Tell me about your gunpowder fantasy world, Veeky Forums

Tell me about your gunpowder fantasy world, Veeky Forums

I don't combine gunpowder and fantasy because it's too unrealistic

Whatever a guy with a gun can do, a wizard with a gun can do better.

/mic drop

Shameless self bump

Just us medieval/renaissance-era guns instead of modern firearms. Powerful, but also inaccurate and a bitch to reload.

I have no idea what this is even supposed to mean.

My fantasy guns don't use gunpowder, they're powered by piezoelectric crystals that convert the slamming of the trigger with a discharge of tremendous energy that propels a slug/bolt/energy at the target.

My setting had gunpowder, but not advanced technology so it was limited to rockets, hornets nests, handgonnes and cannons.
I think only the cleric really used any. He had two handgonnes which he would fire at the start of combat and then drop cus they take like a minute to load

Primitive matchlock firearms are beginning to spread throughout the main continent, but they're already having a notable impact ever since the defeat of the Last Horde - that is, the orcs got together for their once-every-few-generations horde that sweeps down from the northern lands into the southern ones for raiding (this isn't intentional or official, it's just that every few generations the population is too big and a horde develops).

This time around, the orcs ran full-on into nations armed with gunpowder weapons of various types, including matchlocks. The horde was defeated almost as soon as it got started, making no significant gains and actually causing the orcs to be pushed further back than ever before into the north and west. It'll be centuries before the orcs can recover, if at all. One thing's for sure, they need to undergo major societal changes.

Gunpowder was invented by gnomes for use as a mining explosive, and also for fireworks. Humans invented the first canons, and gnomes improved on the design immensely. Humans and gnomes seem to have independently invented the arquebus and later matchlock rifles, but gnomish guns tend to be much better than human ones thanks to a knack for tinkering and experience building clocks (skill in building clocks translates easily over to guns, just like how in real life the best guns for a long time were Swiss).

Dwarves and elves have fallen behind on the whole gunpowder thing. They're slow to innovate and don't like accepting new ideas. Time will tell how that plays out for them. Probably poorly. Kobolds, on the other hand, have latched onto the gun thing with gusto (skill at making traps ALSO translates over to guns very well). Proliferation of guns has allowed the Ereshkiin Confederation to form, that being the first major kobold nation-state. Every kobold is now instructed from a young age in the use of firearms.

>player wants to be the billionth 'character who invents firearms and uses them' guy
>even though his character is young and knows jack shit about science, chemistry or metallurgy because he went into a pure dex fighter
>wishes sulphur and crafted lead balls out of thin air because the player doesn't actually know anything about muskets apart from what they look like and how to load them
>gave it a crossbows stats and called it a day
He seemed happy. I didn't end up have anyone react to it like a completely new, powerful technology like a regular human being would have because then that would be me putting more thought into his shitty snowflake OC garbage than he did

my pronouns are wiz/wizar/wizself

>dieselpunk kung-fu spelljammer

Turns out the effectiveness of guns falls dramatically if you can just reconcile with cosmos, find your inner peace and whap bullets away in mid-air.

Interesting.

As you see here in my VERY raw idea of a setting the Orcs are similiary driven by overpopulation. I am unsure about the technological frame of my setting. I had the vague idea of middle to late 18 century tech or even Napoleonic one. I am just not sure.

Your setting sounds interesting what would you suggest.

In the latest season of my nationbuilder campaign, the players have created a pike and shot era setting. Last time I tried to make a post dark age tech level, but the players wanted generic fantasy so that's what we did. This time they almost immediately turned into European colonizers with pike, shot, huge cities, and native genocide.

It all started in nation creation when the Kasrathi Legions decided to be not!Charr with guns, cannons, flamethrowers, rockets, explosive arrows, magic engines, pikemen, great-weapons, and serial deicide. Osterland basically made The Empire from Warhammer fantasy but with boats and trading, so they got pikes, guns, and cannons. The Marche Kingdoms originally formed a marche between the civilized world and hordes of werewolves that live on the Heath to the west, so they went with a bizarre amalgamation of Scottish/Hussite/Bretton/Jewish culture and weapons including guns, pikes, great-weapons, and war wagons.

What's the world like? There are 17 players and dozens of NPCs. It's constant mass chaos. This map is just the "Old World", the file of the whole world is too big to upload here. Magic is common, but many nations are building "modernized" armies with pikes and guns. Gunpowder requires semi-rare resources so Coalitions form to share the important resources and stop others from getting them.

The idea behind gunpowder's development seems to be that the nations which were not magically inclined advanced technologically instead of magically. They played to their strong suit. The Grand Bazaar has the magic of Genies, Tylwyth Teg the power of fey magic, and Ealunyth the old wisdom of elves blessed with the magic of gods, but others do not have such magical power so they turned to technology. The Kasrathi hate the gods and are so resistant to magic that they cannot cast normally. Osterland is a nation of humans with no magical backing and a god who grants boons of fortune and protection rather than magical power so they turned to the gun to defend their interests. The Marche faced a host of werewolves and found that only silvered pikes could hold back the tide. Slowly though, everyone is now taking up the pike as the weapon of modern war. The cities are getting larger, the colonies wealthier, the alliances bigger, and the battles bloodier.

The border gore is also disgusting.

There were two tribes among many:

-Oayas were pyromancers. They worshipped the zebra-goddess Nuami and practiced their mix of supernatural fighting and ritual dance near volcanos.*

-Khayas were wandering blacksmiths, the ones which "knew how to make swords out of the earth". Their totem-god was Kahomi, the Termite, for the mud of termite hives were the greatest secret of their furnaces.

The prophetess Amanirena Thákame united them, created gunpowder and firearms from their combined traditions and crafts, then conquered the rest of the tribes. Both tribal deities fused into a goddess of earth, fire, life and volcanos, Kahonua. How could one argue against union when its results could bring down walls, bring invisible death from afar, scare men and animals?

Meanwhile, the Volcano Goddess, whose domain is fire, earth and life, burned down the other gods. Their fragments are understood to be the origin of many ghosts. Some said the orcoids were maggots of their corpses which ate their hate and divine power.

The whole land became twelve principates governed by a holy city inside a volcanic caldera. To become a legitimate ruler, each prince or princess** has to ride a giant fire serpent, divine beasts whose first appeared when the goddess blessed the prophetess into becoming one.

When one prince dies, the fire serpent sheds its corindon scales. The next ruler must cover his body with the powdered scales to become immune to heat and fire and thus ride the serpent. Where the serpent crawls, terracota trails are formed.

Pyromancers are as much mages as they are priests of the goddess. One particularly important function is to arbitrate Amani, the tradition of war which keeps the peace. This consists of ritual duels between tribes having disputes or vendettas. A couple dozen of musketeers shoot at each other until one side desists or enough bloodshed is done. Undue viciouness is punished through the ignition of the ofenders' gunpowder. Very few deaths actually happen during a duel. They developed line infantry tactics from these events.

The day-to-day administration of a principate relies on the prince or princess' harem. In at least one principate, the standing army as well. This elite is trusted with composite cannons, repeater muskets, rifling and fire nails.

*Think capoeira/engolo mixed with fire-bending.

**As the true and eternal "queen" is the goddess herself.

Setting isn't strictly Veeky Forums related but I guess I might as well bump. Fantasy guns are cool.
>roughly late 19th century tech
>main setting is basically turn of the century American western, set out in a massive desert on the edge of proper civilization
>occasionally the odd dieslepunk contraption, but no one knows where they come from. They pop up from time to time in the wastes
>range from motor vehicles to weapons to counting machines, all produced and configured in ways that are wildly impractical to replicate, often oddly inefficient but they still beat the hell out of a standard horse. Think something you might find in Trigun but even more beat to shit.
>a massive blue rift sits on the western horizon, bright enough to be seen even at the height of the day
>Every seven years, the dead rise up out of the ground as semi-sapient skeletal husks.
>congregate in large herds, travelling west. Often heard singing old hymns and folk songs
>protected and directed by troupes of fully-sapient undead cowboys, known colloquially as Shepards
>crazy good marksmen, can tell if you're lying by maintaining eye contact, generally unsavory individuals
>a lot of them have odd trick weaponry; pepperbox rifles and pistols which also double as volley guns, ridiculously large-caliber holdout weapons, Bowie knife pistols, gravity pistols (pistols which use gravity to feed their ammo, not guns that shoot/alter gravity). More traditional firearms abound as well, Shepards are just more likely to be eccentric.
>Shepards are on good term with the Shakers, a local not!Baptist religion which believes the Shepards escort believers to Heaven. Shakers espouse the virtues of living off the land, self-sufficiency, and respect for the animals of Jordan, their god.
>Crusaders from the Twister faith, based in a city far to the east, have been hunting Shepards, convinced they are leading the undeserving dead to Hell.

WFRP

Dwarven alchemists developed basic gunpowder painstakingly slowly, and it mostly saw use as a mining explosive - for use in war they developed bombs which could be thrown, or preferably launched, and petards for anti-fortification attacks (some holds also rigged tunnels to collapse with explosives. Still, it wasn't commonly used except in really dire wars, and dwarven tradition and conservatism regarding anything new meant development was very slow.

It was during one dwarven war between two holds that a particularly cunning goblin chief saw dwarf powder in action breaching a wall, and he knew that he had to acquire this weapon. A few months later he had managed to ambush a team of dwarven siege engineers and take their powder.
He then set his best craftsgoblins working on the problem of replicating it. Even with accomplished smellers on the case identifying the ingredients, goblin attempts at powder were very hit and miss, but they narrowed it down - cunning, inventive, and heedless of casualties, they managed to produce a pretty variable but consistently highly energetic blend and set about creating weapons with it.

Again, this process was never without casualties, but it was one of these failures that led to the next big innovation - when one weaponsmith's workshop exploded and sent jagged metal flying through the air, scything down dozens of nearby goblins it inspired the chief that survived to develop nail bombs, land mines and booby traps. Some basic cannon were attempted, but goblin metallurgy wasn't really up to the task.
One common trap whose adoption proved critical was effectively hollowing out a giant primitive shotgun into the stone of the wall facing a cave mouth - anyone who tripped the wire would be shredded in a blast of flame and metal.

A kingdom of humans found these defensive measures when they attempted to wipe a tribe of goblins from their caves - even knowing of goblin cunning, many men were lost to these static pseudo-cannon before an installation was taken intact. Human adoption and refinement of these weapons was relatively swift, and the development of cannons came soon after. While lacking goblins' keen sense of smell, the humans were far more able to reproduce powder mixes consistently and explosives became codified as part of the human arsenal. Handgonnes were developed as cannon technology improved

This development came full circle when one human lord enlisted the assistance of some dwarven artisans in improving his cannon - dwarves being well-known for their skill with metal. Fairly insular outside their race, the dwarven kingdoms and holds hadn't seen much of the adoption of gunpowder in the other races. Once they learned a bit more, news and ideas spread back to dwarven lands. It still took a while, and many of the first dwarven firearms came from collaboration with humans, but eventually they saw fairly widespread adoption. It should be noted that, living in reasonable proximity, trade, banditry and mercenary factors saw the spread of improved firearms expanded at this point - seeing goblins with crude guns wasn't exactly unusual, for example (but they'd be more likely to blow up)

>Twisters are not!Catholics, espousing much the same faith as the Shakers but with emphasis on a large, organized community, the importance of civilization, and strict hierarchy within the faith
>tramp around in heavy, bullet resistant armor, earning the nickname 'kettle heads' for their distinct greathelms which they don before riding into battle.
>armed with special ammunition which melts into the bones of Shepards, often taking the form of buckshot or large slugs dipped in holy water and blessed by Jebidiah the Traitor Saint, a rogue Shepard helping the Twisters in their hunt.

Still working on the finer details of the setting, like particular religious practices for the Twisters and how they get along with normal folk when they aren't being run out of town for shooting at great-great-great-grandpappy.

That sounds cool as fuck, user. Would play.

That doesn't work bub

This setting is fucking radical.
Godspeed user. Sounds amazing so far.

Firearms technology maxes out at the early-mid 16th century. The most advanced things in-setting are rare, highly expensive wheellocks. The snaplock has yet to be invented, but it's probably only a matter of time. Matchlock arquebuses are still the mainstay of armies that aren't still using handgonnes and crossbows.

The elves prefer pistols to longarms, as pistols are classier

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