The next thing from the IRREGULARS game that I'd like to throw out there for discussion and opinions about is the way wounds and damage to characters works.

(Some of this won't make sense unless you know the core mechanic of IRREGULARS, which is explained in this thread: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=858045#post858045 )

Characters get Wound Thresholds, of which there are six. These are derived from the character's Toughness stat.

An average person will have the following numbers: Minor 1-2, Light 3-4, Moderate 5-6, Heavy 7-8, Severe 9-10, Fatal 11+.

A less tough character could have: Minor 1, Light 2, Moderate 3-4, Heavy 5-6, Severe 7-8, Fatal 9+.

And an above average Toughness character could have: Minor 1-4, Light 5-6, Moderate 7-8, Heavy 9-10, Severe 11-12, Fatal 13+.

Rolling to see how much damage you do when you hit your enemy uses the same basic mechanic as a Skill Check. The number of d8 you roll is equal to the Damage of the weapon you're using. The number on each die that counts as a Strike is determined by what body location you hit your target on: Head 5, Abdomen/Arm/Leg 6, Chest 7.

The success of the Damage roll gets compared to the target's Wound Thresholds, to see what level of wound gets inflicted.

So for example, if a weapon that has Damage 8 hits the target on the head, you would roll 8d8 and every 5+ would be a Strike. If you got 3 Strikes, that would be a Light Wound on an average person.

When you hit with more than one bullet/blast/whatever, the Damage goes up by 1 for each extra shot above the first. So a 3-shot burst adds 2 to the Damage, and a full-auto burst of 10 shots would add 9 to the Damage.

Wounds are cumulative, so if you already have a Light wound and then take another Light wound to the same body area, it becomes a Heavy wound. Likewise, two Moderate wounds are Fatal.
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For those people that like to know about the probability of things...

To avoid including lists and lists and tables and tables of possibilities here, we'll consider only, for purposes of this example, an average character with average Wound Thresholds, getting hit with a weapon of Damage 8 (which is average for an assault rifle in the game), and look only at the probabilities of causing a Moderate wound (remember, two Moderate wounds on the same body location are fatal).

The chances of this character suffering a Moderate wound for hits to each body area are:
Head: 36.3%
Abdomen/Arm/Leg: 13.7%
Chest: 2.7%

If the same shot is increased to a 3-shot burst, the chances rise to:
Head: 62.3%
Abdomen/Arm/Leg: 30.5%
Chest: 7.8%

And if it's a full-auto burst that hits with, say, 5 shots:
Head: 87.6%
Abdomen/Arm/Leg: 48.9%
Chest: 15.7%

Obviously these probabilities of causing a Moderate wound to an 'average' person are less than what would be considered realistic for someone getting shot with an assault rifle. This is absolutely intentional. I do not want a game that characters get killed easily when they get shot once. Fun should outweigh realism every single time. Gunfights should be exciting, and yes, dangerous, but not so deadly that the players avoid them at all costs.

As you can see from the probabilities above of causing a Moderate wound to an average person with an average weapon, most wounds that get suffered will be Minor or Light wounds, so characters will be capable of taking a few hits before their life is threatened.

Sounds like you don't think bullets kill people very often.

Except in multiple attacks. Seems weird.

For example, if Bub hits Clem in the chest with a five-round burst from an average assault weapon, you say that gives a less than 16% chance (so less than 1 in 6) that Clem would even take a Moderate wound???

However, if Bub gets a few minor or light wounds spread out over various turns, those are going to add up and result in Moderate to Dead fairly quickly? If I read right 3 light or 6 minor wounds equal dead? Is it possible for bullets to hit but not be a wound at all? If so, that's weird, and if not, then the additive system is going to weirdly mean getting hit by 6 bullets over six turns means dead, but taking a burst of 5 in one round means only a 1/6 chance of being Moderately hurt.

In either case, this sounds almost as bad as the G I Joe cartoon  or A Team TV show gun combat systems, where gunfire almost never actually hits or kills anyone. Seems really sketchy to me.

You say fun should always trump realism, but I find realism and lethality when gaming lethal things, to be fun. I find guns that don't hurt people to be silly and not fun. Getting penetrated in the torso, head or neck, I would want to impair and often take people out of combat, if not dead right then, quite possibly in need of medical attention to avoid later death. What I'd suggest, is an optional lethality scale (probably a modifier to the number needed to count as a wound point - very likely for a realistic setting). I think you could probably list one set of stats and then have your system easily adjustable so that a tweak or two can make the difference between "it's no fun to get hurt" and "bullets kill people", so players can choose.

However, I think there's still a weirdness no matter how lethal you dial it, where cumulative wounds spread out over multiple attacks are much more lethal (because they add up) while burst fire is oddly not (because it just slightly increases the chance of wounding), so I'd re-evaluate that.

Oh, and to provide players ways to have gun combat yet not die frequently, I would provide a combat system that has ways to greatly reduce the chances of getting shot in the first place, and that gives people a chance to give up rather than getting shot when someone gets the drop on them. For example, using surprise, cover, suppression fire, and confusion and reaction times, and possibly smoke screens and so on, to provide smart and logical ways to take action that results in not getting shot, rather than a system where you get shot all the time but for some reason it's not really a problem getting shot all the time.

Oh, and coincidentally, another big problem with having bullet hit be no big deal, is that it removes many of the ways that people can avoid getting shot in natural ways. I.e., if I manage to use tactics to cleverly shoot my enemies before they can shoot me, but since bullets don't take people out, they just turn around and shoot me several times, that's well, exactly the kind of shooting game I don't want to play.