"A no-guns sci fi universe" Topic

A friend of mine is an excellent roleplayer, and I have always wanted him to game in one of my sf campaigns, but he absolutely hates guns. He loves fantasy rpging because it is all about "face the enemy blade to blade", so, because I really want to do sf with this guy, I have agreed to try to create a sci fi universe in which there is a lot of combat, but in which guns play no part.

The first thing I did was look for a paradigm from sf, and, of course, Dune immediately came to mind. I like the idea of knife/sword fighters who use energy shields that guns and lasers cannot penetrate (the idea being, for any who may not know, that the shields gain power from the energy used in the attack, so anything other than a relatively slow moving blade will not penetrate them).

Now, I am trying to extrapolate this to starship combat for this game. If such a shield could be used to cover a starship or a planet, what weapons would be effective? Not nukes or lasers, obviously.

So, I thought, what about mass drivers? A true mass driver is, of course, an asteroid accelerated to near light speed, and smashed into a planet. This would not work either, but what if space wars were fought by using massive battleships that towed (maybe with tractor beams) big asteroids into orbit around a planet, and then launched them through the shields at relatively low speed, letting gravity do the rest?

Seems like an interesting space battle scenario to me. The enemy would try to knock out the attacking battle platform by boarding actions, using relatively low speed shuttles full of infantry. Thus, there would be lots of boarding actions in space, with swordsmen fighting for control of the vessels. If the enemy did manage to get into orbit, a few asteroids would probably be launched to take out major military installations, and then the rest of the fighting would be a ground assault by sword armed infantry.

However, human beings (and, presumably, similar aliens) are clever when it comes to warfare. How would generals/admirals attempt to get around my system of combat, and perform more massive destruction?

Regards

Please note: Obviously, there is a certain amount of handwavium and unobtainium going on here, but GIVEN the (unlikely) premise of such a shield, how would warfare realistically develop?

In fact (sorry, I'm kinda warming up to my own topic) battleships might very well be labyrinthine (dungeon-like) in their construction. They might be built with a lot of traps, false doors and rooms, etc., in an attempt to delay, confuse, wrongly direct, and outright kill enemy boarders. Thus, some of those unlikely dungeon plans that always plague D&D campaigns might prove useful and even "realistic" in such a universe.

The Forever War comes to mind of course. They develop shields that stop bullets and lasers and have to fight hand to hand with swords inside the shields.

For space combat, I think you've got it. It's like a pirate battle but with asteroids instead of cannons.

Mental powers! Telekinesis. If a physical attack is not possible, then "Mind over Matter" would prevail.

Does this player's characters use wands or magic items with a directed affect? If so, he's a bit hypocritical as a wand is just another point-and-click interpersonal interface.

That aside, have a go through the original Buck Rogers in the 25th century and John Carter of Mars books. Both have guns, but they also have other "energy effect" weapons as well.

You could always run a "not Star Wars" scenario where neo-Jedi use energy blades vs. the blasters of the faceless minions.

Wyatt

Once you get inside the shield on a battleship you can detonate a bomb.

Planets would probably still be vulnerable as the power to protect a planet would be….off the scale….or more. Its the individual shields that make the setting work. However, an individual with a shield should still be crushed when hit by a 105mm shell. The shield would probably be overloaded and the shear momentum would be enough to kill the shield wearer. So the pirate idea would still work, smallarms are ineffective, but the big guns would still wreak havoc.

As this relates to your friend, fantasy has equivelent weapons (catapults, trebuchae, scorpians, bolt throwers, etc.) and that type of setting still works.

this should give that fantasy feel in a scifi environemt and still give you those classic starship battles.

They may try to find a better way to toss a rock., like putting it in a really big gun. Sorry.

Perhaps you need to create a different mind set for the game. I remember A book called "The High Crusade" where an alien race landed on earth in the 13th centuy. The aliens were all high tech but had no idea how to defend themselves against melee attack. However, even there the use of bows/crossbows was accepted.

BooneC "Once you get inside the shield on a battleship you can detonate a bomb."

True, and good point. Thus, the bomb would also have to incorporate some kind of nuclear dampening property (more handwavium, please), though this still would not stop the detonation of a chemical explosive.

Nonetheless, this could be assumed to be impractical, if the spaceship interior bulkheads were tough enough that they could withstand a chemical explosion.

Seems to me that space has lots of underused floating big rocks

The ambitious Admiral might decide to, say, bombard a target with 200 or so – that might be hard to stop

Would depend on how pricy/rare/tough to emplace large engines were

Interesting idea

Swords, Melee weapons, and stunners would even be a practical method of warfare in a traditional deep space society. Assuming the outside atmosphere is hostile, toxic, or just plain vacume, any weapon that pentrates the bulkhead would have disasterous consequences for the combatants and all the inhabitants of the section thats pentrated.

The ships would probably not be massively armored metal cases as the ability to maneuver them would be incredible. The ships would have back up sections and hardened points, but truely armoured would be a massive undertaking.

Therefore, if the setting revolved around deep space travel and colonial habitats and space stations, it could be easily hypothesized that many of the marine type forces would rely on melee weapons. The others may be available, but use of them insures your own demise so they stay in the armory most of the time. Even the criminals would shy from them as they almsot certainly have some self preservation instincts.

The traditional Traveler setting had army and marine carrers. Army was a terran ground based force with the guns, the Marines fit the role described above. The poor army veteran was in deep trouble in a space station battle.

"The ambitious Admiral might decide to, say, bombard a target with 200 or so – that might be hard to stop"

In Ian M banks 'Culture' universe, rocks and debris accelerated to near light speeds are used in some space battles as a means of softening up defending fleets before the actual engagement starts. Not too much handwavium involved here.

If ship shields are effective against missiles and lasers, perhaps they don't work against anti-matter projecticles? Again, lets you have your classic space battles. (I'm envisaging some sort of proximity detonation here).

I think you can just about make a reasonably consistent case for a personal Dune type shield, minus the las-gun interaction effect of course.

Not so sure about extrapolating it to vehicles, buildings, planets and spaceships.

What if it's a dark age where the knowledge to build energy weapons and starships has been lost. Luckily, the ships were made to last. And they're so rare, you always try to board and no one would think of blowing one up. That way, when it happens, you have a big plot point and dramatic moment.

Let's take this a different direction…

Interstellar travel is possible, but ship-to-ship combat is not. The ability to maneuver in three dimensions at near relativistic speeds makes the chances of hitting something vanishingly small. Everything has to be done with close assault.

If ships use gravity manipulation for flight and etc, missile weapons can be nullified as the artificial gravity is inversely proportionate to mass (ie; small objects fall faster).

You also might want to look at "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove for a look at low-tech space travel. link

Wyatt

If you're using "Dune" shielding, then the obvious attack weapon against ships would be a "slow" missile, which flies up to the shield and then "brakes" to insert itself. Once inside, it continues to a specific target point and detonates. Intelligent mines (really a lay-in-wait "slow" missile) would also be a natural.

Or you could go with blade-armed drones for over-the-top slicing.

Read The Tour of the Merrimack series by R. M. Meluch for a sci-fi with swords setting.

As for why use swords on a ship even in a gun setting, Traveller had that logically worked out years ago: swords don't produce stray shots that puncture the hull and turn your ship into vacuum, or damage vital ship systems, or ricochet around hitting you and your buds.

And then there's this historical character: link

Just because a weapon's archaic, doesn't mean you can't kill the enemy with it. And scare the out of him, too!

dont forget kinetic energy = 0.5 x mass x velocity^2

so throwing (relatively slowly) a ruddy great asteroid against a target is still likely to have enough energy to be stopped by the shield.

In fact is it not possible that you can't get anything through the shield with enough energy to damage the shielded ship/planet?

even at the person to person combat level there must be enough energy in a sword blow to be able to sever a head say, so would this not also be stopped by such a shield.

You'd need to get INSIDE the shield. and once there surely some form of high energy short range weapon would do. Including a 'gun' of sorts.

If such a shield existed then i think you want to abandon all ranged kinetic weapons and think about other methods such as poisons, bacterial attacks… economic attacks, computer viruses (done to death) etc.

I really am having a hard time getting around your friend's logic here. With the presence of bows, javelins, slings, thrown spears, spells, magical items, breath weapons, spitting venom, etc. it seems that missile weapons themselves cannot be the issue. It seems to me that your friend may simply have an issue in his perception of guns.

So, you could include guns if you wanted, but change how they work or how they fit into the setting. Various excellent strategies have been pointed out already and there are some good sci-fi paradigms to go by.

What if you created a setting where guns weren't outmoded but fallen out of vogue. Perhaps you have a setting where social norms have dictated that guns are crude and the stuff of thugs and space invaders.

I think the Jedi concept is a great one to go with as the Jedi himself is a non-gun user who fights the good fight and wins despite his world being full of guns.

-Eli

ships with arms with cutting or drilling heads with and or shocking weapons and griping arms. also arms with mines to push through the shield
boarding ramps and storm troopers pole arms with shocking or exploding heads would be a weapon to have. also man grabers that can grip around the shield and cut the target in half or have a shocking head.

a person with a personal shield could still be slammed in a wall by an outside force (explosion) stronger their weight and wounded or killed by the impact.

A galaxy with out saltpetre. No impitus to try and create a 'better gun'.

Another possibility, cribbed from Man-Kzin wars, is that your future society has had it's past erased by an ARM-like organization. So your society is not only perfectly peaceful, it didn't even remember that things like guns existed. Something causes the social order to break down, and soon there is need to fight again. Without any conception of guns, they instead apply the technology they have to an obvious combat model- hand to hand. So all their tech revolves around building better swords and defenses, not better firearms.

I do have to wonder though, what is the real difference between a crossbow and a gun, which it comes down preferring fantasy over sci-fi?

-Will

Last Hussar beat me to it, but I too would suggest a universe without gunpowder(as in, it doesn't even exist, not that it hasn't been discovered).

If you don't already have an RPG that you're using try the Fading Suns RPG. Short of an official Dune RPG (is there one?) it's the closest I've found. Noble houses, trade federations, emperor (complete with not Sardaukar) has some important worlds that are relatively low tech (not just backwater rim worlds). Rather fond of it.

link

Check out Cestus Dei.

It's a little late for this but the anime Legend of Galactic Heroes there are guns, but if some one covers an area with zephyr particles the guns become a hazard. So they go to using battle axes in close combat.

In battletech all combat on space ships was limited to melee weapons for fear of a projectile punching a hole in the hull. Even the RPG Star Frontiers had melee weapons for this reason.

Dune is an obvious answer, but not the only option.

Why some people have this irational fear of guns is beyond me.

link it died in the process but is available for download

And the holy grail of RPGs, check out the price tag…
link

Easiest way to avoid the guns issue is to ban them…only cops and robbers have them and robbers are boiled in oil for using them.

Make it a science fiction romantic period with duels, the art of the insult, and such the proper way to behave.

Guns are there but so far and few that most people will never handle one in their lives.

Seems like a long way to go to satisfy one guy…IMO. If I am catering a large dinner and there are food alergies, vegans (ugg), and other related particulars I just prep other dishes separate for them…I do not make all of the dishes bland, no animal fat/peanuts/tomato/etc., low salt, or whatever.

Maybe just let him make a duelist. Magic users do not normally get in the boxing ring, barbarians do not normally pick locks, and chainmail bikinis are for fun time not fight time.

If you do not like guns then do not use them.

Put this group far out where there are few people and those that are there are primatives…or a space station/hug ship, no guns allowed at all.

Best of luck. :)

PS
I second fading suns…close enough to Dune, but you need to tweek it to your vision…easy enough. link

IMO … if it ain't got no guns … than it's fantasy !

You basic concept is very interesting:

The Dune type shield, Lost tech, Cultural norms could all lead to this. Also some type of displacement field or clocking or image shifting tech could also go this way. If you can not see where something is, it very hard to shoot at. You pretty mush have to touch something to know where it really is. But scatter weapons might do some harm but still only at closer range.

Wyatt had a very good idea. Weapons that limit the movement of the target.

For ship to ship, torps that nullify your drive field, or cast nets and add drag, or then find the target and drill their way in. Perhaps ships are so valuable that no one wants to destroy one. You have to make a boarding to take over.

For Man to Man, glue guns, nets, ropes, lassos and close in on the figure and start to drill in, caltrops thrown on to floors, guns that shoot out foam the hardens to limit the battle area, Dusters that cover the floor to let you see the foot prints. Then swords and shield (energy based if you like).

For planets the Dune type shield sounds best. You have to lay siege like to a castle. Make big mirror to shine extra light to heat the planet or divert the light to shadow the entire planet to try and freeze them out. The energy cost to move bug masses around it great so slowly dropping big rocks may not work too well. And ground based defense may be able to shoot out such things unless they are also protected by a shield.

Just some off my head.

DyeHard

Perhaps this? Planet Krishna: link

"Since the entire planet is under an embargo which forbids the import of advanced technology, adventurers cannot clank about in powered battlesuits, menacing the natives with plasma cannon. On Krishna, the Earthmen and the green-skinned natives are on an equal footing. Characters must rely on their wits as much as on their swords. Game Masters who are tired of players who shoot their way out of every difficulty can see how well they do without their technological toys."

<quote>If you don't already have an RPG that you're using try the Fading Suns RPG. Short of an official Dune RPG (is there one?) it's the closest I've found. Noble houses, trade federations, emperor (complete with not Sardaukar) has some important worlds that are relatively low tech (not just backwater rim worlds). Rather fond of it.</quote>

I'm rather fond of Fading Suns too, but the thing about it is the setting proposes pike and crossbow armed peasants serving in the same army where the lord's comitatus is equipped with ceramsteel powered armor troopers armed with fusion guns. The conceit is a bit ridiculous IMHO. And doesn't actually get away from guns either…

I also question what the hang-up against guns are, considering the existence of crossbows, self-bows, magic wands, fireball spells, etc in many fantasy games…

Damon.

"And then there's this historical character: link

Just because a weapon's archaic, doesn't mean you can't kill the enemy with it. And scare the Bleeped text out of him, too!"

Wow. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Thanks for sharing!

Really simple way to keep people from using guns in a SciFi environment: keep the ships fragile enough that even a handgun (modern pistol) is a serious threat to hull integrity. This isn't too far-fetched, at least until the development of grav manipulation for STL travel.

Anyone who threatens hull integrity is *spaced*, after a very short 'Captains Mast'-type trial. Anyone, whether the president of the biggest company/star nation or some two-bit hood. Everyone agrees to this, because it's either space one person or watch him effectively space everyone else.

No *personal* guns in that universe, and if you apply a variation of the Geneva Conventions such that all space habitats are protected under a similar prohibition (threaten a habitat's hull integrity and you get spaced), and you severely change the nature of wars, too.

Not that you can't still have combat space-ships, and not that they can't be armed, but directing attacks towards planets, orbital stations, or STL generation-ships is a death sentence.

Now the question is: how do your ships move, because any ship-drive powerful enough to be interesting is a serious weapon all by itself.

Insystem, this means you're talking months of real-space travel time and comm lags measured in hours.

*IF* you allow FTL (you certainly don't have to: see Jovian Chronicles), then what is your FTL source? Wormholes? Jumpdrives? Can your FTL drive be used as a weapon?

In one story where these conditions existed ( link ), a variation of the FTL drive could be used as a weapon that distorted time in a localized area (FTL was by 'buoys' that had to be delivered STL, but once placed could be used as a nav reference point). These 'TD' weapons could snuff stars, and even the buoys themselves, which were otherwise nearly invulnerable.

Some players just don't like SciFi – it isn't in the fact that there are guns, but they don't like the fact that guns are lethal to the point that you usually don't survive very long in a head long firefight. Heck – it's your game though – so make up any plausible "unobtainium" excuse you need to make the setting work. I've seen Sci-Fi settings in books (short stories) where they did not use firearms because lasers have proven to be very difficult to power to the point of actually making them man-portable. In space, recoil without some form of "inertial dampening" system like Star Trek or Star Wars makes many chemical projectile weapons very problematic and the problems with use in the vaccuum of space are legion. So, the battles were fought between boarding actions where the boarders wore armored suits and fought with hand to hand weapons like the "gropener" which was akin to a can-opening device which you slapped on to an opponent and it then continued to cut through a ratcheting system until the jaws closed tight, usually cutting off the offending appendage caught in the device, or magnetic shaped charges designed to blow small holes through an enemy suit, "Drilgers" which were super-high speed drill weapons used to penetrate enemy suits and thus expose them to vaccuum. Since the boarders were nearly always in a vaccuum protected suit, the ships crews had to be similarly protected as the enemy would simply blow open the vessel and release the air in numerous locations around the ship and then go room to room doing the same. Thus boarding actions were common in space. On the ground however, the field system – even that described by Dune and depicted in the movies would be easily defeated by something as simple as an automatic shotgun. Simply load solid shot, gun for the guy and literally blow him into next week as his field/shield stops the bullet, but not the impact. If the impact from a blow by a person is sufficient to knock down a wearer, as in the Dune scenario, the kinetic energy from a shotgun would send you reeling. Additionally, if you created the "only slow moving weapons can penetrate the shield" paradigm, then someone would develop the slow moving toxin injector or spray which would fly over to the shield, slowly penetrate it and then inject you or spray you with a poison gas.

For every method of protecting yourself from ranged weapons, there is some ranged weapon engineer who will find a way to overcome your defenses. Recall the Ringworld ships, which had stasis fields inside the "impenetrable" and "indestructible" hulls. You could destroy everything attached to the hull on the outside, engines, sensors, etc., but you could not destroy the hull or the contents therein, so what did you do – you destroyed everything else and left the hull to float in space until it finally finds a gravity well and the occupants inside starve to death. All of which makes gaming in the system problematic. But what the heck, use what you like, discard the rest, come up with some reason why and run with it.

Oh Duh! How could we have forgotten the "Lensman" series? There are guns, but when you consider the power of personal defense fields they're kind of useless. So space axe combat is a frequent event, I don't see why other melee weapons can't work just as well.

Ice Pirates have guns? I don't recall if they did or not- I do remember a LOT of sword play.

Thanks guys, lots of good thoughts here.

Actually, I am really warming up to this idea nicely. I even have some figures that I think wil be a lot of fun to use with it.

Cheers!

A while back I came up with the Handwavium Inc. invention of "Anti-Ballistic Cloth" – which was essentially a reactive mesh that was able to cancel the impact energy of bullets (and even lessen the concussive damage from nearby HE blasts).

The widespread use of this cheap and flexible mesh meant that militaries moved to energy weapons … which were unfortunately easily defeated by improvements in hardened armor.

So, the warriors of the future looked much like medieval knights, with a "plate over chain" appearance to their armor. They wielded energy weapons, but the real fighting had to be done up close and personal in order defeat the enemy's armor, which resulted in a renaissance of close combat weapons of all types.

Now see, that's just a plain cool idea CATenWolde. Well Done!

Very cool indeed!

Parzival said on 16 Sep 2009 8:16 a.m. PST:

<As for why use swords on a ship even in a gun setting, Traveller had that logically worked out years ago: swords don't produce stray shots that puncture the hull and turn your ship into vacuum, or damage vital ship systems, or ricochet around hitting you and your buds.

And then there's this historical character: link

Just because a weapon's archaic, doesn't mean you can't kill the enemy with it. And scare the Bleeped text out of him, too!>

Mark's Rule of Life #13--There is no such thing as an obsolete weapon or tool, merely obsolete thinking in its employment.

In Gordon Dickson's Dorsai series, complex technologically advanced weapons were in existence but the countermeasures employed against them caused more trouble than the weapons' advantages were worth.

And in Starship Troopers, the MI were trained in knife fighting and other primitive forms of combat (not to mention the dropped-naked-in-the-wilderness survival course). Which seems to underline RAH's message that the weapon in hand is only as effective and dangerous as the hands that hold it and the will that directs it.

Glad you liked the idea – but the only bad part is that we'll probably never see decent "medieval sci-fi" figures as long as GW dominates the market. Does *anybody* else do high-tech-knights with powerful energy pistols and melee weapons? I would love to see a gritty take on such figures, with more of a rough and ready Crusader look than GW's Goth trope. I could easily picture an elite class of "knights" supported by "serjeants" with lesser equipment, and the main part of the army formed of soldiers in essentially defensive formations around which the more mobile and powerful strike troops maneuvered. Heck, that might even be a good setting for a set of rules.

However, I don't know if the market is really there outside of 40k – after all, are any of the new 15mm guys doing anything even close?

Hmm … I wonder if you could mix Perry plastic medievals with 40k weapons and bits? ;)

An RPG you might want to check out for a nice blend of sci-fi and fantays is "Hellas". It's classic Greek Myth done as scifi.

-Eli

Gor, of course, has the weapon laws of the Priest-Kings, whereby humans using anything above a cross-bow results in death-raying by a stealth flying-saucer.
While definitely strictly sci-fi, the setting is not typically sci-fi, however

One other question: How would Dune style shields affect other adventuring and combat issues?

For example, a character wearing a Dune style shield walks over and triggers a hidden pit-trap, plunging a hundred feet down. Does he go splat, or does the shield simply cushion his fall?

Other ideas re Dune energy shields and adventuring situations?

For example, a character wearing a Dune style shield walks over and triggers a hidden pit-trap, plunging a hundred feet down. Does he go splat, or does the shield simply cushion his fall?

It depends on the velocity gate of the shield (as I understand it, objects of greater than X velocity cannot penetrate the shield, it had nothing to do with total KE). If the Velocity Gate is greater than terminal velocity, then the adventurer goes splat. If the velocity gate is less than about 60kph (17m/s), then the fall is cushioned to some extent, but there are going to be some serious seatbelt bruises as the shield generator slows down before the body it's strapped to does.

Note that most sword-blows are in the 120kph+ (33m/s+) range for full speed here on earth, while bows are in the 80-90m/s range. Even a .45 pistol (slow by many pistol standards) is in the 300m/s range. Do you want to allow bows? Then you're talking a velocity gate of about 100m/s (360kph). I think the Dune shields specifically were gated slower than that, since the knife-fights talked about that last-second slowing of the blow common to shielded fighters, but you get the idea.

The reason there are no big fleet battles in Dune is that the Interstellar ships are out of the control of the warring factions, close planet bombardment is possible of course, but is "limited" by a MAD policy between the great houses

Lion in the Stars "…as I understand it, objects of greater than X velocity cannot penetrate the shield, it had nothing to do with total KE)."

Come to think of it, I think you're version is correct. Not sure how scientific it would be, but it does make it easier to implement in a game.

Sounds like a job for nerve gas or chem-bio weapons. Acid wash the crowd and drop a grenade on them. G'night Knight.

Or better yet make a paintball filled with a corrosive material. Make a blooper gun and fire off a scatter shot into the crowd.

Of course caltrops would make a decent anti personnel weapon again.