Psi-Wars Gun Fu: the Coda Resolute

So, if you couldn't tell, in keeping with the exploration of the Frontier Marshal, I've been exploring Gun Fu in Psi-Wars.  This isn't a new topic: I touched on it back in Iteration 4, but now we have a setting to tie these ideas to, and I have a new system for writing up martial arts.  So, I wanted to explore some.

The first I want to reveal is the Coda Resolute, the Maradonian "Gun-Fu."  This isn't the first I've designed, nor did it exist back in Iteration 4, and I don't expect it to be wildly popular, which is why I'm starting with it, because it's better to have a minor style torn apart by my readers than a major style.  The others will be more detailed and more powerful: Maradonians are all about the Force Sword, and so would look on most forms of Gun Fu as a secondary concern at best.

When I created the Resolution-pattern blaster, the idea, even the name, was with an eye towards the dueling pistol or the flint-lock pistol common among swashbuckling pirates. Thus, it has a low Rate of Fire, little ammunition, and deals a lot of damage at once.  I envisioned it as a side-arm for a space knight who wanted to blow a hole in a well-armored target who was too far for him to cut down with his force sword. I could also see it being used in duels, though it would have been in a different era than the present. 

The Coda Resolute brings the Resolution into focus and emphasizes its role as a dueling weapon.  Naturally, like many things Maradonian, it's a style that's more about style than substance: this is a style that teaches a false sort of accuracy, the sort that's best on the firing range or when showing off, rather than under the pressure of battle.  Thus, I created a new technique called "Plinking," which improves your accuracy when there's no pressure on, when the shot is about showing off, rather than hitting an enemy.  It's a style that also has a lot real accuracy: the weapon is high in accuracy anyway, and Dead-Eye (modified in Psi-Wars to simply give you additional turns of aiming, rather than complex rules with Precision Aiming which are too detailed for a space opera kung fu action game) that allows them to take their time and aim.

Those who are willing to invest more deeply gain access to even greater real accuracy and get to play with some of the neater tricks of the Resolution.  I wanted to explore the idea of the "Cult of the Gun," so I created a cinematic option perk for the Resolution that makes it more lethal post DR, and makes the hot-shotted versions are less prone to failure ("It's the superior cladding; they made them tougher back in the day.").  I wanted to make the style monomaniacal about the gun: like all things Maradonian, they think their stuff is better than everyone else's, and this sort of makes it true.  It does make me want to explore more variations (a multi-barrel version, perhaps?).

As a dueling style, it's more of a curiosity, but if we have space-flint-locks, we should be using them to buckle some swashes.  In 7th Sea, the most common things I saw players do was wield a pistol while they also had a sword, and this classic pose is covered in Ray-Gun Gothic. It allows the character to "dual wield," but the primary focus isn't actually dual weapon attack: I mean, sure, you can shoot while you swing, but most people will either shoot or swing, and the style reflects that.  The other thing I saw a lot of people do is ask how many they could carry.  The "coat full of pistols" was a common "twink" approach to 7th Sea.  So why not embrace the crazy and give our Maradonian pirate-swashbucklers cloaks full of blasters? It's the sort of over-the-top expenditure that I could totally see a Maradonian doing.

It's alright offensively.  Defensively, it obeys two rules from my post on Gunslinger survivability.  First, it uses an actual melee weapon for defense, in this case a force sword.  That makes it a secondary weapon and a secondary concern, but the style accepts that and is cheap as a result.  The second rule is luck, as manifested in the Duelist's Courage trick. I struggled for awhile to find a way to make aspected Impulse Buy points work for me and I've finally given up and focused on Serendipity instead, which is probably what I should have used since the beginning: a single use of luck to do something specific.  In this case, they get a last ditch "lucky" roll to not get hit, or a single use "This doesn't count as combat" moment, allowing them to use their full accuracy for some very cool shot even in combat.

The result is a noteworthy style that suits Maradonian culture and puts a nice lampshade on a weapon that I think not a lot of people notice. I doubt it'll be a must-have for many, but I've been surprised by the popularity of the Maradonian aesthetic before.  But I think keeping this as a "minor" style is still important, given the secondary role of the blaster in Maradonian society.

Coda Resolute can be found here