Interest Piqued

Ian from Forgotten Weapons has a third Kickstarter running, quite successfully I might add.

I didn't have much interest in Chinese Warlord era firearms, so I was basically ignoring this run.

He's been posting videos on some of the guns that will be included in the book and they've been background noise...

Until today.

I'd totally forgotten about the .45 broom-handle.

I remember that small ad that ran in Shotgun News every issue for a princely sum that I'd never be able to put together delivering pizzas.

It did not change THE WANTS® even the slightest.

The Wants® even went so far as to make GURPS stats for one and even make a story about how the fantasy-race version of the Confederate States of America issued them to their Orc troops as an NCO aptitude test.

If an Orc soldier or marine showed some leadership potential they were promoted corporal and issued a .45 broom-handle.  Because of the puzzle-box nature of disassembly and lots of parts; to be promoted sergeant the gun had to be whole, clean and functioning at the end of a set period of time (I never defined it, the description of the test was extemporaneous color story to curry favor with the GM).

The CSA in this world, by the way, didn't use the broom-handle otherwise.  The CSA is aligned with an unnamed Mormon state where John Moses Browning is cranking out designs like in the real world and pointedly NOT selling them to the tyrannical United States (what propaganda?  I don't see any propaganda!  What are you, an Elf?) but is selling them to the CSA.

This CSA is also still racist as all fuck, but so is everyone else.  It's a typical fantasy world crudely applied to an historical template.  Fantasy worlds are chock full of racism, so it was easy to apply a fantasy race to a real world race/ethnicity to illustrate the point... a point which proved too subtle for some people at the table.