Weapons are generic tools

[Dredwulf60]

This is a GM philosophy I have recently adopted for my current SW game.

A heavy blaster pistol is a heavy baster pistol with one set of stats for all of them.

A blaster rifle is a blaster rifle...they are all functionally identical.

etc for all weapons including melee weapons.

For me it's like a D&D game where a longsword is a longsword...generic.

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There are a few reasons for this;

1. understandig that the galaxy is huge. There will be more makes and models of a blaster than could be reasonably be listed.

2. Listing makes and models is just flavour. Flavour is good as long as you realize they will all be fundamentally the same past a point anyway...there are only so-many combinations of stats.

3.Because of reason 2, It's easy to tell what blaster pistol is the 'best'. Perhaps a few have trade-offs, but I have found most players gravitate to 'X' or perhaps 'Y' as soon as they have the cash or get their hands on it. Sure some players will buck this in favour of good roleplay, but they will know they are limiting themselves....or the GM has to make it hard to get / expensive.

But just like in a fantasy game, there will be Masterwork and 'magical' weapons.

Just like in D&D these are rare and not mass-produced (or if they are it's on a scale that is a teardrop in the galactic ocean. I picture a master weaponsmith constructing it by hand the way a wizard labours over an enchanted longbow.


These items I apply one or more modifiers to; like a bit better range category..a couple pips bonus to damage...a better ammo die etc.

Thus the item is truly a masterwork. I can add whatever technobabble I want to explain its characteristics, but the player knows they have something special that the next guy isn't going to just go out and buy when he can afford it.

In conjunction with my 'shopping' house rule anyway.

[CRMcNeill]

You might like this...
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Dredwulf60]

[atgxtg]

One approach you could adopt which could keep the :flavour" as significant while keeping your generic approach and also accomodate your master work weapon idea would be to assign each weapon some "Traits".

Perhaps things like "Rugged", "Long Range", "large Clip" etc. Maybe a tyical weapon might get 1 or 2 traits (maybe more if some sort of flaw is taken). When the trait applies it could grant some sort of bonus. Maybe a bonus die or a straight add.

Mastercraft items could have more traits allowing them to grant bonuses more often.

Note that this approach could be used for all types of gear, making everything a generic "tool".

[Naaman]

I rather like the idea of having a few makes and models that more or less represent a broad selection of individual choices. Or, like in real life, there are some choices that those "in the know" avoid at all costs, often paying more for what they know is quality... or, not willing to pay "extra" for features that they regard as frivolous.

For example, in a gun fight the difference between a $4000 pistol and a $600 pistol is negligible. But the difference between a $600 pistol and a $200 pistol is life and death.

[Dredwulf60]

Just for the sake of discussion (not argument).

(in other words, Just cause I like talking about this stuff, not because I'm trying to convince anyone of anything.)

I find when I go to make a list of weapons, it always feels woefully incomplete. In a compendium of firearms just in our real world, there would be hundreds of entries. Then there is a galaxy...that has been around for hundreds of thousands of years...and conceivably there are firearms (blasters) that have been in service for much of that time; a potentially thousands of thousands of makes and models.

It seems a disservice to show the players a couple of RPG books and make them pick from a few dozen blasters. Once you narrow down your 'type' say...heavy blaster. Then you have about 4 or 5 realistic choices. Some are cheap and meant to represent garbage. A few are very expensive and prepresent the pinnacle of what every character will likely want. And 'role-playing' decisions aside (where a player chooses something less than optimal for the sake of flair) soon everyone will have THAT blaster.

I saw this when playing Shadowrun. Once the players had been playing for a while...It was only a matter of time before every Street Samurai was packing an Ares Predator II smart pistol.

And when characters died and new ones were made...it was only a game or two...if that...before that particular gun was acquired.

I don't like this.

So, the way I run it, I can rattle off a 'fluff' name when a character buys a blaster or steals one or picks one up off a corpse. In this way, it's quite possible for no two characters to have the same blaster pistol...ever, even if the stats are fundamentally the same.

Then there are those special weapons.


This is more satisfying to me.

Like one of my players inherited his father's blaster pistol with this line descriptors:

Hydrak BL-45 AAA
Custom grip, with offset-weight, oversized reinforced barrel, vectored recoil compensation, overpowered focusing chamber with tibana triple-compression and molded wrist-wrap micro-stock.

Which has standard heavy-blaster pistol stats...but with a +2 pips to attack rolls and a +2 pips to damage rolls due to its masterwork status.

EDIT:

You can see this in 'real life'. Look at Mandalorian cosplay. Many people make whatever looks like a cool 'gun' without trying to imitate a particular established canonical weapon.

On the other hand, when Karen Traviss books were all the rage, specifically following Triple Zero....it seemed every mando costumer had to have a 'Verpine Shattergun Sniper rifle'...

Nevermind the fact that even in the novel they were described as fantastically rare and hard to get ahold of...even for Republic Commandos on a black op.

They were made out to be 'so awesome' that everyone had to have one. Just google a Verpine Shattergun. Or 'verp' as it came to be termed.

[Naaman]

Yup. I totally understand what you mean.

In fact, I'm running into a similar problem (minor distinctions between similar weapons) as I write up my list of weapons based on manufacturer.

In reality, the same design is produced by many different manufacturers, so there is no distinction other than quality, which is something I am trying to express in house rules.

For now, some of the distinctions I've made rules for include weight differences, ergonomic differences and reliability differences.

As an example, some rifles have the external controls laid out such that they can be manipulated entirely with the firing hand, while others require the use of both hands to manipulate and a break of the cheek-stock weld. So weapons that were made with those ergo considerations grant a bonus to rolls to manipulaate the weapon (speed reloads, malfuntion clearing, etc).