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A couple of years ago I took inventory of the firearms I gave my characters across all TLs in GURPS for both 3eR and 4e.
I've only given one character a Glock 17.
Two got a Glock 22.
Eight carried a Glock 21.
One has a Glock 45.
I remember taking a Glock on a lot of Twilight: 2000 character sheets... Moar dakka dontcha know.
And I cannot, for the life of me, remember ever have a character actually use a pistol if it was carried as a secondary or backup gun.
But I would often have that pistol.
I often take bayonets for rifles that can mount them, and I can only remember a couple of times when I bothered to fix bayonets; and never used one. With ONE exception.
The FGMP-15 my Imperial Marine was carrying in Bear's world had a variable bayonet modeled on Niven's variable sword. I used that to kill a bunch of orcs once to make the fight kinda fair.
Come to think on it, we rarely had to use a backup weapon of any kind.
If I made a character who used a spear and shield, he'd have a sword too, but...
There is a reason why the US Army, right before WWII, developed the 'first' Personal Defense Weapon to replace both main battle rifles and pistols amongst those who would normally carry either but needed either lighter or heavier. Thus the M1 Carbine was born. Still a good gun today, and you can get some awesome modern loads for it. Subtle hint, if buying more-than-10-round mags, go with the Korean 30 round ones, as they are the best.
ReplyDeleteAnd, really, as long as you don't get the Korean War era ammo that's got the M1 Garand powder loaded into the M1 Carbine cartridge, even the normal Ball ammo isn't bad. Decent deer or hog rifle, good to 200-300 yards with iron sights. And they make an upper rail mount forward stock that easily replaces the old wood and allows more modern sights.
Seriously, in a sci-fi setting when being traders or travelers, a carbine does the best of both worlds until either right up close (where it's fists, knives and pistols at gut-shot range) or past 300 to 600 yards or so.
Pistols are nice, but, yeah, given half a chance a carbine or full battle rifle is the way to go.