Reading about soldiers loads has got me looking hard at several characters.
My Rhodesian snake-chimera in particular. Gotta pick Willards brain over that...
He's got an FAL Para, mag in the gun, five spare mags, 100 spare rounds in a fanny pack and 200 more in his ruck. A Browning Hi-Power with one spare mag with 100 rounds in the ruck. Plus several grenades and three Energa rifle grenades. Plus several days of food, water and shelter.
The reason player characters end up over ordnanced is because Gamemasters do so love cutting off the supply lines. The very rationale that drives armies to load everything including the kitchen sink onto a grunt is present during character creation.
One thing you get in the game is an ability to carry more easily with just a couple more points of Strength. This is not borne out by reality where being stronger doesn't seem to add much extra ability to carry a weight over marching distances.
An RPG character is an idealized simulacrum of the soldier that the General Staff has been equipping for centuries!
With GURPS and Twilight 2000 both, there are benefits to offloading all that junk. You move faster and have fewer penalties for fighting and fatigue. The down side, of course, is when the GM creates a situation where all of the 7.62x51mm in the world is literally in your pack.
It's a balancing game full of compromise.
Expectations are corrupted by earlier experience with high-fantasy games where the armor you need to stay alive puts you well into medium encumbrance. The player gets used to the idea that medium is normal and desirable.
My research on what the SEALs were carrying in Vietnam kind of puts lie to that idea. They emphasized traveling light, but also put a premium on moar dakka! But when you add up the weight, they end up in light encumbrance. What they lack is anything resembling staying power because they eschew the camping equipment that most normal infantrymen carry as a matter of course. The amount of food they carry can best be described as "snacks".
So, how much to carry?
Click here to submit $0.00 US for a lifetime subscription
Posts
Comments
I've been saved more than a few times by having altogether FAR too much weight of ammo (far easier when the GM and/or game system don't track weight unless you're being ridiculous with it), usually with as much armor as I could get away with wearing on a regular basis without raising suspicions.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I attempt to give my players some idea when they're going into trouble, and will be unable to rearm for a while. Whether they take the hint that their foes may not conveniently be carrying boatloads of ammo for their particular guns is up to them, of course. Let them know enough to plan if they're fighting from city to city (or equivalent), or going on a patrol outside of town, or if they're trekking across vast wastes without resupply. Getting waylaid when unprepared can be a good way to boost the tension, but punting them into a deathworld without letting them grab more than the pajamas they're wearing is rough unless plot demands it.
Personally, for the Metro game I'm working on, I'm pushing them more towards the SEALs method, because outside of extreme circumstances, spending the night outside of town is basically suicidal.