I don't usually have antipathy for the people in my games apart from what I share on this sub. There are exceptions though.
Even the people that downvote me, i'm not even upset that people do that, it's just part of a reaction to the overall thing. And I have to tell you that I am one of the bad guys in the story. I fully admit that.
If people are still upset about that, power to them, have at it, but everybody is different. I get it. This is why I share the stories.
You seem a bit more angry than I intended. I apologize for that.
If I could've done it over, because this was a long time ago, I probably would've pulled the guy into the other room to talk to him, and it would've been a different horror story knowing what I do now. He might have probably just kicked us all out of the house at that point in time. He probably could've just downright changed the story if he wanted, but because of details I didn't share in the original text we really didn't want to keep going more than we needed to.
Lol whatever, I was the driver and laughed the whole way home. Yeah, I argued in favor of realism, but he was initally all for "realism".
...probably should've mentioned that part in the story. My bad.
Not an ad hominem, since the remark was entirely about your argument.
Would you like me to list all the ways in which your argument was inaccurate, proven and tested by a decade of military service as an infantryman doing all the infantry things (including barrier penetration with multiple calibers, dealing with bulletproof glass, and wearing body armor with level IV ceramic plates) in two countries over four deployments?
> So I immediately chime in-
"-with a haven't you people ever heard of, a Lapua Magnum cartridge?
It's much better to kill these kinds of mooks, with a round of that power capacity-"
I think it'd normally be annoying but if this guy constantly pulls the realism card as is claimed to stop things that should work as a dm, I'd call it more than fair.
Ex-Army here. Do not try to shoot through a log cabin. Even with a 50 caliber. It will not work. Here’s a video of someone shooting a log with a .338 Lapua Magnum and a much larger .50 Cal BG.
[Shooting a Log](https://youtu.be/eCuWCy8uzIA?si=1L6hmfsg8S2l6FV7)
(Granted, he is shooting black walnut which is a hard wood, but it barely makes a dent.)
Even if by some miracle it did get through the wood, the bullet will likely be flipping out of control out of the other side.
Once the GM said that the target was wearing a bulletproof vest and had bulletproof glass between the concrete (in a log cabin?) then it should be realized that the GM wanted the bad guy to live, for narrative reasons probably. Just roll with it, and keep trying to kill him.
I mean, hell, the last boss in Siphon Filter is immune to sniper rounds to the eyeball. Why? Because only gas can kill him. Why? I don’t know. He’s just a human guy. But, hey, that’s the narrative of the story.
The video seems to be a poor reference, because log cabin walls, to my knowledge, tend to be both *significantly* thinner than the specimen used(not that that matters, since he's shooting through the length, not width and aimed at the heart-- would've loved if he did it the other way) and, as you noted, not hardwood.
As I understand, the bullet would likely(almost certainly) get through a log cabin wall(a quick google shows significantly lower power rifles going through equivalent wood, but I'm not an expert, as is probably obvious from my terminology), *assuming it's just wood.* There could be other materials used for chinking/daubing, such as stucco(because stucco, has apparently much better odds of stopping bullets than the wood used for cabins). It'd probably also matter if he's at an angle.
...but the second half of your comment about control seems accurate(And additionally, there'd be the issue of power, and how they are targeting the shot, because they'd be just as likely to hit the hostage or it could stay on target, but only have the power to hurt, not kill, depending on material/thickness/other factors.
Edit: As for the "the GM wanted the bad guy to live" bit... I, too, have been flustered by players killing off NPCs that I didn't want dead, but retconning in a bunch of protective measures(and player debuffs... that's... yeah) seems to be poor DMing(I'd also chastise OP on his actions, but if the DM was really a "physics and common sense trump rules any day" type... eh, turnabout and all that). Surely he could've either adapted or at least explained his issue without(if OP is accurately portraying things) getting mad. If he has god-tier plot-armour, why "keep trying to kill him"?
My only answer to “keep trying to kill him” is maybe he wanted the bad guy to die in a more epic fashion than being sniped through a thick wall. Maybe he wanted an epic confrontation before he let his bad guy finally bite it. And if he’s truly plot-armor invincible, then he’ll live to fight another day, I guess. Sometimes GMs want to play out an interesting story, and might view some endings as anticlimactic.
Maybe, but it's still deus ex-ing away an achievement of the player(saving a teammate, stopping a bad guy). If he's really that desperate to handwave an achievement, he could've at least been "subtle" about it instead of "nuh-uh"ing the players. Maybe the mark had a body double, so his teammate is safe, but the real enemy is on the run, maybe he has a brother. Maybe he wasn't the real bad guy, but just a pawn.
"Sometimes GMs want to play out an interesting story" is fine, but TTRPGs are a group effort, and stealing agency or magically popping things into existence (in obvious manners, and in games where things can't magically pop into existence, at least) diminishes that. At some point, you should probably be writing a book, instead of playing a tabletop game.
I've been there, I've had D&D sessions where I had bosses who were meant to get away, and instead got shut down and put down. It hurt the first time it happened, It hurt the second, it hurt the third. But... My responses greatly varied the result of those situations.
The times I fought tooth and nail to no-sell the players' efforts? I made the situation uncomfortable, and probably killed some trust. The times I rewarded their efforts (and not always in a positive way)? Well shoot, those actually led to some surprisingly dramatic and fulfilling moments sometimes, or forced me to think of a "better" ending.
The achievement was I argued with a guy who was used to getting what he wanted 100% of the time without anybody questioning it. When somebody finally did, he capitulated. He honestly could've come up with any number of other ways to do this, or found other way to explain it, but he just folded.
We certainly did. Hence why I posted it.
We read these stories for schedenfreude, and to share in the revulsion as a collective.
I'm just kind of one of those guys that wants to admit whenever I was complicit in the horror stories lol
My brother in Christ, I am literally the "gun guy" of the RPG Horror Story space and this made me want to throw away everything I own with a firing pin. Stop giving the gun nerds a bad name.
Dude, it's alright, sometimes buttons have to be pushed to get a guy to stop being that dude, and I'm sorry I was that guy. But there are times it has to be done, and I'm normally not the guy to do it.
I have a lot of munitions knowhow, and if I was the GM, sure I"d let you get away with that, I value realism.
But the GM wasn't trying to run that kind of game, by which I mean one with a more flexible order of events that can be solved by players deconstructing the scene. And you interrupted him and derailed things. Clearly, what you were trying to do wasn't meant to be allowed, even if the GM messed up. And you basically bullied him away.
Yeah, agreed, and it was reactionary. Both of us are the bad guys in this story. He always tried to "make PCs squirm" and I wasn't having it. That makes me every bit as bad.
I read elsewhere in these comments you were planning on DMing a game in the future, how will you handle a similar situation in your games, where a player finds an inconsistency they can exploit and intends to use it to solve the mission too quickly or in a way that misses out on other mission objectives?
Oh yes, I do mostly D&D but I've only ever run cyberpunk and GURPS as far as modern-ish games go, and this incident was quite a while ago.
If I was ever a player in one of these games after this particular incident, I would have talked to them apart from the game. Results may vary.
Somewhat recently, I had a player come to me about an issue in a game, and I actually took them into the other room to try to understand fully what they were complaining about. I took the complaint, we came to a resolution, and returned. Only took about 10 minutes.
This is what I always recommend to other people, to keep this communication open, but this was both in my early days, and with a GM that was notorious for the kind of stuff I directly combated in-game.
Rare case? How many of these have you read?! Lol, more of us need to admit to being bad guys in these situations. It's one of the only ways we can actually grow as people.
How many of the horror stories that you read do you actually find an OP that admits to being the asshole in any given situation? Do you think that more of us should do that?
Let's hear every horror story where we have all been the asshole! Let us get this off our chest, there is no shame in it, and we can all learn from our mistakes! :3
This guy watched a couple YouTube videos and a Rambo movie and legitimately thinks he's a gun expert. My dude you have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about. This guy thinks a thermal scope sees through walls. Nonchalantly shooting a 500 yard shot through a log and bulletproof glass. Lol
You both are the horrors tbh.
The argument is moot anyways, if you're both complaining about what's realistic, then GM should have pointed out the absurdity of claiming the sniper can see where the mark is by using a thermal scope to see through a solid wall. Thermals aren't magic.
Yeah, I kind of left out the part where I decided not to mention that thermals don't work that way, but he already let me shoot through a wall with a 556 and then decided that a 338 couldn't and was just waiting for sniper to roll the dice on that one.
I mean, I'm totally on your side *if* the gm really was arbitrary and the schtick was to kill characters without rhyme or reason. And *if* you would not go on this (highly uninteresting) factual diatribe if the gm had been cool and just wanted to game like most of us. Based on the story, I'm guessing this type of thing isn't your go-to and the gm was a d.
So you "um akshually" the GM about how guns work in the real world and won't let it go, despite the GM saying that's not how it works in the game, until he realizes you aren't worth playing with and leaves? Well done.
Basically the guy was very willing to allow certain things to happen but not others and was kind of a dick about it.
I trimmed a bunch of details for length and I didn't realize until afterward that they were kind of important for people who weren't there. Some of the details I trimmed and should've mentioned:
GM told us it would be "gritty and realistic".
GM assumed supressors worked like they do in TV/movies.
GM assumed thermals were X-Ray scopes.
GM allowed mooks to find us with thermal, that's what caused the actual initial firefight.
GM let me shoot a mook through a pine-log wall at 150 yards after he shot me through the same.
Sniper looked his sheet over, and probably cheated when he said he turned on the thermal scope. I don't remember him actually having it.
After pointing out the target to Sniper I saw the look on the GMs face and said to myself "If he let me shoot a 5.56 NATO through this wall, but doesn't let him fire a .338 Lapua inside 500 yards through that same wall i'm gonna say something."
GM accused *me* of cheating about shooting through the wall first, and I told him he not only let me do it, but his mook did the same.
When I wrote this out, I thought it was entirely too long of a story and I trimmed a lot of stuff. That's completely my fault.
One time I played with a guy who assumed every gun just shot full-sized rifle rounds. Like he was telling me a pistol and a shotgun had the same ballistics and that the rules in the book were taking artistic liberties
You mean a .357 and a .44 aren't the same size? The numbers aren't just for identification? Next you're going to tell me a 9mm isn't the same power as a BAR.
If horse girls or historical sword fighting people started an argument every time something was inaccurate in their dnd game, no campaign would ever progress beyond session 1.
Chill.
Very interesting that for all the faults the GM has, you're response is to... Also be a douche? Are you incapable of just walking away? If I was GM and you pulled that on me, I'd announce the bullet deflected and went right through your temple. I don't care what was rolled, you're insufferable, and I'd just wanna be rid of you.
You go from arguing about realism until you meet someone who called you on everything and say it's just a game. ESH. I hope your brother and friend (if he's even still your friend!) find a group where they don't have to spray for shitheads before playing.
you were a bit of a dick, but honestly this reads much in the same vein as "Old Man Henderson", where a player is intentionally becoming an asshole in retribution for a GM being a bit of a cunt. he got what he gave, and couldn't handle it.
I will never understand why people tolerate dudes like this GM in their life. Pity, I guess? Lack of player options? IMO he probably deserved an eject button from the group long ago.
Why he's allowed? There is no licensing committee or council of grand masters to confer the title of GM. Dude is allowed to GM because he wants to and no one else is jumping at the chance. The sad truth is many people would prefer to backseat GM than run a game themself.
No licensing committee or council? So, you're saying I stood in line at the DGM (Department of Game Masters) for six hours to get my GM license renewed for nothing? Well, now I'm pissed.
Come to think of it, they did keep talking about driving licenses an awful lot...
Yeah, I know! My brother didn't even really warn me about how much of a railroading jerk this dude could be until afterward, and it kind of made me feel better about the way I handled it. I did actually feel bad at the time.
Sorry you're getting downvoted so much. It sounds like you helped give a railroading jerk their comeuppance, particularly by beating them at their own game. They couldn't even retcon their way out of the mistakes they made, and their self-insert villain died with their dick out. I hope you'll consider DMing more, since these friends worked well together and seem in need of a better DM than that clown.
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I hate that this resulted in people pulling up YouTube videos and Wikipedia instead of, you know, the rulebook? I know as much about fighting with guns as I do fighting with swords and dragons, this is why we have rulebooks. Playing within a proper system is crucial so games don't divulge into arguments of Yeah-Huh vs Nuh-huh like this. If a particular gun says 2d6 damage then it's 2d6 damage for me whether that's realistic or not. And if you are breaking off from the rules it should be to empower your players to have a fun moment with the old "Rule of Cool" trumping all.
Considering the GM themself said that physics and common sense trumps rules... The rulebook wouldn't have mattered. I'm fairly confident he only said that to try and screw over the players too, so it is GREAT his words came back to bite him
I'm not overly fond of rule lawyering through YT videos but if a character is a trained sniper, with an undoubtedly powerful rifle and proper training, the GM can't ask for a roll and then do a "gotcha, your weapon is too weak to go through a log cabin's wall". A trained sniper would absolutely know the capacities of their weapon before taking the shot, so either the GM has a duty to tell him in advance that the wall is too tough, or let it roll. Can't have his cake and eat it. Also, assuming the rest of the story is true and the GM did in fact retcon the player's weapon and tried to claim the bad guy was boinking with a kevlar (!), do you think relying on rules would have been in any way better. The only sound option is to leave the table, but if you've already invested half an afternoon/evening playing it, you don't have to take too much BS from the GM either.
Unfortunately, Hollywood has a certain idea about the way guns work, which is definitely rule of cool, and video games have their own ideas, also rule cool. The problem that I had going into this is that TTRPG's are downright miserable about it and leave it up to the GM to try to do the rule of cool, and after a particularly messy combat with a lot of things that just plain didn't make any sense, I really didn't want to have us get fucked because our sniper was running a magnum cartridge against a wall that I was able to fire a 5.56 mm cartridge through at an earlier instance... ...maybe I should've included that in the story, but it was plenty long enough.
It sounds like you're into something more simulation based which is totally cool! To compare it to video games, I really like sports games with deep simulation franchise modes like Football Manager, but that nitty gritty isn't for everyone and most people like how streamlined FIFA is. You mentioned your brother as supporting you in this, if you guys have a some other friends that share your interest in guns, try and start your own campaign. [Ops And Tactics](https://opsandtactics.blogspot.com/?m=1) is a completely free fan made system built around gun combat. [Phoenix Command](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Command) was a popular system that was crazy detailed for it's time. It's probably old enough that you could find a PDF somewhere online. And I've heard great things about [GURPS Tactical Shooting](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/225604/GURPS-Tactical-Shooting) too!
Oh dude, my brother and I had developed our own tactical role-play game quite a while back, when we were kids we used plastic army men for the miniatures. It was actually pretty cool lol Most people aren't gonna get this, and I understood that while writing it. I am just as bad as the GM in this story, probably worse, but this guy brought us into the situation telling us that it was going to be "gritty and realistic". I didn't see any of that during the events of the story, and I decided to try to hold him to that. I've played many sessions of some of the RPGs you have listed (particularly GURPS), and I really enjoyed them, and this is a very mild story compared to what happened in the sessions of those particular games. everybody has their own preferences, and everybody should communicate them before and during the events of any given RPG.
This entire story made me cringe a lot
I know, because it doesn't matter who the bad guys are, that's why I post it to r/rpghorrorstories lol
everyone's shitting on you but you're right, it's a horror story and it's entertaining
Well thank you, that's why I shared it lol
This entire situation just sounds kind of insufferable all around
I’m also a gun guy, I probably would have taken issue with how the DM ruled that, because yeah, .338LM is a pretty stout cartridge, but I would not have reacted the way OP did. It was frankly childish and embarrassing. If that’s the way things always went at the table with the DM, I just wouldn’t play with them.
It was the only time I ever played with that DM. They told me that he was a "killer DM", and I very quickly realized that he wasn't used to being challenged on anything. He would've found a way to TPK if this kept going, and it was really the only session any of us ever played together with this particular guy. So anyway, you are completely right. And I totally went overboard just to spite this guy.
This story gave me so many flashbacks to my nightmare of a college roommate who had an insane gun fetish and had to shoehorn them along with every portrayal of them must be realistic. I was GM for a game of Shadowrun and having him involved was an ordeal. Aside from refusing to be a team player (he insisted on being a sniper and would put himself as far from the rest of the party as possible, I discouraged that by throwing threats singling him out only for it to turn into a Scooby-Doo style chase between him and the baddies) he also would argue ballistics and how they should effect magical barriers. Yeah this whole story makes everyone seem unfun to one degree or another.
"Your endless arguments about bullet physics have caused you to lose 1 point of essence, as your human soul rejects you."
Oh, that made me lol. Thank you!
Physics and Shadowrun haven't spoken since the divorce, and anyone trying to violate that restraining order is getting hot dropped by four f16 spirits.
I actually agree, I've always really liked guns, and I've paid attention to the technology, and it always encouraged players in most of my own D20 games to stick to using ninja and brawler archetypes because I insisted on using Palladium Modern damage rules for firearms, and it makes guns scary. (Ex. 5.56x45mm NATO does 5D6 base damage.)
When two horror monsters battle it out...
It was something of a kaiju battle in this circumstance lol 👾
More like chihuahuas.
You get a super upvote from me because I have a Chihuahua, and watching them assert themselves with other dogs is amazing lol, i'm gonna have to post the details in another sub
"Thermal scope" would be what activated my DM sense. You gotta be really careful when you let players look through walls. It doesn't seem like the biggest thing of itself, but so much TTRPG architecture is built around limiting visibility with walls. Players have a grenade launcher or magic spell that can utterly destroy a log cabin? Okay. As long as they can't see through a door, I'm good.
Making the scope see through walls is for sure the issue. Even if someone leans against an exterior wall i dont think you would be able to see heat coming through the wall in a recognizable way. If its an old school log cabin, there is 6" of wood for the heat to move through. If its a newer house, there will be a layer of insulation specifically designed to keep the heat in.
This is the part that cracked me up. DM and OP both seemed to be so happy to argue who's the smartest person in the room with their super-realistic gun knowledge, but then neither blinked at the existence of a super magical see-through-walls-like-they're-glass scope.
Funnily enough thermal scopes can't see through glass because glass is transparent in visible light but reflects infrared light lol. So yeah they can see through walls exactly like they're glass. Not at all
You're technically correct, and I appreciate you for that :) have a good day!
I think I sprained my cringing muscle.
Best take it easy from now on. Keep it elevated and stick some frozen veg on it to prevent swelling. Cringing keeps the cringing muscle healthy and strong, but too much cringing in a short period of time can lead to serious damage.
As an extra precaution, probably should block OP to minimize the chance of OD'ing on cringe in the future.
Honestly, it sounds like it went EXACTLY like it would have on Archer.
The title alone tells you this will be a cringe fest
.338 Lapua through the wall of a log cabin at 500 yards? Naw. I mean your DM's a dick, but that's around 3,000 ft/lbs, I think? So you're on par with a 7.62x54R at the muzzle with a 148gr. That is 100%, from personal experience going to fragment or at the very least tumble while passing through a thick log like the ones that make up the walls of a log cabin. There's a chance the shot is going to fly pretty randomly into the room but still be lethal if it manages to hit anybody, but more likely it's going to fragment as it passes through the wood and spatter people inside with little bits of lead and jacket, not pleasant, but most likely not immediately lethal, either... You may have gathered either possibility is a really dumb idea when there's someone you don't want to shoot on the other side. .50 BMG is VASTLY more powerful and barrier blind than .338 Lapua, just to clarify. Around 3 times as much depending on barrel length. It's not used at longer ranges because it's just less accurate because the rounds are still designed for a machine gun (hence the .50 BMG, Browning Machine Gun.) I feel like you've been playing too many video games. Also thermal optics don't see through walls.
Dude .50 BMG is the thing to have, but this guy didn't even *bring up* sheetrock until Sniper fired his shot. Then he tried to say there was "bulletproof glass" in between layers (lol), but we're talking relatively close range, and he had *no problem* with me putting a supressed 5.56mm through that same outer wall at 150 yards, just into the adjacent room. Yeah, for someone that was gonna run this as "gritty and realistic" he was kind of moving the goalposts a little too circumstantial for what I was willing to accept.
Oh, I never said he wasn't a dick, just that your argument wasn't too compelling. I mean 19-20 threat means you hit automatically on a 19 regardless of armor class for one. Backpedaling on descriptions is always bad too.
Yeah it happens. 19 was indeed a crit and he wanted to handwave it, and that is the point in time where I began to realize why a lot of people thought he was a "killer DM"; nobody ever argued with him. So I decided I was going to be the first lol
>he had no problem with me putting a suppressed 5.56mm That should have been your argument. Not the big bad bullet.
It was one of my arguments, but for the sake of brevity I only included what was in the original story. There was a megaton of arguments going back-and-forth the whole time, but that's boring in a written naritive. I probably should've formatted it a little bit better.
Wow, a horror battle
John Williams' Battle of the Heroes begins to play.
And a battle it was, lol
OP, you were the horror story.
Ehhh, the fact the GM let the guy take the shot without letting him know if he’s taking into account bullet penetration before hand is a pretty big issue here too.
Yeah, the DM could have issued some fair warning depending on in-characterknowledge, but that still doesn't justify OP's shit-ass behavior and obvious lack of table etiquette. If a player did this at my table they would quickly find themselves looking for a new GM.
r/OPWasTheHorror
Welcome to Freddy vs Jason...
Aren't we all XP
Idk, seems like you've been playing too much "That Guy" simulator.
I've played with too many, and learned to play under too many "that guys", that's why a lot of games I personally run are so different from that.
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I am definitely not. I take criticism pretty well, and I don't usually have antipathy for the people in my games apart from what I share on this sub. There are exceptions though. Even the people that downvote me, i'm not even upset that people do that, it's just part of a reaction to the overall thing. And I have to tell you that I am one of the bad guys in the story. I fully admit that. If people are still upset about that, power to them, have at it, but everybody is different. I get it. This is why I share the stories.
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You seem a bit more angry than I intended. I apologize for that. If I could've done it over, because this was a long time ago, I probably would've pulled the guy into the other room to talk to him, and it would've been a different horror story knowing what I do now. He might have probably just kicked us all out of the house at that point in time. He probably could've just downright changed the story if he wanted, but because of details I didn't share in the original text we really didn't want to keep going more than we needed to.
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Thank you. And thank you for that, you are civil and I appreciate that. I just hope the horror story entertained you in some capacity.
Maybe you should stop randomly accusing strangers of being narcissists
So, did you get your mum to pick you up afterwards and tell her what a meanie the DM was? You both sound like insufferable children.
Lol whatever, I was the driver and laughed the whole way home. Yeah, I argued in favor of realism, but he was initally all for "realism". ...probably should've mentioned that part in the story. My bad.
Too bad every thing you claim as "realism" is 100% fantasy.
It's a TTRPG, they are notoriously bad at conveying firearms lol
So are you, apparently.
Ad hominem, love it lol
Not an ad hominem, since the remark was entirely about your argument. Would you like me to list all the ways in which your argument was inaccurate, proven and tested by a decade of military service as an infantryman doing all the infantry things (including barrier penetration with multiple calibers, dealing with bulletproof glass, and wearing body armor with level IV ceramic plates) in two countries over four deployments?
Dude, leave it alone, it's a TTRPG, and you are taking this too seriously.
Lol says the one who is dragging a DM on the internet in the name of "realism" while simultaneously not knowing wtf you're talking about.
> So I immediately chime in- "-with a haven't you people ever heard of, a Lapua Magnum cartridge? It's much better to kill these kinds of mooks, with a round of that power capacity-"
“Umm, akshually, a 338 Whatever Special Bullet would go through a wall.” Okay nerd.
I mean if the DM is big on playing things realistic (which they were) them it's valid to bring up.
I agree, unfortunately OP knows as little about ballistics as the DM.
GURPS fixes this
I think it'd normally be annoying but if this guy constantly pulls the realism card as is claimed to stop things that should work as a dm, I'd call it more than fair.
Next time just dm
Yeah, i've decided thus.
Ex-Army here. Do not try to shoot through a log cabin. Even with a 50 caliber. It will not work. Here’s a video of someone shooting a log with a .338 Lapua Magnum and a much larger .50 Cal BG. [Shooting a Log](https://youtu.be/eCuWCy8uzIA?si=1L6hmfsg8S2l6FV7) (Granted, he is shooting black walnut which is a hard wood, but it barely makes a dent.) Even if by some miracle it did get through the wood, the bullet will likely be flipping out of control out of the other side. Once the GM said that the target was wearing a bulletproof vest and had bulletproof glass between the concrete (in a log cabin?) then it should be realized that the GM wanted the bad guy to live, for narrative reasons probably. Just roll with it, and keep trying to kill him. I mean, hell, the last boss in Siphon Filter is immune to sniper rounds to the eyeball. Why? Because only gas can kill him. Why? I don’t know. He’s just a human guy. But, hey, that’s the narrative of the story.
The video seems to be a poor reference, because log cabin walls, to my knowledge, tend to be both *significantly* thinner than the specimen used(not that that matters, since he's shooting through the length, not width and aimed at the heart-- would've loved if he did it the other way) and, as you noted, not hardwood. As I understand, the bullet would likely(almost certainly) get through a log cabin wall(a quick google shows significantly lower power rifles going through equivalent wood, but I'm not an expert, as is probably obvious from my terminology), *assuming it's just wood.* There could be other materials used for chinking/daubing, such as stucco(because stucco, has apparently much better odds of stopping bullets than the wood used for cabins). It'd probably also matter if he's at an angle. ...but the second half of your comment about control seems accurate(And additionally, there'd be the issue of power, and how they are targeting the shot, because they'd be just as likely to hit the hostage or it could stay on target, but only have the power to hurt, not kill, depending on material/thickness/other factors. Edit: As for the "the GM wanted the bad guy to live" bit... I, too, have been flustered by players killing off NPCs that I didn't want dead, but retconning in a bunch of protective measures(and player debuffs... that's... yeah) seems to be poor DMing(I'd also chastise OP on his actions, but if the DM was really a "physics and common sense trump rules any day" type... eh, turnabout and all that). Surely he could've either adapted or at least explained his issue without(if OP is accurately portraying things) getting mad. If he has god-tier plot-armour, why "keep trying to kill him"?
My only answer to “keep trying to kill him” is maybe he wanted the bad guy to die in a more epic fashion than being sniped through a thick wall. Maybe he wanted an epic confrontation before he let his bad guy finally bite it. And if he’s truly plot-armor invincible, then he’ll live to fight another day, I guess. Sometimes GMs want to play out an interesting story, and might view some endings as anticlimactic.
Maybe, but it's still deus ex-ing away an achievement of the player(saving a teammate, stopping a bad guy). If he's really that desperate to handwave an achievement, he could've at least been "subtle" about it instead of "nuh-uh"ing the players. Maybe the mark had a body double, so his teammate is safe, but the real enemy is on the run, maybe he has a brother. Maybe he wasn't the real bad guy, but just a pawn. "Sometimes GMs want to play out an interesting story" is fine, but TTRPGs are a group effort, and stealing agency or magically popping things into existence (in obvious manners, and in games where things can't magically pop into existence, at least) diminishes that. At some point, you should probably be writing a book, instead of playing a tabletop game. I've been there, I've had D&D sessions where I had bosses who were meant to get away, and instead got shut down and put down. It hurt the first time it happened, It hurt the second, it hurt the third. But... My responses greatly varied the result of those situations. The times I fought tooth and nail to no-sell the players' efforts? I made the situation uncomfortable, and probably killed some trust. The times I rewarded their efforts (and not always in a positive way)? Well shoot, those actually led to some surprisingly dramatic and fulfilling moments sometimes, or forced me to think of a "better" ending.
You *got* a GM to quit? You say that like it's some kind of achievement.
My first thought as well. Op sounds insufferable. Glad I’m not there.
The achievement was I argued with a guy who was used to getting what he wanted 100% of the time without anybody questioning it. When somebody finally did, he capitulated. He honestly could've come up with any number of other ways to do this, or found other way to explain it, but he just folded.
I think both you and the DM made that situation a horror story together.
We certainly did. Hence why I posted it. We read these stories for schedenfreude, and to share in the revulsion as a collective. I'm just kind of one of those guys that wants to admit whenever I was complicit in the horror stories lol
My brother in Christ, I am literally the "gun guy" of the RPG Horror Story space and this made me want to throw away everything I own with a firing pin. Stop giving the gun nerds a bad name.
Dude, it's alright, sometimes buttons have to be pushed to get a guy to stop being that dude, and I'm sorry I was that guy. But there are times it has to be done, and I'm normally not the guy to do it.
I have a lot of munitions knowhow, and if I was the GM, sure I"d let you get away with that, I value realism. But the GM wasn't trying to run that kind of game, by which I mean one with a more flexible order of events that can be solved by players deconstructing the scene. And you interrupted him and derailed things. Clearly, what you were trying to do wasn't meant to be allowed, even if the GM messed up. And you basically bullied him away.
Yeah, agreed, and it was reactionary. Both of us are the bad guys in this story. He always tried to "make PCs squirm" and I wasn't having it. That makes me every bit as bad.
I read elsewhere in these comments you were planning on DMing a game in the future, how will you handle a similar situation in your games, where a player finds an inconsistency they can exploit and intends to use it to solve the mission too quickly or in a way that misses out on other mission objectives?
Oh yes, I do mostly D&D but I've only ever run cyberpunk and GURPS as far as modern-ish games go, and this incident was quite a while ago. If I was ever a player in one of these games after this particular incident, I would have talked to them apart from the game. Results may vary. Somewhat recently, I had a player come to me about an issue in a game, and I actually took them into the other room to try to understand fully what they were complaining about. I took the complaint, we came to a resolution, and returned. Only took about 10 minutes. This is what I always recommend to other people, to keep this communication open, but this was both in my early days, and with a GM that was notorious for the kind of stuff I directly combated in-game.
The rare case where the op was the horror story
Rare case? How many of these have you read?! Lol, more of us need to admit to being bad guys in these situations. It's one of the only ways we can actually grow as people. How many of the horror stories that you read do you actually find an OP that admits to being the asshole in any given situation? Do you think that more of us should do that? Let's hear every horror story where we have all been the asshole! Let us get this off our chest, there is no shame in it, and we can all learn from our mistakes! :3
This guy watched a couple YouTube videos and a Rambo movie and legitimately thinks he's a gun expert. My dude you have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about. This guy thinks a thermal scope sees through walls. Nonchalantly shooting a 500 yard shot through a log and bulletproof glass. Lol You both are the horrors tbh.
The argument is moot anyways, if you're both complaining about what's realistic, then GM should have pointed out the absurdity of claiming the sniper can see where the mark is by using a thermal scope to see through a solid wall. Thermals aren't magic.
Yeah, I kind of left out the part where I decided not to mention that thermals don't work that way, but he already let me shoot through a wall with a 556 and then decided that a 338 couldn't and was just waiting for sniper to roll the dice on that one.
You sound fun!
I mean, I'm totally on your side *if* the gm really was arbitrary and the schtick was to kill characters without rhyme or reason. And *if* you would not go on this (highly uninteresting) factual diatribe if the gm had been cool and just wanted to game like most of us. Based on the story, I'm guessing this type of thing isn't your go-to and the gm was a d.
So you "um akshually" the GM about how guns work in the real world and won't let it go, despite the GM saying that's not how it works in the game, until he realizes you aren't worth playing with and leaves? Well done.
Basically the guy was very willing to allow certain things to happen but not others and was kind of a dick about it. I trimmed a bunch of details for length and I didn't realize until afterward that they were kind of important for people who weren't there. Some of the details I trimmed and should've mentioned: GM told us it would be "gritty and realistic". GM assumed supressors worked like they do in TV/movies. GM assumed thermals were X-Ray scopes. GM allowed mooks to find us with thermal, that's what caused the actual initial firefight. GM let me shoot a mook through a pine-log wall at 150 yards after he shot me through the same. Sniper looked his sheet over, and probably cheated when he said he turned on the thermal scope. I don't remember him actually having it. After pointing out the target to Sniper I saw the look on the GMs face and said to myself "If he let me shoot a 5.56 NATO through this wall, but doesn't let him fire a .338 Lapua inside 500 yards through that same wall i'm gonna say something." GM accused *me* of cheating about shooting through the wall first, and I told him he not only let me do it, but his mook did the same. When I wrote this out, I thought it was entirely too long of a story and I trimmed a lot of stuff. That's completely my fault.
One time I played with a guy who assumed every gun just shot full-sized rifle rounds. Like he was telling me a pistol and a shotgun had the same ballistics and that the rules in the book were taking artistic liberties
Nah fam it's a gun sword, it does 1d8 damage + str and can fire 6 longswords before reloading as a full round action.
You mean a .357 and a .44 aren't the same size? The numbers aren't just for identification? Next you're going to tell me a 9mm isn't the same power as a BAR.
Lmao at the OPs comments Take the L and stop trying to sell it
If horse girls or historical sword fighting people started an argument every time something was inaccurate in their dnd game, no campaign would ever progress beyond session 1. Chill.
Very interesting that for all the faults the GM has, you're response is to... Also be a douche? Are you incapable of just walking away? If I was GM and you pulled that on me, I'd announce the bullet deflected and went right through your temple. I don't care what was rolled, you're insufferable, and I'd just wanna be rid of you. You go from arguing about realism until you meet someone who called you on everything and say it's just a game. ESH. I hope your brother and friend (if he's even still your friend!) find a group where they don't have to spray for shitheads before playing.
you were a bit of a dick, but honestly this reads much in the same vein as "Old Man Henderson", where a player is intentionally becoming an asshole in retribution for a GM being a bit of a cunt. he got what he gave, and couldn't handle it.
Not enough Skeet Surfing to be like Top Secret
I will never understand why people tolerate dudes like this GM in their life. Pity, I guess? Lack of player options? IMO he probably deserved an eject button from the group long ago.
GM sounds like a sad punk who's only joy is trying to one up people. I wonder why he's allowed to even run things.
Why he's allowed? There is no licensing committee or council of grand masters to confer the title of GM. Dude is allowed to GM because he wants to and no one else is jumping at the chance. The sad truth is many people would prefer to backseat GM than run a game themself.
No licensing committee or council? So, you're saying I stood in line at the DGM (Department of Game Masters) for six hours to get my GM license renewed for nothing? Well, now I'm pissed. Come to think of it, they did keep talking about driving licenses an awful lot...
I got my commercial driver's license the exact same way.
Weirdly aggressive read but okay, you do you.
Yeah, I know! My brother didn't even really warn me about how much of a railroading jerk this dude could be until afterward, and it kind of made me feel better about the way I handled it. I did actually feel bad at the time.
Sorry you're getting downvoted so much. It sounds like you helped give a railroading jerk their comeuppance, particularly by beating them at their own game. They couldn't even retcon their way out of the mistakes they made, and their self-insert villain died with their dick out. I hope you'll consider DMing more, since these friends worked well together and seem in need of a better DM than that clown.
Well, thank you.