Trying something a little different with the videos here recently, hope you guys like it! Next upload will be a return to our regularly scheduled system video. Don't forget to comment, like & subscribe! See you guys in the comments! 👀
Something to note: full plate existed alongside firearms. Guns ended up "winning" the arms race due to cost effectiveness and practicality, but if you can use magic to make armor lighter and/or stronger, suddenly that arms race is extended.
@@jbark678 Exactly then you have to consider all the emergent changes to magic when that happens as well. Magic made to interact and counter technology in a defensive manner which would in turn change technology. You do this about two or three times and you get some really unique stuff!
It would really drive the arms race to new levels. Armor is made to block ranged weapons, protect against bullets, become less penetrable. In return, either mechanically or magically, guns are also evolved and enhanced. Imagine guns that fire special magic-destroying bullets, armor sets that basically protect magic shields to block bullets, etc.
This is exactly what I'm going for in my homebrew D&D setting. It's meant to be a Bloodborne type setting, but I still wanted the possibility to have a fully armored knight in the face of firearms and super strong beasts that can tear through normal metals like paper.
I would argue it’s because there’s more difficultly in writing romantic drama/ tension (in the original sense) in a shoot out vs a sword duel. In a duel, the protagonist visibly sees the antagonist they’re fighting which allows both the protagonist and reader to see a brief window into the antagonist’s perspective. A shoot out meanwhile (unless it’s a classic western duel at “high noon”) doesn’t have such a luxury as characters will always try to avoid being seen.
@@J-manli I would argue that's an incredible idea. A "stealth" battle is unique and has a sudden-death nature. When simply being within sight for a second or less is all it takes to decide a battle, tension builds. You get to write about two entities who play the role of both predator and prey, doing everything in their power to remain unseen as they search for their opponent. The 2014 game "Thief" has a similar concept for one of its boss fights, where as a stealthy rogue, you face off against a thief-taker who launches explosives at you. Your goal is to evade the attacks until you either defeat the thief-taker, or escape by unlock the door through three separate mechanisms. The shadows and cover in the room keep you hidden, and you can throw items or briefly reveal yourself to lure the thief-taker's attention elsewhere, but the space is ultimately limited and the thief-taker will constantly try to flush you out, attacking you even as you work the mechanisms. A duel between two characters equipped with guns would basically just be that, but on both sides. Of course, Thief being a video game with flaws, you can run circles in the room indefinitely and cheese the boss if you so choose, but from a narrative standpoint, I don't see why it can't work.
Tolkien did use gunpowder and explosives, but only on the side of Saruman and Sauron. There might have been Elven crafted weapons in the long past of Arda that we can today think of as projectile weapons other than arrows but Tolkien didn't expand and looks like he largely abandoned this idea of "Elvish magic firearms." But much of the Elven stuff is merely seen via the lens of the Mortal characters and they didn't understand Elvish technology. There is certainly a possible other interpretative that everything "magical" about the Elves is just highly advanced scientific tech. Or a mix of magic and tech. Knights and Samurai only got firearms at latter stages and closer to the modern era. I personally do not like mixing modern aesthetics and tech with fantasy. I very much like the mythic, ancient, heroic romance type of fantasy. In fact, I prefer even older fantasy than the Medieval sort. I like Bronze Age or Paleolithic fantasy like The Iliad or the Epic of Gilgamesh and the stories of the Tuatha De Danann. So....straight up the Poetic Eddas, lol.
@@gimmeyourrights8292 this is a misconception. While yes, there were Knights and Samurais who used guns those were from thr 16th and 17th century's. Also important to mention gund NEVER were standarnized before the 17th century, and for a fact they were actually hard to use since Arquebusiers (early versions of fire guns) were so hard to reload that for example a Samurai who tried to assasinate a Shogun had 3 arquebusiers since it takes aboit 40 to 50 seconds to reload one. Also important to mention Medieval Europe which resembles Tolkien's world does not have guns, or if they had, it was simply inferior to bows or crossbows. What they actually had before the end of Medieval Europe was cannons, which were widely used by the strongest nations in Europe and Asia (giving the name of the Gunpowder Empires, which were the first nations to adopt gunpowder, like the Mughals and Ottomans)
Same here, I implement it in almost every game I run unless it is strictly high fantasy. Some people just prefer a setting without tech and I can understand that, even if it isn't really entirely my cup of tea.
@@Scalesthelizardwizard Its called Hextech. Show some Respekt to my boys Jaice and Victor go watch arcane,becous THE FUTURE IS NOW OLD MAN!!! P.s: Victor is Best Boy/Waifu btw
One thing about guns that I think we have mostly lost is this: Guns, to someone who doesn't know them, is magic. Some dude points a long stick at you from a distance, there is a boom and you are dead. And they use some weird substance to do prep their attacks. Bring even just a simple 19th century rifle to the early or high middle ages and they will balk at it. Either it is magic to them, or their own firearms are so far behind, they still fear it. There is also so much that you can do with guns, combined with magic or not, that would still make interesting. Arcane has some cool tidbits there (though some spoilers for S2): Zaun has guns, and explosives, that rely entirely on chemicals, because that is what they have. Hell, even their lights and power sources use chemicals. Jinx's bombs always have two seperated viles of differently coloured liquids, her guns typically have colored trails from the bullets and don't sound like gunpowder ones (as used by enforcers). Her pistol also has a sort of dial she often adjusts before/during combat, which I think means that one is sort of a like gas-powered gun. Her minigun still has casings, so the bullets here prob have combustionable chem instead of usual blackpowder. Then Caitlyn gets her hex rifle and her bullets look much smaller, because she doesn't need an explosive component to propell them. She literally gets a railgun, the projectile is accelerated by magic and extremely lethal. I am also pretty sure that the normal enforcers faired so poorly against Chemtanks and Noxians to a part because their guns were never meant to go against armor. Our firearms always had to deal with heavily armored foes, they developed rifles to keep control of their poor workforce. They didn't have to go up against steel plate or thick shields and so never had to think much about armor piercing. This entire text block, I hope, shows how a setting can influence a lot of things from our world and make them more unique. At the very least, it would be a good thought/Writing exercise.
No, 100% these are all observations I also noticed! I also think the chem that’s used comes from plants that grow in Zaun that have been influenced by the landscape. So piltover literally made their own enemy by subjugating the people of Zaun so heavily.
Applied Chemistry is Magic. "I cast Fireball" & there's a huge explosion. "I cast Frag Grenade" & there's a huge explosion. The only difference is that, because anyone can throw a grenade, it *feels* less special. That's all Magic is, a feeling, a sense of wonder that, because you don't fully understand how it works, it can do anything. Once it's understood, it's capabilities and limitations clear, it's just science. Which is beautiful in it's own way, just less wondrous to most.
Frankly fantasy settings don’t even need to change that much if guns are added. In the real world, we had firearms being used by professional armies as early as the 1300s, and they were being used alongside bows and crossbows.
@@jacksonmann3161 Conversely, melee weapons existed alongside guns for centuries. In fact, the last effective cavalry charges happened in WW1. And while cavalry carried lances and swords, they also carried carbines.
That sounds really cool, funnily enough I do think wand-like guns could exist where they fire off various small magics. Sorta allowing anyone to cast basic/rudimentary magic without needing to be magically proficient!
I think flintlock fantasy is cool, especially because something like flintlock rifles would be easier to enchant due to their rudimentary nature and rather simplistic design!
@@scroletyper8286 a good example would be the Powder Mage book series by Brian McClellan. A 18th century/napoleonic influence fantasy work, that has more conventional magic, but also a magic tied directly to gunpowder, that rivalry between the two systems is one of the themes.
@@ZagreusWinters in any settings I've run the complexity of the device doesn't affect ease of enchantment but I play GURPS and might need to have an enchanted laptop at some point the last homebrew fantasy game I ran had extremely rare computers but the party didn't play enough to get one
Medieval stasis in a Fantasy world with technology could be completely realistic. The problem is people tend to think that technology is inevitable once the knowledge is unlocked but that is because they don't understand history or economics. The Bronze age collapse is a great example of this. To make Bronze you need Copper and Tin which means if you don't have both you can't make Bronze. Back in Bronze age Tin was only really supplied from one region to the rest of the world, when this trade route was disrupted much of the world could no longer make the Bronze it depended on and Civilization collapsed. In our world China invented the steam engine centuries before it was exported to Europe. China didn't have a ton of coal to use as a cheap available fuel source and thus steam engine was nothing but an oddity. China also had Gunpowder centuries before Europe but again they didn't cause the industrial revolution. Much of the tech that inspired the European Industrialization came from China which didn't have the resources or political will to fully exploit them, such as printing press wasn't used to bring knowledge to the masses like it was in Europe but instead much like the Middle East it was tightly controlled to avoid challenges to existing authority which is why both areas fell behind in technology and remain so to this day. Even the idea of mass production was first done in China though not know until modern times as they found ruins of a site that used water wheel to power rows of hammers for forging. So you don't even need industrialization of steam engines to get mass production. In order for technology to take off you need the right conditions it's not some inevitable march of progress as modernist view tend to pretend it is, as many technologies have been discovered and then lost to time either to be rediscovered centuries later or in some cases lost forever. The industrial revolution required 2 major resources or else it would not have happen. Lots of Iron to turn to steel and massive amounts of fuel to power the intense heat needed for that forging, coal served as this fuel in our timeline. Without lots of iron you basically get Japan where iron is so rare after a fire you have people searching for nails in the rubble because they are valuable. There the idea of making tons of engines and large factories is laughable. Without fuel you got China who has a steam engine but no abundant power source to make it useful outside of an oddity at fancy noble gatherings. To this day china imports mass amounts of coal to feed it's electric grid. More advance technologies like with our electronics require even large numbers of varied resources which can only be obtained through global trade as almost no single country has all the resources. Thus in a world with lots of political term oil or has massive natural threats like monsters it could be difficult to establish such large and reliable trade networks. You might be able to get some of the materials needed so like a few specialized people have fired arms, just like back in the day no everyone had crossbows or bows because like everything they cost something to make and thus are not unlimited in supply. But ultimately at the end of the day technology is about harnessing energy to achieve some task we need to complete. We started off with Human and Animal power to move things around. Eventually we developed wind and water to do things such as turn stone wheels for grinding flour, ships to carry us and goods across vast distances. Then we harnessed coal in machines that were no longer reliant on the whims of nature for our sails and windmills. Such machines could work tirelessly to do the work at a much greater rate and thus increase production. The steam engine eventually gave way to the combustion engine due to far fewer draw backs. Imagine having to wait for your car's steam engine to start boiling before you can actually drive instead of current just putting key in and going. But in a fantasy world Magic is just another form of energy used to achieve a goal and thus might be used to power some machines but also then limited by how abundant that Magic source is. In the case of fire arms though it's a completely different line of technology for energy harnessing. With the others we want something constant and reliable that does work. With guns it is a dramatic release of power to propel a piece of metal forward at high speed to hit a target. The two don't really lead into each other in the way I feel you are trying to suggest they would during the video. The former helps increase the supply of the latter, resulting in it have a much larger impact on the world. But the reverse is really not true as guns are like any other weapon be is sword, bow, crossbow, or etc. It main use it inflicting destruction regardless of if that destruction is done in service of tyranny or to defend the weak. It doesn't really advance to productive capacity of a society. Gunpowder has been around for like over a thousand years so it showing up in a fantasy settings of medieval period is not really far fetched. Heck they had Cannons in the 1300s in Europe. Print press didn't show up until 1440, and industrial revolution wasn't until 1760. It feels like because of the fast pace development of our modern digital age a lot of people under estimate how long it took for us to get here. I mean cannons were around for 100 years before the printing press and about 400 years before the first steam engine shows up. So no guns in fantasy are not that unrealistic and don't mean there should also be more advanced tech.
Yeah! I think that's why the sort of, early 1800's firearms make a lot of sense. Why would they need a fully automatic rifle when they could just equip a barrel to their gun that allows every bullet to scatter like a shot gun at any moment, or equip a barrel which allows your bullets to explode on impact. I think people should also think about emergent technology as well, we only create what we absolutely need and nothing more most times. So the hyper advancement of technology probably wouldn't take place in much the same way it did in our world, and I do think magic within any world will carry with it the essential slowing of humanities development. Why build planes when you can make a teleport gate? Why make nukes when you can just drop meteors on the sky from over a mile away on any opposing city casted by Gary, the old and his older brother that bicker sometimes Byran, the older? I think medieval stasis to a degree is actually a good thing and a subject I'll probably touch on at some point in the future.
@@octavianfahrulsyah8487 Ok a somewhat simplified version. Europe had cannons 1300s, printing press 1440, industrial revolution 1760. So Medieval society with gunpoweder weapons is not unrealistic. Technology tends to requires multiple resources that are often not found in same country meaning you need trade otherwise the tech doesn't happen. Thus fantasy world being stuck in a curtain era not unreasonable. Collapse of civilizations has resulted in some techs being lost forever and others not appearing again for centuries. There is a little more to it and I cite real world examples of these things happening but I fell those 3 things are the major points.
about firearms and engines though: there's a lot of commonality between an automatic rifle and an explosion engine, and I feel it'd be very hard to discover one and not the other, wouldn't it?
Many of the people that think that fire arms would be a game changer in any fantasy setting forget how long and hazardous was the development of said fire arms. One example is the Spanish conquistadors going against the Aztecs, contrary to popular belief their fire arms where not this massive advantage.
my way of adding the guns was just to embrace it. embrace the power that comes from the guns and balance it by making everyone more powerful. Say they move extremely fast, being shot is still extremely dangerous but that if you get shot.
This is literally like Harry Potter. Guns are extremely dangerous to wizards, especially since not every wizard is on the level of dumbledore or Voldemort. A single gun user can kill a wizard easily and a wizard can easily kill a human. But once you get a shit load of humans with guns hunting down wizards, it is game over for the wizards. Fire power and firearms outpace magic. Wizards made Avada Kadavra, the killing curse... muggles created nukes
@@Needler13 Firepower is a universal concept. Pretty sure there'd be a magical equivalent to ending the entire world if muggles can create nukes lol. Let's not get all too excited with conventional reason lol
@@gnw_AstA The thought is that once you got magic to do everything for you, you're less likely to advance. Hence why magic never truly advanced in harry potter. Magic leads to stagnation. Science leads to experimentation.
Arcane is my favorite portrayal of guns in fantasy by far (I am kind of biased since I am currently an Artillerist in a steampunk/magepunk campaign where firearms are encouraged for me, it's so interesting to see both basic guns but also guns empowered by magic, it's given me a lot of inspiration to play around with magic as a power source for various strange guns
The one disappointment there was the final battle. A Noxian professional army winning against a ragtag militia is fine, but the Noxian death toll should have been much higher and their defences way less effective. Their landing seemed almost unopposed when it should have been akin to the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan (Omaha Beach), or the first charge from Zulu (1964). Their discipline ought to have carried the day, not some plate armour that is more effective than early tank plates. Also, Jinx showing up with what's basically a balloon AC-130 should likewise have been way more devastating. None of that would have taken away from the overall scene or balance, but basically throughout the show, the guns are peashooters, and no one is shooting to kill. Hell, it would have made Ambessa look more badass when she could run through the fire like the Master Chief while the first few waves of her regulars are torn to shreds.
Honestly you hit the nail a bit on the head there. Speaking as someone who studies history, ideas such as human rights and liberalism only exist because of the fact that firearms made it more plausible for violence to be leveled in favor of the masses. Before that time you have warrior aristocracies because all forms of violence are most effective when used by a class of people trained from birth to wield it. It’s why my favorite example of pre-gun fantasy is Dark Sun, where civilization is run by god like mages who empower their loyal followers as warlocks the way gods empower their followers, not only because it’s dark as hell, but it’s true to human nature. The only thing that disappoints me is that magic in fantasy that uses firearms is treated as a science, something that can be tamed, which makes sense in a d20 game where your spells always work. I prefer the idea that magic is always a poorly understood force of nature, even studied arcane scholars should have no real understanding of the mechanics by which they are essentially rewriting the laws of reality, which is why I prefer systems where you can not only fail to cast a spell, but casting that spell can go catastrophically wrong. Magic should feel a lot like the force in Star Wars, Jedi and with learn to control their power, but beyond knowing their control comes from learning to attune to a mystic force which surrounds everything, they have no idea how it works, only how to make use of it, and each spell weaver should have to figure magic out basically on their own because once magic usage has formulas behind it, it ceases to be magic and simply becomes an alternate science. That’s how I think you maintain both wonderful from fantasy and machine based modernization.
A very close popular term for the type of magic you're describing is soft magic, although not exactly. Inconsistencies are very dangerous and difficult to use in writing, normally an author needs to have rules but nobody else gets to know them.
@@ryuwaizu9087 "soft magic" is a very overused and misinterpreted term these days. It is often used as a shorthand for "lazy writing of a magic system" by the proponents of hard magic. But it is also used very loosely, describing anything that is not rigidly structured and scientific-sounding. I don't think that what OP describes is "soft magic", necessarily. A magic that is unpredictable, potentially dangerous and cannot be fully understood by the user is not "soft" because it lacks rules; it may have rules, it's just one of those rules is that it is unpredictable, potentially dangerous and cannot be fully understood. I'm not sure if I'm expressing my position clearly enough.
@@arcanefeline assuming I understand you, I think I'd agree. The term soft magic has suffered a lot of the same as the sensing aspect of mbti personality testing (yes I'm aware of it's problems). Meant to describe something neutral but the majority of the audience has a preference and so gradually it becomes more negative. If I want to communicate quickly I'll still use the term, and hope people don't assume I'm being rude or dismissive, but I can understand the aversion since those are very real risks.
@@ryuwaizu9087I mean soft magic might be the right term, generally I think the idea of “hard” magic has stripped all actual magic and wonder from fantasy. Magic is at its best in story telling when it isn’t an arcane formula but rather a cosmic vibe you attune to through a born innate bond or attuning though self discipline, and when magic doesn’t always do what the caster wants it to. It means it cannot be relied upon, and it means that technology has a place, real technology and not magic fueled tech.
yess I love this. one example in a fantasy book series I like (six of crows) is a naturally gifted gunsman who finds out he's using metal magic to slightly bend bullet trajectory. only slightly though,. Guns are effective as a whole because magic requires concentration and energy, and mages are convincted a lot
The villain in a story I'm writing actively suppresses knowledge about black powder to keep his level of power unquestioned. Firearms are so cool in fantasy I love whenever I see them included. On the flip side I also have a battle when one mage shot flames precisely at each riflemans pouch of black powder and obliterated them. There is so much potential either way it's really only limited by your creativity
Completely agreed, and to a point I make in the video itself ideas like this always lead to new and unique viewpoints I would've never thought of myself personally. But the idea of someone shooting somone's bullet pouch with fire magic, utilizing the spell "heat metal" on the bullets on a bandolier to make them go off and shoot the wearer is something I honestly hadn't considered. This is why tech + magic = fun, there really is a limitless number of possibilities!
I like the idea that guns are non magic users answer to magic. Like mages have a superiority complex and can be opressive and so some peasants or knights create guns to even the odds. We need more games to take advantage of these ideas.
That's actually the origin of firearms in my fantasy setting. Back in the day, Mages would typically get a big head because they could shoot lightning bolts and most other people couldn't (Being a Mage in this world is an inborn ability, not a learned skill. You either can do it or you can't.) So to even the playing field, the finest mundane minds banded together to make a weapon of science to fight back. So they invented guns, something that struck quickly enough and hard enough that most Mages couldn't conjure a barrier in time to block it before they had a new breathing hole in their forehead. If they even knew how. This started a sort of 'arms race' between Mages and regular folk. The normals would make a new gun to kill Mages, the Mages would develop new spells to respond to that gun. So on and so forth.
One day there was a great mage, Peerless in skill, endless in age He lorded over the lands as he willed, And those who opposed him were all killed For the mage had a great and powerful staff That turned armies into frogs with a laugh, Turning fields into wheat, and wheat into chaff, Raining fire and storms onto cities with a few words, Flying high above all like a predatory bird. Until one day a humble blacksmith stood up: "Evil mage, we have had enough!" The mage was amused, and he scoffed: "What will you do? You have no magic to speak of!" The blacksmith smiled, "That once was true" "But now I have a staff just like you!" "Oh? Then let us fight!" the proud mage replied, "You will not be the first fool who has tried!" They stood apart in a field, where the onlookers cried: "Blacksmith, blacksmith! You will surely die!" The mage rose in the air while chanting his spells His staff glowed, and the people bid their farewells To the foolish blacksmith, so small before such a great mage. Yet the blacksmith was calm, and did not disengage. Instead, he stepped forth with his staff, compared to the mage, its size was only half. Ugly and simple, made of wood and iron, He raised it up, aiming higher and higher, Til the staff was squarely pointed at the mage. The blacksmith then lit a burning wick, touching it upon his staff with a quick flick. There was a great and thunderous roar, Fire and smoke shot forth from the staff's bore, in that instant before another spell could be said, The mage fell silent, for he was dead. The onlookers were stunned and amazed; From the staff they could not avert their gaze, for a simple iron staff had just ended a great mage! The blacksmith only laughed and roared: "I guess my magic was better than yours!" -Ode to the Blacksmith's Handgonne (Just a little poem thing I cooked up lol :P)
To my mind, a good rule would be to emphasise the *utility* of magic. Guns might be the equivalent of some spells, but they are also single-purpose. If you don't need to kill someone, you're out of luck. Magic, meanwhile, can do so many things beyond killing. Obviously this will depend on the setting, but you have things like healing, augmenting, enchantment, transmutation, illusion, conjuration etc. In warfare, even if we assume that a gun is better/more efficient than spells, think about all the things mages can potentially do: - Creating illusions as diversions, to enhance or diminish their numbers, to hide casualties. - Making themselves (or others) invisible for scouting missions - Giving themselves (or others) flight/levitation to overcome walls or to better target enemies with arrows. - Healing wounded soldiers. - Scrying on the enemy. - Summoning creatures as scouts, attackers, diversions etc. - Teleporting troops for either quick movement or to bypass fortifications during an attack. etc. I'm just naming a few here and (again) this will obviously be setting-dependant to some extent. The point is, though, mages have the potential to turn the tide of battle *without ever using a single offensive spell*.
I'm working on a writing project that's a fantasy world that developed with very minimal magic up until the modern day, then had Magic introduced at that point in a very specific way. From there, magic starts intermingling with the science they use and develops into what amounts to a Magitech Scifi setting with Corporations run by demons that leases the magic of the dead gods to people for contracts of service. I've been working on who mostly gets access to Magitech/Magical guns in a world like that.
Ever since I realized muskets were an optional weapon in the 2014 5e DMG, I will allow firearms in my campaign provided it's appropriate for the setting.
Guns were around before the industrial revolution, so you can have guns without all the steam-powered machines and still have an entire historical period to get inspired from. 1400s - 1600s
i really love the idea of the "great equalicer" because thats what guns did in the past, a nobody can destroy a noble knight in full armor and horse that cost more than all your leneage has made... so now, "we are all the same"
I always liked the idea of a setting where an oppressed nation invents firearms and the authoritarian mages next door find out the hard way how unsustainable a war would be. Imagine how much training it takes to cast even basic cantrips. Training a wizard takes years of very involved study whereas in 6 months you could train an entire village of commoners to be a significant threat to a mage.
Every single time I see people complain about it not being bread and butter bow fantasy, I get a little frustrated. Its why I loved Arcane, it didn't favor magic OR technology, it went with both. Guns that shoot magic are just as terrifying as the normal guns and they can exist together with just a little creativity. It can also fit like how Percy can stand next to characters like Keyleth and Vex does. I think it mostly comes loudest from the D&D community, because people get lazy and just play Clint Eastwood next to Legolas. Its different from Percy next to Vex, it just needs some care with theming and writing to make it work
I honestly have so much to say on this topic because I've been facsinated with it all my life. I had the idea, as a kid, of a story where mages oppressed people and they invented guns to revolt against them, basically the city concept you told in your video, and it stuck with me throughout highschool. During the longest dnd campaign I was in, I got to play a fighter who used guns from the DMG and he was so powerful. He's still my favorite character I've ever played. I realized that descent into avernus basically had cars so I began brainstorming a story where people got mass teleported to avernus so they reverse engineered infernal warmachines and industrialized into a subfaction of gunslinging, cowboy demon hunters trapped in hell. Anytime I find a fantasy setting that has firearms that aren't just flintlocks, it becomes one of my favorite things of all time like Warhammer 40k, or bloodborne (even though a lot of the firearms there are flintlocks and their more just darksouls shields you can only use to parry) I'm currently keeping my eye on a fantasy first person shooter called witchfire where you play as a 1700s witchhunter that uses guns and they're basically world war era instead of flintlocks.
tech in fantasy is great, people tend to forget that as tech progresses you can bet your ass magic will too. If mages start dying from air to ground missiles, they're sure as hell coming up with a spell to counter it.
I've always wondered. Do people from let's say North America love "Medieval Stasis Fantasy" more, because their countries didn't exist in that era? And this isn't supposed to be mean, I really do think about that, and I'm curious. Because as an European, I am sometimes fed up with "Not any specific european medieval period - world.exe", simply because of all the history that is written in my country's culture. No matter where I go, I will find a castle, I will find a museum full of plate armors, swords and warhammers. I will hear stories of honorable knights, and tales of brutal war, mixed, with legends about dragons and forest witches. So for me, and most of my friends, our nerdy souls always went towards the grand American Wild West, the Golden Age of Piracy, and the British antics across the seas. We wanted worlds full of muskets going against demons, steam trains going through fae forests, or Napoleonic era infantry fighting mages, etc. Maybe there is no connection between these things, but it is something, that occupies my mind often.
While i agree with you in everything you said, i would also love to add something: I am a big fan of how warhammer approaches magic in their lore, as something very poweful, but also a high risk, since using strong magic can lead to dire consequences, up to and including ripping open a doorway to the chaos, summoning demons who are really motivated to find out what you look like without skin. I think that is a pretty good way to "balance" magic in your world, and can explain why powerful mages do not just rule the world.
Lovely video! Minor ramble but, I'm actually nearing the end of my first draft of my debut novel; a dark portal fantasy. The premise's protagonist is a bereaved chemistry professor who died fighting in the war to avenge her family, and is reborn to a world of swords and sorcery where she vows to protect her new home - only to unleash the same industrial echoes of war that ravaged her past. I wanted to write a story that 'corrected' most of my gripes with all the portal fantasy/isekai stories I've taken in, and especially the ones that "bring the conveniences from our world to the next" as if we really know any better. It's been an absolute joy to write because I can finally use all that 'useless' knowledge sitting in the back of my head, as I research even more. I even get to use my art skills to make the cover and insert artworks, and use a few of my friends' TTRPG characters that fit! Tackling themes of whether the ends justify the means, the inherent evil of heroism, and the nuance complexities of war. The setting starts off as a moderately downtrodden tolkien-esque fantasy world that's ripe for change, but dips into entropy as the protagonist tries to correct her mistakes that inadvertently triggered a countdown to mortal-made armageddon. There, a distant asian-inspired faction facing off the central continent's demon-kin were forced to use primitive firearms and rocketry to keep what few lands they had left. They tried to cross the oceans to get help (from the euro-centric archipelago the protagonist is reborn into) but have been sunk in their attempts for over two centuries, as the entire island nation of dwarves waged war on them to prevent the spread of firearms which they deemed an offense to the gods. The gods actually don't care and are just betting on what the protagonist ends up achieving. The dwarves still however, use massive torsion-based weapons and crossbows, and have their own inquisitions that stamp out blackpowder research on the archipelago. Elves are largely lost, as they once subjugated all the other races but lost their home to the demon-kin when the gods had enough of their hubris. The protagonist starts out as a peasant, believing she can get by with economic might alone, but she later ends up building a single revolver-carbine-conversion kit for personal defense. Mistakes happen, and the firearms as a concept is proven and spread rapidly on the mainland albeit at poor quality. She sees the effects of the arms race first hand and suffers the costs of her naivete as her motorized repeating crossbow militia are almost outmatched by a well-prepared napoleonic-styled force. Her false belief that power is the only thing that can protect her and those she cares about is bolstered; her paranoia fuels her attempts at making everything a logistical delight for herself, yet nearly impossible to reverse-engineer elsewhere as only she holds the knowledge of modern chemistry. Everything she designs is standardized, and production methods such as blast furnaces and nitrate production become state secrets. Over many decades, she earns her way into a kind of power-fantasy which culminates in a massive war between variously industrialized factions against resistances and the caste-based magocratic realm of the demon-kin, who later desperately begin threats of sacrificing thousands to produce massive mana-bombs. She even offers basic weapons and crude black powder paper cartridges to her allies, while she uses smokeless brass cartridge repeaters. I'm lucky enough to have written her to pursue two identities, one as a pioneer-leader responsible for guiding her faction's development and politics, and the other as an investigator-officer that is obsessed with making sure frontline activities succeed even if she has to do them herself. Magic is still magic, but is gradually overpowered by rapid and haphazard industrialization. Technology eventually reduces magic to mostly healthy non-combat roles. Not even the ancient dragons, primordial beasts, or strongest demigods there can withstand a big enough missile. Human ingenuity when it comes to killing is a horror beyond comprehension in of itself. She eventually grapples with the consequences of her actions and even the stress that's taken a toll on her memory and well-being, as we gradually humanize her once again. The climax is surrounded by action-packed scenes, but ultimately is resolved by her choosing to take the greatest peaceful steps in breaking (or mitigating) the cascading cycles of violence that has plagued that fantastic world long enough. She fakes nuclear weapons and takes the first unilateral step in preventing proliferation and stopping WMD's from holding their world hostage.
@@ZagreusWintersI'm glad you enjoyed the idea! I've actually poured the past 9 months into this IP called "Redoubt: Killing Intent" and developed my writing skill much further than I used to have with short stories and poetry. I've only DM'd a tabletop for a oneshot with my friends (props to you for hitting an actual 10,000 hours) and I did my best. That, and all the other adventures we had surely helped shape Redoubt. My initial goal was simply a compelling narrative that leads to a huge industry vs fantasy war, but I ended up making a fast-paced yet endearingly emotional character-driven story filled with more despair and hope. The half-elf protagonist is, really just a person trying to cope. Here's the blurb on the back of the cover! "A chemistry professor suffering the loss of her family, dies fighting in a bitter war to avenge them. Now reborn as Forlasita, a half-elf with zero magical talent, she builds the connections and skills necessary to protect all she's grown to love in the tumultuous realm of Mondo. She and her allies construct a technological haven through borrowed knowledge, yet her well-intentioned mistakes trigger a countdown to industrial Armageddon. Those she saves urge her to do more, while those she fails can only haunt her into excellence under a sinking heart of darkness. Failures scar her body and soul - she now seeks ways to turn her brutalist bastion into a beacon of hope, before it becomes a pyre for her dreams." I'm always looking for beta or advanced readers as I'm trying to get this out soon without losing the quality, to share a piece of work that I think a lot of people could enjoy just as much as I've loved writing it! Here's where I'm regularly posting rough chapters online to hopefully get any critique and engagement: www.royalroad.com/fiction/98839/redoubt-killing-intent
Interesting, but I feel like much of your argument is flawed. In the real world, we never had magic, so we had to invent technology. In fantasy media, if magic is too hard to learn, and there are too few mages in the world (as is supposedly the assumption in many published D&D settings), then it makes sense that technology would evolve (assuming medieval stasis isn't in play). Take the Shadow and Bone example. Grisha are incredibly powerful (at least typically), but they are incredibly few. To fight effectively, it makes sense that they would go from bows and crossbows to pistols and single shot rifles. The fact that these tools were than used to combat Grisha is besides the point. Eberron is the other end of that spectrum where magic is incredibly easy to learn leading to a world where everyone has access to even simple cantrips (mage hand, firebolt, etc). Which leads to the question, in a world where every school child could be taught the firebolt cantrip, why would anyone need to spend time making guns??? Why would you create mechanical technology when simple spells are easier to learn and do the same thing if not more? It is also worth mentioning that while technology is often described as tools used to overcome oppression, that is a clichee in the settings with little magic that is hard to come by. And for that matter, the real world teaches us just how dystopian and oppressive technology can be. Technology = Tools, Tools are neither oppressive nor liberating. It's all about how said tool is used and by whom. Lastly, I want to touch on magocracies. Shadow and Bone is another great example of this in that even as powerful as Grisha are and politically powerful because of it, they are outnumbered hundreds or thousands to one. In the TV show (season 1 specifically) you see instances of how they are hunted to the verge of extinction prior to the shadow fold, all because the ordinary folk are suspicious and unwilling to accept those with "mage-like" abilities. People unwilling to be ants in front of Superman. Then hundreds of years later, you see no fewer than three of the most elite Grisha "warriors" (in another episode), all taken down by members of a crew of thieves (who are exceptional in their own right but ordinary thieves nonetheless). Which is to say, for magocracies to take hold, magic needs to be common enough that a small, but prominent segment of society has magic (typically replacing the nobility class), but hard enough to come (and/or expensive to learn) that everybody else can't. To establish enough people spread out amongst society to control key positions of power. But that adds up to a LOT of people who would be mages. You know hundreds in a city of several thousand, types of percentage. Otherwise, they are powerful, but too few to maintain power. Vecna is near enough to be a god (who could brainwash people with but a stare, and you would never know it), but even he can't single-handedly rule a nation.
Okay... so here's the thing. The big reason magic changes everything is energy. Energy is the ability to do work. It's the foundation for our food, our transportation, our wars, everything. And because everything requires energy, be it biological or chemical or nuclear or magical, efficiency is what shapes technology. There's a million ways to make something less efficient, but technological evolution favors efficiency. Economies favor efficiency, capitalist or communist. People rarely understand energy. This is often why when physicists get their hands on magic, they understand the real world implications. If it takes less energy to summon water than the energy you get turning a mill, then a decanter of endless water is an industrial revolution. So when you have guns and magic, you have to ask which is more energy efficient? Guns backload most of the energy required. The chemistry / alchemy that made the powder. The forging of the mechanism. Loading the weapon. It culminates in pulling the trigger. That's a huge expense of energy for one intense effect, almost like a ritual. But if I can say a word and duplicate the same effect as that expenditure of energy? If that's all the energy it takes on my part? Hands down magic wins. It becomes nonsensical to have firearms and all they require to make and operate when compared to the efficiency operated by magic. This doesn't just stop at guns. Why would there be ANY medical advancement if cure wounds and cure disease exist? The energy expended to learn and assist magical healing is far less efficient than a god zapping magical ability into your hands. A sending spell is more efficient than developing the infrastructure to make telephones. And without certain stepping stones, you never advance past that point. No enlightenment? Forget chemistry. No chemistry? Forget germ and atomic theory.
Whenever I see people talk about guns in fantasy, what I most often see is idiots gleefully talking about how they'd mow down wizards, warriors, and monsters with ease. And in that I think the best use of guns in fantasy becomes self evident: As a cautionary tale about shortcuts to power, and about people who want to tear others down rather than build themselves up. I think one thing that must be noted about Anna Ripley's story is that magic in DnD is fundamentally NOT exclusive to a certain caste of people. Sorcerers are born with magic, yes, but every other type of caster class is someone who is making use of an art that anyone can theoretically learn. Wizards understand the rules of reality well enough to manipulate them. Warlocks have made a pact with a powerful being who grants them knowledge and power. Clerics are granted power in service of a deity. Druids gain it through their connection with nature. And paladins gain power through the strength of their convictions. These are all things anyone can do if they have the opportunity and the will. And I think the important thing about all of these is that learning any of these disciplines is transformative to the person learning them. It requires them to build themselves up, to change into a stronger version of themselves. Guns don't require that. They don't ask anything of the person wielding them, they simply promise destructive power for free. That's why some people obsess over them, and its why those people make me sick. To so many people, guns are seen as the ultimate way to circumvent personal growth. That guy is stronger than me? Doesn't matter, I have a gun. That guy's smarter than me? Doesn't matter, I have a gun. Everyone hates me because I solve all my problems with murder? Doesn't matter, I have a gun. But it does matter, because the inability of people to defy you doesn't make you right. And that's where the inevitable downfall of anyone who thinks having a gun makes them king comes. Because in a fantasy world like DnD, guns aren't actually that big of a deal. Sure, its lethal enough to a regular person. But the barbarian who can tank a fall from orbit isn't going to be impressed by your pistol. The wizard who can call down a meteor storm doesn't care that you can fling little balls of lead. The paladin who has 25 ac and can critsmite to hit harder than a cannon isn't going to be intimidated by you waving a gun around. You have a machine gun? We have a dragon. Someone like Percy can stand up to forces like that, but its not because he has a gun. It's because of his intelligence, resourcefulness, and determination. Those are what allowed him to invent such a weapon in the first place and those are his true strengths, and having a gun doesn't make you his equal any more than wearing a pointy hat makes you a wizard. And most importantly, he can apply those strengths to virtually anything he sets his mind to, not just violence. Guns aren't a great equalizer. At the very best, they are a great equalizer in the field of violence and only violence, and even then, they're not really that, ESPECIALLY not in a fantasy world. Ripley could have done something like try to make knowledge of magic more accessible so that its usage wouldn't be restricted to just a few people who could abuse that power. But that would have been a constructive thing to do, a way to help people build themselves up, and she didn't want that. She just wanted to tear things down.
I think the problem is that you assume that (pro-gun talkers) somehow care about things like virtue or self-improvement: in Real Politik, guns are precisely the instrument of oppression, the gateway to the monopoly of violence. Like the kings and his Knights. And one can argue that guns in the real world have served to bring about a more just order but it is only in perspective because in the end guns became the new tool of control. It's not a matter of virtue, it's a matter of ego (because, except for the idealists, it's not about making the world a better place, it's about being YOU who holds the biggest stick) and simple politics because historically no one has listened to anyone without power to back themselves up. Today having nuclear weapons, for example, gives you a pass to commit unspeakable crimes. It would be great a fantasy world where guns are not the answer to positive change but the very philosophy behind magical learning. Often in fantasy you see this whole struggle of “good” versus “evil” where the “good guys” win, not because they have the better arguments, but because they can exercise greater violence. Sure, some of that is probably necessary, but the stories tend to end there, which makes me go, “Ok, fine, you killed the bad guy, you won the war, let's ‘celebrate,’ but why do we celebrate? What do we change? How do we build a better country?” Firearms (for these people who speak in favor of them) are not just a tool, they are an argument in themselves. It doesn't matter that you're not right if you're the last one standing, because “truth” was never the reason you decided to use violence in the first place.
@@kelasgre2830 It is an unfortunate truth of this world that all laws are based on the projection of force. For example your wallet is yours untill someone catches you unawares with a knife and demands all your stuff. If we assume that every human posesses some intrinsic rights it is a logical conclusion that a person should have a right to defend their rights. In today’s context it means having access to fire arms. To do otherwise is to say that for example : you and also people stronger than you (this includes the government) have the right to dictate what you may do with your body. Finally the widespread adoption of firearms was helpful to the growth of democracies - it allowed common people to fight off the martial elites (knights etc.) , and effectively democratised power. Stripping people of their right to bear arms is oftentimes a prelude to oppression. It’s much easier to govern a populace who have severely impaired means of fighting back.
@@zoro115-s6b This is why ive always loved bows more than any other ranged weapon. A skilled person can make a bow and arrows with materials gathered in the wild or fringes of society. Its a weapon that requires patience, determination and skill to use. There is no shortcut to being a good archer. No special sights or optics, no special ammunition. Your body is barrel, trigger and firing mechanism, the bow is just the powder. An Archer is a weapon, he has to be. And a skilled survivalist is never without means to arm himself. That being said, im very biased because almost all my characters are some sort of Ranger/Hunter/Vagabond.
@@ibexhunter5624 the virgin no-skill gun lunatic who thinks they are skilled or tough for knowing how to pull a trigger vs the chad ranger with a longbow and magical beast companion who has trained for decades
I like how it is in futuristic settings sometimes, where it just does chip damage and the cooler weapons like swords or whatnot are even more powerful. This is basically how it works in Metal Gear Rising
Its a thing I'm doing in my own fantasy setting I'm making too. Its inspired by the Mughal period of India, a period where you had musket formations and cannon warfare next to sword and board battles, hell, it practically introduced it in a widescale angle to it. In my detting, Magic is a seperate field entirely and one that while some people know how to use and harness and its costs, they don't actually know how it works or what makes it tick. And since not everyone can be a mage (tho there are cheats to it), magic is more of a speciality and its own class of people. Firearms are the complete opposite, and though their supply is handled by the authorities with thr most resources available, its nevertheless a valuable asset for wars and in a adventure party, can be a powerful tool when used at the right moment (right next to bombs).
One cool idea I read in some TH-cam comment (that is from some book, IIRC), is that firearms are susceptible to... fire. Well, the gunpowder is. And in a world with mages that love nothing more than playing with fire... gunpowder becomes a very double-edged sword. Also, depending on the state of tech, conjured rain can make firearms tricky to use. It's interesting food for thought to consider how firearms were perceived, used, and developed in a setting. Did some conjured fire elementals quickly destroyed the secret new weapon a nation introduced? It might have fallen out of favour for wide scale warfare afterwards, deemed too risky. Or were special wards and tactics developed to counter this?
From my experience, there's two kinds of fantasy worlds: ones where magic is a learnable skill and functionality accessible to anyone and worlds where magical ability is a specific thing that only certain people are born with. The latter is much more likely to develop technology such as firearms. After all, why go through the complex feat of engineering to develop a gun when it only takes a few years to teach someone how to throw a fireball?
I would strongly disagree about your last point with Jinx. The Council/Piltover did not take everything away from her. Her parents yes, but Vander and her siblings were on Silco and Sevika. Even Vi, since Marcus was in Silco's pocket. And the second time Vi was taken from her, it was by Ekko, another Zaunite. As much as the Zaunites like to shit on Piltover, 9/10 times, they are the ones screwing each other over (at least until Jinx blows up the Council). The Council is not flooding Zaun with Shimmer, and the Chem Barons are the ones oppressing most of Zaun while the Enforcers rarely go there (more noticeable in the rest of the Zaun lore in League, such as with Zeri, Zac or Urgot). And Viktor was a Zaunite who committed genocide with staggering a death toll that makes the worst of "dictator" Caitlyn look like a toddler in a sandbox.
8:48 "Guns has only one purpose, to game-end the other person...magic can create wonders...and atrocities" Bruh is really comparing a weapon to a concept It's like saying "Necrotic blast can only be used to game-end the other person, but technology can be used for both good and bad!"
I have a huge headache from watching youtube for hours in the middle of the night but I have to keep at it. I think this video solved a big problem I have had with my worldbuilding and by extension the plot of my story. It also got me thinking, as I really like casual magic in high fantasy settings, could magic vs guns be flipped? As in, guns as a more new and powerful technology is a new luxary that the corrupt rich use to keep the "unruly" poor in check and magic then gets learned to get used as means for rebellion.
The only thing that bothers me is the final battle against the noxian army, like YOU REALLY DON'T YOU HAVE ANY MACHINE GUN? THE CITY OF PROGRESS DIDN'T HAVE ANY MASSIVE BALLISTIC?
I have an obsession with setting my various worlds in the 18th century. The dawn of the Enlightenment and prelude to the industrial revolution. Where things are so advanced to be global, but classic weapons have yet to go the way of bygones. The presence of guns are an example of that. If you were to drop out of the sky and ask me for a year to base your setting on, 100% of the time it would begin with that 1-7
I'm used to hearing about those concepts but with slightly different names. "Magi-o-cracy" sounds strange to my ear because people usually speak of "magocracy" with no "i". Similarly with spellpunk, people usually call it manapunk, but that one is more understandable since "mana" is a little more culturally specific so "spellpunk" is more universal.
Guns aren't terribly unbalancing. Bombs, however, are. Or rather, bombs and lax encumbrance rules and/or bags of holding. Often, players resort to just using gold as solutions to problems, whether it is huge amounts of flasks of oil or gunpowder. Which is fine, I suppose, but if a massive logistics support is the way to deal with a problem, you may as well use armies instead of adventurers.
In the show Shadow and Bone, there is a military officer who explains how the mages of the world slowly became less valuable as gun technology advanced. It was one of the most interesting lines in the show.
I don't really like percy's attitude towards his own creation. For one thing, the kinds of guns he uses are like the repeating crossbows contemporary to his time. So why would he make such a big deal about it? Another issue is that there is genuinely an argument for giving people the ability to defend themselves from the magical threats that can literally sprout up out of nothing.
Yeah that's why I actually agree with Anna Ripley, the world they live in is unjust in that way. On one end less violence = good, on another. Why should only 1 group be allowed to commit violence on another with no recourse for fighting back? This is basically percy & ripley, and they're both right but moreso ripley within the context of the violent magic that exists in exandria.
"God created men. Colonel Colt made them equal." The democratization of violence that firearms brought about did much to shake up the existing hierarchies of our own world. Certainly would expect them to do much the same in a fantasy setting dominated by magic.
Don't the military from Warhammer 40K fulfill the "big guy in sword armor wielding gun" aesthetic? Considering how they can wield both melee and ranged weapons, and in a universe that mixes scifi and fantasy, at least to my view.
I'm getting into 6e Shadowrun. I love ttrpgs, and I'm a man of Christian background, so I've always tried to transmit themes of hope, righteousness, and being better than you were in the past in my games. I homebrewed an entire setting with fallen angels, Giants, mortals ascending to godhood and becoming stewards of the earth. I've played DND, Cyberpunk Red, and Vampire the Masquerade. I've even been working on my own Science-Fantasy IP, an animated series. Now, I've been working on Shadowrun and running 6e Shadowrun as a system.
Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar have guns as powerful tools for people who can't use magic. As vital as crossbows, etc. But the some civilizations create magic tech like a magic laser cannon.
What's even better than just mages vs guns is mages with magical guns. That's what makes the world of Tanya the Evil so cool, how magic turns firearm based warfare up to 11.
I love the way Jobless Reincarnation handled Magic Vs Physical Strikers. Those who train to become a warrior have their muscles and skeleton infused with magic simply by training to achieve inhuman feats. A mage can cast down a meteor swarm but a warrior of equal level would cut the meteor in half while swinging around for the mage’s eyes to shut down their target spells. In dnd the disparity between mages and martials can be as wide as an ocean at times with the best versions of martials having some sort of supernatural enhancement (ki, rune magic, Eldritch knight, paladin) so if you want to achieve power in dnd you will always need some form of magic to achieve it. Monks are the greatest example of deviating from this but even they just use an agecent magic system with its own “spells”
This is why I created my Battle Arts system! To give those martial characters the lore that they can stand against mages! Even mechanically this is how that functions, allowing for martial characters to channel rudimentary forms of magic into their most basic battle styles.
In my fantasy setting, which is not medieval but Renaissance and age of piracy -age, I have guns, but flint locks, not your typical ones. Firing them does a lot of damage and ignores armor, but the trade-off is that they can only be fired once. What makes other melee weapons and bow and arrows as relevant as they were during the age of early fire arms.
Those less skilled would use technology to catch up to those ultra talented. Because in a world where everyone can use magic, you'd have the insanely gifted. Just like in real life, we both can run, but we're no Usain Bolt. But we can hop on a motorcycle and out speed him right?
Usually in my worlds magic is obtainable by everyone, sou i don't see, why people would have urge to invent guns. Eldritch Blast, are basically guns, Fire ball is a grenade and magic missals are just that missals
I loved the video but since you showed the hemolergy and allomancy tables I was waiting the whole time to talk about mistborn which does this the best I’ve seen
As usual when discussing this topic, I must mention Anbennar, which currently is a mod for the game EU4. It shows a really interesting perspective of how technology and magic would interact in a fantasy world. Some groups despise mages, some use them for their power, some find a balance between magic and technology.
One fantasy trope I really like is the witch hunter, heck in my own story plans I've scaled it up to the point of being an entire cult/terrorist like organization of people who hate magic. The issue is this trope has an inherent underdog element to it, and underdog's don't tend to make good villains. So how do you take clearly non magical people and make them a threat to clearly magical people, particularly a reoccurring threat? If only there's a well understood item that represents a massive change in power dynamics through both a narrative and practical lens. An item so powerful it's mere existence could change history. An item that's known for being simultaneously powerful enough to lay low great warriors yet simple enough for a common man to use.
I do think there are a lot of ways to integrate firearms into fantasy to have it feel in place. Having watched a lot of anime, I can also say that it can be done very poorly and just feel like a power trip and edgy. I would say my favourite idea is that guns that use magic as a technology in how they would work in setting. Or, in general an idea of guns being like a magic. For the later, I am thinking like the limitations of a flintlock, where reloading well is going to require an almost ritualistic methodology, along with needs for maintenance and likely an element of alchemy. I am particularly fond of an example of AC Black Flag, where you have swordplay, but also firearms that take long enough to reload that the effective technique is having an extra few firearms to switch over to before having the time to start reloading them. I di think it is the most interesting idea that could have firearms feel at place of people casting magic. There is ways to not feel industrial. My own thing that I am working is a mid to late 20th century thing where magic is inherent. So the weapon like a gun would require magic 95% of people can do easily to operate, but use magic instead of gunpowder that a much smaller % could do inherently.
I play _WoW,_ _Pathfinder,_ and _Starfinder,_ was impressed with _The Legend of Vox Machina_ once it got its footing despite not being much of a podcast person, and love urban fantasy and other subgenres that flip the bird to "medieval tech stasis" tropes. As such: "fantasy gun control" can go kick rocks as far as I'm concerned.
The most advanced science uses the fundamental forces of the universe to function. A world where people have access to magic would have people try to channel it through inventions.
As separate as folks view things I also realised something about magic and technology. I'd wager we think of them as separate things because of the romanticism which rose in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. But any technician, or heck today, any IT worker will tell you that while we might believe we understand our technology quiet often there are anomalies and behaviours we just can't explain around them. Things that shouldn't work, work, and things that should, don't. There may be a magic to technology that people of our modernist era are blind to. That could be an interesting subject to explore in and of itself.
I work on some stories mixing modern settings with magic and fantasy. Some people use magic bullets or use glyphs to give bullets effects or increase damage. Cannons and bombs are powered by glyphs or unstable magic crystals. Alternate fuel sources for cars would be magic potions or crystals. Traveling to different realms like Alfheim or different planets are made easier with developments of spacial, portal, and dimensional magic and either having magic users on board or having dwarves and dark elves make machines that harness magic power
Unlike what you claim technology isn't and was never "fully understood" we understand many principles of nature in order to make devices to exploit these to the best of our abilities but all the time things happen that we did not expect ahead of time. For example, out of all the thermonuclear bombs tested during operation Castle only one had the predicted yield, all others were vastly underestimated in their destructive potential because materials act very differently under the insane conditions present during a nuclear detonation. Magic and technology in a fantasy world should ideally mix together and I'd give the use of magic AS PART OF technology the same treatment as nuclear engineering, incredible potential, high risk, unpredictable results.
The story I’m writing has modern technology co-exist alongside fantastical magic. However this isn’t right off the bat. How this happens is kind of by accident when a Nordic warrior and a High Elf mage travel into a post-apocalyptic modern world with the intent of chasing down an evil necromancer who is capable of raising undead. The story itself actually first introduces a trio that wield modern weapons. A former Army Ranger who became a vigilante due to a personal tragedy, a female FBI Agent who goes rogue after being disillusioned by corrupt bureaucracy of the law, and a young teenage boy computer hacker who is adept with almost everything centered around technology. The three go into a village that was supposedly abandoned however they are soon attacked by zombified villagers who they assume to be under some kind of hard drugs. Little do they know that they actually are living dead being controlled by the necromancer to attack anything that is still living. Eventually the Army Ranger, FBI Agent, and Computer Hacker meet the Nordic warrior and High Elf mage and join forces due to sharing the same goal. Eventually they bond over learning each other’s tech and magic with the Nord warrior soon learning how to use modern grenades and actually makes use of them thanks to the teaching of the Army Ranger. Eventually they are joined by a thief thus completing two versions of the warrior, mage, and thief triumvirate with both a modern version and a fantastical version. The modern version of the warrior mage and thief is essentially soldier, sapper, and sniper.
I think part of the problem some people (including myself) have with guns in fantasy, is it very quickly becomes implausible for people to fight with almost anything else. Once the majority of the population has access to even flintlock weaponry, that guy with the sword and armour over there is dead. The armour can't stop the bullet, the wearer can't dodge it and their weapon can't reach the enemy first. It fundamentally changes how I would play and design my fantasy, so in most of my settings I wouldn't put them in, or if they are there, they're very primitive and temperamental. It's different if you're doing something like renaissance fantasy, but that means creating a world with prevalent use of guns fundamentally alters the aesthetic and feel of that world in a way which isn't always welcome. While there is room for that, as the rest of the comments section abundantly demonstrates, I personally have reservations about their implementation, at least on a large scale. And I do know that weapons like pikes and sabres were used on battlefields long after guns became prevalent (though their use increasingly diminished with the arrival of weapons like flintlocks), but that's a battlefield, where things are a lot more chaotic and large groups of mounted warriors etc. are a problem that can't always be solved by the power of gun, but most D&D games are about adventurers. If you're dealing with smaller groups of creatures and people, any other weapon will be a secondary weapon to a flintlock or even matchlock. The damage they are capable of is, realistically, unprecedented in terms of other weapons. In most cases, your best plan is to shoot the thing with the gun and if that doesn't work and the creature is fast enough to dodge your bullet or tough enough for it to glance off it's armour, why would you fight it? How is a sword or axe or any other weapon meant to hurt a target a musket can't or hit a target which can dodge gunfire?
In fantasy that’s where the magic of the world would come in. I truly don’t believe bullets will do anything to a brigade of abjuration mages. Nor do I think guns will really do anything after the first volley of flintlock bullets get lobbed at a lich (he casted shield) before he turns everyone into dust. This is the flaw with this mindset, people get so fixated on how guns change everything. They forget, especially in a fantasy world, people are using magic at a massive scale as well. Then you have to consider, one fireball towards a Calvary of fireman turn them into fireworks since gunpowder explodes. In a magic world, one with thought behind it. The armor you speak of? Enchanted specifically to be projectile resistant. The boots sword carrying warriors wear? Enchanted with magic that either makes them faster, or allows them to teleport short distances (misty step). In the example of “bullets bounce off so we don’t fight it.” A dragon can fly about 20-40mph in D&D at least, the average human barely would break 10. They aren’t getting away, and they most certainly don’t survive.
I'm not arguing about the ability of powerful magic compared to guns. The problem is low-level adventurers. When creating, for example, a Fighter starting at level 1 or 3 (using D&D as an example because that's what most people are using) it makes no sense for the fighter to pick anything other than a gun for their weapon. They don't have access to powerful enough magic equipment to out-compete a firearm. That magical plate armour would probably only be available at level 10 and history has shown as that, in spite of the ability of some exceptional armour to stop a musket all or other round of ammunition, they weren't used because they were either too heavy or too expensive or difficult to acquire. The same logic applies here. You have no reason to use mundane medieval weaponry, which so many people, including myself, love in the face of an abundance of flintlock users. Hence, there is no reason for a Fighter, for example, starting out at level 1 or 3 to pick anything other than a gun. Other ranged weapons also rapidly become obsolete. Sure, the longbow has a greater range and rate of fire than flintlocks, but it also takes years of dedication and learning to use properly (in England there was a saying, "If you want to create a great archer, start with his grandfather". A musket or pistol just takes a week or two of training to use properly. The same goes for weapons like swords and is another reason they fell out of fashion. Ultimately, once you reach a flintlock level of firearms technology and, in some cases, even before that and that technology is widely spread, there is no reason for an adventurer who is just starting out to pick up anything but a firearm as a primary weapon. It's easy to carry, easy to use and highly effective, meaning it will out-compete any of the mundane equipment available at lower levels. Once you reach 5th level, then, you won't be interested in that magical plate armour because your entire fighting style is built around keeping distance and not getting hit. Of course the argument then is, how do you deal with someone in magical plate who wants to close the distance? Well, that question is redundant because this soceity won't create someone who fights like that.
@@ZagreusWinters I appreciate you responding to at least one of the comments pushing back on some of your thesis. It seems like even in your examples here of how magic would still be viable… that these are pretty big reasons that guns would never be invented. Also again, guns invalidate all other weapon types 95%+ of the time. So unless you want to play/run a setting that is just magic and guns… they are a slippery slope to introduce to most fantasy settings. Which is why most settings are either just fantasy or sci-fi. The few that inhabit the middle do end up mostly being magic + guns with other weaponry phased back significantly.
I think there's two facets to this discussion that people gloss over. What about worlds with more constrained or limited magic? What about worlds with weaker firearms? In my setting magic is mostly energy transferal over a dozen feet or so without preparation. The firearms that get invented are just seen as the ranged form of magic, they even literally use mana instead of gunpowder. As well firearms didn't redefine the world because everything else kept up. Enchanting (which people within the setting do not call magic, they see it the same way we see making fancy polymers and rocket fuel) has been able to create clothes and armor that can more than handle a normal firearm. Fortifications still outmatch firearms because mana charges have a size limit before they will just implode so there are no cannon. In my setting the scariest person in a room is the guy with a halberd because he can surge lightning down it and electrocute you through your armor.
In TTRPGs I prefer not to have them at all unless it’s a combat focused game, and even then, they’ll probably feel weaker than you’d want. They have the same impact as irl (or at least they should be, otherwise what’s the point of having them in your fiction), turning battles terrifying and fights dishonorable. They’re not nuclear bombs, but imagine hearing dozens of thundering sounds and not knowing when you’ll be the next. The character loses all agency, nothing about them matters other than their ability to shoot back or avoid getting shot (guns are easy to use, that’s their advantage).
I see what you're saying! I think it comes down to writing style right? For me when I'm running my D&D games and creating interactive stories I try to make it a point that your character is simply "a guy" an average character who could have a meaningless death in the end, as not all stories end heroically or happily. However, this is to set up the paradigm where you as a player get to progressively earn being important to the world which over a longer period of time, allows for you to feel more connected to said world and events. Because you were at some point just a nobody, someone who could've died to a stray bullet in an early encounter but here we are 6 months later in-cannon timeline and maybe 8-10 months IRL and your character can single handedly take on those same threats that were posed to you. No longer will you die to a gunshot wound, and by this point you would've earned your place as being important to the world stage rather than just having it be handed to you. And I think loss of character agency to a degree is okay, I think it's important to show that the world is indifferent to your protagonists because by doing that you make their achievements mean more to the story. At least that's my opinion c:
@@ZagreusWinters I default to magi-tech or sci-fi weapons in that kinda game, that way no one would bat an eye at inconsistencies. “How did three shots not pierce through glass but a blade did?” (Cough Arcane cough cough) Real guns should come with real stakes and limits, so I include them in deadly games or games *not* about power fantasy, in which the characters _should_ avoid being at the end of a barrel and don’t mind (or do actually want) their characters dying suddenly. They have agency up to the point triggers are pulled, then stakes go through the roof and the situation becomes a gamble, but what did they do to get here? But that’s just my opinion. I like separating the two so that assumptions about lethality don’t clash. Though I really feel like most have guns in their stories “just cuz”
@@ZagreusWinters it also depends a lot on the kinda story you’re trying to tell. The protagonists with character arcs and developments can’t just be deleted uneventfully and with no impact lol, their passing must matter somehow. Whether writing a story or on a TTRPG, the presence and nature of guns shouldn’t clash with the story, which is why I always try to include them purposefully
@@claudiaborges8406 It’s just a difference in style and hey to your merit there are some who’d enjoy how I tell stories and others who enjoy the way you do. They both have their pros and cons as to who enjoys which parts of it more. It all comes down to preferences c;
I think one of the most interesting things about Percy from Critical Role is he understands that guns don't just compete with magic, they're even more dangerous. He has the vision to understand what people with less morals would create. Doubt he could imagine the real world's 21st century, but I get the feeling he could envision trench warfare from the World Wars. Magic is naturally harder for the average person to acquire. Individually a mage is often more dangerous than a guy with a gun. But you can get Andy from down the street to square off against someone who's been at magic school from five years, and since you gave Andy a rifle he's actually got decent chances of winning. Imagine 1000 Andys. Imagine 10,000. Magic just can't do that. The scale of its potential damage is limited. It's the same logic as crossbows. Smaller scale but same logic. Longbows weren't phased out by crossbows. In fact they were often still had better range and could put more force behind a loosed arrow. So why were crossbows a thing? Because they're easy to use. A longbowman needs to train for YEARS to be a decent shot and to build the strength to consistently fire at a longbow's peak range, and to be able to have a fast fire rate. But someone with a crossbow can do serious damage with it despite only training for like a day. Then you bring in guns, which do more WAY damage, are MUCH better at piercing heavy armour and seriously compete with a longbow's range, and are often even easier to use than the crossbow. A poorly trained army armed with such weapons can completely dominate a battlefield, even if they're outnumbered and fighting veterans, and even if the other side has a few mages, just because of firearms. If war is easier to wage, more wars will be waged. THAT'S what Percy's done. Then you find out about Exandria's Age of Arcanum, especially Aeor, where technology and magic in extremely advanced forms were often COMBINED, and you literally have civilisations that can threaten gods. When Percy fears what he has unleashed, and Matt as the DM slowly unravels what pre-Calamity civilisations were capable of, you realise Percy is right to be afraid and right to go to such drastic measures to control what he has created. Even if you the audience sadly understand that horse has already bolted. Percy may have abandoned his quest for vengeance, and bettered himself, but his invention of firearms cannot be undone. One man's pain will inevitably kill hundreds of thousands in the centuries to come. Even when Percy himself will be long gone.
I like the concept of magic guns, the first time I was exposed to this was in Wildstar (a great underappreciated MMORPG IMO) where their DPS 'mages' were referred to as Spell Slingers and channeled magic through guns. REALLY liked the concept and really like guns in fantasy settings.
R.I.P Wildstar, it was truly ahead of it's time in many ways and just released at a bad time. I think if it released during covid it might've actually caught on.
Fantasy settings with a form of easy to use powerful energy would easily have many try to build guns as the idea of a gun is, I want this object to go fast, how about I make a explosion to move it?
I also feel like that’s a simple concept too you know? The idea of ballistics is very human when you think about it lol We literally explode ships into orbit. You could also play into a type of acceleration magic, one that magnifies the speed at which an object moves. So now even slingshots can be powerful!
Tbh, I dont believe a fantasy setting should be Spellpunk just to justify the reason for existance of firearms. Firearms in of themselves aren't inherently a high tech idea. For some reason many people think of modern or repeating firearms when they think of guns, when firearms can be as simple and low tech as a Handgonne which predates full-plate armor in our reality. I dont think guns should be synonymous with technology and industrialization in fantasy setting when Handgonnes and even Serpantine Arquebuses are simpler in design than crossbows.
Trying something a little different with the videos here recently, hope you guys like it! Next upload will be a return to our regularly scheduled system video.
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Something to note: full plate existed alongside firearms. Guns ended up "winning" the arms race due to cost effectiveness and practicality, but if you can use magic to make armor lighter and/or stronger, suddenly that arms race is extended.
@@jbark678 Exactly then you have to consider all the emergent changes to magic when that happens as well. Magic made to interact and counter technology in a defensive manner which would in turn change technology. You do this about two or three times and you get some really unique stuff!
It would really drive the arms race to new levels. Armor is made to block ranged weapons, protect against bullets, become less penetrable.
In return, either mechanically or magically, guns are also evolved and enhanced. Imagine guns that fire special magic-destroying bullets, armor sets that basically protect magic shields to block bullets, etc.
@@jbark678
I just think about the force fields in DUNE.
This is exactly what I'm going for in my homebrew D&D setting. It's meant to be a Bloodborne type setting, but I still wanted the possibility to have a fully armored knight in the face of firearms and super strong beasts that can tear through normal metals like paper.
Magically assisted APDS projectile
Finally someone who gets me.
'God made men, Samuel Colt made them equal'
@@dj-chemicalz811 and browning made America everyone’s better
Historically Knights and Samurai did use guns, but every Fantasy writer decided they wanted to be Tolkien and chose not to add them.
I would argue it’s because there’s more difficultly in writing romantic drama/ tension (in the original sense) in a shoot out vs a sword duel. In a duel, the protagonist visibly sees the antagonist they’re fighting which allows both the protagonist and reader to see a brief window into the antagonist’s perspective. A shoot out meanwhile (unless it’s a classic western duel at “high noon”) doesn’t have such a luxury as characters will always try to avoid being seen.
@@gimmeyourrights8292 Tolkien’s Middle Earth also isn’t meant to be a medieval setting. It’s set in a fictional prehistoric period.
@@J-manli I would argue that's an incredible idea. A "stealth" battle is unique and has a sudden-death nature. When simply being within sight for a second or less is all it takes to decide a battle, tension builds. You get to write about two entities who play the role of both predator and prey, doing everything in their power to remain unseen as they search for their opponent. The 2014 game "Thief" has a similar concept for one of its boss fights, where as a stealthy rogue, you face off against a thief-taker who launches explosives at you. Your goal is to evade the attacks until you either defeat the thief-taker, or escape by unlock the door through three separate mechanisms. The shadows and cover in the room keep you hidden, and you can throw items or briefly reveal yourself to lure the thief-taker's attention elsewhere, but the space is ultimately limited and the thief-taker will constantly try to flush you out, attacking you even as you work the mechanisms. A duel between two characters equipped with guns would basically just be that, but on both sides. Of course, Thief being a video game with flaws, you can run circles in the room indefinitely and cheese the boss if you so choose, but from a narrative standpoint, I don't see why it can't work.
Tolkien did use gunpowder and explosives, but only on the side of Saruman and Sauron. There might have been Elven crafted weapons in the long past of Arda that we can today think of as projectile weapons other than arrows but Tolkien didn't expand and looks like he largely abandoned this idea of "Elvish magic firearms." But much of the Elven stuff is merely seen via the lens of the Mortal characters and they didn't understand Elvish technology. There is certainly a possible other interpretative that everything "magical" about the Elves is just highly advanced scientific tech. Or a mix of magic and tech. Knights and Samurai only got firearms at latter stages and closer to the modern era. I personally do not like mixing modern aesthetics and tech with fantasy. I very much like the mythic, ancient, heroic romance type of fantasy. In fact, I prefer even older fantasy than the Medieval sort. I like Bronze Age or Paleolithic fantasy like The Iliad or the Epic of Gilgamesh and the stories of the Tuatha De Danann. So....straight up the Poetic Eddas, lol.
@@gimmeyourrights8292 this is a misconception. While yes, there were Knights and Samurais who used guns those were from thr 16th and 17th century's. Also important to mention gund NEVER were standarnized before the 17th century, and for a fact they were actually hard to use since Arquebusiers (early versions of fire guns) were so hard to reload that for example a Samurai who tried to assasinate a Shogun had 3 arquebusiers since it takes aboit 40 to 50 seconds to reload one.
Also important to mention Medieval Europe which resembles Tolkien's world does not have guns, or if they had, it was simply inferior to bows or crossbows. What they actually had before the end of Medieval Europe was cannons, which were widely used by the strongest nations in Europe and Asia (giving the name of the Gunpowder Empires, which were the first nations to adopt gunpowder, like the Mughals and Ottomans)
I like the idea of tech fuelled by magic.
Same I love magitech
Same here, I implement it in almost every game I run unless it is strictly high fantasy. Some people just prefer a setting without tech and I can understand that, even if it isn't really entirely my cup of tea.
Same I love it provided the melee characters can also thrive in the setting
@@Scalesthelizardwizard Its called Hextech. Show some Respekt to my boys Jaice and Victor go watch arcane,becous THE FUTURE IS NOW OLD MAN!!!
P.s: Victor is Best Boy/Waifu btw
Normelise the term Hextech please
One thing about guns that I think we have mostly lost is this: Guns, to someone who doesn't know them, is magic.
Some dude points a long stick at you from a distance, there is a boom and you are dead. And they use some weird substance to do prep their attacks. Bring even just a simple 19th century rifle to the early or high middle ages and they will balk at it. Either it is magic to them, or their own firearms are so far behind, they still fear it.
There is also so much that you can do with guns, combined with magic or not, that would still make interesting. Arcane has some cool tidbits there (though some spoilers for S2):
Zaun has guns, and explosives, that rely entirely on chemicals, because that is what they have. Hell, even their lights and power sources use chemicals. Jinx's bombs always have two seperated viles of differently coloured liquids, her guns typically have colored trails from the bullets and don't sound like gunpowder ones (as used by enforcers). Her pistol also has a sort of dial she often adjusts before/during combat, which I think means that one is sort of a like gas-powered gun. Her minigun still has casings, so the bullets here prob have combustionable chem instead of usual blackpowder.
Then Caitlyn gets her hex rifle and her bullets look much smaller, because she doesn't need an explosive component to propell them. She literally gets a railgun, the projectile is accelerated by magic and extremely lethal.
I am also pretty sure that the normal enforcers faired so poorly against Chemtanks and Noxians to a part because their guns were never meant to go against armor. Our firearms always had to deal with heavily armored foes, they developed rifles to keep control of their poor workforce. They didn't have to go up against steel plate or thick shields and so never had to think much about armor piercing.
This entire text block, I hope, shows how a setting can influence a lot of things from our world and make them more unique. At the very least, it would be a good thought/Writing exercise.
No, 100% these are all observations I also noticed! I also think the chem that’s used comes from plants that grow in Zaun that have been influenced by the landscape. So piltover literally made their own enemy by subjugating the people of Zaun so heavily.
Applied Chemistry is Magic. "I cast Fireball" & there's a huge explosion. "I cast Frag Grenade" & there's a huge explosion. The only difference is that, because anyone can throw a grenade, it *feels* less special. That's all Magic is, a feeling, a sense of wonder that, because you don't fully understand how it works, it can do anything. Once it's understood, it's capabilities and limitations clear, it's just science. Which is beautiful in it's own way, just less wondrous to most.
Frankly fantasy settings don’t even need to change that much if guns are added. In the real world, we had firearms being used by professional armies as early as the 1300s, and they were being used alongside bows and crossbows.
Exactly! There was a period of time where knights in armor and musketeers existed, there's lots to explore on that subject!
In 1400s.
@@jacksonmann3161 Conversely, melee weapons existed alongside guns for centuries. In fact, the last effective cavalry charges happened in WW1. And while cavalry carried lances and swords, they also carried carbines.
I've been obsessed with what I like to call Spell Rounds think of spell scrolls like in Skyrim and D&D but in the form of bullets
Have you played Wizard with a Gun? You might like it, or at least find more inspiration.
Would also definitely recommend watching Outlaw Star
Yeah, Outlaw star has something called the caster gun. It uses magical shells made by some kind of magic users.
That sounds really cool, funnily enough I do think wand-like guns could exist where they fire off various small magics. Sorta allowing anyone to cast basic/rudimentary magic without needing to be magically proficient!
@@arcanefeline I've heard of it but haven't played it yet
I've heard the term flintlock fantasy for a fantasy with flintlock weapons
I think flintlock fantasy is cool, especially because something like flintlock rifles would be easier to enchant due to their rudimentary nature and rather simplistic design!
@@scroletyper8286 a good example would be the Powder Mage book series by Brian McClellan. A 18th century/napoleonic influence fantasy work, that has more conventional magic, but also a magic tied directly to gunpowder, that rivalry between the two systems is one of the themes.
@@ZagreusWinters in any settings I've run the complexity of the device doesn't affect ease of enchantment but I play GURPS and might need to have an enchanted laptop at some point
the last homebrew fantasy game I ran had extremely rare computers but the party didn't play enough to get one
Medieval stasis in a Fantasy world with technology could be completely realistic. The problem is people tend to think that technology is inevitable once the knowledge is unlocked but that is because they don't understand history or economics. The Bronze age collapse is a great example of this. To make Bronze you need Copper and Tin which means if you don't have both you can't make Bronze. Back in Bronze age Tin was only really supplied from one region to the rest of the world, when this trade route was disrupted much of the world could no longer make the Bronze it depended on and Civilization collapsed.
In our world China invented the steam engine centuries before it was exported to Europe. China didn't have a ton of coal to use as a cheap available fuel source and thus steam engine was nothing but an oddity. China also had Gunpowder centuries before Europe but again they didn't cause the industrial revolution. Much of the tech that inspired the European Industrialization came from China which didn't have the resources or political will to fully exploit them, such as printing press wasn't used to bring knowledge to the masses like it was in Europe but instead much like the Middle East it was tightly controlled to avoid challenges to existing authority which is why both areas fell behind in technology and remain so to this day.
Even the idea of mass production was first done in China though not know until modern times as they found ruins of a site that used water wheel to power rows of hammers for forging. So you don't even need industrialization of steam engines to get mass production.
In order for technology to take off you need the right conditions it's not some inevitable march of progress as modernist view tend to pretend it is, as many technologies have been discovered and then lost to time either to be rediscovered centuries later or in some cases lost forever. The industrial revolution required 2 major resources or else it would not have happen. Lots of Iron to turn to steel and massive amounts of fuel to power the intense heat needed for that forging, coal served as this fuel in our timeline. Without lots of iron you basically get Japan where iron is so rare after a fire you have people searching for nails in the rubble because they are valuable. There the idea of making tons of engines and large factories is laughable. Without fuel you got China who has a steam engine but no abundant power source to make it useful outside of an oddity at fancy noble gatherings. To this day china imports mass amounts of coal to feed it's electric grid.
More advance technologies like with our electronics require even large numbers of varied resources which can only be obtained through global trade as almost no single country has all the resources. Thus in a world with lots of political term oil or has massive natural threats like monsters it could be difficult to establish such large and reliable trade networks. You might be able to get some of the materials needed so like a few specialized people have fired arms, just like back in the day no everyone had crossbows or bows because like everything they cost something to make and thus are not unlimited in supply.
But ultimately at the end of the day technology is about harnessing energy to achieve some task we need to complete. We started off with Human and Animal power to move things around. Eventually we developed wind and water to do things such as turn stone wheels for grinding flour, ships to carry us and goods across vast distances. Then we harnessed coal in machines that were no longer reliant on the whims of nature for our sails and windmills. Such machines could work tirelessly to do the work at a much greater rate and thus increase production. The steam engine eventually gave way to the combustion engine due to far fewer draw backs. Imagine having to wait for your car's steam engine to start boiling before you can actually drive instead of current just putting key in and going. But in a fantasy world Magic is just another form of energy used to achieve a goal and thus might be used to power some machines but also then limited by how abundant that Magic source is.
In the case of fire arms though it's a completely different line of technology for energy harnessing. With the others we want something constant and reliable that does work. With guns it is a dramatic release of power to propel a piece of metal forward at high speed to hit a target. The two don't really lead into each other in the way I feel you are trying to suggest they would during the video. The former helps increase the supply of the latter, resulting in it have a much larger impact on the world. But the reverse is really not true as guns are like any other weapon be is sword, bow, crossbow, or etc. It main use it inflicting destruction regardless of if that destruction is done in service of tyranny or to defend the weak. It doesn't really advance to productive capacity of a society.
Gunpowder has been around for like over a thousand years so it showing up in a fantasy settings of medieval period is not really far fetched. Heck they had Cannons in the 1300s in Europe. Print press didn't show up until 1440, and industrial revolution wasn't until 1760. It feels like because of the fast pace development of our modern digital age a lot of people under estimate how long it took for us to get here. I mean cannons were around for 100 years before the printing press and about 400 years before the first steam engine shows up. So no guns in fantasy are not that unrealistic and don't mean there should also be more advanced tech.
Yeah! I think that's why the sort of, early 1800's firearms make a lot of sense. Why would they need a fully automatic rifle when they could just equip a barrel to their gun that allows every bullet to scatter like a shot gun at any moment, or equip a barrel which allows your bullets to explode on impact. I think people should also think about emergent technology as well, we only create what we absolutely need and nothing more most times. So the hyper advancement of technology probably wouldn't take place in much the same way it did in our world, and I do think magic within any world will carry with it the essential slowing of humanities development. Why build planes when you can make a teleport gate? Why make nukes when you can just drop meteors on the sky from over a mile away on any opposing city casted by Gary, the old and his older brother that bicker sometimes Byran, the older? I think medieval stasis to a degree is actually a good thing and a subject I'll probably touch on at some point in the future.
No offense(cause im a braindead moron) buat can you make a tl;dr version?
@@octavianfahrulsyah8487 Ok a somewhat simplified version.
Europe had cannons 1300s, printing press 1440, industrial revolution 1760. So Medieval society with gunpoweder weapons is not unrealistic.
Technology tends to requires multiple resources that are often not found in same country meaning you need trade otherwise the tech doesn't happen. Thus fantasy world being stuck in a curtain era not unreasonable.
Collapse of civilizations has resulted in some techs being lost forever and others not appearing again for centuries.
There is a little more to it and I cite real world examples of these things happening but I fell those 3 things are the major points.
about firearms and engines though:
there's a lot of commonality between an automatic rifle and an explosion engine, and I feel it'd be very hard to discover one and not the other, wouldn't it?
Many of the people that think that fire arms would be a game changer in any fantasy setting forget how long and hazardous was the development of said fire arms.
One example is the Spanish conquistadors going against the Aztecs, contrary to popular belief their fire arms where not this massive advantage.
my way of adding the guns was just to embrace it. embrace the power that comes from the guns and balance it by making everyone more powerful. Say they move extremely fast, being shot is still extremely dangerous but that if you get shot.
This is literally like Harry Potter. Guns are extremely dangerous to wizards, especially since not every wizard is on the level of dumbledore or Voldemort.
A single gun user can kill a wizard easily and a wizard can easily kill a human. But once you get a shit load of humans with guns hunting down wizards, it is game over for the wizards. Fire power and firearms outpace magic.
Wizards made Avada Kadavra, the killing curse... muggles created nukes
@Needler13 the wizard becomes scarier wen he also cary a gun.
@@Needler13 Firepower is a universal concept. Pretty sure there'd be a magical equivalent to ending the entire world if muggles can create nukes lol. Let's not get all too excited with conventional reason lol
@@gnw_AstA The thought is that once you got magic to do everything for you, you're less likely to advance. Hence why magic never truly advanced in harry potter.
Magic leads to stagnation. Science leads to experimentation.
Arcane is my favorite portrayal of guns in fantasy by far (I am kind of biased since I am currently an Artillerist in a steampunk/magepunk campaign where firearms are encouraged for me, it's so interesting to see both basic guns but also guns empowered by magic, it's given me a lot of inspiration to play around with magic as a power source for various strange guns
Well Jinx is drugged soo
The one disappointment there was the final battle. A Noxian professional army winning against a ragtag militia is fine, but the Noxian death toll should have been much higher and their defences way less effective. Their landing seemed almost unopposed when it should have been akin to the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan (Omaha Beach), or the first charge from Zulu (1964). Their discipline ought to have carried the day, not some plate armour that is more effective than early tank plates.
Also, Jinx showing up with what's basically a balloon AC-130 should likewise have been way more devastating. None of that would have taken away from the overall scene or balance, but basically throughout the show, the guns are peashooters, and no one is shooting to kill. Hell, it would have made Ambessa look more badass when she could run through the fire like the Master Chief while the first few waves of her regulars are torn to shreds.
I love fantasy.
I love guns.
Nuff said.
Internet: Guns in a fantasy setting? What are you thinking?!
Me: Star Wars
“Browning made all men equal.”
You got me with the thumbnail, "The Great Equalizer" was INSANE
Honestly you hit the nail a bit on the head there. Speaking as someone who studies history, ideas such as human rights and liberalism only exist because of the fact that firearms made it more plausible for violence to be leveled in favor of the masses. Before that time you have warrior aristocracies because all forms of violence are most effective when used by a class of people trained from birth to wield it. It’s why my favorite example of pre-gun fantasy is Dark Sun, where civilization is run by god like mages who empower their loyal followers as warlocks the way gods empower their followers, not only because it’s dark as hell, but it’s true to human nature. The only thing that disappoints me is that magic in fantasy that uses firearms is treated as a science, something that can be tamed, which makes sense in a d20 game where your spells always work. I prefer the idea that magic is always a poorly understood force of nature, even studied arcane scholars should have no real understanding of the mechanics by which they are essentially rewriting the laws of reality, which is why I prefer systems where you can not only fail to cast a spell, but casting that spell can go catastrophically wrong. Magic should feel a lot like the force in Star Wars, Jedi and with learn to control their power, but beyond knowing their control comes from learning to attune to a mystic force which surrounds everything, they have no idea how it works, only how to make use of it, and each spell weaver should have to figure magic out basically on their own because once magic usage has formulas behind it, it ceases to be magic and simply becomes an alternate science. That’s how I think you maintain both wonderful from fantasy and machine based modernization.
This. On all points you've made. I wish more people (and more authors) had similar views on firearms, human nature and what makes magic feel wondrous.
A very close popular term for the type of magic you're describing is soft magic, although not exactly. Inconsistencies are very dangerous and difficult to use in writing, normally an author needs to have rules but nobody else gets to know them.
@@ryuwaizu9087 "soft magic" is a very overused and misinterpreted term these days.
It is often used as a shorthand for "lazy writing of a magic system" by the proponents of hard magic. But it is also used very loosely, describing anything that is not rigidly structured and scientific-sounding.
I don't think that what OP describes is "soft magic", necessarily. A magic that is unpredictable, potentially dangerous and cannot be fully understood by the user is not "soft" because it lacks rules; it may have rules, it's just one of those rules is that it is unpredictable, potentially dangerous and cannot be fully understood.
I'm not sure if I'm expressing my position clearly enough.
@@arcanefeline assuming I understand you, I think I'd agree. The term soft magic has suffered a lot of the same as the sensing aspect of mbti personality testing (yes I'm aware of it's problems). Meant to describe something neutral but the majority of the audience has a preference and so gradually it becomes more negative. If I want to communicate quickly I'll still use the term, and hope people don't assume I'm being rude or dismissive, but I can understand the aversion since those are very real risks.
@@ryuwaizu9087I mean soft magic might be the right term, generally I think the idea of “hard” magic has stripped all actual magic and wonder from fantasy. Magic is at its best in story telling when it isn’t an arcane formula but rather a cosmic vibe you attune to through a born innate bond or attuning though self discipline, and when magic doesn’t always do what the caster wants it to. It means it cannot be relied upon, and it means that technology has a place, real technology and not magic fueled tech.
yess I love this. one example in a fantasy book series I like (six of crows) is a naturally gifted gunsman who finds out he's using metal magic to slightly bend bullet trajectory. only slightly though,. Guns are effective as a whole because magic requires concentration and energy, and mages are convincted a lot
oh yo Part 3 mention, shows what I get when I comment before watching all the way lol
The villain in a story I'm writing actively suppresses knowledge about black powder to keep his level of power unquestioned. Firearms are so cool in fantasy I love whenever I see them included.
On the flip side I also have a battle when one mage shot flames precisely at each riflemans pouch of black powder and obliterated them. There is so much potential either way it's really only limited by your creativity
Completely agreed, and to a point I make in the video itself ideas like this always lead to new and unique viewpoints I would've never thought of myself personally. But the idea of someone shooting somone's bullet pouch with fire magic, utilizing the spell "heat metal" on the bullets on a bandolier to make them go off and shoot the wearer is something I honestly hadn't considered. This is why tech + magic = fun, there really is a limitless number of possibilities!
I like the idea that guns are non magic users answer to magic. Like mages have a superiority complex and can be opressive and so some peasants or knights create guns to even the odds. We need more games to take advantage of these ideas.
Hard agree c: it’s why I speak fantasy gun prop- I mean. The fine gospel of gunpowder 💥
That's actually the origin of firearms in my fantasy setting. Back in the day, Mages would typically get a big head because they could shoot lightning bolts and most other people couldn't (Being a Mage in this world is an inborn ability, not a learned skill. You either can do it or you can't.)
So to even the playing field, the finest mundane minds banded together to make a weapon of science to fight back. So they invented guns, something that struck quickly enough and hard enough that most Mages couldn't conjure a barrier in time to block it before they had a new breathing hole in their forehead. If they even knew how.
This started a sort of 'arms race' between Mages and regular folk. The normals would make a new gun to kill Mages, the Mages would develop new spells to respond to that gun. So on and so forth.
One day there was a great mage,
Peerless in skill, endless in age
He lorded over the lands as he willed,
And those who opposed him were all killed
For the mage had a great and powerful staff
That turned armies into frogs with a laugh,
Turning fields into wheat, and wheat into chaff,
Raining fire and storms onto cities with a few words,
Flying high above all like a predatory bird.
Until one day a humble blacksmith stood up:
"Evil mage, we have had enough!"
The mage was amused, and he scoffed:
"What will you do? You have no magic to speak of!"
The blacksmith smiled, "That once was true"
"But now I have a staff just like you!"
"Oh? Then let us fight!" the proud mage replied,
"You will not be the first fool who has tried!"
They stood apart in a field, where the onlookers cried:
"Blacksmith, blacksmith! You will surely die!"
The mage rose in the air while chanting his spells
His staff glowed, and the people bid their farewells
To the foolish blacksmith, so small before such a great mage.
Yet the blacksmith was calm, and did not disengage.
Instead, he stepped forth with his staff,
compared to the mage, its size was only half.
Ugly and simple, made of wood and iron,
He raised it up, aiming higher and higher,
Til the staff was squarely pointed at the mage.
The blacksmith then lit a burning wick,
touching it upon his staff with a quick flick.
There was a great and thunderous roar,
Fire and smoke shot forth from the staff's bore,
in that instant before another spell could be said,
The mage fell silent, for he was dead.
The onlookers were stunned and amazed;
From the staff they could not avert their gaze,
for a simple iron staff had just ended a great mage!
The blacksmith only laughed and roared:
"I guess my magic was better than yours!"
-Ode to the Blacksmith's Handgonne
(Just a little poem thing I cooked up lol :P)
To my mind, a good rule would be to emphasise the *utility* of magic. Guns might be the equivalent of some spells, but they are also single-purpose. If you don't need to kill someone, you're out of luck.
Magic, meanwhile, can do so many things beyond killing. Obviously this will depend on the setting, but you have things like healing, augmenting, enchantment, transmutation, illusion, conjuration etc.
In warfare, even if we assume that a gun is better/more efficient than spells, think about all the things mages can potentially do:
- Creating illusions as diversions, to enhance or diminish their numbers, to hide casualties.
- Making themselves (or others) invisible for scouting missions
- Giving themselves (or others) flight/levitation to overcome walls or to better target enemies with arrows.
- Healing wounded soldiers.
- Scrying on the enemy.
- Summoning creatures as scouts, attackers, diversions etc.
- Teleporting troops for either quick movement or to bypass fortifications during an attack.
etc.
I'm just naming a few here and (again) this will obviously be setting-dependant to some extent. The point is, though, mages have the potential to turn the tide of battle *without ever using a single offensive spell*.
I'm working on a writing project that's a fantasy world that developed with very minimal magic up until the modern day, then had Magic introduced at that point in a very specific way. From there, magic starts intermingling with the science they use and develops into what amounts to a Magitech Scifi setting with Corporations run by demons that leases the magic of the dead gods to people for contracts of service.
I've been working on who mostly gets access to Magitech/Magical guns in a world like that.
Ever since I realized muskets were an optional weapon in the 2014 5e DMG, I will allow firearms in my campaign provided it's appropriate for the setting.
Guns were around before the industrial revolution, so you can have guns without all the steam-powered machines and still have an entire historical period to get inspired from. 1400s - 1600s
i really love the idea of the "great equalicer" because thats what guns did in the past, a nobody can destroy a noble knight in full armor and horse that cost more than all your leneage has made... so now, "we are all the same"
Dude I didn’t realize you could use polymorph to prime power word kill; that’s a villain right there
It’s true villain work, then you can raise em as a zombie for the rest of eternity and make em wash your toilets 💀
Magic is diabolical.
I always liked the idea of a setting where an oppressed nation invents firearms and the authoritarian mages next door find out the hard way how unsustainable a war would be. Imagine how much training it takes to cast even basic cantrips. Training a wizard takes years of very involved study whereas in 6 months you could train an entire village of commoners to be a significant threat to a mage.
Every single time I see people complain about it not being bread and butter bow fantasy, I get a little frustrated. Its why I loved Arcane, it didn't favor magic OR technology, it went with both. Guns that shoot magic are just as terrifying as the normal guns and they can exist together with just a little creativity. It can also fit like how Percy can stand next to characters like Keyleth and Vex does. I think it mostly comes loudest from the D&D community, because people get lazy and just play Clint Eastwood next to Legolas. Its different from Percy next to Vex, it just needs some care with theming and writing to make it work
I honestly have so much to say on this topic because I've been facsinated with it all my life.
I had the idea, as a kid, of a story where mages oppressed people and they invented guns to revolt against them, basically the city concept you told in your video, and it stuck with me throughout highschool.
During the longest dnd campaign I was in, I got to play a fighter who used guns from the DMG and he was so powerful. He's still my favorite character I've ever played.
I realized that descent into avernus basically had cars so I began brainstorming a story where people got mass teleported to avernus so they reverse engineered infernal warmachines and industrialized into a subfaction of gunslinging, cowboy demon hunters trapped in hell.
Anytime I find a fantasy setting that has firearms that aren't just flintlocks, it becomes one of my favorite things of all time like Warhammer 40k, or bloodborne (even though a lot of the firearms there are flintlocks and their more just darksouls shields you can only use to parry)
I'm currently keeping my eye on a fantasy first person shooter called witchfire where you play as a 1700s witchhunter that uses guns and they're basically world war era instead of flintlocks.
I need my magical emotional support anti-material rifle at all times
tech in fantasy is great, people tend to forget that as tech progresses you can bet your ass magic will too. If mages start dying from air to ground missiles, they're sure as hell coming up with a spell to counter it.
I've always wondered. Do people from let's say North America love "Medieval Stasis Fantasy" more, because their countries didn't exist in that era? And this isn't supposed to be mean, I really do think about that, and I'm curious. Because as an European, I am sometimes fed up with "Not any specific european medieval period - world.exe", simply because of all the history that is written in my country's culture. No matter where I go, I will find a castle, I will find a museum full of plate armors, swords and warhammers. I will hear stories of honorable knights, and tales of brutal war, mixed, with legends about dragons and forest witches. So for me, and most of my friends, our nerdy souls always went towards the grand American Wild West, the Golden Age of Piracy, and the British antics across the seas. We wanted worlds full of muskets going against demons, steam trains going through fae forests, or Napoleonic era infantry fighting mages, etc. Maybe there is no connection between these things, but it is something, that occupies my mind often.
You had me at guns
While i agree with you in everything you said, i would also love to add something:
I am a big fan of how warhammer approaches magic in their lore, as something very poweful, but also a high risk, since using strong magic can lead to dire consequences, up to and including ripping open a doorway to the chaos, summoning demons who are really motivated to find out what you look like without skin.
I think that is a pretty good way to "balance" magic in your world, and can explain why powerful mages do not just rule the world.
Lovely video! Minor ramble but, I'm actually nearing the end of my first draft of my debut novel; a dark portal fantasy. The premise's protagonist is a bereaved chemistry professor who died fighting in the war to avenge her family, and is reborn to a world of swords and sorcery where she vows to protect her new home - only to unleash the same industrial echoes of war that ravaged her past.
I wanted to write a story that 'corrected' most of my gripes with all the portal fantasy/isekai stories I've taken in, and especially the ones that "bring the conveniences from our world to the next" as if we really know any better. It's been an absolute joy to write because I can finally use all that 'useless' knowledge sitting in the back of my head, as I research even more. I even get to use my art skills to make the cover and insert artworks, and use a few of my friends' TTRPG characters that fit! Tackling themes of whether the ends justify the means, the inherent evil of heroism, and the nuance complexities of war. The setting starts off as a moderately downtrodden tolkien-esque fantasy world that's ripe for change, but dips into entropy as the protagonist tries to correct her mistakes that inadvertently triggered a countdown to mortal-made armageddon.
There, a distant asian-inspired faction facing off the central continent's demon-kin were forced to use primitive firearms and rocketry to keep what few lands they had left. They tried to cross the oceans to get help (from the euro-centric archipelago the protagonist is reborn into) but have been sunk in their attempts for over two centuries, as the entire island nation of dwarves waged war on them to prevent the spread of firearms which they deemed an offense to the gods. The gods actually don't care and are just betting on what the protagonist ends up achieving. The dwarves still however, use massive torsion-based weapons and crossbows, and have their own inquisitions that stamp out blackpowder research on the archipelago. Elves are largely lost, as they once subjugated all the other races but lost their home to the demon-kin when the gods had enough of their hubris. The protagonist starts out as a peasant, believing she can get by with economic might alone, but she later ends up building a single revolver-carbine-conversion kit for personal defense. Mistakes happen, and the firearms as a concept is proven and spread rapidly on the mainland albeit at poor quality.
She sees the effects of the arms race first hand and suffers the costs of her naivete as her motorized repeating crossbow militia are almost outmatched by a well-prepared napoleonic-styled force. Her false belief that power is the only thing that can protect her and those she cares about is bolstered; her paranoia fuels her attempts at making everything a logistical delight for herself, yet nearly impossible to reverse-engineer elsewhere as only she holds the knowledge of modern chemistry. Everything she designs is standardized, and production methods such as blast furnaces and nitrate production become state secrets. Over many decades, she earns her way into a kind of power-fantasy which culminates in a massive war between variously industrialized factions against resistances and the caste-based magocratic realm of the demon-kin, who later desperately begin threats of sacrificing thousands to produce massive mana-bombs. She even offers basic weapons and crude black powder paper cartridges to her allies, while she uses smokeless brass cartridge repeaters.
I'm lucky enough to have written her to pursue two identities, one as a pioneer-leader responsible for guiding her faction's development and politics, and the other as an investigator-officer that is obsessed with making sure frontline activities succeed even if she has to do them herself. Magic is still magic, but is gradually overpowered by rapid and haphazard industrialization. Technology eventually reduces magic to mostly healthy non-combat roles. Not even the ancient dragons, primordial beasts, or strongest demigods there can withstand a big enough missile.
Human ingenuity when it comes to killing is a horror beyond comprehension in of itself.
She eventually grapples with the consequences of her actions and even the stress that's taken a toll on her memory and well-being, as we gradually humanize her once again. The climax is surrounded by action-packed scenes, but ultimately is resolved by her choosing to take the greatest peaceful steps in breaking (or mitigating) the cascading cycles of violence that has plagued that fantastic world long enough. She fakes nuclear weapons and takes the first unilateral step in preventing proliferation and stopping WMD's from holding their world hostage.
This sounds like a really lovely book and concept, what's the title so I can be on the lookout for it?👀
@@ZagreusWintersI'm glad you enjoyed the idea! I've actually poured the past 9 months into this IP called "Redoubt: Killing Intent" and developed my writing skill much further than I used to have with short stories and poetry. I've only DM'd a tabletop for a oneshot with my friends (props to you for hitting an actual 10,000 hours) and I did my best. That, and all the other adventures we had surely helped shape Redoubt. My initial goal was simply a compelling narrative that leads to a huge industry vs fantasy war, but I ended up making a fast-paced yet endearingly emotional character-driven story filled with more despair and hope. The half-elf protagonist is, really just a person trying to cope.
Here's the blurb on the back of the cover!
"A chemistry professor suffering the loss of her family, dies fighting in a bitter war to avenge them.
Now reborn as Forlasita, a half-elf with zero magical talent, she builds the connections and skills necessary to protect all she's grown to love in the tumultuous realm of Mondo. She and her allies construct a technological haven through borrowed knowledge, yet her well-intentioned mistakes trigger a countdown to industrial Armageddon. Those she saves urge her to do more, while those she fails can only haunt her into excellence under a sinking heart of darkness.
Failures scar her body and soul - she now seeks ways to turn her brutalist bastion into a beacon of hope, before it becomes a pyre for her dreams."
I'm always looking for beta or advanced readers as I'm trying to get this out soon without losing the quality, to share a piece of work that I think a lot of people could enjoy just as much as I've loved writing it! Here's where I'm regularly posting rough chapters online to hopefully get any critique and engagement:
www.royalroad.com/fiction/98839/redoubt-killing-intent
Also: "why I love guns in real life"
Keep it up! Your vibe is fantastic!
I appreciate that man c:
Interesting, but I feel like much of your argument is flawed. In the real world, we never had magic, so we had to invent technology. In fantasy media, if magic is too hard to learn, and there are too few mages in the world (as is supposedly the assumption in many published D&D settings), then it makes sense that technology would evolve (assuming medieval stasis isn't in play). Take the Shadow and Bone example. Grisha are incredibly powerful (at least typically), but they are incredibly few. To fight effectively, it makes sense that they would go from bows and crossbows to pistols and single shot rifles. The fact that these tools were than used to combat Grisha is besides the point. Eberron is the other end of that spectrum where magic is incredibly easy to learn leading to a world where everyone has access to even simple cantrips (mage hand, firebolt, etc). Which leads to the question, in a world where every school child could be taught the firebolt cantrip, why would anyone need to spend time making guns??? Why would you create mechanical technology when simple spells are easier to learn and do the same thing if not more?
It is also worth mentioning that while technology is often described as tools used to overcome oppression, that is a clichee in the settings with little magic that is hard to come by. And for that matter, the real world teaches us just how dystopian and oppressive technology can be. Technology = Tools, Tools are neither oppressive nor liberating. It's all about how said tool is used and by whom.
Lastly, I want to touch on magocracies. Shadow and Bone is another great example of this in that even as powerful as Grisha are and politically powerful because of it, they are outnumbered hundreds or thousands to one. In the TV show (season 1 specifically) you see instances of how they are hunted to the verge of extinction prior to the shadow fold, all because the ordinary folk are suspicious and unwilling to accept those with "mage-like" abilities. People unwilling to be ants in front of Superman. Then hundreds of years later, you see no fewer than three of the most elite Grisha "warriors" (in another episode), all taken down by members of a crew of thieves (who are exceptional in their own right but ordinary thieves nonetheless).
Which is to say, for magocracies to take hold, magic needs to be common enough that a small, but prominent segment of society has magic (typically replacing the nobility class), but hard enough to come (and/or expensive to learn) that everybody else can't. To establish enough people spread out amongst society to control key positions of power. But that adds up to a LOT of people who would be mages. You know hundreds in a city of several thousand, types of percentage. Otherwise, they are powerful, but too few to maintain power. Vecna is near enough to be a god (who could brainwash people with but a stare, and you would never know it), but even he can't single-handedly rule a nation.
It's actually very cool seeing characters that fight using a combination of magic and technologies
Okay... so here's the thing.
The big reason magic changes everything is energy. Energy is the ability to do work. It's the foundation for our food, our transportation, our wars, everything. And because everything requires energy, be it biological or chemical or nuclear or magical, efficiency is what shapes technology. There's a million ways to make something less efficient, but technological evolution favors efficiency. Economies favor efficiency, capitalist or communist. People rarely understand energy. This is often why when physicists get their hands on magic, they understand the real world implications. If it takes less energy to summon water than the energy you get turning a mill, then a decanter of endless water is an industrial revolution. So when you have guns and magic, you have to ask which is more energy efficient? Guns backload most of the energy required. The chemistry / alchemy that made the powder. The forging of the mechanism. Loading the weapon. It culminates in pulling the trigger. That's a huge expense of energy for one intense effect, almost like a ritual. But if I can say a word and duplicate the same effect as that expenditure of energy? If that's all the energy it takes on my part? Hands down magic wins. It becomes nonsensical to have firearms and all they require to make and operate when compared to the efficiency operated by magic.
This doesn't just stop at guns. Why would there be ANY medical advancement if cure wounds and cure disease exist? The energy expended to learn and assist magical healing is far less efficient than a god zapping magical ability into your hands. A sending spell is more efficient than developing the infrastructure to make telephones. And without certain stepping stones, you never advance past that point. No enlightenment? Forget chemistry. No chemistry? Forget germ and atomic theory.
Thats what i like so much about brandon sanderson, whose unspoken “motto” is magic is just science which is not understood
Whenever I see people talk about guns in fantasy, what I most often see is idiots gleefully talking about how they'd mow down wizards, warriors, and monsters with ease. And in that I think the best use of guns in fantasy becomes self evident: As a cautionary tale about shortcuts to power, and about people who want to tear others down rather than build themselves up.
I think one thing that must be noted about Anna Ripley's story is that magic in DnD is fundamentally NOT exclusive to a certain caste of people. Sorcerers are born with magic, yes, but every other type of caster class is someone who is making use of an art that anyone can theoretically learn. Wizards understand the rules of reality well enough to manipulate them. Warlocks have made a pact with a powerful being who grants them knowledge and power. Clerics are granted power in service of a deity. Druids gain it through their connection with nature. And paladins gain power through the strength of their convictions. These are all things anyone can do if they have the opportunity and the will.
And I think the important thing about all of these is that learning any of these disciplines is transformative to the person learning them. It requires them to build themselves up, to change into a stronger version of themselves. Guns don't require that. They don't ask anything of the person wielding them, they simply promise destructive power for free. That's why some people obsess over them, and its why those people make me sick.
To so many people, guns are seen as the ultimate way to circumvent personal growth. That guy is stronger than me? Doesn't matter, I have a gun. That guy's smarter than me? Doesn't matter, I have a gun. Everyone hates me because I solve all my problems with murder? Doesn't matter, I have a gun.
But it does matter, because the inability of people to defy you doesn't make you right. And that's where the inevitable downfall of anyone who thinks having a gun makes them king comes. Because in a fantasy world like DnD, guns aren't actually that big of a deal.
Sure, its lethal enough to a regular person. But the barbarian who can tank a fall from orbit isn't going to be impressed by your pistol. The wizard who can call down a meteor storm doesn't care that you can fling little balls of lead. The paladin who has 25 ac and can critsmite to hit harder than a cannon isn't going to be intimidated by you waving a gun around. You have a machine gun? We have a dragon.
Someone like Percy can stand up to forces like that, but its not because he has a gun. It's because of his intelligence, resourcefulness, and determination. Those are what allowed him to invent such a weapon in the first place and those are his true strengths, and having a gun doesn't make you his equal any more than wearing a pointy hat makes you a wizard. And most importantly, he can apply those strengths to virtually anything he sets his mind to, not just violence.
Guns aren't a great equalizer. At the very best, they are a great equalizer in the field of violence and only violence, and even then, they're not really that, ESPECIALLY not in a fantasy world. Ripley could have done something like try to make knowledge of magic more accessible so that its usage wouldn't be restricted to just a few people who could abuse that power. But that would have been a constructive thing to do, a way to help people build themselves up, and she didn't want that. She just wanted to tear things down.
I think the problem is that you assume that (pro-gun talkers) somehow care about things like virtue or self-improvement: in Real Politik, guns are precisely the instrument of oppression, the gateway to the monopoly of violence. Like the kings and his Knights.
And one can argue that guns in the real world have served to bring about a more just order but it is only in perspective because in the end guns became the new tool of control.
It's not a matter of virtue, it's a matter of ego (because, except for the idealists, it's not about making the world a better place, it's about being YOU who holds the biggest stick) and simple politics because historically no one has listened to anyone without power to back themselves up. Today having nuclear weapons, for example, gives you a pass to commit unspeakable crimes.
It would be great a fantasy world where guns are not the answer to positive change but the very philosophy behind magical learning.
Often in fantasy you see this whole struggle of “good” versus “evil” where the “good guys” win, not because they have the better arguments, but because they can exercise greater violence.
Sure, some of that is probably necessary, but the stories tend to end there, which makes me go, “Ok, fine, you killed the bad guy, you won the war, let's ‘celebrate,’ but why do we celebrate? What do we change? How do we build a better country?”
Firearms (for these people who speak in favor of them) are not just a tool, they are an argument in themselves. It doesn't matter that you're not right if you're the last one standing, because “truth” was never the reason you decided to use violence in the first place.
@@kelasgre2830
It is an unfortunate truth of this world that all laws are based on the projection of force. For example your wallet is yours untill someone catches you unawares with a knife and demands all your stuff.
If we assume that every human posesses some intrinsic rights it is a logical conclusion that a person should have a right to defend their rights. In today’s context it means having access to fire arms. To do otherwise is to say that for example : you and also people stronger than you (this includes the government) have the right to dictate what you may do with your body.
Finally the widespread adoption of firearms was helpful to the growth of democracies - it allowed common people to fight off the martial elites (knights etc.) , and effectively democratised power.
Stripping people of their right to bear arms is oftentimes a prelude to oppression. It’s much easier to govern a populace who have severely impaired means of fighting back.
@@zoro115-s6b This is why ive always loved bows more than any other ranged weapon. A skilled person can make a bow and arrows with materials gathered in the wild or fringes of society. Its a weapon that requires patience, determination and skill to use. There is no shortcut to being a good archer. No special sights or optics, no special ammunition. Your body is barrel, trigger and firing mechanism, the bow is just the powder.
An Archer is a weapon, he has to be.
And a skilled survivalist is never without means to arm himself.
That being said, im very biased because almost all my characters are some sort of Ranger/Hunter/Vagabond.
@@ibexhunter5624 the virgin no-skill gun lunatic who thinks they are skilled or tough for knowing how to pull a trigger vs the chad ranger with a longbow and magical beast companion who has trained for decades
I like how it is in futuristic settings sometimes, where it just does chip damage and the cooler weapons like swords or whatnot are even more powerful. This is basically how it works in Metal Gear Rising
Woohoo! Vox Machina and Arcane in the same video!!!
Its a thing I'm doing in my own fantasy setting I'm making too.
Its inspired by the Mughal period of India, a period where you had musket formations and cannon warfare next to sword and board battles, hell, it practically introduced it in a widescale angle to it. In my detting, Magic is a seperate field entirely and one that while some people know how to use and harness and its costs, they don't actually know how it works or what makes it tick. And since not everyone can be a mage (tho there are cheats to it), magic is more of a speciality and its own class of people. Firearms are the complete opposite, and though their supply is handled by the authorities with thr most resources available, its nevertheless a valuable asset for wars and in a adventure party, can be a powerful tool when used at the right moment (right next to bombs).
This is a banger idea!
One cool idea I read in some TH-cam comment (that is from some book, IIRC), is that firearms are susceptible to... fire. Well, the gunpowder is. And in a world with mages that love nothing more than playing with fire... gunpowder becomes a very double-edged sword.
Also, depending on the state of tech, conjured rain can make firearms tricky to use.
It's interesting food for thought to consider how firearms were perceived, used, and developed in a setting. Did some conjured fire elementals quickly destroyed the secret new weapon a nation introduced? It might have fallen out of favour for wide scale warfare afterwards, deemed too risky. Or were special wards and tactics developed to counter this?
From my experience, there's two kinds of fantasy worlds: ones where magic is a learnable skill and functionality accessible to anyone and worlds where magical ability is a specific thing that only certain people are born with.
The latter is much more likely to develop technology such as firearms. After all, why go through the complex feat of engineering to develop a gun when it only takes a few years to teach someone how to throw a fireball?
I would strongly disagree about your last point with Jinx. The Council/Piltover did not take everything away from her. Her parents yes, but Vander and her siblings were on Silco and Sevika. Even Vi, since Marcus was in Silco's pocket. And the second time Vi was taken from her, it was by Ekko, another Zaunite.
As much as the Zaunites like to shit on Piltover, 9/10 times, they are the ones screwing each other over (at least until Jinx blows up the Council). The Council is not flooding Zaun with Shimmer, and the Chem Barons are the ones oppressing most of Zaun while the Enforcers rarely go there (more noticeable in the rest of the Zaun lore in League, such as with Zeri, Zac or Urgot). And Viktor was a Zaunite who committed genocide with staggering a death toll that makes the worst of "dictator" Caitlyn look like a toddler in a sandbox.
8:48 "Guns has only one purpose, to game-end the other person...magic can create wonders...and atrocities"
Bruh is really comparing a weapon to a concept
It's like saying "Necrotic blast can only be used to game-end the other person, but technology can be used for both good and bad!"
I have a huge headache from watching youtube for hours in the middle of the night but I have to keep at it. I think this video solved a big problem I have had with my worldbuilding and by extension the plot of my story. It also got me thinking, as I really like casual magic in high fantasy settings, could magic vs guns be flipped? As in, guns as a more new and powerful technology is a new luxary that the corrupt rich use to keep the "unruly" poor in check and magic then gets learned to get used as means for rebellion.
The only thing that bothers me is the final battle against the noxian army, like YOU REALLY DON'T YOU HAVE ANY MACHINE GUN? THE CITY OF PROGRESS DIDN'T HAVE ANY MASSIVE BALLISTIC?
People often forget guns existed in historical medieval settings
1:32 _"... with the comeuppance of firearms in a given world."_ "Comeuppance" means "punishment". Perhaps you meant "rise", "advent", or "emergence"?
I have an obsession with setting my various worlds in the 18th century. The dawn of the Enlightenment and prelude to the industrial revolution. Where things are so advanced to be global, but classic weapons have yet to go the way of bygones. The presence of guns are an example of that.
If you were to drop out of the sky and ask me for a year to base your setting on, 100% of the time it would begin with that 1-7
We have guns in our D&D setting, we refer to revolvers as “clockwork wands”.
Oh yeah. This is one of my personal favourites.
I'm used to hearing about those concepts but with slightly different names. "Magi-o-cracy" sounds strange to my ear because people usually speak of "magocracy" with no "i". Similarly with spellpunk, people usually call it manapunk, but that one is more understandable since "mana" is a little more culturally specific so "spellpunk" is more universal.
"FM Boylar Ornate" in the thumbnail?
This video BETTER mention Dishonored.
MISSED OPPORTUNITY! NOOOOO
@ZagreusWinters oh well....
What's done is done, the rest is Void.
I'm sure you're still invited for whiskey and cigars
Guns aren't terribly unbalancing. Bombs, however, are. Or rather, bombs and lax encumbrance rules and/or bags of holding. Often, players resort to just using gold as solutions to problems, whether it is huge amounts of flasks of oil or gunpowder. Which is fine, I suppose, but if a massive logistics support is the way to deal with a problem, you may as well use armies instead of adventurers.
I like guns in general at least outside of bad people using them
Gunswords are a thing that thinged. ‘Nuff said.
@@thetwelfth9987 Gunblades are sick!
In the show Shadow and Bone, there is a military officer who explains how the mages of the world slowly became less valuable as gun technology advanced. It was one of the most interesting lines in the show.
I don't really like percy's attitude towards his own creation. For one thing, the kinds of guns he uses are like the repeating crossbows contemporary to his time. So why would he make such a big deal about it? Another issue is that there is genuinely an argument for giving people the ability to defend themselves from the magical threats that can literally sprout up out of nothing.
Yeah that's why I actually agree with Anna Ripley, the world they live in is unjust in that way. On one end less violence = good, on another. Why should only 1 group be allowed to commit violence on another with no recourse for fighting back? This is basically percy & ripley, and they're both right but moreso ripley within the context of the violent magic that exists in exandria.
"God created men. Colonel Colt made them equal."
The democratization of violence that firearms brought about did much to shake up the existing hierarchies of our own world. Certainly would expect them to do much the same in a fantasy setting dominated by magic.
I like to imagine in every fantasy universe with gun's there's an Ian McCollum.
Don't the military from Warhammer 40K fulfill the "big guy in sword armor wielding gun" aesthetic?
Considering how they can wield both melee and ranged weapons, and in a universe that mixes scifi and fantasy, at least to my view.
I'm getting into 6e Shadowrun. I love ttrpgs, and I'm a man of Christian background, so I've always tried to transmit themes of hope, righteousness, and being better than you were in the past in my games. I homebrewed an entire setting with fallen angels, Giants, mortals ascending to godhood and becoming stewards of the earth.
I've played DND, Cyberpunk Red, and Vampire the Masquerade. I've even been working on my own Science-Fantasy IP, an animated series. Now, I've been working on Shadowrun and running 6e Shadowrun as a system.
Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar have guns as powerful tools for people who can't use magic. As vital as crossbows, etc.
But the some civilizations create magic tech like a magic laser cannon.
What's even better than just mages vs guns is mages with magical guns. That's what makes the world of Tanya the Evil so cool, how magic turns firearm based warfare up to 11.
Some of the commenters here have never seen how the other side of the pond does this and it shows because lmao. Also greetings fellow Tanya enjoyer.
I love the way Jobless Reincarnation handled Magic Vs Physical Strikers. Those who train to become a warrior have their muscles and skeleton infused with magic simply by training to achieve inhuman feats. A mage can cast down a meteor swarm but a warrior of equal level would cut the meteor in half while swinging around for the mage’s eyes to shut down their target spells. In dnd the disparity between mages and martials can be as wide as an ocean at times with the best versions of martials having some sort of supernatural enhancement (ki, rune magic, Eldritch knight, paladin) so if you want to achieve power in dnd you will always need some form of magic to achieve it. Monks are the greatest example of deviating from this but even they just use an agecent magic system with its own “spells”
This is why I created my Battle Arts system! To give those martial characters the lore that they can stand against mages! Even mechanically this is how that functions, allowing for martial characters to channel rudimentary forms of magic into their most basic battle styles.
@@ZagreusWinters a fine addiction to my homebrew collection
In my fantasy setting, which is not medieval but Renaissance and age of piracy -age, I have guns, but flint locks, not your typical ones. Firing them does a lot of damage and ignores armor, but the trade-off is that they can only be fired once. What makes other melee weapons and bow and arrows as relevant as they were during the age of early fire arms.
What if everyone in my setting can use magic (referring to a book world)? How would they fit then?
Those less skilled would use technology to catch up to those ultra talented. Because in a world where everyone can use magic, you'd have the insanely gifted. Just like in real life, we both can run, but we're no Usain Bolt. But we can hop on a motorcycle and out speed him right?
@@ZagreusWinters Very true, thanks for the help
i usually call it magepunk so i was confused for a second
also what is a cannon if not an enlarged gun
Usually in my worlds magic is obtainable by everyone, sou i don't see, why people would have urge to invent guns. Eldritch Blast, are basically guns, Fire ball is a grenade and magic missals are just that missals
I loved the video but since you showed the hemolergy and allomancy tables I was waiting the whole time to talk about mistborn which does this the best I’ve seen
Yeah! It’s really unfortunate because if I had the video would’ve been 1.5x or 2x the current length.
As usual when discussing this topic, I must mention Anbennar, which currently is a mod for the game EU4. It shows a really interesting perspective of how technology and magic would interact in a fantasy world. Some groups despise mages, some use them for their power, some find a balance between magic and technology.
One fantasy trope I really like is the witch hunter, heck in my own story plans I've scaled it up to the point of being an entire cult/terrorist like organization of people who hate magic. The issue is this trope has an inherent underdog element to it, and underdog's don't tend to make good villains. So how do you take clearly non magical people and make them a threat to clearly magical people, particularly a reoccurring threat?
If only there's a well understood item that represents a massive change in power dynamics through both a narrative and practical lens. An item so powerful it's mere existence could change history. An item that's known for being simultaneously powerful enough to lay low great warriors yet simple enough for a common man to use.
Goated video
Thanks! I really appreciate that!
I do think there are a lot of ways to integrate firearms into fantasy to have it feel in place. Having watched a lot of anime, I can also say that it can be done very poorly and just feel like a power trip and edgy.
I would say my favourite idea is that guns that use magic as a technology in how they would work in setting. Or, in general an idea of guns being like a magic. For the later, I am thinking like the limitations of a flintlock, where reloading well is going to require an almost ritualistic methodology, along with needs for maintenance and likely an element of alchemy.
I am particularly fond of an example of AC Black Flag, where you have swordplay, but also firearms that take long enough to reload that the effective technique is having an extra few firearms to switch over to before having the time to start reloading them. I di think it is the most interesting idea that could have firearms feel at place of people casting magic. There is ways to not feel industrial.
My own thing that I am working is a mid to late 20th century thing where magic is inherent. So the weapon like a gun would require magic 95% of people can do easily to operate, but use magic instead of gunpowder that a much smaller % could do inherently.
technology is magic and science
I play _WoW,_ _Pathfinder,_ and _Starfinder,_ was impressed with _The Legend of Vox Machina_ once it got its footing despite not being much of a podcast person, and love urban fantasy and other subgenres that flip the bird to "medieval tech stasis" tropes. As such: "fantasy gun control" can go kick rocks as far as I'm concerned.
The most advanced science uses the fundamental forces of the universe to function. A world where people have access to magic would have people try to channel it through inventions.
@@commonviewer2488 it has a name: magi-tech
As separate as folks view things I also realised something about magic and technology. I'd wager we think of them as separate things because of the romanticism which rose in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. But any technician, or heck today, any IT worker will tell you that while we might believe we understand our technology quiet often there are anomalies and behaviours we just can't explain around them. Things that shouldn't work, work, and things that should, don't. There may be a magic to technology that people of our modernist era are blind to. That could be an interesting subject to explore in and of itself.
I think you're on to something, people tend to overlook the unseen connection between magic and our modern world.
I work on some stories mixing modern settings with magic and fantasy. Some people use magic bullets or use glyphs to give bullets effects or increase damage. Cannons and bombs are powered by glyphs or unstable magic crystals. Alternate fuel sources for cars would be magic potions or crystals. Traveling to different realms like Alfheim or different planets are made easier with developments of spacial, portal, and dimensional magic and either having magic users on board or having dwarves and dark elves make machines that harness magic power
It's all fun an games until the wizard pulls a gun as well.
Wizard with a gun? Sign me up dude!
It's fair enough to prefer fantasy without firearms, but anyone who says firearms can't be in fantasy is simply dumb.
Unlike what you claim technology isn't and was never "fully understood" we understand many principles of nature in order to make devices to exploit these to the best of our abilities but all the time things happen that we did not expect ahead of time. For example, out of all the thermonuclear bombs tested during operation Castle only one had the predicted yield, all others were vastly underestimated in their destructive potential because materials act very differently under the insane conditions present during a nuclear detonation. Magic and technology in a fantasy world should ideally mix together and I'd give the use of magic AS PART OF technology the same treatment as nuclear engineering, incredible potential, high risk, unpredictable results.
The story I’m writing has modern technology co-exist alongside fantastical magic. However this isn’t right off the bat. How this happens is kind of by accident when a Nordic warrior and a High Elf mage travel into a post-apocalyptic modern world with the intent of chasing down an evil necromancer who is capable of raising undead.
The story itself actually first introduces a trio that wield modern weapons. A former Army Ranger who became a vigilante due to a personal tragedy, a female FBI Agent who goes rogue after being disillusioned by corrupt bureaucracy of the law, and a young teenage boy computer hacker who is adept with almost everything centered around technology. The three go into a village that was supposedly abandoned however they are soon attacked by zombified villagers who they assume to be under some kind of hard drugs. Little do they know that they actually are living dead being controlled by the necromancer to attack anything that is still living.
Eventually the Army Ranger, FBI Agent, and Computer Hacker meet the Nordic warrior and High Elf mage and join forces due to sharing the same goal. Eventually they bond over learning each other’s tech and magic with the Nord warrior soon learning how to use modern grenades and actually makes use of them thanks to the teaching of the Army Ranger. Eventually they are joined by a thief thus completing two versions of the warrior, mage, and thief triumvirate with both a modern version and a fantastical version. The modern version of the warrior mage and thief is essentially soldier, sapper, and sniper.
I think part of the problem some people (including myself) have with guns in fantasy, is it very quickly becomes implausible for people to fight with almost anything else. Once the majority of the population has access to even flintlock weaponry, that guy with the sword and armour over there is dead. The armour can't stop the bullet, the wearer can't dodge it and their weapon can't reach the enemy first. It fundamentally changes how I would play and design my fantasy, so in most of my settings I wouldn't put them in, or if they are there, they're very primitive and temperamental.
It's different if you're doing something like renaissance fantasy, but that means creating a world with prevalent use of guns fundamentally alters the aesthetic and feel of that world in a way which isn't always welcome.
While there is room for that, as the rest of the comments section abundantly demonstrates, I personally have reservations about their implementation, at least on a large scale.
And I do know that weapons like pikes and sabres were used on battlefields long after guns became prevalent (though their use increasingly diminished with the arrival of weapons like flintlocks), but that's a battlefield, where things are a lot more chaotic and large groups of mounted warriors etc. are a problem that can't always be solved by the power of gun, but most D&D games are about adventurers. If you're dealing with smaller groups of creatures and people, any other weapon will be a secondary weapon to a flintlock or even matchlock. The damage they are capable of is, realistically, unprecedented in terms of other weapons. In most cases, your best plan is to shoot the thing with the gun and if that doesn't work and the creature is fast enough to dodge your bullet or tough enough for it to glance off it's armour, why would you fight it? How is a sword or axe or any other weapon meant to hurt a target a musket can't or hit a target which can dodge gunfire?
In fantasy that’s where the magic of the world would come in. I truly don’t believe bullets will do anything to a brigade of abjuration mages. Nor do I think guns will really do anything after the first volley of flintlock bullets get lobbed at a lich (he casted shield) before he turns everyone into dust.
This is the flaw with this mindset, people get so fixated on how guns change everything. They forget, especially in a fantasy world, people are using magic at a massive scale as well. Then you have to consider, one fireball towards a Calvary of fireman turn them into fireworks since gunpowder explodes.
In a magic world, one with thought behind it. The armor you speak of? Enchanted specifically to be projectile resistant. The boots sword carrying warriors wear? Enchanted with magic that either makes them faster, or allows them to teleport short distances (misty step).
In the example of “bullets bounce off so we don’t fight it.” A dragon can fly about 20-40mph in D&D at least, the average human barely would break 10. They aren’t getting away, and they most certainly don’t survive.
I'm not arguing about the ability of powerful magic compared to guns. The problem is low-level adventurers. When creating, for example, a Fighter starting at level 1 or 3 (using D&D as an example because that's what most people are using) it makes no sense for the fighter to pick anything other than a gun for their weapon. They don't have access to powerful enough magic equipment to out-compete a firearm. That magical plate armour would probably only be available at level 10 and history has shown as that, in spite of the ability of some exceptional armour to stop a musket all or other round of ammunition, they weren't used because they were either too heavy or too expensive or difficult to acquire. The same logic applies here. You have no reason to use mundane medieval weaponry, which so many people, including myself, love in the face of an abundance of flintlock users. Hence, there is no reason for a Fighter, for example, starting out at level 1 or 3 to pick anything other than a gun. Other ranged weapons also rapidly become obsolete. Sure, the longbow has a greater range and rate of fire than flintlocks, but it also takes years of dedication and learning to use properly (in England there was a saying, "If you want to create a great archer, start with his grandfather". A musket or pistol just takes a week or two of training to use properly. The same goes for weapons like swords and is another reason they fell out of fashion. Ultimately, once you reach a flintlock level of firearms technology and, in some cases, even before that and that technology is widely spread, there is no reason for an adventurer who is just starting out to pick up anything but a firearm as a primary weapon. It's easy to carry, easy to use and highly effective, meaning it will out-compete any of the mundane equipment available at lower levels. Once you reach 5th level, then, you won't be interested in that magical plate armour because your entire fighting style is built around keeping distance and not getting hit.
Of course the argument then is, how do you deal with someone in magical plate who wants to close the distance? Well, that question is redundant because this soceity won't create someone who fights like that.
@@ZagreusWinters I appreciate you responding to at least one of the comments pushing back on some of your thesis.
It seems like even in your examples here of how magic would still be viable… that these are pretty big reasons that guns would never be invented.
Also again, guns invalidate all other weapon types 95%+ of the time. So unless you want to play/run a setting that is just magic and guns… they are a slippery slope to introduce to most fantasy settings. Which is why most settings are either just fantasy or sci-fi. The few that inhabit the middle do end up mostly being magic + guns with other weaponry phased back significantly.
The witchcraft of heretics never seems to stand against the night of Sigmars holy light (concealed carried blunderbust)
@@creed8712 A person of the Vermentide I see o7
I think there's two facets to this discussion that people gloss over. What about worlds with more constrained or limited magic? What about worlds with weaker firearms?
In my setting magic is mostly energy transferal over a dozen feet or so without preparation. The firearms that get invented are just seen as the ranged form of magic, they even literally use mana instead of gunpowder.
As well firearms didn't redefine the world because everything else kept up. Enchanting (which people within the setting do not call magic, they see it the same way we see making fancy polymers and rocket fuel) has been able to create clothes and armor that can more than handle a normal firearm. Fortifications still outmatch firearms because mana charges have a size limit before they will just implode so there are no cannon.
In my setting the scariest person in a room is the guy with a halberd because he can surge lightning down it and electrocute you through your armor.
In TTRPGs I prefer not to have them at all unless it’s a combat focused game, and even then, they’ll probably feel weaker than you’d want. They have the same impact as irl (or at least they should be, otherwise what’s the point of having them in your fiction), turning battles terrifying and fights dishonorable. They’re not nuclear bombs, but imagine hearing dozens of thundering sounds and not knowing when you’ll be the next. The character loses all agency, nothing about them matters other than their ability to shoot back or avoid getting shot (guns are easy to use, that’s their advantage).
I see what you're saying! I think it comes down to writing style right? For me when I'm running my D&D games and creating interactive stories I try to make it a point that your character is simply "a guy" an average character who could have a meaningless death in the end, as not all stories end heroically or happily. However, this is to set up the paradigm where you as a player get to progressively earn being important to the world which over a longer period of time, allows for you to feel more connected to said world and events. Because you were at some point just a nobody, someone who could've died to a stray bullet in an early encounter but here we are 6 months later in-cannon timeline and maybe 8-10 months IRL and your character can single handedly take on those same threats that were posed to you. No longer will you die to a gunshot wound, and by this point you would've earned your place as being important to the world stage rather than just having it be handed to you.
And I think loss of character agency to a degree is okay, I think it's important to show that the world is indifferent to your protagonists because by doing that you make their achievements mean more to the story. At least that's my opinion c:
@@ZagreusWinters I default to magi-tech or sci-fi weapons in that kinda game, that way no one would bat an eye at inconsistencies.
“How did three shots not pierce through glass but a blade did?”
(Cough Arcane cough cough)
Real guns should come with real stakes and limits, so I include them in deadly games or games *not* about power fantasy, in which the characters _should_ avoid being at the end of a barrel and don’t mind (or do actually want) their characters dying suddenly. They have agency up to the point triggers are pulled, then stakes go through the roof and the situation becomes a gamble, but what did they do to get here?
But that’s just my opinion. I like separating the two so that assumptions about lethality don’t clash. Though I really feel like most have guns in their stories “just cuz”
@@ZagreusWinters it also depends a lot on the kinda story you’re trying to tell. The protagonists with character arcs and developments can’t just be deleted uneventfully and with no impact lol, their passing must matter somehow. Whether writing a story or on a TTRPG, the presence and nature of guns shouldn’t clash with the story, which is why I always try to include them purposefully
@@claudiaborges8406 It’s just a difference in style and hey to your merit there are some who’d enjoy how I tell stories and others who enjoy the way you do. They both have their pros and cons as to who enjoys which parts of it more.
It all comes down to preferences c;
I think one of the most interesting things about Percy from Critical Role is he understands that guns don't just compete with magic, they're even more dangerous. He has the vision to understand what people with less morals would create. Doubt he could imagine the real world's 21st century, but I get the feeling he could envision trench warfare from the World Wars. Magic is naturally harder for the average person to acquire. Individually a mage is often more dangerous than a guy with a gun. But you can get Andy from down the street to square off against someone who's been at magic school from five years, and since you gave Andy a rifle he's actually got decent chances of winning. Imagine 1000 Andys. Imagine 10,000. Magic just can't do that. The scale of its potential damage is limited.
It's the same logic as crossbows. Smaller scale but same logic. Longbows weren't phased out by crossbows. In fact they were often still had better range and could put more force behind a loosed arrow. So why were crossbows a thing? Because they're easy to use. A longbowman needs to train for YEARS to be a decent shot and to build the strength to consistently fire at a longbow's peak range, and to be able to have a fast fire rate. But someone with a crossbow can do serious damage with it despite only training for like a day. Then you bring in guns, which do more WAY damage, are MUCH better at piercing heavy armour and seriously compete with a longbow's range, and are often even easier to use than the crossbow. A poorly trained army armed with such weapons can completely dominate a battlefield, even if they're outnumbered and fighting veterans, and even if the other side has a few mages, just because of firearms.
If war is easier to wage, more wars will be waged. THAT'S what Percy's done.
Then you find out about Exandria's Age of Arcanum, especially Aeor, where technology and magic in extremely advanced forms were often COMBINED, and you literally have civilisations that can threaten gods. When Percy fears what he has unleashed, and Matt as the DM slowly unravels what pre-Calamity civilisations were capable of, you realise Percy is right to be afraid and right to go to such drastic measures to control what he has created. Even if you the audience sadly understand that horse has already bolted. Percy may have abandoned his quest for vengeance, and bettered himself, but his invention of firearms cannot be undone.
One man's pain will inevitably kill hundreds of thousands in the centuries to come. Even when Percy himself will be long gone.
No mention of full metal alchemist? Wild.
TO BE FAIR! And I'm a huge FMA:B fan, alchemy isn't magic, it's just alchemy c:
@@ZagreusWinters I must have imagined that time Riza Hawkeye shot someone with a gun.
@@ZagreusWinters In general terms, yes it is magic, just a very hard magic system.
00:00 what is on the very far right? it looks awesome
That my friend is a New World Trailer, decent game, fun concept c:
@@ZagreusWinters thank you! i'll check it out
A way to make guns in a setting without industrialization is by having the guns needed to me made by some kind of magic rituals
Guns were around for about 300 years before industrialization so plenty of room for activities.
I like the concept of magic guns, the first time I was exposed to this was in Wildstar (a great underappreciated MMORPG IMO) where their DPS 'mages' were referred to as Spell Slingers and channeled magic through guns. REALLY liked the concept and really like guns in fantasy settings.
R.I.P Wildstar, it was truly ahead of it's time in many ways and just released at a bad time. I think if it released during covid it might've actually caught on.
Fantasy settings with a form of easy to use powerful energy would easily have many try to build guns as the idea of a gun is, I want this object to go fast, how about I make a explosion to move it?
I also feel like that’s a simple concept too you know? The idea of ballistics is very human when you think about it lol
We literally explode ships into orbit. You could also play into a type of acceleration magic, one that magnifies the speed at which an object moves. So now even slingshots can be powerful!
Yet another reason why warhammer fantasy was the best fantasy universe ever
Tbh, I dont believe a fantasy setting should be Spellpunk just to justify the reason for existance of firearms. Firearms in of themselves aren't inherently a high tech idea. For some reason many people think of modern or repeating firearms when they think of guns, when firearms can be as simple and low tech as a Handgonne which predates full-plate armor in our reality. I dont think guns should be synonymous with technology and industrialization in fantasy setting when Handgonnes and even Serpantine Arquebuses are simpler in design than crossbows.