WHY FANTASY HATES FIREARMS?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 มิ.ย. 2024
- in this video I complain about the lack of firearms in fantasy and cover its evolution through history and its uses in different cultures.
#fantasy #dwarves #dnd #folklore #history #mythology #caucasus #firearms #cannons
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Until fantasy stops being allergic to spears and lances, it might be a while before they stop being allergic to guns.
this lol
also not everything has to be balance
I was a reader of fantasy for as long as I can remember, and took me a long time (as an adult) to realize how exaggerated is the role of swords in fiction. Must thank youtuber creators for that understanding, really. Yes, polearms are way better for most contexts of war than swords. When you know you are going to a battle your first option will probably be something like a spear, unless you have a bow and the skill to use it in war. Swords and knifes are secondary weapons, generally speaking. Make sense, once we think about.
If you want to go home after the debates you want to reach your enemy before he can reach you. He is likely to follow the same doctrine.
And spears are the weapon that stayed on the top for longer, I believe. They are not very practical to carry, but people carry them around since the time when the point was made of sharp black rock. Long before any mining or metal working start.
That depends on the media,@@somedesertdude1308. For books and comic books, yes, sure, balance is not an issue. For the sake of consistency we need to think about consequences of having and not having balance.
And "balance" in a conflict can mean 600 Indians killed for each cowboy killed, or 1000 orcs for each elf. Of course. It does not have to be 1 character as powerful as 1 other character. We can have a Gandalf and a Frodo in the same story.
For tabletop RPG and games, generally speaking, balance is a necessity in some aspects. Not "everything" has to be balance, but some things must.
Generally speaking.
Is always possible for a player to have a comically weak character and make the game more enjoyable for himself and for everybody else because of it. However, that is the kind of exception that confirms the rule.
They should also learn to stop being allergic to HEMA, real battle formations, early Medieval settings, Medieval philosophy and behaviour, and minor details of Medieval life.
Pathfinder 2e has both a gunslinger class and polearm weapons.
Alchemical and enchanted weapons, explosive and chemical grenades.
Firearms range from breach loaded flint-locks to repeater rifles.
Alkenstar (a city) has a massive cannon on its walls that can level a mountain a few times a year.
Dwarves tend to use large bore guns akin to tanegashima, while small calibre revolvers and repeaters tend to be more prevalent with most due to the lower recoil.
Spears come as javelins, spears and shortspears, polearms in general have longer reach and can interrupt an approaching enemy with a reaction attack, making them spend an extra action stepping into fighting range.
"Guns aren't allowed in fantasy setting because its too op!" Oh ok so a firearm that has a high chance of braking,missfiring,not being accurate and slow is mote powerful than a wizard who can spam fire ball, lightning,meteor and can literally stop time?
I mean its more the fact that you can give 10 lets say goblins 10 guns and they will decimate that wizard (unless you make wizard soo op any sort of tension disapears)
@@Kuba_K you can give 10 goblins 10 crossbows and they will also turn a wizard into swiss cheese
the answer is to either
A: Lean into this weakness and make mages play more of a support role due to being vulnerable in direct combat (Wizards could still play a role in logistics, or as a substitute for early artillery, or in asymmetric warfare where they don't engage the armies head on but instead evade them)
B: Make mages able to defend themselves if you really want them to be frontliners (i.e. if they can avoid getting stabbed by using fireballs or walls of force to block a melee attacker's path, they can use fireballs to strike first and wall of force to block incoming projectiles)
- And just because they can *Wall Of Force* or something to defend from bullets, doesn't make them invincible, because it's possible to write your magic system so that, say, they can't defend omnidirectionally, so there's still tension as the people with ranged weapons can try to flank, or perhaps tie a cost to a wizard's actions (like mana and spell slots do) so that enemies with firearms can generate tension by forcing the wizard to expend that cost
- You'd have to do this anyways if you want wizards to be on the frontlines, because a wizard with no defensive ability would get killed by *any* weapon
You are overstating the disadvantages when compared to other weapons of the era.
Early guns are criticized because they are compared to modern guns, when they should be praised for being compared to earlier and contemporary weapons
Simple. Numbers. Magics requires training. Muskets requiring teaching them how to Operate the Weapon.
Just an Army of old people with Muskets they learned how to Fire and Coordinate in one week can devastate Knight armies.
That, by definition, is OP.
@@Quincy_MorrisThat's exactly the Problem. Compared to Contemporary Weapons they were OP especially in Formation.
My setting is precisely inspired by the 16th~17th century because it had everything, knights, guns, pirates, ships, etc.
In mine I went further, combining Napoleonic Warfare and cannons with superhuman melee troops and knights
Yeah, people seem to overlook the fact that heavy plate armor and firearms co-existed for about 300 years, roughly from 1350 to 1650, with many 16th and 17th century armors being made bullet proof. The medieval knight continued on, in the form of the gendarme, cuirassier and reiter.
You should check out GnG, Baltic Empire(same guy), and SandRhoman. They cover all of those topics in an interlapping era.
@@seanbeckett4019 Yep. It literally took WW1 for horse cavalry to finally be put in the ground in conventional warfare.
@@LordVader1094 But it never stopped as unconventional warfare. Horses have the ability to jump which is useful on terrain where you can't just drive over an obstacle.
The use of firearms in a late Medieval / early Renaissance setting is what attracted me to Warhammer Fantasy in the first place :)
Yeah, in recent years I've become more and more interested in the 16th century setting, where musket men, pikemen and cannons, co-existed with heavy cavalry like gendarmes, cuirassiers, and reiters.
technically most fantasy also takes inspiration from that exact period as plate armor developed after firearms, but still some have mental blocks on it
That and the reneissance HRE esthethic of the empire for me, you donť see that often
@@thebordoshow Right!? Where're muh knights shooting guns on horseback, Hollywood!?
Same
for some reason when you say there are guns in your fantasy universe people immediately envision a medieval knight holding an AR15 covered in fancy modern scopes, laser sights, flashlights, foregrips, an underbarrel grenade launcher, a complimentary iphone, and an ice cream dispenser
I mean the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese all used flamethrowers repeating ballistae, and biological/chemical warfare. So how can single shot muzzle loading matchlock muskets; tools that even the slightest of dampness or windiness will render them inoperable, can be considered "overpowered?"
You don't?
Well now I want that
"Magicka : Vietnam" has entered the chat.
I mean, that's just Fantasy if Fantasy weren't boring.
I had an idea for a fantasy novel where an oppressive ruling class used mages to keep peasants in check who would eventually rebel with the use of firearms.
Iron Kingdoms have something like that - clerical magic was very common amidst the Humans of Western Immoren, but the invasion of the Orgoth (evil Humans who used arcane necromantic magic) forced the Immorese to develop firearms and steampower, but also arcane magic came to help, and in the end, this led to their liberation.
There is actually a novel like that but in Thai web novel. The premise is the continent, everyone can use magic apart from this tribe of human. That tribe however, utilize gunpowder to make musket and cannon to defend themselves against dragon and beast. Still, this tribe cannot go against the magic-wielding human as their tribe leader make it so and sell them as slaves. Till one day, protag and his friend change that and rebel. Then the tribe start upgrading their firearms with rifle and tank. Then, war began as magic vs gunpowder. The power are quite balance in novel with magic barrier can deflect some shots.
Or in novelupdate, there is a novel called modern weapon cheat in another world. Isekai novel where protag has skill to summon army and weapon of modern warfare to magic world.
The game Life of Ser brante I think has that premise
Pretty much my ttrpg campaign
Wow this has more attention than I thought it would get.
Recap Replies a few novels including a Thai web novel interesting.
An Isekai, no thanks I've seen far to many that end up as harems or have mediocre plot. Besides I'm tired of the concept.
Me in a short lived DND campaign: "Can I play a flint lock using sniper?"
DM: "No gun's don't fit the setting." _has flying clockwork cherubs in the royal capital and a major NPC that regularly uses smoke bombs_
As a D&D DM, I limit the usage of guns as the mechanic of running guns is challenging. Who wants a pistol, this guy wants a musket, and the next player wants a blunderbuss. I have to come up with different ranges, damages and failure rates. Natural 1 is a jam. When does that turn in to a catastrophic failure? And, in general, I felt like I was penalizing the player when administering gun failures.
@@jimbobagginsnorelation If you want I've got a pretty good chart in mind for guns in DND, even the blunderbuss. (It's written on my phone notes, I don't know how to make an actual chart.) The way I rule it is guns cannot be reloaded mid combat, they're an opening or surprise weapon. And I don't punish players for nat 1's, missing with such expensive ammo is punishment enough for me. (still looking for ship to ship combat rules I like.)
@@jimbobagginsnorelation to be fair, the DMG has rules for all of those weapons. you dont need to custom make them
Just play GURPS. Firearms are plentiful in all TLs other than 2, and you don't have to break the system to accommodate them
@@terminator572 no system breaking required to use firearms in dnd. in addition, some people simply dont want to play gurps
People seem to forget, that early fire arms were not very good. And did not replace bows, crossbows, slings, and javelins. As well as armor and shields. Until fire arms were far better after a few hundred years of development. Fire rate and ammo style, materials used, gun design, military tactics, and supply and demand. Not to mention the ability to be used in certain weather conditions or not. And wear and tear. And the ability to repair. Which, Not to mention guns exploding in your face. Mortally wounding the user. We’re all factors that had to be improved on. Before they could reliably out shine all other forms of ranged weapons. And make all other forms of ranged defense. Mostly Obselite. This is just some of the reasons, why it took hundreds of years to become the only weapon of war.
Yes but guns killed noble cavalry
@@tedarcher9120 So did Cross bow, Long Bows. And pikes. Don’t Forget the Winged Hussars of Polend. Were armored cav. Who regularly. Came out on top of Gun armies of their era. Also Conquestador armor and knights armor got thicker to protect against fire arms. Which worked for some time. Before guns over took them again, in the arms race of Offense VS Defense.
@@tedarcher9120only sometimes and not all that reliable because of the accuracy and reliability of the weapon
Plus the general short range and armour development that countered firearms
Bullet proofed cuirasses we’re common till the late 17th century
@@jungoder1085 Yeah, I think people often don't realize how effective plate armor (at least the cuirasses) could be against 16th and 17th century firearms. Heavily armored cavalry such as gendarmes, cuirassiers, and reiters continued to be deployed effectively on 16th and 17th century battlefields. Considering the high cost of these troops, they wouldn't still have been utilized, if they weren't effective.
*Shoot the horse
"Firearms have no place in Fantasy"
Warhammer Fantasy with tanks and cannons: I beg to differ
To be fair, the Empire of Men is much closer to the Industrial Revolution thematically than to the Medieval Times. And this is another thing fantasy is VERY allergic to: Industrialism.
@@mekingtiger9095It's because Tolkien, The Father of Fantasy, didn't really like The Rising Industrialization if his time that pushed against nature. Like the Eint Who destroyed Saruman's Industrial Weapon making base.
@@mekingtiger9095
WFRP is as renfair as DnD and much of other Fantasy
Medieval Fantasy is very rare
Midgards Alba , Gurps Middle ages and when i very generous Harn
@@arnowisp6244 Which is why I say Science Fantasy is best Fantasy.
Warhammer fantasy has goofy tech. Here's a bunch of things just that dwarfs have I believe
Mechs
Paratroopers
Airships
Ironclads
Not to mention skaven having Gatling guns and nukes
Crossboys and Bowdudes are now added to my vocabulary
That's dangerously close to other terms which in correlation, are very zesty.
^.-.^ and then MusketChads
@@AlfeniumLemon
"By the ten hells i cast hurting upon you"
"By the ten hells i cast lead ball going at 600 km/h in the direction of your fucking face"
The gun: "Sorry, I'm new at this, I don't like damp conditions and I'm struggling to shoot consistently. But I can go through armour sometimes."
The bow, sling, javelin and axe: "Don't worry, stick with us kid, we'll take good care of you, we're sure you'll go far."
Javelins weren't really that much in use anymore when firearms came up. When I think about it, bows were also not that common anymore in the 14th century in most of mainland Europe. They would've been seen as outdated compared to crossbows already. The English were nearly the only ones who still used bows and just went 'Fuck it, we will just make your bows stronger'.
There are plenty of fantasy settings where all your bows, javlins, muskets and everything else wont get you any where because your going off RL historical values, and the world setting is one where people can enchant a cotton magic robe so all that just bounces off. it's fantsy guys, not reality. And the vast majority of it isnt meant to be. Especially in worlds where you're boiling it down to, 'we can have bob with a gun, or we can have Gandorf summoning flaming hail, monsters, healing us and ressurrecting the dead". Whos going to pick ancient or modern tech over that? Well, a writer/creator with an objective in mind, but if it was me in those shoes im going with Glamdorff the Fugly, thanks. If you guys are too stuck in what's called Magical Realism or low fantasy, just remember that's not the only flavor out there. It's another genre of fantasy fiction, and there's several. if you litterally have some king author level of magical superman walking at you in head to toe adamantite armor with a force wall or anti missle spell effect buffing him, you're taking about hitting them with a previously mushed pea when if fact the guy could tank a hit from a 155mm howitzer. And those guys are going to have no use for guns. Basically, the real truth here is that these are different genre and if that's what you like, that's cool. The problem is when people want to lump everything together and say you have to enforce a factor, like guns, into a genre where it doesnt fit. Becaue yeah, it doesnt fit! It has it's own place, and it's a disruptive element in high or pure fantasy for most.
Crossbow: You'll make it far, my dear apprentice! Go beyond plus Ultra!!!
Yeah its the same all over Musashi speaks of of Teppo a Japanese musket yet you always hear people talk of how samurai hated guns lol
The samurai did hate guns, it was the Ashigaru (peasant soldiers) that used muskets
@@idontunderstandhumour2978Samurai as a whole never, ever hated guns. It was them who popularized then in Japan I. The first place. While some individual Samurai might have hated them for whatever reason, it's a massive myth that EVERY Samurai hated guns or considered them "dishonorable"
@@terminator572i think Ian Mccollum has a Samurais matchlock in his collection showing they used them and given how decorated it was took a great deal of pride in them as much as any other weapon they owned.
@@idontunderstandhumour2978 How do you think most samurai actually fought? In my research I've found that the samurai, particularly during the Sengoku Jidai, there were no samurai who fought as a mounted archer. In fact the samurai, across Japan, functioned as mounted infantry (dragoons) and many of them were armed with carbines. So they never hated guns, they used them the same way the Europeans did.
@@jtyranus there even is an entire martial art dedicated to the Tanegashima and guns in general called Hojutsu, the Way of the Gun. Many Clans like the famous Shimazu had quite developed doctrines.
"Firearms have no place on fantasy"
Final fantasy: nah I'd win
I guess for same reason bows are more common than crossbows, swords are THE melee weapon and armour is often just a useless set piece.
Bows and Swords are seen as the weapons of skilled individuals and true warriors, useless in the hand of amateurs, they are noble. Same for magic. We focusing the person.
Guns, polearms and crossbows are the weapons of armies and soldiers, they are practical. So the focus shifts away from the person to a "thing", a weapon, an armour, the industry and logistics behind it.
Altough Legolas getting blasted by an orcish blunderbuss because his arrows bouncing of their armour would be funny, it goes against the common "man over metal" or "one man army" fantasy approach.
Something to add is that Guns (particularly early ones), polearms (and pikes) and crossbows weren't the weapons of armies just because they were easier to use, but also because they are multiple time more effictive when used in military formations and situations than swords or bows.
A formation of polearms and pikes is a lot more fearsome than a formation of swordsmans, because the more polearms and pikes in close formations the better, where swords with less range and more space needed per troops to be efficient would make a swordsman formation so much less dense that it was bad, even though in a one on one swords were considered better than either pikes or polearms.
On a same vein, guns and crossbows, with their slow reload time (and poorer precision for early guns) made them impossible to reload in a very small scale fight, but it wasn't that much of an issue in battles that could last hours and were munitions were often the limiting factor. In addition, if you only have 1 shoot, precision matter a lot, but if you have hundreds of shoots fired at hundred of ennemies, it already matter significantly less.
Swords and bows were still widely used even after armies had more or less transitionned to more or less only guns, simply because even though guns had come to dominate the battlefield, they stil had some use (although the bow was indeed a lot less prevalent than the sword in later periods).
@@user-rg9he8vq3u If I'm not mistaken, _even in a 1 to 1_ situation swords are generally pretty bad against spears and polearms no matter how close to the skill ceiling you are. Exceptions being large two-handed Greatswords or comboes with armor or shields to close the gap safely, but other than that, any rando peasant with a spear will mop the floor with any unarmored and unshielded nobleman with a sword more often than not no matter how many specialized training with "anti-spear" techniques he has mastered over his many decades of training since childhood. (Non Greatsword) Swords are only really good or feasible if paired with aditional gear to synergize with, but as a standalone weapon? No.
@@mekingtiger9095 Not really, in a one on one fighting between sword and spear do mostly come down to skill, I'm not sure what is your source on this...
Also a big advantage of a sword in a private setting, particularly shorter sword, is that they are a less more inconspicuous and easier to carry (not that spear or polearms were that hard to carry, but it is still a different), which meant the sword tended to be the weapon of choice for people who wanted a weapon in their daily life even though their weren't fighters.
@@user-rg9he8vq3u I mean, when speaking about convenience of carry and carrying a weapon around without drawing attention, sure, swords were useful specially in urban settings at peace time for self defence because no one would want to look like they're going to the Medieval equivalent of PUBG and draw attention, thus making swords the go-to choice for "street and alleyway" affairs because the chances of running into someone with a polearm were already extremely low to begin with.
In the event of an actual duel or single encounter with a spear however... Didn't Lindybeige, Skallagrim and like every other medieval arms and armor content creator on TH-cam already settle this?
@@user-rg9he8vq3u
George Silver. HEMA . history to name few
I come from a country that was first in europe to use guns on large scale so I love combining late medieval style fantasy and guns
Jan Zizka? Czech m8? Roll out your war wagons bruh!! You HUSSITE you! Lol. Zizka was an absolute chav(& total hero to boot)!! ;)
@@bwda666 I struggle to understand your words but I am czech yes
I am so sorry friend, but it is ALL GOOD. I love Zizka. Take care m8
@@filipcadilek3695 ''Henry Came to see us!'' :D only thing ı know about czech's along with the company CZ
@@noobguy9973 Then I will give a fun fact
The czech version of the name Henry Is Jindřich
And you are not able to pronounce it
My friend ran a Pike and Shot era of his homebrew setting.
We where mercs in a 600 year long war, just before another fighting season kicked off. Did some raids, I got blasted by a musket while we fled in battle wagon. Didn't die thanks to good old fashioned high hp and a breast plate. It was fun running a company and panning raids.
In fact our setting had not only regular muskets but magelocks essientally a musket that shot a spell and recharged over time they where wonderful for logistics but a regular musket was cheaper to make and more powerful pershot most of the time. Naturally being the broke and extremely disorginized band of hobos we where. We had both.
The idea of a magelock is really fucking cool but to take it even further you could make it like an enhancing weapon that enhances normally weak spells into stronger more effective spells. This aligns with what a gun actually does, focusing the energy of expanding gasses caused by burning gunpowder out onto a tiny opening turning rather slow burning gunpowder into a deadly weapon.
@@itcaboi1707 that is a possibility I will keep in mind for next time we visit that time period in our setting.
There where magelocks that traded power output for number of shots.
Considering we see Patrick Gordon, a 17th century Scottish mercenary get shot in the thigh and ride a horse a few days later shows just how much people could survive back in the day. So your scenario is not unrealistic.
A thought worth considering is that in most fantasy settings, being able to ignite a small fire is usually a beginning level spell/cantrip. Basically just like a match. Sometimes at range.
Gunpowder weapons could be distinctly limited if you need antimagic for all your weapons and logistics lest some twerp apprentice light your powder magazine and wipe a large area clear of life. Basically what happened IRL at Yellow Ford in the late 16th century in Ireland when a stray matchlock spark detonated the powder reserves and killed most everyone on the hill where the cannons were sited.
Alternatively those initiate level spellcasters could use their ability to ignite things remotely to augment the effectiveness of gunpowder weapons.
Being able to perfectly airburst their grenades over groups of enemies, or being able to use guns in adverse weather conditions.
Powder Mage Series@@badideagenerator2315
Note how most fire spells in D&D are very specific about "not worn or carried"
At-will ignition is already artificially limited because it's wacky strong.
Blowing up someone's gun remotely is crazy sure, but so would "I set his Gambeson on fire" every 15 seconds.
Not to mention many settings tend to make mages intentionally scarce because too many of them would radically change society.
TBH, I generally don't pay much attention to specific game rules, because the last time I played D&D was 3rd, mostly to check out Monte Cook's new take on the rules
and stress test them.
I mostly moved away from Class/Race/Level systems in the early 80's. I'm more of a skill based system type.
I was mostly just thinking about how a lot of fantasy or semi fantasy settings, like L. E. Modesitt Jr.'s Recluse, or C.S. Friedman's Black Sun Rising where gunpowder weapons are known, but require special countermeasures to keep them safe and functional also keep them rare and special.
It's how I'm handling them in my game
The Powdermages in the works of Brian McClellan can ignite blackpowder at will, sense it and consume it (like snorting or eating) to get enhanced senses. They get countered with air rifles. And "normal" mages are allergic to blackpowder.
Sorry for not Uploading for a month guys.
I've been stuck in protest mode, fighting against government tyranny and I've been trying to make a video about that but got into huge technical issues I was hoping to upload that video, but had to cut my losses.
Hopefully back to my regular upload schedule.
but crazy things going on in the country, so who knows, no promises
"sorry I haven't posted, I was fighting the government"
*Gigachad theme plays*
Great video. Thank you!
Good luck with the protests, happy to see you back, and looking forward to more videos.
Good luck with the protests!
I hope in the future you will delve deeper in the firearm and fantasy topic.
Great to see another video, and good luck with your freedom fighting side gigi. And as for your question: once your setting is capable of creating something as technologically advanced as a musket, it means that you are a hundred years from all other forms of combat becoming obsolete. And that kills one of the main things that make fantasy so magical: its timelessness.
My favorite mountain dwarf uploaded
Guns are simply intimidating to introduce into a setting stuck in the medieval era. They quite literally changed our own world and would challenge many to consider how it would change their own settings.
Guns were used for the majority of what we popularly associate with the middle ages. They brought changes, like verything else. Regardless you had plate armored heavy cavalry even 300 years after the middle ages ended. So your assertion about guns is a myth.
More unneccasery Magic IS literally guns
@@laisphinto6372 I won’t disagree. It just seems that fantasy writers have their minds stuck on the same standard for a few generations now. Magic powerful enough to shape continents is seen as easy to integrate, but guns are a step too far for most.
The evolution of firearms was a very gradual one, and the advantages of early firearms were moreso logistical (being able to carry a hundred musketballs on you rather than a dozen arrows) than tactical. They probably wouldn’t change much about your typical fantasy rpg campaign.
@@samurguy9906 I don’t disagree. The avatar series introduced hand cannons into their tabletop rpg for non-benders. It doesn’t really reshape the setting because the rules of magic in avatar is already pretty subdued but a constant factor. I do hope others would explore the opportunities blackpowder weapons have for their settings
As someone who has carried a sword in public and regularly carries hand guns for self-defense, I can tell you that wearing a sword on your belt is an immense pain in the ass.
I was actually tripped by the sword swinging from my belt during a Celtic Festival.
I of course have to take into account that I am nothing like an experienced Swordsman and if I carried every day I would find better ways to move after I was used to it
Have you considered a cutlass or dussack? Both are short and maneuverable, easy to carry.
that's why every single cultures prefered short one handed swords. even the edo japan actually preferred wakizashi over katana
Perhaps wearing it higher on your waist would be better? Maybe even tucked snugly to your side like how the japanese carry their swords? I could definitely see the swinging and banging around would be a problem.
This is why the small sword was invented
@@dolsopolar For personal carry, yes. Shorter swords can also be better in extremely cramped sieges or formations, but generally there's a reason longer swords prevailed. In Europe, longswords were adopted because plate replaced the shield. Then, in the early modern period, you see longer blades for horsemen, dueling, and also for officers. Shortwards mostly being delegated to personal/dress carry or naval combat.
Small correction: bows didn't have more power than slings, they were just easier to use in formation as you didn't need a lot of space around you
Yup. That Ease of Use is Why Crossbows started to become more Common place. Why train for a few years with a Bow when a Month of Crossbow training is enough?
And that logic is how Firearms grew as well. Why Use Crossbows when Firearms were just Crossbows but stronger?
If you want to train a man to use a gun, start today
If you want to train a man to use a bow, start when he’s 10
If you want to train a man to use a sling, start with his grandfather
@@wooblydooblygod3857
Nah, it's not nearly that difficult to use slings. Amount of time needed to train slingers wasn't the reason why bows replaced them over time, bows just slowly caught up to slings in terms of power (longbows are more or less just as powerful as slings, and roughly similiar in range and accuracy too. Talking about long, military slings, of course) while always being easier to put in formations as you don't need 2-3 meters of free space around you to shoot a bow, you can just stand shoulder to shoulder with another bowman.
Early middle ages warfare was also dominated by armored cavalry with bows, and I can't imagine being effective at shooting slings on horseback so that probably also played a big role in slings being abandoned
@@starhalv2427 ik, it's exaggerated. But slings are more difficult to train for. +All the reasons you said.
But slings do "hit" harder than almost all bows, but a rock wound, is easier to mend then an arrow i believe
@@wooblydooblygod3857 yea, unless you crack a skull with that rock I suppose.
Because they don't have that warhammer drip
I am a DnD Dungeon Master and I always allow medieval gunpowder weapons in my games like Arquebuses and Hand Cannons, and cannons. My last campaign had ship with cannons from the 15th. It expand so much the world building. I usually make gnomes, dwarves and humans use the guns. Other races like Elves usually prefer bow and arrows.
Everybody’s gangster till a villager whips out an AK and domes the level 20 lich terrorizing the town.
Yup. He had it buried under his basement floor like John Wick. They all called him a crazy asshole until the lich came to town and ruined the pride parade 😂.
Aaah yes, fantasy settings refusing gunpowder is a pet peeve of mine. If your world has international trade and features continent, there should be technology diversity in your setting. And I know a lot, a lot about how gunpowder existed in history and so many people don't get how it was more widespread then believed. Warning long text ahead!
Some of the earliest interpretation of early gunpowder used in warfare was... dried bamboo. No it wasn't explosive but when tossed in a fire, it would create a loud "BANG" sound that would scare animals and people. It was recorded that this method was used in war roughly in 2nd-3rd century CE China during the Jin dynasty (that's after the romance of the three kingdom era). This psychological warfare was the concept that later gunpowder war users would base their technology on. It was during the tang dynasty (600 CE to 900 CE) that Li Tian created an exploding device where you'd stuff gunpowder into a bamboo tube to create a louder noise effect which also was used in warfare. Around this era, the silk road brought the gunpowder existence around the world. But the true era where gunpowder became a practical, see a killing tool, was in the next dynasty, the song Dynasty (960 CE to 1279 CE) where first people found out it has a propulsion method through firework but also deadly effect against soldiers. First it was via exploding incendiary arrows, where one would aim the bow/crossbow at an enemy then another person would lit it on fire before being shot. But the "fire lance" became the popular method where one would add a tube at the end of a spear to fire off shards and flames. From there the idea of using a tube to fire off shards became the standards of gunpowder weaponry, after the toss-able grenade of course. And all this was in the late 900 CE, not the 1500, not the 1400, not even 1000. And what else existed then? The silk road of course! Very quickly, this new Chinese gunpowder technology started to spread out to Asia, middle east and even Africa where engineer studied it and made improvement or new entire technology. It was roughly around 1100-1200 CE that the existence of gunpowder and how practical it was reached Europe. Which was, mind you, a century before the 100 years war started (you know, that era where EVERY medieval fantasy is based on?). Still, it was more of a niche technology that was studied in various rare universities around Europe. Sometime it was used successively in battle, sometime it was very very useless!
The hundred years war changed how people viewed gunpowder in warfare, in Europe at least. See people don't get how warfare worked in the early years of the war to the last. In the early years, the nobles had the horses while the lower people (mercenaries) had the crossbow which was easy to maintain and train. Because of this, there was distrust between the two groups. Traditionally, you do not kill a knight, you wound them then capture them and ransom them for money. The crossbow troops simply aimed and shoot, killing everything, angering the nobles who wanted ransom money. But the Battle of Crécy (1346) changed that attitude when the British longbow devastated french troops so hard that the knights blamed the crossbowmen for the high death toll (the battle was very chaotic). From there, it was a technological arm race to who could kill better at a distance which included early gunpowder technology (like the pot-de-fer). It was after the death of Jeanne d'Arc that the Bureau brothers successfully used the bombard, the earliest (practical) European cannons, at the battle of Castillon in 1453 and that changed warfare entirely. One of the reasons why the cannons were successful was because most buildings at the time were built with thin walls that easily crumbled with canon balls. Compare it to the Chinese thick fortress walls which was built with dirt mounds, clay then surrounded by thick layer bricks as they had longer history against gunpowder then Europe (this is also why these ancient Chinese buildings still exist today). After that battle, ANYONE can use gunpowder with just some light training as long as someone rich can brings the right weapons. No one cared about kidnapping nobles for ransom, death was the deciding factor in battle. From there, gunpowder technology evolve in a way we all know, giving more power to people to fight back against the nobles that used to look down on them. And we didn't even reach the renaissance era! It always bothers me how people view the medieval era as strictly a sword and shield era when back then, most people were figuring out ways to kill easier while dying the least way possible. Chivalry wasn't a code everyone HAD to follow, this isn't Bretonnia from warhammer!
I am reminded of how the Japanese used swords and bows for so long until the Portuguese showed them gun technology. They quickly abandoned katanas to favor tools that kills better at a distance. Sengoku era Japan (1477 - 1573) was also an industrial boom era. More guns were manufactured in Japan in that era then anywhere else in the world! Kinda makes you think why western media portray the samurai as katana wielders instead of gun users like they were historically. Now also look at various native American tribes in the colonial era where even the famous Iroquoi confederacy abandoned bows to adapt, maintain and even create gunpowder weapons to fight back against the European settlers. The image of the white European with superior guns fighting against indigenous people with sticks and stones because one was smarter then the other was for a VERY short era, not because they conquered them but because the people fighting back understood that guns was the better way to defend your home. Even the Aztec were trying to figure out how to reverse engineer the weapons before their empire fell. They always were smart people who just needed the means to fight back better. Gunpowder technology was much much more widespread and used then (western) people thought.
And look, if you really really want a fantasy setting that has no gunpowder whatsoever, may i suggest basing it in the bronze age era where people only used swords and bows instead of the medieval era where universities and commerce was more widespread. It's less complicated to make it technological limited and you can also add mythological supernatural powers since it fits the culture of that era.
Traditional weapons weren't abandoned in favor of firearms until the late 17th century, or sometimes later. The Iroquois continued to use the American Flatbow, or Longbow as a practical weapon of both war and of the hunt. The rifles they favored maintained the killing power of other muskets, without sacrificing range, but their reload speed sucked. Bows remained superior for rate of fire and stealth.
The Japanese never abandoned the sword, until the Officers sword became obsolete in the late 20th century. Matchlock muskets dominated their battlefields, just like in Europe, but samurai remained as elite calvery, even as they adapted bullet proofed plate armor and calvery firearms. Basically the bow lost prominence, not the sword or polearms.
In a way you're completely undermining the fabric of what fantasy is by tring to ground it in historical past, and reality imo. there is nothing that says 'technological diversity' or global trade is anything that should apply in a fantasy setting. that's up to it's creator, and isnt required. According to this world we know, which hey, if they are right about multiple dimensions your going to have not only the pure fantasy geeks but several other realities giving you 'the look'. There are countless worlds in which all these factors are meaningless, due to any combination of factors such as magical holocausts and demon invasions, altered sets of laws of physics or just the fact that nearly everyone has something that negates just being joe blow with a gun. When your entire population either is a mutant, has mind powers, magic, a bond with a supernatural creature or can pull up a magical aura that basically functions like superman's physical abilities, guns either just wont be a factor, or they will just be the random window dressing for bottom of the barrel scabs or rich guys that can afford carrying a one shot hand cannon for defense or assassination because they ar such a fat slob they cant do it any other way and that's perfectly fine. There's multiple genre of fantasy fiction. You seem to like "Magical Realism" or Low Fantasy, and that's fine too. But generically saying those kinds of things you mentioned about trade and development should always be present is a bit too much.
@@user-cv1pj2vv1u warhammer Fantasy, Warcraft, and Guild Wars definitely aren't Low Fantasy, and yet firearms are prominent in them.
The reason so many fantasy writers shy way from firearms is not that thy are too powerful (there is a lot of very powerful things n fantasy) but rather that they demystify power and put it in the everyman's hands.
Usually fantasy calls to a sense of heroism and individual skill where powerful mosnters, wizards and skilled swordsmen take center stage; but in a world where weapons as powerful as firearms are common, the supremacy of heroic characters is challenged by the lowly peasant, so the world moves away from legendary heroes and monsters fighting each other for glory to one where individual skill only gets you so far and does very little to ensure survival; a world where strength in nubers reigns supreme.
it doesn't matter how skilled you are with the sword, if you turn a corner and see a musket aiming at you, your life is now in the hands of it's wielder; but that goes against the entire idea of the power fantasy that most writers desire; Generic fantasy thrives on large power imbalances, and this makes a great equaliser like the musket an unwelcome addition.
It just kills the vibe of training your life with a sword only to be killed by a match lock wielding guy with only a week training...
Early guns were... Finicky and expensive.
And crossbows are VERY Medieval, and VERY empowering to the untrained peasant.
Why does the low skill trigger (or lever) fired projectile weapon suddenly change in tone when it goes bang?
God created man, Sam Colt made them equal
Aaaaaah, so this is why crossbows also aren't very popular in fantasy either.
@@1stCallipostle Except crossbows aren't very common in fantasy either, soooo...
Maybe part of the reason guns aren’t that common in fantasy at least in America is due to how common guns are here in reality. Firearms are so normalized here that I’d imagine even more primitive firearms could detract from the fantasy setting. Moving beyond america, just the fact that firearms are the main weapons of war these days might make people want to disassociate with them in fantasy in order to truly make the genre feel otherworldly and different
They sure don't want to dissassociate from modern morals, social systems or even apparel, though. So this argument only really makes sense for people who are intellectually lazy. To tell the truth, 19th century snobs really ruined our cultural perception of the middle ages. I wish that as much as we don't beat up our wives "for her sake" or create excuses to regard other ethnicities as subhuman, we would abolish this whole BS perception about the past.
For me at least, whenever I use guns for my settings I end up just revolving towards modern weapons and magic. Older flintlock and matchlock weapons don’t seem to work well when every other method is faster and more reliable. A wizard is always going to cast faster that’s you can reload. So to compensate I use modern guns that can reload and shoot more frequently
@@user-kt4to5xs9l But not every person can just become a wizard. And if that would be the case, you would also need to remove all the swords, crossbows ect, because why trying to fight in melee when a bunch of wizards can just bomb an entire army?
Aye, and quickdrawing a primed flintlock and downing the wizard as he casts is a fun option.
Very Indiana Jones moment
@@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei combat drugs, magic resistant armor and the use of distractions. Which I know can be applied to older style guns, it just never seems to fit for me. But that’s just me though
One issue is the idea that guns are some kind of instant win button, one shot can and will kill anyone.
But guns didn't instantly kill people in armor or end knights, many people did survive getting shot.
when i made a fantasy world i made it have 14th and 16th century technology, guns in the world are called hand cannons
Than why did Firearms eventually rendered Bows Obsolete?
Look at Oda Nobunaga. Part of his Success was Precisely because of Line formation Firearm tactics. He was the first to adopt European Firearms.
@@arnowisp6244 Fire arms are much better at dealing with armour and armour was wide spread where guns took off.
By the 1500's most of europe had every one in some kind of plate armour, often Brigandine and helmet.
Thats why writers call it a miracle that someone was killed outright by an arrow, it was rare.
Guns where faster to train with, a few months of good regular intensive training will make you a master.
With a bow that training has add 30- 50 lb on your draw and in another year maybe you'll manage a war bow.
A archer is part bodybuilder, they have to be strong and fit.
@@SuperFunkmachine It's completely irrelevant since armoured were usually fighting on horseback and firearms had proven themselves to be completely ineffective against formations of charging cavalry. It was only beggining to change in the XVIIIth century, but as late as XIXth century a cavalry attack was still very dangerous to infantry.
Well, one thing to consider is that even if guns didn't penetrate armor in its initial early days, they still packed enough of a punch to severely damage its integrity in one shot so that the next few following one or few would certainly do the trick unlike bows, bolts and most other melee weapons of the time that weren't bludgeons. Armor fatigue is a real thing and it has historically allowed much stronger armors to be pierced by far weaker weapons that otherwise wouldn't be able to, including in tanks during WW2. Now you combine that with the huge numbers of musketmen that could be fielded at once, and yeeeeeeeah.....
The problem with fantasy (and worldbuilding as a whole) is that we only have one world to use as a reference - the one we live in, and a lot of authors don't bother learning more about the real world before creating a fantastical one. That's why my favourite fantasy setting is Anbennar. Anbennar is a mod for the game Europa Universalis 4. EU4 is basically a history simulator, so it's playerbase have a much better grasp on history than the average fantasy fan. More important than that - Europa Universalis is set in the Age of Gunpowder, and so is Anbennar. So in Anbennar you get gunpowder-era warfare, colonialism, religious reformation, absolutism, political and scientific revolution, among other things you rarely see explored in fantasy. Plus being a world map-based grand strategy game allows for a level of detail, especially in the representation of history and politics, that is much harder to achieve in other mediums. The map of Anbennar has many areas that correspond to those from the real world, so Anbennar also has a fantasy take on Africa, Asia and it's weird and unique version of the Americas. And since it's a videogame, you can pick any nation on the map and forge your own 370 years' long history for the world. If that wasn't enough, the team are also actively developing Anbennar mods for the games Crusader Kings 3 and Victoria 3, which are set in the Medieval and Victorian ages respectively. Strongly recommend checking it out.
mainstream history is fake anyway. its playerbase is only playing historical fiction. roman empire doesn't exist.
"The problem with fantasy (and worldbuilding as a whole) is that we only have one world to use as a reference - the one we live in, and a lot of authors don't bother learning more about the real world before creating a fantastical one."
So let me use the quote again...
"There's a reason it's called fantasy, you myopic mantatee!" But seriously, drawing on different background sources is fine, but being too heavily mired in the past and reality when writing fantasy material can be incredibly stale and disheartenneing in compairison to pure/high fantasy. It's true, we don't need the backstory on every fing tree branch.
You don't need a history degree to make a good fantasy or for world building, in fact it can get in the way. Take the Gor books, all 44, 55 or how many ever there are of them now. Loaded with stuff influenced by historical context, with scandals, sax and violence, corruption, 'primitives' yelling about honor this and honor that, and it's utter trash. I argue intelligence, creativity and writing skill trump an over reliance on history (written by people with their own interpretations) or loosing sight on the value of fantasy itself over 'the real world'. After all, a large part of the real world is simply made up of these fictional structures we call societies and social values anyway.
The Victoria 3 mod is gonna be lit
I hope.
I highly recommend the book The Gunpowder Age, by Tonia Andrade. It covers in great detail the evolution of gunpowder weapons in China from the invention through to the final transition to smokeless powder.
The timeline is something like 800 to 1900. Over a thousand years of gunpowder weapons, showing various different ways that gunpowder was integrated into military contexts. How path dependence created certain results in China vs the West.
Fantasy wise, I see more firearms set in Sci-Fi-Mutant games as lost technology, and I don't know why. The original 3-booklet D&D rules (Chainmail table-top miniatures rules was first) had Supplement I (published 1976) which included damages for the arquebus. I guess a magical Fireballl is more "believable" that a firearm while hunting liches and dragons. You skipped over the atlatl, a spear-throwing lever, from 17-21,000 years ago. Chinese used firearms in the 1100s. I think firearms were romanticized with the Three Musketeers (set in 1620s) movies.
In a D&D fantasy scenario, I can see each race having a different approach to firearms:
- Humans would be more generalist;
- Dwarves would be more tending towards shotguns: slugs and grapeshot would be the norm for fighting in enclosed spaces, and they would be masters of artillery and demolition;
- Elves would be all for long rifles: from designated marksman to precision snipers. They also would be incredible bayonet fighters;
- Halflings would be incredible gunslingers: revolvers gallore!
- Orcs would make machine guns: the dakka never ends!
- Goliath would be a veritable mobile artillery: break-action 40mm anti-air ammo used as a rifle - those dragons will not gonna hunt themselves...
And imagine the types of magic that can be put in a bullet...
*drools in excitement*
So many options...
I think the thing is, Guns killed off Heavy Armor. The whole Knights in Shinning Armor thing is severely undermined if the very weapon made them extinct is up and about
@@cyberninjazero5659 A simple remedy I've used in the past it that firearms have no effect on magical armor or shields (+1 and better).
Most americans don't know what an arqeubus is and the oldest type of gun they can concieve is the flintlock, hence why DnD added in the magic revolver pistol class instead of the arqeubus.
@@cyberninjazero5659 well, Knights used guns for a while.
The fantasy genre's aversion to firearms is quite simple to explain. Most fantasy worlds, like many tropey settings, are defined by technological stagnation. They reach a certain level of technology and culture, and for most fantasy worlds this is around the medieval period, and then they flatline from there for the rest of eternity. This is because fantasy worlds usually want to focus on a theme rather than be a simulation of the real world. Fantasy worlds that take inspiration from the medieval period often love their focus on the theme of knights in shining armor, clever dagger-wielding rouges, and studious mages, and the like.
The problem with guns is that guns in the real world represented progress from the medieval period into the modern one. Guns becoming popularized in Europe marked the slow phasing out on the reliance on knights for a fighting force, with nations transitioning to large armies with lots of firepower. And, in order to have these large musket-bearing armies be coherent, the nations of Europe needed to undergo power structure reforms to become more modern.
While there indeed was a period in which the first firearms that could be recognized as guns and knights co-existed, this was a transitory period that only lasted about a century, and this century is largely recognized to be the closing century of the middle ages.
We also cannot discount how the gun itself is an invention that fosters innovation like no other weapon before it. A sword is a sword, and will always be a sword. Same with every other primeval weapon, but the single shot, powder loaded musket only took a couple of centuries to become the fearsome handheld machine guns of today.
Thus, with everything the gun is and what it represents in the popular perception of history, the gun would detract from the themes and aesthetics that some fantasy worlds prefer to preserve. Imagine two knights coming face to face with each other on the battlefield, and what looks like the beginning of an intense swordfight ends with one of them pulling an Indiana Jones. Imagine a dragon coming down to rain hellfire on a village, but you don't need an epic hero to stop the dragon, you just need a dozen or so men in a firing line. Imagine a peerless paladin or wizard venturing out on what would be a legendary journey to find the McGuffin, only for their adventure to abruptly be cut short by a farmboy with a pistol.
The point is, guns can cheapen a fantasy setting easily by making everything else obsolete and trivial, and the world would have to transform into something radically different from your average fantasy setting in order to adapt to the presence of firearms.
I agree with your take on technological stagnation. It's one of the fantasy tropes that I most despise. Maybe it's because I got into D&D from a background of Warhammer Fantasy, but I utterly despise worlds where all technological advances stop at the level of the crossbow.
@minimalbstolerance8113
I mean in a world where mages, wizards whatever can manifest things like fire, lighting, change the natural landscape etc, then there's no incentive to change, because magic is reliable enough.
Even something like natural sciences are laughed at by the magical community, because of their attempt to separate magic from the rest of the natural world.
Magic because of how common it is and how much power it grants when harnessed makes any attempt at change pretty much futile.
And this is why magic also never reaches its true potential. Magic is basically omnipotentence if done right, but because disciplines to properly understand it never develop, at best it's used to make fireballs.
Holy goddamn hell, thank you for making this. I've been working on my own world for a long time and always felt very hesitant to explain it to anyone because they immediately balk at the idea of a fantasy setting where guns are involved, but since it's fantasy, whoever said weapons technology or armor needed to progress in exactly the same way as history? Brilliant stuff. Looking forward to seeing more!
My roommate didn’t like the ideas of guns in campaigns when he DM’s. That was until I took him out to shoot some of my muzzle loaders. Having hands on experience helped him understand how they work and is now working out how to add them into his games.
Dude demonstrated to prove his point!
Respect
I'd say fantasy dislikes firearms for the same reason it prefers swords to spears: they don't require much skill and aren't all that flashy, even if they ARE the most effective option.
Although the average spear fighter in the medieval age had probably a more defined and skillful fighting style than all the depictions of "epic swordmasters" who just swing their swords around like baseball bats.
@@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei The average spear fighter swirled their spear around in chaotic motions and stabbed at random spots to throw off your guard, there really isn't much to it hence the popularity, swords on the other hand required a lot of training hence the status they commanded.
I would argue that Spears are as flashy as Swords if not more so.
And Guns can be incredibly flash too so those arguments do not really work imo anymore.
I think the main reason people dislike gunpowder in most fantasy is because the genre is so rooted in pseudo-medieval settings that they feel like it does away with important elements of these types of setting, like armored knights and castles. It sure was a reason for me, as someone who's been creating fantasy worlds for fun since my teenage years.
In most media, gunpowder based combat is shown to be more about masses of individuals shooting at each other, rather than the far more exciting melee, where personal combat and skill at arms seemed to matter a lot more (I know this is a romaticized view of medieval combat too, but I'm talking about fantasy depictions here). As for sieges, I just think the idea of high-walled fortresses, trebuchets and siege towers in fantasy was made so iconic by depictions such as the siege of Minas Tirith in the LOTR movies that doing away with it in favor of cannons and star forts was a deal breaker for past me.
Ironically, my view of naval combat (where pirate movies and Master and Commander were my main reference) was the exact opposite, leading to bizarre worlds where land battles and sieges were fought "medievally", and naval engagements were full of cannon - with some contrived reason to try and explain it.
I've since moved away from that medieval-only type of fantasy worldbuilding, but if modern audiences are anything like I used to be, then I guess that is a factor in why gunpowder doesn't get a lot of love in fantasy media.
Maybe they have cannons, but don't have handguns.
War has always been about mass. It doesn't matter what weapon was used. Peasant levies were very much a thing.
@@torg2126not a thing. If you can make a big metal tube, you can make a small one.
@@CharChar2121 I know. My comment is about the fantasy of combat as represented in media and my perception of it, not the true historical thing. I would not use the word "exciting" to refer to real combat, no matter the time period.
To be fair, though, I don't think that came across in my comment. I've now edited it for clarity.
you just accidentally described Bretonnia a faction from Warhammer fantasy. They refused to use guns and cannons on land and where all about chivalry, knights in shining armor, castles, peasents etc on land but for their navy they did use cannons.
Easy to answer, because it removes the build up of powerful characters because literally a little old lady can easily take out the most skilled warrior. In today’s world anyone could kill a UFC champion. Fantasy is largely built around the fascination with greatness, and guns break the illusion.
I don't think "some old lady" would be able to use a medieval gun. Even modern guns require some basic training.
i guess crossbows could work too.
I saw a documentary about Timur. That was... Educational...
RIP Georgian grapes. They were good vines that did nothing wrong
It is interesting we as Americans have had a weird anti-guns thing with fantasy for a long while since American colonial and Westward expansion aligns way more to TTG adventuring than a lot of European history.
American Longhunters/ Long Trappers are the archetypal Fantasy Ranger. Long traveling, beast slaying, bandit/tribal fighting, hunting/trapping explorers speaking many languages and becoming one with the Wilds.
I blame modern industrial warfare (American Civil War and beyond) for tainting guns too much to be included in 'pure' fantasy combat. Too easy to destroy an entire village's worth of young men in a single volley. No honor, just ignoble suffering .
It doesn't count when a Wizard does the same thing for some reason.
I always found this idea just weird. Just because the corrupt noble's army has boomsticks instead of longbows it wouldn't exactly turn a raid into a single volley into the masses. Americans who are at average better taught about guns should know this the best.
If we approximate, the wizard is essentially a living artillery piece that can scale all the way up to a nuke or beyond.
@@genghiskhan6809”beyond” is an understatement
It depends on the settings and the author. You look at a game where Magus can use reality altering powers, yes you will find some storylines wher people suffer under the regins of them just like evil noble or evil government storlines. ut then there are times when awizard is like a guy carrying 5 grenades and some bandages and a flashlight. So he's not that terrifying. I think there is, for some, that dividing line where we say , 'Magic isn't real, guns are". We face gun deaths and wars today in numbers that far exceed nything in history by raw numbers, though looking at the populations of the earth back then these were actually bigger than hat raw numbers reflect on first glance. it's all perception. When you say 'gun' its a modern firearm people first envision, not a blackpowder gun, first of all. Secondly, it's guns that were involved in the most recent human wastes of life, such as western american expansion over natives, ww1, american civil war, the holocaust and ww2, and mass civilian shootings. fantasy is often an element of escapism, and guns do not help with that for many. Plus the face to face struggle of melee combat is what is the more romatisized fantasy for them, rather than the more 'sterile' ranged combat. having onelegolas or one level 3 DnD wizard doest upset that feel.
Because Wizards would need years of training and skill to master their powers unless they want to be smoke machines. Magic is always shown to require study.
Guns need Minimum Training to the Point you can arm weak Peasents with guns.
It's because guns are percieved as a distinctly modern thing by most people, and Americans being from a young country have a weird perception on anything before 1700.
they dont even learn in shcool about things that happened at this time, but in europe, there was lotta of event at this time.
I love listening to your vids when Im at my desk man. Keep up the good work!
Found you through your dwarf video and now subscribed!
But yeah imagine a knights with guns scenario where a few key innovations made an alternate history firearm truly dynamic. Like using springs to ignite paper cartridges in the barrel.
Because the gun lead to the end of the medieval era and thee dawn of modernity. So when people want to make premodern fantasy it kinda sticks out to include the vehicle that brought it
Idk great story mine if you think about it.
Wizards hate gus but peasants hate magic, conflict and drama!
But then they use all other postmodern inventions that came after the medieval period.
Does not make any sense.
Fantasy writers are just lazy. That is all
Man you make your videos with so much dedication and character, keep it up, you deserve more attention!
Good to hear from you Bordo 🎉
There was an old RPG video game in which this was a point, both as a plot and mechanically: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; the ambientation was in a steampunk world but with fantasy elements like orcs, elves and dwarves, magic was present, with both magic and technology as options: each interfered with the other, so you could have characters proficents with firearms in steam powered armor, togheter with mages and eldricht creatures.
I just stumbled onto your channel. I love your presentation, topics, and tongue in cheek humor. Subbed for sure.
Guns changed the genre. Changed the world. Swords, spears and shields are timeless. But once guns came along it was a new era, a different era that is unfortunately ignored in fiction.
This new era, as with all eras is tricky to pin down. But sometime around the late 1400s the era is no longer Middle Ages or fantasy but the age of musketeers and pirates.
Which is my favorite era. So little speculative fiction is written inspired by the era of 1492-1836. It’s always before or after that time period.
The 16th century is an incredibly interesting time because you have semi-modern colonialism and philosophy co-existing with what more or less still Knights.
But people have a hard time with different things overlapping in time.
Like early cowboys and late Samurai being entirely capable of meeting.
Also pirates.
Love that this appeared in my recommended. I’ve been playing around with a fantasy world building project that includes heavy firearms use, i’ve been theorizing how black powder firearms impact or alter a battlefield that already has magic and mythical creatures.
Rays of love from Kazakhstan ❤ it's so cool, that you produce english video for sharing you culture. Best wishes, dude
Most fantasy settings seem to use magic as a stand in for gunpowder. But the lack of gunpowder in these stories does always make me appreciate the settings that do include them even more.
This was a delight to listen to. The breath and scope of firearms and their development does indeed feel broadly overlooked in fantasy settings especially since you have things like blazepowders and well the concept of moving something quickly to kill started with throwing rocks it in all liklihood wouldnt be that unbelievable to find things like Gonnes and matchlocks in such a setting. wheellocks coming from clocksmiths and well yeah of course the famous flintlock we all know well.
I personally like to stop at early firearms(Firelances, grenades, handcanons and canons) that were slow loading and unwieldy for my fantasy settings. Also most nations might lack the centralized industry to manufacture gunpowder enmasse. Most forges and chemists should be making items that are useful for everyday use, gunpowder being specific to warfare early on, will mean only a small group of society has vested interest in procuring it.
The main world building balancing factor of magic is how rare it is. Most spellcasters are both researchers and users of magic. They cannot hand over their ability to vaporize entire villages to your rank and file troops. You risk losing a valuable researcher sending one to burn some peasants. Also, assuming the reality that most people are not talented, you might only have as many mages in the world as you have teeth that can vaporize entire villages. Most are just throwing one magic missile and done for the rest of the day.
Also, when players from my experience want firearms in their medieval setting...they want something that's akin to a rifle, which is more accurate, longer ranged, punches harder than any bow or crossbow. They want the power fantasy of showing it up to the archers. But also get upset when now, my level 1 rebel militias when introduced with the new weapons, are TPKing them via volley fire, as they never considered the ramifications.
Firearms introduced to fantasy, pretty much is revolutionary and dramatic change. Just as magic existing already has to make the fantasy setting have big changes compared to our world history. Magic's impact is like the introduction of heavy shock cavalry, it's big, but also only limited to a very privileged few, so they are still dependent on the masses. Gunpowder, is the true weapon that empowers the masses. It is, ironically the death of the heroic individual. There's a reason fantasy loves the specific set of feudal like era where power is concentrated in few, because 'heroes' can only thrive where an individual can overpower many.
The inaccuracy of muskets is exaggerated, they are in fact more accurate than bows. The idea of accuracy is just weirdly messed up for people who don’t study historical weapons. At the extreme end you can have a musket which has only twice the MOA rated accuracy of a bolt-action rifle (partly because WW1 rifles have poor quality). Less accurate but far less dramatically than you’d think.I do agree that an adventurer may want something more special like a breech-loading handgonne, revolver matchlock arquebus from 1500, handheld volley guns or one of those more sophisticated early repeaters. I also think while guns dealing more damage is obvious, we need to consider mechanics of the RPG system. Just as you aren’t out for 10 rounds in D&D after you shot your crossbow, I don’t think guns having special drawbacks is fair. Yet at the same time it is also important to scale damage as it makes sense for balance. I think economics can take care of the damage difference or the fact that finding enchanted guns may be more of a novelty than for other ranged weapons. Hit points make characters (in this case) literal bullet sponges anyhow. Also skill differences for combatants still matter the same. As for special repeater handguns and such? See how repeater crossbows are handled in roleplaying games. Same deal here, honestly.
I think people make a bigger deal out of this than it really is.
If magic existed like in a fantasy setting it would probably invade every aspect of life. Any blacksmith worth a damn would have some level of magical understanding that he would use to augment his work. Hammers that hit harder, so he can work faster. Furnaces that use magic to regulate their heat, etc.
The midle ages lasted from 500 to 1500 and guns started to gain pupularity in 1200 meaning guns where arround for 30% of the middle ages.
And if that is cause for excluding them than go ahead and exclude shining full plate armor as that only apepared in 1400 for 10% of the middle ages.
I think gunpowder is indeed despised because it's such an obvious equalizer. Once the greatly-skilled knight faces the BS that is how a peasant with three months' experience being able to cleanly end him with just a little luck, the knightly heros must acquire a new BS to overcome it. The BS needed, being magical armor or jedi deflection or something else, makes the disbelief too heavy to suspend in the face of the reality of what the gun did to the world battlefield. Who wants his knights in shining armor cowering in a trench?
The reason firearms don't seem to fit into "high fantasy" settings has a lot to do with both historical timing and that genre's heavy influence from Western European (and most particularly English and French) folklore and literature. I must point accusingly at King Arthur. Stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were wildly popular in the 12th and 13th Centuries, in the High Middle Ages. Cannons were only beginning to be used around that time, but those stories weren't even set in contemporary time. They were stories about people and events from hundreds of years earlier. If King Arthur was a real person, he would have been defending post-Roman Britain against the Saxons in the 5th or 6th Century. So even when firearms were making their way into Europe, people were already gazing back into the misty, glorious past with their storytelling.
And then we had Tolkien. He created a fictional history of ancient Britain, drawing heavily from folklore. A lot of people read his works and think Medieval. They've been steeped in Middle Ages imagery from King Arthur, Prince Valiant, Ivanhoe, etc. But in many ways Lord of the Rings is more of a pre-Roman, Iron Age story, an ancient Celtic story. And then you have the gaming scene, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons, developing largely inspired from Tolkien.
What an exellent analysis, glad I found this channel
I love the fact that Pillars of Eternity has pistols and muskets
Random knight in the 1600's after throwing a gun and switch to his sword: "so uncivilized"
"Switching to your sword is faster than reloading"
This was such a cool video! Thank you! I’ve been to a few military museums and the one you were in was well stocked. Could you tell us about the swords/knives you had? Also, what types of questions do you have?
I think it boils down to the fact that once you unlock gun everything else becomes really fucking easy, The magical dragon isn't so magical when 40 Mike mike turns it into a pretty pink cloud
This comment gave me flashbacks to the "Gate" anime.
"Invincible" fire dragon vs rocket launcher and a crapton of C4.
Big boom wins.
The fantasy setting isn't that cool if mere guns can reign supreme.
Just have a wizard bless soldiers with a magic bullet shield. With some creativity better than my example there is so much cool balancing you could add.
@@porkerpete7722 Yeah but it kind of evaporates when you realize that I could just delete the wizard's head from a good couple of miles away Before he even realized it,
I'd love to imagine this exact scenario with the dragon vs a musket or earlier firearm. Firearms require significantly less training than any other weapon, but they were still used alongside swords and spears (or bayonets, since bayonets are just gun-spears) until WW1, especially when talking about calvary.
The *weirdest* thing about it is that your average fantasy world is of a technological level where you'd *expect* firearms to be around, but there's not a *single* firearm in sight. Then again, your average western fantasy also seems to deny the existence of *spears* even though they've literally been around since the *Stone* Age; in your average western fantasy, it's all swords, axes, bludgeons, etc.
That's gonna be *very* different in the TTRPG system I'm writing, in which there's gonna be both spears *&* firearms.
Flintlock firearms have played a big part of my home D&D campaign for decades (started with 2nd Edition). I set it in a time period after "High Fantasy" swords & sorcery had started to wane.
I did notice that, back when Jackson's LotR was fresh in theaters, my players kept making Legolas rip-off archers with longbows; despite the odd disparity of all their enemies firing guns back at them.
I like adding guns to my old d&d settings, I usually will have them be an invention of the dwarfs who have things like wheel-locks and flintlocks and they sell their old hand-match and matchlocks to the humans. They don't really dominate the ranged weapons category, different good and bad with each weapon really.
Gigachad posted
Interesting vid. I'm currently in a DnD campaign and one of the NPC's we met on the first ever session had a flintlock handgun. I'm hoping we get a further exploration of the in-universe firearm technology in future sessions.
"sharp stick technology" made me laugh so much.
The key is that guns represent a switch from spring and muscle powered projectiles to chemistry powered ones. That means that while to get a stronger bow you need a stronger man and to get a stronger crossbow you need a complex winching system that makes it even slower, a stronger gun just needs a thicker barrel and a bit of extra powder.
Yea, and while bows and crossbows require a decent amount of training to use effectively, early guns were relatively easier to train for.
Wonderful video! I just want to ask that you do not dry fire a crossbow.
With firearms it can create gradual wear-and-tear on the hammer but is not a big deal with most bog-standard modern automatics. It is sometimes even standard procedure for rendering a weapon safe. (Read your weapon’s manual ofc ofc)
I say all this to juxtapose it with crossbows: Dry firing a crossbow causes immense wear on the arms of a crossbow and can cause outright destruction/injury.
This is due to the pressure that would normally be transferred to the bolt having nothing to transfer the energy into, instead putting loads more pressure into the arms (which they are not built to sustain). I’ve seen well made crossbows shatter because of their mishandling.
It’s hard for me to give unprompted weapon safety advice without sounding like a knob, but I mean well. Great video!
I appreciate the effort and enthusiasm you put into this!
As a writer: I rarely write about guns in speculative settings, because I don't want to invite readers to fuss over gun technicalities, especially when I'm not writing combat focused stories to begin with.
A big part of why firearms aren't popular in American fantasy settings (currently) is because of the types of people we have writing the stories. At least the stories that get translated into film or major publications. They're primarily on the left of the political spectrum, and are desperately trying to destroy the so-called gun culture of the American citizenry. Therefore, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, you'll generally see melee weapons be much more effective, even to the fists of waiflike 5 foot tall girls.
In the old days, going back to fantasy games like D&D, guns were just too powerful, so were nerfed for game balance. (per the game writers)
That said, there's a lively independent fantasy writing community who are including guns much more regularly these days.
I think its the technological implications that cause this. Like with explosives cone a bunch of related and adjacent creations like the onset of early industrialism and stuff. I personally like having the mix like in Warhammer, but I do think that it shouldn't be a widspread trope. I just dont think most writers cant effectively build worlds where firearms can exist without throwing off the "balance" of the world.
Most authors don't understand history, firearms, and are too lazy to do research. This is the reality of it, nothing about balance or bringing forth the industrial age. Guns werein medieval Europe for 300 years before the first manufactory was established, a precursor of the industrial age. Said manufactory created textiles, not guns.
Eh, I'm not sure I agree. The first firearms in Europe are dated to like the late 1300s, the industrial revolution is a full 4/500 years later. Hell, even the renaissance doesn't kick off for sometime thereafter, and had less to do with guns than other ideas and innovations. Now, once guns are THE thing, they do certainly invalidate a lot of preexisting arms and armor which can be daunting for a writer or a game setting aiming to balance them vs other weapons
Most games the main plot is generally the change of the status quo
So honestly it can create amazing narratives
@KingoftheWelsh That depends on what you mean by industrial revolution. There have been mini industrial revolutions going on since the bronze age, especially once you use the more simplified definition of the advent of industrious workshops in order to fulfill a need in society. Even the romans had grain grinding complexes, massive arms work shops, and much much more that they produced on mass in an industrialized manner. This started occurring again around the same time as the entrance of gun powder in Europe. Mass produced arrow and gambeson workshops in placed like England, industrialized armor workshops in Italy, and artisans forming greater industrialized shops throughout the Holy Roman Empire.
Magic and various magical implements change the society way more than gunpowder ever did. We have *theories* about gunpowder contributing towards European governments sliding more towards centralization.
Yet it took *centuries* after gunpowder's spread to Europe that the first proto-industrial facilities were established. For what? To produce cheap textiles, of course! Totally unrelated to gunpowder.
Industrial revolution eventually improve guns and the gunpowder but the idea of firearms would suddenly threaten the end of fantasy narratives is ridiculous.
Especially since a lot of fantasy stories are as medieval in attitudes as atomic bombs are good for the skin. These stories adopt a 19th century mindset at best, right at the industrial revolution the OP fears.
I think firearms ended up as a symbol of industry and industry meant modern times. So people made the cut off at firearms to preserve the medieval tropes because they wanted to do swords and bows. The people who role played with early firearms usually gravitated towards more steam punk fantasy.
Also, firearms made Plate Mail obsolete, which is a pretty big part of Medieval fantasy iconography
But then they use every other post early modern period invention immaginable.
Does not make any sense why one should not use guns.
Your voice is so relaxing to listen to, I love your videos man
Most fun I have ever had with DnD was being a gunslingler with an 1800s Breachloader and Revolver doing gun-fu. It was high damage output but my entire action economy was practically keeping those weapons loaded. Using anything else like second wind could jeopardize that.
I think it can partly be attributed to how common guns are today, because there are no/very few atrocities committed with swords and magic wands, so there is an element of escapism with them, guns have much more of an association with modern real world violence, and don’t have the element of history to separate the fact from the fiction.
It always miffs me because at the same time they don’t try to escape actual society or try to apply different values that were very present in the medieval times. At absolute best a lot of settings use industrial revolution era values without ever realizing it.
That mind set kinda confuses me to be honest. I do know more about history and guns than the average person so that might influence my outlook but I suppose people have a difficult time disassociating gun-musket from gun-AR15. Personally, early firearms are just as fantastical to me as swords or bows.
@itcaboi1707 agreed. Cooler too. I like the modern gun as much as the next but gunpowder weapons are cool in themselves.
I don't think this is the case. I am personally a big fan of guns, both old and modern, and I still don't generally like them in my medieval fantasy settings/games. There's obviously ways to handle it right, but I think medieval fantasy (before it became repetitive and vapid) has this mystical feeling like it's coming from a different world. Violence is not uncommon in history either, there's been plenty of massacres done by swords, clubs, etc. We have evidence of massacres dating back to the very early copper/bronze age.
I'm actually attempting to escape the medieval rot by introducing primitive guns to my own TTRPG and setting, but I'm doing it with great diligence so I can properly balance things out and make sure the choices are sensible.
@@sipofsunscorchedsarsaparil6052 It has nothing to do with liking guns and everything with history and range of options. As other video comments explained having gun knowledge may even make one inclined to exclude guns just because they associate it with modern life.
Were guns the "new thing" in the middle ages? More or less. So were full suits of plates, brigandines, advanced polearms and various two-handed swords. Clocks have been the "IT sector" of the middle ages. It was one of the most complicated crafts availible.So in context guns weren't all that unusual.
The point is simple - personal element.
Sword, hammers and other relatively short melee weapons create the duelist, personalised mindset. Similarly bows emphasise skill. That is why "simple soldier weapons" are downplayed as well - you don't see many spears, halberds, pikes or crossbows.
And early firearms are not exactly too exciting to fire either, when you spend vastly more time reloading than shooting the damn thing.
But even in rpg systems, books, video games and movies in more contemporary settings you still don't see firearms used properly - in vast majority of cases you have short range fights - a dozen meters away - usually within the span of a single room or street. It creates a better tension and excitement to the reader/viewer/player than shooting a human-shaped dot 200-300 meters away.
In similar fashion many sci-fi settings replicate WW II style fighting, just in space - with manoeuvres and dogfights, because it is simply more fun and exciting than much more realistic fire and forget stuff dominating actual modern battlefields.
Yep
The problem basically revolves all around one factor and that is martial skill. Guns for 95% of their history were weapons made specifically to require zero skill and to have almost the same deadliness in the hands of a professional as they have in the hands of a conscripted farmer who just got drafted yesterday. There's really no point in "training the way of the flintlock" when it gets you nowhere further and it clashes 2ith the entire premisse of Fantasy on exceptional individuals. The only way for skill with guns to matter is to adopt later rifled guns with a higher rate of fire, but at this point you have automatically made bows and crossbows obsolete right away by default.
All fun in games until the ork barbarian pulls out two pistols and holds up the local tavern
The reason is because the gun made it so a kid could kill a knight with little training. It’s clearly in realm of the modern era and is a pretty clear divide between the mythological past and the scientific future
No
Fantasy writers are just lazy. That is all
@@user-em8yf6nq1r yes, every fantasy writer that never put guns into their worlds is lazy. How could I miss that? Tolkien was obviously a loafer
Guns represent a democratisation of power that socially awkward and oft bullied nerds don't want in their escapist power fantasy; a place they seek sanctuary from their irl troubles in which they stereotypically get picked on by their bigger, better looking and more athletic peers.
If their power fantasy can be shat all over by anybody (bully included) with a gun then their natural reaction is to fear and shun.
While they could get a gun themselves, it is quite possible for their fantasy setting to become the stage for a fictional arms race, the conclusion they see as ending with modern assault rifles and machine guns which seemingly defeats the whole point of the fantasy.
Someone else talked about this awhile ago, and I basically gave my idea which was to make a time traveler who just builds a cannon on a stick, and as he increases his knowledge and skill, he eventually builds a double barrel shotgun or howdah pistols, depending on their choice of skill allocation. Really wish I could find a DM that would allow it, or even better, a game that would take that concept and let us run with it
Why don't you just do the hard work of integrating yourself and be a dm?
@@Nala15-Artist unlike most people who say they don't have the time or a space to host, I truly do not have the ability at this time. I run a non-profit and in the middle of a divorce and have to move out. Maybe when I'm in a better space I can, but as of now I'm not even trying hard to find a campaign to be a part of
Their just seems to be thier underlining assumption from fantasy creators that firearms, in spite of their long history and presence in the vaguely medevil sometime renaissance time span they like, represent and shift in time and thinking that MANDATES a just as rapid development in technology and society as we saw in our own history in the last 300-400 years. It just comes off as unimaginative that so many of their 'fantasy trappings' get stuck in time but it's impossible to consider that match lock muskets never improved past their early design just like somehow none of the technology of their world improved.
i think the problem that people have with firearms is that they are seen as modern weapons even if they are anything but. while yes the semi automatic and even repeater varieties are semi modern guns and these firearm technologies have been around for a century or two the use of gunpowder has been arond for hundreds and hundreds of years. i personally have no problem with firearms in my fantasy settings especially since there are usually magics that can mimic the functions of gunpowder. i feel it is entirely reasonable that mages would have absolutely experimented with explosive launched projectiles like bullets and cannonballs. especially since early guns were much easier to use than bows and even crossbows, it takes years to train a good bowman but you can give a peasant a musket and theyre just as lethal as a bowman from the same range. firearms fit the fantasy setting easily and should be a staple of fantasy. period.
Counterpoint Guns killed off Heavy Armor. I think one big unspoken reason Guns don't fit in (Medieval) Fantasy is that the early Guns rendered Plate Mail obsolete. Sure, you can say that Mages have the same effect, but a lot of settings have mages being a very rare minority like nuclear physicists, with highly talented/high level ones being a small handful of individuals.
@@cyberninjazero5659 It eventually killed it off, but they still used heavy armor for quite awhile afterwards.
Well you can keep heavy armor as magic powered mechs or something, load them with guns and you can already go crazy on world building
Sigh. its a matter of the genre. High fantasy/pure fantasy is what it is, and what you are talking about is either Magical Realism or low fantasy. And for everyone trying to pump old hsitorical data and development into EVERYONES fantasy remember this. All worlds can be different. if everyone has a base magical ability, if someone came up with a magic misle wand everyone can use, there are multiple things that could weaken or totally derail firearms development. Even tody we are moving away from old school projectile weapons to rail guns and beam weapons, and the only reason they are not in more active use is just paranoia and those wishing to prevent the implimentation of non lethal weapons and weapons we arent yet sure of always how to detect their use or protect against. Read: rock, spear, bow, gun, laser. high tech beam weapons are a lot closer to magic, so do you see the natural evolution even in rl? there are plenty of times when you have magic and trying to use guns is just going backwards.
Speaking as someone from the "fantasy gun control is good" camp (don't shoot, I come in peace): I struggle with guns in medieval fantasy because early handguns and matchlocks have a particular association in my mind with impersonal formation and siege warfare that doesn't really mesh well with heroic fantasy storytelling, where a small party of adventurers is questing around the world fighting villains and monsters. I cannot imagine a cash-strapped, live-on-the-road mercenary or hedge knight carrying a heavy arquebus and all the gunpowder, bullets, cord, matches and other essentials as an everyday self-defence weapon. Plus "BANG! He's dead!" was hilarious when Indiana Jones did it once, but every major fight ending like this would get old really quick. We even see a bit of this in effect in action films set in modern times, where the main characters will be running around mowing down regular goons with machine-guns, but the tense final showdown at the end is always a strictly hand-to-hand affair.
And depending on how prevalent magic is in the world, people may simply not see firearms as the war-changing wonder-weapons we see them as. Why go to the trouble of inventing some heavy, unreliable boomstick with very limited ammo when you can instead have a small wand or staff that has unlimited ammo and can be used for various functions aside from killing? If stories of whole platoons of musketeers being all killed in one go by a single wizard landing a fireball in their midst become commonplace then it's not hard to infer that eventually you would run out of people brave enough to volunteer to carry the guns into battle and commanders would prefer taking a platoon of battle mages. And what about encounters with monsters and creatures that are explicitly cannot be harmed with mundane weapons? It's cheaper and easier to enchant one sword than hundreds of bullets.
Fantastic historical information though, thank you for the video!
Guns are, in fact, just as personal if not more than bows. It depends on how much your adventurers delve into weapons technology. Is it the "bow shoots arrow" type or the one where the quirky ranger invents various specialized arrows? You can do the latter with guns to an even greater degree. Even if you don't want to encourage this, you can and should treat guns as another type of ranged weapon. Guns are more lethal, this is one of the underrated reasons why many cultures were in a rush to adopt them. Yet they don't end fightswith ease. In fact the most reliable weapon for that even in the 19th century is cold steel. A sword can keep the drugged up Dervish at bay even after the six shots from your revolver failed to do the trick. You can miss your shot and just as with a bow you still need to hit somebody at the right place in order to kill them. Non-repeater guns also have the same issue as crossbows, it takes a while to load them. And just as crossbows once loaded you can fire relatively quick, unlike using bows where drawing your arrow takes a precious second.
As for why develop them when magic exist? Why have swords if you can kill them with magic? Guns have the same reason to exist as every other weapon. In fact magical developments might make them more attractive to develop. Where your alchemist can create superb gunpowder and you can have spirits simplifying your gun operation the idea of an enchanted musket is pretty attractive.
By your first argument, you should dump all magic too then. The guy who can cast lightning bolt is infinitely more dangerous than the guy with an arquebus. Infact, people were not dumb historically. If mages existed as portrayed in say DnD, every noble would be a mages from long lines of mages, and every knight would be peasants who discovered a capacity for magic. Nobody would bother with any other primary combat form, melee weapons would be strictly a back-up measure. Why would I bring peasant levys whose only contribution to the fight is a sharp stick? Any mage who can cast AoE invalidates non-magic formations.
Similarly, why bother making castles? The reason castles eventually stopped existing was cannons. Prior to the cannon, it was rare for a castle to be defeated through any means other than starvation. Mages could replicate the fortification destroying capacity of cannons before cannons ever existed, thus invalidating the value of those huge and costly constructs.
Your second argument by the way, could be used to make the argument i made above, why bother with swords and spears with magic exists?
The first guns to exist were literally pipes at the end of a wooden stick and you held a match to the side of them to make them fire. They were aweful, unreliable, and only useful at extreme short range. They were immediately adopted as much as possible when available because they did something no other weapon did. They instantly dealt massive wounds to people in armor. Why would people adopt gun even when magic exists? Can everyone in your setting do magic? If not then guns let non mages do what mages do, invalidate armor. Bows, spears, swords, these things are not getting through anything but weak points in the armor of a fighter.
The reason why it took so long for guns to start getting good was because of things that related to our understanding of metallurgy and chemistry. If you have magical craftsmen like alchemists or the like, then much of the early growing pains can be bypassed. You could rapidly build guns up to the point they aught to match caplocks in capability.
If you have people who cant do magic, willing to fight people can using nothing but swords and spears, then you should have guns too.
I love your channel. Thank you for your time and effort.
Just found this channel by pure luck, and I already love your content!
Greetings from Brazil, another country that is fighting against a tyranny, coming from our own supreme court!
1:33 as a New Canaanite, it’s not weird
The two-handed sword is a more modern weapon then the gun but nobody ever complains about that showing up in fantasy settings.
Early gunpowder weapons and swords in the hands of armored knights or peasants while using pikes, chainmail, and even still using catapults have been my favorite time frame for fantasy.
One of my favorite depictions of a gun in ancient cultures is in princess mononoke.
before watching the video:
Because people were reluctant irl to adopt the first firearms because they were so bad compared to bows and crossbows. In china firearms did not develop because of this.
In a world with magic early fire arms are such a downgrade that very few would use them and they would never reach their potential.
Early firearms were a mixed bag but a massive exaggeration to call them bad. The same fantasy setting which makes bow and arrow relevant would easily make guns just as useful, if not with different strengths and drawbacks.
@@willyvereb Bow and arrow takes the stats of the user into account for it's potential damage, which in fantasy(depending on the setting) is massive. A gun is just chemicals combusting.
If your setting has dudes casually chopping giants in half, then guns are worthless
If in your setting it takes a single dude in armor has close to zero chance of winning against a bear, then guns are as useful as irl
@@marceloantunes998 Damage bonus through DEX modifier equates to better aim, it is the same whether you pull the trigger or actually draw the weapon.
Guns feel pretty modern and personally fantasy is generally associated with swords and bows.
Plus I noticed the opposite. Nowadays, every setting has firearms and plate armor, its the new trope
go lookup the chinese fire lances from 1200 yrs ago or the mongols grenades ext, guns are new to europe not asia & middle east they have had cannons ext for 1000yrs.
fantasy is mostly writen by europeans so they tend to consider it a modern thing, but really they where just some of the last to become aware of gunpowder(thanks to the mongol invasion most feel)
The Hussites broke a crusade with guns in the early 15th century not all that modern tbf
Tho their guns were boom sticks and nothing compared to the later arquebus of the 1490s
@@hamasmillitant1 I am not interested in asian medieval history, sorry, just not my thing
It isn't a trope if it's in fact historical. The era of the middle ages most commonly taken from in fantasy has firearms everywhere. Not to mention that a lot of things in "medieval fantasy" are not medieval at all but early modern era. In fact armored "knights" were a common sight up until mid-late 17th century.. In an age where most troops carried muskets already.
@@willyvereb the middle ages lasted roughly 1000 years. The widespread use of gunpower weaponry in europe started around the end of the 14th century. That makes firearms in europe (the most common inspiration for a fantasy setting) appear in like 10% of the medieval era.
The genre from its humble beginnings up to Warcraft was mostly inspired by the early to high middle ages
I believe english army regulations expected a longbowman to be trained in 10 years, while it expected a gun man to be trained in 2 weeks. At first guns where not better, they where infact the cheep weapon.
When I use guns in my DnD games, I give muskets a whopping 2d10 points of damage, but also require the expenditure of 2 standard actions in reloading them.
This simulates fairly accurately historical firearm reload times [1 round is 6 seconds, so if a gunner is firing once every three rounds, he's firing once every 18 seconds, and historically, a well trained musketeer was expected to fire 3-4 times a minute] while also guaranteeing that the weapon is as combat viable as other weapons in the game. [In 4 rounds, both a heavy crossbow and a musket will have theoretically poured 4d10 points of damage into the enemy.]
In addition, this version of firearms encourages strategic play, since the musket and other guns [which have similar rules] become much more viable if exploited in certain ways [such as by carrying a belt of pistols, or by firing and then switching weapons] and also makes muskets incredibly deadly against low level enemies [and players] creating an impression of how muskets, historically, were "equalizing" weapons.
Fiction is typically based on small collections of characters. Early firearms weren't ideal weapons for combat between individuals. It's really that simple.
No it is not. And that is because they also use bows and crossbows. Thogether with guns they are incredible tools for individual combat as every western has shown us.
@@RealCodreX Western. Anywhere close to medieval fantasy. Come on, man.
@@revolrz22Do you know the flintlock revolver?
@@user-em8yf6nq1r Still 100% in no way even remotely *close* to middle-ages. And the clue is in the fact that it's a flintlock. Middle ages will have matchlocks at the height of firearms technology. If you have greater than that, it ceases becoming a medieval fantasy and becomes an early modern fantasy.
@@user-em8yf6nq1r Flintlocks are still nowhere near medieval fantasy. Flintlocks were a 17th century thing, which is after the European world started going into the rennisance period.
I made a video on a very similar subject
I find the historical medieval arms race so fascinating and I love when it’s incorporated into fantasy, amazing video!!!
Awesome video and hope this will develop into series of some sort as hinted earlier in video. One thing i would had loved to see mentioned about firearms vs plate armor competition in europe: that was the time when word "bulletproof" became a thing. Owners of these armies or rich enough knifgts/manatarms wanted to order armors that could withstand a shot from standard firearm so the smiths often made showcases where they shot armors they made (often no one was wearing them, just empty husk and if you see armor with gunshots in museum it is more likely it is armor that smith shot rather than it being armor that saw combat). If armor was able to take hits from bullet that then was "bullet proof". Still your video already had ton of very important information. Hope to see more from you.
Firearms give a totally different atmosphere, not necessarily worse, but it's different. Lotr or Elder Scrolls with guns wouldn't fit, don't you agree? Same is true for the other side, I couldn't imagine a Warhammer or Warcraft without.
Meh. Swords are lame. Guns are cool.