Quote from: RPGPundit;579559Not really. Its nowhere near the same level of power as magic.

RPGPundit

Especially in the context of period firearms.  They weren't exactly the most reliable thing around, and after you fired, you better be good with melee weapons, because that's what you were left with for 90% of the battle.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579567I am soooo glad you brought this up.  You are absolutely correct, and it's a myth that needs to go away.  Plate armor was being used 100 years after the first gun saw the battlefield.  The cause for the elimination of plate mail wearing knights was economics.  It was damned expensive to be a knight, and it just wasn't cost effective anymore, especially with the way wars were beginning to be fought.

I am doing research on the Engilsh Civil War for the sandbox I writing for James Raggi. Armor and bladed weapons are still in heavy use.

To support what Butcher said earlier, if you have gunpowder in your campaign what are we talking about?  15th century, 16th century, 17th century, etc?

There is gunpowder in the Majestic Wilderlands. It is a recently introduced technology and is considered as a specialty siege weapon. Some local noble and a genius got together and created the first cannons. Big cast bronze bombards intended for use in sieges. Noble was intending to rebel against the Overlord of City-State and the cannons would be his edge by allowing sieges to be completed faster.

Gunpowder or Dragon powder is a refined form of what alchemists know as fire powder. And the cast bronze bombards comes from craftsmen who know how to cast bells and statues out of bronze. There are no cannon carriages they hoist the things onto heavy duty wagons and then unload them for the siege. The entire platform is tilted to aim. The noble was busted by a group of PCs working for the Overlord.


A decade later only the Overlord of City-State has any siege bombards in quantity (about two dozen). There are some experiments using smaller bombard against the gate along loading up the cannon with smaller balls (grapeshot essentially). A couple of folks escaped when the Overlord swept in  so the technology has spread with a half dozen other bombards been built. But their results has been mixed as they relying on accounts of lower echelon workers.

The point of me telling this is to explain that the introduction of gunpowder doesn't have to be the "big event" people like it is.

A excellent summary of the introduction of Gunpowder is GURPS 4th edition Low Tech.

Gunpowder can exist in my fantasy worlds and is a staple of alchemists. However, it is still fairly unreliable and firearms are of the "use once, then reload for 5 rounds" variety.

I think the d20 Iron Kingdoms handled firearms and magic very nicely together, even including the Gun Mage character class.

Quote from: Fiasco;579552LotFP will be putting out a gun supplement soon. I'm looking forward to it.

Ditto. I'll be quite interested in seeing how it will be done, as my current campaign uses Lamentations and has guns in it.

So far we've gone with Pundits take on it; 1D8, exploding dice, and the hussle with ammo and gun powder. And it has worked fine so far.All the characters with guns started out with 1D12 bullets for their weapons, which made getting more ammo quite the priority in the first session, as the two gun carrying characters had 3 bullets between them.

I don't like the medieval period at all, I prefer to draw on antiquity for my fantasy. Thus no gunpowder (though preferably no flashy magical artillery either).

I like primitive firearms (especially wheel lock pistols). It's just that a lot of people feel the inclusion of gunpowder as a foothold for including the whole industrial revolution and I don't really care for that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;579559Not really. Its nowhere near the same level of power as magic.

"Stepping on the toes of" means mildly irritating someone, not replacing them. Although technically sufficient quantities of gunpowder would be more than a match for any amount of destructive magic.

Magic and flashes/bangs/smoke clouds have always gone together, even today stage magicians make good use of pyrotechnics in their performances. Relegating the fireworks to footsoldier weapons takes away some of the mystique.

The dawn of the gun also heralded the sunset of many superstitions, so I guess that's why they are an unwelcome addition to what should be a universe of unicorns and dragons.

No one's mentioned it, so I would point out that gunpowder rarely appears in the inspirational literature for most fantasy - Tolkien, Howard, etc.

In general, I think that historical reality has little to do with most high / medieval / swords-and-sorcery fantasy.  

Nothing wrong with breaking from the genre, but in general unless I've got a strong reason to break from genre I'm going to stick to the genre standards as a default because it's easier to get into for players.

It took only 200 years for black powder firearms to go from "meh" on the European battlefield to eliminating heavy armour as a viable defense.  The pace of technological innovation there was remarkable.  That said, 200 years is a short time from the POV of European history and a long time from the POV of a single person's military career, or a single campaign.

If we're going to drag historical accuracy into the discussion, it's important to pin down exactly what point in the development of black powder firearms we're dealing with.  As the technology and accuracy of black powder firearms improves, the weight of plate needed to reliably stop a shot becomes prohibitively heavy, which is why it kept shrinking from full suit to half plate to back-and-breast and morion to steel plates sewn into a jacket.

There's also the skill factor involved; you can train a peasant to shoot a musket effectively in formation in a few weeks; a company of pikemen could take months to years to drill effectively; and to train a bowman, start training his grandfather.  That distinction is generally not reflected in most RPGs (GURPS being a notable exception).

Quote from: The Traveller;579465It does kinda step on the toes of the wizards.

In the BANESTORM/Yrth setting that is very much the attitude. So much so that the have a pecial council set up to stifle and suppress technological advancements like blackpoweder and gunpowder.

ON THE OTHER HAND: The setting of the MAGE KNIGHT miniatures game had blackpoweder weapons as a centerpiece of the backstory. There was even a faction called the 'Blackpowder Rebels' - one sniper with a blackpowder rifle assassinated a powerful mage tyurant  - and that set the stoiry in motion for the setting.
Always thought that it would have made a great background for a Role Playing Game.

- Ed c.

I like gunpowder in my fantasy, but then, I love a good mix of swashbuckling and fantasy. Swashbuckling without pistols and cannons just doesn't feel right to me.

I have no problem with firearms, explosives and artillery.  They exist in my D&D campaign, but they are still early in development so they have yet to overtake either archery or melee weapons- especially at the man-to-man level wherein a D&D campaign centers itself.  Pistols and muskets are smoothbore weapons that reload from the breech, that must be reloaded after every shot, and must load each component separately.  They are not the wonder-weapons that too many people unfamiliar with firearms--which, sadly, includes a lot of people that make media creations featuring them--think that they are.

In practice, a longarm will be fired one and them be used as a spear (if the bayonet is fixed) or as a club in melee.  Pistols will be fired once and then used as clubs.  Players that want to be the rapid-firing marksman will stick with the longbow; firearms, therefore, are likely to used by characters whose primary action role is not fighting at range.  Artillery, in practice, will be just a set-piece prop until characters transition into the domain-management game.  Explosives--bombs, really--see more use, as they do what Fireball does (and allows Magic-Users to go with different spells), and can be carried/used by damn near every character because it's just a rock that blows up.

What makes firearms impressive, at this point, is beyond the scope of typical character activity: massed ranks/batteries firing upon similar-sized targets. I would not be concerned until a campaign's technology in firearms advances to where rifling exists (and thus the rifle emerges as a distinct weapon type; before that, rifles and shotguns are more-or-less the same thing; pistols get rifling also), smokeless powder exists (big boost in power produced meant more lethal projectiles in flight via greater momentum), self-contained metallic cartridges (faster and easier reloading), mechanics advance to allow for revolving cylinders (the revolver is a thing before self-contained cartridges emerged, as "cap-and-ball" types) and repeating longarms (lever rifles and shotguns first, then semi and full-auto), and so on as recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Stick to technologies before the 19th century, and you'll have firearms that are balanced options to archery and melee weapons (and comparable to some spell effects).  They won't overshadow them, because the drawbacks are serious at the skirmish/man-to-man scale of typical action.  Good for the massed ranks, and not so much for individual actors.

Quote from: Koltar;579868ON THE OTHER HAND: The setting of the MAGE KNIGHT miniatures game had blackpoweder weapons as a centerpiece of the backstory. There was even a faction called the 'Blackpowder Rebels' - one sniper with a blackpowder rifle assassinated a powerful mage tyurant  - and that set the stoiry in motion for the setting.
Always thought that it would have made a great background for a Role Playing Game.

That does sound awesome, one place powder weapons might fit would be in the hands of witchfinders, which again plays an anti-magic angle.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;579902Players that want to be the rapid-firing marksman will stick with the longbow; firearms, therefore, are likely to used by characters whose primary action role is not fighting at range.

Eh I remember in one of the Return to Treasure Island shows, I think it was the one with the brilliant Brian "Gordon's Alive" Blessed as Silver, he hoisted aside his overcoat at the final unearthing of the treasure to reveal eight pistols arrayed about his person. Never say you couldn't do rapid fire with flintlocks!

Quote from: jhkim;579683No one's mentioned it, so I would point out that gunpowder rarely appears in the inspirational literature for most fantasy - Tolkien, Howard, etc.

Discounting the movie, there's some debatable evidence in LOTR that gunpowder existed - the breaching of the Hornburg, and then Gandalf's fireworks.

Quote from: The Traveller;579959Eh I remember in one of the Return to Treasure Island shows, I think it was the one with the brilliant Brian "Gordon's Alive" Blessed as Silver, he hoisted aside his overcoat at the final unearthing of the treasure to reveal eight pistols arrayed about his person. Never say you couldn't do rapid fire with flintlocks!

It's called a "brace" of pistols, and it wasn't at all uncommon for people expecting trouble not on a battlefield.  As were double-barrelled flintlock pistols with a completely separate lock for each barrel, and a double-length pull trigger.  I used to own a replica of one such.