I’ve been playing a lot of Wolfenstein games these past few days. There’s something cathartic about unapologetically fighting Nazis. I first did it to de-stress, and then to celebrate the results of our most recent election (go Lula!).

And since I do occasionally want to post something here that’s not Let’s Read the Monster Manual, I decided to talk a bit about the various guns you use to kill Nazis in all of these games.

We’re dealing with two separate continuities here: one that starts with Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) and another that starts with Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014). You could, if you’re so inclined, include both of them in the GURPS Infinite Worlds framework. I’d call then Wolfenstein-1 and Wolfenstein-2 respectively, though I guess Infinity might call the latter Reich-6 at first.

In this article, we’ll cover the stuff that appears in Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001), AKA the Wolfenstein-1 setting.

Game Overview

This is a flashier remake of Wolfenstein 3D, the game that more or less started the FPS genre back in 1992. It’s the first game in the franchise to have a more fleshed out story wrapped around its gameplay, with voiced dialogue and cutscenes elaborating on the simpler “you must escape the castle and kill Nazis” plot of the 1992 game.

The game takes place in a pulpier version of WWII, where the Nazis are working on a large variety of scary secret projects and the OSA (a joint Allied spy agency) is sending agents to stop them from hitting the field. The player character, as always, is William “B. J.” Blazkowicz. He gets sent along with a British agent to Castle Wolfenstein to find more about these projects, they get captured, and the game starts with Blazko’s escape attempt and moves on to thwarting those projects to the Allies can win the war.

There are two sinister things going on here: an attempt by the Thule society to resurrect ancient evil undead knights, and a mad science lab working to build cyborg supersoldiers. The final boss is, of course, a bunch of cyborg supersoldiers possessed by the spirits of ancient evil undead knights.

Historical Weapons

Wolfenstein-1 is mostly a pulpier version of WWII, so a lot of the weapons we see are historical and present on GURPS High-Tech. Though sometimes you’ll start a level with some Allied weapons issued by the OSA, the vast majority of the time you’ll be using captured German hardware.

OSA-issue weapons include the Colt M1911A1 pistol (p. HT99), the Thompson M1 submachine gun (p. HT122), and the Enfield Sten Mk IIS submachine gun (p. HT 125). The integral suppressor of the Sten works according to cinematic principles here, making it completely silent to enemies.

Interestingly enough, one of the “elite guard” units you face in the game also uses Stens, because they’re meant to be sneaky and the Sten is the only suppressed SMG in the game. The other OSA weapons are used exclusively by the player character.

German weapons include the Luger P08 pistol, (p. HT98), the ERMA MP40 SMG (p. HT 124), the Mauser Kar98K rifle (p. HT111), the Rheinmetall FG42 battle rifle (p. HT 115) and the Panzerfaust (p. HT147). The player also uses these extensively, since every enemy drops ammo for one of them.

The FG42 is the signature weapon of the other “elite guard” unit in the game, and has the scope described in its High-Tech entry. It’s also possible to find a suppressor for the Luger and a variable-power scope for the Mauser, which you can stat up using the generic rules in p. HT 156 and p. HT 158.

You can occasionally also find a few MG42 machine gun (p. HT 134) emplacements in the game. There is also a flamethrower similar to the M2-2 (p. HT179), though this is probably the German equivalent rather than the American version in the book.

Grenades also see use, with most of them being the German Stielhandgranate 24, and the rest American AMC Mk II models. Both are on p. HT190-191.

Fictional Weapons

There’s a lot of pulpy arms research going on here on both sides, so we also get to see some weapons that don’t exist in reality. We’ll cover these in a bit more detail.

Snooper Rifle

This is a prototype sniper rifle issued to Blazkowicz by the OSA early in the second mission of the game. You also find captured rifles later on while breaking into one of the games’ many secret lab facilities.

The Snooper is the most down-to-earth of the experimental weapons here, being an exaggerated version of the M3 Carbine (p. HT113). Even the fancy infrared sight is real! The biggest changes are the addition of a cinematic integral suppressor that makes the gun completely silent, and making the infrared sight more advanced than it really was. The one in the game has variable magnification and requires no external batteries.

Venom Machine Gun

This is the first entirely fictional weapon we encounter in the game, and the second most unrealistic one. It’s a portable, six-barreled, belt-fed minigun. It has relatively short barrels, a shoulder stock and rifle-style grips. There’s an in-game document that describes it as firing 7.92mm saboted armor piercing rounds, but the ammo for it is labeled as “12.7mm” in game. You first find the Venom as a prototype in one of the secret labs that make up the game’s levels, and after that it starts appearing in the hands of some enemy human soldiers. Most of the cyborg supersoldiers you meet towards the end of the game also carry one.

We’ll need custom stats for this one! Let’s go with the assumption that it fires 7.92mm ammo, to make it minimally plausible for it to be portable. To make it a little easier on the user, we can further say it fires the 7.92x33mm Kurz round, instead of the longer 7.92x57mm Mauser round from the Kar98K.

The in-game Venom takes up to 500 rounds. These would probably be in a disintegrating belt inside a metal can that can be worn as a backpack. The whole thing weights around 16kg, more than the weapon itself. More reasonable 200 and 100 round belts with their smaller containers might weight in at 8 and 4kg respectively.

We’ll actually base the stats for it on the Minigun from page 138 of GURPS Ultra-Tech, making the Venom a TL 7+2 weapon. The one on the table fires APDS ammo, which is also TL 7+2 in this caliber, and has a 500-round belt.

TL Weapon Damage Acc Range Weight RoF Shots ST Bulk Rcl
7+2 Venom 6d+2(2) pi- 4 1000/4000 15kg/16kg 25! 500(5) 15M -7 2

The Venom requires Guns (LMG) to operate, or Guns (Longarm) with the Burst-Fire technique if using the alternate gun skill rules from Pyramid #3/65.

Tesla Gun

The weapon used by the advanced cyborg supersoldiers you meet at the very end of the game. Unlike the Venom this doesn’t bear even the tiniest resemblance to any real gun. Pull the trigger and it fires a stream of lightning until you release it or until it runs out of charge.

The Tesla Gun draws power from a superscience backpack battery equivalent to a TL 9 D cell, but four times heavier. Its damage follows the same rules as the Lightning spell: metal armor only provides DR 1, and the target must make a HT roll with a penalty of -1 for every 2 points of injury taken from it. Failure means they’re stunned, and must attempt an HT roll every turn in order to recover.

TL Weapon Damage Acc Range Weight RoF Shots ST Bulk Rcl
7+2^ Tesla Gun 4d+2 burn sur 6 600/1900 35kg/10kg 10 50 (5) 18M -8 1

The Tesla Gun requires Gunner (Beam) to operate, even when carried.

How much for these fancy guns?

You’ll notice that I ommitted any price information for the Venom and the Tesla Gun above. That’s because in Wolfenstein-1 they’re secret prototypes with very limited production runs. You don’t buy them, you pry them from the hands of dead Nazi assholes.

If you want to use them on a different setting where they are available for purchase, use the following costs:

Name Cost
Venom MG $12.500
Venom Ammo (100-round belt, APDS) $180
Venom Ammo (100-round belt, solid) $60
Tesla Gun $60.000
Tesla Battery $400

These are for a setting with a tech level of 7+2. If you’re in a “plain” TL9 setting you might want to use the Minigun and Semi-Portable Electrolaser from Ultra-tech, which have slightly better stats.

If your setting is like Wolfenstein-1, where the overall TL is a plain 7 and these are secret superscience prototypes, multiply all prices by 4.