Would the peasant railgun be possible in GURPS?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The really funny thing about the peasant railgun? It doesn;t work, because just as D&D internal 'physics engine' allows readied actions to wok to allow instant movement of an object from one end of the chain to the other, they also confer no momentum on it as a result. Peasant chains are 'great' from instant communication, but terrible as railguns.

Honestly I don't think it even works in the D&D physics engine. Surely both pass and retrieve an item are Move Actions, you don't get to do two in a round, which means the railgun can only be two characters long. Sure you can *drop* the item as a Free Action for the next guy to retrieve but if you do that it's completely clear why it retains no momentum.

Instead of just mostly clear - after all if it's still moving relative to you, it's not really retrieved is it? You couldn't, say, drop it to the floor as a Free Action - it'd fly off somewhere rather than land at your feet - or prepare it as a material component to cast a spell if it was going to go flying out of your hand in the next millisecond.