Gunpowder in fantasy settings

ArtemisAlpha · September 26, 2012, 09:12:14 AM

I use minis in the games I run, and one of the things that has kept me from having many gunners in my games is the general style of minis armed with an arquebus. Mostly, you find minis that are dressed in a renaissance style - either historical minis like landsknect or the Warhammer empire gunners - or they're pirates. The former is generally out of place in the otherwise medieval milieu my games are set in, and while pirates are great on the sea, every gunner being a pirate mini is a little silly. Privateer press makes a handful of minis that look like they could be an adventurer with a gun, and I'm happy to have them, but it's not enough for guns to be all that common in the games I run.

StormBringer · September 26, 2012, 10:57:59 AM

Quote from: noisms;585731I call bullshit on this, I'm afraid. Hunting a deer involves waiting patiently for hours, sneaking around in the undergrowth to get downwind, carefully lining up a shot, and then shooting. Basically, acting as a sniper. This is not the same things as trying to shoot somebody who knows you are trying to shoot them and, by the way, is coming after you with an axe.

As tenuous as the Denners grasp on D&D is, did you really expect them to supplant that with knowledge about the real world, let alone experience of it?

QuoteI've seen an arquebus. It is long, heavy and unwieldy. You have to carry around a rope to shoot it with, and that rope has to be continuously burning to be used properly. Once fired, you have to fiddle around with the thing while you reload it, during which time you are totally exposed. I don't accept it would be a suitable weapon for adventuring with or fighting with in a D&D skirmish.

Nuh uh, because muskets.

QuoteIf you're so keen on realism, you need to incorporate some pretty heavy modifiers on the usage of the things.

Denner 'realism' is not connected to our reality in any way, shape or form.

Elfdart · September 26, 2012, 06:10:27 PM

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;585620I don't have a dog in te firearm fight, and know very little about the accuracy of muskets in different periodsof history, but do we have a better source on this than wikipedia.

Like the wall of the nearest men's room.

QuoteNot challenging your assertion DeadDM, but I have been burned by wikipedia too many times.

There's a reason wikipedia is not considered a valid source.

As far as smoothbore weapons are concerned, they have three advantages:

1) They don't require the extensive training bowmen and slingers do.

2) Gunshots are more effective against armor and in some cases, cover.

3) The same powder used by smoothbores (and rifles) can, if ground differently, be used for things like demolition, bombs, etc.

RPGPundit · September 26, 2012, 06:21:47 PM

Quote from: Opaopajr;584880Or you could infer from all the clay jar "batteries" littering the Fertile Crescent and Egyptian reliefs depicting what seems to be light bulbs that a fantasy world where electricity came millennia before black powder is wholly plausible.

Incidentally, stuff like that, or the roman steam engine, all demonstrate that you don't need to have a substitute "alchemical smokepowder" or something like that to explain how gunpowder might be rare and limited in availability. If the recipe for creating it is a well-kept secret, it could certainly be a restricted or even lost technology.

RPGPundit

Opaopajr · September 27, 2012, 03:25:30 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;586021Incidentally, stuff like that, or the roman steam engine, all demonstrate that you don't need to have a substitute "alchemical smokepowder" or something like that to explain how gunpowder might be rare and limited in availability. If the recipe for creating it is a well-kept secret, it could certainly be a restricted or even lost technology.

RPGPundit

An "Arrows of Indra" tangent, but related to what you bring up here: have you incorporated anomalous tidbits, like the Iron Pillar of Delhi? Where certain tech ends up a secret, and possibly end up a lost tech?

RPGPundit · September 28, 2012, 12:10:30 AM

Quote from: Opaopajr;586173An "Arrows of Indra" tangent, but related to what you bring up here: have you incorporated anomalous tidbits, like the Iron Pillar of Delhi? Where certain tech ends up a secret, and possibly end up a lost tech?

I didn't put anything in the setting about that (there was nowhere that seemed to fit normally); in the setting, though, the whole society is in a transition from iron to steel weapons; iron was in fact the great advantage that made certain nations of the Bharata Kingdoms so powerful a few thousand years earlier, and now there is the beginnings of steel production in weapons in the largest cities.

RPGPundit

Gunpowder in fantasy settings

ArtemisAlpha

StormBringer

Elfdart

RPGPundit

Opaopajr

RPGPundit