Quote from: chirine ba kal;1022295As in?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alsd3JBc88U

Exactly!

But they're cheating a) by using a cigar instead of a hot wire and b) by having an assistant.

Didn't either you or I have some of those Hinchcliffe figures?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1022305Exactly!

But they're cheating a) by using a cigar instead of a hot wire and b) by having an assistant.

Didn't either you or I have some of those Hinchcliffe figures?

You did. I had the kneeling and praying bombard crew.

Well personally I can go ether way it's more of A setting dependent thing for me.

Though in the setting I am currently working on I keep bouncing back and forth on how advanced the fire arms should get initially I thought of having hand cannons, matchlocks ,flint locks ,percussion and break action shell guns.
I keep adding and subtraction break actions because I keep wondering if I can justify them not being the only firearm in production. You see the world hasn't had an industrial revolution and I keep woundering if that fact alone (and cost) is enough to justify the idea that older tech stays around and reasonably common to be made new.

Two games where guns are well integrated with swords-and-maybe-some-sorcery is The Fantasy Trip and Flashing Blades. I can't think of any others that did it particularly well. For some reason game designers get a bit stuck in their own heads when they confront the issue of getting stats and so forth worked out. If you've ever visited a 16th or 17th century armory you realize they were ubiquitous and effective parts of late medieval armament, but were just part of a mix of battlefield gear. Games tend to either approach them as exactly equivalent to a bow, which seems wrong and pointless, or to give them some sort of severe handicap that makes them unusable in play. I feel like the TFT Arquebus and Blunderbus rules get the balance about right.

I'm not sure what these most games are. But whether I include firearms depends on the setting.

Some fantasy has gunpowder or the equivalent. Some doesn't. Tolkien had Saruman's orcs using an explosive to breach the wall at Helm's Deep. But I don't recall ever seeing gunpowder in an original Conan story. Howard seemed to leave that for other some of his other pulp heroes like Solomon Kane. D&D could include gunpowder or firearms (I think Chainmail included stats for bombards and the Brown Box rules mentioned John Carter of Mars which included a range of cannons and radium rifles and pistols. Dwarfs in Glorantha have firearms and cannon. There's even a Cannon Cult. And games with Cape & Sword settings like Flashing Blades or Honor+Intrigue will include firearms.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1022310You did. I had the kneeling and praying bombard crew.

Right!  Including the guy with the match holder who was turning his face away and shielding it with his hand!

I loved both those sets of figures.

One of the better sets of gun rules I've run across was for 1E AD+D, simply because the weapon vs. armor type table is a perfect way to deal with the fact that the main advantage of guns is that at short range they'll punch through armor no other weapon will easily penetrate. I'm positive I've seen such a table, but for the life of me I can't find it. Maybe it appeared in an issue of The Dragon I'm forgetting?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1022395Right!  Including the guy with the match holder who was turning his face away and shielding it with his hand!

I loved both those sets of figures.

If it's the set I am thinking of I may have seen it once and they where pretty cool.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1022015the sword was on its way out as a battlefield weapon, if it ever was, given all the historical aficionados claiming it sucks as a personal weapon.

I think those claims are nonsense.

Yeah.  The notion of thousands of warriors over the centuries carrying an ineffective weapon just to show off makes no sense to me.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1022669Yeah.  The notion of thousands of warriors over the centuries carrying an ineffective weapon just to show off makes no sense to me.

And yet, there are videos upon essays, proving that swords are useless against chain and then plate harness, or that swords were somehow 'status' weapons.

For the record, I'm not disparaging or disagreeing any of the claims, I simply, honestly, don't know enough about that subject to make any sort of claim.  But those who point out that the sword as a sidearm actively being used, simply because it's been so prevalent and was refined when the armour technology changed the dynamic of war have a very good point.

When it comes to war, humans tend to discard everything that isn't efficient at the job of murdering the other person and protecting oneself against being murdered.  That's what I believe puts us at the top of the food chain, we are among the efficient killers of this world.

Anyway, that's the end of this derail from me.

I've already stated why I personally do not like firearms in a Fantasy setting.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1022682And yet, there are videos upon essays, proving that swords are useless against chain and then plate harness, or that swords were somehow 'status' weapons.

They still work fine on peasants and people who can't afford chainmail. Not to mention you can still stab dinner with them and fend off the local wildlife.

Quote from: Krimson;1022831They still work fine on peasants and people who can't afford chainmail. Not to mention you can still stab dinner with them and fend off the local wildlife.

And yet we have treatises and evidence of them being weapons of skill.  Because, frankly, spears are better at both keeping the rabble away and catching dinner, as well as having the added advantage of being relatively easy to use compared to a sword.

Not to mention, a sword is difficult to make and uses a lot of metal, while any decent blacksmith can manage a spear or an axe.

It just doesn't make sense to carry a weapon that's not useful.

Of course, we now have things like cutting tests, where somebody with an arming sword cut a deer carcass in half with one swing, right through the ribcage and spine.

My personal contention has always been that if there was "one perfect weapon," everybody would be using it.  Since a wide variety of weapons remained in use, we can assume that they were all useful in some way.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1022094If the firearms have appropriate expense and reliability, sure.

The reason I have a kneejerk reaction against gunpowder in fantasy is too many years of gamers wanting "firearms in D&D" to mean M16s and M1911A1s.

Exactly this. I want my fantasy blackpowder weapons to be janky and dangerous to victims, risky to wielders and expensive to purchase and operate.