Weapon personalities

[RootBeerBert]

I’m playing with the concept of Ego weapons, basically just weapons with living consciousnesses, though I’m wondering how far I should go with it. Like, should weapons be able to speak and possess complex thoughts? Or should they just have basic feelings which they communicate to their user? Or Maybe just a mix of the two for different users? And if I go with the latter two, what kind of personalities should they have? Please allow me to siphon off your creativity!

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Sword must be a prick, knife must be its more practical and life-weary elder sibling. Gun is 'Murican. Speaks with a Texan accent and all.

 

[ElijahRyne]

I’m playing with the concept of Ego weapons, basically just weapons with living consciousnesses, though I’m wondering how far I should go with it. Like, should weapons be able to speak and possess complex thoughts? Or should they just have basic feelings which they communicate to their user? Or Maybe just a mix of the two for different users? And if I go with the latter two, what kind of personalities should they have? Please allow me to siphon off your creativity!

For Q1, it depends on wether the weapons could act independently and/or perceive the outside world? If they can’t it might be torturous for a fully independent ego to be stuck in a body that doesn’t respond to them, all alone. A small fix to that is to have a weapon network, where they can share thoughts with fellow weapons. But that doesn’t really solve the main issue of being stuck in an unresponsive body, it also could act as a proto internet/cellphone which might mess up tension in some areas of your story.

For Q2, this would be simpler with less things to think about, but might make the idea a bit flat.

For Q3, this is probably more realistic. But I must ask, where are the weapons coming from? Are they manifestations of a persons soul/personality? Are they from a dimension or plane of weapon entities? If so how does that differ after their summoning? Are the weapons created by skilled workers? Are they mundane weapons who have human or animal souls shoved in them through some sort of magic? Etc.

For Q4, I don’t know.

 

[Pixytokisaki14]

Sword must be a prick, knife must be its more practical and life-weary elder sibling. Gun is 'Murican. Speaks with a Texan accent and all.

Not always, like swords, different types of guns play to different personalities. The one you mentioned will be relating to a revolver. A gun with a suppressor/silencer would be aquaintances with someone with quick wits, deadly personality, charming character complete with a logical mind. An assault rifle like the AK47 would be aquaintances with terrorists or a drunk russian man holding vodka (@Simple_Russian_Boi *cough* *cough*). A sniper rifle will be someone with dead eye precision and long term patience.

 

[LilRora]

There's a lot of flexibility there. You should probably first consider what the origin of the weapon is. I've no idea what setting you're writing in so I can't give specific examples, but a few simpler solutions are things like a magical construct so advanced it develops sentience, a living soul locked in a blade, an artificial soul, a divine artifact, or a poorly understood ancient artifact.

Depending which option you go with (you don't have to specify it to yourself, much less to your readers, but it's often really helpful if you have a vague idea), a lot of things will become limited or natural. For example, if it's a living soul locked in a physical object, it's most likely going to have a distinct, complex personality.

In general though, I'd give one piece of advice. Don't make them human. Even if you give them the ability to talk (or especially if you do, it's debatable) they should feel at least slightly alien. Maybe they talk different, maybe they don't consider some things obvious to us, maybe they have heavy biases or assumptions.

I'm mostly referring to their values here that develop over time - a sword that has had thirteen different users over three hundred years and seven wars is probably not going to have the mentality of an average adult; people who live for long tend to fall into some extremes, and you can exagerrate it even more with an artificial, divine, or ancient contruct. Those don't even have to be traits developed over time. It's just sort of natural for something so different from humans (especially if it's not created by them) to be completely different mentally as well.

Doing the opposite, so a talking weapon very similar to a human, if also fine, of course. There is some risk with it though, similar to the reason why many people are complaining about making monstrous characters too human.

 

[J_Chemist]

I think giving personalities to your weapons is a good idea so long as it's a useable trait within the story. If it adds to the plot in some fashion, send it. But if it's just supposed to be so your character has someone to talk to when it's boring, then I'd find an alternative. Not that it wouldn't be a good idea but you could add in an actual character who could contribute to the party more rather than some random weapon.

To build on that- if your weapons have an actual place in the plot, think of them like Digimon (not Pokemon). Capable.of assisting the MC, leveling up/evolving, and providing information that would help progress the story. Rather than have them be comedians (which is honestly a waste and quite annoying), make them assets.

Personalities can vary and would be up to you and your creative desire. Older weapons could be wiser because of battle experience, younger weapons could be more feisty and thirsty for a cut. Different weapon types could have different traits, or you could disregard that entirely and do whatever you want. Whatever suits your story and can be properly explained to and received by your audience.

Good luck. ?

 

[HelloHound]

Boyfriend Dungeon on Steam

Date your weapons! Romance swords, daggers, and polearms to level them up in this “shack-and-slash” dungeon crawling adventure.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Nahrenne]

I’m playing with the concept of Ego weapons, basically just weapons with living consciousnesses, though I’m wondering how far I should go with it. Like, should weapons be able to speak and possess complex thoughts? Or should they just have basic feelings which they communicate to their user? Or Maybe just a mix of the two for different users? And if I go with the latter two, what kind of personalities should they have? Please allow me to siphon off your creativity!

There's a manhwa(?) and potentially a novel of it, too (isn't too sure) called [Absolute Sword Sense] where the MC can literally hear the spirits of every sword he comes into contact with.
They all have different personalities and spirit bodies.
Maybe check that out for inspiration/a sense of whether to pursue your idea or not?

[Bleach] also somewhat had sword egos, too, but nowhere near as prominent.

X

 

[georgelee5786]

Desert Eagle is perpetually violent

 

[melchi]

Personally, I think it is better of weapon systems are not quite sentient. Yeah it is cool if they can talk but if they are too much of a person then it can bleed into the whole story.

So unless it is going to flesh out into something like reincarnated as a sword, having items that are more haunted than sentient IMO is better.

 

[ReadLight]

I’m playing with the concept of Ego weapons, basically just weapons with living consciousnesses, though I’m wondering how far I should go with it. Like, should weapons be able to speak and possess complex thoughts? Or should they just have basic feelings which they communicate to their user? Or Maybe just a mix of the two for different users? And if I go with the latter two, what kind of personalities should they have? Please allow me to siphon off your creativity!

My thoughts: depends on if you want to make that weapon a minor or a major character. When they have their own individuality and are personified, they can be said to have become characters, so treat them as one you would any other.

As a minor character, stay basic.
As a major character, go deeper, do they have a motivation, how will they interact/conflict with other characters. Etc etc.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

I’m playing with the concept of Ego weapons, basically just weapons with living consciousnesses, though I’m wondering how far I should go with it.

Personally, I am in the camp of "If you have a strange concept, then go full-ham on it! Whap! Bam! Kapow!" Part of the culture, part of the architecture, part of the religion, part of cleaning, part of governing, part of the psychology world-building, etc.

Here are some examples of each in this list, though keep in mind there is so much potential in each aspect that reading these examples may limit what you come up with on your own:
Culture-all in possession of Ego weapons get extremely antsy when still (ADHD or drug withdrawal to the extreme) because the weapons have an extreme drive to move. Really though, who wants to be still when you can get your humans to move you? Dogs don't exactly like staying inside and never going on walks, right? Though @HelloHound may be a difference.
Architecture: obviously, etchings, murals, tile patterns, etc. However, did you think about how the alien minds of weapons may impact the aesthetic tastes? Or even inspire more alien architectural styles? We may not even think of arches comprised in a series of bladework slashes.
Religion: all worship the shovel. LOL!
Cleaning: traumatized spears or what-have-you with PTSD could inform their users, or vice versa, that they want to be turned to pasttimes of peace, like a broom.
Governing: certain weapons can be signs of prestige, or they can make the politician or noble more trustworthy or liked in the public eye. For example, let's say the gladius is an excellent judge of character for some plot-forsaken reason. This makes not having one because you are a lying piece of shit a real barrier to get elected. And as has always been, ways to circumvent these barriers to trust, so as to garner some support for your political campaigns (say by creating Ego-mimicking gladiuses... gladii? Gladius?), will be created. This can create fun adventures, twists, and mysteries!
Psychology: what @LilRora said. There is SO MUCH to do with the alien nature of swords.

Like, should weapons be able to speak and possess complex thoughts?

For speaking, maybe? A lot of times, speaking is not explained well enough. This means that there is a lot of innovative ideas missed out on. If you don't explore how the speaking works, then you can't do cool shit. There could always be a learning curve, in which newly forged tools can learn speaking. And for weapons of users of foreign languages, it would be cool if they actually needed to take language classes rather than just a shrug that says "Well, this is mental communication, so obviously there are no problems."

Or should they just have basic feelings which they communicate to their user?

In my very soul, most grey that it is, just doing basic feelings reeeally feels like a copout! Definitely not enough!

Or Maybe just a mix of the two for different users? And if I go with the latter two, what kind of personalities should they have?

I dunno. All I can think of is really bad anime tropes. So I guess... don't do those? Mix it up?

Please allow me to siphon off your creativity!

Hope you are glutted on what I hope to name as creativity!

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Sword must be a prick, knife must be its more practical and life-weary elder sibling. Gun is 'Murican. Speaks with a Texan accent and all.

I think knife would always be compensating for its inadequacies.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

I think knife would always be compensating for its inadequacies.

knife has no inadequacies. It is super useful.

 

[Werelure]

You have to answer a few important questions first:
1. Do you plan to lewd them?
2. Do you plan to use them more like a character or more like a tool?
3. Do you plan to apply "character growth" concept to them in some form?
4. How important do you want them to be for characters that use them?
5. How impactful do you want their death/destruction to be for readers?
6. How unique and different from each other you want them to be?
7. How much work you are prepared to invest into writing them?

Answer each question with a number in range from 1 to 10, add those numbers up and you'll get a rough numerical estimate of answer to your main question.

Or, basically, find a role you want them to fulfill in your story and shape them accordingly.

 

[2wordsperminute]

I’m playing with the concept of Ego weapons, basically just weapons with living consciousnesses, though I’m wondering how far I should go with it. Like, should weapons be able to speak and possess complex thoughts? Or should they just have basic feelings which they communicate to their user? Or Maybe just a mix of the two for different users? And if I go with the latter two, what kind of personalities should they have? Please allow me to siphon off your creativity!

When in doubt, look to D&D. It has rules for sentient weapons that you can modify to fit your world.

 

[SRB]

Not always, like swords, different types of guns play to different personalities. The one you mentioned will be relating to a revolver. A gun with a suppressor/silencer would be aquaintances with someone with quick wits, deadly personality, charming character complete with a logical mind. An assault rifle like the AK47 would be aquaintances with terrorists or a drunk russian man holding vodka (@Simple_Russian_Boi *cough* *cough*). A sniper rifle will be someone with dead eye precision and long term patience.

Hey! You're not wrong, but still!

 

[ManwX]

Not a bad idea. Could be tricky to implement but hey.. who doesn't like talking weapons

 

[Obsoleteness]

I’m playing with the concept of Ego weapons, basically just weapons with living consciousnesses, though I’m wondering how far I should go with it. Like, should weapons be able to speak and possess complex thoughts? Or should they just have basic feelings which they communicate to their user? Or Maybe just a mix of the two for different users? And if I go with the latter two, what kind of personalities should they have? Please allow me to siphon off your creativity!

Make a sentient shield that is a true defender of the weak and always spurs you to do the right thing and dive into danger for your comrades. In reality it's just a masochist that moans when you block with it and tries to get you into fights

I'm looking forward to seeing it on the bestseller lists