Once they are invented, how long does it take for guns to become commonplace...

Once they are invented, how long does it take for guns to become commonplace ? What about once the matchlock is invented?

Open a history book you piece of shit.

We dunno. We only had one case up to now. For Eurasia, there was maybe a 300-400 year period between the first gun and the matchlock.

gunpowder appears around 1300. large arrows wedged in a vase-like cannon of bronze last till about 1330-40, then are replaced by large balls of stone.
hand-held guns appear about 1400 with the gonne. doesnt become commonplace till about 1420 when the hussites used them extensively. Gonnes slowly evolve over the next 60-80 years, from a staff with a small cannon barrel on the end, to a more ergonomic stock, and then to a longer barrel, making the arquebus.

at the same time a burning match evolves from handheld, to held on a lever, to held on a spring lock, which will be in place by about 1480-90.

so, roughly 200 years pass between first use of gunpowder, and adoption of the matchlock, with about 100 years between adoption of gunpowder, the invention of handheld guns and match-locks.

Mate we've only invented firearms once and that involved them being created at one end of the globe, being really lame and only really useful as siege weaponry, being transported halfway round the world to the place that they were actually developed in a place of constant low-intensity warfare.

Really I'd say its for more a function of economics, need and enthusiasm that dictates this not the stage of development itself.

depends on a fuckton of things (like where do we count the invention what counts as commonplace), but we have solid evidence that at late 15th century there were a lot of citizens in germany (as in, not nobles but people of trades who lived in cities) ownd various firearms and the were even shooting ranges to train them and hold competitions

also from:
A brief examination of warfare by medieval urban militias in Central and Northern Europe

Jean Henri Chandler, SDA NOLA, New Orleans, Louisiana
The Mongols brought many hitherto unknown weapons and techniques with them to

Europe during their invasion in 1241. During the Battle of Mohi in 1241, the Mongols

apparently used a special type of gunpowder weapon called a fire lancelxviii, and in the

siege of Pest that same year, the Mongols used rockets called fire arrowslxix. Europeans

were shocked by pyrotechnic weapons of this type, especially the deadly fire lance,

which was an early type of firearm that had reached military significance in China.

Within a relatively short time though, they had learned the secret. Roger Bacon

published the formula for gunpowder in his Opus Majus in 1267, and may have done so

in encrypted form 20 years earlier. Gunpowder weapons may have been used in the

successful defense of Kraków against the Mongols in 1287. Firearms were definitely

used in the first successful defense of Moscow against them in 1380.

But it was during the hussite crusades of the 1420s and 1430s that firearms came to the

forefront of warfare in spectacular fashion. The Czechs, under pressure of potential

annihilation in the form of a massive crusade, made numerous field-expedient

improvements to the firearm which have left us the words pistol (píšťala) and howitzer

(houfnice). The hussite wars are far too complex and vast a subject to get into here, but

suffice it to say that their impact was strongly felt throughout Europe, and the forges of

many European cities, from Venice to Nuremberg, from Prague to Bruges, began to

fashion guns.

In many cases it was the Czechs themselves who continued to be the direct impetus for

this, because neither the war wagon nor the firearm were easily transferable

technologies. In Poland, after clashing with hussites in 1427 during one of their so-
called “beautiful rides,” and experiencing with some shock their formidable new tábor

gun wagon system, the town council of Kraków met to discuss upgrading the town

arsenal and adding some of the modern Czech style weapons. In the 15th Century, the

firearm became part of the urban culture. Most towns already had a crossbow shooting

range, by 1450 it was common for towns to have a firing range. We know that in many

towns in Flanders special combat guilds were dedicated to crossbows (with the patron

saint of St. George), and firearms (with the patron Saint of St. Barbara)lxx.

From their notes we know that it was determined at that time that the entire town only

had two hand boschen (hand guns) at the time and none of the two-handed hussite war-
flails or flegels. So the town elected to purchase eighty-seven new hand boschen and 147

war-flails to augment the existing guild arsenals, and allocated a substantial amount of

money to buy or make themlxxi. The shift from crossbows to guns remained gradual,

though; at a muster in 1443 each citizen was ordered to appear with both pixides and

balistas (i.e. crossbows)lxxii. Nevertheless, it was in the towns like Kraków where the

skills gradually transferred, as the local guilds figured out the new technology. Without

a doubt journeymen from Bohemia also spread their skills to other towns north and

west. All the towns were linked through their guild journeymen.

The hand portable weapons were the equivalent of a 20 to 10 gauge shotgun, firing

slugs in most cases rather than shot. Larger trestle guns were light cannon in the 15 to

20mm range, and the houfnice was 30mm. Using gunpowder weapons required

considerable skill. In addition to the inherent danger of maintaining a lit fuse in the

vicinity of live gunpowder, before the invention of corned powder, gunners had to

know how to mix gunpowder in the field. The simple innovation of soaking powder in

alcohol and pushing it through a sieve to dry out led to a dramatic improvement in the

reliability, power and accuracy of all European firearms. The forges of Prague and

Tabor churned out weapons which were much improved over the original Chinese fire

lance, an no longer had to be ignited from a flame pushed into the barrel.

The pistala gradually took on the look of a crude arquebus, with a longer barrel

conferring better range and accuracy. It was triggered by a serpentine, a spring-loaded

lever which would touch the match to a hole that was drilled into the barrel so that it

could be ignited much more easily. This was the basis of what became the matchlock

and, ultimately, all modern firearms, but the technology was fairly slow to spread and

still required a great deal of skill to use. It wasn’t until the 16th century that routine

training of hand-gunners was becoming something like a known quantity. Until then it

was the Czechs themselves who often fought as mercenaries, bringing their guns with

them, and often their wagons.

>The End

>using guns took skill

Which shits all over the common colloquialism that guns killed the knight (eventually) because they were cheap and easy to use.

They BECAME cheap and easy to use after literally hundreds of years of development. So in the end it was innumerable development that ended knights (gradually)

fun fact: the first mentions of firearms either in texts or in pictures,etc in medieval europe predates at least a hundred years the first fighting codexes that are about how to fight in plate armour.

While we did have gun knights towards the end, shame they never got super into it like the Japanese.

well at that time knights were getting obsolete. But not because of the gun but because the whole changing social structure.

I mean yeah weapon development was a big thing but that too was also a just a symptom of the changes that come, and at the end this is what ended the knights. Armies were changing, weapons were changing, society as a whole were changing, etc

You want brass cartridges with a fulminate of mercury-equiavelent primer; gunpowder was just too fiddly then, for anything other than heavily-drilled mass armies before then. There's a reason handguns weren't called "the great equalizer" until about the 1880s.

Call it ~500 years after black powder first appears

Basically, it became common place once the resources and practical skills required to create them became highly available.

More interesting question is: Why did that technological progress happen in Europe and not somewhere else?

If your players approach you with plans to make gunpowder and early firearms, with the possibility to upgrade to modern firearms as the game continues, you have NO right to refuse them. Now, I know what you're going to say:

>B-b-b-but muh balance
>B-b-b-but mud medieval fantasy
>B-b-b-but mommy, loud noises make me scared

Shut up. You shouldn't be DMing. Your players are trying to make something interesting out of your generic, elf-loving fantasy, and you're throwing it back in their faces. You have NO right to be DMing - just give your notes to one of your players, they can do a better job than you can.

TL/DR, if you can't handle guns in fantasy settings, you shouldn't be a DM

Nice pasta, can i get that bolognese?

>More interesting question is: Why did that technological progress happen in Europe and not somewhere else?
Everyone was at war with each other

Socio-cultural environment. For all the flak Christianity gets, it created the climate that was least-hostile to innovation and dissenting thought of the big philosophies that reigned the last two thousand years, both by choice and by worldly regents that pushed back.

>shame they never got super into it like the Japanese.
They really did, though in a different way to samurai.

Samurai used bows extensively. The adoption of firearms primarily meant the replacement of the bow with an arquebus.

In Europe, the primary weapon of a Knight (in the wider sense of "rich mofo in full armor, on a horse and trained to murder you" aka a Man-at-Arms) was the lance. Missle weapons were used in sieges and hunting but on the battlefield they were far more useful as lancers or situationally as heavy melee infantry. A hand-cannon or arquebus is not required.

Then in the 1560s the wheel-lock is invented and pistols become practical. The cavalry pistol is not a sidearm but a lance that is reuseable, has longer range and most importantly more penetration. Lancers become pistol cavalry and the gun knight merrily charges around.

It was all over a century later due to musketry making proofed plate too heavy and expensive to be worth the trouble but it was glorious while it lasted.

I should GM a game about using firearms to hunt down elves like wild pigs

...

>Vietcong Kobold.

The horror...the horror...

not bad enough,

do modern fantasy

start of small he said, nothing to dangerous he said, just some kobolds

kobolds with claymore mines and p90s

insurgent separatist reptiles under the banner of tiamat, secretly funded by the big bad of the setting

>The adoption of firearms primarily meant the replacement of the bow with an arquebus.
Not for a good while, though.

I do remember some koryu stuff mentioning on uses for guns and bows, and how guns are excellent when attacking, and bows are excellent when retreating.

Guns at front do heavy damage to enemy lines, and bows at back can volley arrows over own retreating troops, damaging the pursuing enemy troops.

I suspect that what really phased out the bow is most likely the development of better artillery and not small arms, they don't really fill the same role.

did not nobunaga himself, lord of firearms and herald of pike and shot, said that for every matchlock you should have two bows and five spears?

muskets fire, then archers keep the enemy from all out charging with mass arrow spam as muskets are reloaded, spears waiting incase enemy infantry reaches firing line, or incase of sudden enemy cavalry

>suspect that what really phased out the bow
The bow was phased out because it took a shitton of training to be any good.
Guns you give to any mook and spend an afternoon showing them how it works.
The longbow was a far more dangerous weapon than a gun for a very long time. It had a higher rate of fire, longer effective range, and in many cases, better penetration. The longbow didn't become obsolete until they started to make machine guns like the maxim gun.

The main point about longbows vs guns though, is that the training took a lifetime for bows, and it was an old tradition, limited to only a few. What most people miss about historical war is how it started to involve more and more people in bigger and bigger armies, formed quicker and cheaper from the medieval era to the early modern period.
Even then it wasn't until the late 1600s early 1700s that armies started to have more people with guns than without. Up until then, we still mostly used long pointy sticks, and moved in giant squares to stop yourself from being flanked.

Main issue was that the English were the only people in Europe that had an archery culture to begin with and everybody else basically used crossbows instead. Without an archery culture you plain don't have access to archers in sufficient numbers to make'em worth shit.

Early guns then were a straight upgrade to crossbows, with the limited sulphur supply being the one issue that had to be overcome.

firelances (the proto-gonne) have been around since the very late 900sCE.

>Why did that technological progress happen in Europe and not somewhere else?
Europe had the right blend of constant fighting, technological advancement, and economic base. Japan was all over guns when they were introduced, then promptly shelved them once they unified and had no ambitions to keep fighting. China could have developed guns first, but they unified before they had the economic base to make it worth using as a standard implement of war and then stopped major warring (and absorbed would-be conquerors instead). Most other regions, e.g. the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, never had the necessary economic base prior to European colonization. India maybe could have but I'm not familiar with their history.

Keep in mind that gunpowder isn't cheap when it was first introduced, it took a long time to start producing it in industrial quantities. Until that point they were raiding tombs for the nitre on skeletons and such which obviously isn't sustainable.

My point is that longbows weren't in direct competition with small arms because they were indirect fire support weapons.
Artillery cannons could reach much further and with more power, so as soon as you get those the bow is on its way out.

>the longbow didn't become obsolete until they started to make machine guns like the maxim gun
top kek, you longbow fags never cease to amaze me, its literally the katana of the west.

If the bow was that good it would be fielded in numbers by some of the richer countries, they could afford to create archery schools or subsidize training.

>the longbow didn't become obsolete until
It stop being used way way way before machine guns, for sure.
>If the bow was that good it would be fielded in numbers by some of the richer countries
There are two reasons this would not have happened. The first being that the culture of learning a bow from a kid to an adult was lost by the time nations had the absolute control of their military; because we are talking about the kind of wide program creation that would have only been possible from the 1750s onwards, when absolute nation states formed. Also rich nations didn't create archery schools, they bought mercenaries. Large nations where long term wide investments like archery schools would pay off didn't have the top down ability to control such programs, as power was much less centralized.
The second reason is that by the time the above WOULD have been possible, the doctrine of warfare didn't call for archers at all. Infact European militaries were slow to introduce semi automatic weapons or even breach loaded, bolt weapons because they didn't think that soldiers should use that much ammo. (They were also afraid of giving the non-nobility access to weapons capable of a lot of firepower, because it was the era of revolutionaries.)

>The longbow was a far more dangerous weapon than a gun for a very long time. It had a higher rate of fire, longer effective range, and in many cases, better penetration.
Got any data to back up that assertion? Rate of fire, sure no question, but effective range seems questionable. How effective is an arrow at max range hitting at terminal velocity really? Arrows are losing kinetic energy after launch for that parabolic arc, a bullet is moving faster with more force behind it in a smaller footprint. Penetration is similarly in question, because a sharp point doesn't make up the difference in energy behind the shot. A bullet can punch through plate, a bodkin isn't going to be better at the job.

Just google the range of a longbow, then google the range of an unrifled musket or aquebus.
Keep in mind, I'm talking specifically about longbows and not cavalry bows or other kinds

>If your players approach you with plans to make gunpowder and early firearms
Yes.

>with the possibility to upgrade to modern firearms as the game continues
No way fag.

>(They were also afraid of giving the non-nobility access to weapons capable of a lot of firepower, because it was the era of revolutionaries.)
You actually believe the longbow could have had that kind of impact?