Art and Artifacts

Formerly the play-by-post forum for my TSGS Space Force game, now the private forum for development of the new Space Force Science Fiction RPG game. I've retained the entirety of the original game threads here, to be mined for possible content. See the introductory post for more information.
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Solomoriah
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Art and Artifacts

Post by Solomoriah »

I'd like to discuss the artifacts of the game world, and artwork thereof, in this thread. To kick things off, here is my bare-bones drawing of a Vulcan Pistol:
Vulcan Pistol.png
Vulcan Pistol.png (67.26 KiB) Viewed 30156 times
The gray part is the frame of the gun; in red you see the safety switch, in green the magazine eject button. The trigger is shown in a nice, soothing lavender.

In blue you see the magazine (at least, the part that shows when it's inserted into the gun). The bumps along the back are indicators; each glows slightly blue to indicate the presence of a charge, or is dark gray when discharged. Thus the gun has a sort of bargraph showing its charge level.

The big orange bit is the actual lightning-throwing mechanism. It's a heavy metal cylinder with a smaller aperture at the business end where the power comes out.

NO, actual Vulcan pistols are not done in kindergarten colors like this... that's just for illustrative purposes. I'm hoping someone more artistic can provide a nice drawing of one, for inclusion in the book. Artistic license is permitted... fiddly bits and so on are welcome. Heck, a few screw heads in the frame area would be nice. I'm no artist, after all.
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johndice
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by johndice »

Cool, I would expect a pistol with a handy bar graph showing my shots, to at least be visible when I'm actually blasting away in an emergency. Now my hand would be covering the bar graph. I think the design could feel a little more pulpy scifi though, perhaps adding a literal power cord to a belt pack? Just a suggestion! :)
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by Solomoriah »

Spoilers, though not so much if you've read the old Director's Guide:

The orange part above is a shell around a Martian fusion igniter. The Martian version of an argon fusion drive igniter is quite small; the units actually installed in human-built starships are as big and long as your arm. But the Solar Alliance scientists have not been able to reverse engineer them. A large stockpile of spare igniters found at Vulcan's Forge were converted into "Vulcan Pistols" by simply hiding the alien tech inside a metal canister.

The magazine is likewise made up of a stack of Martian power cells, secured inside a thin metal framework. The lights on the back of the magazine are literally the exposed ends of those power cells. This is why the lights are there, and not somewhere else.

Players in the game should ask the exact questions you have asked. Even some high-ranking SASF officers do not know about this.

This is also the reason why there are no "Vulcan Rifles." The igniter which has not yet been reverse-engineered cannot be scaled up. So anyone who asks in-game will hear that they are "still in testing" or are "on back-order."

Incidentally, the safety should be a four-position slider; you can fire from one to three charges per trigger pull, with increasing effects:

1 charge = 1d6 stun
2 charges = 1d6 stun + 1d6 kill
3 charges = 2d6 stun + 1d6 kill
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Nekron99
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by Nekron99 »

OK, so far we have, technology wise;

Graviton Plates: These allow Earthlike or near-Earthlike artificial gravity (Martian Tech)
Graviton Accelerator: This allows the opening of Wormholes.
Wormholes: A man-made opening in Space/Time that allows for relative FTL tavel. (Martian Tech)
Plasma Drive: Reaction Drive (Martian Tech)
Fusion Igniter: Basic foundation of Plasma Drives and Vulcan Pistols. (Martian Tech)

All other technology is circa 1960's.

So then we are looking at Pellet guns, slug throwers, compressed gas and gyrojet weapons for the most part. All of which are considered very bad for any environment involving pressurized spaceships in a vacuum.
Armor will consist of heavy plating, or at best thick layers of ballistic cloth.

On the scientific side we still have toggle switches, analog gauges, LED numbers in displays, green screen monitors, tubes, diodes, and magnetic tape for recording both audio and visual as well as programing computers with tape and by fat fingering in the code.

There are no self opening 'hissing' doors, talking computers, or robots. No scanners other than RADAR.

What else, to get us in the right frame of mind regarding technology?
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by Solomoriah »

No tubes, except for CRTs; only solid state is good enough for the Space Force. On the other hand, LED displays aren't really a thing yet. Good ole' rolling numbers for the jump clock, for instance.
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by ThorinSchmidt »

Actually, you could kind of have LED's using this technology. when I was in junior high, my math teacher had some old calculators. the numeric displays were made of wireframe elements that would glow like heating elements. each "LED" was composed of ten wireframes stacked, 0-9. Then, it was just a matter of "lighting up" the right frame, which would cause the number to glow and be seen through the other non-lit wires. here is a picture
Image
as you can see, the 0 looks farther back while the 9 and 8 appear closer. This particular model was made in the early 60's.
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by Solomoriah »

I believe those are Nixie tubes.
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by ScribblingJoe »

Can anyone submit art? If so, is this the appropriate thread to do so?
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Re: Art and Artifacts

Post by Solomoriah »

It would be fine to submit it here. However, please note that this game has suddenly become a very low priority.
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