How would you make a campaign/setting based around knights with guns?

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Knights didn't stop existing just because they couldn't wear plate armor. You'd be better off asking the same old question of how people are wearing plate armor when guns are a thing like everyone else has and my answer is fuck it and have dudes in armor with guns and if your autism can't handle it making it super armor that only select few people get while the rank and file help sooth your autism.

I was assuming everyone would assume the setting would take place in a fantasy world. I just thought it would be interesting to contemplate what could cause a magical culture(s) to develop in such a way that relatively modern firearms work alongside plated armor as opposed to the traditional melee weapons. I already gave a few ideas here.

I'm just airing my own autism here but it annoys me that being a knight is so intrinicly linked with wearing armor. I mean, I realize that you have people who are knighted who are not warriors of any sorts but in a fantasy setting that modernizes and still has monarchies knights can and would still be a thing but instead of riding horses and running down peasent levies with a joust they could be reconized military commanders or possibly even outside of the chain of command but important military assets who serve other important roles, who knows? That's the beauty of make believe.

That said how much stock I put in realism hinges on how cool I think the idea is and will default to 40k logic when it suits me.

Black Riders.

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First, you need to use magic, because otherwise the players won't accept it. Yes, I know about history and guns/knights existing side by side. The players don't and won't care.

Something I've done in the past with a measure of success has been establish certain rules about how magic works. The more important ones being, "like to like", and, "spells do one thing", and "one spell per item".

What "like to like" means is that the purpose of the enchantment has to be related to the mundane item it's "glued" to, and the more capable the mundane item is at doing its job, the more effective the enchantment can be. Thus, if you enchant a spoon to be extra-sharp, the spell won't be too powerful, since a spoon isn't intended for cutting (outside of Locksley's impromtu heart removal, anyway). However, the same enchantment, cast on a sword, will be much more effective. If you cast the spell of sharpness on an already legendarily-sharp sword, you'd be getting a weapon that literally *can* cut through a tank.

So for the armored knights: they all know that guns exist, and that many guns can defeat armor semi-reliably (not all the time, but not so much that they want to take a lot of chances). An enchantment of a strength to stop a bullet requires a highly protective mundane item, and so there's an incentive to wear plate as an "anchor" for the spellcasting instead of lighter protection.

On top of that, the protection from missiles spell is just that, a spell to stop arrows/bullets. It's not a spell of protection against melee weapons; "spells do one thing", remember? So the plate armor itself is still the melee defense; but anyone with a sharpness-enchanted sword could do serious damage against plate (compared to normally), which also explains all the swords hangning around in PC art instead of mass weapons and pollaxes.

YMMV. My players bought it, so it's worked before. As long as you're clear about it.

Not exactly knights in the traditional sense, but I'd do it like this.
>In the shadow of the Bourbon restoration, a small group of Cuirassiers remain loyal to the exiled emperor
>Branded traitors for their participation in the Hundred Days and their unwillingness to accept the conditions of their amnesty, they are branded outlaws and they each have a hefty price on their heads
>They now roam the French countryside, doing what they can to help the local peasants against their noble overlords and aiding in the survival of the Revolution's legacy
>The campaign ends in 1848, with the retun of Napoleon III and the final defeat of the Bourbons
>Maybe there area also monsters and demons and shit, IDK

Modern ballistic vests and shields were invented 500ish years early through alchemy.

I run a game where borders are protected by orders of cannon-knights who travel with a small team of squires and take potshots at eachother constantly. So, pretty much that.

As a rule, OP, you don't. Guns completely obsolete knights.

If you had to do it, you have to use some form of bullshittium, which, I'll admit, does pretty well. But if you have any STEM people at your table at all, and especially any engineers, they're going to call bullshit almost immediately, no matter how you justify it.

Men encased in armor and guns (not muskets or matchlock shit) simply cannot exist at the same time without an absurd level of plot bullshit to justify it, and a smart person won't have the tolerance for bullshit.

>As a rule, OP, you don't. Guns completely obsolete knights.

Fuck you.

:^)

Hey, save the false-flagging for the Battletech generals, mate. NEA would post a complex insult that pushes the post character limit, not drop a 1-liner and leave. The man puts time and effort into telling people to fuck off.

I mean, you're right, because fuck that guy, but that's not even close to what NEA would have written.

Oh, now that's some tasty bait.

>you need magic
No, you don't. Just say that there is a grade of steel that could reliably guard against small arms fire. KISS dude, you don't have to invent an entire magic system when tweaking the physics of the world work just as well.

Besides, very few people had plate. Most people were filthy peasants so if your average rifle doesn't kill a knight that's fine.

Pic related, rifle designed for cavalrymen in breastplate and helmets in WW1

So, the other week, I went to this great exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago. Saints and Heroes, they called it, shitloads of religious and military artifacts from the high middle ages and early Renaissance.

Turns out knights had guns.

Seriously, there were as many muskets on display as swords. You know where the word "bulletproof" comes from? It's the dent in a breastplate from where the armorsmith shoots the armor with a pistol to prove it can stop a bullet; the dent is the bullet proof.

Eventually, improvements in guns (and changes in the organization of societies) made armored knights obsolete. But there were about 200 years when knights were riding around in full plate with swords and pistols.

>playing with people so autistic that they can accept nothing except an RPG that takes into account every detail of a setting including the atomic structure of the metals used in the arms and armor.
Go play play FATAL if Muh Realism is so important

>But there were about 200 years when knights were riding around in full plate with swords and pistols.
And there were about 200 years after THAT when heavily armored cavalrymen were riding around in breastplates with swords and pistols. Their armor had become somewhat lighter and they were regular citizens, but with some social changes here and there they could easily be the 19th century equivalent of knights in your setting.

>work just as well.
Won't work just as well at making people want to play in your setting.

> Guns completely obsolete knights.
This is historically and factually wrong though?

>Everyone wants pedantic magic system to slog through
>Enchantments match any tone, genre, or A E S T H ET I C anyone would want to play
>Everyone is so autistic that they can't remove their heads from their asses long enough to allow for something that doesn't exist IRL to be explained in any other fashion other than magic

You're fucking retarded. Should I be forced to come up with an entire cosmology to keep your shit magic from being "bullshitium". What if I wanted to play alternate history, sci-fi, or pulp? Your uninspired garbage idea springs purely from your inability to think of any game that doesn't take place in a shit generic fantasy setting.

For some reason, the main material of this setting is lighter and stronger than steel. In Nausicaa, people would mine the hulls of ancient airships to make ceramic armor.

>Should I be forced to come up with an entire cosmology to keep your shit magic from being "bullshitium".

Yes.

>What if I wanted to play alternate history, sci-fi, or pulp?

You'd be a shit player (or shit GM if you were running the game).

More importantly, just making up a grade of steel that can resist rifle fire isn't sufficient, because natural laws don't allow for that. If it existed, it wouldn't be "steel", since words have meanings and you don't get to redefine them to let your non-magical realm function. Steel is steel, and its properties are fixed and known. If you're using non-existent materials (adamantium, unobtanium, etc), then you're only playing fantasy anyway.

Kevlar plate armor and some kind of bullshitium "nanomail" that provides them with adequate protection from shrapnel and other battlefield conditions. Knights would be an elite social and military class who would operate similarly to how mechanized infantry or special forces units operate today.

Armoured knights and guns coexisted for hundreds of years. Actually, hand cannons were invented before plate armour (although they came into use in the west at about the same time).

Aren't space marines basically mutant knights with guns... from space?

Are power armor/mecha knights acceptable?

My dream setting is a retrofuturist anachronist science fiction setting where genetically enhanced nobles who are literally and figuratively superior by blood than the peasantry pilot Mecha's only they can operate using their enhanced neural pathways and robust biology, skiing across battlefields like Gungriffon (sorry Battletech, ur 2 slow) jousting at each other with thermite weapons and particle lances as lowly infantry fire massed salvo's of powerful but innacurate Rockets mounted on staves like futuristic pikes and Orbital Bombardment is usually held in reserve as pre-arranged agreement

Ancient corporate entities long seperated from earth degenerate into literal fiefdoms where employee's are property, career change is treason and planets are led by councils of noble CEO's

"I need convoluted, poorly conceived magic systems to make my dick hard."
"If you don't masturbate my autism you have wrong fun"

That's beautiful user.

So, what, I'll just give you my credit card info and you can start working on this?

Just... make one? Knights had guns. Heck, even non-European knight equivalents used guns.

/thread

.. I'm going to go fap now.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Or run a historic game. Pic related.

>Or run a historic game
Hussites were not knights with guns, they were knight-killing peasants with guns. And that's why everyone was so mad about them.

Knighthood is as much that the expenses related with warfare meant that you need many peasant to support a fully trained and equipped warrior.

Guns are inherently an equalizer, They are much cheaper to to produce and train a man to use, elimination the need for a feudal pyramid structure to support fighting men.

The only way that it could work is if guns somehow turned out to be extremely expensive, difficult to use, and armor remained useful against guns. Now you could have a dynamic where the most optimal warrior is a well trained armored human with a gun. Otherwise 10 commoners with 10 guns is still going to make any sort of expensive feudal warrior obsolete.

is there any art like this that tacticool's up the aesthetic of middle eastern or east asian armor styles?

If it's Crusader-type of knights, it's like said: nanomail and they have a sword as a side arm.
For full plate it's more light-weight ceramics covering nanomail.

I'd make a Brotherhood of Steel campaign

Ok? The hussites were not the only guys with guns, user, nor was I posting or talking about them.

Professional knights and men-at-arms used firearms quite regularly.

>operate like mechanized infantry

modern line infantry is mechanized for the most part

Sure, when guns were newfangled and expensive to make.

But the price of guns dropped rapidly, especially in comparison with armor, because a metal tube is pretty easy to make. Then you could round up 100 peasents and hand them each a gun, and poof went the knights.

The armor is iconic.

>Sure, when guns were newfangled and expensive to make.

Ok, I am going to stop you there, as your scale and scope of history is pretty skewed on the subject.

The pictures I have posted? By the period they are from, guns have been in production and use in Europe for almost 300 years, and typically in lower class infantry use. They were not rare, or purely the realm of the rich.

>All these people talking about how knights and guns overlapped by a few hundred years
>All of the opening pictures from OP clearly show guns that are considerably more advanced than the shit that finally drove knights off the field
Fuck's sake, people, it's obvious what OP wants.

I guess I should try to write it some day

I never will, because I can only think of Meme concepts, not carry a story.

It's 1492. Charles VIII of France invades Italy. Have fun.

Kewl. Moar?

Sounds like they want a campaign setting, not a story. Can't be that hard if you like it if you already dream about it regularly.

This is the kind of campaign I'd definitely would like to see run

Hey is that part of that series of photos that includes the cuirassiers posing alongside nude women?

I'd play it

Simple...
Run a game based on the "Pike & Shot" era of warfare.

This thread had my interest. Now you have my attention.

True, but in this theoretical setting that wouldn't be the case.

Or if it was the knights would merely be the "elite", much like how they were in the late Medieval period. After all, non-knightly class heavy cavalry still existed even as knights fulfilled the same tactical role.

Do a historical setting, duh.
The gun came before full plate.

By the late medieval knights as heavy infantry made less and less sense. Land-owning gentry had a complicated, full time job in running their large estates and it made far more sense for them to send money rather then personally give military service to their lord. Hiring a mercenary for a 6 month campaign with the money a gentlemen could send was just more effective then getting the same gentlemen for 3 months of owed military service.

he's just saying how knights were eventually phased out I think

Dark Heresy

I like a fairly similar approach except replace aristocracy with cult and have a bunch of gun worshippig "priests" wearing plate mail and dishing out leaden sermons

You glorious bastard that shit is the best