Jul14
on July 14, 2017
Rod of Shooting
Adding guns to fantasy roleplaying games breaks a lot of people’s immersions. Despite firearms have a long history in medieval Europe: simple firearms have been around since the 12th Century, with even earlier examples in China. Mechanically, guns can work fairly easily, being functionally identical to wands. Instead of pointing a wand and saying a magic world to unleash a bolt of pure magical energy, you squeeze a trigger and, ahem, bust a cap. This is often made more complicated, with bullets penetrating armour or dealing high damage, despite sharpened crossbow bolts also being able to punch through metal armour and kill as effectively as a bullet.
To anyone who thinks that guns don’t have a place in fantasy, do yourself a favor and go watch Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards. ;)
By the way. If feels like people have an almost to snobbish level of separation between Fantasy and Science Fiction. Folks don’t think it can be mixed right. But back in the Golden Age of Pulp, witters mixed them with reckless abandon and a lot of great works came of it.
A prime example would be A Princess of Mars. It had swashbucklers who used swords alongside “radium rifles”, while riding round on flying sailing ships. It was a huge influence in countless works of fiction (as well as real-life Scientists and Astronauts), and it was one of a number of scifi/fantasy that influence the development of D&D.
Although, at the time, Pulp-Era fantasy writers were not stuck in the same “Medieval Europe” box like we are today.
Hearkening back to 3.5, pages 144-146 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide had tables for renaissance, modern, and futuristic weapons. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be reproduced in the SRD.
Pathfinder has rules for renaissance weapons on its SRD, though.
Still, in a regular D&D game, I could see some alchemist going ‘my arms aren’t strong enough for a bow, I’ll use a wind-up crossbow instead…hang on, look at how those guys were tossed by a thunderwave, what if I could use a controlled explosion to fire my arrows?’
Its even older than that: The original AD&D DMG had rule conversions for two of TSR’s other genre games. “Sixguns & Sorcery” was about mixing D&D with the Wild West themed game Boot Hill. “Mutants & Magic” was about mixing D&D with classic Gamma World, with all its retro B-movie scifi technology and Kirby-esque post-apocalypse adventures.
Actually, I’m in the middle of making a well detailed campaign for 5th edition, located in the north of the Moonshae and pirate-schemed. Year is 1396 DR, right after 10 years of Spellplague, so you should expect some development in technology after magic went avry, even if Lantan got wiped out…
Also, a pirate campaign without guns? No way!
Though it was long and painful to make simple but realistic rules for naval combat, we had a lot of fun playtesting them… and our gnomish sorcerer found out that a 12 lb naval cannon can be a satisfying way to reach out to your enemies if they are still out of spell range.
So, I’d say that it mainly depends on the kind of campaign you have in mind. Personally, I’m willing to give it a shot….
Also, even if medieval-era guns were impractical to use, prone to bursts and more costly than crossbows, they DID pack a better punch and effects: same good armor penetration, but a lot more tissue damage, more difficult removal of the bullet from wounds… not counting the psychological side.
That’s why they won their place on the battlefields over time.