Review: GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions

Review: GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions

We got a new GURPS book out – GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions. If you are new to GURPS, you probably haven’t heard about it, but if you are a GURPS veteran, then this title isn’t new to you. Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions was in development for, I believe, five years, despite not being a 300-pages-long tome. I still remember its announcement, and being excited, but then, after some time, the author simply disappeared without a trace for a few years, hence the delay. However, he has reemerged and actually finished the book, so big props for that.

What is this book about? Just like Tactical Shooting, it presents new, crunchy rules for realistic firearm combat. While it is mostly intended for high-tech games, many of the rules are applicable to low-tech and ultra-tech games as well.

The book itself is only 42-pages long, but it is densely packed with information, making the most out of its limited volume. Let’s go through it chapter by chapter.

Chapter 1 is titled Shooting in Extreme Conditions. It talks about such things as rolling Will in stressful situations to avoid distractions, dodge restrictions, and holsters that protect your gun from extreme environments. Then, there are some quite generic rules that are very interesting to me, as I’ve been delving into these topics as of late.

The first sub-chapter is Reduced Vision Due to Precipitation or Vegetation – exactly what I was researching before the release of this book. GURPS just didn’t really have much on this topic. Some of the rules in this sub-chapter were taken from “The Emerald Hell” article from Pyramid #3-95, and I even talked about them before. However, the rules were slightly changed and clarified. Now, such conditions as fog, rain, snow, and dense vegetation impose a penalty to Vision. Depending on the severity of the condition, the Vision penalty is applied in increments. For example, if dense fog has an increment of 50 yards, then every 50 yards between you and the target impose a -1 to Vision. Pyramid #3-95 introduced this concept first but… it didn’t actually explain how it all works. I blame the editor for not catching this. So, it’s nice to have a proper explanation here. I’d be happier if we had rules for using these Vision increments with the Obscure advantage. It would probably be something close to the Dissipation, -50% limitation. The tables themselves are slightly different from the ones in Pyramid #3-95. Vegetation got a new density class, some numbers were slightly shifted around, and so on. One of the most important additions is the introduction of snowfall impeding vision, which was not mentioned in Pyramid #3-95 for obvious reasons. So, these rules are more complete and generic. There also are rules for how precipitation and fog affects different kinds of scopes, optics, and lasers, which is nice.

The second sub-chapter is Shooting in Wind. It explains how wind can affect the bullet travel path and what penalties are imposed. These rules are new, as far as I know. I checked GURPS Disasters: Hurricanes, and found nothing on this topic. I wish we had rules for how wind affects low-tech projectile weapons, but a man can dream.

The third sub-chapter is Shooting in Thin Atmosphere. Such conditions can be found not only on other planets, but also high in the mountains. I really haven’t thought about thin atmosphere actually increasing firearm damage. The increase is not significant, but in ultra-tech games, when numbers are higher, it will be noticeable. Strangely enough, there is nothing about shooting in dense atmosphere. Do I simply reverse the rules? It would be really nice to have these rules for ultra-tech games, but this part probably was omitted because the book focuses on environments that can be found on Earth. Oh well.

Then we have chapters devoted to specific extreme environments. The first one is titled Winter War, and it describes everything about shooting in cold conditions. This is the longest chapter of the book. Despite being very familiar with cold winters, I learned a lot of new things from this chapter. It talks about everything from wearing multiple layers of clothes to keep yourself warm, to ways to conceal the vapors you exhale that may reveal your position. Also, we finally get rules for snow blindness! I complained about this before.

Speaking about my complaints about non-existing rules. I wonder why nobody has called me out for being a dumbass and not reading GURPS After the End 2: The New World. That book does have rules for movement on snow and ice that are pretty decent. GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions also reprints rules for movement on snow, but not on ice, but makes them slightly different. Also, it mentions that movement through snow is extremely tiring, but doesn’t specify what this means in terms of mechanics. If you want these mechanics, consider using the rules from GURPS Russia, where each inch of snow equals to 6 pounds of extra encumbrance.

The other rules in Extreme Conditions are very detailed. Now you have rules for bracing a firearm when lying prone in the snow, guns freezing up, urinating on guns to unfreeze them, cold affecting optics, and even hollow-point projectiles failing to expand due to their cavities getting plugged up by heavy winter clothing. Also, I had no idea that ambient temperature has such a significant effect on firearm damage. One thing that I found interesting is that snow reduces fragmentation damage from ground-level explosions, and ice increases it. My favorite part was the rules for how much DR does snow provide. That’s very cool.

The next chapter talks about desert combat. Basically, this is the inverse of the previous chapter. It talks about rules for heat and introduces such things as sandstorms that penalize vision and hearing, sun glare that works the same as snow blindness, heat haze that limits the range of vision, and, surprise, rules for moving on sand! Yet another thing that I complained about. However, I have a complaint about the sandstorm rules. They tell us to apply 1d-5 damage to unprotected eyes and optics, but do not say how often you should do that, and what the damage type is. And this is important.

Just like before, we get rules for equipment breaking down in hot and sandy environments, dust and sand affecting optics, and high temperatures increasing firearm damage.

Then we have a chapter on jungle combat. Some of the rules were adapted from Pyramid #3-95, but expanded and explained better. These chapters are becoming shorter, because to avoid repeating the same thing over and over again, they simply refer to the rules from the winter and desert chapters. In the jungle war chapter, we get rules for dense vegetation and humidity. Again, there’s a nice part about foliage reducing fragmentation damage for ground-level explosions.

The next chapter is titled Water War. While it cribs a lot from Pyramid #3-26, it covers not only shooting underwater, but also on water, and near water. Rules for perception underwater or between surface and water were expanded, as were the rules for movement in water.

The next chapter is titled Underground War. If you want to go into the mines, underground tunnels, caves, or want to exterminate the dark elves in the Underdark, you’ll have to read this chapter. Most, if not all, rules for vision, hearing, and movement were reprinted from GURPS Underground Adventures. So, as I complained earlier, the rules for vision aren’t very clear to me.

The next two chapters are very short – Aerial War and Space War. The air combat talks about rules for shooting while parachuting and situations when you would like to shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane. For whatever reason. Space War is basically a partial reprint of the Tactical Shooting: Tomorrow article from Pyramid #3-55.

The final two short chapters talk about skills, perks, techniques, and gear for extreme condition. There isn’t much new here, but it’s nice to have everything in one place. I think the Sure-Footed (Zero-G) perk is new, but I may be mistaken.

Anyway, what’s the conclusion? It’s not a secret that I’ve been disappointed with most of the recent GURPS releases and the entire trajectory that the system is shifting to. Because of that, such releases as Shields Up! and GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions are a godsend to me. While I don’t really run modern-time games, many of the rules presented in this book are very generic and can be used in any game that features extreme conditions, be they modern, sci-fi, low-tech, or fantasy. Rules for perception and bad footing have been on my mind lately, and I even wrote a blog post to consolidate what I found and patch up the holes, and it seems that I will have to revise it after reading this book. Overall, an excellent addition to any GURPS GM or player library, and more than worth a purchase.