JDS

2 hours ago, klecser said:

This is a really good example of a human cultist-focused approach.

Another way to do it is in our campaign: Mythos creatures/deities just don't care about humans unless they: 1) get in their way or 2) can be used/manipulated in some way.

Being a science teacher, and a big fan of theoretical xenobiology, there is a pervasive false assumption that makes it very easy to derail any realistic discussion of theoretical encounters with alien beings. Many people make the assumption that alien beings would actually care about people. And giving up that assumption is just as nihilistic and terror-filled as other common Mythos tropes. There is also the assumption that alien technology is even understandable. SETI has shifted it's focus largely from searching for intelligible signals from space to searching for phenomena that look like "magic" to us.

In light of these considerations, I find "humans must be stopped at all costs" is giving agency to people that they likely wouldn't even have. And also results in combat encounters that most alien species wouldn't bother with.

"But that's boring."

If someone finds it boring, that's ok. It's your game. I don't boring. Learning that there are advanced civilizations that don't even bother with people or are even amused with attempts of people to influence things? That's an angle. "You oppose my plans? pfffft. Go ahead, you lame meat-bag." And I find that to be particularly interesting story-telling, because it forces people to confront the concept that humans likely aren't as amazing as they think they are. And I think that is truly terrifying to a lot of people.

Now, that doesn't mean that investigators can't influence things, or have an impact. Underestimating human potential is a noteworthy theme in of itself.

The last few posts have brought up a really great question: Why do people Cthulhu? For some, I can see that the desire to replicate the style of short-story telling that H.P. Lovecraft did is a really strong pull. And I respect that. But many of us also see novel-style or epic poem-style storytelling as being very much possible too. You don't have to sacrifice elements that make cosmic horror interesting to run a lengthy story. And I completely agree: investigators don't need to suffer frequent death in order to make those stories interesting.

I also don't think that this discussion would surprise any of the current designers. The challenge of any role-playing game is how to effectively market it. And the types of products that Chaosium publishes don't preclude the possibility of either death-focused or long-term focused games. They have published a ton of great campaigns. Yet, the death-focused "you get to be murdered in spectacular fashion" seems to be a big selling point. And it begs the question if that is a deliberate marketing decision because it sells books, or an artifact of the historical Call of Cthulhu community. Neither answer would surprise me. Or a combination. The designers are highly educated, highly intelligent people.

Interesting points.

'Why do people Cthulhu?' is a question that I think is too often left unexplored. 'Evil' or 'insane' is usually tossed out and it is business as usual.

But I believe it is something that, if explored, gives villains and cults greater depth. Admittedly, some Mythos beings don't attract followers with depth, but there's always room in any campaign for serial killers and murderous nutjobs. CoC is very inclusive in that regard.

The way I look at it, the business of being a cult leader for one of the more 'rational' of the mythos entities is akin to playing 3D chess with the stakes being your life, and getting the keys to the vaults of the Bank of England. If you do it right, you not only get power, but you get power that no one else has access to. That last part is something that often gets overlooked. Some people crave the unique; it is why some people pay staggering amounts of money for the original of a painting, when a $500 print is just as vivid. The idea of having something that no one else in the world does is very intoxicating to some personalities.   

54 minutes ago, Darius West said:

  CoC shouldn't degenerate into a shoot-out imo.  Shoot-outs are not a strong feature of Lovecraft's writing, and characters in general shouldn't be armed to the teeth like Mexican bandits unless they are actually Mexican bandits (who were definitely about in the 1920s, but not featured in Lovecraft's writing).

Heresy!

The problem with CoC is that scenarios tend to copy Lovecraftian fiction: one villain or small group, deranged, who is/are working to summon forth (insert elder being here). PCs save the world, and are scarred for life.

It's a tough sell, because if all it takes is one whack-job who finds a book or artifact to bring down all of Mankind, we wouldn't last long enough to read this thread.

The key is to go corporate: Cthulhu isn't going to get up early because of one guy with a book. No, to really get Elder Being face-time, you need a proven track record, a portfolio of success, and lots of support. Drawing a Elder Being should be about as complex as building a Fortune 500 company. Devoted people are going to have to extract the maximum effort out of a lot of wage slaves over an extended period of time to have a shot at the big time. There's going to be set-backs, hostile take-overs, and recessionary impacts.You're going to need to absorb smaller cults who have fallen behind the times, and merge with fast-climbing cults who will bring energy and assets.

This will give the PCS endless opportunities to investigate seemingly-unconnected things that start becoming connected, to shoot it out with gun thugs, amoral security, and low-ranking believers, and generally have the sort of good times that PCs expect.

The first season of True Detective is a prime example of how this works: they plugged away for years, uncovering layer after layer that went back generations. Another great source is the McCarthy view of communism and its infiltration of the West. Or the expansion of Wal Marts.

You want lots of minions who are just following orders, looking the other way, getting a few bucks on the side. Then people who have seen unearthly things, but had their curiosity numbed by the application of money. Then the first people who actually know bits and pieces. And so on.

So, first you build your occult organization, and then you set your PCs against it. You include lots of violence because that keeps players interested, and it keeps a lot of NPCs from sharing information (because they're dead). Slowly, a bunch of unconnected (make sure some scenarios are really unconnected) events start piling up until the players trust no one and nothing, and see conspiracy everywhere.

That's how I see it being done.

Electric sheep.

1 hour ago, Eff said:

"Bulletproofing", as a magical technique, is about as old as guns and continues more or less down to the present day, mostly with insurgent groups and bandits. Stories about a family Bible or medallion or similar stopping a bullet and saving someone's life are transmuted relics of belief in bulletproofing within our own cultures. Of course, most of the time this folk magic is reliant on complex systems of purity that are easily violated, and in a Lovecraftian context I suspect it works in a more gruesome fashion, perhaps as an explicit lottery of some kind. 

The pocket Bible/book, etc stopping a bullet is true enough on the face of it, but a key issue that is seldom considered is how much power the bullet had when it hit. The Army has conducted detailed studies of body armor in four wars, and the problem that undermines the studies is the lack of data on the shooter; in Vietnam particularly, poor quality of ammunition saw numerous incidents where Americans and South Koreans were struck by gunfire that did minimal damage (one example was a US soldier shot in the face by an AK-47 at a distance of under 20'; the bullet pierced his cheek, knocked out a tooth, and chipped a tooth on the opposite side, coming to rest in his mouth.

One issue I personally believe helped spawn the beliefs in the early years, particularly in forested eastern America and in the Philippines, is that shooting through dense brush and/or branches can cause rounds to deviate from the point of aim. So to people uneducated in the mechanics of firearms, shots from relatively close range missing could appear to be magically inclined.

And there's just the vagurities of war: in one documented case, a British officer in the 1777 Saratoga campaign emerged from a fight uninjured, but with 27 bullet holes in his (loose fitting) clothing. Some of that count would be entrance and exit holes, but that is still an impressive incident. Similar evens have been documented in other conflicts.

29 minutes ago, AlHazred said:

Eh, Boxers did it first! (I guess, I don't really know! But it sounded good, which is good enough for me!)

You're right, some Boxer groups made the same claim. I guess if you're about charge US Infantry armed with Krags, and your guys all have big swords, you want to buck up the troops.

5 hours ago, AlHazred said:

Colonial Era is too early to put in the Ghost Dance, but you could absolutely fabricate a secret society of Native Americans prior to Wovoka who had the same motivation: to use magical traditions to throw back colonial expansion and reclaim Native territories that had been overrun by invaders.

Way ahead of you, bunky. 😉

As a point of fact, not long after the Revolution several groups appeared with much the same philosophy of the northern, late-cycle Ghost Dances (removal of the whites, return of the lost, trappings that defeat bullets).

Interestingly, the US Army encountered groups claiming to be able to defeat bullets via fetishes while putting down the insurrection in the Philippines.   

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

If you are running Flames of Freedom, that makes matter considerably easier.  The go-to cult is obviously Freemasonry with its allied strands of the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians and their alchemical tradition, Esoteric Judaism, and the Bavarian Illuminati if you are looking to something historical.  You can also incorporate the Witch Cult tradition if it interests you.  There is also the Dutch "Pow-wow" tradition of folk magic, and the Apalachian equivalent. 

In terms of African traditions in the area, there are Root Doctors in Georgia, the ubiquitous Voudon Louisianaise, and the general class of Hoodoo traditions across what would become the Confederacy.

IDK if Native American traditions of the 13 States regions are interesting to you?

Those are all good, but most are in fact the core occult villians in the core book, so I don't want to use them. Plus I don't know if any of my group are Masons.

I've gone with three obscure European groups with the serial numbers filed off, and two Native American groups that are a mix of Mythos and local legends.

I initially wanted an African-based group, and thanks to you I found an excellent one, but after careful thought I decided to save it for the 1920s. Even for a long campaign I have more than enough material to work with, what with the incredibly-layered politics of the American Revolution, the equally complex politics of the NA tribes, five cults, a variety of small independent groups and creatures, and then just a few nutcases tossed in to muddy the waters.

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

I'd love to help, but I have a couple of questions.  Firstly, to clarify when you say "colonial era" do you mean American Colonial Era, or the British Empire (or French, German, Belgian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish Empires) in Africa?

The classic African secret society is the Leopard Society of Sierra Leone.  There is also the Hyena Men of Nigeria.  There is also a huge witchcraft tradition in Africa that takes many forms.

American, of course. 😉

Actually. I'm running a historical Flames of Freedom campaign. I'll check out the African societies; they could be very interesting, given the involvement of slavery in the conflict. 

Flames of Freedom's cults are just awful, and worse, they're in the core book for everyone to see, so I'm going with the Mythos, because you can't beat it for occult issues.

4 minutes ago, alter said:

Maybe You can pick up Cults from Masks of Nyarlathotep? And Chapel of Contemplation (?) from The Hunting?

Nah, I got what I needed from Nozbat's post and a CoC wiki. Throw in some symbols from Pinterest, and I'm good.

It's nonsense. All it's doing is dumping more work on the GM, because I've got a lifetime supply of the old pronouns, and see no reason to switch.

But it will impact my willingness to buy more products, at least until they stop discriminating against me.

The BBC is entirely fictional modern cults. Decent stuff, but not really transferrable. Thanks, Nozbat, I'll start the Wiki searches immediately.

So I've got the Big Book of Cults and Golden Dawn. They are helpful, but I am planning a long-run (50-odd weekly sessions) colonial-era game, and most of the BBC do not translate. What I want are a couple (more) well-developed cults, probably emigrating from Europe or Africa rather than local developments, for my setting.

Anyone know of a product that can deliver this? I expect I will have to adjust to the time period, so long as the cults are not too embedded in a particular time period (as the BBC are).

Stepping out of the rules system, to bring a building down you need to attack the load bearing framework. You can punch holes in a building all day, so long as the the LBF stays reasonably intact. Since the PCs are moving the bombs, they're not too heavy. If it is pre-WW2 and the Mob, odds are it is commercial dynamite, medium-speed explosives at best, untamped, you're not looking at too great of a threat unless placed directly up against key structural points. Since it is a very tall building, it probably has an exterior box structure, which means the PCs may have moved the bombs to bad positions. But the bombs are pretty far apart. If the bomb planners had been smart, every bomb would have been on the second or third floors.

If it is post-WW2 military-grade explosives, still untamped, the risk is higher. 

But all things considered, if the PCs run like hell, they should be OK. Bystanders outside are in extreme danger, though, as it will be raining lethal-velocity building materials for a city block.

Player Agency: 
I have the players be part of an informal organization, generally working for a single patron. This allows me to fee the PCs missions rather than endlessly involving friends and family. This also lets me use non-mythos (X-files) missions and purely secular missions to keep things varied. 

Companion NPCs
Other than the patron and a patron-cut-out, I don't run NPCs as part of the party. I find players tend to meta-game input from such NPCs. 

Planning Connections and Arcs
The patron is an individual, not an organization, and missions come down via the cut-out; as an individual, the patron's whims eliminates a deep need for connections. 'The boss read about this, and wants you to check it out' will suffice. Being informal, if the PCs decide to track down connections from a case for a while, there will be little opposition, as the patron has no pressing agenda, nor a need for justification.

Weird Tech As Sustained Projects for Investigators
I do not use weird tech. It clashes with my view of the genre.

3 hours ago, klecser said:

If there is interest in a dedicated thread for discussing modifications to rules made for campaigning, I'd be happy to start one!

 

Count me in!

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Firstly, I applaud the long campaign approach.  I do that too, and it works surprisingly well for Call of C'thulhu, and makes the game far more interesting than the sudden -death-mass-character-turnover-regular-TPK approach imo.  I also intersperse my game with plenty of non-C'thulhu-non-cult activities to insure that the players and characters feel that they are in and part of a world with depth far beyond their cult chasing, and a world that is worth saving too.

As to the credit rating system, there are a couple of approaches.  What I am trying to get at is there are a few ways of handling credit rating and money.  In the early addition Credit Rating was primarily used for obtaining loans (which were seldom paid back given the high rate of character mortality).  These days it has become more a shorthand for one's social standing and income bracket in 7th ed.  Some GMs like to completely abstract the system, while others want to count every dime.  Where it gets tricky is whether you want players to actually be able to generate income via the labor of others.  Some GMs (bad ones imo) won't let players invest their hard won gains into enterprises that will allow them to gather resources that will be useful in mythos busting, while running other income generation on the side.  Security firms are a classic for this, and are even more useful when tied to law firms and private investigators.  Smart players will understand that when human pull together they are a force the mythos fears.  Smarter players will insure that they control the information flow in their organization and gradually get their employees onside and weed out the mythos infiltrators.  Many Keepers don't know how to handle players who use this sort of strategy, or deliberately keep their players poor so they can't even begin to meaningfully try.

The key to a long campaign IMO, is creating Mythos cults with depth of layers. And, as you noted, non-mythos sidebars. Plus I like to throw in the odd 'X-file' case, where it is supernatural/occult, but not tied to anything bigger.

I view the credit rating as a social indicator. The next campaign I'll run will be in 1925, with the PCs being recruited (via a cut-out attorney) by Andrew Mellon. They will have (modest) salaries and expense accounts, but no official standing; they will probably use insurance adjustment as a cover if need be. Mellon's interest in all things financial should provide occult, criminal, and some political investigations.  

32 minutes ago, andyl said:

Yes but I still think skills, sanity, luck, money, and contacts are far more important that attributes.

Earlier you said "I'm doing for for a sense of accomplishment for the players. Most players want to see their PCs improve, even if it is in small increments".  In that case just have regular Investigator Development Phases.  Surely seeing your skills go up gives that sense of accomplishment.  Surely interim SAN awards (where appropriate and tied to the story) do that even more.

I'm pleased with my house rule, and I'll keep it.

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

Please, I am not suggesting that you are doing anything wrong by allowing player characters to increase their attributes.  Not at all.  What I am saying is that the improvements are so small that they seldom matter.  When Shub Niggurath stomps on you, it won't matter whether you have 10HP or 11 or 20, the outcome is likely to be identical.  As a person who both Keeps and plays CoC, my advise to your players is if you have to choose between hours of rigorous physical exercise and a pimp's fan of Ben Franklins, shake hands with Ben every time.  This is not a criticism of what you are doing, just advice that you can choose to take or ignore as you choose 🙂

I'm not really using the credit rating system; players will be tracking income as is usual for most games. 

I run long campaigns (40+) sessions, so the PCs will be dealing with a lot more cultists than Mythos entities.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

In truth, one Keeper to another, Call of C'thulhu Attributes aren't very important. 

The most important one is POW, and if people resist spells or successfully cast spells on others, then their POW has a good chance to improve naturally.  POW also governs those luck rolls and how many luck points a character has to blow. 

The next most important one is DEX, because that governs initiative.  Going first matters.

Now INT and EDU are really important in Character creation, but they drop off a lot.  KNOW rolls and IDEA rolls are sometimes never used by Keepers at all.  These are never dump stats, but once it comes time to play they may as well be.  I have seen characters with 18 INT behave like right idiots 🙂

Now STR & SIZ give you a damage bonus if you are half-lucky, and if you are super lucky you will hit the +1d6, but don't hold your breath.  CON is also used for surviving poisons and some spell or special attack effects.]

A high APP is a sort-of social superpower, but again, don't hold your breath.

The point I am getting at is that ultimately, CoC isn't a game where these base attributes offer more than a slight situational advantage.  It isn't as if the stats boost your skills like in RuneQuest or D&D.  In a funny sort of way, the mixed bag of often dubious stats don't matter a great deal and may even help to define your character in a positive way for roleplay despite being low.  Players may not think much of their balding, pigeon-toed overweight vacuum cleaner salesman with halitosis, but they often become very attached to them as they confront adversity bravely, and cheer when this nobody manages to somehow hold their own and even occasionally get a victory.  There isn't a big difference between a +1d4 and a +1d6 damage bonus.

If you want to reward players, they soon discover that in 1920s USA, money talks, and people will overlook many personal failings if you are rich.  I'd sooner have a high Credit Rating than any single Attribute you care to name.

I'm doing for for a sense of accomplishment for the players. Most players want to see their PCs improve, even if it is in small increments. I posted my house rule in this sub-forum, but basically in addition to attribute points, it adds hit points and luck points. Small numbers, but I think it will do the job.

Leveling up

(This in addition to the regular skill improvement system) PCs will be awarded Reward Points (RP) for Innovation, ideas, role-play, knowledge of setting, use of the IC chat, and any other contributions to the game.
Expending 100 RP (200 for levels 11+) and taking three days downtime will advance the PC to the next level.
Upon reaching a new level, the PC will have ten attribute points, each of which can raise a single Attribute (STR, CON, POW, DEX, APP, or IQ) 1 point. EDI and SIZE cannot be improved by this method.
The player also receives ten Skill points, each of which can raise a single skill by 1%.
Finally, the PC receives 2 additional Hit Points (3 if SIZE 75+), and 2 additional Luck Points.
 

A Clarification of the Combat Round

A round is six seconds long. During his turn, a PC may make a Movement Action, and one Attack Action.
If at any time during an engagement, an enemy leaves the PC’s melee-weapon range (provided he has a melee weapon in hand), the PC can make an attack of opportunity.
Attack Action: During an attack action, a PC may employ a ranged or melee weapon against any enemy within weapon range. Certain firearms allow more than one shot fired per round; these are rolled individually, with a penalty die added (p.114). This does not apply to full auto fire.
Movement Action: A movement action can be split into multiple segments as desired, so long as the total distance moved does not exceed the PC’s total. If no attack is made by the PC, he may take two Move actions. Disengaging (safely leaving a melee-equipped foe’s range) costs half the PC’s movement, and moves the PC 5’ away.
Additional activity:
Communicating simple messages does not affect actions.
A PC can drop an item in hand without cost. Picking up or passing one item is free, while additional items cost -5’ of movement.
A PC can holster/sling one weapon, or draw/unsling one weapon, for free. If he chooses to draw/unsling or holster/sling a second weapon, it costs -5’ of movement.
Reloading costs movement.
Applying First Aid takes a full Movement or Attack Action.
Other actions cost movement based upon the current circumstances.

I plan to adjust reloading to cost movement, and add the BRP rule for suppression fire.

I plan to use the optional rules for Point buy (p.49), Starting Skill cap (p.49), and spending luck (p.99).

6 minutes ago, Susimetsa said:

Well, cane swords / stickswords were still pretty widely manufactured in the early 20th century. In fact, I just made an upper class character for the 1920 Berlin setting who uses one (with the former corpsstudent package).

Not a bad choice for urban use. 

56 minutes ago, andyl said:

The point about questions is that you very often want (well not want but have to) talk to the cultists, to ask them questions, get information from them.  A shoot first from 25 yards approach isn't good for that.

Also cultists (and sometimes monsters) will ambush you when you have not got your guns out, or even when you don't have your guns on you.  So sometimes you cannot avoid melee.

Finally the people of a town (and the police) are probably going to be pretty annoyed but these out-of-towners walking around armed to the teeth gunning down people left, right, and centre. 

I've had pretty varied combats including one which involved one person sneaking into a barn to stampede a load of horses out of it and then in later rounds shoot the bad guys in the confusion, one person in melee, one person running to the car (to try and use it as a weapon - he failed his drive roll on the next round), and one person rolling a hard success to empty out a heavy water-trough, turn it over on top of himself and hide under it before the bad guys got to him.  Combats aren't always straightforward and that is with the things that can be easily hurt.

On the run 100 feet in a combat round. That certainly seems easily doable for athletes and characters that keep themselves in shape. I certainly wouldn't let them take another action that round. Maybe the old professor, or the flapper in heels or maybe some other character concepts, is not going to be able to sprint like that - but that is more a narrative thing not something that should be covered by a more concrete combat system.

So you talk before the fight starts. But generally, cultists don't volunteer information to outsiders, at least in my setting. They tend to be less than chatty to outsiders.

Drawing a weapon does not take long. But yes, ambushes occur. Don't have firearms with us? That hasn't happened yet.

You're not going to walk around town lugging a BAR, sure. But a pistol under your coat was perfectly legal pretty much everywhere in the 1920s, and in the USA today. Sure, shoot-outs in town are not wise, but cultists tend to set up away from public view. I haven't yet had CoC cultists conducting ceremonies at high noon in the city square. Usually, they're out in the boonies, or in a cellar of a house on the outskirts.  

Yes, I've run very varied combat scenarios since I started gaming in 1979.

No, its definitely a concrete combat system issue. 

I've already knocked out a paragraph laying out the possibilities for a six-second combat round that will surely serve our needs. Like I said, I've run Mythos campaigns before, just not using the CoC rules. 

8 hours ago, CastingsofCthulhu said:

You may be best picking up the additional pulp rules and playing using those as well, the core CoC system isn't very combat heavy. Characters can die in gun fights instantly in the vanilla rules, and it sounds like you're playing it more in the pulp vein.

I've been playing it since 2nd ed in the 80s and melee combat is often more common that gufights. Also, characters are never really designed for fighting. One game I was in a few months ago, I attacked a werewolf with a cricket bat. Did quite a bit of damage to it as well.

Nah, I do not like the pulp genre. I prefer a more serious, grim tone in any case, particularly when using the CoC setting.

I've used a lot of CoC scenarios, starting in the 80s. I'm new to the system, not the setting. If a PC can survive a fight with a werewolf while armed only with a wood club, why would having a BAR make him more vulnerable?

As to the nature and frequency of combat, that's in the GM's hands. It won't be a problem. I normally run high-risk systems.

8 hours ago, greger said:

On page 33:
"An investigator can move a number of yards (or meters) up to five times their MOV value in one round."
MOV is usually between 7-9, allowing for quite a lot more than 25 feet.

But, also, about combat, on page 127:
With regards to melee combat: "A character can move a number of yards equal to their MOV rate and attack normally.", that is, if they don't use their whole round to move.
And on using firearms: " A character can move up to a number of yards equal to their MOV rate and make their firearms attack (or attacks) normally on their usual DEX rank."

And next point: "If the attacker moves their MOV rate multiplied by 5 in yards, they must fire while running and so lack sufficient time to take a steady firing position, taking
a penalty die to their attack roll(s). The shots will normally be taken on their usual turn in the DEX order, but may be delayed if significant distance must be covered to reach a firing position (at the Keeper’s discretion)."

 

Sounds pretty limited. Sometimes you want to ask someone a question. Sometimes you are not fighting a killer. Sometimes you need to punch out your fellow investigator, who has lost a lot of sanity.

And, I really don't see how any of the previously mentioned rules contradict being a bit tactial.

And to be fair, in the Player's Handbook for 5e, it says on page 189:
"A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world.", so it is not set in stone there either.

 

I don't like 5e. I quit using D&D in the 80s, and only returned to 5e for a couple campaigns.

Thanks for the rule references! I love the system, but the organization of the book is a bit scattered in places.

I don't see questions arising in a firefight. Good point about a fellow PC losing it, though. But still, that's easily accommodated in a more defined combat round. I'm certainly not going to allow someone to run over a hundred feet in a single combat round.

33 minutes ago, CastingsofCthulhu said:

Theres nothing wrong with using the rules on role20, I've used, and played in games with maps. It's just down to how you interpret the players actions. You're just not bound by strict limits of time so theres plent of chances for players to move around while also attacking or interacting with their surroundings.

I recommend watching the melee video if you haven't already. At the 4 minute mark it talks about how its not a tactical combat system and encourages interaction with the environment. It then details how a character searches a kitchen, finds a knife, then attacks. How long would that take in real life? 10-30 seconds maybe? but the system allows players to be more creative.

The firearms video also talks through the (optional) move and shoot rules.

I don't see melee coming into play in a 1920s setting, or even in an 1880s one. I can't imagine a player deciding that running up to a killer and punching them is superior to shooting them multiple times from a distance. Or at least, I don't see any point in keeping a player who thinks like that.

But it's not a problem. A six-second combat round, and a short clarification of what is possible in terms of movement and action will suffice. They didn't develop excellent firearms rules and a really quality weapons list (plus the excellent weapon supplements) if a tactical game wasn't considered a valid option.

I didn't pay a hundred bucks to Roll20 for dynamic lighting so players could free-style encounters. 😉