> I never used them, but I am sad to see them go.
I like 'em. Looking at the way the original HW weapon edge rules are written, I'd say that a gun's edge is determined mostly by its caliber: e.g., among pistols, .22s have a small edge, .45s have a big one, and 9mms are somewhere in between. A 120mm armor-piercing tank round has an immense edge (and tank armor is an immense defensive edge: bullets really can't hurt it) and a huge improv penalty for shooting at an individual human -- if it hits you, it will kill you, but hitting you will be very difficult. High-explosive artillery rounds have a much smaller improv penalty against infantry, but not much smaller an edge.
> 1. Your gun has an ability rating
> 2. At the start of an EC that is a gun battle you can add your
> gun's ability rating to your AP total, as if it was a follower
I think this method works best for ammunition. Your actual gun (and certain special properties of ammo) should be adding edge (e.g., caliber, muzzle velocity, "cop-killer" bullets) and perhaps skill bonus (e.g., really good telescopic sight, sci-fi homing rounds, or even a Ranged Combat penalty for using an unrifled musket), but sheer quantity of ammo is probably just an AP battery follower. One of the things that makes a machine-gun team so nasty is "Ammo Belt Boxes 15w2"; of course, a .50cal M2 Browning has a really nice edge, too.
Regardless of what your weapon is and whether it holds one round or a thousand, "I fire all my ammunition" is definitely one thing which would count as "I bid all my AP." Getting more ammo from a friend would be them using the usual AP lending rules, which has the very sensible effect that a character with Ammo 17w can lend you a few rounds much more easily and with less chance of depleting his own supply than one with Ammo 13. In Roderick's favorite "Ahming of Ahnold" ritual in _Commando_, he's definitely using some (all?) of the ritual's bonus points to augment his Ammo ability.
> If your campaign is all about guns, then you need a more detailed
> model: don't just give guns one ability rating but several.
Agreed -- whatever gets the most screen time should get the most detail. If you're running an all-healer campaign, you should be worried about the edges and bonuses of various kinds of medicines vs. various kinds of injuries and diseases, not combat paraphernalia. Anything your players do every single session needs to have as many detail hooks as you can cram into it.
Ryan Caveney
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