Electorthermal Weapons in Cyberpunk 2020

ELECTROTHERMAL WEAPONS

Author: unknown.

These weapons are very unrealistic and overpowered. The default rules don’t talk about the many disadvantages of such weapons. Will all know that an electrothermal upgrade can only be preformed on a gun that fires cased shells. While the increase in firepower is considerable, the large list of disadvantages may make you think twice about using such weapons.

Heat:

Think about it, using plasma to fire a copper cased shell is not by any means smart. The copper casing ejects from the side of the gun through the sliding action. These casings are extremely hot and can burn your skin. Even normal casings can burn you if you catch them, but with electrothermal casings the chances of starting fires and such are greatly increased. Burning your hand on a casing inflicts 1 point for a normal casing and 1d6/2 for a electrothermal casing. There is also a 15% chance that a hot casing will start a fire if it lands on something flammable. Continue reading “Electorthermal Weapons in Cyberpunk 2020”

The Humble Smartlink Revisited

The Humble Smartlink Revisited

[This article deals with the benefits and problems of directly plugging a gun into your nervous system – what probably every cyberpunk PC everywhere does all the time.]

Author: Chris Lupton.
Taken without permission from his site at (now dead). It pains me to violate his copyright, but the article is just to good to let it be forgotten. I’m sorry Chris and hope you approve what I do here.

The History of and Information about Smartguns

Origins
Operation
Advanced Systems

Origins

The first smartgun systems were developed independently by the US and German militaries in the 1990s. By 2001, smartguns had been adopted by several corporations and were beginning to appear on the street. The US military created the Milspec Smartgun Standard (MSS1) in 2003, after disastrous compatibility problems amongst the smartguns used in central America caused embarrassing problems and several fatalities. Today, almost every smartsystem in the world conforms to this standard. To ignore it means ignoring the large profits to be made selling smartlinks to the US military. In 2013 an improved standard (MSS2) was released, though it has yet to be universally adopted. The army considered it too expensive for its benefits and has yet to make compliance a requirement in weapons trials.The MSS1 standard was essentially very simple. It defined the data protocol between the smartgun and the neuralware smartlink, in terms of required and optional information/functions. This meant that one smartgun link mounted in a neuralware processor or smartgoggles could interpret the data from any smartlinked weapon. Continue reading “The Humble Smartlink Revisited”