Great! I'm putting a gun mage in my story now.

@cassius_scrungoman

4 ай бұрын

bless

@Tainted_Delusion

4 ай бұрын

fuck it im stealing that idea too now

@bulldowozer5858

4 ай бұрын

Council of Mages: "You call -throwing bombs around- shooting guns -a martial art- magic?" Gun Mage: "Hey, as long as it works."

@nilquill6097

4 ай бұрын

This reminds me think of the Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan. Flintlock meets sorcery. It's set in a similar French revolutionary period.

@emberthecatgirl8796

4 ай бұрын

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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

@therat1117

4 ай бұрын

​@@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).

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

@therat1117

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

Ah, yes, my favourite time period: knights with guns.

@samfire3067

4 ай бұрын

Mah boy.

@borjaslamic

4 ай бұрын

I mean early modern period is incredibly fascinating in history. You have Jolly Olly (Cromwell) in England, the Ottoman incursions in the Balkans and beyond, alongside the Siege of Vienna and the winged hussars, Kosaks just east of those. The landsknecht in their fancy dresses sieging Vatican and whatever the fuck the Sweeds were doing. Edit: And that's just in Europe! Edit 2: Also the art of that time with people like Rubens, Rembrandt, Carravagio, Bernini or Velasquez

@Devin_Stromgren

4 ай бұрын

@@borjaslamic How dare you gloss over Gustavus Adolphus as "whatever the fuck the Swedes were doing"! The man was basically Swedish Teddy Roosevelt.

@AHappyCub

4 ай бұрын

@@Devin_Stromgren The Lion of the North single handedly carried the Protestant cause

@Tinylittledansonman

4 ай бұрын

Kinda like a cowboy sort of thing though. Extremely brief. too brief to be considered a time period lol. Realistically it would be boiled down more to "this happened once or twice". But yeah the TLDR is the "knights" with guns was never a thing. Knights had a very specific political role under a lordship that was no longer a thing by the time firearms were on the battlefield. By the 14th century knighthood had basically died out. Now knights getting smoked by peasants with guns, that was thing. A very definite thing that went on to define modern warfare. And as a disclaimer here: if you're a History channel version of history person please dont reply. For you theres no difference between history and fantasy so yeah. No sense in debating.

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.

@AntonDVasiliev-ss1ie

4 ай бұрын

i believe something more closer to it existed, pill lock was it? pretty much just uses fulminate crystal pieces in place of cap

@arfyego0682

4 ай бұрын

@@AntonDVasiliev-ss1ie Right, good point

@Devin_Stromgren

4 ай бұрын

Except in his idea the crystal is replacing the powder, not the ignition system.

@AntonDVasiliev-ss1ie

4 ай бұрын

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

@arfyego0682

4 ай бұрын

@@AntonDVasiliev-ss1ie Lmao figures.

"i may be out of spells, but I'm not out of shells" *Pulls out musket from hat*

@fishHater

3 ай бұрын

I don’t mean to be rude but did The Archchancelor of unseen university write this?

@JustAnAstronautPerson

3 ай бұрын

@@fishHater I don't think so. But I never heard of "unseen university" so it's possibly a coincidence.

@Spectral-Spiff

3 ай бұрын

wizzard: aahhh thats it im out of magic big evil guy: haha now im gonna win wizard: you feeling lucky?

@JustAnAstronautPerson

3 ай бұрын

@@Spectral-Spiff "you ready to play"

@Abrothers12

3 ай бұрын

Making a hat into a bag of holding is honestly pretty genius

“Flintlock” *shows both matchlocks and caplocks, but not flintlocks*

@jsteckle4897

4 ай бұрын

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.

@ArcAngle1117

4 ай бұрын

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.

@m0nkEz

4 ай бұрын

​@@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."

@ea5yliver

4 ай бұрын

​@@ArcAngle1117An arquebus IS a matchlock so, yes, the Japanese used matchlock firearms.

@cdgonepotatoes4219

4 ай бұрын

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.

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

@ahha623

4 ай бұрын

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.

@Devin_Stromgren

4 ай бұрын

You forgot the saltpeter.

@paulfrancistorres7144

4 ай бұрын

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

@nickandres7829

4 ай бұрын

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.

@katherinespezia4609

4 ай бұрын

@@nickandres7829 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.

D&D: Guns hard, only made by artificers. Shadowrun: I've had multiple run-ins and fire fights with a gang in the Barrens in Napoleonic French uniforms and using 1861 Muskets. They have killed two runners as of writing.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

Poser gangs in 2020 could have all sorts of ludicrous themes and the props to go with them, but even the Star Trek gang had modern street firearms inside their prop phasers. You could see three Bob Kennedy and two Jaquelines slinging street drugs.

@Bluecho4

4 ай бұрын

D&D's abstinence from guns isn't even consistent within the game. Early adventures would see parties loot crashed alien spaceships for _laser guns._ And the Red Steel campaign setting takes active inspiration from the Renaissance and Age of Exploration, including sometimes ubiquitous use of wheel-lock pistols. (Because when one country in the Savage Coast is basically just Old West Texas, you can't NOT have characters getting into gunfights. Red Steel was weird.)

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

@@Bluecho4 You just got to decide which AD&D setting you and the crew wants to use. There was a number of historical modules as well, A Mighty Fortress details early modern period historical Europe. You swashbuckle and jump in chandeliers and shoot pistols. There's scheming cardinals and the magic of John Dee. There was a victorian horror setting, Red Masque or something, where you can shoot revolvers and pepperbox pistols.

@Random-ei2uo

3 ай бұрын

actually forge cleric make gun too but instead of regualr wooden stuff they pretty much turn it into functional piece of art

@SkoomaGodDovahkiin666

3 ай бұрын

@@Bluecho4 Heck, 1e, for all it's cringe had rules and stats for guns and, IIRC 3/3.5e also had guns present in certain modules. Blame the monkey brained DnD community. Fucking incels would turn base D&D into LOTR if those crayon eaters could.

Honestly. As a Medievalist who studies the Late Middle Ages (the time-period your typical fantasy setting tends to be based on), I always found the utter disdain that some fantasy readers (and writers) have towards guns quite jarring. You have blokes at the end of the 13th Century that are already using cannons in Southern and Eastern Europe. Handcannons (exactly what they sound like) appeared in the 14th Century. Gunpowder is older than Knights in shining (plate) armour. But, for some reason, the latter is seen as more "Medieval" (even if they started to appear by the time the Middle Ages was ending) than the former. All because the laymen's understanding of the Middle Ages has been stuck in the 19th Century and hasn't moved from it at all.

@elgostine

4 ай бұрын

earliest tentetive reference was a .. i think mid 13th century seige in spain of a muslim fortress.. the defenders are described as shooting 'white hot balls of iron etc etc

@user-ej4eq5im4r

4 ай бұрын

Regarding Eastern European handcannons, in Ukraine we still have some that survived from way back then and you should be fine even if you make one (though our cops are dumb and you will have to grip soap harder) and they are called "Гаківниці". It's a noun that evolved from the word "Hook", because it's a small cannon on a stick with a hook! You were expected to hook them onto railing in a fortress so recoil doesn't destroy your shoulder if you had to fire it

@user-ej4eq5im4r

4 ай бұрын

I was debating to translate it as "hookers", but I don't think it sounds right :p

@mustardjar3216

4 ай бұрын

i fucking love the hussite wars

@ingold1470

4 ай бұрын

I think the reason is that medieval European fantasy evolved from romanticism, the point was to escape modernity (Tolkien made this explicit in some of his letters). The adoption of firearms coincided with the transition from feudal/clan kingdoms to bureaucratic nation-states, because the latter was better adapted to gunpowder warfare. Plus the myths the mostly British inventors of this genre based it on come from the early/high middle ages.

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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

@user-bg9sq5kb6o

Күн бұрын

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

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.

@dragonfell5078

4 ай бұрын

Holy shit that is amazing and cool, what's the name of the isekai?

@arewe9647

4 ай бұрын

nameeeeee

@omganotherun

4 ай бұрын

​@@dragonfell5078 Found it, "Guardians of the Flame" books by Joel Rosenberg. First published 1983.

@omganotherun

4 ай бұрын

@@arewe9647 Found it, "Guardians of the Flame" books by Joel Rosenberg. First published 1983.

@dragonfell5078

4 ай бұрын

@@omganotherun Thanks mate!

The Empire of Man from Warhammer Fantasy: Allow us to introduce ourselves.

@Banzaiiii2223456

4 ай бұрын

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).

@heavymetalknight3728

4 ай бұрын

@@Banzaiiii2223456 Three things make The Empire great: Faith, Steel and GUNPOWDER - Emperor Magnus the Pious

@Banzaiiii2223456

4 ай бұрын

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)

@Zectifin

3 ай бұрын

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.

@m.otoole7501

25 күн бұрын

Karl Franz: This action has my consent.

"No dude, you can't have John Moses Browning as a Wizard for your character. That's not fair." ~ My DM

@LecherousLizard

4 ай бұрын

"Why not, you stupid bastard?"

@owlsayssouth

4 ай бұрын

How about a cleric?

@MK_ULTRA420

4 ай бұрын

@@owlsayssouth That's basically the TF2 Medic if he had guns...okay that would probably be worse lol

@PobortzaPl

3 ай бұрын

That's because he is an artificer. Or a prophet AND an artificer.

@poikoi1530

3 ай бұрын

​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

Another cool aspect of historical firearms is that ammo was SO much easier and cheaper to mass produce when compared to arrows and bolts. Sure, gunpowder needs some arcane wizard-tier alchemists to figure it out and mix, but they can do it by the ton, you can get the raw materials by the ton, you can ship it by the ton, and bullets are made of a metal so soft people can mold bullets over a campfire. Arrowmaking was very labor intensive, a real artisan craft, and basically impossible to mass produce (at that period), gunpowder and bullets were soooo much easier to scale production in comparison.

@MandolinMagi

4 ай бұрын

Gunpowder is hilariously hard to make in good quality. Or safely. But yeah, you can industrialize it easily. Bonus points if you have a paper industry for paper cartrigaes.

@MK_ULTRA420

4 ай бұрын

"Arrowmaking was very labor intensive, a real artisan craft, and basically impossible to mass produce (at that period), " The only exception is still...THE MONGOLS *Mongols.mp4* Seriously, every Mongol cavalry archer had to know how to make their own arrows as part of qualifying for service. They also had to bring their own supplies, weapons, armor, and at least 4 horses each for a campaign. They were known to tear down entire villages to loot their wood for arrows. Like, imagine a bunch of dudes on horses tearing your house down to make arrows, wtf.

@Devin_Stromgren

4 ай бұрын

@@MK_ULTRA420 While that's interesting, that isn't mass production. Every man making his own equipment is literally the OPPOSITE of mass production.

@r.kolemaistos7788

4 ай бұрын

On the other hand, this is also a good reason why firearms are more relevant to the background setting (unless you're playing a military campaign): Their advantage vis-a-vis crossbows is most relevant when it comes to entire companies of soldiers rather than small squad battles or duels, which is what most fights in RPGs boil down to.

@alganhar1

4 ай бұрын

@@MK_ULTRA420 Sorry, but as I make my own arrows you aint using beam timber from ripping down a house to make arrows. You are also not forging your own arrow heads nine times out often. The Mongols were no exception, you honestly think English Longbowmen, men trained to the bow from the point they could draw a childs bow did not know how to make and fletch their own arrows? If you do you are seriously delusional.... The guy was right, making arrows is an artisanal process, ESPECIALLY for arrows to be used with warbows with draw weights in excess of 100 pounds. An arrow for such a bow is not simply a dowel of wood whittled from a bit of timber with a point and some feathers. it is thicker in the centre for example. Grain runs directly down the shaft. You are using heartwood for best possible strength through the entire arrow (so not frigging beam timber), and so on. Its only with modern high tech materials that arrows are the same circumference from nock to tip....

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

@runakovacs4759

4 ай бұрын

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!

@crowe6961

4 ай бұрын

@@runakovacs4759 Warhammer Fantasy isn't that far off.

@Tinylittledansonman

4 ай бұрын

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.

@trevorthompson6825

4 ай бұрын

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.

@jamesedwardladislazerrudo1378

3 ай бұрын

​@@crowe6961 Warhammer fantasy is more 13/15th century setting.

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.

@elgostine

4 ай бұрын

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

@MandolinMagi

4 ай бұрын

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

@elgostine

4 ай бұрын

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

@ingold1470

4 ай бұрын

@@MandolinMagi "He wants nothing from us but powder to kill his fellows and spirits to kill himself"-Joseph De Maistre, in 1821

@ingold1470

4 ай бұрын

​@@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.

Basically Warhammer Fantasy, Empire musketeers fighting alongside wizards.

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.

@magmapixel8627

4 ай бұрын

The global east's contributions to technology, specifically weapons technology, is way too overlooked imo

@elgostine

4 ай бұрын

citation needed*

@comradep8519

4 ай бұрын

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?

@elgostine

4 ай бұрын

@@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..

@herrfantastisch7489

4 ай бұрын

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.

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

@MandolinMagi

4 ай бұрын

Fun fact: the caplock was invented by an English minister who was frustrated by the flash of powder warning the birds he was hunting.

@Devin_Stromgren

4 ай бұрын

And there are a LOT of weird systems in between matchlock and flintlock, most of which were some variation on a "proto-flintlock".

@ea5yliver

4 ай бұрын

"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."

@redanthalas8830

4 ай бұрын

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.

@ea5yliver

4 ай бұрын

@@redanthalas8830 Condottiere aesthetics. 😩👌

For those interested in guns I advise to look at 16th century guns. No flintlock yet but you have matchlock where a piece of burning cord is slammed into black powder to propel the bullets. You also have wheellock mecanism, they kind of work like a zippo but instead of putting gaz on fire it's the blackpowder. Plus wheelock mechanism where often quite complex and look like clockworck which will be great for any artificier out there.

@Devin_Stromgren

4 ай бұрын

The locks were actually usually made by clockmakers, and then a gunsmith used them to make the rest of the gun.

@jamesedwardladislazerrudo1378

3 ай бұрын

I thought flintlock existed in 15th century?.

@DaveePB

3 ай бұрын

Heck, why even use locks? ;D If you want to go truly medieval, handgonnes such as fire lances, multi-barreled hand-cannons and hand bombards have been around in Europe since at least the mid 14th century. They were basically tubes on sticks. You just had to poke that burning cord or tinder into the touch hole by hand!

@sirxarounthefrenchy7773

3 ай бұрын

@@jamesedwardladislazerrudo1378 They didn't, they were types of early matchlock

@jamesedwardladislazerrudo1378

3 ай бұрын

@@sirxarounthefrenchy7773 Late variant of matchlock?.

Flintlocks had paper cartridges for them, they contained your buck/ball, wadding, and pre measured amount of powder.

@therat1117

4 ай бұрын

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.

@SnakebitSTI

3 ай бұрын

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.

@therat1117

3 ай бұрын

@@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.

@musketeerash

3 ай бұрын

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.

If you've got alchemists, you might end up with guncotton rather than black powder. You wash cotton in acid, rinse it in water to desensitize it(otherwise it spontaneously combusts- fun!), and you now have explosive. The really fun part is that guncotton leads to plastics, photography and even motion pictures- if you don't mind the part where your film archive may spontaneously ignite in an unfightable fire (there's a *reason* so many old films have been lost)

@voidseeker4394

4 ай бұрын

So, smokeless gunpowder, but we can't mass-produce cartridges? Well, caseless ammo anyone?

@MandolinMagi

4 ай бұрын

@@voidseeker4394 You can mass produce cartridges if you have paper

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 absolutely love the overconfident master swordsman gets one shot by gun trope

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

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.

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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

@cassius_scrungoman

4 ай бұрын

this is precisely why high fantasy was a mistake

@tbotalpha8133

4 ай бұрын

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.

@penguinlordalan

4 ай бұрын

@@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

@Ezekiel_Allium

4 ай бұрын

@@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

@deci2723

4 ай бұрын

​@@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.

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.

@LecherousLizard

4 ай бұрын

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.

@Kirill-ig6nr

4 ай бұрын

​@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.

@LecherousLizard

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

@ddshocktrooper5604

4 ай бұрын

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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

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.

@MK_ULTRA420

4 ай бұрын

In American prisons they sometimes call that the Home Depot ;)

"This is a flintlock" Proceeds to show mtachlocks and caplocks, but not flintlocks.

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.

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".

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!

@bajscast

3 ай бұрын

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

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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

Warhammer Fantasy has guns in a world of dragons and magic so it is proven to work.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

WFRP 1e didn't make handguns dramatically different. Handguns deal damage as crossbows and reload relatively slow. Later on, they gave handguns a point of armour negation. A bloke in non-magical mail and plate has armour 2. WFB cannons have the most impact on the battlefield. A cannon strips Wounds off monsters handily. A ball can bounce and mow through several lines in a regiment. If a regiment has crossbows or handguns is a small difference. Handguns tend to lower armour a bit and reloading handgunners are less mobile. Powder is easy to get in towns. A handgun is expensive but available there. Finding these out in the villages is a lot harder, but so are armour parts and tools. There is no magic crystal power in a handgun. Magic items are pretty rare.

@o98z

3 ай бұрын

@@SusCalvin and then theres the dwarves who industrilazed the process so hard, they have battery guns as field artillery(organ gun go brrrrrr), and rapid fire gyro copter guns

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.

In my opinion, a fantasy world is most of the time an amalgamation of historical and mythological elements mixed and reimagined by the writer for his worldbuilding so if in those elements gunpowder weapons are present I'm totally agreeing with your video ! Like warhammer fantasy or the 7th seas RPG ! and yes we need more modern and early modern fantasy worlds ! I'm always and advocate for historically inspired setting (and I think that a setting is always better if the authors do research on the elements he is inspired by) but what I find interesting in the fantasy genre is that it conveys more than just historical inspiration but also themes and aesthetic : I think the "no gun in fantasy" cliche comes from the great ancestor of fantasy that is Tolkien (and others like Lord Dunsany) that had a very romantic (as in Romanticism) and quite antimodern (he hated cars and industry and such things) views. He wanted to recreate a fiction that compared to the sagas, epics, and chansons de geste, of old ! And in these they were no gunpowder but dashing hero and champions battling honour duels , bloody battles, themes of good vs evil and mythology ! Is it the only way to do fantasy ? Obviously, no ! But sometimes people want to keep the world free of elements that are presumed "to modern" like gun powder to keep this pure image of a past fantastical era ! In my opinion, it's all about the themes that the authors want to put in his story/worldbuilding, and sometimes there is a place for gunnery sometimes not ! It's close to the "dragon couldn't fly", debate with people doing magnificent works of "spec evo" to make "dragons work" but if you come from a mythological point of view this "realistic" dragon doesn't make much sense ! The dragon fly because it's a magical or divine creature that is ruled by other rules, rules that I think should be somewhat fleshed out in the mind of the authors but still ! I could say more but that's long enough of a coment, thanks for the read !

@martimsousa2601

4 ай бұрын

I agreed

I got ADHD-based overload headaches (twice!) and then loneliness-based depression for Christmas, so I feel you. A bit.

"In a world of mages and sorcerers, cant a man have a stick that go boom?" - Napoleon, maybe

Something i think you'll appreciate, Forgotten Weapons had a video of a cartridge fed, breech loading wheel lock rifle. Produced in 1625. it's a testament to how inventive and capable humans can truly be when given time and passion. It's beautiful!😭

"I like the knights with guns" - Alternatehistoryhub

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.

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)

@averagejoey2000

4 ай бұрын

You could definitely argue for Matchlocks. Mulan and the rocket kind of thing

@tbotalpha8133

4 ай бұрын

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.

@MacCoalieCoalson

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

@tbotalpha8133

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

@MacCoalieCoalson

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

Not even finished with the video, but YES! All you need is salt-pewter, sulfur, and charcoal for the powder and lead for the ball, and then a piece of cast led as a projectile in a pipe. All you need is fire and BANG, you get a firearm. I'd love to have a D&D match with match or flintlock rifles available for my mercenary fighter character. Edit: For kidney stones there's a product called "Stone Breaker" by Herbpharm that works REALlY well for kidney stones. A friend of mine at work swears by it.

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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

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.

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.

@TheNatenigga

4 ай бұрын

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.

@baneofbanes

4 ай бұрын

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?

@NotsilYmerej

4 ай бұрын

@@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

@TheNatenigga

4 ай бұрын

@@baneofbanes absolutely true

@duchessskye4072

3 ай бұрын

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.

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.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

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.

@o98z

3 ай бұрын

@@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,

@TheAchilles26

3 ай бұрын

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.

@SusCalvin

3 ай бұрын

@@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.

@dccherrytrees7539

3 ай бұрын

@@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.

5:40 oddly with this, we might actually see instead of firearms having a semi equalizing effect, the opposite. in a world where the superpowers can cover soldiers in magical battle armor and field advanced magical firearms or send gunwizard hitsquads after the people they don't like...

Actually, samurai's opinions about firearms were a little bit more diverse and evolved with time. Some definitely disliked firearms, thinking they were dishonorable. Some immediately wanted to have these new weapons. Others thought it was not bad per se but the fact that a simple farmer could kill a trained warrior with a boomstick was dangerous. In the end, the samurai accepted firearms, including them in their training, because they were extremely convenient. The thought process of European knights was very similar. Anyway, just like the video says, the spread of firearms is definitely an interesting theme for a fantasy story. Plus, guns can be great gameplay elements.

With Fire And Sword is objectively good, glad to see it being recognized

I'm glad that guns are being put more into fantasy!

I'll decide what my settings should have.

Imagine a DnD group came across some weirdly dressed men with vibrant colours clothing in a distance, lined up and point their stick at your position, and all of sudden sounds of small thunder-like explosion and all you DnD members lifelessly lay on the floor Come to think of it, muskets kinda works like a wizard staff, only it shoot out tiny exploding rocks and not fireball and other spells.

Well, there is Warhammer fantasy battles, that have poster faction - The Empire, that use gunpowder, and muskets. I think it's a matchlock, but it maybe is a flintlock. And dwarfs, that have the same weapons (they were the inventors). Chaos Dwarfs have blunderbusses, and canons with imprisoned demons, normal dwarfs and humans have canons, Empire have a FREAKING STEAM TANK (Invented by Leonardo Da Vinci of this world) and so on. And they have not only wargame tabletop game, but also Table Top RPG, Fantasy Roleplay.

@TheAchilles26

3 ай бұрын

WHFB's Empire is using matchlocks. They're mostly at about a Thirty Years War tech level.

@user-lf3eh3px7j

3 ай бұрын

@@TheAchilles26 but still it's sticks with the firearms, that can be introduced to fantasy. Because flintlock muskets is more of 18-19 century. Unless you would make fantasy setting with equivalent of Napoleonic wars or Seven Years War.

@TheAchilles26

3 ай бұрын

@@user-lf3eh3px7j oh, I agree. Full plate and rapiers are ubiquitous in so-called "Medieval" fantasy, so matchlocks and wheellocks really should be included, whereas flintlocks would be more of the game changer critics claim all firearms to be

The Scottish guy should've been the main character in The Last Samurai.

@cassius_scrungoman

4 ай бұрын

so true

Just found your channel trough this video and I do not regret for even a single moment clicking on it. I will most likely binge watch a lot of your videos. Thank you, like, idk how to put this into words, but like, I don't think my limited english vocabulary cant put into words what I feel, so yeah, great video!

There is a japanese light novel/web novel/manga (Nihonkoku Shoukan) where this fictional fantasy napoleonic empire has magic crystal muskets, cannons and they also have knights who fly dragons capable of firing fire balls from their mouths + land turtle tanks. Pretty cool.

I keep putting your videos on as background noise in the best way while I work on my worldbuilding. The points you make about the innovations and such always get me giddy. In my world I've been writing warfare never fully evolved out of pike and shot tactics, so as equipment got better it also refined warfare, plate armor has been found to be able to mass produced for armies so armies usually have two main wings, the Gunlines or as they're nicknamed Bluecoats who are the back line in the trenches with bolt action rifles and lmgs (ww1 with fantasy go brrrr) who maintain the more static positions acting as sharpshooters to protect the frontlines of melee fighters nicknamed Wireheads (this was due to a practice in the Bloody Tears war in which melee combatants would wrap their helms in barbed wire in the hopes of preventing their primary foes in the war vampires from being able to remove their helmets to get at their necks easier) who are your more armored combatants. This isn't even mentioning how the city states all use their own tactics within this empire and their own preferences of equipment, such as the distinct difference between Kearburg the second largest city with several academies, institutions and magical circles all doing their own thing whos troops are equipped with enchanted gear and have a more strict tactical doctire, vs Relten a highly magic averse city who use shock rush tactics with their melee fighters and overwhelming fire tactics with firearms. Throw in Oathsworn Orders (Since I'm moving away from dnd for my system it feels better to dub them something other than Paladins) who are complete wildcards in who they align with depending on their oaths who are all vastly different on the battlefield, warfare on the continent of Af'oragat is this messy complex world of pike and shot tactics mixed with ww1 strategies. Also side note it's so wonderful finding an enby content creator who shares in worldbuilding philosophy as well as general taste in content. Best Wishes!

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.

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

3 ай бұрын

So… the same thing that crossbows and bows already become in fantasy RPGs?

@Falconer1523

3 ай бұрын

@@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.

@Sanguivore

3 ай бұрын

@@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?)

@Falconer1523

3 ай бұрын

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

@Sanguivore

3 ай бұрын

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

Thats why I find Warhammer Fantasy interesting. Generally the Empire's army is Pike and Shot.

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!

@cassius_scrungoman

4 ай бұрын

it is my footage, thanks for all your work, marty! :>

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.

@MK_ULTRA420

4 ай бұрын

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.

I think the idea of firearms and fantasy is more along the lines of the ability to use magic in the first place. In a world where it takes a lifetime of training or you have to be born with the ability, guns would surely be a popular method of self defense for the layperson. However, if the use of magic is wide spread and easily accessible, firearms don’t really make much of a difference when you can engulf someone in flame with a flick of the wrist. Also, to those who are talking about the range of the weapon, may I introduce to you the eldritch blast corps with their ability to deal force damage from half a mile away.

Honestly I am quite happy I have found this video, and your channel. I love world building and writing, but always get weird looks when I tell people I have ideas for implementing firearms from the 1500s to the1600s along with magic, swords, and dragons. This gives me more inspiration to work on the setting itself and I can only thank you so much for it.

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.

@MandolinMagi

4 ай бұрын

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.

@Cowboycomando54

4 ай бұрын

@@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.

@MandolinMagi

4 ай бұрын

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

@magniwalterbutnotwaltermag1479

4 ай бұрын

​​@@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.

@Cowboycomando54

4 ай бұрын

@@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

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.

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.

@cheesusabidas77

3 ай бұрын

check out pathfinder 2e guns

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.

YES, just from the title and I haven't watched even a second of the video yet. YES! Now after watching the video I have to say: STILL YES WITH ALL OF MY HEART! You brought up nearly every single point I had on the topic except one. Bayonets! Fit your man's height musket with one and even if you miss you have the option of either going for the high stakes high reward pay out or use the pointy bit at the end of your long metal and wood stick as one of the most powerful, useful and (in fiction) criminally underutilized weapons of all of human history, the spear.

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, and a good point about firearms not immediately becoming overpowered. Near the end of the middle ages, cavalry became an extremely powerful and dominant force on the battlefield because of advances in armor. An unprotected unit of firearm-wielding infantry could get run down and slaughtered by arquebusiers. In Japan and Western Europe, the solution to this was to use pikemen - infantry wielding extremely long polearms - alongside arquebusiers, giving rise to pike-and-shot warfare as you mentioned. But an alternative (and imo underappreciated) way civilizations dealt with the dominance of cavalry during the 16th-17th centuries is by developing highly effective field fortifications. Eastern European and Ottoman warfare was much more "mobile" during this time compared to the grueling pike-and-shot combat of the West; this was both because of the terrain and because their armies used field fortifications rather than pikes. Ming China is another example.

Some more context for guns historically: contemporary plate armor of decent quality had a good chance to stop a bullet. Even after armor fell out of wide spread use due to increasing sizes of armies, and thus the cost and logistics of purchasing and marching with armor, cuirassiers and some other types of heavy cavalry maintained the use of bullet proofed breastplates all the way through a good chunk of the 19th century.

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.

Idk if it's an issue with most table tops, might just be the system you're using. My games in GURPS and some indie RPGs I've tried tend to go very quick despite me telling players to take their time. Regardless, I do adore firearms in fantasy, and this inspired me to run an early high tech fantasy game. I appreciate the content, I'll be employing heavy use of firearms in my games, and I'm feeling very inspired.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

Esoteric Enterprises is an OSR game where you play criminal-occult fools exploring a mysterious underworld of a city. In it you can arm yourselves with automatic rifles and semi-automatic shotguns. They don't have much special rules to them. You make one three-burst attack or one shotgun blast or one hand grenade toss per round. People do not walk around swinging their AR-10 around town because it's illegal. The fuzz reacts negatively if some fool starts slinging spells at their rivals at the KFC, much like they do when fools pop shots with a glock at their rivals at the KFC. The law comes down hard on any fool who thinks they can swagger down the street waving a wand around.

@TheAchilles26

3 ай бұрын

DnD (especially 3.X and 5E) and Pathfinder 1E are the poster children for the issues with combat he highlighted. And sadly, DnD has more of the tabletop market share than everything else combined.

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.

Amazing video and my thoughts exactly, as a DM who is currently running an online campaign whose time period is roughly around the Early Stuart Period/Late Renaissance it is nice to see that other people think about pre-modern guns and their applications (In-Story & Mechanically) in these type of settings.

dude just describing Warhammer Fantasy.

@TheUSgoverment

4 ай бұрын

Exept the Britonnians, but nobody likes them

Regarding your Last Samurai bit, there is one thing that the movie got right: Japan does consider Saigo Takimori (I'm pretty sure I misspelled that, sorry), whom the video is loosely based on, as a national hero and is known to history as the last samurai.

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.

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.

Loved the video and the take which i agree upon that there should be more firearms in fantasy settings and am definitly going to use what you said about a empire hiding the production of firearms to use for their own benefit in a part of my campaign that i am running thank you for the idea and good video

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.....

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.

Shout out to the powder mage series for NAILING the idea of magic and guns by having a group of people who are like airbenders but for gunpowder

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.

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

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.

Great video ! I really hope you feel better now !! Always wanted to see the implications of guns appearing in a fantasy setting and how people would handle them

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

2:40 i think the problem is that people have a really inflated view of how effective projectiles are. Or how effective *anything* is, against armor. Plate existed basically with the arquebus for darn good reason... The problem is that in most older games there had to be Rules For Everything, but because of that trying to figure out how armor works anywhere close to reality would need stupid big amounts of rules. And grappling. i mean on the other end of things it might be a tad amusing to see a knight run at the PCs and watch their reactions as all their arrows and bolts bounce right off, but... *rolls 5 billion dice* idk. a lot of ttrpgs are weirdly similar to Computer Game On Paper in complexity and I think it hurts a lot.

@arsarma1808

3 ай бұрын

This is basically why Pathfinder is a bad game, at least when it comes to firearms. There are just a bunch of extra, unnecessary rules (misfires, touch ac/"armor piercing" attacks) for something that really shouldn't work that differently from a normal weapon in game terms or historically. I will point out that most other weapons in the game, or its parent, do not demand this level of detail in their mechanics.

@scarletsilveriron

2 ай бұрын

Or why why video games have no problem with Guns in fantasy.

Counter argument, depending on the easy of access to magic like fire balls or lightning bolts in your setting, personal fire arms like hand canon become redundant and impractical.

You missed the very on the nose title: "Wizard with a Gun." Other than that, loved the video and will be "liberating" the ideas from it to use in a d&d setting.

the "too modern" argument falls apart mainly because rapiers are newer than wheellocks or matchlocks, by quiet a few years.

@martimsousa2601

4 ай бұрын

If they don don't have rapiers ?

Funny how we both came to similar conclusions actually, I'm making an offshoot off of DnD 5e where black powder caused an as race. Two different technology routes emergeed: Dwarven chemical reactions (black powder) though I did include more "modern" guns but made them more rare Elven magic core technology, essenttially a giant battery that can be rechargrd but only usable if you know. Small, medium, large and an illegal version being the variations Then a combination of the two to make simple vehichles and exoskeletons

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

The lizardmen in WFB have magical energy cannons. They have a lot of weird magical-technical stuff left from their glory days when they were servants of the gods and not just abandoned custodians. It's a big aztec wheel thing on a stegosaurus that somehow shoots lasers.

@anelbegic2780

4 ай бұрын

@@SusCalvin That does sound cool actually, won't lie.

@SusCalvin

4 ай бұрын

@@anelbegic2780 The lizardmen filled the role of crumbling south american city-states. They're holed up in their last cities, basically the janitors and custodians of long gone gods who try to keep their geomantic seals working. The last mage-priests are slowly dying out and stay around as mostly inactive sorcerer-mummies attended by smaller lizards. They can't replicate the relics of the gods, only pull them out of storage now and then. When a sorcerer-priest mummy manages to stir enough to tell the others to haul its body out, they can pull of magic that rival and surpass the elves.

Cassius is always spittin fr, also sucks to hear that u got kidney stones :< get well soon!

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.)

@arsarma1808

3 ай бұрын

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.

I am a fellow gun-in-my-fantasy appreciator, but I do think you're not giving anti-gun fantasy makers enough credit, There are plenty of reasons not to include guns. A gun, for instance, has no place in a medieval or classical setting. Similarly, muskets are a formation weapon. In individual combat (as happens in most RPGs) didn't involve guns, even in times where they were very common (German dueling as late as 1900 comes to mind). As for why so many prefer gun free fantasy, I really think it's not because of a lack of creativity, but of the influence of things like Ivanhoe and King Arthur (not just or even mostly Tolkien), both of which take an expressly anachronistic approach to the Middle Ages, even though firearms were actually a feature for more of the that period than not (firearms were in use in some capacity as early as the 14th century, the classical, archetypical High Middle Ages). The infantry revolution caused by the rise of guns is a very complicated bit of history and it's often beyond the ability of many worldbuilders to reconcile. That previous authors, as far back as the 19th century didn't bother figuring it out either, does us no favors in the modern day. There is also something undeniably buccolic about a world with no guns, although I think it's overblown. Also, I think your comments about hojutsu are exoticize Japanese musketry a little to much. A better translation than "art of the gun" would be something like "musket-ology" or just the English word "musketry," although I think that supports your point because it highlights just how normal guns have been for so long in so many places. Ty for vid and readding my effort comment go with God and drink lots of water.

@baneofbanes

4 ай бұрын

Guns were invented in the late medieval era. Plate armor and the earliest guns were contemporary. Guns were certainly used in individual combat ever since they were invented. Muskets aren’t that inaccurate, especially at close range. And rifles appeared in the 1500’s, so not too terribly long after the Middle Ages, and again was contemporary with plate armor. And dueling with guns has been extremely common throughout history, what are you talking about? Sets of dueling pistols were common prestige items.