PDA

View Full Version : Justifying Anachronisms



Mr. Mask
2015-07-21, 07:11 PM
Technological anachronisms are fun. Full plate and rapiers, atlatls and guns, bolt action rifles and mail armour and maces. The question is, how to justify it.

How would you/do you explain anachronistic technology/society/whatever in your settings? There are cases in real life we can base this off of, that atlatls and guns is a reference to the conquistadors and Mayans. And there were a few cases of maces being tried in WW1/2, but I'm not sure about mail armour.


One of the more popular methods is to have the lost civilization with advanced technology, which has rare surviving example and everyone battles for it. But there are no doubt some other examples that've been used.

SkipSandwich
2015-07-21, 07:52 PM
Abberations such as Illithids are commonly fluffed as Alien invaders who crashed here long ago and got 'stuck' when the invasion failed. So a mind-flayer 'temple' may in fact be a downed spaceship. The Illithids themselves are only able to maintain some of fantastic machines of thier past due to a lack of certain rare elements, particularly radioactive elements being very difficult to obtain and work with without the specialized tools of their homeworld.

Another fun one is the "Obsessive Tech Horder" civilization, who possesses technology far in advance of their neighbors but who also aggressively send agents to prevent any of that tech from falling into "barbarian" hands.

but most of my settings schizo tech is devolved primarily by humans, orcs and goblins, with the explanation that due to their shorter lifespans, outdated tech and ideas are more quickly discarded(forgotten), promoting a much more rapid development of technology then that of longer lived races who tend to be set in their ways.

ShaneMRoth
2015-07-21, 08:00 PM
High level characters who travel the Planes often find themselves in a fictional counterpart of IRL. Those characters find their way back to the Prime Material Plane and bring with them cultural ideas and artifacts.

A form of "cultural leakage".

Over the course of several generations... these novel, off-world, cultural phenomena become a part of the D&D culture.

Cealocanth
2015-07-21, 08:33 PM
I usually go with "It's an alternate history. Technology advanced a little differently than in real life, and so that's why crossbows and laser cannons." I suspect, however, that you're looking for settings or themes that would allow such anachronisms.

The societies of the world are isolated and xenophobic. There are few empires that actively attempt to conquer, and those that do are restricted by deserts, mountain ranges, or water. As a result, the different technological focuses of the societies of the world have led to different advancement and specialization among the races. War and pillage based races - as well as the victims of these - have access to more advanced weaponry, armor, and tactics. More peaceful and isolated races are likely to be further behind weapon-wise, but also likely to have more advanced political, religious, or educational systems. A lack of universalizing cultures and a rarity of travelers make these specializations quite extreme.

Time travel. Yes, this is an excuse for everything, but when you have people from the era of laser guns and invisibility watches go back to the era of pointy rocks and fire, you get an anachronism.

Magic made a certain technology obsolete. Society has all-but abandoned armor because there's no point being slowed down by full plate when the simplest magic missile pierces through. Warfare has advanced to more modern-style wars of attrition, all soldiers are agile magic users of some variety, but the most you will find in the ways of actual physical weaponry are swords, axes, maces, and bows.

Mechalich
2015-07-21, 09:50 PM
You can build of the Mayans/Conquistadors situation - which is ultimately a case of isolated continents developing their technology at different rates due to a variety of factors. If you reposition the continents on a hypothetical world so that they are less effectively linked than they are on modern Earth, you could easily end up with five to ten civilizations developing largely in isolation to each other. Upping the ratio of water to land and making the seas particularly violent (perhaps by having multiple moons and thus considerably worse tidal forces) can be used to justify this.

If seafaring/magic is only able to have cultures on the different land masses contact each other erratically, you might also be able to introduce small quantities of advanced technologies that local populations cannot duplicate, and fail to prepare for because they have to deal with more pressing local problems.

More mystically you can use cross-planet and cross-planar conflict to justify the presence of advanced technologies or magic that is too many steps ahead to effectively reverse engineer.

mephnick
2015-07-21, 10:23 PM
High level characters who travel the Planes often find themselves in a fictional counterpart of IRL. Those characters find their way back to the Prime Material Plane and bring with them cultural ideas and artifacts.

A form of "cultural leakage".

Over the course of several generations... these novel, off-world, cultural phenomena become a part of the D&D culture.

That's kind of a cool idea. I guess I have a similar thing in my setting. Black powder was only developed after the gnomes came from the feywild. The powder is created using a plant only found on that plane. The dwarves, who the gnomes originally befriended, found the explosive properties and have a monopoly on the creation of it.

JAL_1138
2015-07-21, 10:30 PM
...rapiers and fullplate did coexist, both developing (or rather, the rapier developing and fullplate reaching its peak) during the renaissance. The rapier was primarily a civilian weapon.

Not precisely full plate, but curiassers initially wore 3/4ths plate (missing the back of the legs, due to being primarily cavalry) while armed with wheel-lock firearms.

Atl-atls and slings would be useful hunting tools for peasants even with bows and crossbows around, being cheaper to make (if harder to use). Aztec atl-atls could penetrate chain armor worn by the Spanish, though not the plate of their heavier-armored troops.

Plate and chain coexisted for quite some time, and chain was also used to supplement plate around the joints.

Maces have been around much longer than chain armor, going back to the bronze age and earlier. Some bronze-age maces and even some stone-age maces had flanges.

Bolt-actions are the only really tough ones to justify there.

Mr. Mask
2015-07-22, 03:59 AM
JAL: Sort of missing the point. Maces have been around basically forever, in some form or another, but if someone used one today in battle it'd be news-worthy. So unless you have a super hero setting where everyone is looking for a theme, you won't see bad guys with maces and atlatls today, alongside PCs with similar anachronisms. WW1/2 did have a few cases where interesting melee weapons were improvised, like flails and maces. To be used in tunnel fighting, defending/attacking trenches, or fighting in no-man's land (since gunfire attracts machine guns), so it's a case where you might justify some medieval-associated hardware.

Rapiers and plate is a commentary on technologies at odds coming together. A rapier is useless against armour (despite what video games tell you), yet there were rapiers around during the later stages of plate (not used in battle, though, they were weapons to scare off beggars and duellists). A true example of anachronism or simply senseless technology would have rapiers being used on the battlefield, alongside full plate. That could work, if a percentage of the fighters had no armour.

What was interesting about atlatls and guns in America, was that the atlatls and slings were military weapons, not something a few farmers used because a crossbow was too expensive or they thought it was fun. Interestingly, you could justify that fairly easily with the right setting, having an equivalent to the Balearic islands stay relevant to more of the game's/setting's battles. Or, just have a lot of poor farmers go to war.

Mastikator
2015-07-22, 04:22 AM
The reason people still use swords when there are guns is because swords are fashionable. That's the only reason I can think of that makes a semblance of sense to me.

Brother Oni
2015-07-22, 05:04 AM
The reason people still use swords when there are guns is because swords are fashionable. That's the only reason I can think of that makes a semblance of sense to me.

Or firearms are banned from civilian ownership while swords are still a cultural item (eg Edo era Japan).

Alternately, firearms are still not developed enough to achieve the rate of fire required to replace melee weapons (eg Napoleonic War era, possibly American Civil War), or the conditions of warfare promote melee weapons (WW1 trench raids required stealth which removed firearms from use except as a last resort).


I usually go with "It's an alternate history. Technology advanced a little differently than in real life, and so that's why crossbows and laser cannons." I suspect, however, that you're looking for settings or themes that would allow such anachronisms.

There's a sci fi short story I heard about where Earth is invaded by spacecraft and as the aliens attack, they're surprised to find the invaders are still using black powder weapons. Apparently during Earth's development, we somehow missed the rather simple discovery of levitation and after the aliens are defeated in short order, their leader realises the terror they've unleashed on the universe as humanity starts to reverse engineer their space craft to develop their own.

The reason for the missing discovery could be anything from a particular necessary element not being present on our planet, to nobody thinking about it and missing the obvious.

Mastikator
2015-07-22, 06:29 AM
Or firearms are banned from civilian ownership while swords are still a cultural item* (eg Edo era Japan).

Alternately, firearms are still not developed enough to achieve the rate of fire required to replace melee weapons** (eg Napoleonic War era, possibly American Civil War), or the conditions of warfare promote melee weapons (WW1 trench raids required stealth which removed firearms from use except as a last resort).
*Fashionable

and

**That's not anachronistic, the guns were still bad enough that it was practical to put blades on the rifles to turn them into spears. Historically people have used whatever weapon is the most practical and the most fashionable, in that order. So the only reason to not use the most practical weapon is that it's fashionable.

Perhaps I should restate my original post. The only reason people use anachronistic weapons is because it's fashionable.

Slipperychicken
2015-07-22, 06:58 AM
How would you/do you explain anachronistic technology/society/whatever in your settings? There are cases in real life we can base this off of, that atlatls and guns is a reference to the conquistadors and Mayans. And there were a few cases of maces being tried in WW1/2, but I'm not sure about mail armour.

By declaring that we're playing a game of let's-pretend set in D&Dland with magic wizards and flying dragons, and that this is not an attempt to simulate any real-life place or time period.

Not only do we not care about making our magic elf game exactly like 1500s Europe, but it takes place in a world which bears only a mild superficial resemblance to our own (it doesn't even have the same physical laws as ours, much less the same cosmology, geography, ecosystem, or politics!), so one can't possibly expect things to have turned out in a similar way.

Brother Oni
2015-07-22, 07:03 AM
*Fashionable

I think we have slightly different interpretations of the term 'fashionable'. If the current style and trend is towards muskets and rifles, but people are still carrying around swords then how are swords 'fashionable'?



**That's not anachronistic, the guns were still bad enough that it was practical to put blades on the rifles to turn them into spears. Historically people have used whatever weapon is the most practical and the most fashionable, in that order. So the only reason to not use the most practical weapon is that it's fashionable.

Perhaps I should restate my original post. The only reason people use anachronistic weapons is because it's fashionable.

I think the issue is that sometimes 'most practical' and 'fashionable'/'anachronistic' coincide, for example, the reports of bayonet charges during recent conflicts (example (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bayonet-charge-foils-enemy-ambush)). Other times you get the real characters, like Lt. Col. Jack Churchill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill), the only Allied officer to score a confirmed enemy kill with a longbow during WW2.

Mastikator
2015-07-22, 07:25 AM
I think we have slightly different interpretations of the term 'fashionable'. If the current style and trend is towards muskets and rifles, but people are still carrying around swords then how are swords 'fashionable'?



I think the issue is that sometimes 'most practical' and 'fashionable'/'anachronistic' coincide, for example, the reports of bayonet charges during recent conflicts (example (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bayonet-charge-foils-enemy-ambush)). Other times you get the real characters, like Lt. Col. Jack Churchill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill), the only Allied officer to score a confirmed enemy kill with a longbow during WW2.

It's not anachronistic if it actually happened in history. Anachronism is when you combine elements from different epocs in fiction

JAL_1138
2015-07-22, 07:43 AM
JAL: Sort of missing the point. Maces have been around basically forever, in some form or another, but if someone used one today in battle it'd be news-worthy. So unless you have a super hero setting where everyone is looking for a theme, you won't see bad guys with maces and atlatls today, alongside PCs with similar anachronisms. WW1/2 did have a few cases where interesting melee weapons were improvised, like flails and maces. To be used in tunnel fighting, defending/attacking trenches, or fighting in no-man's land (since gunfire attracts machine guns), so it's a case where you might justify some medieval-associated hardware.

Rapiers and plate is a commentary on technologies at odds coming together. A rapier is useless against armour (despite what video games tell you), yet there were rapiers around during the later stages of plate (not used in battle, though, they were weapons to scare off beggars and duellists). A true example of anachronism or simply senseless technology would have rapiers being used on the battlefield, alongside full plate. That could work, if a percentage of the fighters had no armour.

What was interesting about atlatls and guns in America, was that the atlatls and slings were military weapons, not something a few farmers used because a crossbow was too expensive or they thought it was fun. Interestingly, you could justify that fairly easily with the right setting, having an equivalent to the Balearic islands stay relevant to more of the game's/setting's battles. Or, just have a lot of poor farmers go to war.

"Maces in modern day" wasn't how it was phrased. The way I read it was implying the two technologies ("X and Y") being found side-by-side at once was itself anachronistic--or even in the case of all of the above at once, the only one that stood out from "the renaissance" generally was bolt-actions.

As for rapiers on the battlefield...rapiers no. But the spada da lato / side-sword, yes. It looked like a thicker-bladed rapier, and sometimes not by much. While some were true cut-and-thrust, designed to be equally good (or rather equally middlin' but versatile) at both, albeit with a slight emphasis on the point over the edge, thinner variants existed which could cut but were ill-suited for it, being mostly thrusting weapons. The spada da lato was a military battlefield weapon meant to handle a mix of armored and unarmored opponents, and eventually evolved into (and continued alongside) the rapier. It's fairly simple to say that the "rapiers" of D&D are misnamed side-swords, particularly if two-handed swords and hand-and-a-half swords aren't allowed to thrust despite being capable of it (since by the weapons table they only do slashing damage).

Brother Oni
2015-07-22, 08:31 AM
It's not anachronistic if it actually happened in history. Anachronism is when you combine elements from different epocs in fiction

The problem is that you have to draw a line somewhere. For example, multiple rocket launchers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha) have been known since the 14th century and were reputedly used against the Japanese during the Imjin Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_%281592%E2%80%9398%29) .
There's also the bombardment of Kagoshima (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Kagoshima), where the British shelled the Japanese due to a cultural misunderstanding, putting it mildly.

If samurai coming under attack from rocket artillery or modern naval artillery doesn't stretch your sense of credulity, I don't know what will.

Thrudd
2015-07-22, 09:57 AM
One possibility for explaining why heavy crossbows and articulated plate exist alongside javelins and slings alongside ring maille and battle axes is that you have a world composed of several isolated civilizations that have fairly recently come into contact with one another. The reasons for this could be geographical or magical.

The political environment of this world is likely one where the most advanced of these societies is gradually absorbing the others, either by proximity and peaceful trade and cultural assimilation, or by conquering. But artisans and traditions of many cultures will still be present and warriors of each culture might still favor the weapons and armor of their own traditions, although you will see mixing and matching in places where cultures intersect and depending on wealth level.

So you could have a barbarian that wears hides and is an expert with sling and javelins, that has also picked up a two handed sword which his own culture could never have crafted.

BootStrapTommy
2015-07-22, 10:49 AM
That's kind of a cool idea. I guess I have a similar thing in my setting. Black powder was only developed after the gnomes came from the feywild. The powder is created using a plant only found on that plane. The dwarves, who the gnomes originally befriended, found the explosive properties and have a monopoly on the creation of it. Ha ha. My campaign setting has a similar thing. Gnomes descend from the local halfing population of an isolated island who interbred with shipwrecked dwarves. The gnomes are the only culture which possesses the knowledge of how to make and produce gunpowder (with the exception of some isolated xenophobic duergar) and they trade exclusively with their cousins, the dwarves.

Brother Oni
2015-07-22, 11:51 AM
So you could have a barbarian that wears hides and is an expert with sling and javelins, that has also picked up a two handed sword which his own culture could never have crafted.

So kinda like Colonial era Philippines where you have conquistadors rubbing shoulders with Ming Dynasty soldiers, the indigenous natives, Japanese wokou and other pirates of all stripes.

I believe a famous author once wrote that the difference between fact and fiction, is that fiction has to make sense. :smallbiggrin:

Coidzor
2015-07-22, 12:23 PM
I think we have slightly different interpretations of the term 'fashionable'. If the current style and trend is towards muskets and rifles, but people are still carrying around swords then how are swords 'fashionable'?

Extreme gilt.

Murk
2015-07-22, 12:37 PM
I've seen a lot of cultural arguments in this thread, and geographical (separate cultures). I think nobody mentioned extreme capitalism or more simply poverty yet: the technology is there, but not everyone has the money to afford it.
This happens in the real world too. I was once involved with a project of texting auctions on mobile phones in ***** - a lot of farmers there didn't have the materials or money to transport their cattle to auctions far away. However, every single one of them had a high-tech mobile phone. I don't know why - for some weird economical reason one tank of gas was much more expensive than a cellphone.
So in a fantasy world, say, everyone knows how to make guns, but iron is simply enormously expensive: everyone walks around in leather armor, but a Lucky few carry a gun.

As a second suggestion: the anachronism is done on purpose. In a highly segregated setting, with for example a lot of small but powerful guilds, technology could be limited to those who are member of the right group. Say, the capital city syndicate knows how to make steam engines, but no one else does. The mercenary guild knows how to make high-quality plate armor, no one else does. The alchemist labour union knows how to make plasma rifles, no one else does. An adventuring party could consist of members of different groups, all using their own (anachronistic) technologies, guarding the information as far as they can

Mastikator
2015-07-22, 01:26 PM
The problem is that you have to draw a line somewhere. For example, multiple rocket launchers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha) have been known since the 14th century and were reputedly used against the Japanese during the Imjin Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_%281592%E2%80%9398%29) .
There's also the bombardment of Kagoshima (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Kagoshima), where the British shelled the Japanese due to a cultural misunderstanding, putting it mildly.

If samurai coming under attack from rocket artillery or modern naval artillery doesn't stretch your sense of credulity, I don't know what will.

History is crazy, but if that actually happened, if the British actually bombed Japanese samurai then it's anachronistic in a game that takes place in that time. There's no point in justifying anachronism if it genuinely happened.

mikeejimbo
2015-07-22, 01:42 PM
There's a sci fi short story I heard about where Earth is invaded by spacecraft and as the aliens attack, they're surprised to find the invaders are still using black powder weapons. Apparently during Earth's development, we somehow missed the rather simple discovery of levitation and after the aliens are defeated in short order, their leader realises the terror they've unleashed on the universe as humanity starts to reverse engineer their space craft to develop their own.

The reason for the missing discovery could be anything from a particular necessary element not being present on our planet, to nobody thinking about it and missing the obvious.

"The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove? (Yes the title intentionally refrences the Frost poem and characters in the story do draw parallels.)

hamishspence
2015-07-22, 03:03 PM
I vaguely remember his Worldwar series (with the lizardy aliens), having them be amazed and caught aback by human tech progressing much faster than they were expecting.

Segev
2015-07-22, 03:14 PM
The main reason that some things are NOT used when we know what they were is because they're obsolete in today's world, for one reason or another. Full plate is useless against most modern weapons, so isn't used anymore. Same with swords, most of the time. Knives/daggers are still useful as utility tools as well as last-ditch weapons, and are not as bulky as swords; if you're in range for a blade to be useful, the reach of a sword isn't so useful, so the convenience of the knife (combined with, agian, its non-combat utility) makes it see use to this day.

Most "reach" weapons are obsoleted by guns.

We rarely see mounted cavalry because our vehicles are capable of going into nearly all the same terrain and are safer and faster. (They still see use in certain situations where the horse is just superior, such as crowd-navigation in urban areas.)


If you want to explain anachronisms, do it by giving reasons for those things to still be used. I'm fond of the idea of creating some unique mechanics for each weapon or device. If, for example, Conan had some super-powerful techniques for using the Greatsword which made him a formiddable foe even for infantry armed with rifles or automatic weapons, then that would be a reason for greatswords to still see use (as, theoretically, others could also learn those greatsword techniques).

It does require a setting where magic and may-as-well-be-magic powers can be exercised by sufficiently powerful warriors or sufficiently skilled experts, not "just" through spellcasting, but it's doable. (It's why, for instance, the First Age in Exalted still featured magical supergreatswords (called "daiklaives") even though the magitech made things that were akin to modern weaponry feasible and such saw active use: the daiklaives and those who wielded them were more than a match for normal people armed with the highest tech of weapons, and the wielder of the daiklaive was not necessarily any stronger for using a high-tech weapon. (Even if he was super awesome with a high-tech weapon, it was in a different way and wasn't MORE than he was awesome with the daiklaive.)

Brother Oni
2015-07-23, 01:42 AM
"The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove? (Yes the title intentionally refrences the Frost poem and characters in the story do draw parallels.)

Probably, I only remember the two line synopsis while scanning through a TV Tropes page.

Thanks for that - I've been meaning to find the story and read it.

Knaight
2015-07-23, 01:49 AM
However, every single one of them had a high-tech mobile phone. I don't know why - for some weird economical reason one tank of gas was much more expensive than a cellphone.

Infrastructure. Cell phones are extremely technologically complex, and the actual manufacture of cell phones requires advanced high tech facilities. Once the technology is there and the cell phones are being produced elsewhere though, the infrastructure is relatively easy. Cellphones need to get distributed - they're small, they're light, they don't need frequent replacement, it's not a problem - and cell lines need to be placed, which are often basically just above ground wires and wire towers. It's way cheaper than something like plumbing is, the logistics are easier than bringing in and storing gasoline (where you need some fairly specific stuff on site and the amount brought in per person over the period of one cell phones use is way higher by mass and volume, with specific transport vehicles needed), and there's a whole host of other less technologically advanced things with far more difficult implementation problems.

Kami2awa
2015-07-23, 02:08 AM
Chainmail was used by tank drivers in WW1 to protect them from shrapnel:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2242785/Medieval-headgear-issued-First-world-War-tank-drivers-protect-flying-shrapnel.html

It is still used in protective gear today:

http://www.schlachthausfreund.com/butcher_equipment/metal_mesh_safety/gloves.html

and it's even marketed as body armour:

http://www.ringmesh.com/ChainMail_Protection_s/2.htm

and when it comes to anachronism, how about making chain mail on a 3-D printer?

http://www.thingiverse.com/image:188998

Brother Oni
2015-07-23, 04:10 AM
Chainmail was used by tank drivers in WW1 to protect them from shrapnel:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2242785/Medieval-headgear-issued-First-world-War-tank-drivers-protect-flying-shrapnel.html

and when it comes to anachronism, how about making chain mail on a 3-D printer?

http://www.thingiverse.com/image:188998

Body armour isn't a particularly anachronistic concept and the designs are still applicable even with modern materials. A number of militaries experimented with body armour during WW1; for example this German infantry armour has more in common with modern body armour designs than medieval plate harness or Early Modern cuirasses.

http://www.operatorchan.org/w/src/139655374972.jpg

The Dragon Skin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Skin) body armour system is based on scale armour (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_armour), but the use of overlapping modern ceramic plates inside a glass fibre textile rather than steel/iron/bronze metal plates sewn onto a leather/fabric backing makes it decidely non-anachronistic.
Likewise use of stainless steel links for PPE for butchers and divers isn't particularly anachronistic.

As for the mail on a 3d printer that's been displayed, that's more a curiosity than anything useful, since the material isn't very durable, they're split links which can't be closed, plus the large hexagonal link shape raises questions of flexibility.

Worgwood
2015-07-23, 04:58 AM
I have a few justifications for the anachronisms I use. First, magic; sure it's a cop-out, but a Protection from Arrows spell, scroll, or wand will negate a rifle's effectiveness. I also tend to rule that while a nonmagical gun can penetrate nonmagical armor, nonmagical guns can't penetrate magical armor. When the +1 on +1 full plate costs less than the full plate itself, most wealthy knights, lords, and men-at-arms will probably make that investment.

Then there's economy; if Joe Farmer can't afford a knight's fighting sword, how will he afford the materials and crafting expertise required for a firearm, let alone its ammunition? Or ecology; a rifle might penetrate armor well enough, but against tough monsters - say, a bulette - you're not going to put it down with one shot, regardless of whether or not you penetrate its hide. On the other hand, the armor you invested in sure can't stop guns, but the bulette's teeth can't penetrate it so easily.

Also, alternate and competing technologies; sure, full plate's the pinnacle of human armor-smithing, but elven chain nevertheless remains competitive because the elves use their own techniques which make their chain lighter, stronger, and more flexible than conventional chain mail.

Ultimately, though, it comes down to the fact that the world's a big place and people are constantly fiddling around with old and new technologies, and ideas can only travel so far on their own.

ArcanaFire
2015-07-23, 06:25 PM
It's always going to come back to world building.

For a more modern setting in which I still want swords, it really helps just to go with "this is a creature that can shrug off bullets like rain, get a blade" and have others of its ilk to deal with.

Nightlife had a fairly good justification for why one of its characters carried a sword. The blade isn't going to jam on you. He carried a gun, too, if I recall correctly, but he kept the sword as a back up because it was more trustworthy to him.

It's a lot easier to justify swords in a modern settings than guns in an older one, but in a more mid-fantasy setting, it's a matter of showing why they needed this certain thing. One of my settings is a city surrounded by a toxic wasteland that /really/ needed some kind of filtration system, thus the invention of the gas mask was expedited.

They also didn't have to worry about being attacked from the outside so their weapons all tend to be close range and they have nothing in terms of siege weapons. Clocks, yes. Clockwork things, yes. Because instead of focusing their efforts on making a better weapon to protect themselves from neighboring lands, they focused on making things to make their lives inside the city easier.

All you have to do is take a look at the object or chain of objects you want, and if it doesn't fit come up with a reason why somebody needed it early, or needs it still even though we don't in our current timeline.

If all else fails, rule of cool. I mean...you're all sitting around a table to roll dice and pretend to fight dragons.

Brother Oni
2015-07-24, 03:37 AM
For a more modern setting in which I still want swords, it really helps just to go with "this is a creature that can shrug off bullets like rain, get a blade" and have others of its ilk to deal with.

This is something that especially gets my goat if not done well - why a creature shrug off bullets but is vulnerable to bladed weapons.

The kinetic energy from any modern round significantly exceeds the energy generated from a sword stroke, so another reason has to be found other than the incorrect 'bullets are weaker' from writers who simply don't understand modern firearms. The critter having hardened armour thus better armour penetration is required is a possible reason, but that just skews it even further towards larger calibre firearms and light weapons.

The Shadowrun setting found one way about it, in that certain magical critters require a physical interaction of intent between your living aura and theirs, thus pistol whipping a critter would hurt it, but shooting at it did minimal damage (up to a point - while a 9mm round would basically plink off it, its resistance wasn't as effective versus a 20mm autocannon).
The anime Blood also found one in that the creatures require sudden and massive exsanguination otherwise it would use that blood to heal, thus between civilian restrictions on firearms (it was set in Japan) and what weapons were on hand, a katana (as opposed to a spear or naginata) was the optimal weapon in terms of damage dealt and concealability.

On the other end of the scale, you have Hollywood films; Jeepers Creepers especially annoyed me in that the creature was taken down by being rammed by a mini at ~30mph then driven over and reversed a few times but later on it was immune to several assault rifles being fired at it. :smallfurious:

goto124
2015-07-24, 03:40 AM
Use a magic sword, duh.

Or use a club. Blunt force and stuff.

Brother Oni
2015-07-24, 04:16 AM
Use a magic sword, duh.

Or use a club. Blunt force and stuff.

Well if magic breaks the laws of physics so badly such that a 140J sword stroke can injure a creature but it can bounce a 120mm APFSDS tank shell that can penetrate 670mm of steel armour, then go for it.

Don't get me started on the artificial differentiation of blunt/edged/piercing damage types in D&D.

Knaight
2015-07-24, 03:57 PM
On the other end of the scale, you have Hollywood films; Jeepers Creepers especially annoyed me in that the creature was taken down by being rammed by a mini at ~30mph then driven over and reversed a few times but later on it was immune to several assault rifles being fired at it. :smallfurious:

From a kinetic energy perspective, the car collision is way nastier. Granted, kinetic energy is a fairly iffy standard for a number of reasons, but a lot of the other metrics also work out in favor of the car, such as momentum.

BRC
2015-07-24, 05:07 PM
Also, remember that the game world and the rules of the game are somewhat synched up. The rules of the game are, in many ways, the way things work in the world.

For example, let's say that somebody introduced guns into their game, and for the sake of simplicity they just stated them as crossbows that dealt a bit more damage and were more expensive.

So, why are swords and the like still used in this setting? Because in this setting firearms are expensive, and not that much more effective at killing things than crossbows, which were in turn not that much more effective than swords.

In this world, Firearms and Swords exist alongside each other because there are plenty of people/things that can keep charging you after taking a few bullets to the gut.

Brother Oni
2015-07-24, 05:47 PM
From a kinetic energy perspective, the car collision is way nastier. Granted, kinetic energy is a fairly iffy standard for a number of reasons, but a lot of the other metrics also work out in favor of the car, such as momentum.

While I concede momentum, I'm a bit dubious on the KE perspective.

Taking a 700kg Mini travelling at 13.4 m/s, that has a KE of 62.8kJ. A round from a M4 has a muzzle energy of 1.6kJ so this would mean you'd need to hit it 40 times to exceed the energy input from the vehicle, which taking a cyclic rate of 700 rds/sec, would be achieved in about 3.4 seconds of accurate, full auto fire.

Now the M4 only has a magazine of 30 rounds, but there were ~5 such armed officers in the scene I remember, so anything above an average 26% accuracy on a full mag dump, would input equal KE to the target as a mini, in ~2.5 seconds.
If we took an average 30% accuracy, that's 45 rounds connecting for a total of 72kJ.

Now there are a number of other issues, but given that the critter survived being hit by a car, I don't think over penetration by the rifles is going to be one of them.


In this world, Firearms and Swords exist alongside each other because there are plenty of people/things that can keep charging you after taking a few bullets to the gut.

The point I'm trying to make is that if there are things that will keep charging after taking a couple of rounds centre of mass, they're also likely to rip your head off even after you've put three feet of cold steel through their chest. At least with the firearm, you still have a head start to leg it once you see that your attacks are ineffective.

ShaneMRoth
2015-07-24, 06:00 PM
For a frame of historic reference, bear in mind that during the Naopoleonic era of warfare... firearms, swords, and artillery were all used on the same battlefield.

Also swords (sabers) were issued to cavalry and used during the American Civil War. While they weren't used extensively, they were used. In the same war that introduced the one of the earliest forms of the modern machine gun (the gatling gun).

It is not as difficult to justify anachronisms as it might first appear.

The most recent incident of an official military order to fix bayonets I could find?


The date was May 14, 2004, and Falconer, along with Wood, Private Anthony Rushforth, Sgt Chris Broome, and privates John-Claude Fowler and Matthew Tatawaqa, were speeding down a roadway 150 miles south of Basra in Southern Iraq.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-famous-bayonet-charge-of-modern-conflict-2012-10#ixzz3gqumdKuj

To this day, military infantry are issued bayonets, to turn their rifles into... spears?

How's that for an anachronism?

Tvtyrant
2015-07-24, 06:22 PM
I don't need to justify it. If I want tanks and knights battling on frozen clouds then I will. Fiction doesn't have to make sense when compared to the real world, it needs to have a message that is applicable within it.

Grinner
2015-07-24, 07:15 PM
...so another reason has to be found other than the incorrect 'bullets are weaker'...

Well, if we really want to scrape the barrel of plausibility...Isn't kevlar vulnerable to sharp objects?


The anime Blood also found one in that the creatures require sudden and massive exsanguination otherwise it would use that blood to heal, thus between civilian restrictions on firearms (it was set in Japan) and what weapons were on hand, a katana (as opposed to a spear or naginata) was the optimal weapon in terms of damage dealt and concealability.

I could be wrong, but didn't Protagonist-chan also need to cut herself on the blade to petrify vampires with it? Or is Blood distinct from Blood+?


I don't need to justify it. If I want tanks and knights battling on frozen clouds then I will. Fiction doesn't have to make sense when compared to the real world, it needs to have a message that is applicable within it.

This works with TV and movies, where the viewer typically doesn't really put a lot of thought into what they're seeing.

RPG players are a far more inquisitive breed.

Brother Oni
2015-07-24, 07:25 PM
The most recent incident of an official military order to fix bayonets I could find?


I posted a link earlier to a bayonet charge from HERRICK 15, sometime between late 2011 and early 2012: link again (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bayonet-charge-foils-enemy-ambush).

That said, talking to serving and previously serving personnel, bayonet training is only very briefly covered these days. The only modern troops that I know of that go around actively using weapons that could be classed as obsolete for the purposes of this thread, are the Gurkhas with their kukris - there's a report of gurkhas sent after a high value target and come back with him either alive or proof of his death. They found and killed him, but rather than run the risk of trying to bring the target's body back when they came under fire, one enterprising soldier decapitated the corpse and brought the head back instead.

Understandably, he got a significant dressing down for it and the report didn't mention how the body was decapitated, but they do all carry a rather large knife with them at all times. Actually this incident is also rather anachronistic - we tend not to display the heads of our enemies as trophies or mutilate corpses these days.


Well, if we really want to scrape the barrel of plausibility...Isn't kevlar vulnerable to sharp objects?

I could be wrong, but didn't Protagonist-chan also need to cut herself on the blade to petrify vampires with it? Or is Blood distinct from Blood+?

Depends on the weave and design, but you're correct in that the typical bullet resistant vest isn't stab proof - knives and things like icepicks either cut or push the kevlar fibres out of the way, in contrast to a bullet which tries to ram its way through. Kevlar by itself still isn't proof against larger calibre or higher velocity rounds though (ARs for example).
That said, the ceramic plate inserts for higher level body armour is surprisingly proof against being cut or stabbed through - a user on this site here had a couple left over from his army days and had a go trying to hack through them with his kukri (he didn't make much more than a couple of dents and scratches).

I don't remember the protagonist deliberately cutting herself in the Blood: The Last Vampire movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood:_The_Last_Vampire), so there's probably a difference between Blood and Blood+.

Steampunkette
2015-07-24, 09:07 PM
Okay, so... Ceolocanth was the closest to the truth of anachronisms:

In a world that doesn't exist, neither do anachronisms. Anachronisms only apply to Historical fiction within our world.

Different cultures develop differently, and there is no clean step from one technological advancement to another. We tend (especially in Western Societies) to assume that all cultures that are even remotely similar will progress in the same way and at roughly the same pace. But simulation would never bear that out. Invention is based on opportunity, availability, and curiosity.

Let's take a look at Air Conditioning, for example. Air conditioning became a thing because Napoleon Bonaparte used the Pike Square formation in battle. No, I'm serious.

Bonaparte's use of the Pike Square, and specifically it's simplicity and ease of use even by peasants and untrained laborers lead to a massive swelling of the French Military. Which lead to issues when it came to transporting the massive amount of food the now much larger military required.

So Bonaparte's soldiers began bottling their food in Champagne bottles to keep it fresh. Eventually they started using Cans to seal the food. However, some of the food in Cans would spoil. This was blamed on "Bad Air" even though it had far more to do with bacteria that lead to botchulism. People tried to solve the botchulism problem by studying the Bad Air.

Bad Air, in this case, being Swamp Air. Which lead to further investigation of Malaria and, specifically, the benefits of cooling the air around malaria-infected individuals in their treatment in a "Cooling Room".

And that's how Napoleon Bonaparte spurred the invention of Air Conditioning in 1799, which was created by John Gorrie in 1819 and perfected by a German Brewer Carl Von Linde in 1870 using compressed gasses.

If Napoleon had not used the Pike Square, had not created the supply problem, and his soldiers had not used tin cans to contain meat, Air Conditioning may never have been invented.

For a slightly different real world example of what is largely considered anachronistic: China had Gunpowder sometime around 100AD. While the Western World was painting themselves blue and stabbing each other with pointed sticks and weak metal the Chinese were busy making the sky explode. Meanwhile the Japanese had very little metal armor to speak of (no Full Plate for example) but they had beautiful swords and wood armors. This is because there wasn't a lot of accessible metal in Japan and what was there contained enough impurities that getting rid of them was essentially impossible with the technology of the time. Swords were folded 100 times not to get the finest edge in the world, but simply to get the weapon to keep an edge at all.

Technology, like Evolution, is not a straight advancement from one thing to the next. It is a messy game of one-upmanship with reality to try and find the best possible answer to the problem. Different people, and thus different societies, are going to come up with different answers.

Also, watch Connections with James Burke. It was one of the coolest TV series to air on TLC. And it contains a small balding British scientific historian swinging a claymore through a side of beef.

Orcus The Vile
2015-07-24, 09:19 PM
Technology makes your reflexes so fast that you can block and deflect bullets with swords. So it is becomes superior weapon.

Knaight
2015-07-24, 09:31 PM
Let's take a look at Air Conditioning, for example. Air conditioning became a thing because Napoleon Bonaparte used the Pike Square formation in battle. No, I'm serious.

This is one set of events you can trace, sure. On the other hand, air conditioning also became a thing due to the thermodynamics research that came largely from steam engine studying. Understanding how compression worked, temperature change that accompanies compression and expansion, and that sort of stuff in general is basically necessary to develop air conditioning, along with lots of other types of cooling.

The point is, fictional settings can be anachronistic. Technological developments are built on what is essentially an infrastructure of knowledge, along with often being tied pretty closely to more literal infrastructure, and while there are plenty of things that could easily have been developed and implemented far earlier than they were but weren't, there are also plenty of things that emerged recently because a great deal of knowledge had to be accumulated to even approach the problem.

Steampunkette
2015-07-25, 01:35 AM
Oh, sure. All I'm saying is that technology is random advancement, not a set in stone point a to b.

It's more like Le Poopy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPj8pjAXYdQ

Brother Oni
2015-07-25, 01:47 AM
Meanwhile the Japanese had very little metal armor to speak of (no Full Plate for example) but they had beautiful swords and wood armors. This is because there wasn't a lot of accessible metal in Japan and what was there contained enough impurities that getting rid of them was essentially impossible with the technology of the time. Swords were folded 100 times not to get the finest edge in the world, but simply to get the weapon to keep an edge at all.

To be precise, they did have plenty of easily accessible metal ore, it was just in the form of iron sands which had a ferric content of 1-2%, necessitating their massively laborious smelting and forging process. In comparison, most decent ores have greater than 50% ferric content.

A high impurity content also generally makes a blade too brittle thus giving it a tendency to snap under strain, like hitting a target - sharpening it isn't an issue.

hiryuu
2015-07-25, 03:55 AM
That's kind of a cool idea. I guess I have a similar thing in my setting. Black powder was only developed after the gnomes came from the feywild. The powder is created using a plant only found on that plane. The dwarves, who the gnomes originally befriended, found the explosive properties and have a monopoly on the creation of it.

I also do this. Humans come from "IRLs," and in general, the Americas, so often that there's multiple terms for it and government programs designed to help people adjust. It's brought religions (which have glommed together in many cases), technologies (largely in the form of systems - stuff like electronics has a tendency to go a little loopy until it gets fixed up with local materials and such), and languages. Most of the continent I usually run games in has a unified language because someone from the States came in and introduced English.

SkipSandwich
2015-07-25, 02:11 PM
In the space-fantasy setting i'm developing (True20 System), Bows/crossbows are the ranged weapon of choice for Arcane and Spiritual magic users with the ability to imbue projectiles with magical force, since attempting to fire a magically imbued bullet just causes all the stored energy to detonate inside the chamber, destroying the weapon and injuring the shooter, perhaps fatally. Swords and other melee weapons are popular for starship boarding actions where accidentally destroying the wrong conduit could cause all sorts of issues. Psionic magic users (yes, in setting psionics are just "mind/ego magic") also favor melee weapons because with training they can run at superhuman speeds and deflect away projectiles they cannot outright dodge via enhanced reflexes or outright precognition.

Non-magic users stick to either conventional firearms or things like laser/plasma weapons which although non-magical themselves, could not be created in a man-portable form without magically synthesized materials and power sources.

Jay R
2015-07-26, 04:44 PM
The reason people still use swords when there are guns is because swords are fashionable. That's the only reason I can think of that makes a semblance of sense to me.

Swords never run out of ammunition.

Even people defined by their firearms (like musketeers, which just means people with muskets) are still known to have used swords.

erikun
2015-07-26, 05:00 PM
How would you/do you explain anachronistic technology/society/whatever in your settings?
If it still works, it sticks around. If you are living in a world where high enough STR allows a character to drive a wooden javelin through full plate armor, then javelins are still going to be considered a viable weapon.

Shadowsend
2015-07-27, 08:36 PM
You could use Jim Butcher's take on it. In the Dresden Files books, magic still existed, people just stopped believing it, so the horrible things that were happening in his world were reduced to "disappearances" and "conspiracy theories" to people who weren't in the know. Also, since magic as a force existed, it had different rules regarding the magical creatures being hurt. Swords were effective because of belief.

Jay R
2015-07-27, 09:05 PM
Oh, sure. All I'm saying is that technology is random advancement, not a set in stone point a to b.

I agree that the assumption that technology is a set in stone from point a to point b is a grossly simplistic statement.

The idea that it is random is an equal and opposite grossly simplistic statement.

The truth (as always) is more complicated. It's not automatic that if you have the basic technology that leads to, say, railroads, you will start railroading. But it is true that lots of people know the current technology, and lots of people want to move freight quickly, and it's pretty likely that somebody will put a steam engine together with wheel and rails and come up with it. There are lots of examples of parallel engineering, like Elisha Gray, whose patent for the telephone was turned down because Alexander Graham Bell had already filed the patent the same day.

Steampunkette
2015-07-27, 10:19 PM
Oh, Sure.

If you have the disparate pieces of technology required to make an advancement someone will probably put them together. I'm not arguing against that at all.

I'm saying that getting to the point of -having- those disparate pieces of technology is essentially random. That there's no set duration between having gunpowder and then learning metalworking to the degree you can make gun barrels. Or the reverse. That when the various pieces to create a given technological advancement are brought together is without a set point in progression.

Roxxy
2015-07-29, 05:45 AM
When it comes to my setting, the anacronisms stem from the fact that it developed along different lines than Earth because it had different resources and needs. What I established early on is that, among the Pathfinder magic using classes, the Alchemist is dominant by far among NPCs. This sets the tone for the setting, because widespread alchemy has become a technological base for industrialization. We can fuel a facory, mass produce steel, build a railroad, treat disease, and more. On the battlefield, alchemical artillery can shred a tight infantry formation so thoroughly that lining troops up became a thing of the past in favor of scattered units that weren't so vulnerable. Meanwhile, the use of alchemy to enhance soldiers became widespread (Alchemical enhancement is my 3.P magic item system replacement. Don't get a Belt of Giant Strength, drink something that permanently strengthens your muscle tissue.). Alchemically enhanced troops are expensive, but they are very effective. This, combined with the horrendous effects of artillery against massed forces, has led armies to be professional forces of modest size, with very high standards of training and discipline.

All of this leads directly to a big anacronism - the setting understands everything it needs to know about metal forging and mechanics to build a bolt action rifle, yet lacks cartridge firearms, and soldiers typically prefer bows. The reason for this is that muzzle loading firearms do not fit the needs of the military well, so research into better firearms has been stunted by lessened interests. The musket is ubiquitous in civilian hands, and has totally replaced the crossbow, but in military use it runs into the problem that it is most effective in massed fire, and massing troops together gets them killed by artillery. The reloading time is a problem when you don't have the protection of a large formation, and noise and smoke are problems when you don't want to telegraph your position to some alchemist with an infantry mortar, or, even worse, flying cavalry. The massive ease of use isn't a crucial advantage when long training regimens are the norm and soldiers are more physically capable than non-soldiers. None of that prevents the use of firearms by the military, but it does prevent them from becoming dominant. Swords, battleaxes, halberds, and bows still nave a ton of utility on the battlefield, and all of those weapons typically see as much, if not more, use than the musket. As a result, there has been less research into firearms than one might expect, and people who build massive railroad networks still fight with swords, shields, and bows, even with muskets easily available. New alchemical enhancements and weaponry soak up a lot of research resources that would otherwise go to firearms. Somebody will figure out the idea of cartridge firearms eventually, probably within a few decades, but after that happens, it will take time to get the military to see that as the future dominant face of warfare, and then more time to make the switch over to appropriate equipment and doctrine. It'll happen eventually, but the current crop of player characters will be old by then.

As for that artillery I was taking about? Smoothbore cannons are pretty much the entire field. They shoot hollow balls filled with acid, high explosives and shrapnel, poison gas, smoke, liquid ice, and the much feared flammable jelly.

BootStrapTommy
2015-07-29, 05:32 PM
For a slightly different real world example of what is largely considered anachronistic: China had Gunpowder sometime around 100AD. While the Western World was painting themselves blue and stabbing each other with pointed sticks and weak metal the Chinese were busy making the sky explode. Actually, in Western World around 100AD, the Roman Emperor Trajan was presiding over the largest Empire in the world, whose cities possessed sewers systems, indoor plumbing, central heating, and even factories.

VoxRationis
2015-07-29, 05:56 PM
When it comes to my setting, the anacronisms stem from the fact that it developed along different lines than Earth because it had different resources and needs. What I established early on is that, among the Pathfinder magic using classes, the Alchemist is dominant by far among NPCs. This sets the tone for the setting, because widespread alchemy has become a technological base for industrialization. We can fuel a facory, mass produce steel, build a railroad, treat disease, and more. On the battlefield, alchemical artillery can shred a tight infantry formation so thoroughly that lining troops up became a thing of the past in favor of scattered units that weren't so vulnerable. Meanwhile, the use of alchemy to enhance soldiers became widespread (Alchemical enhancement is my 3.P magic item system replacement. Don't get a Belt of Giant Strength, drink something that permanently strengthens your muscle tissue.). Alchemically enhanced troops are expensive, but they are very effective. This, combined with the horrendous effects of artillery against massed forces, has led armies to be professional forces of modest size, with very high standards of training and discipline.

All of this leads directly to a big anacronism - the setting understands everything it needs to know about metal forging and mechanics to build a bolt action rifle, yet lacks cartridge firearms, and soldiers typically prefer bows. The reason for this is that muzzle loading firearms do not fit the needs of the military well, so research into better firearms has been stunted by lessened interests. The musket is ubiquitous in civilian hands, and has totally replaced the crossbow, but in military use it runs into the problem that it is most effective in massed fire, and massing troops together gets them killed by artillery. The reloading time is a problem when you don't have the protection of a large formation, and noise and smoke are problems when you don't want to telegraph your position to some alchemist with an infantry mortar, or, even worse, flying cavalry. The massive ease of use isn't a crucial advantage when long training regimens are the norm and soldiers are more physically capable than non-soldiers. None of that prevents the use of firearms by the military, but it does prevent them from becoming dominant. Swords, battleaxes, halberds, and bows still nave a ton of utility on the battlefield, and all of those weapons typically see as much, if not more, use than the musket. As a result, there has been less research into firearms than one might expect, and people who build massive railroad networks still fight with swords, shields, and bows, even with muskets easily available. New alchemical enhancements and weaponry soak up a lot of research resources that would otherwise go to firearms. Somebody will figure out the idea of cartridge firearms eventually, probably within a few decades, but after that happens, it will take time to get the military to see that as the future dominant face of warfare, and then more time to make the switch over to appropriate equipment and doctrine. It'll happen eventually, but the current crop of player characters will be old by then.

As for that artillery I was taking about? Smoothbore cannons are pretty much the entire field. They shoot hollow balls filled with acid, high explosives and shrapnel, poison gas, smoke, liquid ice, and the much feared flammable jelly.

Why wouldn't they make rifled artillery? It's superior in accuracy and range, and you could make custom shells for it just as easily.

Hiro Protagonest
2015-07-29, 06:23 PM
Technology makes your reflexes so fast that you can block and deflect bullets with swords. So it is becomes superior weapon.

There would have to be a hugely disproportionate amount of research dedicated to cybernetic enhancement, while not at all focused on electromagnetic/coil-based/laser guns, to get to the point where not only can you block a bullet, but it's more efficient to carry a sword than just dodge because you can swing it faster than a point-blank shot.

Really, I'm more inclined to believe "enchanting a bow or gun doesn't work, and it's logistically easier to enchant a sword than bullets" and that magic armor and shields are highly resistant to anything not magic, so only those able to make precision shots use guns (kinda like how lasguns SHOULD be used in Warhammer 40k).

Roxxy
2015-07-29, 06:43 PM
Why wouldn't they make rifled artillery? It's superior in accuracy and range, and you could make custom shells for it just as easily.Rifled guns have serious durability issues if they are cast, and almost all military cannon are made that way in this setting. The Parrott Rifle was able to solve this durability issue, but this required inventing a new method of overlaying wrought iron onto cast iron that my setting hasn't discovered yet. So, rifled artillery isn't popular for the same reason it wasn't popular IRL until the American Civil War. Just like cartridge firearms, it'll be probably be figured out within a few decades at most, and then rifled artillery will start replacing the smoothbores.

Alternatively, I might go with the early American Civil War explanation of "We just figured out how to forge these things a year ago and got access to them on the battlefield a few months ago, and haven't had anywhere near enough time to replace existing artillery." In which case, they'd be available, but very new.

hiryuu
2015-07-29, 07:05 PM
Really, I'm more inclined to believe "enchanting a bow or gun doesn't work, and it's logistically easier to enchant a sword than bullets" and that magic armor and shields are highly resistant to anything not magic.

I sometimes use "each individual part must be enchanted separately." This results in PCs using magic guns, but not a whole lot of large-scale groups. Which is ideal - it allows PCs to be awesome and dramatically slows things down. It's easier for an NPC group to make a bunch of wands or crossbows than it is to make some magic guns.

In my home setting, one of the things contributing to the slow/declining growth of certain industries and forcing workarounds is that oil wells and pockets have been sucked up by several previous civs and what's left tends to be bogarted by certain types of necromancers. It's hard to drill for oil if the guys holding on to it are capable of manipulating tiny little globs of the stuff or making the magic equivalent of Venom suits and wrapping them in Megalodons - I wrote that correctly. UNDEAD OIL-BASED VOLTRON SHARK ZOMBIES.

Brother Oni
2015-07-30, 02:23 AM
I sometimes use "each individual part must be enchanted separately." This results in PCs using magic guns, but not a whole lot of large-scale groups. Which is ideal - it allows PCs to be awesome and dramatically slows things down. It's easier for an NPC group to make a bunch of wands or crossbows than it is to make some magic guns.

Matchlocks are very simple weapons with not many parts and probably about on par with a contemporary military crossbow in terms of complexity and number of parts. Stepping over wheellocks and snaplocks to flintlocks, again you go back to very simple weapons.

I agree that once you start having percussion caps and cartridged rimfire/needlefire ammunition, the complexity starts going up rapidly.

Mr. Mask
2015-07-30, 02:49 AM
If the important part is magical contact, then having to enchant a million musket balls might be an issue. A lot of those were cast by soldiers on campaign.

Brother Oni
2015-07-30, 06:27 AM
If the important part is magical contact, then having to enchant a million musket balls might be an issue. A lot of those were cast by soldiers on campaign.

The difference is that a musket ball can be cast in a fraction of the time it takes to craft an arrow or a bolt, so if magical crossbows/bows are available then we'd have to get more into the enchantment process to distinguish why a musketball can't be enchanted but an arrow can.

Depending on the fixed and variable costs, equipment and personnel required, you can come up with any reasoning from magical ranged weapons being rare in general (immobile equipment and rare personnel), to lots of arrows/bolts but not musketballs (high variable costs resulting in a high cost per unit) to lots of musketballs (high fixed costs but low variable costs so it's more efficient to mass enchant a day's production of a few thousand balls than it is to mass enchant a day's production of a few hundred arrows).

Of course you can play around with the production scheduling (with the high fixed, low variable version, you can wait and enchant a week's production of arrows to reduce the fixed cost per unit at the potential risk of running out of ammunition between the weekly resupply), but that involves even more detail of the production and enchantment process.

hiryuu
2015-07-30, 01:30 PM
Matchlocks are very simple weapons with not many parts and probably about on par with a contemporary military crossbow in terms of complexity and number of parts. Stepping over wheellocks and snaplocks to flintlocks, again you go back to very simple weapons.

Oh, yeah. What happened in-setting was that they revolutionized warfare entirely - delivering magic at range using peasantry was a ridiculous bump in firepower - to stay relevant, non-magical smithing guilds started experimenting with other weapons in a broad and haphazard fashion, and firearms tech got real complicated really quick - we're talking skipping "revolver" and going straight into breech-loads and spring-loads.


I agree that once you start having percussion caps and cartridged rimfire/needlefire ammunition, the complexity starts going up rapidly.

And especially if you're making gatling guns.

Mr. Mask
2015-07-30, 05:32 PM
Oni: Mm, was thinking specifically of magic swords being possible but ranged weapons are tricky. You can work other strange possibilities, like enchanting gunpowder is either ineffective, less effective, or just harder, and that enchanting a gun only makes the barrel more durable. You could make it that it's impossible to enchant anything that's cast, it has to be hammered. There are lots of odd rules you could have. The important point is making them seem plausible in a setting.

One thing I would be interested to see, is a setting where the armour is so tough, the troops have to carry recoilless rifles as the main armament. It'd bring things back to the level of sword and musket, essentially. It'd also make gas weapons and flamethrowers (and thermobaric bombs) a lot more attractive.

SkipSandwich
2015-07-30, 05:48 PM
Oni: Mm, was thinking specifically of magic swords being possible but ranged weapons are tricky. You can work other strange possibilities, like enchanting gunpowder is either ineffective, less effective, or just harder, and that enchanting a gun only makes the barrel more durable. You could make it that it's impossible to enchant anything that's cast, it has to be hammered. There are lots of odd rules you could have. The important point is making them seem plausible in a setting.

One thing I would be interested to see, is a setting where the armour is so tough, the troops have to carry recoilless rifles as the main armament. It'd bring things back to the level of sword and musket, essentially. It'd also make gas weapons and flamethrowers (and thermobaric bombs) a lot more attractive.

..Isn't that basically Warhammer40k Space Marine Armor? Bolters rapid-fire HEAP rockets instead of bullets after all. Of course, Space Marine armor also has life support functions to cover the few remaining weaknesses that haven't been genetically modified out of the Space Marines tehmselves (practically immune to aging, poison and disease, can eat and digest pretty much any organic matter and even some inorganic compounds due to having highly acidic saliva, redundant organs, ect.). If it's not a diamond-tipped chainsaw-sword, modern anti-tank equivalent firearm, spacefuture super-napalm or better, it aint doing diddly squat to a Space Marine.

Reltzik
2015-08-02, 03:11 AM
Let's see.

I ran a hard sci-fi game once, set around habitats in the frontier of space (the Jovian Trojan asteroids). Habitats were too high-value to destroy, so military action revolved around boarding actions instead. Guns caused too much damage to equipment and risked hull breaches, and recoil in zero-g is awful. Electrolasers were the preferred police weapon, but didn't function in a vacuum. The typical infantry engagement took place at point-blank range, rounding the corner in a zero-sound environment to come face-to-face with the enemy. So... the standard-issue weapon was the gladius. Yes, the Roman sword. Lethally-effective at close range, excellent for stabbing, a point-first flying charge, or slashing open a space suit.

Then there was the steampunk novel I started writing (and got stuck on). Revolvers with percussion cartridges were established technology and early gattling guns were making their way into the military. However, the typical person was armed with bows and spears... because gunpowder technology was restricted to nobility and royalty. It was a death sentence for serfs, peasants, or the unacknowledged merchant class to carry them. (Crossbows were also illegal, but a lesser offense.) The artificial rarity of gunpowder weapons made the armored cavalry charge a viable tactic. Rifled artillery with elevation screws existed, but these were also restricted to crown ships, and most ships were armed with ballistae coated with incendiary pitch. High-speed harpoons fired through steam overpressure were common, too. Chain mail was popular among the criminal or rebel element for its ability to stop lower-class weapons, and was produced with an eye towards concealment. This was juxtaposed with all the wacky steampunk tech possessed by individual nobility and royalty, whose lifestyle of leisure afforded them considerable time for invention and tinkering, which were the proper pastimes of a gentleman (or -lady). ... oh, and electricity and radio had both been discovered, but were suppressed secrets because EM interfered with the royal telepathy mutation. ... it was a weird world.

Mastikator
2015-08-02, 08:53 AM
Swords never run out of ammunition.

Even people defined by their firearms (like musketeers, which just means people with muskets) are still known to have used swords.

If the guns are muskets then it's not an anachronism for people to still use swords. You don't have to justify realism and historical accuracy. The muskets and swords thing is a strawman, only actual anachronisms are actually anachronisms

If the gun in question is an AR-15 then you will make to make up a justification for people still using swords in actual battles with AR-15s