A few years back in 3d printing circles, there was talk about 3d printed guns. The kind of things that would blow up in your hands, because they were made using materials that couldn’t take the strain. Roll forward a few years, and things have changes a little with this example, a Glock 19 Clone With Clear Frame!
The clear plastic frame is not 3D printed, but created on a CNC machine. It’s a small step to use an injection mold with high density plastics. And a little further to using a robust plastic to create most of the gun shape with some specialist parts (ie barrel, spring, and firing chamber) machined out of metal.
How can you use this technology both in your game and for your tabletop?
Use for 3D Printing in Game
The first idea is the instant 3D-printed weapon. Even through the process can take a few hours to fabricate the parts, a good tech (aka a weapon smith) can assemble the components from the printed bits. And a bad one is a great way to arm up gangers with crap that any sane PC won’t touch.
If the Techie has access to the design files (aka the STLs). Just look on thingiverse or an equivalent website, but in the time of the Red those files become rich pickings to sell onto Techies, or pass on for a favor. So reward the PCs with some files of good gear. Depending on the relationship with their contact (tech/fixer/executive/whatever), this can be access to some Shiny tech or a dodgy piece of Luh Suh. Either way they’ll find out during the next job.
Custom parts is another place where the Techie can shine, by designing or creating just the bit every Solo needs. Triple sized clips. Optic mounts. Concealed bottoms for guns. Plastic knives to walk past the metal detectors. You get the idea.
However, designing stuff is some next level stuff and most street tech won’t have spent the time to learn the skills. Design requires a number of iterations (aka test models and failures) to reach something useful. Making a clone of another product may take a month or more, depending on the complexity. And creating something completely new is years and beyond the reach of anyone without a good R&D budget. So with copying stuff or making new, give it a high target, a longtime to design, or both to avoid player abuse.
3D Printed Goodies for the Tabletop
Any talk about 3D printing in-game, should be match by the same for your table-top. The range of Miniature creators, seams to be ever-increasing, and then there are terrain systems and scatter pieces. There are a huge range of creators out there and there are a few places I look for good stuff.
