Psi-Wars Gun Fu: Undercity Noir

For my second gun-fu style, like my first apparently, I went with something that I hadn't already done.  I've been busy at work on the Way of the Rim and Shineido, and in my research, looked more closely at Double Trouble, and thought "You know, there's actually a lot I can work with here." This resulted in Undercity Noir.

One reader pointed out that they couldn't tell the difference between Double Trouble and, basically, all the other dual-wield styles. This is a problem with all of the gun-fu styles, because Martial Arts in GURPS are written as a list of options, and if everyone takes the same options, regardless of their sources, they look the same ("I use Guns (Pistol) and Dual Weapon attack from Double Trouble.  You?" "I use Guns (Pistol) and Dual Weapon attack from Way of the West!" "Oh that's totally different").  But I find with my martial-arts-as-power-ups, I can greatly accentuate the differences and give the player a greater sense of what differentiates his style from another style, both by embedding the "fluff" of the move closer to the mechanics, and by presenting those mechanics in a context.  For example, both Coda Resolute and Undercity Noir make use of Off-Hand Weapon Training, but the former focuses on using the blaster as an accessory to their force blade, while the latter actually uses Dual Weapon attacks.

So the thematic hook I hung my Double Trouble on was the idea of extreme mobility. I think that's the core of Double Trouble anyway: slow motion leaps while blasting your guns.  There's also a strong mechanical benefit to high mobility, as noted in my discussion of gunslinger survivability: mobility gives you greater defense in depth, and lets you bypass other people's defenses. Another reader insists the best trick is to jump behind people and shoot them in the head from behind, where they can't dodge (or have a penalty).  Naturally, I had to fold this into the style.  I also wanted to give them Enhanced Dodge, but it turns out +1 Basic Move + Enhanced Dodge 1 is objectively inferior to +1.0 Basic Speed.  So I gave them Trained by a Master (Evasion) instead. It suits them.  I also continued on with making these 15-point power-ups, rather than 20 like force sword styles.  I think that might continue: gun styles just don't demand as many skills as the force sword or unarmed combat do!

But where does it fit into Psi-Wars? The whole point of Iteration 6 and 7 is to fold these things into a defined setting.  This was a high mobility style, and we already have a style for each "human ethnic group." So, an alien perhaps? I could give it to the Ranathim but, like, they get everything cool and alien.  Also, the Ranathim would really seem to prefer to get stuck into melee.  What other highly agile and flashy race do we have? Well, the Asrathi! They also fit well because they're, culturally, basically human.  So, I made it a style associated with Psi-Wars' cat-folk and tied it up with the criminal elements of the galactic core and, to keep it from being too dominated by a single, relatively minor race, I let the rest of the Galaxy start to pick up on it.  To justify it going to full Master status, I gave it a bit of legend and lore and some interesting characters for practitioners to moon over.

Then, uh, I had to give it a name. After much struggling, I came up with "Undercity Noir." I felt this captured the cinematic, criminal vibe of the style.  I think the result is very true to the core inspiration of John-Woo-in-Space.

You can find the Undercity Noir here.