Hyperspace Arsenal/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Video game characters tend to carry much more stuff on themselves than is realistically posssible.

  • Straight: Player's character, Sgt. Bob, carries on his person: a knife, a chainsaw, two pistols, a revolver, an SMG, a shotgun, an assault rifle, a Sniper Rifle, a rocket launcher, twenty frag grenades...
  • Exaggerated: ...and also teargas grenades, smoke grenades, Molotov Cocktails, 5 kilograms of C4, a broadsword, a flamethrower, a minigun, a laser cannon, a Tesla coil, a black hole generator, a nuclear warhead, a tank, the obligatorical kitchen sink, a battleship, a plunger, and last but not least, his weasel sidekick.
  • Justified: Sgt. Bob is a Space Marine, and uses Compression Storage Device running on Handwavium to haul his weaponry around.
    • All the weapons that ridiculously macho Sgt. Bob carries are actually visible on his back.
    • Sgt. Bob has the power of telekinesis. All the things he carries float around him and Bob grabs whatever necessary.
    • he's got an app that reverse-engineers enemy tech, then stores all his guns as data files on his PDA and can make them out of his Utility Cloud.
  • Inverted: Instead of controlling one character with many weapons, you have entire squad of them, each with his own unique weapon.
    • Bob carries less than what his pockets could reasonably hold.
    • You can carry a weapon besides a knife, but if you do, your Endurance score quickly plummets whenever you walk.
  • Inverted Exaggerated: A single gun is so ludicrously huge it has to be carried by a whole squad (Like that autocannonn from Saving Private Ryan).
  • Subverted: Sgt. Bob's inventory contains dozens of spaces; only two are usable.
  • Double Subverted: The remainder are unlockable later in the game.
  • Deconstructed: Everyone in the world wants to get their hands on the main character, because his ability to carry tons of stuff undetected could be used for smuggling or sabotage.
  • Reconstructed: Having a Hyperspace Arsenal is standard for the military Sgt. Bob is in. Those who want it join said group to acquire one.
  • Zig Zagged: Some characters are able to carry truckload of weapons, other are not. Some suffer from Critical Encumbrance Failure, others do not. There's no consistent rules about that.
  • Parodied: See Exaggerated.
  • Averted: Sgt. Bob can only carry one main gun, one sidearm, and four grenades.
  • Enforced: "Our character is going to carry all weapon types available. Having a lot of firepower is fun, realism be damned!"
  • Lampshaded: "Say, Bob, how do you manage to carry all that stuff if it's not even visible?"
  • Invoked: "Hey, George! I'm gonna need hundreds of guns! All you've got! Just pile them in this backpack."
  • Defied: "You expect me to carry a small armory on my back?! And how did you think I was going to manage this? This is not some video game!"
  • Discussed: "Did you ever notice how Sgt. Bob is always carrying around no less than ten weapons?" "Well, I guess that 'cargo pants' get entirely new meaning in this context."
  • Conversed: "Wait, what? Your character can carry around fifteen weapons?! Talk about 'realism' in gaming..."

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