Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:00 pm

Georgia teen arrested in fatal sword attack

Pennsylvania road rage

Pittsburgh family dispute

"It was self defence"

masked sword-weilding gang

Evansville swordsman

Man attacks ex-girlfriends lover with sword

Liverpool street attack

Just googled 'sword attack 2011' and picked the first 8, non-repetitive reports.

Swords are pretty common. A friend of mine was mugged in Brisbane a couple of years ago at swordpoint. He did not give the mugger any trouble, but they cut him anyway.

I know a guy who carries a meat cleaver instead of a knife because he thinks it is a more intimidating crime deterrent, plus less lethal if anyone calls his bluff.

My cousin in the police force remarked that it was standard protocol to shoot anyone weilding a weapon within 5 meters. Reason being, the closer they get, the less effective a pistol becomes, conversely the deadlier a blade becomes. Apparently it's common enough for there to be protocols in place.

I guess my point would be that I would not expect swords to be uncommon in a distopian future.

edit:replaced 10 with 8. numeracy fail.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:32 pm

It's a well known fact, to the point of it being an established point in a court of law, that a man with a knife can close the distance and stab you faster than you can draw and fire a pistol more than half the time if they are within 6 meters of you at the start of the confrontation. That people can kill other people with blades is not up for serious debate. That people commit crimes with blades and fight each other with blades is also not up for serious discussion. It's simply true.

The issue is whether player characters can (or should) be competitive when carrying a blade. And if so, what kinds of blades. And that, I think, primarily depends upon cultural considerations. If having a sword is considered culturally acceptable, then people will commit sword crimes. If having a sword is not culturally acceptable, then they won't.

As long as there are packages and watermelons and steaks, there is absolutely no chance that knives will become socially unacceptable to have. Swords will only be acceptable if there is some status thing for having a sword. Japanese sword fetishization is well known, but I think having a Southern thing where people carry sabers to pretend to be aristocrats could go far.

The moment that having an expensive looking sword is not something the cops will harass you for, the PC sword enthusiast has a clear niche to fill.

-Username17

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:55 pm

saber carrying American gentleman sounds cool.Could even have some kind of tricked out hi-tech gun that resembles a civil war revolver, depending on how far that Aristocrat theme wants to go.

Wuxia wandering around China to right social wrongs using mono-edged jian also sounds cool. You could tap into all the real/semi-real/completely fantastical kungfu anti government secret societies of China at all points of history for inspiration.

Isn't there a general breakdown of law and order in this future setting?

Swords are cool. You can make up some technobabble about super kinetic energy dispersing materials that can still be sliced through, or just not bother and have swords be cool swords.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 3:05 pm

Anybody else thinking Saber Rider right now? O.o

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 3:54 pm

There is also the whole gentleman duelist/rapier twit which you could claim came back into vogue in Europe.

Any region whose cultural identity stretches back to when swords were the weaponry of the wealthy or the elite will have some concept of "I carry a sword so I am either a bad-ass, in charge or both."

Heck, just having the movie Braveheart come out lead to all sorts of people wanting to carry a claymore; this setting posits far greater social upheavals than Mel Gibson in a kilt so we really can have a generation of kids whose yuppie parents enrolled them in fencing or kendo instead of karate.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 4:19 pm

If you want swords you could rationalize it by saying that armour in this era is better at protecting against penetrating bullets then slashing swords. Which from what I know of materials engineering (which isn't much) impossible, but still. Maybe magic can make swords better at cutting through armour because swords can be enchanted and bullets can not.

Also, you'll probably want armour to be unrealistically good. In real life most bullet proof vests just won't provide any protection from a high calibre rifle round or a shotgun slug. In the game you'll probably want some of the cheaper armours to at least help a little against those types of attacks, since they are probably quite common.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 4:57 pm

Finger razors and other kinds of strap-on or hidden blades make sense. They don't run out of ammunition, they can be used for tasks other than killing fools, and make a good close-quarters or last ditch combat weapon.

I'm fine with blade usage. I don't think you have to rationalize it vs. firearms with lame handwavium. If you're concerned about combat balance, I would penalize the use of firearms in CQ combat. If you're at or closer than three times the width of say, a human arm, you're too close to use a firearm effectively - especially if both parties are military combat trained.

Traditional ancient melee weapon usage (sword, axe, spear, club etc.) should probably be limited to magic users with ties to a specific regional magical tradition. A European Catholic theurge would be skilled with a rapier, a Buddhist monk would be skilled with the dao, jian or butterfly sword, a Southern Baptist theurge with a saber, a Hindu yogi with a katara or a Massai laibon with stabbing and throwing spears. Melee weapons are still prevalent visual and cultural motifs in most belief systems. The gun or cannon hasn't quite made it there yet.

I know Gibson described Molly as a "street samurai" but she didn't actually wield a katana like Leonardo the Turtle. That visual is pure Shadowrun and CP2020 tradition. I would probably ditch the traditional katana (which wouldn't work in modern combat anyway) for your stabby-cyber-guy and push a more high-tech nano-combat blade. Maybe it grows and shrinks its blade like the Sword of Thundera from a pool of gray nanogoo in the hilt.

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 5:44 pm

I think that swords are valuable and common weapons here. It all comes down to prosthetics.

First, if your arm is already built out of metal, detecting a blade hidden inside the rest of the metal is extremely nontrivial. It's also easy. If you have a prosthetic and you expect to fight anything, you will have a sword.

Second, you will use that sword, because it removes prosthetics. Shooting an ogre heavy in the shoulder doesn't stop him shooting back; all the control runs to his forearm cannon are still there and everything. Cutting the arm off entirely, on the other hand, solves the problem immediately.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:52 pm

More than anything, I just don't want melee abilities to be so costly or specific that you could plausibly sum up people's roles with Kick Man or Sword Guy, since unless you're making guns uncharacteristically weak then melee is ultimately a last ditch trick roughly on level with having the Escape Artist skill from Shadowrun. I'd seriously rather see us just put in a cheap Jackie Chan quality/feat that lets people use Agilityx2 for their melee dice pool regardless of what they're swinging at people than require people to blow a ton of resources on being a bullshido grandmaster.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:58 pm

you could make it one handed / two handed close combat weapons with specializations in short (knives and the such) and long (swords and the such) and another skill for purely unarmed combat that takes care of EVERYTHING and the style you use is purely fluff.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 7:16 pm

Whipstitch wrote:More than anything, I just don't want melee abilities to be so costly or specific that you could plausibly sum up people's roles with Kick Man or Sword Guy, since unless you're making guns uncharacteristically weak then melee is ultimately a last ditch trick roughly on level with having the Escape Artist skill from Shadowrun.

Melee abilities are easily modified by cyber or magic. When you can punch through walls with ease it ceases to be a last ditch trick and becomes a primary means of offense.

While IRL it's harder to learn a form of wushu than use a pistol effectively, in terms of game balance the two should cost the same, else melee is a meaningless ability and should be dumped.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 7:17 pm

All fighting should probably use the same basic skill of Combat. You have a grand total of 7 specializations in that, unarmed, short melee, long melee, throwing, pistols, rifles and heavy weapons.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 7:24 pm

Nah, there should really be different skills with specializations i think . .
Or would you want the Boxer to be a crack shot, because he got his combat skill up high?
Else please explain to me what you meant.
Preferably in simple terms.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 8:03 pm

And high end gunfighters make them teleport into a hail of bullets that appear inside them.

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 8:43 pm

Boxers aren't PCs. And yes, the boxer would also be a crack shot - because there's no 'boxer' archetype. There's the PC who wins fights.

Agent_0042 · Post by **Agent_0042** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 9:24 pm

Easy solution - treat Shadowrun's weapon skill groups as skills, and use the individual weapon skills as specializations. Something like

Combat Skill Group
Close Combat (Unarmed, Blades, Clubs)
Firearms (Pistols, Longarms, Automatics)
Heavy Weapons (Grenade Launchers, Rocket Launchers, etc.)
? Projectiles (Archery, Thrown Weapons)

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 9:57 pm

Ha ha, that's awesome. What a perfectly elegant system!

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:07 pm

Wesley Street wrote:
Melee abilities are easily modified by cyber or magic. When you can punch through walls with ease it ceases to be a last ditch trick and becomes a primary means of offense.

While IRL it's harder to learn a form of wushu than use a pistol effectively, in terms of game balance the two should cost the same, else melee is a meaningless ability and should be dumped.

Yeah, see, I don't want it to be a primary means of offense because it starts to beg the question of at what point things are sufficiently lethal to be really useful to players in the setting. I want submachine guns and assault rifles to stay pretty dang lethal and that means that punching through walls just means that you win harder the few times you actually manage to get inside someone's barrel. I don't really want hulking out to be a particularly common tactic. That's why I want melee to be a lesser thing that explicitly costs less rather than continue the "It's all equal" farce.

Anyway, I use a skill group system similar to what was suggested in Shadowrun already and while it works OK I'd still make things even broader given that a lot of character variety is presumably going to come from what mods or qualities you take anyway. Basically, what I'm saying is that anything at all similar to SR4's Exotic Weapon skill needs to go die in a fire.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:20 pm

Grek wrote:As it turns out, a guy charging a man with a pistol can cross 15 meters in the time it takes for the shooter to get off 1 shot. Add in magic axes from Thule, body armour and the enhanced stealthiness of melee weapons vs. magic and you have a perfectly valid tactic for some opponents.

I've done that one. It's called the Tueller Drill, developed by Dennis Tueller years ago. I had a armorers class with him last year where he talked about this a bit. The usual distance is 21 feet, or roughly 7 meters. This assumes that a) the guy with the HtH weapon has it out and ready and the guy with the pistol has it in his holster. At 7 meters, if you have your hand on the gun and are ready to draw, you can shoot him several times. We found that if you don't have your hand on the gun it's a lot more questionable if you can or not. If you have the gun at a low ready you can shoot the crap out him without a problem.

At 15 meters you'd need to be asleep or have some issue with weapon access to not shoot him a lot before he reached you.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:30 pm

Wesley Street wrote: While IRL it's harder to learn a form of wushu than use a pistol effectively, in terms of game balance the two should cost the same, else melee is a meaningless ability and should be dumped.

Real World people will learn harder skills just because they want to. If I spent as much time at the range as I spend at the dojo I'd be hell on wheels with a pistol, but I like karate. And it doesn't cost $15 per every 50 punches or take 45 minutes each way.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:36 pm

Firearms are simply more effective than melee weapons. There are situations where melee weapons are highly effective, but they remain limited in scope and scale.

Having said that, melee weapons are always going to be available. It does not matter if it is a broken bottle in a bar fight, or arachaic weapons that a ganger picked up at a pawn shop in order to impress his peers.

In a cyberpunk game, I would expect melee weapons to be fairly prevalent. Unarmed expertise is discrete, when empowered by magic, tech or pharma can be simply devastating. Even something like a stun gun could have a super-charged cyberpunk varient that gives targets a heart attack. While clubs, hatchets and blades may be the mark of an unprofessional or desperate weilder, you can bet that even the most proffesional runner/operative/merc may occasionally have the need for cutting-edge melee weapons. (no pun intended).

In a pink mohawk style game, it may simply be wired up junkies armed with rebar and hockey sticks. In a black trenchcoat game it may simply be a syringe that will flood a targets system with tech disabling nanites.

I don't want to over-emphasise melee. Firearms are obviously more practical for a larger range of circumstances. But like explosives, biological agents, armoured vehicles and drones, I think it has a place in this sort of game.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:56 pm

I'm totally fine with people being killed by hand to hand attacks. What I'm less OK with is people being merely inconvenienced by gunfire. Basically, I think this boils down to a referendum on how much rocket launcher tag you want to allow, since melee simply doesn't do very well in settings where people can still be fairly easily killed with a .44.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:27 pm

Firearms should be deadly, period. If you are melee and not already kicking and stabbing when the other guy gets the gun out, you should have lost already.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 3:11 am

Agent_0042 wrote:Easy solution - treat Shadowrun's weapon skill groups as skills, and use the individual weapon skills as specializations. Something like

Combat Skill Group
Close Combat (Unarmed, Blades, Clubs)
Firearms (Pistols, Longarms, Automatics)
Heavy Weapons (Grenade Launchers, Rocket Launchers, etc.)
? Projectiles (Archery, Thrown Weapons)

I like the After Sundown method more:

Combat

Combat is the training needed to fight. Usually other people. More than any other skill, people will ask to divide up Combat into smaller fragments. It is not immediately clear why, but we strongly suggest that you do not do this. While there are truly a vast array of differences between stabbing someone with a sword and shooting them with a gun – the simple fact that the combat simulationist player can name them all draws attention to how simply not that different they are. The basic truths of combat skill include making rapid life and death decisions while avoiding threats and putting the pointy end of your weapon into the other man. There's a world of differences from combat situation to combat situation, and that's why the skill goes all the way to six. But please remember that this is a game where flying a plane and managing a nuclear power plant can be the same skill (Operations).
Specializations: By weapon or martial style.

FrankTrollman wrote:Japanese sword fetishization is well known, but I think having a Southern thing where people carry sabers to pretend to be aristocrats could go far.

Actually, they've outlawed swords for anyone at all to have recently. Now people just stab each other with pocket knives instead.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 5:08 am

North America- Southern Gentlemen's Club, Academy Officers
Central America- Banditos, Zorros and sheriffs
Caribbean- Pirates
South America- Cyborg Jiujitsu Association
East Asia- Wuxia Society, Samurai & Ninja clans
Western Europe- Knightly Orders
Southern Europe- Dueling schools
Middle East- Assassin, Mujahideen
Africa- Crusaders, Tribal Warriors
Antartica- Anti-Orca Penguin Jiujitsu

AND EVERYONE WAS MELEE FIGHTING