Most Ridiculous Equipment

Gear, stuff, supplies... The things that make encumbrance rules a serious consideration for your GM.
Nvision
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Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Nvision » Mon May 06, 2013 12:37 pm

Players make the darndest things.... What's the most off-the-wall mythos-busting equipment your players (or you) have come up with? How did was it thought up? Was it effective?

At my table, my favourite invention would have to be classic-era salt grenades. If you're a long time keeper you probably know the scenario in question, but my players needed a lot of salt, and fast. Ignoring vital clues that would have had a very large quantity ready to go, they instead drove into town and bought all they could from the general store (one barrel) and the bakery (one large can). Then they needed a delivery vehicle for all of that salt. They bought the general store's entire stock of mason jars, leaving the owner with the impression they must really like pickling. Fire crackers were discussed as a mean of blowing the jars, but that idea seemed more dangerous than it was worth. The lids were popped open before throwing, or smashed immediately before the thing they were aiming for.

That was the plan, at least...you don't want to roll a 99 when you're alone in a basement with a massive hostile life-form and trying to throw an open jar of salt at it.

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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by EddyPo » Mon May 06, 2013 2:47 pm

Nvision wrote:Players make the darndest things.... What's the most off-the-wall mythos-busting equipment your players (or you) have come up with? How did was it thought up? Was it effective?
I'm going to say wood chipper. And, yeah, it did the job.
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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Koakai » Mon May 13, 2013 4:11 am

I still want to see a player try to get a punt gun into combat.

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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Wordcraftian » Mon May 13, 2013 4:47 pm

Once had a character toss a load of c4 in his trunk. He'd never played CoC before... One car accident later and his ass was grass.
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Nvision
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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Nvision » Mon May 13, 2013 7:13 pm

EddyPo wrote:
Nvision wrote:Players make the darndest things.... What's the most off-the-wall mythos-busting equipment your players (or you) have come up with? How did was it thought up? Was it effective?
I'm going to say wood chipper. And, yeah, it did the job.
Hmmm...I believe I experienced that wood-chipper first hand. It was very efficient at disposing of me. :p

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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by fallingtower » Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:38 pm

One time I met a guy on YogSoth who was in the middle of running a campaign. I was invited to join and when I got there the group had things like
  • Armored Dusenberg's
    An attack zeppelin with quad 50 belly turrents and a bi-plane launcher
    A bi-plane that seemed like something out of RIFTS® with napalm crop duster sprayer, 6 machine guns and rockets
    Armor plated trench coats
    Tommy Guns converted to fire 12ga. shotgun shells
    there was more...but thank god I can't remember
At first I thought it was a joke, but after their constant Beavis and Butthead like chuckling :x , i knew they were completely serious. Well as serious as they could manage.

It was bad...really bad. I had a Catholic Priest investigator, who just ended up hauling their spare ammo around Innsmouth.

He went insane at one point and the Keeper inflicted my character with 'chronic masturbation', so every time he got scared or anxious he'd flog himself raw.

It was just stupid...the sad thing was it was an actual published scenario we were playing. The Raid on Innsmouth.

I never went back and had some harsh words to the Keeper (via internet). Who I found out later was big into Rifts.

Why does RIFTS® make people stupid?
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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Keeper Dan » Mon Aug 05, 2013 12:08 am

Wow... :o
I loves me some pulp action and adventure. I've had the team with the armored vehicle and I designed the headquarters to be a downtown fortress against the monsters.
But damn... That was a game that should not be advertised as Call of Cthulhu. That was like the over the top anime interpretation of a CoC game.
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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Thomas R. Knutsson » Tue Aug 06, 2013 4:05 am

fallingtower wrote:One time I met a guy on YogSoth who was in the middle of running a campaign. I was invited to join and when I got there the group had things like
  • Armored Dusenberg's
    An attack zeppelin with quad 50 belly turrents and a bi-plane launcher
    A bi-plane that seemed like something out of RIFTS® with napalm crop duster sprayer, 6 machine guns and rockets
    Armor plated trench coats
    Tommy Guns converted to fire 12ga. shotgun shells
    there was more...but thank god I can't remember
At first I thought it was a joke, but after their constant Beavis and Butthead like chuckling :x , i knew they were completely serious. Well as serious as they could manage.

It was bad...really bad. I had a Catholic Priest investigator, who just ended up hauling their spare ammo around Innsmouth.

He went insane at one point and the Keeper inflicted my character with 'chronic masturbation', so every time he got scared or anxious he'd flog himself raw.

It was just stupid...the sad thing was it was an actual published scenario we were playing. The Raid on Innsmouth.

I never went back and had some harsh words to the Keeper (via internet). Who I found out later was big into Rifts.

Why does RIFTS® make people stupid?
I once had to endure months of similar stuff. Only stayed because I had been made to make a promise that I would stay and I always try to keep my promises. Felt nice when I got kicked out by the GM after he had some freak-out because he had some bad rolls during a game where I was GM and blamed it on me even though it was he who had rolled his own rolls. Even got some threats from him and his father. Worst sore loser ever!
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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Aaron » Tue Aug 13, 2013 4:40 am

I just started my first CoC table, and have never been a DM of any sort in the past. We have had one session and are having our second tomorrow. There are three of us, and for the first session I was pretty loose about equipment that could have, but was very clear about consequences of trying to carry it around or use it. I allowed them to have an elephant gun, but they heeded my warnings about the issues of trying to carry it around. However, my friend rolled an engineer with a high Mechanical Repair skill, and he wants to affix the elephant gun to a motorcycle sidecar. I am going to make him roll a couple of things to see if he figured out how to do it, but have already decided that, as a way to lead their particular group into the A Little Knowledge scenario, a group of zombies will attack them in the barn they meet at, eventually setting it on fire and destroying the device. I figure I will accomodate most things that they can in any way rationalize so that the fun continues, but I will also rationalize a wide variety of ways to rob them of their ridiculous toys to keep things even keel overall.

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Re: Most Ridiculous Equipment

Post by Dr. Gerard » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:35 am

Wow, that's one of those amaxing inventions that looks really great on paper...

...unless there's any physics calculations on the paper.

The recoil of an elephant gun is most certainly going to destabilize a moving motorcycle to the point of running it off the road. It's all about mass and inertia. Sidecars are not really that stabilizing, it turns out.

The force of a shouldered gun's kick is transferred to the ground. Put it up on wheels, and the energy goes into acceleration/deceleration (ultimately ground) and into rotational torque. Both are mitigated by the mass of the motorcycle and riders, but not enough to give much help.

Aiming would also be near impossible if the barrel is meant to be fixed in place. See Car Wars. That's why gangsters and Nazis would more likely use a hand-held automatic weapon from a sidecar.

Not that you're asking, but here's what I think I would do...

I'd allow the experiment (it's not impossible to try), but make the modifiers pretty unattractive. To rig it up in the first place, a good mechanics roll or a physics roll from someone involved in the project. To fire, a halved drive skill roll (worse for bumpy roads) to avoid veering into a ditch from the recoil. Even if it's fixed exactly straight ahead, there will be some significant rotational torque. A motorcycle is rarely moving in a perfect straight line, and if it's on a sidecar much of that kick will impose on the steering. I guess a failure would call for a luck roll to avoid injury in the crash. If the drive roll passes, a rifle skill roll at half (more realistically 1/5) for pulling the trigger at the right moment.



On the other hand, physics and verisimilitude frequently take a vacation in adventure and action genres -- and to be fair, very often in horror as well. You just gotta go with the flavor of your campaign. Not sure you need to burn it up in a barn. This thing is dangerous enough that it's actually more of a liability than an advantage anyway. In my experience, crazy ideas that work poorly tend to get a little bit of screen time, and are then quickly ditched.
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