Niklas Jansson
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Last Imperium - Direction for Weapons
🕑 Added 2022-08-08 20:54:45 +0000 UTCFor the weapons I wanted to do something a bit different from what I've done elsewhere, and different from say, fictional modern looking guns, and different from sci-fi cool-guns with lots of mystery greeble. Since I have a slight medieval thing going on, I decided to mix antique forms with sci-fi detailing. I also wanted to come up with some sort of consistent detailing so I went for a sphere with a thing going off to the side. Perhaps it's a mini reactor or combustion chamber. Other types of weapons could do other things (cooling fins, glowy bit, etc).
Given the size of the imperium, I might have to do several "brands"... perhaps functionally identical, but it might be neat if there's some minor quirk to each, like prone to overloading, jams in the cold, bad reputation.
Melee weapons could be useful in survival situations, and perhaps certain worlds don't allow guns for some cultural reason. For boarding actions, it might be more practical to bring non lethal weapons like net casters, foam, gas, etc. An assassin might find a blade handy since they're probably not in a dueling situation with ranged weapons. I don't think I'll invent a reason for melee weapons being effective (like Dune's shields), but it's always possible to bump their stats a bit, look away and whistle. Also, when you play an RPG without miniatures like I always did, distances become abstract. You're either close or far away and perhaps it's your turn to move and attack, so this makes melee more viable than in real life.
Comments
Niklas Jansson
Bad Reputation opens up for some roleplay (and fluff build) yeah. As for boarding... I think realistically they'd probably develop special boarding weapons rather than use melee. I was thinking about some sort of foam which could be used to fill corridors for defense or area denial offense. A mess to clean up though. Then there are other projectile weapons which might work. If the ships are sectioned, armoured and shielded like tanks or battleships, handguns and rifles would be okay too. I'm not familiar with how ship combat works in Traveller/Cepheus, but I don't think the ships are fragile since that would freak kill the RPs who spend a lot of time in the ships.
Florian Hofmann
Two thoughts: (1) "bad reputation" as a modify is pretty neat both from a mechanic (cheaper? (frowned upon) lethal damage?) and a fluff perspective (might not bring the weapon to a more "casual" location). (2) As for why melee weapons are still used, the easiest and even hard-scifi explanation is still that once you shoot a weapon in a spaceship ... you have a hole in that spaceship.
