Discussion Discussing firearms in fantasy settings

The purpose of this thread is to talk about what people like, or dislike, in regards to firearms in fantasy settings. It’s for real life type weapons in fantasy settings, and not magical firearms as that is a completely different subject.

Personally, I usually don’t like it when firearms are too OP in a fantasy setting as this really cheapens the fantastical elements of the story for me (I’m looking at you Gate – Jietai Kare no Chi nite, Kaku Tatakeri). The magic loses a lot of it’s romance for me if someone can easily just shoot the big bad archwizard to death.

If firearms are too weak in the fictional universe then I think it’s better just not to include them at all, unless of course the story is supposed to take place in real life.

When firearms are included, I usually like it best when their usefulness is somewhere in the middle. Some beings should be vulnerable to them, but enough should be immune, or resistant, to firearms for the magic in the story not to be cheapened by them.

Anyways, what are your thoughts on the matter?

 

In a fantasy setting, people dodge bullets. And if they can't dodge them, they deflect them with energy shields.

As long as there's a defense against it, it's a balanced weapon.

 

Don't like them in fantasy settings overall. Talking more about medieval fantasies rather than sci-fi, ofc. Often tend to be convenient cheats that upset the power balance.

 

Most authors that write guns into their story don't actually know how they work or they're huge gun nerds that go way too into detail about them and make them far more powerful and useful than they would actually be now I like guns I have few of my own and have a good understanding of how they work and what they can and cannot do so reading stories where either the author doesn't know what their talking about or won't shut up about how much they know and how unstoppable they make the character using them are both annoying and off putting

 

I guess it really depends on how realistic you want your fantasy world to be.
Assuming that people have sufficient understanding of alchemy and woodworking/metalworking. Something resembling a gun/cannon can easily be made.
It won't be reliable because of: inaccuracy, the gun itself might blow up if the material is weak or single-use, projectile would be low velocity if the design is crappy, and only a few can get it since you can't mass produce it.
To be honest, a crossbow would be more practical since we had bows 2000 years ago that could pierce through most thin armor with relatively better accuracy, though you would need a very good understanding of woodworking and metalworking to make a practical one that pierces through armor (sometimes even castle walls but that's more of a siege weapon)

Of course, we can easily say that they never invented gunpowder (it was only discovered once by accident in reality)
You can also read Fantasy Gun Control which explains this trope better than I could.

 

Usually hate them on high fantasy novels, just ruins my immersion on that sense of mysticism and otherworldliness. For low fantasy novels, I usually welcome them.

One of my favorite usage of guns in a fantasy world was with Gate, that anime where there was suddenly a gate that connected the modern world to another world, a fantasy world. Guns can ruin the power balancing of a world depending on its effectiveness, but in Gate, guns and modern weaponry ruining the power balance was part of its plot and one of its main charms. Unfortunately, S2 of Gate didn't really focus much on the modern weaponry vs fantasy weaponry, at least not as much as S1.

 

I would have said I don't really mind it, but since you specifically said modern firearms that is gonna have to be a pretty hard no. When ever you see a setting where the protagonist has access to modern weapons for whatever reason the narrative always becomes hyper focused upon said firearms. They'll waste your time going into nonsensical details about the guns specs. Some of the especially obnoxious ones will even force in a boring history lesson about the firearm.

Honestly I think the worst thing about it how often the person with the firearms isn't even trained or anything. They're just some random dude who got a gun cheat and is now automatically overpowered. As if to imply that a civilian without any formal training can top a veteran whose fought against demons, monsters, and enemy soldiers, just because he has a gun.

 

As long as the author is creative with their use it's usualy a good addition.
But often it's just guns=OP MC, not good story telling.
Author should make well deffined downsides and upsides to using guns. Why would they use guns and not magic. Is magic used to make the guns? In that chase, why do they do so. Who would use them and why would they use guns?

Basicly the Author have to make the reader belive the guns are a piece of the world. Not just somthing the author threw in because they are cool/OP or they want to.

 

Personally Gate is my least favorite out of all the combinations of firearms and fantasy that I can still remember. Although I guess I do still remeber it which is more then I can say for a lot of stories.

I didn't specifically say modern firearms. I'm guessing that's what you interoperated real life type weapons to mean, but really many types of firearms exist in real life, not just modern ones. Anyways, the point of that sentence was just to exclude magical firearms from the discussion. I guess I should have been more clear with my language. Sorry about that.

 

Well I guess I don't mind it as long as it is incorporated in a realistic way into the story. Like if you have a setting where guns are obviously better than swords and bows, than why would anyone opt out of using a gun? If you're setting uses advanced automatic weapons, than why would primitive medieval style weapons still exist. If you have magical enchanted weapons, than why has no one made magic guns? Basically whatever the story goes with they need to be consistent, or at least have a good reason why they aren't consistent. i.e. Story is about a war between a technologically advanced culture, against more primitive tribal culture.

Of course in the examples above I am excluding settings that use guns as cheats. Basically the isekai story where the protagonist gets a gun, or makes a gun, and is overpowered because of said gun. I'm sure there is a proper way to write that setting, but I have yet to see it.

 

I like Harry Turtledoves's In The Darkness series. Ww2 in a magical world, flying dragons, unicorns, explosive launching behemoth tanks, nuke through mass sacrifices, magical laser guns.

The possibility is there for some gun otaku inadvertantly giving magic laser gun technology to the enemy empire, some of the things we do today could be backward figured out by a Roman. If I have any talent I would write such a story.

Also someone did write a story of eve of ww2 Soviet Russia teleported to another world. Some interesting concepts such as magic brainwashing vs soviet indoctrinations. Crimson Empire is the name.

 

I don't mind fantasy stories having guns, but I'm not fond of stories where some character from modern times brings them over to a medieval level world.
At the very least if a fantasy story have guns I want to see characters quickly adapting to them, and either have them find ways to counter them or have the technology be spread so it isn't just one side steamrolling everything.

 

Depends on the context. In a novel like release the witch guns bring introduced is understandable since the guy is an engineer. But most times guns ruin the fantasy atmosphere in novels especially when the Mc has absolutely no need to create guns but still does for whatever reason.

 

In my case I'm neither pro nor against gun in fantasy setting, I mean depending on the setting of the stories, a firearm is either going to be an OP weapon or just a loud slingshot.

In anime Gate for example, gun in that anime became strong weapon because no matter how strong the creature in that world is, they're still just a regular living creature that can be damaged using physical attack. IIRC, in the anime, there's not even any enchanted weapon or armor.

Now try to bring a gun to a fantasy world where the character can level-up until to literally able to move faster than eye can follow or in some story even able to teleport short range at will, then it'll became useless as the user can't even take aim properly. Also, even if the user can follow the enemy movement, the bullet probably not, and then even if the bullet able to hit the target in this setting usually exist an enchanted armor that can resist or even nullify physical attack, so unless the gun's power scale up according to the user level it'll will only work against low to low-mid-level creature that have low resistance against physical attack/have slow movement speed.

 

I sort of love it when protagonists introduce firearms into their world. However, this is generally in historical novels and the firearms being used are simple ones like matchlocks and flintlocks. Such weapons are still able to be decisive in combat, but it requires some clever tactics to do this and it tends to not obliterate the rest of the story. Then again the writers who tackle this kind of story tend to have an understanding of how dramatic tension and conflict work.

That said, there are fantasy books out there (even famous ones) that manage to combine the two. The most obvious example is the Wheel of Time where cannons play a major role in the final battle. Gunpowder has been in wide use since the 1200's so there's no good reason to exclude it from an ostensibly medieval setting. Sure that's what Dungeons and Dragons did, but why should modern writers be still bound to it?

 

Firearms won over bow and arrows in the real world because people can train faster with guns compared to learning archery. Likewise, in a fantasy world the elite who have money and time to learn magic or martial arts will use it. But the common people will use guns.



Malazan has Moranth munitions which helped the Malazans kill even dragons.

 

I voted neutral because magic, enchanted weapons, flying swords and any number of things are basically firearms for cultivators. Archers or cultivators with flying swords can kill a man from miles away instantly which is basically what a firearm does. If it’s done well, it can be fun to read and usually firearms have some magic elements implemented as well since normal guns would be useless against cultivators.

firearms in novels fills a certain niche like isekai, zombies, BL, cooking do on and will draw the people who are interested in firearms. To everyone else, if it’s done well I think it’s not a big deal but that can be said about any gimmick this resulting in my neutral vote.

 

neutral~
most of times da gun on story on early phase of industry revolution or related to it or just pure nonsense deux ex thing~
for early phase it kinda interesting how firearm change course of war but it not instant sadly that rare topic~ da idea is how put cannon smaller iirc cannon pop up first on west side while on east side that is east asia nah dunno beside firecrackers or fire work cuz it to dangerous from war experience~

there also bomb stuff meh~ never see laser or beam weapon againts fireball~ that will fun to read.... or this cat forget .... do this cat read such stuff before?
oh wait MMORPG~ plenty of it~

 

It depends on how they are used, keep in mind that early firearms did not always defeat the strongest armors of the time, the term bulletproof comes from how armors were tested against fire arms to prove they could withstand a bullet. It was not till later developments that they made metal armor all but useless.

Many authors over power guns, but in a High Fantasy setting with more magic armors they could easily be all but useless.

The same applied to crossbows and we did not abandon archers for them.
But yes, it took a lifetime to raise and train an archer, due to how their muscles needed to develop in order to utilize a warbow. Crossbows and firearms took nowhere near as long to train.
Firearms eventually won because of several traints, easy of training was a major one though. Others including IIRC a greater effective range, superior armor penetration (eventually surpassing even the best armors available), and usability from behind cover/confined locations.

 

One other advantage that sometimes gets overlooked is that guns are loud, which can make them extra scary to go up against, especially in large numbers.