How would you go about building a world where weapons were either restricted, or somehow discouraged, whether legally...

How would you go about building a world where weapons were either restricted, or somehow discouraged, whether legally, socially, whatever, to a point where fighting unarmed was common? I'd like to build some kind of campaign set in a world fueled by fisticuffs and streetfights, possibly set in an urban environment. How would you go about building a rough and tumble world populated by tough sailors, streetwise fighters, travelling circus boxers, etc?

I'd probably start by deciding im not gonna take things too seriously.

Then id probably do an alternate post WW1 world where everyone decided "fuck warfare" and banned high powered weapons, leading to a pulpy world of two fisted adventure.

Well. I would go to a point where government was so supported, that they developed strong position where they restrict gun laws and anyone owning a gun or other threatening weapons/tools (sword, knife, bow) is shot on sight. That resulted in huge problem, because people like blacksmiths couldn't use their tools, or they would be killed instantly, so they moved to the sea because of less surveillance there and they work on the boats. The government allows any sort of nowaday crim (thievery, bribery etc...) as long as it doesn't involve guns and weapons in general.

Definitely feeling the pulpy vibe (the picture is of Conan writer Robert Howard's character Steve Costigan), I like that idea. Definitely going to be an exercise in fun storytelling rather than trying to create a gritty drama.

We Wuxia now motherfucker.

So this leads me to the question, how could I blend Wuxia and pulp?

I don't know enough about Wuxia to speak specifically to its themes and style, but pulpy works tend to have their characters driven by base impulses. They do things because they want things. It also doesnt mind perhaps a little bit of ham or craziness.

Blending these elements into an rpg story is easy and fun.

Just make the story high octane and the NPCs overwhelming nuts and powerful.
Wuxia goes well with pulp.
Watch a few Indiana Jones movies to get the writing juice going.

I'd go the post-WWI route as well, or just create a world that had experienced a massive war that made people thoroughly despise any and all weapons.

>wuxia
nah mate this is fuckin' straya cunt, lets fuckin take this outside if you got a fuckin' problem
an yeah nah we ain't pussies we don't use any fuckin' guns, if you're too much of a chickenshit for a good fist fight you can get the fuck out of our fuckin' country

>setting is near-future or alt-history utopia
players are rowdies or really just bunch of bored upper class troublemakers (think Clockwork Orange)

You ever think about narrowing the scope of your game world user? Some "worlds" can be as small as a single city, or neighborhood, or hell, a single building or room for that matter!

In a magic setting it'd be as easy as saying the local government or a meddlesome wizard cast some sort of permanent disarming spell over the region. Soldiers and upper-tier police use expensive magic-resistant gloves to get around it, as do wealthier criminals.

In all other settings you run into the problem of "why the hell don't I just use this here wrench to cave your skull in instead of hurting my hand", so you'd have to go a more comedic route.

Well, without the spectacular ass pulls let's use your pic as basis.

People regularly live and work inside of a giant underwater city so weapons are severely restricted so as not to cause undue damage to the infrastructure. People with guns inside of the city will immediatley have that portion sealed off and flooded.

Yes, actually. It was going to be limited to a single large city that had a port where sailors hung out, slums where poor street fighters were, and an upper class area where sons of wealthy businessmen and politicians learn expensive athletic martial arts in gyms.

This sounds a lot like the story I heard about the invention of Savate-boxe française, the French art of kickboxing, where the french government were so desperate to stop the huge fights that kept breaking out between sailors in the Marseilles that they outlawed the *fist* as a deadly weapon.

Couldn't you simply say certain resources are vastly more rare? As such, the materials that would have gone into making that gun or knife or whatever were instead used to make part of a car or boat or ship or building? As such, weapons exist but are ridiculously expensive, so most people have learned, and are accustomed to unarmed combat.

Put the setting in space and make most of their defenses projected shields, possibly generated by polar ubotium.

So the hull is this thin stuff that projects a shield away from the ship so the ship can play bumper cars with meteors its own size, but is pretty easily pierced from the inside, by say, guns, opening everything to the vacuum.

Results? No guns or you're risking everyone dying. Also raiders will try to sneak on with their suits and then hold everyone hostage with a stake and a sledgehammer to the wall.

It might make sense in a worldbuilding point-of-view but it would lead to a very boring gameplay. Players characters wouldn't stand a chance against an armed outlaw or a wild animal or a monster. So you'd be severely limiting encounter possibilites. I think fantasy settings need to have ~some~ abstractions in order not to compromise fun.

So what I do in my setting is that everyone is allowed to carry weapons but in some cities it's strictly forbidden to draw a weapon without permission.

Dune had something like this. Everyone had a force field that would explode like a nuke if they were shot, so everyone used knives and martial arts.

That was in Dune right? I didn't dream that?

I started working on a setting where people with powerful kung-fu could only be hurt by other people with kung-fu. Guns and normal weapons have no kung-fu, so they're useless. Of course, this story was exceedingly silly involving an evil kung-fu space empire challenging Earth to a fist fight, but if you're aiming for a world revolving around fisticuffs you probably don't mind silly. Maybe replace "kung-fu" with "heart" or "a man's romance" or some other crap to fit your desired style.

You don't have to build a world for that, just look at modern day UK or Australia

Pretty sure the shields in Dune were designed to withstand ballistic/blaster fire, thus leading to the dueling art of uncommonly slow, stilted movement in order to get through the shield and strike home.