Knives, Shotguns and Hemp Rope (Items)

When you actually think about it, what exactly are Items in a role-playing game? What kind of thing are they trying to model? The only reason a Character in the story might use something is to be more effective the in the particular task they are doing in the story. To try and emulate this, the Pulp System looks at items as things that alter particular attributes or abilities of Egos and NPCs, whether temporarily or permanently. In this view, weapons, armor and other objects all fit under the same category, and are separated only by their primary use.

Close Combat Weapons

“Come and take me, mongrels - if you dare! While I have fingers to grasp a sword, and eyes to see your cowardly faces, your treacherous heads will not be safe on your shoulders!” – The Conqueror, 1956.

Close Combat Weapons’ primary purpose is to increase an Ego’s damage through a blade, mass, physics, whatever. They modify the Ego’s Hand Damage roll by a certain amount. As with any item, weapons may modify other attributes in a negative manner. For instance, a war axe may have +5 damage but due to its weight being all at the head makes a clumsy weapon and modifies the user’s to-hit roll by –5. The to-hit roll with close combat weapons is against the user’s Brawl attribute.

Ranged Weapons / Self-powered weapons

“Well, I guess to sum it up, you could say, there's three reasons why there's so little crime in Mayberry. There's Andy, and there's me, and [patting gun] baby makes three.” – Barney Fife, The Andy Griffith Show.

Ranged Weapons increase an Ego’s damage as well. They are thrown or ballistic weapons. Thrown weapons simply increase the damage similar to a Close Combat Weapon and can be used to attack at a range greater than just within arms reach. Self-powered weapons include anything that uses physics to determine damage rather than simply increasing the user’s muscle power. Examples are a bow, crossbow, sling, or any automatic or energy weapons. Thus, Self- powered weapons have their own, separate Damage listing. An example is a Laser Pistol that has a D10+5 for a damage listing. Unless the user throws the weapon at someone, it relies upon its power cell to generate the beam to cause damage. Ranged Weapons include a ROF (Rate of Fire, how many times the weapon can be fired in the space of one combat turn) and a Range attribute. The to-hit roll with Ranged weapons is against the User’s Eye attribute.

A note on Weapons with ROF greater than 1
Automatic weapons present problems with to-hit and dodge rolls. A weapon with a ROF of 2 is no problem…the user simply rolls twice for each fire and the defender rolls a dodge roll twice. If he fails a dodge, he takes the damage. What do you do when the weapon is a super-rail gun with a ROF of 50? If you visualize the weapon firing, the bullets would be coming so fast that one dodge would dodge all of the bullets, while a missed dodge would result in at least 10 or so hitting the mark. So, the proposed system is to roll one to-hit and allow one dodge for weapons with a ROF over 5. Damage is assessed by multiplying the damage for the weapon by the ROF. Thus, our super-rail gun has a DAMAGE of d10-3. If the user hits, they roll the damage roll, which results in a 4. They multiply the 4 by the ROF (in this case, 50) and get 200 Damage. Ouch! The defender better have some advanced armor or they are blood puddin’.

Ammunition
Another consideration with Ranged weapons is ammunition. It can be a chore to keep track of the number of bullets fired for our super-rail gun over a few turns. The player will always claim to have a full case of ammo. So, the GM should design some way to track ammo for the players. A box for ammo is included on the Party tracking form in the appendix.

Armor

“We had a short-timer once. Johnny I-forget-his-name. He wore a flak jacket, two helmets and armor underwear. “ – Hamburger Hill, 1987

Armor, obviously, provides protection from blows for the player’s fragile ego (ad nauseum). Armor has a protection value that subtracts from the damage of a successful hit. For simplification reasons, the standard Pulp game does not take into accounts that blows could hit the head, arms, etc. So, the protection given by armor protects the whole body. An Example: Our hero is wearing iron plate (Protection: -5) and is hit with a morning star. The morning star rolls up with 10 damage. The damage is assessed (10-5 for the armor) as 5 and is subtracted from the hero’s guts value.

Armor Layers
It is possible to layer armor if the layering seems reasonable to the GM. For instance, layering a suit of plate armor over another suit of plate armor is ridiculous! Add the protection value of all the layers to assess the total protection value that is subtracted from damage.

Equipment

“Get your gear together, Doctor, or you'll find yourself floating home.” – Event Horizon, 1997

Equipment is a catchall category for anything that isn’t primarily used as a weapon or armor. Like the other categories, equipment enhances the ego’s attributes or abilities in some way. Equipment can range from tools to actual physical enhancements, such as cybernetic eyes. Equipment can also enhance other items, such as a sight on rifle.

Example Items

To stay with our Dune Gameworld, we will now show example items for it.

A Dune Close Combat Weapon:
Fremen Crysknife
Made from a sandworm’s plethora of teeth, this is a sacred item to the Fremen.
DAMAGE: +2
WEIGHT: 2 lb.
VALUE: Very High, since the Fremen consider these ceremonial.

A Dune Ballistic Weapon
Lasgun
Used by the Sadarkar of the Emperor, emits a focused, green beam of light.
DAMAGE: 2d10
ROF: 1/Turn
RANGE: 10 yd.
WEIGHT: 10 lb.
VALUE: High

A Dune Armor
Forceshield
Emitted from a piece on the belt, this forms a protecting energy field around the wearer.
PROTECTION: -15 vs. ballistic weapons, -5 vs. CC Weapons.
WEIGHT: emitter weighs 2 lb.
VALUE: High.

A Dune Equipment
Spice Melange
Orange in color, spice extends lifespan and consciousness
EFFECT: +1 Smarts, +1 Cool, +1 Eye for D10 Rounds per dose
WEIGHT: 1 dose (in bar form) = .1 pounds
VALUE: Commodity - affordable but luxury