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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
I once read a webnovel where guns do exist in the fantasy world, but mages above a certain rank have a spell that can disable the combustion of gunpowder(In a long radius). While knights above a certain rank are able to dodge, deflect, or tank bullets. There was a plot point where a civil war with the anti mage group(They really hate all mages) discovered a recipe for a gunpowder that effectively ignores the spell and functions more efficiently. If the gunpowder got mass produced to an industrial scale a large number of mages would've been taken out in the war. The mc had to come out of retirement to prevent them from producing more.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
Honestly, if I was given a writing challenge of creating a story featuring firearms in a fantasy setting, I'd probably take the opposite approach to Vox Machina. Make firearms ubiquitous as spears irl and available to everyone from the poorest farmer to the wealthiest king. I'd just make it clear that though they may be useful for popping pests like say a DnD style goblin, they'd be next to useless against a troll's stoney skin. Or a horde of skeletons. In the latter case, the toothless old hedge witch in the village could dispel the lot of them in a minute whereas it would take hundreds of rounds spent to do the same with guns. Swords and armor would endure well past the introduction of firearms, largely because weapon enchantments aren't cost effective when used on bullets. Those applied to a gun don't pass on to the bullet when fired, so they have to be on the bullet itself. But a bullet enchantment is one use only whereas an enchanted sword could see centuries of use for the same cost. And a common enchantment on armor is divert projectile, so a lot of combat is decided in melee.
I have a different idea about part 4. Magic is the freedom for the oppressed. Materialist technocratic dystopias are the oppressors. lol. And then some ancient power that cannot be explained or curtailed by mere technology is reawakened and causes a whole worldwide paradigm shift.
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.
In my opinion fantasy is better WITH guns. Firearms have existed for over 1500 years. That’s one thousand five hundred years. If you don’t have guns and gunpowder in fantasy you are not doing the history you are basing your fantasy world justice.
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.
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.
That is the netflix series Dragon Age: Absolution and it is VERY good, and honestly too short at 6 episodes. The animations and fight scenes are well worth it!
That's exactly why guns aren't a great equaliser though? It's not guns vs magic. It's guns vs magic and guns. That's not an equaliser. Why wouldn't a magician use a gun alongside their magic? Pride? Yeah right. They've now seen what they can do. They see that guns can only supplement their magic. This is the flaw in your thinking that you clearly haven't considered
@ZagreusWinters is there like a Hazy center/Boundary where no one is able to agree where it starts and finishes. Mark Twain isn't the right term because that usually is a clear delineation.
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 would argue, in my opinion, Guns in fantasy works best with the following approach, barrow heavily from Real world 16th century. Flint lock & or match lock firearms, cannon, mortars & so on. the distribution of witch is Controlled by the Dwarven Black-powder guild's. For in my view it makes the most sense for Dwarves to be the inverters of black-powder weapons specifically to better defend their holds against all that would assail them, be it Dragon, goblin invasion & so on.
It's weird how when we think guns we think Industrial Revolution era and onwards, when firearms have instead existed for centuries prior, roughly the 10th century. Most fantasy worlds pull inspiration from anywhere from the 5th century to the 19th and early 20th in the real world. So if firearms have existed for the majority of the same time periods that we pull fantasical inspiration from, why can't they coexist on the basis of "it ruins the vibes/aesthetics"? It's a pretty dumb arguement. Especially when there's so many fascinating ways to include firearms in fantasy settings, from the ways mentioned in the video, to combining guns with magical ammunition or magic enhancements/enchantments, to societies that outlaw/ban public use of magic making up for the firepower gap with guns and cannons. Some of my favorite examples of worlds with magic combining firearms are the likes of the world or Arcane, or Runeterra as a whole where certain regions have magic as commonplace but others outright shun it, and certain anime like Youjo Senki where magic spells enhance firearms and military power. There's so much potential in having both guns and magic in the same world, both from a combative perspective to a worldbuilding and moral/ethical/political perspective. Magic and guns don't always have to coincide of course, many worlds can have magic and not have firearms, but excluding the potential for what guns can bring to a story on the argument of "it ruins the vibe" or not knowing how to combine them effectively is honestly kind of lazy.
Completely agree, I think usually people wish to tap into the cowboy aesthetic and the like. Where guns are developed to their "cool' states, early 1800's era style firearms and stuff like that. I actually think you could make the case that rudimentary guns like flintlock pistols are probably easier to enchant as well. Rather than cylinder-based firearms like revolvers and lever actions due to how much less meaningful ammo is made with how fast it can be expended.
There are only four relationships magic can have with martial, but there is a serious imbalance of which ones get representation in popular media. As you spoke, magic subsumes technology, being something more powerful than the mundane and a symbol of elitism due to utilizing a form of energy unavailable to those of lower class, the most common use of magic in media. The second form is when magic is of the old ways, and technology is the superior form, bringing tomorrow into today, while those who use magic are stuck in the past. And while esoteric in nature, is ineffective in comparison, as is done in Arcane as one of the few actual examples. Game of Thrones falls under this category, and magic only stands a chance by outnumbering the mundane by extreme numbers or relying on subterfuge, with dragons being the sole counter-example yet is still vulnerable to advances in technology. The third is when magic and technology reaches a rough equilibrium, where one may advance and grow dominant, but only for a time until the other side makes its own advances. This is probably the rarest form, as it requires the most work in worldbuilding to make happen, something that most media simply cannot dedicate enough time to doing. But as an RPG series, Star Ocean may be one of the few examples doing this, having space-faring people finding out that magic isn't so weak and ineffective upon reaching the late-game and discovering the heights it can reach. Finally, the last form is quite rare in the west, but I find to be far more common in the east, even if it still isn't as common as the first two. That is, when magic is merely a way to utilize supernatural energies that technology utilizes in other ways. The Nanoha franchise goes deep into this, making magical energies a foundation of everything for civilizations that use it. Midchilda uses magic in the more traditional ways, using high-tech wands to throw fireballs or erect barriers of energy. Belka on the other hand feature a knighthood that uses swords and hammers powered by the same magical energies that can crush concrete like paper, while having more mystical style mages that feel even more traditional than even Midchilda's mages.
There's a HEMA focused TH-camr out there by the name of Skallagrim, who'd look at your take on guns in fantasy, then nod his head and say, "Yep sounds about right to me." He even has two videos arguing for guns being appropriate in fantasy. He also brings up the fact that 1.) rapiers were developed at roughly the same time period as flintlocks and 2.) the kind of plate armor commonly featured in fantasy was first developed in the 14th century, with primitive firearms being introduced to Western Europe in the same century. First video here (th-cam.com/video/ywluXjKbt-8/w-d-xo.html) and the second one is here (th-cam.com/video/zFXC3JZNnDk/w-d-xo.html).
@@ZagreusWinters I have a slight correction to make, while it is true that flintlocks and rapiers developed and were used at around the same time period, I rewatched both videos and don't seem to find Skall bringing that up I'll have to watch them again.
Of course fantasy can have guns but i mostly still dont like it. But i think much of the debate comes down to what we mean by fantasy. Fantasy is very broad, but its older style (closer to early fantasy) is the stuff of myth, legends, epics/sagas and folklore... And if grendel came down to the hall to find no warrior under the sheets but bombs, then Beowulf and gang are outside with a smirk while he lights the wicks with his cigars... that can be cool. It can be fun. But it doesnt ilicits the same heroism and rawness. Imagine now Sauron being headhsoted by a long rifle. Instead of an epic battle against the elves (when he first died) the author making up some contrived plot as to why he would die by random bullets- idk some magic barrier- and he finally comes down because someone dispelled the barrier and the rifle shot finally came through... I like fantasy in a broader sense, not just early fantasy- but the reason i enjoy early fantasyy that much more is not having guns. And it isnt about lore, or sense but imediate feedback. On a high concept sure, guns ARE equalizers (thats what happened in our history). But so much so it dulls things. Films, comics and games have to come up with all sorts of nonsense like plot armor or contrived fictional reasons for fights to be exciting and last because it would normally take 1 shot. Every duel. I like some western movies but thos standoffs were dull... as a wepon unless youre using plot armor or highly non-realistic rule of cool reality (so everyone jumps and dodges super humanly) what guns entail, for worldbuilding and most conflicts resolution is how it works in the real world- a weapon where the winner is usually the person who shot first, generally at a target that wasnt aware yet. Thats how most infamous western cowboys did it btw- you dont win numerous firefights by standing proudly in the face of your enemies. All fiction with guns needs to have a lot of 'coincidences' so we can have heroes lasting- or a whole less fighting. Theres a reason Matrix and John Wick went the way they did- any and everything so it wouldnt be just gunfights. Thats probably also why the 80s-90s action flicks lost its charm giving way to super heroes- its easier to not just count with plot armor and have really crazy battles when the involved are super human And then theres the best climax fights- unbalanced fights. The heroes against greater odds. The argument of equalizer flys out of the window if the authors to achieve that up the ante for the villain too. If equalizer was the point then the heroes would win like Indiana Jones won that swordsman- wizard shows up, raises hand and then blood pour from his forehead. Headshot. Big bad falls back. There the equalizer.... ...but of course no one does that. So the big bad will be in a tank, a mecha, super wizard flying with barrier, quasi imortal whatever... the point wich the same would be achieved without guns, and more organically too Then theres worldbuilding. Another thing antiquity-early medieval brought, without guns, was a big gap between skill, sheer strength and smarts and where the majorityy of people didnt master fighting. So what does it lead to? To a majority of opressed people save the ones that managed to stand up, grow stronger/better and be the... oh, what was the word? Oh yes, be the HERO. It also lends itself easily to hero-champions that are called for, and go on multiple fronts, towns or what have you helping liberate people and so on And thats why while i agree fantasy can have guns and have enjoyed some fantasy with guns- i mostly dislike guns in fantasy and would rather not have then To make another parallel i have the same dislikes and complaints about overpower in fiction- reason why Spiderman works sooo much more then superman, and why Batman have thrived so much for so long. Fictionally guns are quite like guns in FPS games- cheap shots, who shoots first... and then shooters that add fantas come up with ways to not be just that, say demons in doom and huge hp bosses. Because a single aim-headshot makes for very very bland narrative.
Ahh! It seems my videos talking points landed on its target audience it seems! You can create all the same tensions with firearms as with anything else. It’s what makes the difference between a poor storyteller and a good one. In my experience telling stories for a reason, anytime dangerous weapons are involved in my games/campaigns. They start sweating because they know I can instill tension and fear in stories to such an extent. That I’ll make you feel as if you’re right there, I think it really depends on the storyteller and their skill. Guns are just a different type of magic, and if you make magic able to fix everything instantly as well. You make for a bland story, just as if you make firearms instantly resolve any issues you’re dealing with as well.
@@ZagreusWinters Precisely my points actually- and thats why i feel it takes away from heroism in a WORLBUILDING sense. Depending on the story teller is what i said of making elaborate reasons to raise the tension or avoid a quick ending (and in fiction plot armor). I have nothing against narrative ways to raise tension (i love ttrpgs and i pretty much only gm) not even plot armor in fiction(not overdone, done well etc)- but that is exclusive to the plot, the heroes and not so much the world. In a palpable way the author/gm is avoiding the natural outcome of the elements that exist... and in rpgs it can lend to some letdowns too. I once had a player who tried to be extra smart, shortcuting and even rules 'creative interpretation' where possible- you know the type... and he always tried things like 'let assasinate the important npc X, so there wont even be an war'- wich btw i find very fun in may scenarios and love to play out as a challenge. But a table i played as cyberpunk? He wanted to snipe across city blocks any and everyone. The sessions went fine, but he was very much noticing- coments like 'but of course, some how, i wont be able to get him...'. And i did let him kill key npcs, just not 'main baddies', still he could notice the baddies plot armor and some of the rails. He wasnt ever mad but... it is kinda disapointing. It does take from the imersion, or the impression its a living world with internal sense- but the more the rules for heroes and baddies arent the same as everyone else the more it chips at the immersion. But of course thats taste and choices. Ive also played in zany less serious pulp and spycraft games where everyone was having a blast and i even had a rule and check that was almost like extra lives, and on sucess the pc(and baddies) survived(no matter what) and reapeared later. Very fun, and funny. Just not that timeless heroism from classical fantasy. I think it all depends on goals and expectations of course. For example i dont mind a setting like Arcane series, but im not much of a fan either (personally). Its more of a bummer when people or players are expecting one kind of fantasy and get the other- and because we call it all fantasy equally it creates this kind of discussion. Another way to look it at is to say medieval fantasy- vs steampunk, magipunk, etc. Even nowadays base d&d leans waaay more towards a less victorian steampunk then medieval fantasy, yet people treat or label that as medieval fantasy. Dragons and swords arent it. Guns, powder and steam were very real, bombastic milestones that pretty much killed a whole era, and ushered a new one. Nothing against said new era, just when its encroaching on the old. ...and in a lot of media, games and ttrpgs its getting increasingly rarer to get the older medieval fantasy. And also another point is having the classical fantasy elements on steampunk worlds too; Of course we can have armor and swords and dragons, but again a lot have to make up to justify it. Since it would be silly to today go to a gunfight in fullplate, it ends up needing lore reasons, generally magic to explain so... wich leads to another thing im not a big fan wich is too much high magic. I love when magic can feel magical- being misterious and not found on every street corner being part of that. If everyone is trading in enchanted cloth, magical metals and magical bullets.... it loses like 98% of all its luster? Even the word starts to lose meaning- if everything is magical nothing really is. It would be like saying everything is 'technological' today. Kinda moot, empty. And another final bit is... i dont think its just me but the more high magic, guns+fantasy or steampunk any setting is i feel they start looking and feeling very much alike- somehow way more then medieval fantasy. Maybe its the age of the genre, classical and medieval fantasy been around so long authors had enougth time to deviate from just copy-pasting setting or even look and feel. We still get vanila generic medieval fantasy of course, games btw filled to the brim with generic- but for me magitech guns & wizards look and feel almost all alike. So much so im not really remenbering any specially distinct... Eberron a bit, just kinda, but much more on details or if you get into the lore... I had to squeeze my memory to remeber Bloodborne and Mortal Engines as good examples of non generic samey magitech. End of the day its all vibes of course. Rpg/games more as theme parks, everything goes- ninjas, pirates, robots, magic guns, cthulhu- and heroes more as SUPER heroes are a thing, world of adventure, just a whole different vibe. Its been the dna of d&d since inception, minus the super part, just leaned more and more towards that... but when everything goes and everything is super then nothing is really super or special.... and maybe thats why I (personally) feel like it ends up feeling samey- because everything goes leans itself against having an identity. But thats just me, and i feel also many others when they say they dont like guns in 'fantasy'
I actually have a really cool concept about specifically this! I developed defensive magic that diverged into 3 forms, one which is the shield we all know and love, the second is a barrier system (think overlapping hp), and finally a type of tactical foresight which enhances your movements enough to dodge bullets and the like. One of the core rules of shield is that it'll require you actually see the attacker to cast it. Whereas barrier would absorb any attack you take, and foresight would allow your body to naturally move ahead of time. It's a whole thing, I have a small war in my head on abjuration magic lol..
Counterpoint: mind control is far stronger a weapon. "But I added mind control proofing!!!" Then the weapon is that spell not the gun. I think this attitude is wildly overgeneralising across fantasy settings. Edit: not even mind control, all you have to do is put a spark somewhere bad, maybe some magnetic field shit, electricity, water, it's a fiddly weapon which frequently hurts the user and would just be used against you by a million types of mages. Some of these things might not even be noticeable before hand, just change the humidity around people so the gun blows them up instead of firing and that's not going to be easily apparent until they think they've won. How many fantasy settings wouldn't allow you to do something subtle like that? Or juat put a shield around you, again, magnetic, high resistance or something to stop bullets.
And this is where the fun begins! So you make some type of magnetic magic that stops bullets in their tracks! I design explosive rounds so when you eventually stop them, they explode. Counteracting the magnetic shield you're currently using! They would develop in tandem, but you also have to remember. Powerful forms of magic would be used by the 0.1% to where firearms are rendered ineffective. The rest of the 99% are locked in a rat race of trying to use their ingenuity to the best of their ability!
One of the cases I argue is that If magic is such a catch all answer why would a world advance past the stone age? or in the in settings like path of exile if magic is such a great solution then wreaclast (where the game takes place) wouldn't be the hellhole it is today.
That's easy c: Because we are humans. We will always inevitably destroy what is around us, the hubris of malachai is why most of the events happened in path of exile in the first place. Him tampering with the beast and us subsequently killing him & the beast is what unleashed the gods. Before that? Everything was fine before humans came along, if it wasn't for our flaws magic wouldn't be so horrifying in practice. We could be given the tools to fix humanity, and we would find some way to disenfranchise or harm others with it.
@@ZagreusWinters I mean you say that like it would be a uniquely human problem and in the case of malachai wreaclast was a bit of a dumpster fire before he arrived on the scene.
I’m a gun hater. Unless they are done well mechanically (dice system) and thematically… I feel they remove the wonder/awe feeling in place with a calculated/science feeling. Which is a feeling I don’t enjoy in my RPGs. It’s just one step closer to the sci-fi theme. Also unless there are mechanical drawbacks to guns you get a situation where bows, crossbows, slings, etc suddenly lose their use cases. I do appreciate your take, and as long as a system makes it so that guns don’t push out all other ranged weapons I will tolerate them.
I do appreciate the discussion about it being an equalizer for those without magic. Which only applies in settings where there are those without… Regardless, I would love to see equalizer concepts that aren’t just “guns”.
i hate guns, its too powerful, a sniper can take out a ton of powerful wizards or strong melee only fighters.. ill allow cannons or crude hand canons but thats it. even in arcane.. the guns could easily kill people but convienient they always miss when plot needs it
In Arcane specifically we see magic transport people to other dimensions, even in the final episodes guns were powerless to stop the Viktor. Guns technology couldn’t beat him.
@ okay…so the mage for our example doesn’t count. Okay then Mel, the only other mage in arcane. Who had weapons directly aimed at her and even survived essentially a building buster from jinx at the end of S1 with the use of her magic (which is strong enough to deflect bullets as we see in part 3.) You’re also not considering the possibility that magic in a world like that is also sufficiently developed alongside firearms. It’s like people stop at the idea that magic would be basic and rudimentary when in fact it’d evolve alongside us. And would evolve to be at least somewhat resistant to firearms. It’s sillly to me to think that we can have a magic world with fireballs and that same ingenuity isn’t used to create… I don’t know. Projectile resistant cloth?! For one? Magically reinforced steel would probably not have an issue with deflecting non-magical mundane bullets surely.
@@ZagreusWinters so you have to use Mel who seem super powerful just to equal a gun? that anyone with no training can use and kill 99% of the people.. everyone who doesn't have an automatic barrier gonna get killed easily if it was realistic.. jinx fighting VI with a mini gun was so dumb basically used it more as a melee weapon since obviously she can't shoot her so they convieniently miss. i rather just take guns out completely, just stick with bows and arrows or other traditional range projectile weapon. if u put guns in there, you'll always have to make some BS about how they aren't powerful.. when we know how deadly even a pistol is
@바보Queen Arcane is based on Runeterra and even in Runeterra there are lots of people who are using guns outside of Piltover/Zaun. But just because anyone cant use a guns doesnt stop a mage from being very dangerous and scary, not just that, there are many strong fighters and creatures that literally shrug bullets and magics so I fail to see your agruments here.
To me, guns not only symbolize dishonorable combat but they're also a lazy form of it, too; when compared to archery or swordsmanship. All you do is aim it, point at anything in front of you and fire
When you have to arm one knight, you have expectations of their skills and effectiveness with more mundane weapons, and thus select to supply them with the best your money can buy. When you have to arm a hundred peasants, you come to appreciate the lazy dishonesty of a musket any shmuck can learn to use in like three hours.
@@SilverScribe85 I mean, yeah, guns are a form of power. Power doesn't keep the masses in balance, whether it comes from magic, lineage, a blade or gunpowder. It would also depend greatly on the values of a culture. If they value strength or skill with a weapon, a gun is inherently dishonorable and lazy. If they value ingenuity or skill with crafting, then that makes any weapon you didn't craft dishonorable and lazy, you took it from another person who did. And there is no honor in war to begin with anyway. In war, there's only pain, death and bloodshed. Honor is for the general, not the common soldier.
Wearing armour is cowardice, true warriors should just dodge slings and arrows. To actually be honest, the main thing guns did was drag the people who could afford proper armour back down to the level of everyone else. Its also pretty silly to talk about honour when most warfare was just raiding enemy civilians rather than anyone who could fight back.
![ออร่า (AURA) - JUEPAK feat. SARAN [OFFICIAL MV] | เอแคลร์ จือปาก](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RY9j7Lzp-FI/mqdefault.jpg)
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.
@@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'
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
I love fantasy.
I love guns.
Nuff said.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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!
Also: "why I love guns in real life"
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.
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
"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
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.
“Browning made all men equal.”
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.
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.
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
Oh yeah. This is one of my personal favourites.
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.
I once read a webnovel where guns do exist in the fantasy world, but mages above a certain rank have a spell that can disable the combustion of gunpowder(In a long radius). While knights above a certain rank are able to dodge, deflect, or tank bullets. There was a plot point where a civil war with the anti mage group(They really hate all mages) discovered a recipe for a gunpowder that effectively ignores the spell and functions more efficiently. If the gunpowder got mass produced to an industrial scale a large number of mages would've been taken out in the war. The mc had to come out of retirement to prevent them from producing more.
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.
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.
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
Gunswords are a thing that thinged. ‘Nuff said.
@@thetwelfth9987 Gunblades are sick!
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.
Yet another reason why warhammer fantasy was the best fantasy universe ever
Goated video
Thanks! I really appreciate that!
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.
technology is magic and science
I guess Warhammer 40K is when this idea get cranked up to.....40 000.
1:32 _"... with the comeuppance of firearms in a given world."_ "Comeuppance" means "punishment". Perhaps you meant "rise", "advent", or "emergence"?
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 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.
Honestly, if I was given a writing challenge of creating a story featuring firearms in a fantasy setting, I'd probably take the opposite approach to Vox Machina. Make firearms ubiquitous as spears irl and available to everyone from the poorest farmer to the wealthiest king.
I'd just make it clear that though they may be useful for popping pests like say a DnD style goblin, they'd be next to useless against a troll's stoney skin. Or a horde of skeletons. In the latter case, the toothless old hedge witch in the village could dispel the lot of them in a minute whereas it would take hundreds of rounds spent to do the same with guns.
Swords and armor would endure well past the introduction of firearms, largely because weapon enchantments aren't cost effective when used on bullets. Those applied to a gun don't pass on to the bullet when fired, so they have to be on the bullet itself. But a bullet enchantment is one use only whereas an enchanted sword could see centuries of use for the same cost.
And a common enchantment on armor is divert projectile, so a lot of combat is decided in melee.
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 have a different idea about part 4. Magic is the freedom for the oppressed. Materialist technocratic dystopias are the oppressors. lol. And then some ancient power that cannot be explained or curtailed by mere technology is reawakened and causes a whole worldwide paradigm shift.
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.
In my opinion fantasy is better WITH guns. Firearms have existed for over 1500 years. That’s one thousand five hundred years. If you don’t have guns and gunpowder in fantasy you are not doing the history you are basing your fantasy world justice.
from 1000 years
Who said I was basing my fantasy on a specific time period? What if I set it before that time?
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.
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.
Whats the animation clipped that isnt mentioned? Around 10:20
That is the netflix series Dragon Age: Absolution and it is VERY good, and honestly too short at 6 episodes. The animations and fight scenes are well worth it!
i am legally considered autistic gun nerd.
and i approve this message.
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
That's exactly why guns aren't a great equaliser though? It's not guns vs magic. It's guns vs magic and guns. That's not an equaliser. Why wouldn't a magician use a gun alongside their magic? Pride? Yeah right. They've now seen what they can do. They see that guns can only supplement their magic.
This is the flaw in your thinking that you clearly haven't considered
So the difference between your early magic and your late tier magic is like the difference between physics and Quantum physics.
Yes, exactly! It's the best type of magic system, in that you get the best of both worlds without sacrificing the identity of either c:
@ZagreusWinters is there like a Hazy center/Boundary where no one is able to agree where it starts and finishes. Mark Twain isn't the right term because that usually is a clear delineation.
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;
Happy Thanksgiving 2024🦃🍁🍂. Everyone have great Thanksgiving 2024🦃🍁🍂 and day 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊.
Warhammer Fantasy.
Nuff said.
I would argue, in my opinion, Guns in fantasy works best with the following approach, barrow heavily from Real world 16th century. Flint lock & or match lock firearms, cannon, mortars & so on. the distribution of witch is Controlled by the Dwarven Black-powder guild's. For in my view it makes the most sense for Dwarves to be the inverters of black-powder weapons specifically to better defend their holds against all that would assail them, be it Dragon, goblin invasion & so on.
If Armor and Blade Enchanted with Runes of Magic exist
Why Not Bullets, Barrels, and Rails for Kinetic and Railguns?
the right to bear arms shall not be infringed!
It's weird how when we think guns we think Industrial Revolution era and onwards, when firearms have instead existed for centuries prior, roughly the 10th century. Most fantasy worlds pull inspiration from anywhere from the 5th century to the 19th and early 20th in the real world. So if firearms have existed for the majority of the same time periods that we pull fantasical inspiration from, why can't they coexist on the basis of "it ruins the vibes/aesthetics"? It's a pretty dumb arguement.
Especially when there's so many fascinating ways to include firearms in fantasy settings, from the ways mentioned in the video, to combining guns with magical ammunition or magic enhancements/enchantments, to societies that outlaw/ban public use of magic making up for the firepower gap with guns and cannons. Some of my favorite examples of worlds with magic combining firearms are the likes of the world or Arcane, or Runeterra as a whole where certain regions have magic as commonplace but others outright shun it, and certain anime like Youjo Senki where magic spells enhance firearms and military power. There's so much potential in having both guns and magic in the same world, both from a combative perspective to a worldbuilding and moral/ethical/political perspective. Magic and guns don't always have to coincide of course, many worlds can have magic and not have firearms, but excluding the potential for what guns can bring to a story on the argument of "it ruins the vibe" or not knowing how to combine them effectively is honestly kind of lazy.
Completely agree, I think usually people wish to tap into the cowboy aesthetic and the like. Where guns are developed to their "cool' states, early 1800's era style firearms and stuff like that.
I actually think you could make the case that rudimentary guns like flintlock pistols are probably easier to enchant as well. Rather than cylinder-based firearms like revolvers and lever actions due to how much less meaningful ammo is made with how fast it can be expended.
There are only four relationships magic can have with martial, but there is a serious imbalance of which ones get representation in popular media. As you spoke, magic subsumes technology, being something more powerful than the mundane and a symbol of elitism due to utilizing a form of energy unavailable to those of lower class, the most common use of magic in media.
The second form is when magic is of the old ways, and technology is the superior form, bringing tomorrow into today, while those who use magic are stuck in the past. And while esoteric in nature, is ineffective in comparison, as is done in Arcane as one of the few actual examples. Game of Thrones falls under this category, and magic only stands a chance by outnumbering the mundane by extreme numbers or relying on subterfuge, with dragons being the sole counter-example yet is still vulnerable to advances in technology.
The third is when magic and technology reaches a rough equilibrium, where one may advance and grow dominant, but only for a time until the other side makes its own advances. This is probably the rarest form, as it requires the most work in worldbuilding to make happen, something that most media simply cannot dedicate enough time to doing. But as an RPG series, Star Ocean may be one of the few examples doing this, having space-faring people finding out that magic isn't so weak and ineffective upon reaching the late-game and discovering the heights it can reach.
Finally, the last form is quite rare in the west, but I find to be far more common in the east, even if it still isn't as common as the first two. That is, when magic is merely a way to utilize supernatural energies that technology utilizes in other ways. The Nanoha franchise goes deep into this, making magical energies a foundation of everything for civilizations that use it. Midchilda uses magic in the more traditional ways, using high-tech wands to throw fireballs or erect barriers of energy. Belka on the other hand feature a knighthood that uses swords and hammers powered by the same magical energies that can crush concrete like paper, while having more mystical style mages that feel even more traditional than even Midchilda's mages.
There's a HEMA focused TH-camr out there by the name of Skallagrim, who'd look at your take on guns in fantasy, then nod his head and say, "Yep sounds about right to me." He even has two videos arguing for guns being appropriate in fantasy. He also brings up the fact that 1.) rapiers were developed at roughly the same time period as flintlocks and 2.) the kind of plate armor commonly featured in fantasy was first developed in the 14th century, with primitive firearms being introduced to Western Europe in the same century. First video here (th-cam.com/video/ywluXjKbt-8/w-d-xo.html) and the second one is here (th-cam.com/video/zFXC3JZNnDk/w-d-xo.html).
That's really cool! I'll check them out ~
@@ZagreusWinters I have a slight correction to make, while it is true that flintlocks and rapiers developed and were used at around the same time period, I rewatched both videos and don't seem to find Skall bringing that up I'll have to watch them again.
@@thomaschristenson4967 Rapiers precede flintlocks. They were more contemporary to matchlock muskets.
Of course fantasy can have guns but i mostly still dont like it. But i think much of the debate comes down to what we mean by fantasy. Fantasy is very broad, but its older style (closer to early fantasy) is the stuff of myth, legends, epics/sagas and folklore... And if grendel came down to the hall to find no warrior under the sheets but bombs, then Beowulf and gang are outside with a smirk while he lights the wicks with his cigars... that can be cool. It can be fun. But it doesnt ilicits the same heroism and rawness.
Imagine now Sauron being headhsoted by a long rifle. Instead of an epic battle against the elves (when he first died) the author making up some contrived plot as to why he would die by random bullets- idk some magic barrier- and he finally comes down because someone dispelled the barrier and the rifle shot finally came through...
I like fantasy in a broader sense, not just early fantasy- but the reason i enjoy early fantasyy that much more is not having guns. And it isnt about lore, or sense but imediate feedback. On a high concept sure, guns ARE equalizers (thats what happened in our history). But so much so it dulls things. Films, comics and games have to come up with all sorts of nonsense like plot armor or contrived fictional reasons for fights to be exciting and last because it would normally take 1 shot. Every duel. I like some western movies but thos standoffs were dull... as a wepon unless youre using plot armor or highly non-realistic rule of cool reality (so everyone jumps and dodges super humanly) what guns entail, for worldbuilding and most conflicts resolution is how it works in the real world- a weapon where the winner is usually the person who shot first, generally at a target that wasnt aware yet. Thats how most infamous western cowboys did it btw- you dont win numerous firefights by standing proudly in the face of your enemies.
All fiction with guns needs to have a lot of 'coincidences' so we can have heroes lasting- or a whole less fighting.
Theres a reason Matrix and John Wick went the way they did- any and everything so it wouldnt be just gunfights. Thats probably also why the 80s-90s action flicks lost its charm giving way to super heroes- its easier to not just count with plot armor and have really crazy battles when the involved are super human
And then theres the best climax fights- unbalanced fights. The heroes against greater odds. The argument of equalizer flys out of the window if the authors to achieve that up the ante for the villain too. If equalizer was the point then the heroes would win like Indiana Jones won that swordsman- wizard shows up, raises hand and then blood pour from his forehead. Headshot. Big bad falls back. There the equalizer....
...but of course no one does that. So the big bad will be in a tank, a mecha, super wizard flying with barrier, quasi imortal whatever... the point wich the same would be achieved without guns, and more organically too
Then theres worldbuilding. Another thing antiquity-early medieval brought, without guns, was a big gap between skill, sheer strength and smarts and where the majorityy of people didnt master fighting. So what does it lead to? To a majority of opressed people save the ones that managed to stand up, grow stronger/better and be the... oh, what was the word? Oh yes, be the HERO. It also lends itself easily to hero-champions that are called for, and go on multiple fronts, towns or what have you helping liberate people and so on
And thats why while i agree fantasy can have guns and have enjoyed some fantasy with guns- i mostly dislike guns in fantasy and would rather not have then
To make another parallel i have the same dislikes and complaints about overpower in fiction- reason why Spiderman works sooo much more then superman, and why Batman have thrived so much for so long. Fictionally guns are quite like guns in FPS games- cheap shots, who shoots first... and then shooters that add fantas come up with ways to not be just that, say demons in doom and huge hp bosses. Because a single aim-headshot makes for very very bland narrative.
Ahh! It seems my videos talking points landed on its target audience it seems!
You can create all the same tensions with firearms as with anything else. It’s what makes the difference between a poor storyteller and a good one. In my experience telling stories for a reason, anytime dangerous weapons are involved in my games/campaigns. They start sweating because they know I can instill tension and fear in stories to such an extent. That I’ll make you feel as if you’re right there, I think it really depends on the storyteller and their skill. Guns are just a different type of magic, and if you make magic able to fix everything instantly as well. You make for a bland story, just as if you make firearms instantly resolve any issues you’re dealing with as well.
@@ZagreusWinters Precisely my points actually- and thats why i feel it takes away from heroism in a WORLBUILDING sense. Depending on the story teller is what i said of making elaborate reasons to raise the tension or avoid a quick ending (and in fiction plot armor). I have nothing against narrative ways to raise tension (i love ttrpgs and i pretty much only gm) not even plot armor in fiction(not overdone, done well etc)- but that is exclusive to the plot, the heroes and not so much the world. In a palpable way the author/gm is avoiding the natural outcome of the elements that exist... and in rpgs it can lend to some letdowns too.
I once had a player who tried to be extra smart, shortcuting and even rules 'creative interpretation' where possible- you know the type... and he always tried things like 'let assasinate the important npc X, so there wont even be an war'- wich btw i find very fun in may scenarios and love to play out as a challenge. But a table i played as cyberpunk? He wanted to snipe across city blocks any and everyone. The sessions went fine, but he was very much noticing- coments like 'but of course, some how, i wont be able to get him...'. And i did let him kill key npcs, just not 'main baddies', still he could notice the baddies plot armor and some of the rails.
He wasnt ever mad but... it is kinda disapointing. It does take from the imersion, or the impression its a living world with internal sense- but the more the rules for heroes and baddies arent the same as everyone else the more it chips at the immersion.
But of course thats taste and choices. Ive also played in zany less serious pulp and spycraft games where everyone was having a blast and i even had a rule and check that was almost like extra lives, and on sucess the pc(and baddies) survived(no matter what) and reapeared later. Very fun, and funny. Just not that timeless heroism from classical fantasy.
I think it all depends on goals and expectations of course. For example i dont mind a setting like Arcane series, but im not much of a fan either (personally). Its more of a bummer when people or players are expecting one kind of fantasy and get the other- and because we call it all fantasy equally it creates this kind of discussion.
Another way to look it at is to say medieval fantasy- vs steampunk, magipunk, etc. Even nowadays base d&d leans waaay more towards a less victorian steampunk then medieval fantasy, yet people treat or label that as medieval fantasy. Dragons and swords arent it. Guns, powder and steam were very real, bombastic milestones that pretty much killed a whole era, and ushered a new one. Nothing against said new era, just when its encroaching on the old.
...and in a lot of media, games and ttrpgs its getting increasingly rarer to get the older medieval fantasy.
And also another point is having the classical fantasy elements on steampunk worlds too; Of course we can have armor and swords and dragons, but again a lot have to make up to justify it. Since it would be silly to today go to a gunfight in fullplate, it ends up needing lore reasons, generally magic to explain so... wich leads to another thing im not a big fan wich is too much high magic. I love when magic can feel magical- being misterious and not found on every street corner being part of that. If everyone is trading in enchanted cloth, magical metals and magical bullets.... it loses like 98% of all its luster? Even the word starts to lose meaning- if everything is magical nothing really is. It would be like saying everything is 'technological' today. Kinda moot, empty.
And another final bit is... i dont think its just me but the more high magic, guns+fantasy or steampunk any setting is i feel they start looking and feeling very much alike- somehow way more then medieval fantasy. Maybe its the age of the genre, classical and medieval fantasy been around so long authors had enougth time to deviate from just copy-pasting setting or even look and feel. We still get vanila generic medieval fantasy of course, games btw filled to the brim with generic- but for me magitech guns & wizards look and feel almost all alike. So much so im not really remenbering any specially distinct... Eberron a bit, just kinda, but much more on details or if you get into the lore... I had to squeeze my memory to remeber Bloodborne and Mortal Engines as good examples of non generic samey magitech.
End of the day its all vibes of course. Rpg/games more as theme parks, everything goes- ninjas, pirates, robots, magic guns, cthulhu- and heroes more as SUPER heroes are a thing, world of adventure, just a whole different vibe. Its been the dna of d&d since inception, minus the super part, just leaned more and more towards that... but when everything goes and everything is super then nothing is really super or special.... and maybe thats why I (personally) feel like it ends up feeling samey- because everything goes leans itself against having an identity.
But thats just me, and i feel also many others when they say they dont like guns in 'fantasy'
I like the idea of magical wards (for blocking spells) being almost completely useless against firearms. Until the magic adapts.
I actually have a really cool concept about specifically this! I developed defensive magic that diverged into 3 forms, one which is the shield we all know and love, the second is a barrier system (think overlapping hp), and finally a type of tactical foresight which enhances your movements enough to dodge bullets and the like.
One of the core rules of shield is that it'll require you actually see the attacker to cast it. Whereas barrier would absorb any attack you take, and foresight would allow your body to naturally move ahead of time.
It's a whole thing, I have a small war in my head on abjuration magic lol..
Eberron specifically doesn't have any guns, though.
Amazing video! I love worlds that mix tech and magic.
Also, sorry to put this here, but your discord invite has expired.
It's mostly because to most payments, fantasy=Lord of the Rings and WWI gave jrr Tolkien a lot of Opinions about Industrialization
Counterpoint: mind control is far stronger a weapon.
"But I added mind control proofing!!!" Then the weapon is that spell not the gun. I think this attitude is wildly overgeneralising across fantasy settings.
Edit: not even mind control, all you have to do is put a spark somewhere bad, maybe some magnetic field shit, electricity, water, it's a fiddly weapon which frequently hurts the user and would just be used against you by a million types of mages. Some of these things might not even be noticeable before hand, just change the humidity around people so the gun blows them up instead of firing and that's not going to be easily apparent until they think they've won. How many fantasy settings wouldn't allow you to do something subtle like that? Or juat put a shield around you, again, magnetic, high resistance or something to stop bullets.
And this is where the fun begins! So you make some type of magnetic magic that stops bullets in their tracks! I design explosive rounds so when you eventually stop them, they explode. Counteracting the magnetic shield you're currently using!
They would develop in tandem, but you also have to remember. Powerful forms of magic would be used by the 0.1% to where firearms are rendered ineffective. The rest of the 99% are locked in a rat race of trying to use their ingenuity to the best of their ability!
One of the cases I argue is that If magic is such a catch all answer why would a world advance past the stone age? or in the in settings like path of exile if magic is such a great solution then wreaclast (where the game takes place) wouldn't be the hellhole it is today.
That's easy c:
Because we are humans. We will always inevitably destroy what is around us, the hubris of malachai is why most of the events happened in path of exile in the first place. Him tampering with the beast and us subsequently killing him & the beast is what unleashed the gods. Before that? Everything was fine before humans came along, if it wasn't for our flaws magic wouldn't be so horrifying in practice. We could be given the tools to fix humanity, and we would find some way to disenfranchise or harm others with it.
@@ZagreusWinters I mean you say that like it would be a uniquely human problem and in the case of malachai wreaclast was a bit of a dumpster fire before he arrived on the scene.
'Murica
I’m a gun hater. Unless they are done well mechanically (dice system) and thematically… I feel they remove the wonder/awe feeling in place with a calculated/science feeling. Which is a feeling I don’t enjoy in my RPGs. It’s just one step closer to the sci-fi theme.
Also unless there are mechanical drawbacks to guns you get a situation where bows, crossbows, slings, etc suddenly lose their use cases.
I do appreciate your take, and as long as a system makes it so that guns don’t push out all other ranged weapons I will tolerate them.
I do appreciate the discussion about it being an equalizer for those without magic. Which only applies in settings where there are those without…
Regardless, I would love to see equalizer concepts that aren’t just “guns”.
16:15 what movie is this from?
what was the animation from that showed in how magic affects society? I didn't recognize it but I was intrigued
May I recommend checking out the 5th edition campaign setting Crystalpunk for a world of magitech?
i hate guns, its too powerful, a sniper can take out a ton of powerful wizards or strong melee only fighters.. ill allow cannons or crude hand canons but thats it. even in arcane.. the guns could easily kill people but convienient they always miss when plot needs it
In Arcane specifically we see magic transport people to other dimensions, even in the final episodes guns were powerless to stop the Viktor. Guns technology couldn’t beat him.
@@ZagreusWinters yeah but thats victor a all powerful jesus character.. not ur run of the mill mage.
@ okay…so the mage for our example doesn’t count. Okay then Mel, the only other mage in arcane. Who had weapons directly aimed at her and even survived essentially a building buster from jinx at the end of S1 with the use of her magic (which is strong enough to deflect bullets as we see in part 3.)
You’re also not considering the possibility that magic in a world like that is also sufficiently developed alongside firearms. It’s like people stop at the idea that magic would be basic and rudimentary when in fact it’d evolve alongside us. And would evolve to be at least somewhat resistant to firearms. It’s sillly to me to think that we can have a magic world with fireballs and that same ingenuity isn’t used to create… I don’t know. Projectile resistant cloth?! For one? Magically reinforced steel would probably not have an issue with deflecting non-magical mundane bullets surely.
@@ZagreusWinters so you have to use Mel who seem super powerful just to equal a gun? that anyone with no training can use and kill 99% of the people.. everyone who doesn't have an automatic barrier gonna get killed easily if it was realistic.. jinx fighting VI with a mini gun was so dumb basically used it more as a melee weapon since obviously she can't shoot her so they convieniently miss. i rather just take guns out completely, just stick with bows and arrows or other traditional range projectile weapon. if u put guns in there, you'll always have to make some BS about how they aren't powerful.. when we know how deadly even a pistol is
@바보Queen Arcane is based on Runeterra and even in Runeterra there are lots of people who are using guns outside of Piltover/Zaun.
But just because anyone cant use a guns doesnt stop a mage from being very dangerous and scary, not just that, there are many strong fighters and creatures that literally shrug bullets and magics so I fail to see your agruments here.
counterpoint: I'm not matt mercer
To me, guns not only symbolize dishonorable combat but they're also a lazy form of it, too; when compared to archery or swordsmanship.
All you do is aim it, point at anything in front of you and fire
When you have to arm one knight, you have expectations of their skills and effectiveness with more mundane weapons, and thus select to supply them with the best your money can buy.
When you have to arm a hundred peasants, you come to appreciate the lazy dishonesty of a musket any shmuck can learn to use in like three hours.
@@lukahumar1371 But as Percy himself pointed out in Vox Machina, firearms don't keep things in balance within the masses; it only leads to chaos
@@SilverScribe85 I mean, yeah, guns are a form of power. Power doesn't keep the masses in balance, whether it comes from magic, lineage, a blade or gunpowder.
It would also depend greatly on the values of a culture. If they value strength or skill with a weapon, a gun is inherently dishonorable and lazy. If they value ingenuity or skill with crafting, then that makes any weapon you didn't craft dishonorable and lazy, you took it from another person who did.
And there is no honor in war to begin with anyway. In war, there's only pain, death and bloodshed. Honor is for the general, not the common soldier.
@@lukahumar1371 Not always
Wearing armour is cowardice, true warriors should just dodge slings and arrows. To actually be honest, the main thing guns did was drag the people who could afford proper armour back down to the level of everyone else.
Its also pretty silly to talk about honour when most warfare was just raiding enemy civilians rather than anyone who could fight back.
No, magic is.
God made man and woman but Samuel Colt made them equal.