Things like recoil and stuff would be mechanics based, so like, if you let your character with low strength empty a burst of fully automatic gunfire, the outcome would be limited, in that only the first couple of rounds are likely to go anywhere near the target. That's the sort of thing you'd tie into skills and stats, and wouldnt require actual player skill.. more like a traditional RPG than, say, a FPS.

That kind of thing is more to do with the mathematical model behind your combat system, and less about the actual player experience, per say, but makes the system a bit more interesting for people who're advancing a character through the game.

jermz is right, check out the Fallout series, or get truely oldschool and play Wasteland. ;) Syndicate Wars had something a bit more fastpaced, and less RPGish, but you might want to implement a playstyle a bit more like that? Like I said originally, though, you'd probably want to limit the complexity of the gun system to match the rest of the game, assuming there's more to it than running around with guns, kneecapping people-
actually, there's an idea.. as you mentioned headshots, maybe have location-based damage, and test some kind of skill-weighted 'dice roll' against a table of hit locations.. I think the downloadable GURPS Lite pen-and-paper RPG had a system like that, you might want to check it out if you go with something like that.

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If you're talking guns, I'd suggest having a look at Jagged
Alliance, Fallout Tactics, and Silent Storm.

All of them are pretty good, with a variety of guns to choose
from. Playing them or at least getting familiar with them
should give you some good ideas for your game.

What level of realism are you going for? If you aren't concerned with realism too much you can find a way to work in special attacks. Strategy would arise from when and how to use the characters special attacks; you could limit usage by having specials cost special attack points, which slowly regenerate over time (or through picking up powerups, or whatever).

Beyond this, the only thing that I can think of to add an element of strategy (without going to a style of RPG where you control an entire party), would be effective usage of terrain (cover, high land, etc).

Keep in mind this is more of a small orpg. Like 3 people for testing just to work the system out. The special attack is a great idea. You could do special attacks and do other special attacks to counter. I'm not going for like power ups or anything maybe some potions you can buy to raise special points. Special points could be like the mana of magic games. Fallout and Jagged Edge are tactical games and will not help me much. I played them before as well. About realism, no not really. Like I said though i'm going for a skill base fight rather then who sat and played the game for 5 months to get to level 50. Of course a higher level will have advantages. But say someone skilled at level 10 and someone who just sucks at the game at level 13 could probably be beat easily. Thats just an example of the style I'm going for.

I mean you can't really do much with 3d rpg gun fighting I guess. Basically just moving around for cover and using your counters and special at the right times. Unless I hear more ideas?

ps: Thank you everyone that has posted their ideas there all great so far and helping me a lot.

Moved to Game Design.

"Head shot" perhaps can be a low-probability instant kill move, assuming the enemy type fits because it'd only work on humans or other being with obvious 'brain' It won't work so well on robots and those, for sure.

Hmm I don't know about adding an instant kill. I mean I think someone would be really pissed if some level 1 guy just walked up shot some level 60 guy and took all his "uber" stuff. I think just making it a critical hit is good.

Play the classic European DOS games of the genre: Syndicate and X-Com. Between them, they're the first and last word on gun-fighting in an RPG sense. And not RPG in the "anime chick with buster cannon slaying monsters" - but book style, that is an attempt to make an attribute-oriented but realistic gameplay where the player has control and strategy but so do the characters.

Why not model their modern analogues, games like Full Spectrum Warrior? Or play an RTS like Metal Fatigue, where you have stat-oriented giant robots.

Another element of gunfighting strategy is aiming time, ala Jagged Alliance and X-Com (probably others). The player could choose to take his time carefully aiming a single shot, or he could spray-and-pray, hoping that one of his many poorly-aimed shots hits the mark.

Quote: Another element of gunfighting strategy is aiming time, ala Jagged Alliance and X-Com (probably others). The player could choose to take his time carefully aiming a single shot, or he could spray-and-pray, hoping that one of his many poorly-aimed shots hits the mark.

Thats a possible solution except I do not know if that would work well in a real time battle.