Zornhau Forums

pepe_andre wrote: ↑12 Dec 2018, 07:39 Hi there,
as you could see in my earlier posts I prefer modern age/science fiction over typical fantasy and medieval settings. Since I posted my near-future setting seed I came to think about what would suit the system best and I came to the conclusion that either Fantasy or Space Opera would be the best fitting settings. But the melee focus of the game makes pure scifi settings problematic since ranged combat is only half the fun and in a highly futuristic society missiles and guns will be predominant. So one solution could be a setting like Star Wars where magical creatures wield swords because they can. Another solution would be DUNE where swords became the weapon of choice once again because every other weapons is made nugatory by scientific advance. The problem is that in a game the players and the audience want variety. In a fighting scene there must be multiple possible solutions to the problem: melee and ranged. So I would like to brainstorm with you: How would a use of swords and alike be justified in a science fiction setting? I am thinking mainly about really fast fencing-like fights with sabres or epees. Is there a solution that is not just handwaving about the core philosophies of warfare? How would you handle it? Maybe through the use of power shields that repel ballistics and energy?

Agamemnon wrote: ↑12 Dec 2018, 15:07 There are generally three responses to the question of "swords in sci-fi."

1. Armor technology is as such that personal ranged weapons are no longer capable of dealing with it, but for one reason or another (whether it's the nature of the shield, like Dune, or serious melee upgrades like 40k power weapons) melee weapons still can.

2. The demands of space combat have effectively made various forms of hand-to-hand combat a significant portion of martial training due to a combination of the intense close-quarters on board a ship and the risk of a hull breach.

3. You create some outside cultural reason for it. A noble class who has reinstated a dueling culture -- which is of course imitated then by the lower classes. Star Wars sort of hits this one as well. Jedi using lightsabers is effectively a cultural thing. The weapon is iconic to their station, but nothing in the star wars universe makes a lightsaber an especially effective tool other than that it's a Jedi using it.

There is always the 4th option as well, which is just: It's cool, so I want it. That is itself a valid approach to take, especially when it's genre-appropriate. A cyberpunk setting loves melee weapons even if there's nothing in the setting that would suggest that it's an inherently good idea. Style over practicality is arguably one of the major themes in cyberpunk, so of course your hot-wired street samurai is carrying a Hitsuri 3000 MonoKatana.