From: "andi jones" To: Subject: Re: Late TL8 Arms Date: Monday, January 28, 2002 7:58 PM russell jennings wrote: >I'm running a late TL8 campaign where the players are battlesuited SWAT. >I'm wondering what the average street punk would be armed with, all the way >up to what the heaviest weapon the players could encounter. In their last >battle, I had the bad guys armed with the equivalent of AK's and M-16s, >rifles doing about 10d(2) of damage or so. The suits have 400 pts of >ablative and 85 points of laminate, so they just shrugged all of this off. > >When looking at a modern gang, they don't seem to have RPG's or LAW's or >anything much heavier then an assault rifle or a machine pistol. How >probable is it that gangs in the future might? I know that in war torn >countries and such, you can buy weapons like this on the street, if you've >got the money, but San Francisco in 2159 doesn't seem like the place that >would have this. > >On the other hand, the TL9 plasma shotgun that's been posted would probably >be a serious threat to one of these suits. Is anything at TL8 available >that's man portable, that could punch thru this kind of armor? > >Basically, I'm just wondering what you guys equip your late TL8 badguys >with. i can't give you an answer, but i can ask you some questions that may help you find one... 1) in this setting, what criminals are these battlesuited-SWAT police meant to deal with? in the real world, SWAT was a response to civil unrest and criminal activity that had exceeded the scope of baseline law enforcement. today, our SWAT teams do the tactical police-work for which patrol officers are neither equipped nor trained. in a modern-day city, that means criminals with rifles (and the like) that can punch through a typical police officer's concealable body armour. in your setting, what criminal activity exists in san francisco of 2159 that demands b-SWAT in close to 500 points of armour? because if the criminals don't pose the threat, it's "unrealistic" that the b-SWAT would wear that kind of equipment; the cost would be prohibitive if the gear wasn't necessary, and the more advanced the gear, the more advanced the training. training costs more time and money. so you're not likely to see b-SWAT running around in that kind of battle-gear if there isn't some routinely-encountered threat that demands that level of protection... 2) when you started this campaign, did you decide how the world worked, and then decide that these b-SWAT guys were a reasonable (or even inevitable) product of that world? or did you first decide, "wow, battle-suited SWAT would be fun", and then hang the rest of the campaign around that premise? neither way is right or wrong, but if it was the latter, this may be one of those instances for which you'll need to flesh out your setting to "reconcile" some of the elements therein. really, it's the realistic<->cinematic spectrum. in the most general terms, a realistic setting - even if it's imaginary or speculative - is one in which the GM decides how the world is and what the contents of that world are, and the adventures that occur there are logical extensions of that vision. in a cinematic setting, the GM decides what kind of action he wants, and makes the setting conform to the desired premise. and in some cases, unreconcilable issues are either ignored completely, or dismissed with genre conventions. so your setting may be meant to look and feel like one of those manga series like "bubblegum crisis" with hardsuited megacops in what is otherwise a normal-ish world. if so, you don't need to justify why or how your b-SWAT guys have that kind of armour... 3) what's the legal and social atmosphere of this world? i notice you said late TL8, but didn't mention "cyberpunk". is it an oppressive world in which civil liberties have taken a back-seat to homeland security? or is it a free-wheeling post-modern wild-west? what's the status of the second amendment? (is san francisco in the USA still? does the USA even exist?) more importantly, what's the nature of crime in this age? what do these street gangs do? do they troll their turf, all vested up and looking to bust caps on rival slangers? or are they the foot soldiers in the yakuza's ever-tightening stranglehold on the american northwest? if these "gangs" are just hoods with cheap guns, there's a gang task force for them, and you don't need b-SWAT. if they're moving billions in heroin annually for the yak, there's both money and power galore if you go up the ladder high enough. money and access may mean big weapons. or was b-SWAT not meant to deal with mundane criminal activity, but rather with crimes on an entirely different level? political unrest can provide military-style bad-guys on city streets... think of the IRA in ireland, or the PLO in israel. not just cops and robbers, but "good soldiers" and "bad soldiers" (with "good" and "bad" depending on what side of tracks you grew up on, or which sunday school you went to...) 2159 is a long time away, and it's hard to know what kind of social forces will be at work. the police walking the beat in new york city in 1850 could hardly have imagined today's SWAT forces... 4) how has technology progressed? have we got lasers that are effective yet? what about gauss guns? are you using the "generous" default GURPS rules for power cells, or the more realistic power slugs from "ultra-tech 2"? do your chemical slugthrowers use electrothermal propellant, or liquid propellant? has there been 150 years of active military conflict world-wide, something that would have spurred on the development of newer and better weapons? or have we seen 150 years of relative peace and prosperity? compare the guns of today to the guns of 1850, and then compare the guns of today with those of your setting. how do they stack up? 5) if b-SWAT wear that kind of armour, what do actual soldiers of this day and age wear? and what do they shoot? i hope some of that helps. in the real world, the ability of the bullet to penetrate the armour always seems to outpace the ability of the armour to stop the bullet. if there's a company that designs and builds b-SWAT armour, it's because there's something our there that punches through anything thinner... have you considered outfitting these punk with some surplus 14.5mm russian anti-materiel rifles? the global black market was flooded with them following the third ukranian uprising in 2096, and you still see them cropping up on ebay every once in a while. the default cartridge was an electrothermal caseless round housing a tandem-warhead shaped-charge designed to trick out laminate armour... 22d base damage (crushing plus plus), and all DR is divided by 10, even the laminate stuff. end of line. +-------------------------------------------------+ | andi jones - illustrator, typographer, designer | andi@angelwerks.com / www.angelwerks.com +-------------------------------------------------+