arwink said:
I tend to take the opposite tactic here - the numbers may be off, but its more important than they feel accurate to the person playing the game than the mechanics represent it.
A musket that takes a full-round to reload may only be six seconds of time in the game, but for the player sitting at the table facing about fifteen minutes of other people attacking and moving, it can seem like an eternity.
I'll play with the numbers to suit the genre of the game - certainly in a D20 modern game I'm looking at four rounds or so to reload a musket because I want the focus to be on modern weapons, but in a fantasy or psuedo-fantasy context I can accept the full-round reload without any real problems.
Oh, I agree to some extent. First and foremost, if it works for you/your players, by all means go for it. If it feels good, dont stop it
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But my group has come to realize that games for us are more fun when our world has physics that we can understand, i.e. that are reasonably modelled on our real-world physics. An average person can lift x pounds, an average horse runs x fast, etc. If the majority of actions and reactions are those which we can expect to occur, then when the truly mystical stuff happens it really *is* magic, at least more magic than a pay-phone ringing next to you.
Without a good reason, we tend to stick with physics we can understand and are familiar with, so the not-so-mundane things that happen to the adventurer type dont feel so mundane. Suspension of disbelief, and all that. Fantastic elements that are commonplace are ok with us, as long as it has some reason for existing within the physics of that fantasy world. But the characters will soon treat them as mundane also, and not get excited by the large glowing gate that erupts with magical energy and is capable of transporting them to another plane if they have seen 3 of them already in the last 2 blocks, one of which has a 'for sale' sign tacked up in front of it
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If a flintlock musket only took one round to reload and fire *without good reason*, then it would feel 'wrong' or 'magical' to my players, and I'd then have a problem with it. But most of them are at least familiar with the actions involved and would rather it be reflected in game than become some other ho-hum fantastic thing we wave hands over and subscribe to magic or something like that.
Also, I personally feel that a lot of the issues that people in fantasy roleplaying games revolve around a lot of misconceptions and half-truths involving how gunpowder and history have gone together. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
