A quirked up Red Mage inside a hollowed out golem with two electromagnetic dust-alloy cannons (because Electric Dust is as common as they get) yelling “LONG LIVE IN THE NC (Northern Covenant)!!! DEATH TO THE TR (the Territories of Regina)!!!” Now that’s what “fantasy” should stand for!
“Guns in Fantasy are too lethal and overpowered” says the sorcerer before casting fireball three times in a row after getting tossed across the battlefield by dragon the size of a two family home.
WFRP handguns do the same damage as a crossbow. They got one point of armour pen later on. In WFB, handguns would lower the armour save of targets. The choice is less spells vs guns but crossbows vs guns. Warhammer is in the transition period where professional state troops with crossbows can march to war covered by a battery of cannons. The cannons probably have names.
@@SusCalvin Yeah, Warhammer Fantasy is about the only fantasy setting that isn't afraid of guns, and that's because it's Warhammer, mostly. The Empire being solidly in the pike and shot era makes a lot of sense when they didn't have to invent guns themselves, but borrowed them off the dwarfs who invented guns 2000 years ago (or something).
@@therat1117 The alternative in WF is not between magic and handguns. It's between crossbows and handguns. A WFRP handgun is in the transition state where the advantage over a bow or crossbow isn't all that clear yet. State troops of an elector count can march out with crossbows and polearms as a cannon battery shoots over their heads. A WFRP crossbow is not all that different in effect than a handgun.
@@SusCalvin Yeah, yeah that's more Warhammer being Warhammer and rule of cooling things rather than having anything approaching realistic technological development. The Empire also has steam tanks, gattling cannons, and magical laser beam wagons.
@@therat1117 The aztec lizards have lasers of the gods. They can't reproduce these relics of the gods. There was a little less steampunk in older editions. Steam tanks was a thing though. You could field every single steam tank of the empire in one army if you liked and had the points. The dwarfs had their funky coal helicopters and submarines. I like the coin clipper, student, bawd and bailiff adventuring nonsense of WFRP 1e.
American Civil War Reenactor here. Your idea with the crystal that explodes a little bit each time a hammer hits it is EXACTLY how muskets from the late 19th century worked. You know those little 4th of July popper thingies you throw on the pavement? Well, they made percussion caps out of that and stuck it on the lock of a rifle. When the hammer went down, it went off, the spark lit the powder. That's alchemy. If you swap percussion caps for crystals, that's just some more magic stuff. Super ez.
if using magic crystal powder as propellant, i remember there is a manga using this in Nihonkoku Shoukan, one country is on napoleonic level tech and has french aesthetics, alongside magic muskets, the army also had armor using land dragons and airforce of wyvern very good world building but the plot is basically JSDF propaganda
While talking about the Japanese relation to firearms, it's cool to mention the initial dynamics of how they got them: when the Portuguese arrived in the Far East they found Japan in a state of civil war and realised the warring samurai could really use some of their boomsticks. They then leveraged this power to spread christianity by only allowing daimyos who converted to buy guns. These dynamics can be super interesting when transported to a fantasy world, where you not only have the common human factors, but also magic, monsters and dragons and whatever. It's such a shame that firearms are crimminally underused in these settings.
The dutch show up. They have less jesuits with them and are easier to contain. "Dutch studies" was the study of imported european books. The colonial powers are not cooperating with eachother the slightest.
And interestingly unlike The Last Samurai most Samurai at Minji period use fire arms as well Units like Battotai are literally samurai with swords and Revoler and 春日隊 fought on the shogun side are a unit with samurai who use sword and rifles even sword master like Hijikata Toshizo use revoler and sword same time on the battlefield
Wanted to comment on this as well. People who talk about this topic seem not to notice the difference between the early firearms and use the blanket term flintlock.
He also used the term Arquebus which is actually what the Japanease used during the civil war period. Not flint, match, or cap locks. Arquebus could also require more than one person to fire Edit: Arquebus are apparently Matchlocks, the more you know.
@@ArcAngle1117"The addition of a shoulder stock, priming pan,[4] and matchlock mechanism in the late 15th century turned the arquebus into a handheld firearm and also the first firearm equipped with a trigger."
I will call "semantics" on this comment, the message gets across even if he's inaccurately portraying matchlocks and cap&ball as flintlocks. Did you know? There's also a system that's very much similar to a flintlock but it's called a "doglock", bet you missed it a few times but nobody cared.
So real about pike and shot being overlooked. It's such a cool time period in terms of history and in its potential for fantasy. Worth noting that most people think guns are also quite accurate, they were actually in lines so that they basically couldnt miss by sheer number. Pre-rifling its just a "this general direction" weapon, and the problems with smooth bore only really started getting solved in the early 19th century, although not all of that was rifling. Think France had one where it expanded when being shot out or something. Also Rifling initially meant slower reloading, since pushing it down meant you had to push it through the spirals. Early gunpowder warfare is sick asf, from flintlocks to muskets to giant cannons and giant cannons on ships its so cool and actually was at the same time as a lot of the like, more traditional fantasy weapons came about. Pretty sure heavy calavry only became somewhat common after gunpower started to come into use.
thats mostly because of cavalry.... like 80% was because of cavalry when bows and firearms met in the 16th ceand 17th century guns won,.. in range.. and accuracy... almost every time theres a 1565 i think, note where a man leading italian arquebusiers was faced with a group of englishmen with longbows they said 'the english bow is short ranged and littlethreat to us, i told the men to not fire when the english advanced into the mens range.. but to WAIT, until the english reached THEIR range and began to prepare to shoot their bows, and by letting them get even closer our shots would hit easier and be more devestating the italians fired a volley which ripped into the english, they then drew swords and chased them from the field in the invasion of korea, japanese man sieged a korean fort.. the korean archers had ZERO hope of hitting the japanese, the japanese could shoot THEM but the korean arrows either fell short, or were so lobbed, they had zero accuracy... and korean bows are some of the best in the world cossack and tatar bowmen attacked men in some wagons... and these archers couldnt get anywhere NEAR close enough to shoot accurately
It's worth noting that the American Indigenous were REALLY willing to sell their metaphorical souls for firearms. Yeah, they were 100% reliant on the Whites for ammo, but muskets are just SOOOO much more effective than bows.@@elgostine
we have an account of someone showing up to some natives who were known for good shooting and asked if any could string and shoot his warbow and none could @@MandolinMagi later a party were driven away by the natives shooting musket and arquebus
@@elgostine Incidentally the pike and shot era was a terrible time to be English, or German, or any European nationality besides possibly the Poles and Spaniards. It's probably why most English-language fiction skips over it.
Once read a surprisingly OLD western isekai novel series about a D&D tabletop party getting zapped over by their actually a wizard DM. Eventually they started manufacturing guns to fuel their nation building. The baddies, an evil wizard guild, reverse engineered the gun concept. While they could not replicate the gunpowder which the party went to great lengths to keep secret, they used the theory to use a magic crystal to super heat water in the weapon to get a similar effect.
Our current Homebrew DnD session, has me, a Cleric having a Pontifical Remington Rolling Block rifle (yes this exists IRL) and a Colt m1877 Revolver as main weapons. Meanwhile our Artificer has a Railgun. Your DM must be strict if they thinks guns are overpowered cause my guns in the current campaign miss like half of the time lol
Remember there's nothing stopping anyone from imagining a "fantasy world based on ww1 with ww2 elements while having a civil war narrative with roman, Chinese, Japanese, and British based cultures while having characters travel around the world like lunatics meeting famous people in search for the cure for aids or something
It exists, its called Warhammer lol. Pretty much all of this exists in fantasy. Within D&D settings with firearms just arent popular. I think the problem is magic existing makes firearms seem kind of useless. If you want a ranged attack magics just more efficient, powerful, accurate, and no reload time. Seems this youtuber didnt really bother to look into fantasy very much though.
If you just focus on the "fantasy in world war 1 with world war 2 characteristics" and ignore the rest of your comment, then idk what games might fit but it made me think of the anime saga of tanya the evil. Pretty fascinating world if you ask me.
also the Dwarves to an even greater extent. Fantasy without guns is great, but its ridiculous when they include dwarves as masters of industry and technology and they have created massive underground cities and mechanical marvels far advances than the level of technology in the setting should be, and yet they have crossbows as the most advanced weapon.
Matchlocks had a physical wick or matchstick that would touch the powder and ignite it Flintlocks used a striker of (wait for it) flint to cast sparks on to the powder to ignite Caplocks had an external explosive primer cap that would be struck to ignite the powder
"Flintlocks used a striker of (wait for it) flint to cast sparks on to the powder to ignite. CaploCKS HAD AN EXTERNAL EXPLOSIVE PRIMER CAP THAT WOULD BE STUCK TO IGNIGHT THE POWDER."
The coolest are wheellocks though, they appeared early on an use a pyrite dragging on a steel wheel (similar to lighters), they have the absolute best gun aesthetics.
I never understood the fantasy settings with highly advanced magics and alchemy yet no firearms, you're telling me that the court wizard discovered how to put ancient materials together into some kinda dragon killing super potion but can't figure out how to put charcoal powder and sulphur together in a bowl
do you know how black powder was invented in real life? by complete accident so this gives people who are designing a world the freedom to chose to add guns or not.
I mean, to be fair, gunpowder was pretty much an accidental invention. Though if that fantasy setting happens to also have a king/emperor who's doing literally everything in his power to create some sort of immortality potion, its invention would probably be inevitable
In a world where you can literally ask your god to do things and even the most basic spellcaster can shoot tiny IFF guided missiles, having someone spend ninety seconds shoving explosive powder into a tube just so he can shoot a lead ball Somewhere Forward, Hopefully seems less than efficient.
@@atraxisdarkstar And yet you apparently don't question having the same someone spend ninety seconds cranking up a crossbow to shoot a pointy stick Somewhere Forward, Hopefully. If a crossbow is a viable weapon in a setting, a musket is too, because muskets are just crossbows but better.
Here's another little factoid about the samurai and their relationship with guns. The Japanese were the first people to make guns that had sights, because they greatly emphasized good marksmanship.
@@comradep8519 its just untrue... we have arquebus's in armouries with front and rear sights dated to 1525 the japanese probably got the tech from the portugese for reference, the first guns were sold to the daimyo in the 1540s the simple fact is that weve had guns with rear sights thr whole way through and even IF the samurai were technically the first to add a front sight( they arnt) ... its completely possible that people can develop it individually and even then, theres the ottoman developments, developments in indo-persian areas as well..
While this would be cool, it’s incorrect. We have examples of sights being used as early as the 1400s. It’s not like Europeans never considered the concept. The earliest iron sights was a small metal bead. On muskets in the 1600s to 1700s, the bayonet lug even doubled down as a sight.
Yeah, wrong terminology being used. It's not cartridge ammunition that modern people are used to, it's *cased* ammunition where all you have to do is stick a cased round into the gun and it fires rather than any priming, tamping down, or any of that extra work.
You're thinking of modern metallic cartridges. "Cased ammunition" and "cartridge" are synonymous. The case is what makes a cartridge a cartridge. Effective paper cartridges which could be loaded as-is date back to needle rifles, though the technology is quite a bit older than that.
@@SnakebitSTI Yeah I know, I was pointing out the difference between a modern cartridge and a historical one. By the time you get to needle rifles (~early 1800s), you're already talking about a breech-loading bolt action that is about as far from a 1700s flintlock as a flintlock is from an iron barrel on a stick.
Further, there were two distinct types of paper cartridges. Combustible paper cartridges, most often used for percussion revolvers and the like, used thin paper that would burn quickly, and could be inserted whole and unaltered. Most muskets and rifles used a thicker, sturdier paper, and the user would tear the end off with their teeth before sprinkling a little bit into the pan (if flintlock), then pouring the rest down the barrel and then driving the bullet down, using the now empty paper as the wad.
Yes but they still required you to open the powder end and dump the powder then turn it over and ram the ball down using the paper as your wadding. They were only marginally faster in a muzzleloading application.
I love fantasy with firearms. I think it works really really well and makes it more interesting. I also love fantasy without firearms. Fantasy is just so cool. It's really hard to dislike it.
Couldn't agree more. Guns were (sorta) built to defeat knight armor. How, in a world with dragons would there be no reason to invent a way to pierce armor or scales or huge fantasy beasts, that any decently trained shmuck could wield. Every kingdom would have a Cannonier corps who's job is to delete dragons from the sky.
Yeah, not really. Firearms did very poorly against plate and the scales of dragons in fantasy are usually the toughest (or like the second toughest) material in existence. Remember that the major reason for phasing out armor wasn't the development of firearms, but the cost of the thing and the general evolution of the battlefield. By the time firearms actually got good enough to deal with plate armor almost nobody wore it in the first place. The last people to keep the armor was the cavalry, because if you could afford a warhorse, you definitely could afford a blacksmith.
@LecherousLizard Gun only started to work "Poorly" against plate is because chestplates eventually became thicker, sloped, and overall heavier to be bullet resistant and when this eventually wasn't enough, some were kept for shrapnel protection. This idea even carried on as far as WW1.
@@Kirill-ig6nr Yeah, wrong. An average 14/15th century breastplate (at least those which were a set with full body plate armor) is more sloped than, say, a 17th century cavalry cuirass. Can't comment on the thickness of armor, because it wasn't anyhow standarized and I can't seem to find any information about post-medieval armor thickness on top of that.
Handheld firearms were built to create a "pike" with a longer range. They're basically unusable due to innaccuracy unless you're in a formation, at which point it creates a wall of death, just like a pike formation. They're also designed to be wielded by levies with little to no training to massive effect, just like the pike. The musket is just a really technologically advanced pike. Only downside to these ridiculously long range "pikes" is they couldn't exist continuously like a real pike can, which is why you had to mix them together to make up for that shortcoming. At least until Gustavus Adolphus managed to solve this issue and the pike became completely obsolete.
The vast amount of pre-early modern period fighting blokes had cloth armour. Big, wadded cloth suits in several layers with maybe a mail suit on top and a helmet. Cheap munitions armour stamped out in large one-size-fits-all quantities was around for a while. Warfare focused more and more on manouver with armies the size of towns walking around Europe and making more complex, speedier drills. In WFB, cannons are used to delete monsters on battlefields. A cannon hit strips a dice of Wounds off a monster. WFB cannons also had a bounce rule, the ball would land and bounce through a regiment for several Wounds.
Honestly as a historian who wrote their dissertation on the early-modern period and Dutch Golden Age, YES THANK YOU SO MUCH MY NB PAL ;3; Heavily armoured cavalry with wheel-lock pistols charging up to pike and shot formations, firing and wheeling away, the formation of mixed-unit tactics like the Spanish Tercio, the arms race of gunpowder artillery forcing european nations to reinvent their castles and defensive structures into more stout and dense forts than tall citadels, as well as a million other things like differing tactics and the history of pre-industrial firearm production and innovation... it's fucking amazing, and pisses me off to no end when people become high-fantasy obsessionists. Also really good points mentioning the Sengoku Judai and the Boshin War - the samurai were obsessed with firearms and early cannon, and after importing a few small amounts from Portuguese and Dutch traders they quickly had their own home-grown manufacturing areas for guns. Samurai adopted firearms, Monks adopted firearms, and by the time of the Boshin war in the Meiji restoration, Japan had over 200 years of a culture that valued firearms. I appreciate some people don't like guns in their fantasy RPGs, but these people bug me from both a personal and academic standpoint - like my brother in christ, you have mechanical golems and steampunk creations guarding ancient holds, but you think a piece of lead being fired by compressed explosions in a metal tube is too far?
I think this is why I love the Europa Universalis 4 fantasy mod Anbennar, which takes place in the early modern period and roughly mirrors the real world events (discovery of the new world, protestant reformation, guns, colonialism). While it has its problems like any collaborative work, this might also be its strength, as different people create different ideas for different regions of the world. For example, the Gnomes in the equivalent of Western Europe are adept at artificery, so they create inventions roughly 100 years ahead of time, like ironclads and very good guns. Another is Feiten, a country in the equivalent of East Asia has a tradition of hot air baloon festivals, which they decide to scale up, firebomb a city or two and eventually master airship travel. The equivalent of the French Revolution happens because artificers figured out how to coat bullets in anti-magic juice, meaning that the mages which depended on magic shields and thought they were immune to peasants and their guns, were suddenly very, very killable.
The first hot air ballons were used for observation. You can go up and down while being towed to the ground unless you want to drift around. But when you are up, you could get a pretty good lookout position. It's not as mobile as 50 dudes on horses.
I'm a sucker for world building when I dungeon master, but a problem I've run into with specifically 5e is that there is no way that with the spells that exist in 5e that firearms shouldn't be everywhere.
Why bother investing in new and untested weapons technology when you're already knee-deep in trained wizards, who can already do the same things as *modern gunnery* and more, and do it far more reliably than any proto-firearm could? This is like asking why the Ancient Greeks and Romans never developed steam engines, even though the concept of using pressurized steam to turn an axle was centuries-old already. While there were many material barriers (the metallurgy to build a steam engine simply didn't exist, etc.), a major economic factor was that neither society felt any need for such machines. Because they had slaves. Staggering numbers of slaves. With that much disposable human labour available, why would the wealthy elites bother investing in mechanical labour, that would probably never reach a cost-effective state within their lifetimes? EDIT: Posted before finishing the video. I stand by my argument. Firearms are not inevitable inventions.
@@tbotalpha8133 It definitely depends on how common wizards are, if they aren't then guns have a clear place. If they are then I think the main use of something like a musket wouldn't be to mass arm soldiers (although while a single wizard may be better than 10 or more men I wouldn't say that makes them a replacement) but to shoot at people at further distances without worry or giving them notice. While he does mention that early guns weren't very effective at range, its not hard to think that development may be put into that feature so that they could be better suited to taking out single targets at long distances aka shooting a wizard dead before he has time or a reason to put up a ward
@@tbotalpha8133 Can every military field large numbers of spellcasters? No? Then guns have a niche. And if magic users are that common, all the more reason to have guns, actually. You need standard infantry to have a way to compete with casters, and with the massive proliferation of magic, technology and manufacturing techniques can rapidly advance, and even advance in ways they couldn't in the real world. magic not only _increases_ a need for guns proportionally unless literally everyone is an offensive caster, it also makes them easier if you think about it for like five seconds. Not to mention that casters could also use guns. Basically every setting has a limit on how much magic you can do, one way or another. Having a sidearm as a backup for when you're out of magic, or even using a rifle to save energy for more powerful, niche spells, etc
@@tbotalpha8133lol, lmao even Why should we invest in this stupid flintlock technology when a skilled bowman can shoot faster, farther, is cheaper to maintain and can operate in any conditions? Training a skilled mage is way harder than teaching a peasant how to operate any firearm. Also, steam engines REQUIRE proper steel and you have simply proven that you do not know how an actual steam engine works. The greeks did not invent a steam engine, they invented a useless curiosity that was nowhere near even a simple steam engine.
I don't give guns outrageous damage. You can kill a level 0 townie or a 1HD goblin pretty easily. Fighting some 3HD dude is a little gnarlier because they're outside that one-shot hp zone. A handgun deals damage as a crossbow or slightly more, maybe with some armour negation. BRP characters in games like Call of Cthulhu don't walk around with giant elephant rifles. Not because scaling up gun to make more gun is hard, but because using an antimaterial rifle to shoot people is overkill. A SWAT bloke with a rifle dealing 2d6 damage times a three-round burst is going to drop another human. Mutant UA had a wonderful big-game gun/anti-material gun that hunters and infantry units use. Something between a punt gun, light artillery and elephant rifle. A big-bore breech-loaded gun operated a bit like a swivel gun by one gunner and one assistant carrier/loader. Big game hunters used them to hunt really big mutated nonsense. It's heavy to lug around and expensive, so only aristocrats with a hunting party in tow or small army units used them.
Warhammer Fantasy: the setting where three factions have the majority of their ranged troops armed with muskets. (Skaven don't count though they do have muskets to a degree). And it is interesting because I do want to do a fantasy, Medieval setting that has firearms in them. Though late Medieval, so mainly handgonnes and bombards.
WFRP 1e handguns did not have dramatically different rules. A handgun deals damage as a crossbow. Reload is a bit slower. A dude can hold a pistol in one hand. Later on they got a point of armour pen. Handguns are a bit expensive, but so is heavy plate suits. Powder is easy to get in towns. Empire armies are in the transition period where entire regiments are likely to show up with crossbows. WFB handguns lower but don't completely remove armour saves. WFB cannons are monsters that strip Wounds off hydras and giants.
Worth noting: you can create a real life shotgun with a length of metal pipe. You have to manually blast the shotgun shell, sure, but that's all it takes. Feel like this could be in addition to any point in the video, instead of just one point, so that's all I'll say.
Love it when someone else also pointed out the crystal part and how early firearms can indeed exist and make sense in a fantasy setting. Many writers tend to assume that firearms only became prevalent in the early 18th century when people already been using it since the 14th century with cannons being an incredibly good siege weapon. Heck, people also tend to forget that the idea of using firearms against cavalry was first started during the Hussite Wars in the 15th century, literally the "war cart" tactic. Literally a medieval "tank" if you think about it and I find it to be pretty interesting, yet I have yet to see anyone featuring this tactic in any fantasy fictions I know of. So, honestly, true, the period where the pike-and-shot formations were prevalent is extremely underrated and rarely referred to in many fantasy fictions. Even if early muskets were included in fantasy setting (isekai is the genre that I often read and notice the problem), I often see people keep jumping straight to the matchlocks for some reasons, even in a circumstance where the handcannons would make a better choice or flintlocks would be ideal. Instead, they were incredibly obsess with Nobunaga's tactic and just assume "matchlocks can defeat cavalry with ease" without even considering the context of the battle and the additional factors like your opponent's moral and skill, your position, defense layers (often omitted) and even the weather, something rarely talked about. Rather than utilising the tactic correctly, they just said "people with matchlocks line up in two or three lines and boom, we win", assuming that matchlocks were incredibly accurate or overpowered somehow. The "gun is easy to use" is true, but I do find some depictions to be extremely dishonest in the way they assume battle formation is easy to pull of in combat with peasants and never consider the morale impact of cavalry. Muskets were notoriously inaccurate and short range afterall, hence the effective range to deal with cavalry was often short and heavily dependent on the ranking volley fire tactic. I just don't think it will be easy to pull this off with inexperience peasents who definitely will cower at the sight of horses and armoured men charging at them. That's why pikes were important, because the moment the cavalry managed to charge through the volleys, they definitely will hit the largely vulnerable peasants with muskets. Hence, this is why pikes were important but I rarely see this being factored in. More often than not, isekai writers love to depict volley fires as being incredibly devasting in killing cavalry units rather than scaring them away. The only one fantasy isekai that I can think of that actually addressed the Nobunaga's volley tactic's weakness is Drifters, which ironically enough has Nobunaga himself knowing that his tactic does have weaknesses and heavily dependent on the amount of guns and motivated men he could gather. On the "gun mage" concept, I do thought of that too and would include it in my own story if I ever manage to cook one. Been thinking about that ever since I really wanted to subvert the common fantasy tropes in how they handled guns in fantasy worlds. The one thing I like to touch upon relating to gun technology is how early single-shot breechloading rifles being extremely underrated. Chassepot and Dreyse didn't get the love they deserve in fantasy setting. Literally paper cartridge black powder guns but with early bolt-action system and extremely long bayonet. People just love to skip them over and go from muzzleloading muskets to literally magazine fed bolt action rifle like the Kar98k which is like not the simplest bolt-action rifle to be ever produced (though it is one of the best bolt-action system that still being used in one way or another). Anyway, just really wanted to comment since rarely I see people discussed how early firearms can be sensible in fantasy worlds whilst not breaking the "balance".
1:22 Correction: That's a caplock, not a flintlock I'm talking about the firing mechanism specifically right now, because converting flintlocks to caplocks is possible and did happen. The difference is, caplock has a nipple that you put the primer on, which the hammer strikes (in the video you see how it would look like after you pulled the trigger). Kind of like in a modern firearm and that, once again, proves your point of "Jamming individual pieces". Flintlocks did not use primers, instead you'd basically have a spring loaded flint and steel which would strike against one another to create sparks, which would light the powder you'd have to put on a pan (basically part of the firing mechanism) , whenever you pulled the trigger. I'm sure you know that, but I think it could be useful for someone who might see this comment. It's very simplified and "mansplained", but that's what I was going for.
Loved the presentation of this video! I've been a fan of Warhammer Fantasy partly because of this reason alone. I've never ventured into it, but Gunpowder Fantasy is a pretty extensive genre right now in terms of books. I loved the point you raised relating to The Last Samurai. Having a plot device where you have a weapon which can be wielded by anyone without extensive physical or technical training is a great plot you can insert into any piece of fantasy fiction or home game of DnD. As musketry replaced the need for highly conditioned archers, who says alchemical or convetional firearms en masse wouldn't force the ancient council of wizards to start wearing flak jackets under their robes. Thank you for making this - I really enjoyed it!
The thing with the last samurai is it's just another example of bad history from creators, because the samurai used guns extensively for hundreds of years before they were ousted from power, and the satsuma rebellion was done primarily with guns instead of swords. The last stand wasn't them reaching enemy lines with swords, it was them melting down statues to make bullets and trying to fire at soldiers bombing them with artillery
The Imjin war was pretty insane. The Samurai had pleeeeeenty of matchlock guns after the unification, and were well-versed in their use. Some of the battles that happened between them and the Joseon (Korean) and Ming (Chinese) dynasties which both had pretty antiquated militaries was insane.
I remembered a story where some gunslinger found a ring that dispels magic at a pathetic range, only useful to pick locks. So what he decided to do is to ask the wizard to shrink cannon balls so he could ram it inside his pistol. Then he would mount the ring on the muzzle creating a literar hand cannon.
We can find solutions in History to make TTRPG firearms more fun and interesting. The first is to better represent the situations these weapons were designed for. TTRPG combat usually takes place within 25 meters and in rounds representing 6 in-game seconds. Firearms were not meant for this. Increased engagement ranges combined with (in-game) longer rounds would allow these weapons to shine. Firearms would be afforded more shots before the enemy can reach melee and take less real-life time to reload as a round's length can be extended to cover most or all of a firearm's reload time. For TTRPGs that stick to combat at traditional ranges, switching to a melee weapon should be more viable. Embrace the fact that, for most of its history, the firearm was paired with the bayonet. Consider what kind bayonet(s) your setting has available. The earliest were plug bayonets that made continued fire impossible since they blocked the barrel they plugged into. Sword & ring bayonets did not impede fire as they attached to a lug below or via a ring around the muzzle respectively. Even before bayonets, early-modern soldiers either carried small melee weapon to defend themselves or resorted to using their guns as cudgels. Lastly, consider exotic designs. As early as the 16th century (and possibly sooner) there we experiments with revolver-magazines and other exotic solutions to increase fire rates. The 18th century saw even more prototypes such as the Girardoni Air Gun (practically an air-powered bolt-action) and revolving Puckle Gun - all invented before the integrated cartridge became common.
Great video! On the historical fiction note, gunpowder has been known about since 142, and used in warfare since 904. This is before even the Norman conquest in 1066 so yes i agree medieval fantasy definitely should have gunpowder in it. (my only disagreement is that the flintlock mechanism specifically is a later development and fantasy should use less derived weapons pls dont smite me)
Yes, it was known about since 142. In China. Most Fantasy settings are not trying to evoke medieval China. Nor does the fact that Europeans as early as the Romans "could" have theoretically discovered/invented gunpowder mean it SHOULD exist in Fantasy settings evoking the European Middle Ages. Especially since gunpowder was not present in Europe for most of the Middle Ages.
@@tbotalpha8133 There are a lot of things that didn't exist in medieval Europe but are present in Fantasy. Full suits of plate armor weren't truly a thing until the Renaissance. Or, you know, dragons and orcs and elves. I do agree that "SHOULD" is a bit of a stretch but the antipathy towards firearms/gunpowder makes very little sense when you have things like nautiloids and the like in various DnD settings. Nobody complains about Lord of the Rings having a fantasy version of Tobacco despite the setting being inspired mainly by Early Medieval Europe which had no access to it.
@@MacCoalieCoalson The antipathy makes perfect sense. The creators, and their audience, do not want firearms in their settings. They do want nautiloids and plate armour and dragons. That's what this comes down to. Differences in taste, not some nonsense about historical accuracy. Different priorities. You can criticize an artist's priorities if you want. But criticizing fiction for a lack of realism, when it was never trying to be realistic in the first place, is completely wrongheaded.
@@tbotalpha8133 The issue here is, plenty of creators and players alike do want those things. Not to mention that outright hostility to the suggestion is silly, because as you say, the audience and creators should be deciding what they want to see in their setting. This concept works both ways. I'm not saying every fantasy setting needs gunpowder and firearms, I'm saying that a lot of the justifications given for excluding them are pretty silly.
My players veto'd guns, not because they don't think guns would work in a fantasy setting or because they think they'd be overpowered; They're scared of the consequences of letting me arm their enemies with boomsticks. I've worked around this by sticking giant-sized wands and staves on a prototype airship they're riding around on. They don't know that I'm planning for sky pirates to "commandeer" airships of their own.
That's smart of them. I made Napoleon Bonaparte reborn as a Hobgoblin General with access to guns and cannons...yeah it took literal magic intervention to stop him lol.
Ngl as someone outside of the fantasy community, ive always found the fear of guns and more contemporary settings weird, like imagine how hard a fantasy cold war setting would be, or a late 1800s fantasy setting.
I ran some Faerun for my buddies a bit ago, and there is lore for a few cultures around Faerun having unlocked the secrets of "Smokepowder", and the way I worked that in is that highly civil cultures can cultivate various magic users(nerds) more effectively than highly dis-civil cultures(Pirates, Raiders, Tyrants), and that magic users are a far better tool than the standard firearm(A wizard can cast a fireball every 6 seconds, its nearly a semi-auto cannon), but since these dis-civil cultures don't have as many of them, when they do their raiding they might employ smokepowder as a cheap semi-equalizer, ships use naval cannons, raiders might throw a bomb, but these technologies have never advanced past the capabilities of magic, and these societies are already not particularly progress focused. I never got around to people chucking grenades at my players, but they did get shot at by pirates with cannons.
Cannons and artillery is hard to do. You need to go to school and do a bunch of math to be an artillerist, and understand things like artillery tables. Making a cannon is a big industrial undertaking, the early heavy siege cannons are stuff emperors personally commission. A cannon probably has a name. You need to understand a lot about metallurgy and smelting and get all that metal together in the first place. It depends on how the magic works. In Birthright, you could bring wizards to the battlefield. Any spell that can target 50 blokes can be used in that battle system. They were still limited by spell slots. Wizards and their spells are a limited resource, you must decide where they place their three combined fireballs that day. It's similar in Warmaster for Warhammer Fantasy. Wizards are nice, but you must use their spells judicously. A magic zap can make a lot of difference with the right timing. Bless is a really good basic battlefield spell. It is low level, even basic spell-users can toss it. It gives a group of dudes +1 to hit which is not much, but when a whole unit has +1 to hit it makes a difference. Illusions are always nice, an illusonary unit of knights, an illusionary terrain piece or an illusion dragon overhead adds a lot of confusion.
@@SusCalvin meanwhile you can make basically any bloke in a regiment able to fire a gun in less than week, and like and bullets you find lying around are reusable with a little work you can do while waiting for dinner to cook,
Wizards who can cast Fireball even once a DAY are extremely rare, the ones who have enough spell slots to act like a semi-automatic cannon are once a generation or rarer.
@@TheAchilles26 It depends on how high-level your world is. Some TSR writers like to casually toss in level 4-6 people on the streets. Some OSR games keep tightly to the level 0 world, others have level 3 farmhands around. TSR had rules for battlefield magic in their domain play title Birthright. Any spell that can target 50 people can be used at this scale. Not just Fireball but Stone to Mud, Mass Phantasm etc. Even a level 1 cleric can toss Bless, and when an entire troop of 100 archers all have +1 to hit it makes a difference. With spell slots it was all about timing. Warfare can reach a scale where a wizard can hurt one unit, but there are ten of them tromping up. Warmaster for Warhammer Fantasy has battle wizards as well. They are an addition to regiments and cannons, not a replacement for them. You have to be judicious where you use your magic resources. When used well, a wizard can entangle a much stronger unit of knights right in front of a crossbow line or a cannon.
@@SusCalvin While yes a Cannon, or Artillery piece can be relatively difficult to produce, and utilize there is also that magic is often a rare very specialized art that takes a lot of training to make just anyone any good at, while I made the pirate vessel that engaged my party that session have 3 cannons, other pirate vessels may have a contracted warlock, or evil-aligned cleric slinging spells. Part of that choice had been to emphasize the addition of magic on criminal enterprises, that pirates make what may be crude cannons, or be willing to invest in proper ones to try to have some equalizers.
Welcome back. Sorry 'bout the stones but I very much like your take on this. Pathfinder did a good job implementing it with their nation of Alkenstar being a place where magic sometimes outright doesn't work so they made guns and justified the Gunslinger class.
Magic stops working when the nerds run out of spell slots in most OD&D or B/X games. Magic is limited but pretty powerful. Even a level 1 spell can resolve an entire encounter. Some nerd can magically slam and lock a door, create a sphere of impenetrable darkness, hush all sound or make a section of goons drop asleep. But after that, they're back to popping shots with a pistol or tossing darts or what have you.
Also flamethrowers should exist as well. Its not hard to project a flammable liquid using a pressurized cylinder out of a nozzle. The pressure can be from a spring or by the person pushing on a plunger.
The issue with those is that flamethowers are really heavy and mechanically complex, require pressure vessels far more complex than a firearm, and have terrible range. A gun requires a single straight forged tube. A flamethrower requires multiple curved tubes Like, your fantasy flamethrower operator is probably going to take an arrow to the face before he can get in range. At which point he has five seconds of fire before he runs out and has to run away for an hour to reload. The military flamethrower, in its classic backpack form, is only really usable for assaulting fixed positions, bunkers and the like. They were only really used for about ~40 years from WW1 to shortly after WW2, when rocket launchers proved far more accurate and long-ranged. Some did stick around, and rocket flamethrowers do exist (M202 and RPO-A), but regular HE rockets are just so much more useful.
@@MandolinMagi A flamethrower in principle is no where near as complex as you think. All you need is a cylinder with a nozzle equipped with a burning wick on one end and a plunger in the tube to displace the flammable liquid. (Like an oversized syringe) The plunger can be driven by hand or by a spring. Push the plunger, the plunger pushes the fluid out the nozzle and the wick ignites the fluid. Small ones would be single use, so no where near as heavy as you think, and large ones could be refilled after use but would be used defensively as a fixed emplacement. Think clearing castle walls during a siege. Range may be limited, but the status effects or debuffs from lighting an enemy on fire with sticky goo would be a good trade off for the lack of range. Also it would be great for clearing caves, sewers, dungeons and other CQC areas where range is less of a factor.
Your plunger flamethrower is going to have a range so short it's a danger to the user. You need actual pressure to get the fuel moving@@Cowboycomando54
@@Cowboycomando54that would be a large siege or naval weapon like the siphons used by the eastern romans because single use weapons like that are not good for economics of a kingdom. Grenades would be close but even then not a flamethrower. Their infantry flamethrowers were so few we barely knew they existed and their depictions are dubious at best.
@@magniwalterbutnotwaltermag1479 The flamethrower would not be a standard issue thing for NPC's. My character would be the one making and using the single use
Kind of funny that guns aren’t in fantasy worlds with literal potions and such since it was most likely alchemists in ancient China with access to the right materials, who invented gunpowder.
Firearms in a fantasy setting ALWAYS without fail end up being "Here is my semi automatic flintlock rifle thats accurate up to a kilometer away, has infinite ammo, requires no reload, never jams or misfires and makes no souond or smoke."
@@Sanguivore I'd argue there is a difference between becoming more proficient with a bow, and thus being able to fire another arrow in the timespan of a turn, and turning a flintlock into a silent, no smoke semi-automatic.
@@Falconer1523 I’m just saying that there’s not much of a *functional* difference at that level between how firearms and crossbows/bows are handled, so I guess I just fail to see the problem. (And as a sidenote, I’ve never witnessed this issue at all in fantasy. Can you point me in the direction of some examples?)
A skilled archer can loose 3 arrows in the 6-ish seconds a DnD turn takes. A flintlock musket averages 3 shot per minute with a reasonably skilled shooter. Reloading them is a process that does not lend itself very well to tabletop gaming. Thus, in my personal eperience from games I have played, they become ridiculous semi-automatic rifles with infinite magazines that make no noise.@@Sanguivore
I certainly understand that from a *technical* level, I just fail to see the real issue. Wizards can cast Fireballs and literally wish things into existence. Archers can loose multiple silent arrows at incredible distances in a round, Fighters can wear impossibly-tough armor and slay Giants with a mere sword, Rogues can disappear in plain sight in the middle of combat and know more skills than anyone else alive. What honestly does it matter if someone can now shoot and reload a firearm faster? Fantasy is not exactly known for its adherence to realism, as it's literally in the name. Our suspension of disbelief extends to all things under the sun, except flinging small lead balls from a metal tube?@@Falconer1523
My major problem with firearms in fantasy (and I assume, other people’s as well) is that guns have become so effective that they’ve completely supplanted every other weapon for warfare; and thus the immediate question is “why would someone use a sword, bow, or whatever else when guns exist?” As I’ve learned more about early firearm history, I’ve warmed up to them in fantasy, but not everyone is going to want to spend 4 days worth of time digesting trivia about this random topic.
Well, you can tell the others a tldr: Guns are easier than bows and simpler than crossbows. The gun did not replace the spear/sword, the bayonet did. Cavalry still uses swords up to WW1.
Swords and bows existed alongside guns in warfare for centuries dude. And in a setting with devastating combat magic why would anyone use a sword or bow either?
@@baneofbanes like I’ve said, I’ve warmed up to guns recently. As for magic, not everyone has the potential for magic, and even those who do may have to spend a lot of time before they can be proficient with it. Yes, the same could be said about archery, but not everyone is going about that sort of thing. Even then, that same argument has been made before
People used bows and crossbows etc for about 3 centuries alongside guns, until the latter became mass produced enough to replace the former. And gunners still used swords, and pikemen still existed to cover them.
One of my favorite Fantasy RPG settings, GURPS Banestorm, actually has an active conspiracy suppressing the invention of gunpowder and other technological and societal advances, to try and maintain the medieval stasis.
Bretonnia from Warhammer is another great example of this deliberate suppression of firearms development and technological advancement, because a) the neighbouring wood elves want to use them as a buffer against threats without them threatening their forests with industry, and b) the nobility of Bretonnia are massively classist and don't want peasants to have access to easy-to-use, point-and-kill ranged weapons that they could use to overthrow the social order.
@@IAmTheStig32 Medieval cities IRL criminalized the civilian use of the crossbow to prevent the ruling and managerial class from getting sniped by a betrayed peasant. Guns basically had to be at point blank range to reliably work during the age of the Flintlock. Guns were still always superior when sending death to a formation of people such that accuracy didn't really matter as long as the loud end was pointed at the enemy.
Magical Cartridge for a firearm? Sounds like a Caster. They are from the Anime Outlaw Star, Basically, mages found out that magic was leaving the universe for some reason, and decided to preserve their spells in Cartridges so they could be used when needed. These are mainly attack spells, but basically are very rare, and anyone with a Caster Firearm can use those Cartridges to fire spells at their enemies if they can find any.
You kinda touched on it already, but in the 1600's, there were more firearms on the Japanese Islands than anywhere and everywhere else in the world *COMBINED* because Samurai lords were like, "wait, I can conscript a peasant and train him for like 2 days, and this guy can kill a samurai? Yes, I'll take 10,000 of those. Don't have that many? Figure out how to make them then, it can't be that hard, we have one right here." There were literally sweatshops and factories running almost around the clock of people making arquebuses based on Portuguese and Dutch designs. I think Princess Mononoke has the best depiction of such a firearms workshop.
Our dm took us 600 years into the future of our homebrew setting right into the middle of the Pike and shot era, with an invention of one of my characters taking center stage. The Magelock, there where regular firearms too and how both these where balanced was the regular firearms where disgustly powerful, where as the magelocks varied from equally devestating to weak but could fire quiet a bit before needing to charge it's arcane energies. It was up to the nation or mercanary company weather they wanted the easy logistics of the magelock or devastating firepower of a regular ass musket. We naturally used both and made quiet the killing as a raiding force in the 600 years war. Getting hit once with a musket through the wooden walls of our battlewagon punched a hole through my breast plate and k.o.ed me from full hp. Until then being big balls mc'gigachad knight and charging through gunfire worked pretty good. I miss that game it was fun running a company and having npcs that could actually be relied upon to fight effectively, I still wish we found out why that lady knight joined our company, she alone made up half our fighting power.
I'm planning a renaissance era campaign so I've had to make my own homebrew rules for guns. The working plan is each fire arm is an automatic non magical +3 to hit representing how hard it is to dodge a bullet and how good they are at piercing armor. the bonus decreases by 1 or 2 at further ranges. But guns can only be reloaded out of combat, I'll be counting the ammo for each gun like magical ammo. Pistol: 1D10 piercing 30/90ft range. Musket: 1D12 piercing 40/120ft range. (can have 1d6 piercing bayonet) Blunderbuss: 2d4 piercing +1d4 to 1 additional adjacent target. 2 additional targets on crit. Only 20ft range. Jezail: 3d4 piercing 75/225ft range. Magnum: 2d8 piercing 30/90ft range. Beyond that we get into artillery rules.
Muskets used cartridges because it simplified the loading process. The earliest documentation was the 14th century(1300s). Fantasy has magic users that supplant for the tactical viability of fire based tactics and organization. The adoption of firearms as the mainstay of European armies was unique to the climate, politics and industry of Europe. Though other cultures and peoples also had firearms and even knew them before Europeans did, they did not employ them to an extent Europeans did because Europe had the socio-economic and political ingredients to adopt musketeers. In a world of magic, where instead of wasting time and valuable effort on applying kinetic energy via energy, why not just concentrate the energy you have instead that you already can control in the first place? It does not waste time, resources for tactically dismal results such as musket infantry. Compare that to having mages just blasting and leveling places with many times the firepower of muskets.
There is a particular problem with games like DnD, which is the fact that old gunpowder weapons are a bit hilarious to think about in context of the mechanics of the game. DnD is especially bad because if you're playing any class with extra attack and you don't want the mechanics to totally screw you, you're shooting at least two times in 6 seconds. And if the ranger gets to have extra attack with their gun, the fighter should too... And now we've got a level 20 fighter shooting a flintlock 8 times in 6 seconds. PF2e is a lot better on this front, but it still face the problem that you can reload so quickly. For me, I usually rationalize this by just making the weapons NOT flintlocks, and instead breach loading and cartridge based. Yes from a worldbuilding perspective this is hard to justify without putting some serious work into trying to find some kind of logic in it... and no, I don't care, nobody is shooting a flintlock 8 times in 6 seconds, I refuse, good day sir
I'm sorry I just kept picturing a napoleon style musket line of lightly armored footman with black powder bags hanging on them all tightly grouped together and wizard goes... "I cast fireball".
Why should it? At the end of the day a Tabletop Fantasy world is for the players. What if they DONT WANT firearms? You going to force them on your table? I sure as hell am not. Oh, while you are also going on about how firearms were around relatively early, perhaps you should ALSO mention the burst rate of early firearms? As in the chance that the damned thing literally explode in your face? The chances were scarily high.....
The point about "magical crystal cartridges" actually reminds me of how guns work in Arknights. Their guns are actually classified as "a new type of wand" powered by magic crystals, and you need to be able to cast precisely to fire a bullet (those who can't cast but want to fight at range have to use bows or crossbows instead, while those who are powerful-but-imprecise casters use the more usual magic staff-type weapons instead). The in-game races are also stronger than real-world humans, so their draw strengths with a bow or crossbow can often be considered more powerful than a smaller gun. The game had a crossover with Rainbow Six: Siege and the game's lore actually updated to include the Arknights setting's engineers attempting to reverse-engineer gunpowder (without having ever heard the names for any of the chemicals being listed to them by the Rainbow Six operator), but finding the results too costly to reproduce and too cumbersome and loud for their operations, and also too weak compared to the heavy ballistae carried by the kinds of strong operators who could manage a heavy real-world firearm. They also decide to keep their experiments a secret, to keep the knowledge that "anyone could use a gun" out of the hands of those who'd use them to destabilize their already-unstable world.
There's so much Gekokujo footage in the background, it made my heart melt (I was the original creator of Gekokujo). If that's your gameplay, thanks for playing the mod!
I agree in principle, there is one thing though. I'm history, gunpowder was only invented once and spread from there. This puts it in a category of intentions which are very hard to discover. Other examples include stirrups. Notable _non_ examples include writing.
My idea for putting guns into dnd-esque fantasy is through a fun new concept called 'thunderstone' - you strike it, it makes a force blast with the same force you struck it with. if you lock that down into a tube, you're suddenly pushing out a ball of iron at a massive force.
What you describe at 4:30 i basiclly a plot of kung fu panda 2 and I know It's not a game but It's just perfect example of the story of someone in fantasy setting who industrializes gun production and becomes a giant threat for the rest of the world and the main characters
Fun story: in my homebrew universe that used GURPS 3 and a fully custom magic system, one of my players (a mage) figured out that he could have glass gems manufactured, charge them with magic, and (since they were fragile) use them as improvised grenades. Couple that with the later discovery of a really high tensile-strength alloy, and you get a magic-powered gun that's pretty cheap to operate. This was 6 years ago, so it was funny to hear you arrive at the same conclusion.
eh, the samurai DID have a complicated relationship with guns. As did euro knights of roughly the same period. After the sengoku jedai and the invasion of korea there was a MASSIVE crackdown on gun ownership and firearms became super rare again for the next 200 years. They were seen as destabalizing agent and were seen with a good deal of distaste. Just a distaste that had to be put away when it came to large scale organized war. And I think this connects to why guns arent as popular in fantasy. They are an immediate visual reminder of modernization. That there might be skyscrapers and electricity in 800 years. Even basic muskets and arquibus’s are usually products of semi-industrialization. your local blacksmith does not usually make one, but some state armory does. It a product and symbol of a certain degree of modernism. While the heavy armor of a late knight or the heavy armor of a legionary effectively and comparitively do the same thing. Not saying that you cant have guns in fantasy, something like Warhammer fantasy does that, but it also explores the themes of burgeoning early-modernism, which gets away from that sense of vague timelessness where something could be set anywhere between 1000 BC and 1500 AD and you would t have a stark sense of progression. You can depict david and Goliath as a 7th century bc near eastern warriors or a 13th century ad European man of arms, Same as king Arthur, but there is a sense once guns are involved that its no longer a part of the mists of the past, but a definitive position in the progression of history.
The gun: "Sorry, I'm new at this, I don't like damp conditions and I'm struggling to shoot consistently. But I can go through armour sometimes." The bow, sling, javelin and axe: "Don't worry, stick with us kid, we'll take good care of you, we're sure you'll go far."
I read a sci-fi/fantasy book that happens on a distant world that is "stuck" seemingly in that early medieval setting. The protagonist, advanced human from Earth, forced with having to essentially take part in guerrilla warfare, quickly whips up gunpowder, and it goes "pflut" instead of "bang". And he learns from some oral history that "many have tried to do what you had, but it never works" (essentially, not to spoil, the "gods of the realm" have tweaked the rules so that gunpowder doesn't work). I found it to be pretty interesting twist.
"If you can have a spell that summons a meteor from dumb fuck nowhere, I can have myself a fucking Königstiger, and if you can fly on a dragon that can burn down an entire city in 20 seconds, I can have a Ju-87 Stuka."
You know, I have an idea for guns in fantasy. Species and people without much magical power want to be able to fight the people who have magical power, so they ended up with guns, which gave them the power to fight back, then the people with magical power found the concept of a gun interesting and managed to create a gun that shoots magic. So now there’s guns, and there’s magic guns, which are still like staffs n shit but the magic is condensed for less area attack but more lethality
i dont really feel like its *that* underreprestanted, i mean one of the most well-known fantasy "universies" is warhammer - age of sigmar, where humans are notorious for using blackpowder for their advantage (the good humans, fuck these french-knight-bretons) be it muskets, cannons or in general technological advancement. but one factor that I personally think influences heavily the usage of black powder as a weapon in fantasy stories, are fucking dwarves, I mean they almost everytime own all big mines (aka salpeter and sulfur which are crucial to do black powder) and since dwarvs are mustly stubborn in every fucking fantasy trope, they never think of the idea to create something COMPLETELY NEW since their forefathers didnt create it (and i think a hand-cannon/flintlock-musket is something so revoluitanry that most dwarves would probably be even disgust by it) most of the time the humans are the ones who really create/invent outstanding new things, since they are just normal people like us, no great wizards that have ages to train like elfs, to super-great artisman that have hundred of years to train and improve their skill of their trait (like dwarves who live almost in every fantasy story >150years and on top that live in a fucking fort which IS the mountain so fairly save - and if they arent save they almost die instantly xD be it skaven or goblins/orcs) because of that humans need to find anything else they can grab to survive in the world, but if they have literally no access to the ressources they need for it, then its hard for them to create fire arms as example. of course they have their own mines and can trade with the dwarfs, but dwarves are often so extreme stubborn that its hard to trade with them, and to think about a ressource (in this case sulfur...) as a mean of weapons, is no easy and quick process, if you only have a small limited amount of it then you dont think about including it in your army since you would make them too depedent on them (see that firework rockets existed, way before mass - handcannons/musket wielding armys)
I've been wanting to play a gunslinger in my current dnd campaign so my DM and I have been working out how it works. This video is really cool and I think I'm going to show it to them. I also like Forgotten Weapons' videos are guns that are like turbo old because it gives a unique perspective on firearms based in reality and not pop culture. (PS, I love love love guns but I'm kind of anxious about it being a "guy" interest so it's really reassuring seeing another transfem person express a similar kind of fascination/obsession with them so thanks for that.)
You don't need to introduce guns into the setting. You do not need a gunslinger class no more than you need a bow class or a halberd class. There are guns in Faerun (Dragonheist has a faction of gun users in particular), and there is a Gunner feat. This is simple DnD lore and basic game design.
5:28 That's something I've thought about a lot, in any setting where there's advanced metals and the ability to create fireballs there's no reason for guns or cannons not to exist
Something fun for those who want early firearms in their settings is to look up the pliers pistol or 'sechongtong' (세총통). It's a Korean invention from the Joseon dynasty that is a preloaded microcannon that fired darts that was held in place with a set of specialized pliers. You could load up 10-30 of these tiny cannons and swap them out after each shot. They were reportedly easy enough for women and children to use to fight off raids in the north frontiers, but it's a very easy to replicate weapon for TTRPG's and looks cool too!
Muskets and flintlock rifles need to be in fantasy games and books. In fact muskets we’re in use as early as the 16th century but are much more bulky than what most people think of when they think of muskets and flintlock rifles
D&D: Oh no! Not Firearms!!! It's not good for our setting! (But smokepowder still exists and no one made any form of a gun) WFRP4e: Put as much lead to this monster as you can!. But seriously in Warhammer Fantasy 4e, firearms are soo good. They are sometimes hassle to get and to reload but the damage and Blackpowder quality (it requires a Cool check from targeted creature to resist against fear effect of this weapon) is a selling point in this weapon category.
5:44 expensive magical cartridges? Sounds like someone needs to watch Outlaw Star (space fantasy where the main character has a gun that shoots spells but "scrolls but cartridges" are a pain to actually get your hands on)
The primary reason for the fantasy genre's aversion to firearms is that firearms as an invention marked the end of the oft-romanticized medieval period and the beginning of the modern times. The moment firearms come into play, it's only a hop skip and jump before the age of noble knights and swordfighting is replaced with riflemen marching in mass formation. If magic is dangerous and or difficult or learn, the mages are put at a severe disadvantage as well.
Several people have mentioned this already, that's completely ahistorical. Firearms preceded the stock fantasy "noble knight in full plate armor" by more than a hundred years. The real reason is that Tolkien had a hate boner for everything "industrial", and everyone since pretty much just followed the conventions he set for high fantasy.
@@whatisthisayoutubechannel Yes, when early firearms were first invented in 13th century Asia and it took over a hundred years for those firearms to come to Europe and then even longer before guns as we know them became widespread. When firearms became popular in Europe, gunpowder warfare replaced previous forms of warfare within the century.
@@electivetoast6897 Firearms were not “first invented in 13th century Asia”, China had them in the 10th century. They were common in Europe by the 14th century (you’re correct on that date); not exactly widely adopted by armies, but they were around and people knew what they were. Full plate armor, on the other hand, didn’t even exist until the 15th century. If you’re going to have full plate in your fantasy setting (like most do) then you don’t get to use history as an excuse for not having firearms.
I'm moreso arguing from a world building perspective than a historical one. Yes, what most people think of as knight armor wasn't developed until around the time that firearms came to Europe, but you cannot deny that firearms are the very thing that brought about the transition of warfare from knights and their warbands to ranks of musketeers.
The most difficult part about producing relatively modern weapons is the primer. The primer has to be almost perfect and extremely standardized AND produced in huge numbers.
Guns don't belong in all fantasy. The purpose of this video, at least to my understanding, is to argue that guns will make fantasy better. This isn't a really fair argument to make. To get the obvious out of the way first, it is entirely up to the individual what they think looks good in their world. If the world is heavily inspired by fantasy and not really tethered to our reality, then its fine. World building doesn't always have to be entirely realistic in terms of technological progression. Oftentimes I see it being used as a way to nitpick certain worlds, when it doesn't really cause any problems when you are engaging with it otherwise. Secondly, you act like there's no possible way that a world with magic might not have guns. Again, literally any justification works for a world. Maybe they haven't been able to master the magical ability into such a small space. Maybe they haven't had a real need to change the status quo. Maybe they just haven't invented gunpowder yet. Any of these could work for the world as a justification, because it really isn't that important whether or not there are guns in them. Acting like guns will objectively make a world better isn't really fair, and it also isn't fair to say that being more like historical fiction is better. Fantasy tropes are tropes for a reason, they are popular and well-liked by many people. That isn't to say that there aren't issues with them, its to say that certain stories are built for them. Injecting 'realism' into every single IP is pointless. Realism can be a good thing if your intended purpose is to make a more grounded and down to Earth world. It makes no sense to argue why there aren't guns in a world that is clearly playing into the aesthetics of a more classical fantasy story. You can make a good world without needing a realistic approach to technology. One thing that I genuinely do not enjoy seeing is this constant need to appeal to realism. You see it in the comments for movies, shows, or really anything. The important thing is that you tell a good story. If that story is aided by a factor of realism, than go right ahead and add it. If that story is hindered by it, than there is no real point for it. Realism for the sake of realism alone isn't inherently a good thing. There should be a DnD module about guns though.
It just needs either gun implementation, or believable justification why guns were never invented in the setting. Because most of the time we have all the inventions required to build a gun, and usually quite a few inventions of later era, but guns are just ommited for unexplained reason while being very obvious inventions for the era in question. Fantasy shouldn't be entirely realistic, but it should be consistent and believable.
You think guns are obvious and inevitable. They absolutely weren't. The pre-columbian metropolises of South and Central America prove that not even iron is inevitable, or necessary, in building empires.
One important thing to remember is that even early firearms had a noticeably longer range than what they were effective at. This is because smoothbore muskets didn't impart any real accuracy beyond barrel length and velocity. If I remember correctly, the effective range for muskets in that period of combat was about 100 yards, and that was just the maximum amount of distance you could reliably expect the bullet to travel without any major deviations. Rifles of course can impart extra accuracy by adding grooves in the barrel to spin the projectile (not unlike feathers on arrows), and we do have evidence experiments were conducted with rifling as far back as the 15th century (meaning they might be close enough to the period). The issue with rifling is that the bullet has to be a much tighter fit in order to take to the grooves (watch videos of cap and ball revolver reloads, if they use ball ammo you'll notice a lead ring around the cylinder chambers as they reload). This increased reloading time, which was more important than accuracy for most. All that changed in 1846 with the Minié ball. It's concave base expanded to take the rifle grooves when fired, allowing it to be easily loaded like regular balls in smoothbore muskets. It's one of the reasons you see such high casualties during the American civil war. Both sides used Minié balls extensively, and the greater likelihood of hitting a target further out meant that more people were getting hit. Line combat continued as the best formation for the time (albeit with greater casualties), but we did start to see more extensive uses of trenches in battles such as the Siege of Petersburg. This whole last paragraph is a bit too advanced for most fantasy settings, but it is something to keep in mind. If nothing else, it's good inspiration. the Minié ball could have in theory been developed earlier, far as I'm aware it's just a more complicated bullet mold than a sphere.
Biggest counter-argument is if the DM is running muskets, combat gets a lot more deadly for PCs. We've got a lot of lore of "Arrrgh, got hit in the shoulder by an arrow, let me keep going!" while a quarter-sized hole from an iron penny is harder to handwave, haha.
In D&D the Savage Coast sub-setting had magic fire arms as an important part of that region. There was also Top Ballista that had some gun equivalents.
So the dwarfs would make it with gunpowder, and the elves could use magic to make a gun. Then the dwarfs and the elves would banter over who has best boomstick!
Fable kind of implemented firearms into their fantacy setting in Fable 2 and 3 but didnt realy explore the implications of that, other than saying it was the great equiliser that made the people able to kill most of the "Hero's" from Fable 1's era, leading to all the ruins and lack of Hero's at that point of the timeline.
I find it extremely funny that you included a snippet from Paizo when talking about being problematic. Of ALL the companies, LOL This is a good video and that point is very true though
Depending on the aesthetic of the fantasy setting (late medieval 14th to 15th century and early modern 16th to 17th) there is definitely a place for firearms. However, if your aesthetic is more medieval I'd say that the flintlock shouldn't be used in favor of handcannons and firelances. That is a personal bias though, as I feel the handcannon/firelance are far too underutilized in media.
There's a cool little history channel that recently made a video on Gunpowder in East Asia. Long story short, it was widely used in combat ever since it's invention in the early Middle Ages.
For real, the Thirty Years War (AKA the Pike and Shot era) is basically the peak of European insanity that can still have fantasy tropes. Everyone was killing each other over a mixture of geopolitical interests and religious disputes, the Witch Hunts as a large scale practice became a thing, and capitalism was being born into the world thus enabling the player characters to do insane things by becoming rich through their adventures.
Love this and agree that Pike and Shot is criminally under represented in media. I've been working on my own fantasy setting that is specifically meant to be a Pike n Shotte because of this. Spent forever trying to balance firearms with melee, but I found the Genesys game system to be great for it. one day I'll finish it up (I've been working on this for like 6 years)
I played a pistolero gunslinger in Pathfinder and had a blast. I think people forget there were hundreds of years that firearms and melee weapons would both appear in the battlefield, as firearms did not truly take over melee weapons until rifling was invented.
3:58 "If this is discovered by the great ganondalf the 18th who wants to keep these a secret, that's a plot thread you can follow." An explicit worldbuilding detail in Mistborn. Gunpowder was suppressed because of how easy it would be to create a rebellion. Especially since there's a class of mages who can be described as "Human Guns" in the sense of "hucking small pieces of metal really really fast." The moment the evil emperor dies, gunpowder becomes ubiquitous in a pretty short timescale. Especially since the magic at the core of the world hinges *entirely* on metallurgy including composition, alloys, purity, and mass production.
My sympathies on the kidney stones. I did the same thing last year. They stuck a tube in my back and sucked out as many stones as they could find, then x-rayed me the next day and scheduled me to come back in a month for a catheter to go after the ones they missed. My holiday stay was in 2017. I got in a motorbike crash on Thanksgiving weekend and had a proper turkey dinner with pumpkin pie and everything. The local hospitals have great food, but the entertainment systems are hit and miss. One had video on demand, but the other was just satellite. What ever was on was on. Guns are a problem with me right now. My grandmas keep shooting the bad guy by page ten and then where do I take the story? It's a problem when my weakest character is just as deadly as the biggest hulking ogre.
I wrote some stories once upon a time that featured "aetherguns"- literally guns that shoot magic- and they worked almost EXACTLY how you theorized in this video. They were basically a (conductive) metal magic wand attached to a handle/stock with a trigger/hammer mechanism, and a magically charged crystal (used as the "ammo"). Finger pulls trigger-> trigger drops hammer-> hammer hits crystal,-> piezo-electric action in crystal releases magic-> conductive "barrel" directs said piezo-magical charge at whatever you're aiming at-> target gets blasted with a fireball (or a lightning bolt, or an ice bolt, or a cone of force, or whatever type of magic was stored in the crystal). In said stories, they were invented by (magic-using race) after (technology using race) showed up with flintlock/percussion guns. They basically got their hands on a "slugthrower", figured out roughly how it worked, and then figured out a way to do something similar with magic. The aetherguns even had an ADVANTAGE over slugthrowers, in that the crystals could be "fired" multiple times before they broke and had to be replaced, so aetherguns actually had a *higher* rate of fire... until cartridges were invented. And it kept your combat-casters from burning up all their "spell slots" (not how magic worked in said stories, but close enough for example purposes) too quick during a fight, as they could save their innate magic abilities until after they ran out of crystals. tl;dr: You are totally right about how a magic-based society should be able to figure out the concept of "magic gun" pretty easily. (And yes, aetherguns are basically just "magic wand with more steps", but you gotta think about the PSYCHOLOGY, man! It was basically the magic-people going "These 'gun' things are kicking our ass, we need to make some, but we can't do it like they do it, so let's fake it as best we can!")
![An Introduction to Fantasy in the Wild, Weird West [cc]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6gS17eZb6xw/mqdefault.jpg)
Great! I'm putting a gun mage in my story now.
bless
fuck it im stealing that idea too now
Council of Mages: "You call -throwing bombs around- shooting guns -a martial art- magic?"
Gun Mage: "Hey, as long as it works."
This reminds me think of the Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan. Flintlock meets sorcery. It's set in a similar French revolutionary period.
A quirked up Red Mage inside a hollowed out golem with two electromagnetic dust-alloy cannons (because Electric Dust is as common as they get) yelling “LONG LIVE IN THE NC (Northern Covenant)!!! DEATH TO THE TR (the Territories of Regina)!!!”
Now that’s what “fantasy” should stand for!
“Guns in Fantasy are too lethal and overpowered” says the sorcerer before casting fireball three times in a row after getting tossed across the battlefield by dragon the size of a two family home.
WFRP handguns do the same damage as a crossbow. They got one point of armour pen later on. In WFB, handguns would lower the armour save of targets.
The choice is less spells vs guns but crossbows vs guns. Warhammer is in the transition period where professional state troops with crossbows can march to war covered by a battery of cannons. The cannons probably have names.
@@SusCalvin Yeah, Warhammer Fantasy is about the only fantasy setting that isn't afraid of guns, and that's because it's Warhammer, mostly. The Empire being solidly in the pike and shot era makes a lot of sense when they didn't have to invent guns themselves, but borrowed them off the dwarfs who invented guns 2000 years ago (or something).
@@therat1117 The alternative in WF is not between magic and handguns. It's between crossbows and handguns. A WFRP handgun is in the transition state where the advantage over a bow or crossbow isn't all that clear yet. State troops of an elector count can march out with crossbows and polearms as a cannon battery shoots over their heads. A WFRP crossbow is not all that different in effect than a handgun.
@@SusCalvin Yeah, yeah that's more Warhammer being Warhammer and rule of cooling things rather than having anything approaching realistic technological development. The Empire also has steam tanks, gattling cannons, and magical laser beam wagons.
@@therat1117 The aztec lizards have lasers of the gods. They can't reproduce these relics of the gods.
There was a little less steampunk in older editions. Steam tanks was a thing though. You could field every single steam tank of the empire in one army if you liked and had the points. The dwarfs had their funky coal helicopters and submarines.
I like the coin clipper, student, bawd and bailiff adventuring nonsense of WFRP 1e.
American Civil War Reenactor here. Your idea with the crystal that explodes a little bit each time a hammer hits it is EXACTLY how muskets from the late 19th century worked. You know those little 4th of July popper thingies you throw on the pavement? Well, they made percussion caps out of that and stuck it on the lock of a rifle. When the hammer went down, it went off, the spark lit the powder.
That's alchemy.
If you swap percussion caps for crystals, that's just some more magic stuff. Super ez.
i believe something more closer to it existed, pill lock was it? pretty much just uses fulminate crystal pieces in place of cap
@@AntonDVasiliev-ss1ie Right, good point
Except in his idea the crystal is replacing the powder, not the ignition system.
if using magic crystal powder as propellant, i remember there is a manga using this
in Nihonkoku Shoukan, one country is on napoleonic level tech and has french aesthetics, alongside magic muskets, the army also had armor using land dragons and airforce of wyvern
very good world building but the plot is basically JSDF propaganda
@@AntonDVasiliev-ss1ie Lmao figures.
"i may be out of spells, but I'm not out of shells"
*Pulls out musket from hat*
I don’t mean to be rude but did The Archchancelor of unseen university write this?
@@fishHater I don't think so. But I never heard of "unseen university" so it's possibly a coincidence.
wizzard: aahhh thats it im out of magic
big evil guy: haha now im gonna win
wizard: you feeling lucky?
@@Spectral-Spiff "you ready to play"
Making a hat into a bag of holding is honestly pretty genius
While talking about the Japanese relation to firearms, it's cool to mention the initial dynamics of how they got them: when the Portuguese arrived in the Far East they found Japan in a state of civil war and realised the warring samurai could really use some of their boomsticks. They then leveraged this power to spread christianity by only allowing daimyos who converted to buy guns. These dynamics can be super interesting when transported to a fantasy world, where you not only have the common human factors, but also magic, monsters and dragons and whatever. It's such a shame that firearms are crimminally underused in these settings.
The dutch show up. They have less jesuits with them and are easier to contain. "Dutch studies" was the study of imported european books.
The colonial powers are not cooperating with eachother the slightest.
And interestingly unlike The Last Samurai
most Samurai at Minji period use fire arms as well
Units like Battotai are literally samurai with swords and Revoler
and 春日隊 fought on the shogun side are a unit with samurai who use sword and rifles
even sword master like Hijikata Toshizo use revoler and sword same time on the battlefield
“Flintlock”
*shows both matchlocks and caplocks, but not flintlocks*
Wanted to comment on this as well. People who talk about this topic seem not to notice the difference between the early firearms and use the blanket term flintlock.
He also used the term Arquebus which is actually what the Japanease used during the civil war period. Not flint, match, or cap locks. Arquebus could also require more than one person to fire
Edit: Arquebus are apparently Matchlocks, the more you know.
@@ArcAngle1117"The addition of a shoulder stock, priming pan,[4] and matchlock mechanism in the late 15th century turned the arquebus into a handheld firearm and also the first firearm equipped with a trigger."
@@ArcAngle1117An arquebus IS a matchlock so, yes, the Japanese used matchlock firearms.
I will call "semantics" on this comment, the message gets across even if he's inaccurately portraying matchlocks and cap&ball as flintlocks. Did you know? There's also a system that's very much similar to a flintlock but it's called a "doglock", bet you missed it a few times but nobody cared.
So real about pike and shot being overlooked. It's such a cool time period in terms of history and in its potential for fantasy. Worth noting that most people think guns are also quite accurate, they were actually in lines so that they basically couldnt miss by sheer number. Pre-rifling its just a "this general direction" weapon, and the problems with smooth bore only really started getting solved in the early 19th century, although not all of that was rifling. Think France had one where it expanded when being shot out or something.
Also Rifling initially meant slower reloading, since pushing it down meant you had to push it through the spirals.
Early gunpowder warfare is sick asf, from flintlocks to muskets to giant cannons and giant cannons on ships its so cool and actually was at the same time as a lot of the like, more traditional fantasy weapons came about. Pretty sure heavy calavry only became somewhat common after gunpower started to come into use.
thats mostly because of cavalry....
like 80% was because of cavalry
when bows and firearms met in the 16th ceand 17th century
guns won,.. in range.. and accuracy... almost every time
theres a 1565 i think, note where a man leading italian arquebusiers was faced with a group of englishmen with longbows
they said 'the english bow is short ranged and littlethreat to us, i told the men to not fire when the english advanced into the mens range.. but to WAIT, until the english reached THEIR range and began to prepare to shoot their bows, and by letting them get even closer our shots would hit easier and be more devestating
the italians fired a volley which ripped into the english, they then drew swords and chased them from the field
in the invasion of korea, japanese man sieged a korean fort.. the korean archers had ZERO hope of hitting the japanese, the japanese could shoot THEM but the korean arrows either fell short, or were so lobbed, they had zero accuracy...
and korean bows are some of the best in the world
cossack and tatar bowmen attacked men in some wagons... and these archers couldnt get anywhere NEAR close enough to shoot accurately
It's worth noting that the American Indigenous were REALLY willing to sell their metaphorical souls for firearms.
Yeah, they were 100% reliant on the Whites for ammo, but muskets are just SOOOO much more effective than bows.@@elgostine
we have an account of someone showing up to some natives who were known for good shooting and asked if any could string and shoot his warbow and none could
@@MandolinMagi
later a party were driven away by the natives shooting musket and arquebus
@@MandolinMagi "He wants nothing from us but powder to kill his fellows and spirits to kill himself"-Joseph De Maistre, in 1821
@@elgostine Incidentally the pike and shot era was a terrible time to be English, or German, or any European nationality besides possibly the Poles and Spaniards. It's probably why most English-language fiction skips over it.
Once read a surprisingly OLD western isekai novel series about a D&D tabletop party getting zapped over by their actually a wizard DM. Eventually they started manufacturing guns to fuel their nation building. The baddies, an evil wizard guild, reverse engineered the gun concept. While they could not replicate the gunpowder which the party went to great lengths to keep secret, they used the theory to use a magic crystal to super heat water in the weapon to get a similar effect.
Holy shit that is amazing and cool, what's the name of the isekai?
nameeeeee
@@dragonfell5078 Found it, "Guardians of the Flame" books by Joel Rosenberg. First published 1983.
@@arewe9647 Found it, "Guardians of the Flame" books by Joel Rosenberg. First published 1983.
@@omganotherun Thanks mate!
"No dude, you can't have John Moses Browning as a Wizard for your character. That's not fair." ~ My DM
"Why not, you stupid bastard?"
How about a cleric?
@@owlsayssouth That's basically the TF2 Medic if he had guns...okay that would probably be worse lol
That's because he is an artificer.
Or a prophet AND an artificer.
Our current Homebrew DnD session, has me, a Cleric having a Pontifical Remington Rolling Block rifle (yes this exists IRL) and a Colt m1877 Revolver as main weapons. Meanwhile our Artificer has a Railgun. Your DM must be strict if they thinks guns are overpowered cause my guns in the current campaign miss like half of the time lol
Remember there's nothing stopping anyone from imagining a "fantasy world based on ww1 with ww2 elements while having a civil war narrative with roman, Chinese, Japanese, and British based cultures while having characters travel around the world like lunatics meeting famous people in search for the cure for aids or something
my ideal would be 17th/18th century dress, atire and weapons but with elves dwarves and other shit. I want my tall ships and cossack outfits!
@@runakovacs4759 Warhammer Fantasy isn't that far off.
It exists, its called Warhammer lol. Pretty much all of this exists in fantasy. Within D&D settings with firearms just arent popular. I think the problem is magic existing makes firearms seem kind of useless. If you want a ranged attack magics just more efficient, powerful, accurate, and no reload time.
Seems this youtuber didnt really bother to look into fantasy very much though.
If you just focus on the "fantasy in world war 1 with world war 2 characteristics" and ignore the rest of your comment, then idk what games might fit but it made me think of the anime saga of tanya the evil. Pretty fascinating world if you ask me.
@@crowe6961 Warhammer fantasy is more 13/15th century setting.
The Empire of Man from Warhammer Fantasy: Allow us to introduce ourselves.
Yes, steampunk Holy Roman Empire. One state of the Empire even has clockwork robots (Nuln). Not to mention a Da Vinci-esque tank (steam tank).
@@Banzaiiii2223456 Three things make The Empire great: Faith, Steel and GUNPOWDER - Emperor Magnus the Pious
One of the only 2 "races" I usually main in warhammer 3, the other is Bretonnia if I am in a Hundred Years War mood. (Knights and longbows lol)
also the Dwarves to an even greater extent. Fantasy without guns is great, but its ridiculous when they include dwarves as masters of industry and technology and they have created massive underground cities and mechanical marvels far advances than the level of technology in the setting should be, and yet they have crossbows as the most advanced weapon.
Karl Franz: This action has my consent.
Matchlocks had a physical wick or matchstick that would touch the powder and ignite it
Flintlocks used a striker of (wait for it) flint to cast sparks on to the powder to ignite
Caplocks had an external explosive primer cap that would be struck to ignite the powder
Fun fact: the caplock was invented by an English minister who was frustrated by the flash of powder warning the birds he was hunting.
And there are a LOT of weird systems in between matchlock and flintlock, most of which were some variation on a "proto-flintlock".
"Flintlocks used a striker of (wait for it) flint to cast sparks on to the powder to ignite.
CaploCKS HAD AN EXTERNAL EXPLOSIVE PRIMER CAP THAT WOULD BE STUCK TO IGNIGHT THE POWDER."
The coolest are wheellocks though, they appeared early on an use a pyrite dragging on a steel wheel (similar to lighters), they have the absolute best gun aesthetics.
@@redanthalas8830 Condottiere aesthetics. 😩👌
Basically Warhammer Fantasy, Empire musketeers fighting alongside wizards.
I never understood the fantasy settings with highly advanced magics and alchemy yet no firearms, you're telling me that the court wizard discovered how to put ancient materials together into some kinda dragon killing super potion but can't figure out how to put charcoal powder and sulphur together in a bowl
do you know how black powder was invented in real life? by complete accident so this gives people who are designing a world the freedom to chose to add guns or not.
You forgot the saltpeter.
I mean, to be fair, gunpowder was pretty much an accidental invention. Though if that fantasy setting happens to also have a king/emperor who's doing literally everything in his power to create some sort of immortality potion, its invention would probably be inevitable
In a world where you can literally ask your god to do things and even the most basic spellcaster can shoot tiny IFF guided missiles, having someone spend ninety seconds shoving explosive powder into a tube just so he can shoot a lead ball Somewhere Forward, Hopefully seems less than efficient.
@@atraxisdarkstar And yet you apparently don't question having the same someone spend ninety seconds cranking up a crossbow to shoot a pointy stick Somewhere Forward, Hopefully. If a crossbow is a viable weapon in a setting, a musket is too, because muskets are just crossbows but better.
Here's another little factoid about the samurai and their relationship with guns. The Japanese were the first people to make guns that had sights, because they greatly emphasized good marksmanship.
The global east's contributions to technology, specifically weapons technology, is way too overlooked imo
citation needed*
this sounds very cool and interesting and i really want it to be true but i can't find any source related to it, do you have one?
@@comradep8519 its just untrue...
we have arquebus's in armouries with front and rear sights dated to 1525
the japanese probably got the tech from the portugese
for reference, the first guns were sold to the daimyo in the 1540s
the simple fact is that weve had guns with rear sights thr whole way through
and even IF the samurai were technically the first to add a front sight( they arnt) ... its completely possible that people can develop it individually
and even then, theres the ottoman developments, developments in indo-persian areas as well..
While this would be cool, it’s incorrect. We have examples of sights being used as early as the 1400s. It’s not like Europeans never considered the concept. The earliest iron sights was a small metal bead. On muskets in the 1600s to 1700s, the bayonet lug even doubled down as a sight.
Flintlocks had paper cartridges for them, they contained your buck/ball, wadding, and pre measured amount of powder.
Yeah, wrong terminology being used. It's not cartridge ammunition that modern people are used to, it's *cased* ammunition where all you have to do is stick a cased round into the gun and it fires rather than any priming, tamping down, or any of that extra work.
You're thinking of modern metallic cartridges. "Cased ammunition" and "cartridge" are synonymous. The case is what makes a cartridge a cartridge. Effective paper cartridges which could be loaded as-is date back to needle rifles, though the technology is quite a bit older than that.
@@SnakebitSTI Yeah I know, I was pointing out the difference between a modern cartridge and a historical one. By the time you get to needle rifles (~early 1800s), you're already talking about a breech-loading bolt action that is about as far from a 1700s flintlock as a flintlock is from an iron barrel on a stick.
Further, there were two distinct types of paper cartridges. Combustible paper cartridges, most often used for percussion revolvers and the like, used thin paper that would burn quickly, and could be inserted whole and unaltered. Most muskets and rifles used a thicker, sturdier paper, and the user would tear the end off with their teeth before sprinkling a little bit into the pan (if flintlock), then pouring the rest down the barrel and then driving the bullet down, using the now empty paper as the wad.
Yes but they still required you to open the powder end and dump the powder then turn it over and ram the ball down using the paper as your wadding. They were only marginally faster in a muzzleloading application.
I love fantasy with firearms. I think it works really really well and makes it more interesting. I also love fantasy without firearms. Fantasy is just so cool. It's really hard to dislike it.
Couldn't agree more. Guns were (sorta) built to defeat knight armor. How, in a world with dragons would there be no reason to invent a way to pierce armor or scales or huge fantasy beasts, that any decently trained shmuck could wield. Every kingdom would have a Cannonier corps who's job is to delete dragons from the sky.
Yeah, not really. Firearms did very poorly against plate and the scales of dragons in fantasy are usually the toughest (or like the second toughest) material in existence.
Remember that the major reason for phasing out armor wasn't the development of firearms, but the cost of the thing and the general evolution of the battlefield. By the time firearms actually got good enough to deal with plate armor almost nobody wore it in the first place.
The last people to keep the armor was the cavalry, because if you could afford a warhorse, you definitely could afford a blacksmith.
@LecherousLizard Gun only started to work "Poorly" against plate is because chestplates eventually became thicker, sloped, and overall heavier to be bullet resistant and when this eventually wasn't enough, some were kept for shrapnel protection. This idea even carried on as far as WW1.
@@Kirill-ig6nr Yeah, wrong.
An average 14/15th century breastplate (at least those which were a set with full body plate armor) is more sloped than, say, a 17th century cavalry cuirass.
Can't comment on the thickness of armor, because it wasn't anyhow standarized and I can't seem to find any information about post-medieval armor thickness on top of that.
Handheld firearms were built to create a "pike" with a longer range. They're basically unusable due to innaccuracy unless you're in a formation, at which point it creates a wall of death, just like a pike formation. They're also designed to be wielded by levies with little to no training to massive effect, just like the pike. The musket is just a really technologically advanced pike. Only downside to these ridiculously long range "pikes" is they couldn't exist continuously like a real pike can, which is why you had to mix them together to make up for that shortcoming. At least until Gustavus Adolphus managed to solve this issue and the pike became completely obsolete.
The vast amount of pre-early modern period fighting blokes had cloth armour. Big, wadded cloth suits in several layers with maybe a mail suit on top and a helmet.
Cheap munitions armour stamped out in large one-size-fits-all quantities was around for a while. Warfare focused more and more on manouver with armies the size of towns walking around Europe and making more complex, speedier drills.
In WFB, cannons are used to delete monsters on battlefields. A cannon hit strips a dice of Wounds off a monster. WFB cannons also had a bounce rule, the ball would land and bounce through a regiment for several Wounds.
Honestly as a historian who wrote their dissertation on the early-modern period and Dutch Golden Age, YES THANK YOU SO MUCH MY NB PAL ;3;
Heavily armoured cavalry with wheel-lock pistols charging up to pike and shot formations, firing and wheeling away, the formation of mixed-unit tactics like the Spanish Tercio, the arms race of gunpowder artillery forcing european nations to reinvent their castles and defensive structures into more stout and dense forts than tall citadels, as well as a million other things like differing tactics and the history of pre-industrial firearm production and innovation... it's fucking amazing, and pisses me off to no end when people become high-fantasy obsessionists.
Also really good points mentioning the Sengoku Judai and the Boshin War - the samurai were obsessed with firearms and early cannon, and after importing a few small amounts from Portuguese and Dutch traders they quickly had their own home-grown manufacturing areas for guns. Samurai adopted firearms, Monks adopted firearms, and by the time of the Boshin war in the Meiji restoration, Japan had over 200 years of a culture that valued firearms.
I appreciate some people don't like guns in their fantasy RPGs, but these people bug me from both a personal and academic standpoint - like my brother in christ, you have mechanical golems and steampunk creations guarding ancient holds, but you think a piece of lead being fired by compressed explosions in a metal tube is too far?
I think this is why I love the Europa Universalis 4 fantasy mod Anbennar, which takes place in the early modern period and roughly mirrors the real world events (discovery of the new world, protestant reformation, guns, colonialism). While it has its problems like any collaborative work, this might also be its strength, as different people create different ideas for different regions of the world. For example, the Gnomes in the equivalent of Western Europe are adept at artificery, so they create inventions roughly 100 years ahead of time, like ironclads and very good guns. Another is Feiten, a country in the equivalent of East Asia has a tradition of hot air baloon festivals, which they decide to scale up, firebomb a city or two and eventually master airship travel. The equivalent of the French Revolution happens because artificers figured out how to coat bullets in anti-magic juice, meaning that the mages which depended on magic shields and thought they were immune to peasants and their guns, were suddenly very, very killable.
The first hot air ballons were used for observation. You can go up and down while being towed to the ground unless you want to drift around. But when you are up, you could get a pretty good lookout position. It's not as mobile as 50 dudes on horses.
"This is a flintlock"
Proceeds to show mtachlocks and caplocks, but not flintlocks.
I'm a sucker for world building when I dungeon master, but a problem I've run into with specifically 5e is that there is no way that with the spells that exist in 5e that firearms shouldn't be everywhere.
this is precisely why high fantasy was a mistake
Why bother investing in new and untested weapons technology when you're already knee-deep in trained wizards, who can already do the same things as *modern gunnery* and more, and do it far more reliably than any proto-firearm could?
This is like asking why the Ancient Greeks and Romans never developed steam engines, even though the concept of using pressurized steam to turn an axle was centuries-old already. While there were many material barriers (the metallurgy to build a steam engine simply didn't exist, etc.), a major economic factor was that neither society felt any need for such machines. Because they had slaves. Staggering numbers of slaves. With that much disposable human labour available, why would the wealthy elites bother investing in mechanical labour, that would probably never reach a cost-effective state within their lifetimes?
EDIT: Posted before finishing the video. I stand by my argument. Firearms are not inevitable inventions.
@@tbotalpha8133 It definitely depends on how common wizards are, if they aren't then guns have a clear place. If they are then I think the main use of something like a musket wouldn't be to mass arm soldiers (although while a single wizard may be better than 10 or more men I wouldn't say that makes them a replacement) but to shoot at people at further distances without worry or giving them notice. While he does mention that early guns weren't very effective at range, its not hard to think that development may be put into that feature so that they could be better suited to taking out single targets at long distances aka shooting a wizard dead before he has time or a reason to put up a ward
@@tbotalpha8133 Can every military field large numbers of spellcasters? No? Then guns have a niche.
And if magic users are that common, all the more reason to have guns, actually. You need standard infantry to have a way to compete with casters, and with the massive proliferation of magic, technology and manufacturing techniques can rapidly advance, and even advance in ways they couldn't in the real world. magic not only _increases_ a need for guns proportionally unless literally everyone is an offensive caster, it also makes them easier if you think about it for like five seconds.
Not to mention that casters could also use guns. Basically every setting has a limit on how much magic you can do, one way or another. Having a sidearm as a backup for when you're out of magic, or even using a rifle to save energy for more powerful, niche spells, etc
@@tbotalpha8133lol, lmao even
Why should we invest in this stupid flintlock technology when a skilled bowman can shoot faster, farther, is cheaper to maintain and can operate in any conditions?
Training a skilled mage is way harder than teaching a peasant how to operate any firearm.
Also, steam engines REQUIRE proper steel and you have simply proven that you do not know how an actual steam engine works. The greeks did not invent a steam engine, they invented a useless curiosity that was nowhere near even a simple steam engine.
I absolutely love the overconfident master swordsman gets one shot by gun trope
I don't give guns outrageous damage. You can kill a level 0 townie or a 1HD goblin pretty easily. Fighting some 3HD dude is a little gnarlier because they're outside that one-shot hp zone. A handgun deals damage as a crossbow or slightly more, maybe with some armour negation.
BRP characters in games like Call of Cthulhu don't walk around with giant elephant rifles. Not because scaling up gun to make more gun is hard, but because using an antimaterial rifle to shoot people is overkill. A SWAT bloke with a rifle dealing 2d6 damage times a three-round burst is going to drop another human.
Mutant UA had a wonderful big-game gun/anti-material gun that hunters and infantry units use. Something between a punt gun, light artillery and elephant rifle. A big-bore breech-loaded gun operated a bit like a swivel gun by one gunner and one assistant carrier/loader. Big game hunters used them to hunt really big mutated nonsense. It's heavy to lug around and expensive, so only aristocrats with a hunting party in tow or small army units used them.
Warhammer Fantasy: the setting where three factions have the majority of their ranged troops armed with muskets. (Skaven don't count though they do have muskets to a degree).
And it is interesting because I do want to do a fantasy, Medieval setting that has firearms in them. Though late Medieval, so mainly handgonnes and bombards.
WFRP 1e handguns did not have dramatically different rules. A handgun deals damage as a crossbow. Reload is a bit slower. A dude can hold a pistol in one hand. Later on they got a point of armour pen. Handguns are a bit expensive, but so is heavy plate suits. Powder is easy to get in towns.
Empire armies are in the transition period where entire regiments are likely to show up with crossbows. WFB handguns lower but don't completely remove armour saves. WFB cannons are monsters that strip Wounds off hydras and giants.
Worth noting: you can create a real life shotgun with a length of metal pipe. You have to manually blast the shotgun shell, sure, but that's all it takes.
Feel like this could be in addition to any point in the video, instead of just one point, so that's all I'll say.
In American prisons they sometimes call that the Home Depot ;)
Love it when someone else also pointed out the crystal part and how early firearms can indeed exist and make sense in a fantasy setting. Many writers tend to assume that firearms only became prevalent in the early 18th century when people already been using it since the 14th century with cannons being an incredibly good siege weapon. Heck, people also tend to forget that the idea of using firearms against cavalry was first started during the Hussite Wars in the 15th century, literally the "war cart" tactic. Literally a medieval "tank" if you think about it and I find it to be pretty interesting, yet I have yet to see anyone featuring this tactic in any fantasy fictions I know of.
So, honestly, true, the period where the pike-and-shot formations were prevalent is extremely underrated and rarely referred to in many fantasy fictions.
Even if early muskets were included in fantasy setting (isekai is the genre that I often read and notice the problem), I often see people keep jumping straight to the matchlocks for some reasons, even in a circumstance where the handcannons would make a better choice or flintlocks would be ideal. Instead, they were incredibly obsess with Nobunaga's tactic and just assume "matchlocks can defeat cavalry with ease" without even considering the context of the battle and the additional factors like your opponent's moral and skill, your position, defense layers (often omitted) and even the weather, something rarely talked about. Rather than utilising the tactic correctly, they just said "people with matchlocks line up in two or three lines and boom, we win", assuming that matchlocks were incredibly accurate or overpowered somehow.
The "gun is easy to use" is true, but I do find some depictions to be extremely dishonest in the way they assume battle formation is easy to pull of in combat with peasants and never consider the morale impact of cavalry. Muskets were notoriously inaccurate and short range afterall, hence the effective range to deal with cavalry was often short and heavily dependent on the ranking volley fire tactic. I just don't think it will be easy to pull this off with inexperience peasents who definitely will cower at the sight of horses and armoured men charging at them. That's why pikes were important, because the moment the cavalry managed to charge through the volleys, they definitely will hit the largely vulnerable peasants with muskets. Hence, this is why pikes were important but I rarely see this being factored in. More often than not, isekai writers love to depict volley fires as being incredibly devasting in killing cavalry units rather than scaring them away. The only one fantasy isekai that I can think of that actually addressed the Nobunaga's volley tactic's weakness is Drifters, which ironically enough has Nobunaga himself knowing that his tactic does have weaknesses and heavily dependent on the amount of guns and motivated men he could gather.
On the "gun mage" concept, I do thought of that too and would include it in my own story if I ever manage to cook one. Been thinking about that ever since I really wanted to subvert the common fantasy tropes in how they handled guns in fantasy worlds.
The one thing I like to touch upon relating to gun technology is how early single-shot breechloading rifles being extremely underrated. Chassepot and Dreyse didn't get the love they deserve in fantasy setting. Literally paper cartridge black powder guns but with early bolt-action system and extremely long bayonet. People just love to skip them over and go from muzzleloading muskets to literally magazine fed bolt action rifle like the Kar98k which is like not the simplest bolt-action rifle to be ever produced (though it is one of the best bolt-action system that still being used in one way or another).
Anyway, just really wanted to comment since rarely I see people discussed how early firearms can be sensible in fantasy worlds whilst not breaking the "balance".
1:22 Correction: That's a caplock, not a flintlock
I'm talking about the firing mechanism specifically right now, because converting flintlocks to caplocks is possible and did happen.
The difference is, caplock has a nipple that you put the primer on, which the hammer strikes (in the video you see how it would look like after you pulled the trigger). Kind of like in a modern firearm and that, once again, proves your point of "Jamming individual pieces".
Flintlocks did not use primers, instead you'd basically have a spring loaded flint and steel which would strike against one another to create sparks, which would light the powder you'd have to put on a pan (basically part of the firing mechanism) , whenever you pulled the trigger.
I'm sure you know that, but I think it could be useful for someone who might see this comment.
It's very simplified and "mansplained", but that's what I was going for.
Loved the presentation of this video! I've been a fan of Warhammer Fantasy partly because of this reason alone. I've never ventured into it, but Gunpowder Fantasy is a pretty extensive genre right now in terms of books.
I loved the point you raised relating to The Last Samurai. Having a plot device where you have a weapon which can be wielded by anyone without extensive physical or technical training is a great plot you can insert into any piece of fantasy fiction or home game of DnD. As musketry replaced the need for highly conditioned archers, who says alchemical or convetional firearms en masse wouldn't force the ancient council of wizards to start wearing flak jackets under their robes.
Thank you for making this - I really enjoyed it!
The thing with the last samurai is it's just another example of bad history from creators, because the samurai used guns extensively for hundreds of years before they were ousted from power, and the satsuma rebellion was done primarily with guns instead of swords. The last stand wasn't them reaching enemy lines with swords, it was them melting down statues to make bullets and trying to fire at soldiers bombing them with artillery
I got ADHD-based overload headaches (twice!) and then loneliness-based depression for Christmas, so I feel you. A bit.
The Imjin war was pretty insane. The Samurai had pleeeeeenty of matchlock guns after the unification, and were well-versed in their use. Some of the battles that happened between them and the Joseon (Korean) and Ming (Chinese) dynasties which both had pretty antiquated militaries was insane.
"I like the knights with guns" - Alternatehistoryhub
I remembered a story where some gunslinger found a ring that dispels magic at a pathetic range, only useful to pick locks. So what he decided to do is to ask the wizard to shrink cannon balls so he could ram it inside his pistol. Then he would mount the ring on the muzzle creating a literar hand cannon.
We can find solutions in History to make TTRPG firearms more fun and interesting.
The first is to better represent the situations these weapons were designed for. TTRPG combat usually takes place within 25 meters and in rounds representing 6 in-game seconds. Firearms were not meant for this. Increased engagement ranges combined with (in-game) longer rounds would allow these weapons to shine. Firearms would be afforded more shots before the enemy can reach melee and take less real-life time to reload as a round's length can be extended to cover most or all of a firearm's reload time.
For TTRPGs that stick to combat at traditional ranges, switching to a melee weapon should be more viable. Embrace the fact that, for most of its history, the firearm was paired with the bayonet. Consider what kind bayonet(s) your setting has available. The earliest were plug bayonets that made continued fire impossible since they blocked the barrel they plugged into. Sword & ring bayonets did not impede fire as they attached to a lug below or via a ring around the muzzle respectively. Even before bayonets, early-modern soldiers either carried small melee weapon to defend themselves or resorted to using their guns as cudgels.
Lastly, consider exotic designs. As early as the 16th century (and possibly sooner) there we experiments with revolver-magazines and other exotic solutions to increase fire rates. The 18th century saw even more prototypes such as the Girardoni Air Gun (practically an air-powered bolt-action) and revolving Puckle Gun - all invented before the integrated cartridge became common.
Great video!
On the historical fiction note, gunpowder has been known about since 142, and used in warfare since 904. This is before even the Norman conquest in 1066 so yes i agree medieval fantasy definitely should have gunpowder in it. (my only disagreement is that the flintlock mechanism specifically is a later development and fantasy should use less derived weapons pls dont smite me)
You could definitely argue for Matchlocks. Mulan and the rocket kind of thing
Yes, it was known about since 142. In China.
Most Fantasy settings are not trying to evoke medieval China. Nor does the fact that Europeans as early as the Romans "could" have theoretically discovered/invented gunpowder mean it SHOULD exist in Fantasy settings evoking the European Middle Ages. Especially since gunpowder was not present in Europe for most of the Middle Ages.
@@tbotalpha8133 There are a lot of things that didn't exist in medieval Europe but are present in Fantasy. Full suits of plate armor weren't truly a thing until the Renaissance. Or, you know, dragons and orcs and elves.
I do agree that "SHOULD" is a bit of a stretch but the antipathy towards firearms/gunpowder makes very little sense when you have things like nautiloids and the like in various DnD settings.
Nobody complains about Lord of the Rings having a fantasy version of Tobacco despite the setting being inspired mainly by Early Medieval Europe which had no access to it.
@@MacCoalieCoalson The antipathy makes perfect sense. The creators, and their audience, do not want firearms in their settings. They do want nautiloids and plate armour and dragons.
That's what this comes down to. Differences in taste, not some nonsense about historical accuracy. Different priorities. You can criticize an artist's priorities if you want. But criticizing fiction for a lack of realism, when it was never trying to be realistic in the first place, is completely wrongheaded.
@@tbotalpha8133 The issue here is, plenty of creators and players alike do want those things. Not to mention that outright hostility to the suggestion is silly, because as you say, the audience and creators should be deciding what they want to see in their setting. This concept works both ways.
I'm not saying every fantasy setting needs gunpowder and firearms, I'm saying that a lot of the justifications given for excluding them are pretty silly.
My players veto'd guns, not because they don't think guns would work in a fantasy setting or because they think they'd be overpowered; They're scared of the consequences of letting me arm their enemies with boomsticks. I've worked around this by sticking giant-sized wands and staves on a prototype airship they're riding around on. They don't know that I'm planning for sky pirates to "commandeer" airships of their own.
That's smart of them. I made Napoleon Bonaparte reborn as a Hobgoblin General with access to guns and cannons...yeah it took literal magic intervention to stop him lol.
Ngl as someone outside of the fantasy community, ive always found the fear of guns and more contemporary settings weird, like imagine how hard a fantasy cold war setting would be, or a late 1800s fantasy setting.
I ran some Faerun for my buddies a bit ago, and there is lore for a few cultures around Faerun having unlocked the secrets of "Smokepowder", and the way I worked that in is that highly civil cultures can cultivate various magic users(nerds) more effectively than highly dis-civil cultures(Pirates, Raiders, Tyrants), and that magic users are a far better tool than the standard firearm(A wizard can cast a fireball every 6 seconds, its nearly a semi-auto cannon), but since these dis-civil cultures don't have as many of them, when they do their raiding they might employ smokepowder as a cheap semi-equalizer, ships use naval cannons, raiders might throw a bomb, but these technologies have never advanced past the capabilities of magic, and these societies are already not particularly progress focused.
I never got around to people chucking grenades at my players, but they did get shot at by pirates with cannons.
Cannons and artillery is hard to do. You need to go to school and do a bunch of math to be an artillerist, and understand things like artillery tables. Making a cannon is a big industrial undertaking, the early heavy siege cannons are stuff emperors personally commission. A cannon probably has a name. You need to understand a lot about metallurgy and smelting and get all that metal together in the first place.
It depends on how the magic works. In Birthright, you could bring wizards to the battlefield. Any spell that can target 50 blokes can be used in that battle system. They were still limited by spell slots. Wizards and their spells are a limited resource, you must decide where they place their three combined fireballs that day. It's similar in Warmaster for Warhammer Fantasy. Wizards are nice, but you must use their spells judicously. A magic zap can make a lot of difference with the right timing.
Bless is a really good basic battlefield spell. It is low level, even basic spell-users can toss it. It gives a group of dudes +1 to hit which is not much, but when a whole unit has +1 to hit it makes a difference. Illusions are always nice, an illusonary unit of knights, an illusionary terrain piece or an illusion dragon overhead adds a lot of confusion.
@@SusCalvin meanwhile you can make basically any bloke in a regiment able to fire a gun in less than week, and like and bullets you find lying around are reusable with a little work you can do while waiting for dinner to cook,
Wizards who can cast Fireball even once a DAY are extremely rare, the ones who have enough spell slots to act like a semi-automatic cannon are once a generation or rarer.
@@TheAchilles26 It depends on how high-level your world is. Some TSR writers like to casually toss in level 4-6 people on the streets. Some OSR games keep tightly to the level 0 world, others have level 3 farmhands around.
TSR had rules for battlefield magic in their domain play title Birthright. Any spell that can target 50 people can be used at this scale. Not just Fireball but Stone to Mud, Mass Phantasm etc. Even a level 1 cleric can toss Bless, and when an entire troop of 100 archers all have +1 to hit it makes a difference. With spell slots it was all about timing. Warfare can reach a scale where a wizard can hurt one unit, but there are ten of them tromping up.
Warmaster for Warhammer Fantasy has battle wizards as well. They are an addition to regiments and cannons, not a replacement for them. You have to be judicious where you use your magic resources. When used well, a wizard can entangle a much stronger unit of knights right in front of a crossbow line or a cannon.
@@SusCalvin While yes a Cannon, or Artillery piece can be relatively difficult to produce, and utilize there is also that magic is often a rare very specialized art that takes a lot of training to make just anyone any good at, while I made the pirate vessel that engaged my party that session have 3 cannons, other pirate vessels may have a contracted warlock, or evil-aligned cleric slinging spells. Part of that choice had been to emphasize the addition of magic on criminal enterprises, that pirates make what may be crude cannons, or be willing to invest in proper ones to try to have some equalizers.
Welcome back. Sorry 'bout the stones but I very much like your take on this. Pathfinder did a good job implementing it with their nation of Alkenstar being a place where magic sometimes outright doesn't work so they made guns and justified the Gunslinger class.
Magic stops working when the nerds run out of spell slots in most OD&D or B/X games. Magic is limited but pretty powerful. Even a level 1 spell can resolve an entire encounter. Some nerd can magically slam and lock a door, create a sphere of impenetrable darkness, hush all sound or make a section of goons drop asleep. But after that, they're back to popping shots with a pistol or tossing darts or what have you.
Also flamethrowers should exist as well. Its not hard to project a flammable liquid using a pressurized cylinder out of a nozzle. The pressure can be from a spring or by the person pushing on a plunger.
The issue with those is that flamethowers are really heavy and mechanically complex, require pressure vessels far more complex than a firearm, and have terrible range. A gun requires a single straight forged tube. A flamethrower requires multiple curved tubes
Like, your fantasy flamethrower operator is probably going to take an arrow to the face before he can get in range. At which point he has five seconds of fire before he runs out and has to run away for an hour to reload.
The military flamethrower, in its classic backpack form, is only really usable for assaulting fixed positions, bunkers and the like. They were only really used for about ~40 years from WW1 to shortly after WW2, when rocket launchers proved far more accurate and long-ranged. Some did stick around, and rocket flamethrowers do exist (M202 and RPO-A), but regular HE rockets are just so much more useful.
@@MandolinMagi A flamethrower in principle is no where near as complex as you think. All you need is a cylinder with a nozzle equipped with a burning wick on one end and a plunger in the tube to displace the flammable liquid. (Like an oversized syringe) The plunger can be driven by hand or by a spring. Push the plunger, the plunger pushes the fluid out the nozzle and the wick ignites the fluid.
Small ones would be single use, so no where near as heavy as you think, and large ones could be refilled after use but would be used defensively as a fixed emplacement. Think clearing castle walls during a siege.
Range may be limited, but the status effects or debuffs from lighting an enemy on fire with sticky goo would be a good trade off for the lack of range. Also it would be great for clearing caves, sewers, dungeons and other CQC areas where range is less of a factor.
Your plunger flamethrower is going to have a range so short it's a danger to the user. You need actual pressure to get the fuel moving@@Cowboycomando54
@@Cowboycomando54that would be a large siege or naval weapon like the siphons used by the eastern romans because single use weapons like that are not good for economics of a kingdom. Grenades would be close but even then not a flamethrower. Their infantry flamethrowers were so few we barely knew they existed and their depictions are dubious at best.
@@magniwalterbutnotwaltermag1479 The flamethrower would not be a standard issue thing for NPC's. My character would be the one making and using the single use
Kind of funny that guns aren’t in fantasy worlds with literal potions and such since it was most likely alchemists in ancient China with access to the right materials, who invented gunpowder.
Firearms in a fantasy setting ALWAYS without fail end up being "Here is my semi automatic flintlock rifle thats accurate up to a kilometer away, has infinite ammo, requires no reload, never jams or misfires and makes no souond or smoke."
So… the same thing that crossbows and bows already become in fantasy RPGs?
@@Sanguivore I'd argue there is a difference between becoming more proficient with a bow, and thus being able to fire another arrow in the timespan of a turn, and turning a flintlock into a silent, no smoke semi-automatic.
@@Falconer1523 I’m just saying that there’s not much of a *functional* difference at that level between how firearms and crossbows/bows are handled, so I guess I just fail to see the problem.
(And as a sidenote, I’ve never witnessed this issue at all in fantasy. Can you point me in the direction of some examples?)
A skilled archer can loose 3 arrows in the 6-ish seconds a DnD turn takes. A flintlock musket averages 3 shot per minute with a reasonably skilled shooter. Reloading them is a process that does not lend itself very well to tabletop gaming. Thus, in my personal eperience from games I have played, they become ridiculous semi-automatic rifles with infinite magazines that make no noise.@@Sanguivore
I certainly understand that from a *technical* level, I just fail to see the real issue. Wizards can cast Fireballs and literally wish things into existence. Archers can loose multiple silent arrows at incredible distances in a round, Fighters can wear impossibly-tough armor and slay Giants with a mere sword, Rogues can disappear in plain sight in the middle of combat and know more skills than anyone else alive. What honestly does it matter if someone can now shoot and reload a firearm faster? Fantasy is not exactly known for its adherence to realism, as it's literally in the name. Our suspension of disbelief extends to all things under the sun, except flinging small lead balls from a metal tube?@@Falconer1523
My major problem with firearms in fantasy (and I assume, other people’s as well) is that guns have become so effective that they’ve completely supplanted every other weapon for warfare; and thus the immediate question is “why would someone use a sword, bow, or whatever else when guns exist?”
As I’ve learned more about early firearm history, I’ve warmed up to them in fantasy, but not everyone is going to want to spend 4 days worth of time digesting trivia about this random topic.
Well, you can tell the others a tldr: Guns are easier than bows and simpler than crossbows. The gun did not replace the spear/sword, the bayonet did. Cavalry still uses swords up to WW1.
Swords and bows existed alongside guns in warfare for centuries dude.
And in a setting with devastating combat magic why would anyone use a sword or bow either?
@@baneofbanes like I’ve said, I’ve warmed up to guns recently.
As for magic, not everyone has the potential for magic, and even those who do may have to spend a lot of time before they can be proficient with it. Yes, the same could be said about archery, but not everyone is going about that sort of thing. Even then, that same argument has been made before
@@baneofbanes absolutely true
People used bows and crossbows etc for about 3 centuries alongside guns, until the latter became mass produced enough to replace the former. And gunners still used swords, and pikemen still existed to cover them.
One of my favorite Fantasy RPG settings, GURPS Banestorm, actually has an active conspiracy suppressing the invention of gunpowder and other technological and societal advances, to try and maintain the medieval stasis.
Bretonnia from Warhammer is another great example of this deliberate suppression of firearms development and technological advancement, because a) the neighbouring wood elves want to use them as a buffer against threats without them threatening their forests with industry, and b) the nobility of Bretonnia are massively classist and don't want peasants to have access to easy-to-use, point-and-kill ranged weapons that they could use to overthrow the social order.
Stupid elves. Most of Europe's forests were clear cut before the industrial age.
@@IAmTheStig32 Medieval cities IRL criminalized the civilian use of the crossbow to prevent the ruling and managerial class from getting sniped by a betrayed peasant. Guns basically had to be at point blank range to reliably work during the age of the Flintlock. Guns were still always superior when sending death to a formation of people such that accuracy didn't really matter as long as the loud end was pointed at the enemy.
@@MK_ULTRA420 No that was the church and in fact it was all ranged weapons, and only when used against christians.
With Fire And Sword is objectively good, glad to see it being recognized
Magical Cartridge for a firearm? Sounds like a Caster. They are from the Anime Outlaw Star, Basically, mages found out that magic was leaving the universe for some reason, and decided to preserve their spells in Cartridges so they could be used when needed. These are mainly attack spells, but basically are very rare, and anyone with a Caster Firearm can use those Cartridges to fire spells at their enemies if they can find any.
You kinda touched on it already, but in the 1600's, there were more firearms on the Japanese Islands than anywhere and everywhere else in the world *COMBINED* because Samurai lords were like, "wait, I can conscript a peasant and train him for like 2 days, and this guy can kill a samurai? Yes, I'll take 10,000 of those. Don't have that many? Figure out how to make them then, it can't be that hard, we have one right here."
There were literally sweatshops and factories running almost around the clock of people making arquebuses based on Portuguese and Dutch designs. I think Princess Mononoke has the best depiction of such a firearms workshop.
dude just describing Warhammer Fantasy.
Exept the Britonnians, but nobody likes them
"In a world of mages and sorcerers, cant a man have a stick that go boom?"
- Napoleon, maybe
Our dm took us 600 years into the future of our homebrew setting right into the middle of the Pike and shot era, with an invention of one of my characters taking center stage.
The Magelock, there where regular firearms too and how both these where balanced was the regular firearms where disgustly powerful, where as the magelocks varied from equally devestating to weak but could fire quiet a bit before needing to charge it's arcane energies. It was up to the nation or mercanary company weather they wanted the easy logistics of the magelock or devastating firepower of a regular ass musket.
We naturally used both and made quiet the killing as a raiding force in the 600 years war.
Getting hit once with a musket through the wooden walls of our battlewagon punched a hole through my breast plate and k.o.ed me from full hp. Until then being big balls mc'gigachad knight and charging through gunfire worked pretty good. I miss that game it was fun running a company and having npcs that could actually be relied upon to fight effectively, I still wish we found out why that lady knight joined our company, she alone made up half our fighting power.
I'm planning a renaissance era campaign so I've had to make my own homebrew rules for guns.
The working plan is each fire arm is an automatic non magical +3 to hit representing how hard it is to dodge a bullet and how good they are at piercing armor. the bonus decreases by 1 or 2 at further ranges. But guns can only be reloaded out of combat, I'll be counting the ammo for each gun like magical ammo.
Pistol: 1D10 piercing 30/90ft range.
Musket: 1D12 piercing 40/120ft range. (can have 1d6 piercing bayonet)
Blunderbuss: 2d4 piercing +1d4 to 1 additional adjacent target. 2 additional targets on crit. Only 20ft range.
Jezail: 3d4 piercing 75/225ft range.
Magnum: 2d8 piercing 30/90ft range.
Beyond that we get into artillery rules.
check out pathfinder 2e guns
Muskets used cartridges because it simplified the loading process. The earliest documentation was the 14th century(1300s). Fantasy has magic users that supplant for the tactical viability of fire based tactics and organization.
The adoption of firearms as the mainstay of European armies was unique to the climate, politics and industry of Europe. Though other cultures and peoples also had firearms and even knew them before Europeans did, they did not employ them to an extent Europeans did because Europe had the socio-economic and political ingredients to adopt musketeers. In a world of magic, where instead of wasting time and valuable effort on applying kinetic energy via energy, why not just concentrate the energy you have instead that you already can control in the first place? It does not waste time, resources for tactically dismal results such as musket infantry. Compare that to having mages just blasting and leveling places with many times the firepower of muskets.
The Scottish guy should've been the main character in The Last Samurai.
so true
There is a particular problem with games like DnD, which is the fact that old gunpowder weapons are a bit hilarious to think about in context of the mechanics of the game. DnD is especially bad because if you're playing any class with extra attack and you don't want the mechanics to totally screw you, you're shooting at least two times in 6 seconds. And if the ranger gets to have extra attack with their gun, the fighter should too...
And now we've got a level 20 fighter shooting a flintlock 8 times in 6 seconds.
PF2e is a lot better on this front, but it still face the problem that you can reload so quickly. For me, I usually rationalize this by just making the weapons NOT flintlocks, and instead breach loading and cartridge based. Yes from a worldbuilding perspective this is hard to justify without putting some serious work into trying to find some kind of logic in it... and no, I don't care, nobody is shooting a flintlock 8 times in 6 seconds, I refuse, good day sir
I'm sorry I just kept picturing a napoleon style musket line of lightly armored footman with black powder bags hanging on them all tightly grouped together and wizard goes... "I cast fireball".
Why should it? At the end of the day a Tabletop Fantasy world is for the players. What if they DONT WANT firearms? You going to force them on your table?
I sure as hell am not.
Oh, while you are also going on about how firearms were around relatively early, perhaps you should ALSO mention the burst rate of early firearms? As in the chance that the damned thing literally explode in your face? The chances were scarily high.....
The point about "magical crystal cartridges" actually reminds me of how guns work in Arknights. Their guns are actually classified as "a new type of wand" powered by magic crystals, and you need to be able to cast precisely to fire a bullet (those who can't cast but want to fight at range have to use bows or crossbows instead, while those who are powerful-but-imprecise casters use the more usual magic staff-type weapons instead). The in-game races are also stronger than real-world humans, so their draw strengths with a bow or crossbow can often be considered more powerful than a smaller gun.
The game had a crossover with Rainbow Six: Siege and the game's lore actually updated to include the Arknights setting's engineers attempting to reverse-engineer gunpowder (without having ever heard the names for any of the chemicals being listed to them by the Rainbow Six operator), but finding the results too costly to reproduce and too cumbersome and loud for their operations, and also too weak compared to the heavy ballistae carried by the kinds of strong operators who could manage a heavy real-world firearm. They also decide to keep their experiments a secret, to keep the knowledge that "anyone could use a gun" out of the hands of those who'd use them to destabilize their already-unstable world.
There's so much Gekokujo footage in the background, it made my heart melt (I was the original creator of Gekokujo). If that's your gameplay, thanks for playing the mod!
it is my footage, thanks for all your work, marty! :>
I agree in principle, there is one thing though. I'm history, gunpowder was only invented once and spread from there. This puts it in a category of intentions which are very hard to discover. Other examples include stirrups. Notable _non_ examples include writing.
the "too modern" argument falls apart mainly because rapiers are newer than wheellocks or matchlocks, by quiet a few years.
If they don don't have rapiers ?
Let's not forget airships or Metallic Golems comprised of what I can only describe as enchanted depleted uranium.
My idea for putting guns into dnd-esque fantasy is through a fun new concept called 'thunderstone' - you strike it, it makes a force blast with the same force you struck it with. if you lock that down into a tube, you're suddenly pushing out a ball of iron at a massive force.
What you describe at 4:30 i basiclly a plot of kung fu panda 2 and I know It's not a game but It's just perfect example of the story of someone in fantasy setting who industrializes gun production and becomes a giant threat for the rest of the world and the main characters
Fun story: in my homebrew universe that used GURPS 3 and a fully custom magic system, one of my players (a mage) figured out that he could have glass gems manufactured, charge them with magic, and (since they were fragile) use them as improvised grenades. Couple that with the later discovery of a really high tensile-strength alloy, and you get a magic-powered gun that's pretty cheap to operate. This was 6 years ago, so it was funny to hear you arrive at the same conclusion.
eh, the samurai DID have a complicated relationship with guns. As did euro knights of roughly the same period. After the sengoku jedai and the invasion of korea there was a MASSIVE crackdown on gun ownership and firearms became super rare again for the next 200 years. They were seen as destabalizing agent and were seen with a good deal of distaste. Just a distaste that had to be put away when it came to large scale organized war.
And I think this connects to why guns arent as popular in fantasy. They are an immediate visual reminder of modernization. That there might be skyscrapers and electricity in 800 years. Even basic muskets and arquibus’s are usually products of semi-industrialization. your local blacksmith does not usually make one, but some state armory does. It a product and symbol of a certain degree of modernism. While the heavy armor of a late knight or the heavy armor of a legionary effectively and comparitively do the same thing.
Not saying that you cant have guns in fantasy, something like Warhammer fantasy does that, but it also explores the themes of burgeoning early-modernism, which gets away from that sense of vague timelessness where something could be set anywhere between 1000 BC and 1500 AD and you would t have a stark sense of progression. You can depict david and Goliath as a 7th century bc near eastern warriors or a 13th century ad European man of arms, Same as king Arthur, but there is a sense once guns are involved that its no longer a part of the mists of the past, but a definitive position in the progression of history.
The gun: "Sorry, I'm new at this, I don't like damp conditions and I'm struggling to shoot consistently. But I can go through armour sometimes."
The bow, sling, javelin and axe: "Don't worry, stick with us kid, we'll take good care of you, we're sure you'll go far."
Fun fact: back in the day your musket/rifle would come with a mold for casting your own bullets.
I read a sci-fi/fantasy book that happens on a distant world that is "stuck" seemingly in that early medieval setting. The protagonist, advanced human from Earth, forced with having to essentially take part in guerrilla warfare, quickly whips up gunpowder, and it goes "pflut" instead of "bang". And he learns from some oral history that "many have tried to do what you had, but it never works" (essentially, not to spoil, the "gods of the realm" have tweaked the rules so that gunpowder doesn't work).
I found it to be pretty interesting twist.
"If you can have a spell that summons a meteor from dumb fuck nowhere, I can have myself a fucking Königstiger, and if you can fly on a dragon that can burn down an entire city in 20 seconds, I can have a Ju-87 Stuka."
You know, I have an idea for guns in fantasy. Species and people without much magical power want to be able to fight the people who have magical power, so they ended up with guns, which gave them the power to fight back, then the people with magical power found the concept of a gun interesting and managed to create a gun that shoots magic. So now there’s guns, and there’s magic guns, which are still like staffs n shit but the magic is condensed for less area attack but more lethality
Awesome!
i dont really feel like its *that* underreprestanted, i mean one of the most well-known fantasy "universies" is warhammer - age of sigmar, where humans are notorious for using blackpowder for their advantage (the good humans, fuck these french-knight-bretons) be it muskets, cannons or in general technological advancement.
but one factor that I personally think influences heavily the usage of black powder as a weapon in fantasy stories, are fucking dwarves, I mean they almost everytime own all big mines (aka salpeter and sulfur which are crucial to do black powder) and since dwarvs are mustly stubborn in every fucking fantasy trope, they never think of the idea to create something COMPLETELY NEW since their forefathers didnt create it (and i think a hand-cannon/flintlock-musket is something so revoluitanry that most dwarves would probably be even disgust by it) most of the time the humans are the ones who really create/invent outstanding new things, since they are just normal people like us, no great wizards that have ages to train like elfs, to super-great artisman that have hundred of years to train and improve their skill of their trait (like dwarves who live almost in every fantasy story >150years and on top that live in a fucking fort which IS the mountain so fairly save - and if they arent save they almost die instantly xD be it skaven or goblins/orcs)
because of that humans need to find anything else they can grab to survive in the world, but if they have literally no access to the ressources they need for it, then its hard for them to create fire arms as example.
of course they have their own mines and can trade with the dwarfs, but dwarves are often so extreme stubborn that its hard to trade with them, and to think about a ressource (in this case sulfur...) as a mean of weapons, is no easy and quick process, if you only have a small limited amount of it then you dont think about including it in your army since you would make them too depedent on them (see that firework rockets existed, way before mass - handcannons/musket wielding armys)
I hate skipping straight to flintlock muskets. Give me the awkward teen years of firearms tech: breech-fired and matclock.
I've been wanting to play a gunslinger in my current dnd campaign so my DM and I have been working out how it works. This video is really cool and I think I'm going to show it to them. I also like Forgotten Weapons' videos are guns that are like turbo old because it gives a unique perspective on firearms based in reality and not pop culture.
(PS, I love love love guns but I'm kind of anxious about it being a "guy" interest so it's really reassuring seeing another transfem person express a similar kind of fascination/obsession with them so thanks for that.)
You don't need to introduce guns into the setting. You do not need a gunslinger class no more than you need a bow class or a halberd class. There are guns in Faerun (Dragonheist has a faction of gun users in particular), and there is a Gunner feat. This is simple DnD lore and basic game design.
5:28 That's something I've thought about a lot, in any setting where there's advanced metals and the ability to create fireballs there's no reason for guns or cannons not to exist
Something fun for those who want early firearms in their settings is to look up the pliers pistol or 'sechongtong' (세총통). It's a Korean invention from the Joseon dynasty that is a preloaded microcannon that fired darts that was held in place with a set of specialized pliers. You could load up 10-30 of these tiny cannons and swap them out after each shot. They were reportedly easy enough for women and children to use to fight off raids in the north frontiers, but it's a very easy to replicate weapon for TTRPG's and looks cool too!
Muskets and flintlock rifles need to be in fantasy games and books. In fact muskets we’re in use as early as the 16th century but are much more bulky than what most people think of when they think of muskets and flintlock rifles
In AD&D I ran an arquebus on my aquatic elf. Spending like 3 rounds to load it, only to miss the last minion left standing from the combat.
D&D: Oh no! Not Firearms!!! It's not good for our setting! (But smokepowder still exists and no one made any form of a gun)
WFRP4e: Put as much lead to this monster as you can!.
But seriously in Warhammer Fantasy 4e, firearms are soo good. They are sometimes hassle to get and to reload but the damage and Blackpowder quality (it requires a Cool check from targeted creature to resist against fear effect of this weapon) is a selling point in this weapon category.
5:44 expensive magical cartridges? Sounds like someone needs to watch Outlaw Star (space fantasy where the main character has a gun that shoots spells but "scrolls but cartridges" are a pain to actually get your hands on)
may i introduce to you Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) Where knights, rat catchers and steampunk engineers team up to fight deamons and the like
The primary reason for the fantasy genre's aversion to firearms is that firearms as an invention marked the end of the oft-romanticized medieval period and the beginning of the modern times.
The moment firearms come into play, it's only a hop skip and jump before the age of noble knights and swordfighting is replaced with riflemen marching in mass formation. If magic is dangerous and or difficult or learn, the mages are put at a severe disadvantage as well.
Several people have mentioned this already, that's completely ahistorical. Firearms preceded the stock fantasy "noble knight in full plate armor" by more than a hundred years.
The real reason is that Tolkien had a hate boner for everything "industrial", and everyone since pretty much just followed the conventions he set for high fantasy.
@@whatisthisayoutubechannel Yes, when early firearms were first invented in 13th century Asia and it took over a hundred years for those firearms to come to Europe and then even longer before guns as we know them became widespread. When firearms became popular in Europe, gunpowder warfare replaced previous forms of warfare within the century.
@@electivetoast6897 Firearms were not “first invented in 13th century Asia”, China had them in the 10th century. They were common in Europe by the 14th century (you’re correct on that date); not exactly widely adopted by armies, but they were around and people knew what they were. Full plate armor, on the other hand, didn’t even exist until the 15th century.
If you’re going to have full plate in your fantasy setting (like most do) then you don’t get to use history as an excuse for not having firearms.
I'm moreso arguing from a world building perspective than a historical one. Yes, what most people think of as knight armor wasn't developed until around the time that firearms came to Europe, but you cannot deny that firearms are the very thing that brought about the transition of warfare from knights and their warbands to ranks of musketeers.
This is why Warhammer fantasy is the best fantasy setting because there are elves and you can shoot them with guns
The most difficult part about producing relatively modern weapons is the primer. The primer has to be almost perfect and extremely standardized AND produced in huge numbers.
Actually, cartridges existed since the late middle ages.
But where made out of paper and were muzzle loaded.
Guns don't belong in all fantasy. The purpose of this video, at least to my understanding, is to argue that guns will make fantasy better. This isn't a really fair argument to make. To get the obvious out of the way first, it is entirely up to the individual what they think looks good in their world. If the world is heavily inspired by fantasy and not really tethered to our reality, then its fine. World building doesn't always have to be entirely realistic in terms of technological progression. Oftentimes I see it being used as a way to nitpick certain worlds, when it doesn't really cause any problems when you are engaging with it otherwise.
Secondly, you act like there's no possible way that a world with magic might not have guns. Again, literally any justification works for a world. Maybe they haven't been able to master the magical ability into such a small space. Maybe they haven't had a real need to change the status quo. Maybe they just haven't invented gunpowder yet. Any of these could work for the world as a justification, because it really isn't that important whether or not there are guns in them.
Acting like guns will objectively make a world better isn't really fair, and it also isn't fair to say that being more like historical fiction is better. Fantasy tropes are tropes for a reason, they are popular and well-liked by many people. That isn't to say that there aren't issues with them, its to say that certain stories are built for them. Injecting 'realism' into every single IP is pointless. Realism can be a good thing if your intended purpose is to make a more grounded and down to Earth world. It makes no sense to argue why there aren't guns in a world that is clearly playing into the aesthetics of a more classical fantasy story.
You can make a good world without needing a realistic approach to technology. One thing that I genuinely do not enjoy seeing is this constant need to appeal to realism. You see it in the comments for movies, shows, or really anything. The important thing is that you tell a good story. If that story is aided by a factor of realism, than go right ahead and add it. If that story is hindered by it, than there is no real point for it. Realism for the sake of realism alone isn't inherently a good thing.
There should be a DnD module about guns though.
It just needs either gun implementation, or believable justification why guns were never invented in the setting. Because most of the time we have all the inventions required to build a gun, and usually quite a few inventions of later era, but guns are just ommited for unexplained reason while being very obvious inventions for the era in question. Fantasy shouldn't be entirely realistic, but it should be consistent and believable.
You think guns are obvious and inevitable. They absolutely weren't. The pre-columbian metropolises of South and Central America prove that not even iron is inevitable, or necessary, in building empires.
What if that Baseline for The humans are just Higher?
One important thing to remember is that even early firearms had a noticeably longer range than what they were effective at. This is because smoothbore muskets didn't impart any real accuracy beyond barrel length and velocity. If I remember correctly, the effective range for muskets in that period of combat was about 100 yards, and that was just the maximum amount of distance you could reliably expect the bullet to travel without any major deviations.
Rifles of course can impart extra accuracy by adding grooves in the barrel to spin the projectile (not unlike feathers on arrows), and we do have evidence experiments were conducted with rifling as far back as the 15th century (meaning they might be close enough to the period). The issue with rifling is that the bullet has to be a much tighter fit in order to take to the grooves (watch videos of cap and ball revolver reloads, if they use ball ammo you'll notice a lead ring around the cylinder chambers as they reload). This increased reloading time, which was more important than accuracy for most.
All that changed in 1846 with the Minié ball. It's concave base expanded to take the rifle grooves when fired, allowing it to be easily loaded like regular balls in smoothbore muskets. It's one of the reasons you see such high casualties during the American civil war. Both sides used Minié balls extensively, and the greater likelihood of hitting a target further out meant that more people were getting hit. Line combat continued as the best formation for the time (albeit with greater casualties), but we did start to see more extensive uses of trenches in battles such as the Siege of Petersburg. This whole last paragraph is a bit too advanced for most fantasy settings, but it is something to keep in mind. If nothing else, it's good inspiration. the Minié ball could have in theory been developed earlier, far as I'm aware it's just a more complicated bullet mold than a sphere.
Biggest counter-argument is if the DM is running muskets, combat gets a lot more deadly for PCs. We've got a lot of lore of "Arrrgh, got hit in the shoulder by an arrow, let me keep going!" while a quarter-sized hole from an iron penny is harder to handwave, haha.
In D&D the Savage Coast sub-setting had magic fire arms as an important part of that region. There was also Top Ballista that had some gun equivalents.
So the dwarfs would make it with gunpowder, and the elves could use magic to make a gun. Then the dwarfs and the elves would banter over who has best boomstick!
Fable kind of implemented firearms into their fantacy setting in Fable 2 and 3 but didnt realy explore the implications of that, other than saying it was the great equiliser that made the people able to kill most of the "Hero's" from Fable 1's era, leading to all the ruins and lack of Hero's at that point of the timeline.
I find it extremely funny that you included a snippet from Paizo when talking about being problematic. Of ALL the companies, LOL
This is a good video and that point is very true though
Depending on the aesthetic of the fantasy setting (late medieval 14th to 15th century and early modern 16th to 17th) there is definitely a place for firearms.
However, if your aesthetic is more medieval I'd say that the flintlock shouldn't be used in favor of handcannons and firelances. That is a personal bias though, as I feel the handcannon/firelance are far too underutilized in media.
There's a cool little history channel that recently made a video on Gunpowder in East Asia. Long story short, it was widely used in combat ever since it's invention in the early Middle Ages.
The idea of a rifle being praised as a sacred, legendary object just as the generic magic sword has always been so criminally dismissed
For real, the Thirty Years War (AKA the Pike and Shot era) is basically the peak of European insanity that can still have fantasy tropes. Everyone was killing each other over a mixture of geopolitical interests and religious disputes, the Witch Hunts as a large scale practice became a thing, and capitalism was being born into the world thus enabling the player characters to do insane things by becoming rich through their adventures.
Love this and agree that Pike and Shot is criminally under represented in media. I've been working on my own fantasy setting that is specifically meant to be a Pike n Shotte because of this. Spent forever trying to balance firearms with melee, but I found the Genesys game system to be great for it. one day I'll finish it up (I've been working on this for like 6 years)
I played a pistolero gunslinger in Pathfinder and had a blast. I think people forget there were hundreds of years that firearms and melee weapons would both appear in the battlefield, as firearms did not truly take over melee weapons until rifling was invented.
There's musket in my fantasy game:
Landsknecht and pike and shot, fear me calvary! Fear me tanks!
At least avatar had the explanation that Guns (even Arkubus’) couldn’t hold up to Bending.
3:58 "If this is discovered by the great ganondalf the 18th who wants to keep these a secret, that's a plot thread you can follow." An explicit worldbuilding detail in Mistborn. Gunpowder was suppressed because of how easy it would be to create a rebellion. Especially since there's a class of mages who can be described as "Human Guns" in the sense of "hucking small pieces of metal really really fast." The moment the evil emperor dies, gunpowder becomes ubiquitous in a pretty short timescale. Especially since the magic at the core of the world hinges *entirely* on metallurgy including composition, alloys, purity, and mass production.
My sympathies on the kidney stones. I did the same thing last year. They stuck a tube in my back and sucked out as many stones as they could find, then x-rayed me the next day and scheduled me to come back in a month for a catheter to go after the ones they missed.
My holiday stay was in 2017. I got in a motorbike crash on Thanksgiving weekend and had a proper turkey dinner with pumpkin pie and everything.
The local hospitals have great food, but the entertainment systems are hit and miss. One had video on demand, but the other was just satellite. What ever was on was on.
Guns are a problem with me right now. My grandmas keep shooting the bad guy by page ten and then where do I take the story? It's a problem when my weakest character is just as deadly as the biggest hulking ogre.
I wrote some stories once upon a time that featured "aetherguns"- literally guns that shoot magic- and they worked almost EXACTLY how you theorized in this video. They were basically a (conductive) metal magic wand attached to a handle/stock with a trigger/hammer mechanism, and a magically charged crystal (used as the "ammo").
Finger pulls trigger-> trigger drops hammer-> hammer hits crystal,-> piezo-electric action in crystal releases magic-> conductive "barrel" directs said piezo-magical charge at whatever you're aiming at-> target gets blasted with a fireball (or a lightning bolt, or an ice bolt, or a cone of force, or whatever type of magic was stored in the crystal).
In said stories, they were invented by (magic-using race) after (technology using race) showed up with flintlock/percussion guns. They basically got their hands on a "slugthrower", figured out roughly how it worked, and then figured out a way to do something similar with magic. The aetherguns even had an ADVANTAGE over slugthrowers, in that the crystals could be "fired" multiple times before they broke and had to be replaced, so aetherguns actually had a *higher* rate of fire... until cartridges were invented. And it kept your combat-casters from burning up all their "spell slots" (not how magic worked in said stories, but close enough for example purposes) too quick during a fight, as they could save their innate magic abilities until after they ran out of crystals.
tl;dr: You are totally right about how a magic-based society should be able to figure out the concept of "magic gun" pretty easily. (And yes, aetherguns are basically just "magic wand with more steps", but you gotta think about the PSYCHOLOGY, man! It was basically the magic-people going "These 'gun' things are kicking our ass, we need to make some, but we can't do it like they do it, so let's fake it as best we can!")