But I Remember

The Veterans of Foreign Wars is all in a tizzy about veterans benefits being cut.

They care about ALL of us now?

Because I remember, back in 1992, when what my paltry 10% service connected got me was dramatically reduced.

You now need to have a 30% serviced disconnected disability to get those benefits.

The VFW didn't give two shits about me back then.

The Cold War didn't count, see.

To see the power the VFW had, look at the difference in benefits Nam ERA vets get compared to anyone serving from the end of Vietnam to the beginning of the War on Terror.

I'm not opposed to them fighting this fight, but I remember when they didn't care about me.  They still won't support me directly because my DD214 doesn't reflect my entire service.

There still isn't a single veteran's organization that represents all of us.

The smaller VSO's are geared more to discourage us from making claims.  Ask me how I know.  I am discouraged, they are successful. 

If you're about to ETS, look at the dates CAREFULLY on the DD214 they ask you to review.  You have that moment and 90 days after that to fix any errors.  If you notice that someone typed 89 and not 90 as your separation date, and you notice in 01...  It's a nightmare to get fixed inside the VA's system and you will NEVER get a new DD214 showing the correct dates.

"I was popping percocet like M&Ms when I ETS'd," is not grounds for missing the clerical error! 

M16ish At 50 Yards and/or Meters

Little Black Book TRAVELLER 

Traveller is my first game that had guns at all.

In Traveller the "M16" would be an assault rifle from Book 4: Mercenary.

Defenders range modifiers are (semi/auto): Close -4/-4, Short +1/+1, Medium -1/+2, Long -2/0, Very Long -4/-3; Wound Inflicted 3D; Defender's Armor: Nothing +2/+4, Jack +2/+4, Mesh -1/+2, Cloth -3/-1, Reflec +2/+4, Ablat 0/+2, Battle -5/-4.

The skill you use it with is Gun Combat, with a specialization in assault rifle.  We're going to go with Gun Combat: Assault Rifle - 2 to be consistent with the skill level 12 in GURPS later on.

The basic roll to hit is an 8 or higher on 2d6.  The average roll of 2d6 is 7, so you need some modifiers, like your skill, to actually hit on average.

You get +1 for every level of skill you have. 

If your Dext is below 5, you get a -1 to hit.  If it's 8 or higher you get a +2. 

50 yards meters is "Medium" range.  -1 to hit with semi-auto fire (one shot per round), +2 to hit with auto (4 shots per round).  The magazine holds 30 shots.

If the target is unarmored, +2 to hit with semi, +4 with auto. 

If our Gun Combat: Assault Rifle - 2 character with Dext 8 fires on someone at 50m they need a 3 or more (97.22% chance) with semi-auto fire and 2 or more (100% chance) with automatic fire on 2d6.  The average damage applied to any stat will render our target unconscious.

But if we're dead average across the board, our Dext is 7.  That means we need a 5 or more (83.33% chance) with semi-auto and 2 or more with autofire.

It'll do 3d6 damage when it hits.  Each die is applied, randomly to Strength, Dexterity or Endurance.  When one stat is reduced to zero, the victim is rendered unconscious; two is seriously wounded and all three is dead.  Two dice hitting the same stat can end the fight in a single round.

Notice that firing more rounds increases your chance to hit, not the amount of damage done. 

All in all, it's pretty straight-forward and simple.  There's an unneeded complication with range bands we never bothered learning or using.  I remember we changed armor to absorbing damage rather than making it harder to hit, but I don't remember the specifics.

Top Secret

Top Secret is the first game I owned that had an assault rifle called M16 by name.

The M16 is PWV 79, Range modifiers of: PB +5, S -8, M -50, L -160, WS S, Rate 3, Ammo 20, Cost 325, DECP NC, HWV 14.

I remember TS being convoluted in figuring out combat and I did not misremember. 

First you need your "Offense Value" this is the average of your Coordination and Courage.  You rolled percentiles to get those and the average percentile roll of 55 gets you a score of 65.  (65+65)/2=65, so the average Offense is 65.

How much damage you can take is determined by your "Life Level" which is the average of Physical Strength and Willpower.  Same average of 65.

Once again, 50 yards is medium range.

To hit you take your Offense Value, add the weapon's PWV (Projectile Weapon Value) subtract the Range Modifier and subtract the penalty for extra shots.

Semi-auto fire is 1 shot per turn, the M16 can fire up to 3 per turn.  The second and third shot get -11 and -22.  The Top Secret M16 has a 20 round magazine.

That extra shot penalty adds up until you take a round to recover, it can grow to be very severe.  It's actually quite GURPS like!

There are other penalties for movement and position we're skipping for now. 

So, at 50 yards with our M16 we have 65 + 79 - 50 = 94 or less on percentiles against a standing opponent for our first shot, 83 or less for the second and 72 or less for the third if we fired automatically.  On average, all rounds will hit.

That's more like sniping, ain't it.

If we're firing from rice-paddy prone (-5) at a target who's running and dodging (-20)...  That drops our chances to 69, 58 and 47 respectively.  On average only the first two hit.

On to damage! 

We roll on the General Injury Determination Chart to see where we hit with those two rounds.  The average roll of 55 will generally hit the abdomen or lower back.

Then we roll two d10.  The first tells us what type of damage from abrasion to internal damage.  The second tells us if the wound is serious or light.  The average roll of 5 gets a light laceration which applies 5 points against the target's Life Level, down to 60 from 65.  At the other end, a 6 and a 10 gets a serious internal injury and does 12 points of damage, down to 48.

It's going to take more shots than I remembered to shoot someone to death.  Top Secret trends to the cinematic end of the scale!

There are optional rules in the Top Secret Companion that give the location, type and severity in a single d1000 roll.

Twilight: 2000

Stats are determined by rolling 4d6-4, making the average 10.  A favored stat averages 15 and a slighted stat 5.

Hit Capacity varies by hit location.  Head is equal to CON, body is STR+CON+STA, other locations are equal to CON+STA.  Average person has 10, 30 and 20 respectively.

Everyone starts with the Combat Rifleman (CRM) skill at 20.  You can buy that up using skill points.  We'll buy it up to 74 to match the Skill 12 in the GURPS 2e example.  The skill is modified by range to get a "Base Hit" number which you need to roll, or less, on a d100.

An M16A1 has: ROF 4, Mag 10, Rng 50, Dam 2, and Arm -.

ROF is rate of fire in "shots," Mag is magazine capacity in "shots" which are 3 bullets each.  Rng is a range increment in meters.  In our example 50m is close range (the "Base Hit" is 60% skill or 44), 100m is medium range (30% skill or 22) and 200m is long range (10% skill or 7) and 400m is extreme range (special to hit rules), Arm is the armor multiplier which makes armor more or less effective against some weapons (no effect here).

Did you hit?

On average, a 74 skill is going to be missing at 50m.  If you spend a turn aiming, your first shot of the next round is at double the "base hit", or 88 in our example.  The aimed shot will, on average, hit.

Where did you hit?

An aimed shot can hit a specific hit location by halving the base hit number, which was normally doubled by aiming, returning it to it's original value, or 44 in our example.  Sniper weapons don't suffer this penalty!

If you didn't aim at a specific hit location, you roll 1d10 on the appropriate hit location chart.  Most likely hit the abdomen.

How much damage did you do?

At close range the M16A1 does the 4x the base damage plus 4d6 or 4d6+16; average of 30.  That's enough to drop someone's body damage capacity to zero.  This is a serious injury and they need to make a CON roll (d100 of CONx5 or less or 50 in our case) or fall unconscious.  This is beyond negative head damage capacity (a critical injury), so they'd be automatically unconscious and die in 1d10x10 turns if no medical assistance is rendered.

NPCs are supposed to use a simpler set of rules that gives them less damage capacity, 2d10x2 or 22 on average.  We never did use this rule, it doesn't add that much bookkeeping to the game and it made the fights better. 

I don't think we adhered to the rules very closely at all. 

GURPS 2e

All GURPS skill rolls are 3d6.  We're ignoring passive defense.

We don't have an M16, so we'll let the M-26A2 from GURPS: Autoduel 1e stand in.

With a, commonly taken, 12 skill in Guns/TL7 and straight 10 stats.

Our 10 ST is above the minimum of 8, so no penalties from that. 

It's Inc. is 20, so there's a -3 for range.

You can fire 2 shots semi-automatically or 3 shots in a burst.  We get 30 shots.

If you take turn to aim before firing, you take no penalty to the first semi-auto shot or any of the rounds in the burst.

If you don't take a turn to aim, they are all "snap shots" and have a -4 penalty.

So, chance to hit with an aimed shot is 9 or less (37.50% chance).  Snap shots are 5 or less (4.62% chance).

Two aimed, semi, shots are at 9 and 5.
Two snap, semi, shots are at 5 each.
Three aimed, burst, shots are at 9 each.
Three snap, burst, short are at 5 each.

On average you're gonna miss.

But if you aimed, you can pick a body location, and take a penalty to hit.  The body is a -0 though.  Some locations do more damage and have special effects, like crippling a limb or knocking them unconscious before their HP drops to zero.  The head, for example is -5 to hit, has DR 1 for the skull, but gives double damage and damage of HT/3 or more causes them to be stunned and HT/2 or more knocks them unconscious.

The hit location of a snap shot is determined by a 2d6 roll and looking at the table.  Coincidentally, the average roll of 7 on 2d for a random location also hits the body!

The M-26A2 does 2+2 dice of crushing damage. 

The average damage is 9, and will do 9 points to an unarmored torso; they keep fighting.  This same damage roll would do 16 points to the head, this both stuns and knocks the target out; but you'd need a 4 or less to hit with an aimed shot. 

We didn't play much Autoduel, so we never really got the warts located. 

GURPS 3e.

Update: I forgot the blow-through rules. 

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Lt Auto.

An M16 does 5d crushing damage, SS of 12, Acc 11, 1/2D 500, Max 3,843, Wt 8, RoF 12*, Shots 20, ST 9, Rcl -1, Cost $540, TL 7.

First, the unaimed semi-auto shot:  The range of 50 yards is a -9 penalty giving us a net skill of 3.  That's below the SS number of 12 so we get an additional -4 to hit for a -1 chance on 3d6.  Any roll of 9 or higher is a critical failure, so...  maybe don't make this shot.

Aimed, semi-auto shot:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, for a net +2 or 14 or less (90.74% chance) to hit the body, 13 or less (83.79% chance) for a second shot and 12 or less (74.07% chance) for a third.  On average, all three hit!

5d crushing does an average of 17 points of damage to the body, but is reduced to 10 because of the blow-through rule on p.B109, which is enough to warrant a "consciousness roll" against HT on 3d6 to stay awake.  On average, they make it, but are very penalized by the damage with regards to movement and DX based skills.  The second shot drops them to -10 and this adds a "death roll" against HT to keep from dying.  The third shot drops them to -20, another consciousness roll and two more death rolls.  This is bad.  Three death rolls in rapid succession rarely yields happy results.

Aimed, semi-auto shot at the vitals:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -3 to hit vitals, for a net -1 or 11 or less (62.50% chance) to hit the body, 10 or less (50% chance) for a second shot and 9 or less (37.5% chance) for a third.

On average two rounds hit. 

Vitals do triple damage after subtracting the DR of the target, which is 0 here.  So our average roll of 17 damage does 30 points dropping the target to -20 and requiring 4 death rolls.  The second shot takes them to -50 and 6 more death rolls.

How about an unaimed blast of full-auto fire?  Same chances as before, but with an additional -1 for recoil on the first burst, -2 on the second, -3 on the third, and -4 for the fourth.  Spraying and praying doesn't really work.

An aimed blast is 13 or less for the first burst, 12 for the second, 11 for the third and 10 for the fourth.  Using our average rolls of 10 we look at the table on p B120 and find: we hit with 3 rounds from the first burst, 3 from the second, and 2 from the third.

8 rounds to the body doing 10 each on average because of blow-through totaling to 80 points of damage which is well past the 60 needed to get auto-death.

The players really liked rolling for each separate round/burst. 

GURPS 3eR with High Tech 3e.

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Lt Auto.

An M16 does 5d crushing damage, SS of 12, Acc 11, 1/2D 500, Max 3,843, Wt 8, RoF 12*, Shots 20, ST 9, Rcl -1, Cost $540, TL 7.

First, the unaimed semi-auto shot:  The range of 50 yards is a -9 penalty, -5 for bullet-shyness, giving us a net skill of -2.  That's below the SS number of 12 so we get an additional -4 to hit for a -6 chance on 3d6.  Any roll of 4 or higher is a critical failure, so...  maybe don't make this shot.

Aimed, semi-auto shot:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -5 for bullet shyness for a net -3 or 9 or less (37.50% chance) to hit the body, 8 or less (25.92% chance) for a second shot and 7 or less (16.20% chance) for a third.

On average, all three miss!  But let's assume one does. 

5d crushing does an average of 17 points of damage to the body, which is reduced to 10 because of blow-through, which is enough to warrant a "consciousness roll" against HT on 3d6 to stay awake.  On average, they make it, but are very penalized by the damage with regards to movement and DX based skills. 

Aimed, semi-auto shot at the vitals:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -3 to hit vitals, -5 for bullet shyness for a net 6 or 6 or less (9.25% chance) to hit the body, 5 or less (4.62% chance) for a second shot and 4 or less (1.85% chance) for a third.

Even though we probably missed, vitals do triple damage after subtracting the DR of the target, which is 0 here.  So our average roll of 17 damage does 30 points of damage because of blow-through dropping the target to -20 and requiring 4 death rolls.

How about an unaimed blast of full-auto fire?  Same chances as before, but with an additional -1 for recoil on the first burst, -2 on the second, -3 on the third, and -4 for the fourth.  Spraying and praying doesn't really work.

An aimed blast is 8 or less for the first burst, 7 for the second, 6 for the third and 5 for the fourth.  Using our average rolls of 10 we look at the table on p B120 and find: we missed with all 12.

Adding in that bullet shyness penalty, because combat, really pissed the players off. 

GURPS 4e

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Rifle.

The M16A1 is TL7, does 5d pi damage, Acc 5, Range 500/3,200, Weighs 7.2/0.7, RoF 13, Shots 20+1(3), ST 8†, Bulk -5, Rcl 2, Cost $550/$34, LC 2.

Snap shots have been eliminated!  So has blow-through for the body.

Skill 12, -8 for range, 4 or less to hit with three rounds of semi-auto fire.  Yeah... No.

Aim for a second.  Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc.  9 or less.  On average, still a miss.

Aim for two seconds.  Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc, +1 aiming bonus.  10 or less!  On average, one hit.

5d pi to an unarmored ST 10 torso is about the same as before, doing 17 points of damage on average, but without blow-through, all of those points do damage.  It takes the victim to -7 points of damage, requiring a HT roll to remain conscious.

13 round blast without aiming?

Skill 12, -8 for range, +3 for volume of fire.  7 or less.  Prolly missing with all of those too.

After aiming?

Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc, +3 for volume of fire.  12 or less.  Average roll of 10 with a Rcl of 2 means two rounds hit.

17 damage from the first round gets to -7 and a consciousness roll.  17 from the second round gets to -24, another consciousness roll and a death roll.

4e angered several players because their characters became ineffective with the golden standard of a 12 skill.  I'd been looking for a means to simulate the vast expenditure of ammo to a single hit since I started playing GURPS and 4e solves for it nicely. 

Make A Roll

FuzzyGeff is something of a math geek and his knowledge of statistics has colored how I do gaming once I learned a bit of statistics myself.

Because of things like the critical failure's default of 18 should result in a mean rounds between failures almost ten times worse than a rifle that is KNOWN to be unreliable.

That same critical failure would mean half the air wing of every aircraft carrier would be in the drink every cruise.

Many commercial aircraft would become lost and need constant guidance to find the airport and it would become insane to fly at night because of the darkness penalties.

There are a myriad of things that require a bit of knowledge, but no actual skill to perform and, if there's no stress, a person just does.

It's that stress part that can, often, be missed when a GM says, "make a roll."

Too many people look at the rules and see more places to make a roll than another rule-set and declare the new game bad because you CAN make more rolls...

But it is, and has always been, the decision of the DM or GM to call for a roll in any given situation.

If they suddenly start calling for more rolls when you change from D&D to GURPS it might mean they want you to work harder for it and D&D didn't have the mechanism to force you.

Twilight: 2000 has no mechanism for making the character respond to something creepy and frightful.  GURPS does.  So when in the catacombs under Częstochowa, I can call for a Fright Check and impose a reaction on the character.  T2K is a pure honor system to act afraid that I've seen fail over and over.

So GURPS has more rolls than T2K because of having rules to handle the frightened.

Which brings us to "GURPS sucks!"

Did the GM call for a roll under a rule that the game you prefer doesn't have that caused you to conform to the character you created?

The fright check from the T2K module "The Black Madonna" ticked off a couple of people who had played at my table under the OG T2K rules.  It thrilled others.

YMMV.

But, if we're going to overgeneralize, then I would say that the real reason that some people hate GURPS and cannot stand that other people enjoy it is because they are lazy.

They don't wanna work to make the character.  They don't want to put in the effort to learn how to assemble the character they want and, having failed to so, blame the game.

Then they don't want to be exposed to many die rolls, because a die roll is chance and chance is something they cannot control and without that control they may fail and without being able to declare, "I win!" they don't want to play. 

Contrast this to the person who did read the rules and learned to make the character they wanted.  They're never complaining about the rules.  They're an example of being satisfied by a successful application of labor.  Mike Rowe would understand the feeling.

The epiphany of realizing the complainers never learned to make the character they want to play comes from noticing that I have converted so many character from other games JUST to learn the rules.  I.  Have.  Never.  Failed.

GURPS has never failed to be able to accommodate a character from a different game.

Traveller, Twilight: 2000, AD&D 2e, Champions, Shadowrun, etc.

4th edition of GURPS is better at it than 3rd edition revised, but even 3eR never actually failed.

Not that the haters ever read this far. 

 

But I'm Too Ugly

"I will grant you a handsome reward!"

But I'm ugly...

I Said That Already

I just spent half an hour typing out a story about how I stopped being friends with a particular group.

Then realized that I'd already mentioned them moving my pistol from the agreed upon storage place to a place I didn't know.

Already posted about being invited only to show another member they could be replaced.

I think I forgot the pizza fiasco.

The normal breakdown was everyone kicked in X for an equal portion of a pizza.  It worked out to two slices each.

But, being allergic to mushrooms, I couldn't have a slice from the deluxe they always ordered.  Gods forbid they skip the mushrooms for me!

So I asked if I could skip the share and just pay for my own pizza.

No problem they said.

Then they proceeded to take one slice each from both pies.

I'm like, "hey! gimme back my pizza!" and they were all "but we share around here."

You paid for half and there's two half pizzas left, why are you complaining?

Because I can't eat half of what's left and you eating MY pizza wasn't part of the fucking deal!

I am somewhat amused in hindsight that they kept betraying my trust and kept acting like I couldn't be trusted. 

Economics Of Adventuring

I'm not offering a solution or even a complete analysis here, just babbling to help me organize my thinking on the topic.

Something I noticed before about adventurers in most D&D campaigns is they often, and quickly, attain individual power that can literally topple nations.

"You and what army?" becomes, "Aw, you sent an army, how cute!"

This is especially true of magic users.

The commoner / nobility divide is not even considered in AD&D's rules.

It can be a campaign assumption.  Standing Bear's Hundred Town campaign, where I learned AD&D, you started as an orphan the day the orphanage kicks you out.  You got a copper piece, a dagger, a set of clothes and a lump of goat cheese.  Oh, and enough training to be a 1st level character of your class.

This, I am sure, influenced all our gaming and we were never nobles.

Most of the other fantasy rule sets really mention it either.

Stormbringer, using the Chaosium Basic Role-Playing System, had mention of nobility.  Much to the frustration of our GM, we had a rare talent for getting lucky on the nationality and origin table.  (It turns out that Scott was using that table wrong, it was for randomly generating an NPC, the players were supposed to be able to choose the character's origins.  He just didn't know he was supposed to forbid origins that didn't fit his campaign...)

Warhammer certainly didn't make most characters noble.

In GURPS you could make a noble, but it costs valuable points you could be spending on something keeping you alive.

Commoners are not supposed to be able to have access to such power as to topple the legitimate government or challenge the divine rights of kings.

Government was something we just didn't do for most of our gaming.  We didn't even ignore it, there simply wasn't any.  Well, it might have been there, but it didn't rise above subtext.

Even when I added government, much later, it wasn't near intrusive enough and it never really affected the players.

Feudal governments are of the "a place for everyone and everyone in their place" variety.

The rise of a middle class and commoners getting rich as nobles really destabilized feudal reality.

Adventurers would certainly be part of this.  They're powerful individually and often become insanely wealthy.

This is not necessarily a world ending problem, Elizabethan England survived merchants being richer than the nobility and the United Kingdom spawned and outlived the East Indian Company, which had nation state power.

The nobility could be faded into the background, like the Junkers.

The GM will have to decide how the existence of adventurers is handled.

I've been using less medieval model for the fantasy settings I've been using because it's easier and closer to how we think of government in our egalitarian American culture.

Plus, there's always that Divine right of kings in a world where you can physically speak to The Gods.  How can you lose with God on your side?  How would your little rebellion go if the cleric found themselves powerless because their deity says King Incompetent the Third shall remain king?

I have a model, it just needs fleshed out.  Some of the work won't really be complete until there's players, but it keeps me from eating my own mind.

You Gonna Fish Or Talk

The tier list post and SWJ's comment reminded me of something that's mildly irritating in the land of guns.

People pick a gun as a bragging point without regards to whether it shoots well or not.

My cheap Savage 110XP suits me just fine.  I'm still upset my phone had died and I didn't get a pic of the perfect cloverleaf 100 yard group.  I'm even more upset with myself for balling up the target in anger at my phone and not just taking the damn thing home where I had a real camera.

Besides, I happen to like Savages!

I have yet to buy a complete AR.

I buy parts and assemblies, but not complete guns.

Every single one is a "FrankenAR" of some stripe.

Mostly because the configuration I want isn't a stocked item.  You couldn't get an M16 or M16A1 clone when I made mine.  The closest you could get was a Colt SP1, and the front pin was totally wrong in addition to lots of other details.

I've watched people with high-dollar set-ups come to the range and struggle with it.

Those same people have watched me breeze into my lane, fire a few rounds to get zeroed, then enjoy shooting a box or two and leave.

While they're still struggling to get zeroed.

All the money in the world won't help if you don't understand what you're doing.

Despite my accumulative tendencies, I'm more of a shooter than a collector.  That lets me accept and enjoy guns that are downright ugly.

That rusted S&W M&P I saved with electrolysis is a great shooter!  But it's ugly.

Pawn shops have been a great source of good shootin' but bad lookin' guns.

The Lovely Harvey and I both love the Colt Challenger that Willard scored for us.  I had to modify a set of Woodsman stocks to work with it, but it's an awesome shooter despite the abuse to its finish it's seen.

My grampa's old Remington .22 is still a tack driver despite all the rust patina.

This is not to say that I don't own guns just to have them.  Grampa's .32 revolvers are not great shooters, nor are they pristine.  But they have sentimental value.

Sentiment and nostalgia might, actually, be the main driver of my purchases come to think of it. 

A couple of examples here are here just because I think they're neat!

There's no grand unifying theory.

Except:

Buy what you like.  Shooting shouldn't be a grim chore.  Shooting can be, and is, great fun!

Let yourself enjoy it and don't worry if anyone else is impressed with what you have.

Do it for yourself. 

No More Forever Wars

That's a great tag line, isn't it?

No more forever wars.

What's your basis for a war ending?

Not having to do it again in about a generation?  The Great War World War One fails that.

Bringing the troops home?  World War Two fails that.  The Cold War fails that.  Korea fails that.

Vietnam, widely regarded as a loss succeeds at both of those metrics.  The troops are home and we haven't felt the need to go back...

The enemy doesn't want to go again is prolly the best indicator of winning.

Despite the agitation of groups like the American Indian Movement,  The Indian Wars are won.

WW2 is really a win, despite the troops still being there because we started The Cold War almost the same day that Doenitz signed the surrender instrument.

I still feel like we won The Cold War too.  Sun Tzu would applaud how the win was obtained too!

To play World Police, we need forward bases and we already had them in place in Europe and Asia.

But the war on Terra Tara Terror...  We're not attacking the root causes, just responding to their attacks.  In essence, a purely defensive war.  Ask the Confederacy how a defensive war works out.  Or France.

Curtis LeMay understood.

Sometimes you have to fight and if you're going to fight, fight to fucking win!

That will mean killing people.

That will mean destroying things.

But you need to take the war to the bad guys and defeat them on their home turf.  You have to eliminate that home turf, even if it's in a "neutral" nation.  Pakistan should have been a lot more afraid of Bin Laden getting caught is all I'm going to say about safe haven nations like that.  Heck, I still think we owe them for that.

While blowing up Iran's labs is great, it's not going to end the conflict.

We're going to be blowing up their labs again unless they do a change in leadership.

Changing that leadership is not something the US has EVER been good at.  Just look at our attempts in banana republics.  South America has every right to resent our attempts!

I endorse an approach that leads to Iran being our friend.  It's been clear since 1979 what is in the way.

By the way, speaking of 1979 and nations providing safe haven for the problem makers.  France was instrumental in allowing Khomeini to take power in Iran.

The Other 'S' Word D&D Doesn't Really Talk About

The first 'S' word is Sex.  As we know from Phil and Dixie, they avoided talking about it while trying to get to talk about it.

Slavery is the other word.

Slavery was common in the way back.

For some categories of slave, it wasn't even a bad deal.  A Greek tutor was a good deal for a slave in Rome.

But medieval slaves are laborers, not skilled experts.

Despite the medieval trappings, most D&D campaigns don't have slaves.

I think it's from the generally egalitarian nature of the players.

Most of the fantasy games I've played didn't have slaves and didn't discriminate against women.

The one campaign were slaves were prominent had my character leading a revolution to end slavery.  That's the only time it stood out.

OG AD&D has a couple mentions of slavery in the Dungeon Master's Guide.  Admitting it exists is a pretty big deal.

The World of Greyhawk has slaves.  It also has some powerful abolitionists. 

AD&D 2e has an admission that slavery could exist, but only in the context of humans being weak and other races being strong.

The evil nations of Forgotten Realms have slaves and a slave trade. 

AD&D 4e mentions there's enslavement and suggests a campaign where the players free slaves and end tyranny and mentions being an escaped slave as a character background.

AD&D 5e mentions slavery as a tool used by the villain in a villain's methods random table.

GURPS: Banestorm, being a world setting rather than a game, has a chapter on slavery as does the 3e book of the same setting GURPS: Fantasy.  (4e's Fantasy is for making your own Fantasy world and it explains all the tropes and let's you DIY a world from them).

With all the mention of slavery in the rules, why didn't more of us have slaves in our games?

Again, I think it's just our American egalitarianism being applied to a social order that was decidedly NON-egalitarian in nature.  Feudalism isn't, generally, compatible with how Americans see themselves.

All that romantic liberty, freedom and equality (distinct from the French "Liberté, 'egalité, fraternité) seeps into most everyone's game and makes an almost unconscious decision to not go historical feudalism with it's attendant tyrannies and rigid social order.

The players don't like it when you put such things into the game.  They never take any social status that makes them noble and when the restrictions of being a commoner hit them, they get peeved.

Enforcing the sumptuary laws on them was good for a laugh.  But they really get umpty when they get told they can't buy a common everyday weapon, like a sword.

That first came up when I played a Togugawa Japan campaign in GURPS.  A commoner might own a wakazashi with a permit; but only Samurai could own and carry a katana.  The VERY rigid social structures confused the players and they didn't work to understand them.  Not that I understood them well, but I was working at it.

Japan is interesting here because, while the structure was rigid, it was possible to break through it and move up.  Not common, but possible.  Toyotomi Hideyoshi being an excellent example.

In Europe it was much harder to break out of your lane.  At least until the plagues... 

Everything Is Bad

I've often wondered why we target a certain percentage of inflation and think of it as normal and good.

The official goal is 2%, in case you're wondering.

The reason they are doing this is to prevent deflation.

Why is that?  If you ask most people they'd be happy with lower prices on goods.

The answer is historical.  The great depression had massive deflation as prices dropped to get any return on investment at all.  Because prices were falling, people deferred purchases, lowering demand in the face of sufficient supply and caused prices to fall further...  Until prices were well below costs and the company closed.

It's a vicious thing.

I am willing to bet that, if we looked into it, we'd find that people stopped buying goods they didn't NEED because they'd lost jobs and had reduced incomes from the recession that became the great depression.  Deflation USED to be how the economy righted itself in the face of recession.  For some reason (cough cough cough FDR) it failed that time.  One reason was how easy it was to obtain credit (credit is another word for debt in case you're not up to speed here) and deflation kills you if you owe.

Inflation causes people to defer a purchase when their wages stubbornly refuse to keep up with inflation.

You might notice a lack of LS3 cam in The Beast?  That's because we're buying groceries.  The cam purchase is deferred.

Explain again why deflation is bad?

Worse, we can tell that they're lying about it because of how selective they get when calculating inflation.  They don't count "volatile" goods like energy and food.

You know, the stuff that everyone HAS to buy and cannot readily be deferred.

Those goods are crushing us.

My, long held, theory is that inflation is good for people in debt.  Economists LOVE debt.

If we take the official inflation rate against my house payment...

The $458.61 I've been paying on my mortgage every month was $458.61 when I started.  You need $765.49 today to match the buying power of $458.61 then.  Put the other way, our payment has fallen to the equivalent of $274.76 over the past 20 years.

Inflation is GREAT if you're in debt.  My loan is getting cheaper the longer inflation goes on.

What entity is in the most debt in America today?

Personally I'm good with 0% inflation.  I can afford what I have and knowing that it won't be getting more expensive to keep it on an unpredictable schedule would be GOOD for me, even with my meager debts.

Some deflation would also be good for me.  Especially if wages hold firm.

I think I know who benefits from the Fed's scheme, and it's not The People.

"A Sword?" R. Nash c. 1986

It should be noted, before I start wandering here, that all the various kinds of swords we have put names to were just called "sword" in their day.  Most of the names are from archaeologists attempting to sort out the timeframes of grave goods.

Oakeshott typology is probably the most famous way to sort what GURPS will call a "broadsword" and D&D will call a "longsword."

GURPS has a list of swords that are all "broadswords" under the rules.

Khopesh

Broadsword

Large Falchion

Pata

Shotel

Bastard Sword (used one handed)

Dao

Estoc

Hook-Sword

Jian

Katana

Longsword

Backsword

Cavalry Saber

Edged Rapier

The D&D 5e equivalent to "broadsword" is "longsword" and it covers a wide variety of side-arms.  Perhaps more because the "versatile" tag means it can be used 2-handed; which would imply bastard sword is included.

This is a continuation from 4e where the weapons list is a bit longer, but still much shorter than 2e.  I don't have any 3e books (or 3.5e books for that matter).

2e was longer than AD&D. 

D&D, starting with 4e makes a distinction between "simple" and "military" weapons.  5e calls the distinctions "simple" and "martial."

With how over-the-top inclusive Wizards of the Coast went, I cannot but wonder if these categories are from the thinking about "assault weapons" among liberals.

The historical divide over some weapons is related to sumptuary laws in that you needed to be of a certain social rank to have them.

Cost wasn't the only reason a peasant didn't have a sword in many places.

But ahistorically egalitarian D&D can't make the common/noble distinction and still have adventurers, so...

I'm amused to note that 2e has a firearm, an arquebus.  It also adds the rapier.  4e and 5e don't have guns, but keep a sword that was developed from guns driving armor off the battlefield.

Warhammer FRP is even more consolidated, most everything is a "hand weapon"

Hand Weapon: This broad class includes one-handed axes, swords, clubs, maces and hammers. These weapons are all com­parable in use and effect, and no distinction is made between them in the rules.

Yet it still has a rapier...

Pathfinder 2e follows the same pattern as D&D (shocking! I know) but breaks the falchion out from longsword and still has a separate bastard sword.

Rapier without firearms again... 

LBB Traveller has guns, so many guns...

Sword is the one handed, all inclusive sword.  Broadsword is a two-hander.  Cutlass is loosely defined enough to include a rapier.

Top Secret might have rules for swords, it definitely has rules for throwing them...

Top Secret SI has a "sword".

I've Met Them

Getting caught up in Islamophobia is pretty easy when there's savages murdering people and claiming Islam as their justification for doing so.

The urge to cry, "kill them all and let God know his own!" is pretty compelling.

There's a bit of an issue.

Islam is not a monolithic thing.

There are moderate Muslims.

There are very secular Muslims.

More than a few live here in the USA to escape the more radical, savage, interpretation of their religion.

Many branches of Islam still advocate death to heretics and apostates and in their native lands, they do kill those whom wish to trod a more moderate path.

The problem, here in the US, is determining one from the other when deciding if we're going to let them move here.

Worse, while they might be fine; too often their children prove vulnerable to being radicalized.

No, I don't have a solution, just making an observation.

Too often Islam is not compatible with the norms of Western Civilization, but it's a friction point that could be lubricated; but it requires something of a reformation from Islam and making the moderate and more secular version to become the mainstream.

That will be intolerable to the radical versions, it's literally an affront to God to depart from their interpretation of their scriptures.

Another wrinkle is Islam being the state religion of several nations.  That means there will be a State sanctioned version of the Holy Text and other versions will be illegal.

This has hampered research and archaeology.  Just like the Bible and Torah, there have been finds of different versions of the Quran.  Some of these have just disappeared and scientists expelled or censored.

A huge thing that the more radical versions of Islam in America need to get is we're serious about religious freedom.  A huge thing about that is there's no punishment from The State for deciding you don't want to be a member of any given religion anymore and that some religions punishment for doing so is illegal.  Your kid decides they want to be an atheist, you can disown them, but you can't kill them.

Knowing that there are Muslims who handle this just fine is great.  It means there's hope that the murdering might stop without one side being completely scoured from the earth.

Sadly, the nature of terrorism means that a small number of people can do vast damage.

One Thing I Can Say

I have an 18 year archive of my thoughts.

If I've been saying something for years, there's years of me saying it here.

Even if I only said it once, it's here.

I strongly suspect that some of the pricks in the comments are coming to these topics very recently, because they're all using the same phrases.

It makes me believe that these are not their thoughts, but others who pique their emotions.

You cannot reason someone out of an emotional position, and they can't be reasoned with.

Plus, they're pricks about it.  I'm not making an archive of people being pricks, so they don't get their comment published here.

Many of my thoughts here are of the "thinking out loud" type.  The ideas are still plastic and malleable.

I am wondering if the whole student loan kerfuffle has an analogy.

"This is the way it's always been done, and it's always worked out," is strong.

People taking on too much debt is not new.  Overborrowing on student loans is not new.

But it's a problem all of a sudden.

What changed?  Who changed it?

I look back 100 years ago and wonder if its comparable to The Great Depression.

The surprise with The Great Depression was that the economy didn't right itself as it always did.  Boom and bust was a cycle, and whatever set off The Great Depression's bust, kept the recovery boom from happening.

Go back and read the confused news articles!

So, what's changed and who changed it?

I will say there's another thing these two situations have in common.

Both are solved with there being a large supply of good jobs.  The Great Depression didn't really end until after VJ Day for the US.  Longer for Europe and Asia.

How can we get those jobs here in the US so that even someone like me can get a job and pay shit back.

Maslow was prescient about this.  To pay back a loan you need to have a surplus of money beyond the basic needs.  You are going to find out that few people can live on just their basic needs for long, so the surplus funds must also exceed the lower level of psychological needs.

There needs to be more and better jobs.

I think we're going to find that the reason there aren't is because of a group we like to call "The Government".

I think this because I can recall when belly lint weaving degrees led to well paying jobs.

Why did those jobs go away?

Who changed the circumstances?

Hint, "You don't know."

I Am Wondering

There's many times that I find that I don't fit.

Many times I don't fit because I'm seeing "the problem" in a way that neither side sees and they both want me to shut up or go away.

I'm running about 60% correct on my unique perspectives.  Not quite good enough to rely on it, yet...

I've learned a lot about people from them trying to shake me off my strange viewpoint.

Online, even more.

It's why I keep the comments open.

Being closed minded is something shared by both sides.

An assumption that their experience is universal is shared by both sides.

An assumption that their circumstances are universal and can be applied to everyone, everywhere is shared by both sides.

It's why nothing gets settled.

You cannot book a Zeppelin to Siam, so explaining, in detail, about how you bought your tickets, enjoyed the flight and marveled at the sights...

There are no more passenger dirigibles and Siam is Thailand now.

That world no longer exists.  The past is another country.  You don't live there anymore.

So many people are expats in their home town because they can't accept their experience is unique to themselves and their circumstances were exceptionally beneficial to them.

They don't understand that doing exactly what they did, even a year later; or two states over, does not find the success they enjoyed.

But I will keep trying to explain it.

You will not understand it.

The Only One Even Close

The only "real" pistol I've bought that approached a Hi-Point in price was my Sigma SW9V.

Just a whiff more than $200 out the door.

It promptly broke.

Ultimately, it didn't cost me anything to get it fixed, because S&W went way beyond what I'd have expected for warranty care on a second hand gun.

None of this is new news.  I detailed this on this very blog as it was happening.

I got this gun on a whim.

What if I'd bought it and needed it to actually work?

That's the risk of used guns.

It's also why you should shoot your new purchase a bit before betting your life on it!

Something about this particular gun comes to mind.

Is it a rare collectable now that the SW9V slide has been factory replaced with one from an SD9VE?

Tortured Logic

Polk County, Florida recently lost a deputy during the service of an arrest warrant.

The suspect hid in her home, and when discovered, produced a soft-air replica that sufficiently resembled a real gun to elicit gun fire from the two deputies in the house.

She was wounded.

But since Rule 4 will not be ignored, the deceased deputy outside the trailer was struck and killed by one of his fellow deputy's bullets.

The suspect they were there to arrest is now being charged with 2nd degree murder.

The laws which charge a suspect with everything bad that happens while trying to arrest them is the most "that makes sense in the most what-the-fuck-over way".

It makes sense that you want people to surrender peacefully, so being charged with everything is an incentive to do so.

It doesn't make sense because the suspect didn't even have a weapon that could fire lethal ammunition.

As the sheriff says (paraphrased): Everyone in that home was a felon, with long histories, all she had to do was surrender when they knocked and she'd only be charged with the things she'd allegedly actually done.

On the flip side, this sort of law creates a perverse incentive for the police to be reckless.

A cop rushing to join the pursuit can t-bone a family in a mini-van without personal, legal, consequences because the suspect being pursued will be charged.

Something of the sort has already happened.  A cop rushing to join a pursuit t-boned another cop doing the same thing.  One was killed, the other severely injured and the suspect, miles away, was charged for some level of murder.

However...  I'm just not seeing this additional charges thing affecting people whom I wish to continue sharing air with.  If a murder charge over the death of a deputy who was shot by the other deputies trying to arrest her finally gets her in jail for good.  Good.

But I sometimes think that two massive upheavals in our laws would fix the problem better.  We can even leave the criminal is responsible for all the bad shit that happens arresting them in place, but my suggestion will lead to fewer situations where it will matter.

First we stop with all victimless "because it's good for them" laws.  Someone wants to commit slow suicide with crack, let them.  Crack is only expensive because it's illegal and that high cost leads to them stealing everything not nailed down to buy more.

Second we institute truth in sentencing.  The time you're sentenced to is the good time.  You get a year, you serve a year if you're a model prisoner.  You're a bad inmate, your bad days don't count.

Hand in hand with this, once released they are done being punished for the crime.  They return as a full member of society with all the rights associated with being a free citizen.

If we really want them punished for life for what they've done, then we should imprison them for life.  If not...

It Does Occur

I really think that if we were to pare government back down to just what's authorized in the constitution then we wouldn't have near the problems we have.

But even if we did, we'd be able to deal with them rather than being forced to sit and watch while government prevents us from acting.

Take student loans, for example.

This is a problem caused by government interference in the marketplace.

It's probably not going to be solved by the government DOING something.

It's also not going to be solved by "fuck those people".

You're not helping.

It's not going to be solved if you cannot comprehend that the conditions when your boomer ass got your degree do not, and have not, existed for a while now.

But remember what I said about the government fucking around in the marketplace?

It was their policies that drove many places to require a degree, ANY degree, in jobs that don't really require any formal education.  All because the bell curve is real and too many people of a politically protected class couldn't a pre-employment aptitude test.

The degree, ANY degree, became a proxy for such testing.

A bachelor's in underwater basket weaving became as valuable as a doctorate in advanced mathematics to land one of these jobs and was a lot easier to get.

Have you noticed that you need to get a master's today to land a job that needed a bachelor's 30 years ago?

I noticed that my associate's stopped being good enough to get mechanical design jobs 20 years ago, despite ten years experience doing the job.  Now that job requires a bachelor's in mechanical engineering where the engineer will never use most of what they learned.

Real engineering jobs are needing master's and getting ever more demanding of narrow specializations...

At least that was the trend when I got laid off when the ham-fisted response to 9/11 killed the contracts keeping the doors open were cancelled.

But the point is the market is distorted and requires active work to unfuck it.

I would also like to point out that while this slow motion education train-wreck was unfolding, the loudest voices opposed to any action to alleviate student loan debts said nothing.

The internet is forever.  Your blog is old enough to have made mention of when it started.

You.  Said.  Nothing.

You were blind sided as hard as the kid who just realized that a degree in anything doesn't land a job they couldn't get before getting the degree (but without the debt).

Admit it.

The actual solution is the oldest one.

Bankruptcy.

I know why this is unthinkable, do you?

Controversial

The more I observe the phenomenon, the more convinced I am that the current potential Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization isn't really the Pro-Life position winning but the Pro-Choice side overreaching until the average person notices what's going on and deciding to get involved.

The phenomenon is a refusal to accept victory and go home.

It's distinct from a win in an incremental strategy were a positive ruling is one step towards a larger, stated, goal.

The pro-gun movement is doing such an incremental approach in getting laws struck and legislation passed.  The goal is unfettered 2nd Amendment rights and until we get there it's just wins, not victory.  Someday, though, we're going to have to address that that average person doesn't want machine guns to be easily and widely available.

But abortion and gay rights goals were stated and achieved... then they presented new goals and began advancing on those causes.

As the goals get further out of synch with everyday Americans, the less support they have as they accumulate more political power until...

Punctuated equilibrium from the electorate slams them in the face.

The first time I noticed this was with MAAD.  They were going to get real punishments for drinking and driving, did studies, pressed the flesh and made real changes.

One important change was getting "you're too drunk to drive" defined at 0.10% blood alcohol content.  This definition was arrived at through extensive studies of when the average person becomes impaired.  I was a rational standard to adopt.

And it was.

After a round of very public enforcement, the average, rational, person looked at the new severe punishments for drinking too much and driving home then made a rational decision to not drink so much before heading home.

Thus, substantially fewer drunk drivers and this was reflected in a dramatic drop in the police catching and prosecuting them.

Victory, right?

MAAD realized they were now irrelevant.

So a new campaign to move the standard down to 0.08% BAC.  A level that wasn't shown to be associated with impairment for most people.  But it got arrests up again, got their name in the public's mind again and (most importantly) got the donations flowing to the organization again!

Which brings me back to abortion.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the leak has put the debate back into people's living rooms and many people are discovering that there's a much larger overlap in the Venn diagram between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice once they are allowed to talk to each other and explain what they mean.

People are discovering that their position was based on the fringe of the other side and not the everyday person.

The everyday pro-life person didn't really want a full ban, but was hearing the advocates of partial or full birth abortions and saying they would not support that.  The national pro-life organizations are captured by religious organizations who DO support full bans, and are thusly the voice of the pro-life side.

The everyday pro-choice person didn't really want second or third trimester abortions, let alone partial birth and outright opposes full birth.  But the national organizations and national voice does.

Most people, after comparing notes, are realizing that they're OK with abortion being legal with a cut-off date.  There's debate about when that point should be, but it rarely extends past the first trimester.

Both sides appear to be shocked to learn that such a cut-off is in Roe v. Wade!

[D]uring the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

- Wikipedia article on Roe v. Wade.

 Most people are content with this.

But the pro-choice fringe wouldn't leave it alone.  Now the fringe from the pro-life side might be getting a big win and taking the momentum to a place that most people don't want.

This whipsaw oscillation between two tyrannies of the minority pisses people off.

LGBT people just wanted to be people, like everyone else.  To not be second class citizens by law because churches had gotten regulatory capture of marriage so long ago it preceded the term.

But their national orgs couldn't let that victory sit.  And they took it all the way to where the religious fundamentalist bigots said the average queer wanted: Pederasty.

The average bent person didn't want that!

And after looking at the utter lack of compassion I've seen from members of a religion founded on the idea of forgiveness towards trans-genders, I totally understand the motive to stick a knife in the eye of a Christian fundamentalist and give it a good twist.  Even if that twist is pederasty.

Again we're trying to make the fringes happy and pissing off the middle.

You think they're on your side because they're not noticing you and thus not opposing you.  But wait.  You will overstep.  Again.

Note: Comments on this post will be moderated much more strictly than normal.

I Have No Idea

Someone said in a podcast I'm only half listening to about Netflix collapsing.

"The problem with television is there's too much of it."

That made me realize that I have absolutely no idea what's on TV any more.

I don't even really remember when I stopped watching.

I get my video entertainment from downloads YouTube and Prime mostly and not anything that's regularly scheduled where I can't pause or rewind.

There could be lots of content that I'd enjoy, I just don't go any place where I'd hear about it any more.

I noticed the same personal trend with science fiction.

After a bad run of books I'd paid for, but didn't enjoy, I started waiting on friend's recommendations... which were few and far between already.

Pretty soon I wasn't reading much.  Especially when I got a couple of authors writing in worlds I enjoyed but stopped telling the story of the characters and started experimenting in new ways to tell the story...

Steven Brust, I am looking at you!

I've got a couple of books that are unread, but purchased because I'm going to finish the series... someday.

And Brust comes up again here.  The clock is ticking, Steve, you going to live long enough to finish the story?  Especially since you've wasted several books on asides that don't advance the plot or complete the narrative.

Brust is doing better than G.R.R Martin here (thankfully I never started reading Game of Thrones) in that he's healthier, younger and does appear to still be writing.

Connection

I just figured out what is so damn galling about Aesop's position on firearm safety.

He thinks there should be an exception to personal responsibility with a firearm.

I don't.

That's the essential conflict here.

Expanded on this my rejection that there should be special laws for people above a certain income level or in certain jobs.

Both rejections are at play here.

Yes, Hollywood created a procedure that allows dancing monkeys to hold a firearm and point it at others in a way that's resulted in damn few injuries and even fewer deaths.

But I disagree that absolves the person with the gun in their hand from responsibility for the harm done when that procedure fails.

But why did that procedure fail on the set of "Rust?"

Because there really isn't an industry wide standard with accreditation with regards to becoming an armorer.

It's a master and apprentice model.  A model that breaks over and over in history when family is involved and skills turn out to not be hereditary.

The set was clearly not following the strictest guidelines with regards to firearms because there were live rounds on set, they were not segregated from dummy and blank ammunition and the cast and crew had access to both live ammunition and the firearm in question.  They were plinking with it during down time.

More than a few actors have been railing on the goings on at that set.  Many of them outlining what the correct procedures should have been.

My contact in Orlando (who asks not to be named because they like their job) spells out the basics:

No live ammo on set.  Period

Everyone on set will be briefed about the shot and the presence of the firearm.  Anyone on set during the shot can call a halt for a safety violation and the briefing informs everyone of that.  Everyone knows what the rules are from this and if they don't attend the brief, they are not allowed on set.  Safety is everyone's responsibility.

No live guns in actor's hands until the shot.

No blank ammo loaded until the actual shot.

The live gun with blank ammo will spend the absolute minimum amount of time in the actor's hands.

The actor does not operate the firearm unless directed to do so and only at the designated point in the script.

Blocking, rehearsals and run-throughs are done with the rubber or resin look-alikes both for safety and expense.

With modern cameras, there is no reason for anyone to be downrange of a "down the barrel" shot.

Because cameras suck at depth perception, there's no reason for the actor to have to point a firearm at anyone directly.  A little to the side doesn't show on camera.

Now, how many of those rules were broken in New Mexico that day?

There's proper ways to do things when playing with dangerous items.  Ways that mitigate the dangers.

At the end of the day, the person on the trigger is the one who decides that they are OK with how well the procedures have been followed and they pull the trigger, or refuse.  Making them responsible for what happens in the end because they are the last go/no-go in the chain.

If, as Aesop claims, actors are too stupid or uneducated to make that decision, they should not be allowed anything sharper than a marble or harder than meringue.

If they really are that incompetent, we shouldn't be making excuses for them, we should be getting actors who know what they're doing.  Actors who care about their co-workers.

Something else to consider, when you're trying absolve the dancing monkey of the responsibility of shooting someone, you're creating a situation where they don't have to care about safety.  They will not suffer consequences, why should they bother with making sure it's safe?

You're guaranteeing that someone else will get killed by an actor, maybe even the same one.