Why is having firearms in medieval fantasy such a controversial topic...

People are idiots who don't realize there were hundreds of years where guns and melee weapons stood side by side

Why did 20th century western powers back the orcs against the elves? Did Sauron's boys win WWII or something?

Most people have no grasp of history or progression. We live in, arguably, a time that's seen the most dramatic advancements in technology in the shortest period of time. The internet's gone from being something only a handful of people knew about and could access to something so ubiquitous that some people consider internet access a basic human right in our lifetimes. We've seen technologies made obsolete practically overnight ourselves and it's not difficult to take that for granted and apply it to the anachronism stew that is fantasy worlds where you have hoplites fighting against mounted knights in full plate fighting against wizards fighting against vikings fight against dragons.

Dwarves control the governments

fucking dwarves. Damn their gold-mongering and mud golems.

>I have never studied early modern military history

Cannons getting SMALLER was one of the most important steps in their becoming the king of the battlefield, size doesn't matter if you don't have proper ballistics, high tolerances on materials, and the ability to get it where it needs to go.

That is the face of a pure-blooded man.

Where did the "cannons started small and got bigger" meme come from anyway?

Tolkien, having seen WWI & numerous damages brought by industrialization, didn't have guns (though still had gunpowder & dynamite) & many copied.

Others who don't copy likely didn't read history &/or aren't creative. Warhammer & even Warcraft have guns & artillery fit in just fine.

>Gangsta style flintlock grip

Can confirm. Even in history, guys like Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden decided smaller & many > big & few.
If I remember right, either China or Europe got cannons & made them into guns & the other one did reverse.

Because most people think of the Middle Ages as this atemporal period where not much ever happens, no new inventions appears, people wear armors and weapons that belong to the very end of it, late Middle Ages, etc.

Middle Earth, at least during the Hobbit/LOTR era was firmly based on the Dark Ages both in terms of tech and taking many cues from period heroic poetry such as Beowulf. Tolkien being a Prof specialising in Anglo-Saxon literature. Guns would not be suitable for the timeframe and feel he was going for, it's not like other fantasy works with settings that ignore firearms despite having many techs that came much later (full articulated plate being the big one of course).

>smaller & many > big & few.
I'm sure your mother would agree.

>born weak, was to be shunted off into the clergy
>Fuck that I'm going to be in the military
>You mom's accused of witchcraft so the French don't want you
>Join up with the Habsburgs instead.
>Defeat Ottomans despite being outnumbered
>Have a long, illustrious career as a widely respected general and statesman, kicking the shit out of the French until retirement
>Oh no he made fun of my facial structure how will I deal with this

Adolfus.
But its not like Big guns were totally removed. But the overall average size and got shrunk with the bigger guns relegated to siege duty or as ship ordnance. At the beginning Swede King used his smaller guns as a mobile fire support while his big guns bombarded from the back and in time the smaller ones became the standard as warfare became more mobile nad infantry blocks became thinner infantry lines, making big balls impractical in the battlefield.

>tfw Caracole was a non-stop medieval drive-by

These threads are worse than crack, just can't have enough of them.

>fucking dwarves.
Right?
>Damn their gold-mongering
Greedy bastards
>and mud golems.
oh... pic related

>tfw people still take the Draper-White thesis seriously

I get it. Guns like your image appearing were out of medieval times and more early modern, though that very much depends on the disputed definition of medieval.

It also just doesn't fit thematically, medieval fantasy plays more on the heroic image of the knight and soldiery or the inverse of it. Guns just don't fit in that image.

>It's well known that firearms existed in medieval times
only in the late medieval era

Nah, the dwarves are just puppets of the gnomes.

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A lot of fantasy staples are late medieval doe. Some are even renaissance and Victoria, I think.

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High medieval user high. Big gunpowder weapons in Europe started to appear during the latter years of the 1200's.

Not overnight but their potential was quite quickly realised. At the start of English Civil War an average pike-and-shotte unit was about 1/3 firearms to 2/3's pikemen, by the end of the war those ratios had reversed and units made up entirely of shooters began to emerge. This is all pre-musket and over the course of about 10 years.

See above. If you exclude firearms like the handgonne and actually realise that from the mid 1600's to early 1700's melee combat was largely a thing of the past your 'hundreds of years' isn't actually that long at all. But muh bayonet charges, they were a lot rarer than you'd imagine, the intention was that a charge would break the enemy so you didn't have to actually fight them, charges were unpopular among soldiers. You can post pictures of backwards Poles all you like guns trumped swords after the firelock emerged, if not the snaplock.

It was a shit tactic.

>mid 1600's to early 1700's
Firearms predate that by hundreds of years. Chinese people had them.

>if you exclude firearms like the handgonne
Then your arguement is already in the shitter. Arquebus and Muskets already appeared in large numbers during the start of the Renaissance. The majority of the Melee is done by the cavalry in huge numbers.

>early 1700's
>melee combat was largely a thing of the past
CarolusRexLaughing.jpg

Worth noting that no suit of plate armor is ever mentioned in LotR. It's chain and scale all the way through.

The amount of straight up fucking fash in this thread...

This is fucking Lindybeige-tier shit

They get mentioned when Dol Amroth turns up?

Because the same people who try to have their character invent guns will try to have their character invent better guns.
In my experience, they also often can't stand the idea that guns aren't an instant win button.

Because cold weapons can be magic, effective, and still keep the "one special guy fighting against the odds" aesthetic that fantasy
When you have guns, all that shit changes.
Suddenly peasants kill knights, numbers > skill. Better, magical guns only makes this worse
Fantasy is ultimately solo/squad based combat.
Guns are all about mass combat
It's not surprising they don't mesh well together

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Single reference to a vambrace only, which does not really imply suits of plate. 99% of the time it's maille with mentions of scale you can count on one hand.

Honest question, what does "Fash" mean in this instance?

"Medieval Times" covers a wide era. During some of this time, some form of gunpowder weapons were in use. You picture isn't remotely Medieval, however, and looks to be from the 1700's.

I'm pretty sure Tolkien mentions "Full Harness" at one point as well.

But you are right, there isn't plate near the same level as the movies make one think.

The earliest musket and arquebus style firearms were owned almost exclusively by kings and wealthy noblemen. I excluded the handgonne because it was the earliest, most primitive and most common (despite still being used in very, very small numbers). Your only partially even right about cavalry, cavalry charges were also fairly rare, most cavalry harassed and skirmished, cavalry was a morale weapon more than a melee one. Plus if cavalry make up the majority of the melee then doesn't that weaken If you are trying to tell me common people had access to muskets from 1399 you might want to reassess your argument.

With some exclusions of course, if only the swedes weren't unique in their way of warfare and if only they didn't you know, lose.

You haven't read what I have written. Besides, the Chinese barely moved past firelocks, they were still being used in the 19th century.

>It also just doesn't fit thematically, medieval fantasy plays more on the heroic image of the knight and soldiery or the inverse of it. Guns just don't fit in that image.

Musketeers would like a word with you.
Also gunslinger cowboys, which, in american mythology, are basically the equivalent of the knights.

I've read what you've written & you chose a very narrow period compared to the history of firearms. Cherrypicking to an extreme.

>With some exclusions of course, if only the swedes weren't unique in their way of warfare and if only they didn't you know, lose.
In all honesty, the Swedish tactics won most battles. They lost because they didn't have the population to suffer the casualty rates.

I don't know what part of the country YOU'RE from, but cowboy gunslingers aren't seen as anything like knights.

Adoption of firearms even within specific tactical roles waxed and waned between major European wars. The English civil war, used as your test case, saw the virtual end of the "pistolier" cavalrymen and the caracole, with swords once again serving as the primary arm of the horseman. In the Napoleonic war, the French fielded lancers, who worked well at countering Coalition cavalry. Cavalry charges into close quarters were used succesfully all the way into World War II against infantry targets, though they were uncommon at that point, and in the Victorian era they were extremely common. Winston Churchill's account of the River War includes a cavalry charge he participated in which employed mixed weaponry, most using a sword, and him, due to his injured shoulder, using a revolver.

Plus, in those 2/3 musket pike and shot formations, the typical musketeer was still armed with a thrusting sword for close quarters, with the alternative being the use of his matchlock as a club.

Because fantasy isn't based on medieval europe, it's based on mythical medieval europe.

Not that user but they're just as overly romanticized.

And that would mean clueless historyfags like you which don't understand the roots of fantasy.

That can also refer to a complete suit of maille or any full coverage armor, and was a fairly common usage with historians/translated period sources in the early 20th century. Considering the context, I think we can be fairly sure there was not just one dude in all of Arda running around in Milanese harness.

Picture a Norman, Anglo-Saxon or Vendel and you have a good idea of what the Free Peoples looked like.

>Winston Churchill's account of the River War includes a cavalry charge he participated in
I read that Churchill exaggerated his military experience. Officers present in his units said he basically showed up to get a feather on his cap and left before any real action.

What was Richard Boone's character from Have Gun-Will Travel called again?

Yeah, when I picture any form of plate for LotR it is at most Crusader Armour.

And yes, more like the Normans and Anglo-Saxons (given LotR is meant to be like an Anglo-Saxon poem). Not the plate of the movies.

>arquebus style firearms were owned almost exclusively by kings and wealthy noblemen
At first but at the onset of the italian wars firearm personal owners are already hiring themselves as mercenaries from north africa to the Baltics. They were already cheaper than a high tension crossbow at the time. Even then it the battlefield saw mixed deployment of such weaponry from the most advanced wheellock to "primative" Handgonnes.
>Your only partially even right about cavalry, cavalry charges were also fairly rare, most cavalry harassed and skirmished, cavalry was a morale weapon more than a melee one
You are talking about light cavalry. Even as firearm technology progressed cavalry started to drop firearms and reverted back to swords and lances, as nations and generals realized the cavalry charge is still more effective at breaking formations.
Even the Dragoons of major European armies by the start of the Napoleonic era went back to being sabre armed light cavalry dropping the carbine altogether.
>If you are trying to tell me common people had access to muskets from 1399
Not common people but the common soldiery and by the 1400's with the rise of the middle class it became more available. Might wanna retract your entire point completely.

Texas, the midwest rural southwest and if you include the boys in grey most of the old south.

Ha you almost had me with that trick question. Its the man with no name

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You stink

The closest thing to a reasonable excuse I've ever heard is that guns are a pain in the ass to balance vs magic and bows due to the lethality and ease of use. Or that the rules behind them are pointlessly complex and frustrating to abide by.

Everything else is the same old Veeky Forums grognard bullshit

It was good enough that Reiters were widely sought mercs.

Because fantasy has not, nor has it ever been about realism or specific time periods or cultures. It's about an aesthetic and fun escapism into a fake world.
>Monsters exist everywhere instead of wiping out early man before technology or man destroying the mega-fauna as they did in the world
>not!Catholic churches despite a pantheon of many Gods and christian miracle-style clerics/priest magicians
>Bows are dexterity weapons all about speed and skill, despite requiring strength to use in real life
>Everyone uses swords as the best weapon despite polearms being the primary arm for most eras of combat
>Everyone uses plate but no helmet because they're a main character. Also nobody uses armor on their horses
>Only a few people are magicians to keep it weird and rare, despite how everyone would try to learn magic if it was real
>Elves, dwarves, humans and other races living in harmony instead of wiping each other out for muh feeling of fellowship
>all kinds of weird weapons like sytches and shit despite not being real
>foreign cultures are based on amalgamations on the myths of many cultures- all arabic style cultures are egyptian and arabic and indian all at once; all asians are the not asians with samurai and shenlong looking dragons, etc.
>all the oldest shit is the most powerful despite technology/techniques of crafting are almost always better as they advance in the real world. ie; magic sword from a 1000 years ago is better then a magic sword created by a modern magician
>clearly ridiculous class restrictions; mages have to be weak and wear robes, thieves wear "studded leather armor", etc.

Stop trying to compare it to real life. It isn't, and shouldn't be. Embrace the cliche.

Who would win?
>The proud and noble rulers of a rich and mysterious land who have inhabited it for thousands of years
>Some Yuppies in shorts

I loved playing a gunmage in Iron Kingdom. Your gun functions as a wand and sort of like a familiar, too.
You can craft elemental bullets, fire spells out of the gun barrel, which usually requires a "magelock" weapon if you don't want your gun to explode from all that arcane energy, and use a number of gun related spells like magically reloading, silent killer bullets that mute the target and make no audible gunshot noise and other neat stuff.
There really needs to be more combo classes that mix magic with weapon styles.

Reiters were thought to shoot point blank into the enemy as well as the other firearm eqquiped cavalry due to the ineffectiveness of the Caracole.
The tactic itself achieved very little decisive effect on the battlefield as it was easily countered with counter fire from infantry blocks and charges from opposing cavalry dissolves the formation. It was abandoned in favor of the good old cavalry charge with mixed units of heavy cavalry and firearm equipped cavalry. In time units like the Reiters became indistinguishable from regular cavalry as they integrated into it.

Or you could not be a brainlet and put some more thought than none at all in.

I think the general problem is that it isn't the time period or the realism itself, it's the fact that firearms aren't 'heroic'. I mean it's like the choice of an epic duel vs. the hero just pulling out a gun and killing off the villain in one shot. This is also the reason why Sci-fi isn't popular.

youtube.com/watch?v=4cZqRzHnI8s

Would early firearms actually be effective for a dungeon crawler?

All this gunpowder shit seems really slow when you fight giant cave spiders or goblins or some shit.

Reiters remained highly respected and desirable mercenaries even after becoming focused on charges with point blank pistol and sword. Equipment-wise they were normal harquebusiers with maybe more armor than average and without the actual harquebus carbine, but their elan made them stand out.

Pistols were always meant for melee use, being adopted as replacement lances with more range and punch, with the caracole being a temporary experiment.

From what I've heard, the caracole was used up until the early stages of the Thirty Years War.

Then Gustavus Adolphus started having his cavalry charge, fire pistols, then engage, which worked far better. As his tactics of combining musketiers and cavalry also made Caracoles against cavalry useless, everyone else quickly switched to the new tactic.

LOTFP talks about this in it's little section for firearms

" Given how combats in Weird Fantasy Role-Playing are usually small-scale skirmishes, it is probably easier to just say firearms have a rate of fire of once per combat. Early Modern drills were all about making the reloading process as safe and organized as possible within large units in open field warfare, and that is where the rate of fire becomes relevant."

That said, if it goes well, that's a good hole to put in a giant spider

Which is why I find it weird more fantasy isn't set in the early modern, which is the closest IRL came to being a D&D campaign. It was a time when you could have a party of variously armed murderhobos travel to an unexplored Aztec kingdom and turn it upside down.

Which one are you? The same thing happened during the 30 years war if that broadens things, Japan around the same time had a staggering amount of firearms, more than any European country (though that all came to an end)
I'm using wars because it's honestly fairer on you lot. Take more irregular wars, firearms galore. A good example would be conflicts between English settlers and woodland Indians in the 17th century take King Phillips war for example or the Powhatan war. Conflicts were run and gun skirmishes and this is with firelocks and snaplocks. Yes, it's Indian culture to try to 'touch' you opponent during a fight, it helped them lose but they still used firearms whenever they could.
I've been trying think of the closest historical proximation to adventurers with guns, I think it would be between Aventuros, bands of Spanish and Portuguese explorers and indigenous attendants in the 15 and 1600's competing over Amazonian territory. They used almost exclusively ranged weapons, Europeans and Indians alike. And American trappers and pioneers in North America, they may have had tomahawks and knives but mostly as tools and 'just in case' weapons. They never armed themselves with swords.

>Sci-fi isn't popular
Nigger WHAT THE FUCK?
Such a waste of good trips.

That's only because they were famed in Northeastern Europe as said they faded into obscurity as the tactics became standardized. Balkan brigands and Cossacks retained their fame longer than them.

Long neck firearms, generally no since they would wind up being too large to use in a crowded space situation and you would need a clear line of sight if the dungeon only has one person space, meaning that you would be stuck to the front, not to mention the fifteen second reloading time. Pistols and dragons (The blunderbuss pistol cousin) would be the much better choice since their better equipped to deal with the situation since they aren't has long and you can carry multiple of them, meaning you don't have to waste your time trying to reload during a fight.

Oh right, my bad, I meant to say it isn't has popular has fantasy in general.

Dungeons would also make Black Powder Grenades more useful than they were in real life. Because you can just throw them and duck behind a corner.

Cavalry charges are dramatic, they're remembered, especially the rare successful ones. Not much is said of the mundane, everyday failures. Cavalry as you said was used to counter other cavalry, but it was more increasingly used to get infantrymen armed with guns from place to place. That was the norm, through out all the periods you've mentioned, charges were not.
I have sort of got you. Taking the argument back to context it's important to remember that adventurers in an rpg context are not cavalrymen and would not appreciate being realistically shot and killed when they try to charge their enemies.
Musketeers being armed with full length swords are rare. More likely wealthy veterans or mercenaries, the majority using, like you said, their guns as clubs. That is, little to say of how often they actually got into melee, which was not often at all.

That's pretty much how early modern bear hunting worked. You had one shot with your musket, which was likely to miss or not incapacitate the bear, but that one shot still increased your odds well above what you'd get with just a bear spear and knife.

If you allow windlass heavy crossbows, firearms won't be a problem. RoF only becomes an issue if the game has HP bloat which means it takes multiple shots to put down most enemies instead of making a mess of anyone not in expensive and heavy proofed plate.

Either make guns realistically lethal so that each hit has the liklihood of disabling most enemies even through armor and could seriously damage larger monsters OR if you want a less lethal system tweak the reload times so they can shoot faster since each shot does less damage.

Don't nerf the damage so a musket 10 feet away can't explode a goblins head and then cry about realism and slap long reload times before wondering why guns suck in a dungeon. You can't have it both ways.

Muskeeters during the 1450-1600's hundred were wealthy men, especially the mercenaries. Often times they had full foppish raiment and weapons of high quality.

For the most part what you're talking about is irrelevant, it's an entirely different thematic.

Musketeers are closer to correct but notice for the most part media portraying them focuses more on the dueling...

Because it is the beginning of the end.

Up to this point, the arms race revolves around acquiring personal strength, wits(, and magic). Some hundred or so years after the appearance of guns, all of these are dwarfed by guns.

Because they fail to realize the issues with early firearms and how a bit of advanced metallurgy or materials science could even out the balance significantly

For fucks sake a few ounces of resin and cloth can stop a modern day cartridge

>MFW I solved this issue with a homebrew by having firearms do the same damage as crossbows with better armor penetration but a chance to misfire

There werent any pistols in the early period. Pistols did not become practical until the wheellock.

What time period are we talking about, then?