Branching off from the thread on the Knockdown Talent , I've been thinking about ways to run more melee and brawl combat. It's more of a personal preference for me, but it becomes pretty impractical. Apart from lightsabers, using a melee weapon usually puts a player (or adversary) at a disadvantage. There are benefits, such as penalizing an opponent using a ranged weapon while engaged, but they tend to be advantages that the melee fighter has to press, whereas the disadvantages are more inherent.

So, I'm looking at some house rules, or perhaps situational allowances, to encourage players to engage (as it were) in melee and brawl more frequently, because I just find it very interesting.

Some things I'm considering.

• Lessening the threat of being shot by allies. The first time this came up, poor Lowhhrick took a nasty shot from an ally's blaster rifle. Not pretty. I was thinking of making this less dangerous by allowing an Aim maneuver to downgrade the difficulty of ranged attacks at engaged targets. This effectively offsets the upgrade in this situation. The possibility of a Despair still exists on Challenge dice from Destiny Point upgrades or the Adversary talent, and those can still cause an ally to be hit, but it won't be as common an occurrence.
• Narrative persuasion. This can be barriers, like the "no blasters" rules in many establishments. Granted, most players will find a way around that. It can be a requirement, such as "you must battle my favorite gladiator and prove yourself before I offer you this job." Maybe it's a code of honor or an opportunity to gain "street cred" at a local port. (take down the local enforcer in a hand-to-hand fight, and your party gets Boost on all (or certain) social checks while in that locale.
• Meta-gaming. Wait! Meta-gaming is bad, right? Well, this goes back to a solution that is frequently recommended on these boards. "Talk to the players." To be honest, I probably should have already tried this one. It's natural for players to try to get "the most" out of every round their character gets to act. Outside of combat, players are usually OK letting the "Face" do the talking, or the Slicer override the computer security, etc. In combat, everyone takes a turn, and reasonably, so, given the stakes. But if I talked to them, I think they'd go along with a scene where Lowhhrick is fighting the Gamorrean champion without too much interference from others. Maybe Pash and Oskara take bets on how long it will take Lowie to put the pig down. Sasha provides color commentary, with 41-VEX adding his medical opinion on how much that must hurt. Yes, I could just throw more things for the others to shoot at, but that would kind of steal from the focus.

What it comes to is, "I love the "shoot the swordsman" scene from Raiders as much as the next guy, but just once, I wanna have a sword-fight." If any of the players want the same thing, maybe we could agree on it.

A room full of fuel barrels, explosives, etc.

Scenarios where guns can't be brought in, plenty of real world precedent for places where you just can't get a firearm into, or at least nothing more than a highly concealed one.

Locations with extremely tight quarters, where Melee and Brawl is almost assured, ie the bar fight that breaks out and every PC is no more than Short range from someone willing to deck them with a stool.

There was a planet in one of the legends comics where blasters of any kind were outright banned, but swords were just fine. So a whole culture was based around sword fighting. It reminded me a lot of Samurai Champloo.

I would use the environment in encounters to restrict your PC's and give your NPC some advantages.

Darkness/Fog/Rain/Snow/Duststorm that reduces visibility to short with 3 setback or if your engaged with 2 setback.

Fighting in tunnels

Fighting in jungle/forest with dense undergrowth.

Use incredibly fast NPC's such as flying easts or Force Enhanced sentient beings.

Ambush the PC's

Have Re-enforcements come from an unexpected and close location.

The suggestion of local Law or customs restricting ranged weapons is great, so is the social encounter with a Brawl Duel in the middle.

There was a planet in one of the legends comics where blasters of any kind were outright banned, but swords were just fine. So a whole culture was based around sword fighting. It reminded me a lot of Samurai Champloo.

This also brings to mind Adumar, where everyone was so obsessed with HONORRRRR and status that everyone carried around literal gunswords and settled disputes solely with dueling.

God that was such a crazy planet.

EDIT: Speaking of, has anyone ever statted out a blastsword?

There was a planet in one of the legends comics where blasters of any kind were outright banned, but swords were just fine. So a whole culture was based around sword fighting. It reminded me a lot of Samurai Champloo.

This also brings to mind Adumar, where everyone was so obsessed with HONORRRRR and status that everyone carried around literal gunswords and settled disputes solely with dueling.

God that was such a crazy planet.

EDIT: Speaking of, has anyone ever statted out a blastsword?

I would try using the Vibrosword stats, but replace the "Vicious 1" quality with "Linked 1." In this case, the linked quality would represent triggering the blaster at just the right moment, rather than getting a second hit with the sword.

This isn't one you can pull out too often, but I'll let my friends from "Aliens" explain...

Ripley : Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire?

Gorman : 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor-piercing round. Why?

Ripley : Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers.

Gorman : So?

Ripley : So... if they fire their weapons in there, won't they rupture the cooling system?

Burke : Whoa ho-ho... yeah, she's absolutely right.

Gorman : So? So what?

Burke : Look, this whole station is basically a big fusion reactor, right? So she's talking about a thermonuclear explosion and adios muchachos.

EDIT: Formatting

One thing is an easy way: CQC. Think tiny spaces, where the players can't feasible use their guns properly. Add the enemy knowing this and using it to his advantage and voila more melee/brawl.

One thing is an easy way: CQC. Think tiny spaces, where the players can't feasible use their guns properly. Add the enemy knowing this and using it to his advantage and voila more melee/brawl.

In this system, a blaster pistol makes for a fine weapon in such circumstances. That's either a feature or a bug depending on how you look at it.

If your on a ship, use threats to do detrimental things to the environment. The Nal Hutta book gives a good example of a pirate gang that takes a fairly excessive amount of precautions, including the use of Toxin's over standard blaster weaponary.