Why don't people want guns in their fantasy settings when more often than not they're running some sort of 13th century...

Why don't people want guns in their fantasy settings when more often than not they're running some sort of 13th century analogue?

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Because 99% of the time those people are playing DnD and when retards try to implements guns, they balance them like retards.

Basically this . They're either uber death rays that can destroy matter on impact, or shitty crossbows, most games don't handle it well.

Well, for most of human history they were shitty crossbows that had a profound psychological effect on non-professional warriors.

I mean, you don't even have to aim a gun at the goblin or the giant spider, as soon as the shot has fired, they're fucking bailing for the shadows.

I think symbolism plays a role.
Guns symbolise modern warfare, for some reason.

Well it's a dumb reason, since the Chinese were shooting each other with gunpowder when the jews were still busy being chopped up by Roman soldiers.

Guns are pretty much the only weapons still in use today. Almost no one carries a sword or a dagger anymore, same for bows. The only thing you'll find are knives.
Due to this they are associated with modern times where they reign supreme. In a fantasy setting, they do not fit. It's another world, we want it to be different. In general, guns are also boring if you're not a gun nerd, and these people generally freak me out a lot too.
Do it if you really must, but I don't want it in my games.

...

>he dosent Run magic powered lasguns
Pitty thy

>magic powered
Not magic powered, but they're top of the line alchemy.

>but they're top of the line alchemy.
I do this for muh setting where gnomes, needing a way to even the odds, have had guns around for a while and have been selling them but they use a kind of explosive rune to propel the ball so that it dies to an anti-magic field to give a reason why
A)you can't just give every tom, dick, and harry one and go to war
B)how wizards can still compete
Goblins are trying to make magicless guns just to spite the stunty knife-ears but are some ways away.

So in other words first level magic?

>I don't want guns in my game because I don't understand history

Because swords, spears, and bows are cool in the sense that they hit that sweet spot where physicality is important, but not TOO important.

With guns, being fit is great and important, but this is not really conveyed well. A stronger person might have a larger gun, but it's not like the bullets are going to hit someone harder if you happen to be stronger. It often can even strike people as unfair, especially if you watch things like the end of the Last Samurai and you watch great warriors get cut down by gatling fire from people who've been trained in something like a couple months' time. Still, you can argue the same thing would have happened with enough longbows/crossbows, but that might be why it's somewhat rare to see heroes that use those weapons who don't happen to be guerilla fighters going against impossible odds.

At the same time, it's not like it is in unarmed fighting, where physicality often ends up being the end-all-be-all. Though sufficient skill can allow a smaller person to beat a larger person, it's an important gap, which is why sports like boxing and wrestling have weight classes in order to make fights competitive but fencing and HEMA don't (though, admittedly, some HEMA dagger competitions do use weight classes).

So, people like swords, spears, axes, and bows. They seem "fair", because it's not just skill that matters, and it's not just physicality that matters, but that right blend of just the right amount of both.

And, guns threaten the importance of those weapons. So, people like to leave guns out.

I get to cherry pick the bits of history I want in my fantasy setting.

Magic + technology leads to a slippery slope of ever creeping power until you have something like WoW is now with teleporters, space ships, and lasers.

I like the guns from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Unless you're a fighter with great Dex who likely spent every penny getting cutting-edge tech for his gun, you're not shooting it more than once per fight, and it's likely it will misfire. But that shot will ignore some AC and force the other side to make a morale check, and there's nothing stopping you from carrying a bunch of loaded pistols.

Nigger have you ever watched Last of the Mohicans? They had muskets and when they fired they used them like clubs.

Guns are not the problem. Gunpowder is.

I have literally never, not fucking once, had gunpowder or something analogous to Gunpoweder in a setting that didn't IMMEDIATELY fucking turn into my players treating every encounter they had more than 5 minutes of time to prepare for into Guy Fawkes Day.

Evil King? Buy or steal a shitton of gunpowder, explode his castle.

Invading orc army? Bury casks of gunpowder in the mountains and the forests, explode them with fire magic and run away laughing.

Hostage situation? Wagon full of gunpowder carried into the building by summoned monsters, with a lit fuse. We don't negotiate with dwarves.

We are being ambushed in the middle of the night by giant spiders? How much gunpowder do we have?

Any time you try to restrict their access to Gunpowder or otherwise prevent it from invalidating whole fights, prepare for an hour and a half of bitching before the game can continue.

Four different groups across 15 years. Same thing every time.

I have officially given up on having flintlock weapons in my fantasy games.

I just have them be human inventions because I can't stand gnomes in fantasy settings and really can't stand them being the "tech" race

Because it's not like you can just put limits on what magic can do or how quickly technology developes within the scope of a campaign.
I don't even see what's wrong with that beyond WoW's shitty aesthetic honestly.

How did they get rich enough to buy gunpowder by the barrel for every single of their plans? How did that not raise the suspicion of the local authorities?

If they can do it why didn't everyone else do it as well?

If they don't have money for gunpowder, the plan becomes either 'steal gunpowder' or 'raise money for gunpowder, and gunpowder only'.

They won't buy anything but the bare essentials of new equipment, relying on treasure they find along the way, because gold goes almost exclusively into healing items and gunpowder plans.

Which, as you can imagine, fucks with my ability to plan encounters because the level 10 Barbarian is still swinging a +1 shortsword he found up a dire rat's ass 6 levels ago, because buying a level appropriate weapon would mean NOT buying another 5 kegs of explosion powder.

I wish I was joking.

Gunpowder is fucking heroin for my players. The only way to keep them off it is to make sure they never have it in the first place.

That sounds suspiciously like an excuse to not let your players buy unreasonable amounts of gunpowder.

[autistic arguing and whiny dealmaking increases]

>We are being ambushed in the middle of the night by giant spiders? How much gunpowder do we have?
How the fuck do you even get that set up in time?
Have your players just never encountered an enemy that was immune/resistant to fire? No rogues with evasion. No anything with Resist energy?

From hearing about various expereinces in GM I figure one of the many things I will attempt to do is make sure that anything the PCs can do NPCs can as well. They are not and will never be the only group with the big guns in any setting.

They're brought for questioning as for what they've needed all that fucking gunpowder for, and later it turns out that was the result of the armies/guilds/nobles/mercenary companies they've stolen from pulling strings to go down on their asses

because they are loud and give people fear-erections

That doesn't need guns really. The problem exists in any setting where magic is basically another form of technology. Most D&D settings for example. Also the bigger problem IMO is the fact that these settings try to maintain medieval stasis despite the fact that wizards could start industrial revolution with magic laser shooting golems at any time. In fact settings like Eberron and WoW are more logical Forgotten Realms where you basically have potential for same technology, but for some reason it's medieval stasis forever aside some ancient high tech ruins.

>being freaked out by people who like guns
Let me guess--Los Angeles or New York.

Also, I have to add that best kind of fantasy is fantasy where technology is incompatible with magic (Arcanum) or magic is actually technology (tons of dying earth settings, arguably this is sci-fi though).

So are you a woman or a "male" with a single mother?

Honestly, I'd be worried too given half the shit /k/ gets into.

To be honest that's relatively sane and normal compared to stuff I have seen here on Veeky Forums.

See, but they didn't use a gun for that. Just cock. Can't beat the cock, user. Not the cock.

>Guns are pretty much the only weapons still in use today. Almost no one carries a sword or a dagger anymore, same for bows.
Quite a few people carry tasers, switchblades and other knives, even telescopic batons, be it when looking for rumble or for self defense EDC short blades are quite common too, and while not really fit for combat they still technically can cut someone.

The gun is good!

I don't know why I would be thinking this, but it could be because they want to run some sort of 13th century analogue that doesn't have guns in it.

>Even imagining guns is frightening.
The modern left everyone.

Because it's not about history, it's about feel. It's about how the game feels, and because of our stories and myths and whatnot, guns do not feel like high fantasy.

I love powder fantasy you generalizing cunt.

Well guns sort of signalled the end of heavy cavalry knights which were the staple of the era.

Because not a lot of people care about the historical basis of their sword and sorcery fantasy roleplay

Shocking, I know

I homebrewed a flamethrower analogue into my setting. They work a lot like the old WWI models in that they had large, exposed tanks worn on the back. An errant spell that can make the metal corrode will spell bad news for the user because it contains pressurized necrosis.

Think The Blob but weaponized.

This is what a historically authentic royal monopoly on powder is for. How the fuck do you think real nobles kept their levies from turning their guns the wrong way?

Absolute control over the powder and its associated taxes.

Your entire party's greatest enemy is a single errant torch.

Because more often than not the people that want guns in their 13th century analogue fantasy don't have the slightest fucking clue what a 13th century gun looks like, and those that do think they look stupid.

Now if you want a 15th century analogue, ok. But in the 12th or 13th? Haha, no thanks.

My game is set in 970CE Bavaria. Guns would be an absurd anachronism.

GURPS lists guns in its Low-Tech supplement. They're a pain to reload, though, and depending on your model water will stop 'em from functioning.

>Think The Blob but weaponized.

That's neither how flamethrowers or blobs work. Weaponized "The Blob" would be a Weird Tank filled with some sort of ooze like Black Pudding.

Aren't most of them 14th century? I don't think there are many setting where there isn't full plate armour.

If you don't paint your plate armour in flashy colours, you are doing wrong!

Most medieval fantasy isn't really an analogue to middle ages, or even renaissance for that matter. Ways of thinking, economies, governments, they relate more to modern eras.

The resemblances are mostly aesthetic, so any significant aesthetical change will have a profund impact.

Guns invite mechanical complexity and attract a secondary layer of fussy pedants (above and beyond the fussy pedants attracted by archaic arms and armor).

most settings are actually cherry picked shit from 8th-18th.

>fantasy campaign
>plays a gunslinger

>scifi campaign
>plays a mage

why?

??

Because of bad systems that don't incorporate it properly, and the assumption that if you add a gun to a medieval setting, they're immediately overpowered and armor is now useless.

Thank you

Flintlocks are fine. All the guns up to about the 1650s are fine. but revolvers and better can fuck right off.

>it doesn't feel like what i've been forcefed since birth about fantasy

They can't into history.

>when more often than not they're running some sort of 13th century analogue?

And neither can you.

There is modern guns and riffles in my fantasy setting, fight me.

Because this.

You make a very good point, but the same thing could happen with a bow and arrow or a throwing knife, right?

Firearms define a certain level of cultural sophistication that basically requires you to play your character in a certain way depending on the setting, especially if it's a 13th century analogy.

It makes sense for an intelligent and learned criminal to have access to firearms, not dumbfuck McGee.

Clubs are still fairly ubiquitous in security forces. Shock batons are basically lightweight maces.

>9th century
>Roman soldiers still being a thing

Were they made by dwarves?

This is a silly, silly film.

First it normally is a 14th century analogue due to plate. Second guns were very damn crude at the time. The only people who commonly used them were gate guards and the reason why they used them is because early ones were cheap. They were a poor mans crossbow. By the ~1390s they got some minor improvements like the start of a shaped stock.

Guns would only really take off during the Hussite wars in the 1420s. Basically the only weapon suppler the Hussite had were gunsmiths and their leaders worked out tactics to better use them. After winning a few early battles the Gunsmiths of Prague started to work on new weapons to keep the hussites winning. The arquebus was invented around 1421-1424 and the very first pistol around 1423-1424. But of those were far cruder at the time then what most of you are thinking of right now. Can't not find a clip of it right now but the Maria the Virgin Witch shows what arquebus looked like at the time.

Aways those things were very costly and rare outside of Hungary and Bohemia till the after the Crusade of Varna was over in 1444. At that point everyone and their brother were investing in new firearms and changing up their battle tactics.Matchlock firearms became at thing during the Crusade of Varna. The medieval style of warfare basically died at that point. Cannons had being making far bigger waves then guns over this whole period. start watching at 17.54...

youtube.com/watch?v=EaY7bJoOGts

Nine years of after the end of the Crusade of Varna the Ottomans take Constantinople and a of people feel the Medieval period ends right there.

Leaving the History lesson behind the reason why don't people want guns in their fantasy settings is because the guns people are thinking of are almost wholly post medieval and GM not do not want to deal with cannons.

Plus most of the rules for guns are just bad.

>Guns symbolise modern warfare, for some reason.

Ottoman Janissaries are looked at in some circles as being the first (well first post classical away) modern professional fighting force. The title of second modern professional fighting is given to the Black Army of Hungary, founded in 1458.They are also the first large standing army to make major, systematic use of firearms. The Black Army of Hungary was the second. Janissaries were key to the conquest of Constantinople which ended the Medieval period and started the early modern period...

You can see were I am going which this, right?

Because they weren't in LotR.

Ditto. I've got up to 19th century bolt-action rifles in my game alongside things like wands and longswords. But that still doesn't stop the Protection from Missles spell the wizard keeps casting.

LOTR isn't a 13th century analogy.

I don't allow Magical Realm shit in my games, and some of the people here are CLEARLY popping boners at the smell of gunpowder.

So in Veeky Forums's opinion, what are the best stats for guns you've seen?

This has one of the most realistic portrayal of medieval armor/weapons/fighting techniques in fiction, witches aside, odly enough. It takes place during the 100 year's war.

youtu.be/_tFOJFyTl1U

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Standard 9mm shouldn't be anything more than a heavy crossbow.

It might actually, as bolts are not as deadly as bullets (mainly because less bleeding when you are hit with a bolt or an arrow)

Pre-modern bullets are not nearly as fast. They tend to have bigger caliber, tough.

That would be damage type. I'm talking about penetration and straight damage.

Crossbows achieve their penetration via the weight of the haft being forced into the tip upon impact. The speed of the bolt helps with this.

>Why don't people want guns in their fantasy settings when more often than not they're running some sort of 13th century analogue?

>13th century guns

Uh....I mean you could put them in but besides cannons, they'd kind of be a minor novelty compared to a lot of magic systems.

Also, less people these days are familiar with the effects of swords, clubs, maces, spears and the like. Think on why characters in children's TV tend to have way, way more laser guns and swords than bullet-guns and knives; kids might actually handle the second set of items.

Advanced firearms also have the Fun element of being basically impossible to counter. Martial arts, spears, swords, pikes, etc. there's always a fencing manual or something out there that gives you a tactic or technique to fight against them. Even arrows and slings can be somewhat mitigated with shields & certain types of armor.

Advanced gunpowder firearms smash right through 'bulletproof' vests and plate armor. They move so fast that you'll often be dead before you hear the shot much less have time to process the sound. They can kill you from over a mile away or close enough that you can see the rifling in the barrel.

Also, gameplay. When have you ever seen a D&D player (or any player) willingly decide "well this weapon is slower, louder, heavier, less accurate and weaker than the alternative but I'll use it!" Early firearms are about as pointless as the 5e sickle rules, and later firearms are just so much better than their competitors that everything else becomes essentially useless.


tl;dr: Realistic firearms are either too shit to be worth using or so effective that not using them is a handicap.

> useless.
There are ways to defeat firearms completely depending on the setting.

Because they're actually poorly emulating fiction that itself took place in a fantastical post-Roman/Early Middle Ages setting.

I'd kill for more Renaissance fantasy.

Early firearms are not that much less accurate than crossbows or bows depending on the difference between the diameter of the bullet and the diameter of the barrel. It's a tradeoff between accuracy and rate of fire. It turned out that rate of fire matters more for everything but sharpshooter. The ranges are also similar because archers rarely shoot their arrows at max range to preserve ammo and do more casualties per volley.

I'm sure that a magical anti-bullet ward would work just fine, but I've never been a fan of the 'magic that nullifies technology but only certain types of technology based on the time period it became widespread' trope.

That's fair but the statements were re. PCs rather than soldiers. In my 5e campaigns I've basically never seen someone opt for a heavy crossbow over a longbow, simply because of the Loading property.

How about if I was holding a thermal detonator.

That's the fault of the designers for not introducing a heavy tax for longbows. You need a lifetime of training for usimg a longbow. Then again, longbows are far from being the biggest balancing problem with wizards around.

Arent guns in Pathfinder better in the hands of a caster due the no penalty for applying spells to bullets?

The first shot might be accurate but the second will be shot from inside a cloud of smoke. There's so much shit involved in actually implementing firearms even if you could handle them in a balanced way they'd just feel like a refluffed heavy crossbow anyway.

Not really more skill-based-training than regular bows but they were stupidly heavy draw weight for actually poking through armor. Massive arrows and stuff. I would say that if your PCs are into the superhuman levels it's not an issue but then you get shit like Mighty in older systems which doubles down on that.

>They'd just feel like a refluffed heavy crossbow anyway.

That's fine. It's not like combat isnt an abstraction anyway beyond "I stab him with my blade". On the other hand, fantasy usually have crazy alchemy and spells that could either accelerate gunpowder advance or bring im things like enchanted bullets that release spells upon impact.

Part of that is do to the fact that RPGs rarely want to factor in the type of downsides that early firearms had. Everyone knows that 18th century muskets 'could get 5 shots a minute", however they rarely know what had to be done to get that rare of fire. The British Army used loose fitting sub-cablier ammo to get that rate of fire and trade off a lot of accuracy. Most other armies did not do that as so got a rate of fire of about 4 per minute. The hunting loads that people use to be-bunk the myth that muskets had bad accuracy only get about 3 rounds per minute.

Most 16th & 17th century firearms, when using the reloads aides they had at the time, fire even slower then that. Early 16th century arquebus had a reload time of about 41 seconds and late 16th century arquebus had reload time of about 32 seconds. In D&D that means 5 rounds of full round actions.

Also if you are in a decent rain or in heavy winds the matchlocks just fail most of the time. Water getting into the fire pan or wind blows the powder out of the fire pan. Most people do not know just how much of upgrade a flintlock is over a matchlock. The frizzen helps a decent amount with both the issue of heavy winds and rains. Melee armed foot soldiers were a thing during the period of matchlocks and stopped being a thing in Europe short after flintlock entered common use.

Even then the 16th+ century firearms are hot shit compared to earlier styles. Even later cap & ball pistols weren't combat-reloadable even with a better ignition mechanism. I do think a lot of settings could manage something along the lines of alchemists-fire-percussion-cap hybrid tech which could be fun.

>Melee armed foot soldiers were a thing during the period of matchlocks and stopped being a thing in Europe short after flintlock entered common use.

Nah. That was not because of the invention of the flintlock but of a much humbler and later invention made melee infantry like pikemen completely redundant: The humble bayonet.

To scrubs, sure

That is a theory that is on ranter loose ground these days. The think is that some historians though that plug bayonets became a thing in 1671 or shortly before, or at lest were not in common before that because it is the date of the first record of a European unit being issue with bayonets. If that is true that is does fit very with the time table of melee armed foot soldiers failing out of uses.

The issue is that plug bayonets in Europe have been found to predate that by a good deal and Chinese plug bayonets predate that by over 70 years. In China early bayonets did not displace melee armed foot soldiers at all.

However 1670 is around the time a lot of European armies finish refitting to flintlocks and is when melee armed foot soldiers fell out of use. I think there may be a stronger correlation there.

Having said that the bayonet theory is still reasonable. It would just change to military thinks of the day finally putting their faith in a technology that fits a needed role well after the technology became a thing. Not the first time that has happened.

Probably the switch away from square formations to line ones due more nimble and accurate field artillery influenced.

Fair point.

>Even then the 16th+ century firearms are hot shit compared to earlier styles. Even later cap & ball pistols weren't combat-reloadable even with a better ignition mechanism.

Handgonnes had a rate of fire of about 8 per minute. Firearms only ended up having a shit reload in order to give them the power to punch thru plate past 30 feet. Not to say your wrong, but there is a big "why" in the matter.

>I do think a lot of settings could manage something along the lines of alchemists-fire-percussion-cap hybrid tech which could be fun.

Iron kingdoms is nice for having that. Their rules could use some work however.