Miskatonic University Campus

Anyone have a better house rule for automatic fire?

As it stands in 6E, someone with a Thompson @ 50% skill can fire up to 50 rounds in a combat phase with no chance of missing after 20 shots (5% increase per shot/ max double)

I understand combat is deadly and Thompson's are very lethal but come on

Ah yes. The lovely mess of machine guns. Here's how I would tweak it.
Start off with a limit on how many shots can be fired in a round, even on full auto. The rule is to roll a die to determine how many hit. That means that unless someone has a d50 laying around, that's a no-go. Even though the big drums came in 50 and 100 round capacities, I would say that 20 rounds is the limit for an action, and that if they kept the trigger down, it just lasted into their next combat action for another 20.

As for the +5% per round fired...
Starting with a 50-50 chance of hitting, then raising that to 96% by spraying the area with bullets isn't unrealistic. Remember the weapons malfunction level is 96-100, so that's a jam at best, or an explosion if they hit a 100 or fail a Luck on their malfunction. (but that's just how I roll)
An alternative is to allow for a +1% per bullet. That would give a +20% on full auto rather than the +46% as before. That's keeping the max 2x original skill, of course.

Investigators Weapons Vol 1 from Sixtystone has alternate auto fire rules as well.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys

It looks like Delta Green - Targets of Opportunity also has alternate rules

Excellent. I had forgotten about the weapon book having an alternate rule. And not having read DG, it's good to hear that has something as well.
I hope that automatic weapons was one of the things the guys looked at in 7e. It needs some attention.

Keeper Dan wrote:And not having read DG, it's good to hear that has something as well.

This blows my mind.

I agree!

I've stuck to the Jazz Age stuff. And I'm not really interested in running a military type of game, so I never researched it. Though I am pretty well versed in the general atmosphere of the setting. Live plays help tremendously in that regard.

Keeper Dan wrote:I've stuck to the Jazz Age stuff. And I'm not really interested in running a military type of game, so I never researched it. Though I am pretty well versed in the general atmosphere of the setting. Live plays help tremendously in that regard.

While some people have taken that approach to the setting, I've very happily run character-focused, low-key personal horror using Delta Green. It's certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but I can definitely say there's more to DG than fully automatic weapons and tactical airstrikes.

My long-running Delta Green campaign features no player characters with a military background . . . which is not to say that the source material doesn't amply support it. One of Delta Green's best features is that it supports many styles of games depending on what the players and Keeper decide to focus on, since many Mythos flavors are presented for the players to sample. About the only constant the players should be presented with is conspiracy and paranoia, which prime the dread and horror of fighting the Mythos.

I really don't see how one can be well-versed in Delta Green without having read it.

But hey ... the upside is that you have the pleasure ahead of you of reading Delta Green for the first time.