Guns and Magic: a winning combination.

I just fired off an edited draft of Firearm Arcana off to the good folks at Expeditious Retreat Press in the hopes that they might find a use for it. I originally contacted them in regards to the Free Tip of the Day featured on the publisher's co-op, Your Games Now. I figured that a collection of spells could easily fill a couple weeks worth of tips, and I am eager to contribute to the success of YGN.

Firearm Arcana is a perfect representation of my writing style in a small package. It takes something I find cool (two things, actually: guns and spellslinging) and tries to find the most unconventional things to do with them. Or, it takes standard elements and does them in different ways. Take, for example, the 5th-level Acolyte spell LeSmith's Near-Complete Bulletproofing. It does two things. Number one, it converts ballistics damage to nonlethal damage, which isn't so bad under the standard d20 Modern nonlethal damage rules (it's a little worse for the caster if the game is being run, like so many d20 Modern games, with houserules in place making nonlethal damage similar to it's D&D counterpart). It therefore can turn a lethal gunshot into simply a knockout shot, or allow the caster to shrug off shots that would seriously wound him. Its second effect is to deal an equal amount of (lethal) ballistics damage back to any source that tries to deal ballistics damage to the caster. In short, when someone tries to shoot the caster, the gun gets shot back. This may not seem like an effective retaliation until you compare the amount of damage most guns do to their hardness and hit points. On a good damage roll, the attacker's gun will shatter in their hands, and the caster may be knocked unconscious or may just have a nasty bruise to show for it.

My favourite creation in the document isn't a spell at all; it is the Bullet Bug Swarm, a horde of chittering insect that resemble arachnoid ammunition. They attempt to bury into their victims and leave wounds that look remarkably similar to gunshots. I could see bullet bugs serving as an interesting introduction to the arcane in modern games. The players are tasked with investigating a "murder" where the apparent gunshot victim was alone in a room with no sign of ballistic penetration through the walls. There's evidence of an insect presence at the scene, but the victim appears to have died from multiple gunshots. Or did he?