We have some pretty cool ideas around here. Some of us have a good working knowledge of physics and/or chemistry. Some of us are really imaginative. Some of us are really good at pointing out when we've taken things beyond the realistic.

So lets take that to the logical extreme. Let us design some awesome weapons for Shadowrun... using the power of SCIENCE!

Sage for requesting without relevant content. Learn2post, n00btard!</4chan>

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is creating an electromagnetic launcher, then stuffing it full of nails. Point it, flip the switch, and throw nails at your opponent. Though the question that comes to mind is how much of a charge would you need to have those nails do lethal damage?

Depends upon what range you want those nails to be Lethal, I would guess. The further the range desired, the greater the charge.

Are vibroblades a thing yet in Shadowrun? I always like them as a concept. Also, how hard would it be to work penile implants to be projectiles?

Actually, one of my players wanted a throat cybersnake, like in the old Cyberpunk RPG. I allowed it. Cyberspurs are still a thing, right? Have they made variants of those yet?

How about stuff like self-igniting flamethrower ammunition? Remove the need for a pilot light so it doesn't give you away for your ambush.

That's not particularly hard, sufficiently hypergolic fuel will autoignite when exposed to atmosphere. We've had that since the 1940s, when they were trying very hard to prevent that.

Apparently there's an idea floating around for a hypersonic plasma weapon at Boeing. When something gets going fast enough (around mach 8 ) plasma builds up on the surface of an aircraft, maybe using a laser-induced-plasma channel (LIPC) you could target that into a weapon to create a corridor of hot plasma death as the drone flies overhead.

And to think that idea isn't a Boeing top-secret idea you start to think, "What else has Boeing thought up, but has kept under wraps?"

(I can ask this question as I know that there are top-secret Boeing projects, I just don't know what they entail. My grandfather said once that he knew things that were "still top secret" from the days he worked at Boeing, but whatever secrets he had, he took them with him to the grave. He also didn't reveal that he worked at the NSA during the 50s and 60s until two months prior to his death!)

Closest thing we got recently was the Arm Blade in Way of the Samurai. It's described as being the largest cyber-blade thus far, being almost a meter long in length and can still be sheathed inside an entire arm when need be, cyberarm or flesh and blood.

Elemental Potassium stored in a Capsule round. Does damage per gel round, then begins the burning.

Improvised Weapons -- Pair of clubs attached to jumper cables. Hit with one club, no problem. Hit with both clubs and the circuit completes with a car battery and the victim. Stun Baton damage?

Myomeric implants -- cut somebody up and implant bits of myomeric rope coiled up. If they go off mission, hit them with a stick and shock round which makes the rope snap straight and shred the soft organs inside.

How rude...

Reminds me of a room description from D&D:

There is a large double iron door at the top of a short flight of stairs with gold plated balusters. At the bottom of the stairs are two shallow pools with a statue standing in the middle. One status is made of pure copper, the other of pure zinc. Each statue rests a hand on the bottom curl of the railing going up the stairs.

They really should keep that Science out of my Fantasy... But it does sound vaguely familiar.

It was a fairly generic trap I ran across one time, easy to plop down just about anywhere. It's hilarious when done right because if someone gets zapped people start trying to figure out why and assuming all the wrong things (I probably over-detailed in some respects and under-detailed in others, the failings of recalling this stuff 8 years later). When explained everyone goes "omg, it's a fucking battery" because they recognize it for what it is.

A few other ones involved varying degrees of "science" and "believable fantasy" like giant glass tanks of acid and a giant bell (ringing it shatters the glass, flooding the corridor) to "foot long cubes of a silvery metal in a cave behind a waterfall" to "stone statues of adventurers with gear intact, shocked expressions, standing around a pile of rubble" (touching a statue knocks it over and causes it to shatter, releasing a gas that does Flesh to Stone on anyone caught in it).

I'm running a BECMI D&D campaign. I'm now taking notes. Please, continue.

Completely normal room, except that there appears to be no floor with a 60 foot drop into a spiked pit. Attempts to test the solidity of what the various things scattered around the room are sitting on show that there is an invisible wall of force covering the pit. Every time the players enter the room, the barrier shrinks away from the wall 1 inch (eventually someone will fall in...under the description as written, it will take ~50 trips, modify as desired).

Fireball Trap....on the ceiling.
(Actually happened to a group I was in, it made us so paranoid that "check the ceiling for traps" became habitual--it never happened again)

Corridor with a bell pull at the end. Pulling the role causes a bell to chime, which makes monsters show up ("Dinner time!"). There were a few variations on this one, don't recall the exact details any more.

Completely empty room, door shuts as soon as the party enters, far end has another shut door. Neither door can be opened from the inside. On the wall is a button and a countdown timer, pressing the button resets the timer.
(If a party has never encountered this one it will likely use up about three hours of session time as they look for traps / secret doors / try to bust through the wall / etc. Letting the timer expire opens both doors.)

BECMI?

-- You would be shocked at how many cool-sounding projects are basically pie-in-the-sky or utterly unfeasible. Or just plain over-optimistic. If I had a penny for every "railguns are 10 years out..." post in the last 30 years I would be a rich man. But the DoD loves people thinking they have all sorts of stuff just waiting in the wings ...

-- Most of the plasma systems I've seen are either for drag reduction (shaping the plasma envelope at the upper atmosphere) or stealth (also shaping the plasma envelope). The mechanics are straightforward. Implementation and utility are completely different beasts.

Basic
Expert
Companion
Master
Immortal

The 'red box, blue box, cyan box, black box, gold box' sets of classic D&D

Nah, not really.
I work in this field, kinda sorta. I keep having to tell my boss that we can't do Augmented Reality.
(He asked today if we could target the open space inside what is effectively a 6 foot tall doughnut and I looked at him and said, "Holes don't exist. I can't target them.")

Wow... REAL Old Style... Have fun...

Yay traps! Boo another FD thread about weapons.

Some particularly evil things I've used:

A lock with a secondary locking mechanism that was magnetically driven and if anything iron or steel was stuck into the lock the secondary locking mechanism engaged. So picking with standard picks was impossible. That earned some swearing.

A wall decorated with arrows embedded in the walls opposite holes in the wall. There are no triggers and no mechanical arrow firing mechanisms. It's designed to make people hesitate.

Scraping on the stone floor next to a statue that's only noticeable with a high perception role. Moving the statue triggers a land mine/explosive devise.

Doors with shock sensitive explosive liners/inserts, so that shooting or kicking them open causes them to explode.


Edit: hit post too early.