I'm hoping what I'm seeing is the police force taking a more active role to confiscating openly carried weapons. Especially those overabundant swords, katanas and other exotic weapons really should just go imho. They are fine in a cyberpunk setting, but in a realistic, or in my eyes even retro, setting they are immersion-bumps. And I wouldn't mind the 1 in 100 characters who actually might have an RP reason to have a sword or katana. But since they are one of the more powerful unrestricted weapons available, a lot of people seem to be carrying them now, and they mostly seem to be made of some polymerically enhanced stainless steel that never breaks, rusts or dulls.

But instead of just griping I wanted to be somewhat useful, so I thought a bit about the reasons behind this, too. Obviously a lot of people want to play a power fantasy, they want to have a powerful, cool character that's either a hero or a villain to reckon with. To me that's not what CD is about, at all. CD is like rp noir.. a no-heroes setting, it might be tragical or comical at times, but more mundane than fantasy. And that's what special about it. The characters should feel powerless, helpless, oppressed by the system, and yet find the means to survive, physically and mentally (or fail at that and die, but yet in a somehow meaningful way within this context).

In another thread I saw someone mention that guns could be used to end unpleasant rp situations quickly - if you don't feel like dealing with it, pull the gun and walk out. In my opinion this is exactly the wrong kind of use of guns, and controlling the rp in the wrong way. This is what makes players, as opposed to characters, feel powerless and frustrated, and unable to cope without being equipped with a gun, or at least as powerful a melee weapon as they can get.

Honestly, if you don't feel like rp'ing some situation, don't force the other player out of it by pointing a gun at their char, that's.. well bad storytelling, and bad rp. Instead address them OOCly in IM, explaining them that you don't want that confrontation rp right now, and agree to finish off with an unresolved stand-off or whatever. Just something that leaves the other player a chance to interact meaningfully. Guns shouldn't be given to players that don't understand that they are meant to be used as story devices, not as personal ego-tripping aids (as many people would like to use them, and at the moment aren't allowed I believe), nor as semi-I-win-buttons, nor just as nice utilities to have. The characters with guns should be seen as having more _responsibility_ at storytelling, even directing the scenes in a way, as they in fact do have more power in that they can injure or kill (in theory) other characters with relative ease.

This brings me to another idea about hospital rp, I was thinking that to reduce the amount of people healing from 5 shot wounds in one day hospital rp would be made mandatory for healing. In other words, no injury can be healed without an rp session in the hospital. And the OOC channel should be used to 'page' people to appear at the hospital, wasn't this once so? Since the rp at the hospital tends to be rather sporadic, it would be better to be able to be available when there are people ready there to rp, and to be able to rp with them when they are there, than to just stand there and wait.

Anyway.. To encourage the rp noir atmosphere, I would suggest that for every non-mundane weapon there has to be an RP reason, stated in character profile, for the person carrying that weapon. If ever lost, a weapon must be acquired again within CD in an RP session. If these conditions aren't met, that weapon is void. Could make for some nice scenes for characters who are gun dealers, or trying to steal weapons from static locations, or manufacture their own.

I know that more rules tend to make things more confusing, and that rules like the above one about the hospital can be broken without anyone noticing or any consequences. But I wouldn't see these things as 'rules' as much as ways to improve rp. If people start doing this, newbies will pick it up too. I don't _need_ to be backed up by rules to be able to say 'no thanks' to a non sequitur katana drawn out from nowhere. But as guidelines, these things would make sense.