Super pulp Guns and tech

[Lameth]

Is there a reference for Pulp action 1920s "high" tech retro gear, like laser blasters or electro shooters, or even jet packs?

I am going to try to run a pulp action heroes game.

[whswhs]

Just as a small note, in the 1920s they would not have been called "laser blasters"; the word laser wasn't coined till around 1960 (inspired by "maser," coined in the 1950s). "Heat ray" would be a likelier name.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Lameth

Is there a reference for Pulp action 1920s "high" tech retro gear, like laser blasters or electro shooters, or even jet packs?

There is some such gear in Tales of the Solar Patrol and Mars Attacks!, but the easiest way to generate your own is to start with devices from Ultra-Tech, and adjust the ostensible TL to your taste.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

the easiest way to generate your own is to start with devices from Ultra-Tech, and adjust the ostensible TL to your taste.

Alternatively, don't even go with Ultra-Tech - most of the weapons I'm familiar with from that era of sci-fi don't actually seem much more effective than weapons from the time period they were written in. So, you could probably achieve similar effects by just grabbing pulp-era guns from High-Tech and High-Tech: Pulp Guns Vol. 1 and 2, changing their damage type to burning for your "heat rays" or "rayguns", and just using that.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Alternatively, don't even go with Ultra-Tech - most of the weapons I'm familiar with from that era of sci-fi don't actually seem much more effective than weapons from the time period they were written in. .

That depends. In E,E, Smith's Triplametary and first Lensman the "Lewiston" blasters appear to be flamethrowers that don't need tanks of fuel and fit in a pistol holster. They are effective but not entirely controllable so slugthrowers still exist.

Super-exploisives that turn pistols into artillery pieces are also common. The original Buck Rogers used rocket guns with super-explosives.

There are some jet-packs and rayguns and such like in Gurps Supers.

[Rupert]

And the guns of Smith's Skylark series start at .45 pistols firing explosive shells with power ranging from 'small grenade' or 'large artillery shell', and rapidly go up from there.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

And the guns of Smith's Skylark series start at .45 pistols firing explosive shells with power ranging from 'small grenade' or 'large artillery shell', and rapidly go up from there.

The small caliber machine pistols used by Doc Savage's aides had super-explosive bullets as one option.

The most common option they used were "mercy bullets" that dispersed a contact sleep chemical of great effectiveness.

the principle of the gauss gun was known as well. The main gimmick of one of the bad guys in a Doc story was a magnetic gun that was effectively a amn portable .50 caliber with a perfect silencer.

In C.L.Moore's "Northwest Smith" series of short stories the hero was a hard-bitten anti-hero who roamed Mars with a heat gun in his holster. Un fortunately for him his writer was doing a "Ctulhu bait-and-switch" where he was always meeting low-grade Mythos creatures and just barely manging to ray them out of existence with the last shred of his blasted sanity. That heat gun certainly seemed to be more effective agaisnt the monsters than bullets would be.

Note that whereever they apear heat guns and their ilk are almost always quite damaging to inanimate objects. You can usually weld with them too.

Captain Future (c. 1940) does this with his "proton pistol". Proton pistols are very advanced for their era and have stun settings. Pretty much the earliest example I know of a multi-function lethal/non-lethal weapon.

Single purpose non-lethal weaposn like the Nevian Paralysis Ray show up earlier/