Gun-fu inspired setting - Fight for your right to bear arms on Wuxia Mars

[LoneWolf23k]

Here's a suggestion: keep the generally available gun technology one TL lower then the SOTA. Say, if the average TL of Mars is 10, most available guns are TL9. Blame "the Dark Ages" for it.

Then, present your players with TL10 weapons, as "relics of a lost era". The weapons will take on an almost magical mystique. When your Seven Tactical Superiorities character has used a TL9 Caseless Assault Rifle all his life, him suddenly finding a TL10 Gauss Assault Rifle, he'll feel like a Samurai who just found an authentic Masamune blade.

Edit: And of course, his find will only draw all sorts of attention to him, making it a great adventure hook.

[hari]

I'm impressed. I quite like this setting. It's a good balance between fitting in all kinds of silly fun stuff on the one hand, and keeping a setting quite internally consistent and even realistic on the other hand. I may very well be stealing the idea of an isolated post collapse Mars.

[Celestial Goblin]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

Here's a suggestion: keep the generally available gun technology one TL lower then the SOTA. Say, if the average TL of Mars is 10, most available guns are TL9. Blame "the Dark Ages" for it.

Then, present your players with TL10 weapons, as "relics of a lost era". The weapons will take on an almost magical mystique. When your Seven Tactical Superiorities character has used a TL9 Caseless Assault Rifle all his life, him suddenly finding a TL10 Gauss Assault Rifle, he'll feel like a Samurai who just found an authentic Masamune blade.

Edit: And of course, his find will only draw all sorts of attention to him, making it a great adventure hook.

Actually, no! Weaponry meant for the gun-fu masters is supposed to range from as low as 7 TL to 9, with most stuff being super-fine versions of what we'd today call 'cult' or just 'reliable' guns. Mars is TL10 in pretty much every technology *except* weapons. Here's why:

- Martian colonists came from a peaceful, quite unified Earth where weapon development stalled and colonists themselves were peaceful people arriving on a planet with no hostile life. So they had non-lethal weaponry and scarce self-defense weapons.
- When Mars turned dangerous, most of the banditry and terrorism was actually done with repurposed civilian technology like industrial equipment, heavy machinery and robots. And on the lower scale it was improvised 'street' weaponry, hastily improvised stuff and whatever was around for self defense.
- the really serious stuff was all in the hand of the colonial security forces or in small amounts in hands of security-minded individuals in specific communities. Colonial security is now the enemy and much of what was in private hands was taken by warlords and bandits.
- auto factories are ubiqitious and easy to use and can churn out anything you have digital schematics for, in higher quality than it existed in it's original time, but can't do cutting edge tech. Mars is plentiful in raw resources but not fancy stuff needed for a Gauss gun. Martians came prepared with copious archives of technological data of pretty much every object that existed. Schematics of weapons were expected to be nothing more than interesting foot-notes in history lessons.

All in all, Martians have download-and-print access to pretty much everything up to early TL9 and can fiddle and fine-tune it to absurd, 'legendary sword' level equivalents. Anything past that is difficult to obtain. Not impossible, but difficult, and the self-defense societies fought with what they could reliably prepare in the security of their own dome-stead, just like historical martial arts societies used modified farm tools or other simple objects as basis of many arts.

It bears clarification too that the exo-suits used by the two of the styles are *civilian* rigs that can at most be modified for military uses but they are *not* actual power armour. The robo-terrorists of north are playing with upgunned versions of industrial robots, only over time refining them into actual remote combat robots. After all, think about it, do you need cutting edge military tech to bully around unarmed colonists?

The Mars arms race is merely starting. The gun-fu masters made the first step forward by tapping the otherwise powerful technology towards the means of war. Their enemies will respond in turn. Attempts by any faction to get assistance from Earth could be a big plot seed.

...

More locales:

Smokestack Plains
North east of Water City, East of Iron Mountain. In the early part of colonization a large, low-level industrial complex was set up here to quickly process resources and produce basic tools and parts for the growing civilization. Right now the factories are worked by robots, with humans only overseeing the work. The area, itself chosen for being a featureless plain, is heavily polluted and full of ugly looking concrete and metal structures and the factory workers prefer to live a good distance away in a town-sized settlement.

The Tranquil Society
East of Smokestack Plains.The Tranquil People were and are an Earth religion coming from Hindu roots, stressing a strife-less, simple life, sacrifice for community, meditation and careful use of pharmaceutics towards their goals. Their program of chemical mind-adjustment and trance-state conditioning was controversial on Earth and they came to Mars hoping to establish a shining example of a society. All together, there were not wholly unsuccesful - the 'Society' is a pleasant, slightly 'hippy' place to live but with a rather spartan bias against comfort and indulging. The Tranquils responded in a most strange way to the fact of war and raiders - rather than compromising their pacifism they selected an elite few of them to be given dispensation from the ban of violence and sent them to assassinate all possible threats, keeping fighting far away from their meditative serenity. This was the 'Sacred Bull's Eye' school's origin.

Chillypoint
North east of the Tranquils. A medium sized community at the edge of a great forest. Originally the people here were all working the forest but within a strict plan that would keep Martian ecology in order. Currently they are a stable, if rather dull community that logs, plants crops, distills medicine and does more high-tech work with computers.

Greenheaven
South east of Chillypoint. This is the furthest organized colonists moved into the great Martian forests. Greenheaven proper is actually now cut clean, with sorrounding forests divided into districts that are, over years cut down, given time to regrow and cut again. The forests are also a source of many precious biochemical and pharmaceutic ingridients and smaller villages sorround Greenheaven that are nested in deep verdant greenery which they care for and which bounty they take.

Hodgson Biocreators, inc
Hodgson was originally an Earth company involved in cutting edge biological, biochemical and genetical research. Embroiled in many scandals involving unethical research, they semi-legally placed a lab on Mars hoping to do the less ethical things there away from scrutiny. During the time of strife on Mars, the facility turned into a warlord state, using macabre cloned humanoids as it's enforcers. It's not much known who is in charge there and the clones overrlords tended to communicate from afar only.

Northern Territories
North of, well, everything. The belt around northern Mars pole housed a large amount of the machinery that originally terraformed the planet. Much of it is now broken down having done it's part but some is still of importance and has people manning it. The region is also rich in fissionables. Finally, certain rare-to-Mars metals can be recovered from the terraforming machinery. As this, the north is dotted with mining and scavenging communities. Because of the harsh conditions, most actual hands-on work is done by remotely controlled robots and the north is one of the most fertile grounds for advances in these technologies.

The Bunker
In the ice-encased north polar wasteland of Mars is a fortified subterran community that terrorizes the region. Originally housing remote-op and computer specialists, the facility was a kind of mecca for people with 'geeky' and 'transhuman' bent. Now, in the times of strife, the high-tech community emerged as terrorists using armies of repurposed robots to prey on the sorrounding settlements. People inside the bunker are said to be quite mad, spending whole of their life in enhanced reality and never even seeing each other in person.

*Right Handgun of Justice should also have the acrobatic stand technique

Longarm of Justice School
skills:guns(rifle),guns(pistol),fd(ammo),judo,armo ury(guns),observation,staff
optional skills:hiking,guns(musket),crossbow,karate
cinematic skills:zen marksmanship(rifle),flying leap
techniques:close-hip shooting,close-quarters battle,double-loading,flank shot,immediate action,precision aiming,retain weapon
martial arts techniques:acrobatic stand,sweep
perks:armorer's gift,bend the bullet,cool under fire,deadeye,flimsy cover,grip mastery,gun shtick(next your head),quick reload,tap-rack-bang,reach mastery,shoves and tackles
advantages:gunslinger,combat reflexes,improvised weapons(rifles)

Seven Tactical Superiorities School
skills:guns(rifle),gun(smg),judo,tactics,gesture,b ody language,stealth,guns(grenade launcher),armoury(guns),throw,club
optional skills:
cinematic skills:zen marksmanship(rifle),flying leap
techniques:close-hip shooting,close-quarters battle,disarming,flank shot,immediate action,quick shot,retain weapon,timed dodge
martial arts techniques:acrobatic stand,armed grapple,breakfall,close combat,disarming,stamp kick
perks:armorer's gift,cool under fire,cross-trained,flimsy cover,grip mastery,gun sense,lightning fingers,quick reload,tacticool,tracer eyes,weapon bond,teamwork
advantages:gunslinger,combat reflexes

Tree Cutters A-OK Corps
skills:guns(light machine gun),guns(rifle),battlesuit,brawling
optional skills:liquid projector,guns(grenade launcher),chainsaw
cinematic skills:flying leap,breaking blow(chainsaw,LMG or rifle)
techniques:double-loading,immediate action,quick shot,retain weapon
martial arts techniques:acrobatic stand,break weapon(chainsaw)*,whirlwind attack(chainsaw)
perks:army of one,bend the bullet,cookie cutter,flimsy cover,gun shtick(stone-cold killer,wall of lead),quick reload,surefooted(uneven),tracer eyes,special setup(chainsaw-weapon snap)*,suit familiarity
advantages:gunslinger,combat reflexes,weapon master(chainsaw)

* - can be attempted after hitting enemy weapon with a chainsaw or turn after your chainsaw being parried or blocked by it