Basic Information
In a Cargo Cult or Time Travel scenario, a modern person with some technological convenience uses it to try and impress the locals. Guns, cigarette lighters, and Polaroid cameras are the most common such items in fiction.
The trope is named for a famous line in Army Of Darkness, the third Evil Dead film, where the time-displaced zombie-fighting housewares stocker Ash is threatened by medieval peasants. He has a shotgun. Violent Hilarity Ensues.
Yeah. Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up. See this? This is my BOOMstick! It's a twelve gauge double barreled Remington, S-Mart's top-of-the-line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart. GOT THAT?
—Ashley J. Williams, Army of Darkness
This trope has nothing to do with an actual Boom Stick, unless the anachronistic item you bring to the setting just happens to be one.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Start a campaign that looks like a perfectly normal RPG scenario for the game you've announced you're running. Part way into the first session, suck the PCs through a time portal to the past, or a gate to another dimension, or just crash them into a primitive culture. A Fish Out Of Temporal Water scenario will result, in which the PCs are like Connecticut Yankees in King Arthur's Court. Certain fairly mundane items they happened to have on them will will suddenly matter disproportionately.
- This works especially well if the default system is one that encourages carrying (and tracking) numerous individual bits of equipment, so the players will know exactly what resources they've brought with them. Having the only automatic weapon in the fantasy world is pretty darned impressive - but less so if you only have one Clip of 30 bullets and no way to manufacture more.
- Subvert this. "Oh, yeah, the 'righ-full'. Someone came by with one of those last week. His looked different and didn't work in the rain."