yeah recently this sub has been inundanted with "fantasy should have guns" posts, when in actual fact, a ton of fantasy series already feature firearms.
Like, just a cursory list of the more famous examples include Princess Mononoke, Sekiro, Final Fantasy, Berserk, Bas Lag, Arcane/LoL, Dresden, Laundry Files, Lovecraft's mythos, Marvel/DC, Dishonoured, Weird West, World of Darkness, Bloodborne, Cultist Simulator, the Magicians, Pirates of the Carribbean, Paradise Lost, Elden Ring, Kill Six Billion Demons etc.
And if you add the caveat "ackshually by 'fantasy' they're referring specifically to medieval European fantasy that don't have guns" then that's a tautological statement. "Settings that don't have guns don't have guns"
Even then, the only fantasy setting I can think of that should have guns, but doesn't, is ASoIAF (they have the metallurgy for steel and plate armour and maesters tinkering with alchemy). And even then they have wildfire and dragons to make up for that. Maybe also LoK, but when they have tasers and mecha and metal telekinesis it's understandable.
There's the various handheld cannons you can use, like the jar cannon and the new Rabbath's cannon, as well as fixed cannons and explosive weapons used against you by the NPCs
I think most people when they mention this argument they refer to adding guns to medieval fantasy setting. Weird west type stories are fantasy and have guns, but no one bats an eye cuz its the american west.
That's why the counter argument is mentioning there were handheld gunpowder guns in the XIV century.
I mean, I also mentioned several settings that take place in late medieval/early Renaissance settings - Berserk, Sekiro, Elden Ring, Princess Mononoke etc. that all prominently feature firearms technology, of the blackpowder hand cannon/matchlock variety that's appropriate to the time period and/or general tech level of the setting.
I am fine with those examples, what i say refers to lumping all fantasy settings in one as a defense of guns being utilized, when I don't think anyone will say "well, the cthulhu mythos has guns, and that is fantasy too, so checkmate."
that's not what I'm saying?
I'm saying that I don't think there's a "no guns in fantasy" stigma, when guns are quite prevalent in fantasy settings, including medieval era fantasy settings.
It's not just one or two counterexamples, it's a big long laundry list of examples of very popular and successful fantasy settings (including medieval ones) that have no problems with incorporating firearms into their setting.
I think ultimately the difference is "Sci-Fi has the pretense of possibility." You don't ask how teleportation works in fantasy, but you do in sci-fi, because the foundations of the genre are rooted in speculation about the future.
Fantasy by contrast isn't about the future, it's about another space in imagination. It doesn't have to be plausible, it's any story where the fundamental question of believability is suspended (Mostly because the genre used to be exclusive to children's media).
These contrast with "Any story that takes place in our world" which is, by its nature, ostensibly trying to convince you that this either could happen, will happen, has happened, or is happening. They're not usually trying to actually do that obviously, but at the roots of fiction it was, and I think that element still exists in how we engage with media and the extent to which we suspend our disbelief with it.
The main continent in my world doesn't have blackpowder because the elves assassinate everyone who invents it so nobody can blow up their fortifications.
The message of my story is that elves ruin everything.
Coincidentally there is a different continent where humans have already invented gunpowder and early cannons and are about to reestablish contact with the main continent so that problem might solve itself soon.
I actually have some thoughts about this!
The rejection of guns in fantasy is, in my eyes, much more about wanting to avoid the decreased importance on personal combat ability that gun-based warfare brings as opposed to accuracy to a time period. This is also the reason the protagonist in fantasy tends to be a swordsman/woman as opposed to an archer, because we perceive one's skill with a sword to be more important in successful combat than one's skill with a bow (It's a super old trope, dates back to ancient Greece, long story).
This is also why when you see important characters use guns in fantasy a lot of the time they're cowboy-styled gunslingers spinning six-shooters around their fingers, because it puts the emphasis back on individual skill.
This is a lot more important in fantasy compared to, say, sci-fi mostly because fantasy has always been a very character-driven genre, and thus an individual's ability is more important narratively than the broad strokes of technological development.
Guns also tend to peel away some of the illusion of a war or adventuring being glamorous for those same reasons: you don't survive because you're the most skilled member of the group, you survive because you got lucky.
Inevitably, the story becomes somewhat less about an epic quest, and somewhat more about just trying to make it home. And we don't like being reminded of that when we read our escapist stories.
I don't know about that hypothesis, honestly.
There's plenty of fantasy series that have no problem glamorising skillful firearm use in individual combat. And it's not just cowboy gunsligners with six shooters either, they run the gamut.
Sekiro has many deadly elite enemies characterised by their use of blackpowder matchlocks
Like Snake Eyes Shirahagi and Shirafuji and their subordinates, who guard the gun fort of the Sunken Valley. Their firearms technology are primitive, behind that of the rest of Japan, but they possess superhuman aiming skills, being descended from the yokai monsters of the Okami clan.
Then there's the elite Samurai warriors of the Interior Ministry's Red Guard - who fight with oversized matchlocks, rocket launchers, cannons and flamethrowers, as well as dual blades, spears and halberds.
And there's Sword Saint Isshin - who's the single deadliest warrior in the setting, who fights with a sword, a cross guard spear, and an advanced (magical?) semi automatic flintlock.
Then there's Guts from Berserk. He's also the deadliest human fighter in the setting, and his ace in the hole is his hideously powerful black powder arm cannon hidden in his prosthetic arm.
Or Uther Doul from the Bas Lag series - who (again) is the most skilled and lethal fighter in the setting, and fights with an eldritch sword and multiple flintlock pistols. He's described drawing his guns and blades so smoothly and quickly that it seems to happen in the blink of an eye, and hits all of his shots dead on.
Also, what you said about Ancient Greek mythology not glamourising archers is completely wrong. There are more legendary archers than there are swordsmen.
Philoctetes is so deadly with a bow and arrow that he can slay a man from hundreds of meters away, even while he's laying sick and only being able to use his feet to shoot.
Heracles has many incredible archery feats, which are valorised just as much as his wresting and quick wits. He isn't even known for using his sword, his iconic weapons are the bow and club.
And for most of their history, the Samurai warriors of Japan considered their primary role on the battlefield to be horseback archers. Their yari spears and tachi/katana swords were secondary weapons, of lesser importance.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and assume they mean the contemporary use of firearms (and ranged weapons in general) in combat involves a lot of suppressive (or, if older, volley) fire, having a lot of people in general, and larger overall strategic plays being more important than small tactical victories. These make individuals less important and the brigades they compose more important, which can be hard to write if the story is just supposed to be about a handful of guys who fight on their own.
Yes, it's not like ranged weapons aren't also famous in their own ways, but these tend to be snipers of gun and bow, cowboys and their companions, or small, highly trained spec ops teams. On their own, these guys can be pretty good, but they all tend to fall flat if you remind the reader of situations where they'd suck, e.g. snipers fighting more than a handful of people, cowboys fighting more than a handful of people, spec ops teams fighting more than a handful of people, etc. So, to avoid reminding people that they would probably be little more than a fancy trooper in terms of actual strategic value, you tend to not see ranged weapon users too often.
(In general, if these heroes needed to fight more than a handful of people, their skills would be rendered useless by the sheer volume afforded with ranged weaponry and their suppressive capabilites)
Volley fire, incidentally, dates back to bows, which is why the archers were probably thrown to the wayside in favor of swordsmen and mages, for the reasons seen above.
sure, in real life, logistics, economies and overall strategy play a far greater role in military victory than individual skill.
Individual skill does still matter, of course, but usually in the context of how well soldiers work in tandem to conduct an operation, not so much their ability to win a skirmish or one on one duel. (though there are rare exceptions, like with WW1 era dogfights or sniper duels)
The important individuals tend to be spies, special forces and military leaders - and they're not so much the "deadliest fighters" as they are performing difficult and critical jobs that allow regular troops to be in the right time and place to win the war. Alan Turing and Green Berets and agent Zigzag aren't one man armies, even if they were disproportionately important to their respective war efforts.
However, fiction isn't bound by those constraints. It really is possible for one insanely skilled fighter to turn the tide of the war based on their combat skill alone.
The factors in real life that diminish the role of the individual combat skill (volley fire, disciplined formations, professional soldiers etc.) are negated by the fact that fictional badasses can do things like dodge or deflect bullets, fire handheld blackpowder cannons and wield massive swords in a manner physically impossible for any real human, survive grievous injuries through sheer force of will etc.
So even if society had developed into kingdoms, or centralised imperial states, or even modern nations - it's possible for warfare to more closely resemble small scale tribal warfare, or even "champion warfare", because of the outsized impact of just a handful of one man armies.
And firearms aren't incompatible with that.
I'd still consider them cowboy-styled highly skilled gunslingers tbh
Like, I don't think this is a hard and fast rule, but I do think it's a general trend. Like... you wouldn't give a no-nothing fantasy protagonist farm boy a gun if you wanted to show them growing in skill over time in combat, necessarily. You'd probably give them a sword, because the relationship between skill and success *feels* closer.
As I said, obviously not a hard and fast rule, and it varies by story.
Honestly that’s what I love about guns in fantasy. They are a great equalizer. Guns don’t require as much training or conditioning as bows or spears, and armor isn’t as effective against them. Guns were also used for hunting unlike warbows or swords so they are tools and weapons. Guns allowed peasants to be as powerful as their lords.
I think people also just forget that you can still have sword fights in a world where guns were invented. I’ve seen so many people argue that guns led to less sword fights or melee combat in general which may be slightly true by the 19th century but there’s still 500+ years where people were constantly having sword fights even after guns were introduced and melee weapons are still used today. That’s why I’m such a fan of 15-19th century fantasy because such a wide array of weapons and military strategies were developed.
Gunpowder "weaponry" is much older. 14th century is the very beginning of the hand held "gun"
Bombards (big canons) were already popular in the 13th century
its kinda funny how people say "muh guns will change the world" yet their world has so many fucking end of the world scenarios but society still is similar to ours n shit all normal n safe
fuck this lol
Yeah.
Like you have a caster that was so powerful his 10th , 11th or 12th circle spells changed the entire world and had the power to steal the power of gods, causing anything above spell level 9 to be universally banned by gods, but NoOoO, you can't have a 1d12 damage gun.
Hell, *we* have enough nukes to bomb ourselves back into the stone age and (used to have) enough poison gas for a lot of people to never breathe again, but life goes on because nobody would be so dumb to try and use it. Doubly so in the case the case of nerve gas; most of it got destroyed.
New tech in warfare will change warfare because that's how tech works, but none of it will end the world because nobody (usually) wants to do that.
In Weirdos 4 Hire (a sci-fi story) they don't use laser weapons or fancy stuff, they use regular modern day guns and blades.
Unless that's an atomic weapon or organic one from within.
Boring ass fantasy discussuon: guns don't exist here, and even if they did, wizards have shield spells.
Awesome fantasy discussion: guns are, in fact, a magic spell created by other mages to give to the common man so they can serve in armies to kill their foes
Brought to you by the Technocratic Union.
Fantasy is more about aestethic than historical accuracy. If the writer doesn't want guns there won't be guns.
But anyway, this strawman is so old that guns in fantasy has almost become the norm rather than the exception
Right, but early guns were 1 shot and take a minute to load, potentially explode in your hand, among other problems. I don't have a problem with guns in fantasy so long as they don't invalidate other mechanics.
Less than a minute to load. Depending on method one could load an early handgonne much quicker than a windlass crossbow for instance.
Could potentially explode on your hand, but it wasn't exactly normal. A bow string snap. Crossbow explode. Both of which could be highly dangerous to the users
That said, old smoothbore guns were HILARIOUSLY inaccurate over longer distances, so forget about using guns for sniping prior to the invention of Rifling
Which to be fair happens fairly early too. It's argued but either later 15th century or early 16th. So if you are going for renaissance style setting rifling is very plausible. Albeit expensive
Actually I let my sailing ships have guns cause I like Master and Commander and my land soldiers have swords cause I like Game of Thrones and it works cause I like it
No, I'm going the opposite way and making a story that takes place in the modern era but gunpowder was never invented.
The Korra approach.
The Nimona approach
# WE SKIPPED STRAIGHT TO NITROCELLULOSE
Wizards use magic to propel bullets without gunpowder
god we really need to return to definitions of sci fi and fantasy that go deeper than "stuff in the future" and "swords and sorcery lotr rip of"
yeah recently this sub has been inundanted with "fantasy should have guns" posts, when in actual fact, a ton of fantasy series already feature firearms. Like, just a cursory list of the more famous examples include Princess Mononoke, Sekiro, Final Fantasy, Berserk, Bas Lag, Arcane/LoL, Dresden, Laundry Files, Lovecraft's mythos, Marvel/DC, Dishonoured, Weird West, World of Darkness, Bloodborne, Cultist Simulator, the Magicians, Pirates of the Carribbean, Paradise Lost, Elden Ring, Kill Six Billion Demons etc. And if you add the caveat "ackshually by 'fantasy' they're referring specifically to medieval European fantasy that don't have guns" then that's a tautological statement. "Settings that don't have guns don't have guns" Even then, the only fantasy setting I can think of that should have guns, but doesn't, is ASoIAF (they have the metallurgy for steel and plate armour and maesters tinkering with alchemy). And even then they have wildfire and dragons to make up for that. Maybe also LoK, but when they have tasers and mecha and metal telekinesis it's understandable.
Wait Elden ring? I don’t remember any guns in that. Unless you’re talking about the machine gun adjacent crossbow lol
There's the various handheld cannons you can use, like the jar cannon and the new Rabbath's cannon, as well as fixed cannons and explosive weapons used against you by the NPCs
Lovecraft? Most stories take place in the XIX-XXth century.
still fantasy, no? Kill Six Billion Demons, World of Darkness, and the Laundry Files are also fantasy, and they take place in the 21st century
I think most people when they mention this argument they refer to adding guns to medieval fantasy setting. Weird west type stories are fantasy and have guns, but no one bats an eye cuz its the american west. That's why the counter argument is mentioning there were handheld gunpowder guns in the XIV century.
I mean, I also mentioned several settings that take place in late medieval/early Renaissance settings - Berserk, Sekiro, Elden Ring, Princess Mononoke etc. that all prominently feature firearms technology, of the blackpowder hand cannon/matchlock variety that's appropriate to the time period and/or general tech level of the setting.
I am fine with those examples, what i say refers to lumping all fantasy settings in one as a defense of guns being utilized, when I don't think anyone will say "well, the cthulhu mythos has guns, and that is fantasy too, so checkmate."
that's not what I'm saying? I'm saying that I don't think there's a "no guns in fantasy" stigma, when guns are quite prevalent in fantasy settings, including medieval era fantasy settings. It's not just one or two counterexamples, it's a big long laundry list of examples of very popular and successful fantasy settings (including medieval ones) that have no problems with incorporating firearms into their setting.
I think ultimately the difference is "Sci-Fi has the pretense of possibility." You don't ask how teleportation works in fantasy, but you do in sci-fi, because the foundations of the genre are rooted in speculation about the future. Fantasy by contrast isn't about the future, it's about another space in imagination. It doesn't have to be plausible, it's any story where the fundamental question of believability is suspended (Mostly because the genre used to be exclusive to children's media). These contrast with "Any story that takes place in our world" which is, by its nature, ostensibly trying to convince you that this either could happen, will happen, has happened, or is happening. They're not usually trying to actually do that obviously, but at the roots of fiction it was, and I think that element still exists in how we engage with media and the extent to which we suspend our disbelief with it.
> we really need to return to definitions of sci fi and fantasy Boy do I have some bad news for you about the definitions of sci-fi and fantasy!
i know its futile
The main continent in my world doesn't have blackpowder because the elves assassinate everyone who invents it so nobody can blow up their fortifications. The message of my story is that elves ruin everything. Coincidentally there is a different continent where humans have already invented gunpowder and early cannons and are about to reestablish contact with the main continent so that problem might solve itself soon.
The last sentence is pure gold. OP if you're writing some work about it, I'll gladly read it
human continent with gunpower sailing to another continent without gunpowder, sounds good I am sure everything is going to be fine, right Spain?
First part is rather dragon age like
It is? I've only played the first one. Didn't the dwarves have granates and bombs in that one?
The few dwarves that do have stolen it from the Qunari, who make a serious effort to stop anyone else getting it
man i dont even care when firearms were invented. i'm taking the urban fantasy pill, baby
Three Little Pigs, but they're all Police Chiefs. They're P.I.G pigs And of course, The Fairy Godfather
I mean I'm also write urban fantasy
I actually have some thoughts about this! The rejection of guns in fantasy is, in my eyes, much more about wanting to avoid the decreased importance on personal combat ability that gun-based warfare brings as opposed to accuracy to a time period. This is also the reason the protagonist in fantasy tends to be a swordsman/woman as opposed to an archer, because we perceive one's skill with a sword to be more important in successful combat than one's skill with a bow (It's a super old trope, dates back to ancient Greece, long story). This is also why when you see important characters use guns in fantasy a lot of the time they're cowboy-styled gunslingers spinning six-shooters around their fingers, because it puts the emphasis back on individual skill. This is a lot more important in fantasy compared to, say, sci-fi mostly because fantasy has always been a very character-driven genre, and thus an individual's ability is more important narratively than the broad strokes of technological development.
Guns also tend to peel away some of the illusion of a war or adventuring being glamorous for those same reasons: you don't survive because you're the most skilled member of the group, you survive because you got lucky. Inevitably, the story becomes somewhat less about an epic quest, and somewhat more about just trying to make it home. And we don't like being reminded of that when we read our escapist stories.
I don't know about that hypothesis, honestly. There's plenty of fantasy series that have no problem glamorising skillful firearm use in individual combat. And it's not just cowboy gunsligners with six shooters either, they run the gamut. Sekiro has many deadly elite enemies characterised by their use of blackpowder matchlocks Like Snake Eyes Shirahagi and Shirafuji and their subordinates, who guard the gun fort of the Sunken Valley. Their firearms technology are primitive, behind that of the rest of Japan, but they possess superhuman aiming skills, being descended from the yokai monsters of the Okami clan. Then there's the elite Samurai warriors of the Interior Ministry's Red Guard - who fight with oversized matchlocks, rocket launchers, cannons and flamethrowers, as well as dual blades, spears and halberds. And there's Sword Saint Isshin - who's the single deadliest warrior in the setting, who fights with a sword, a cross guard spear, and an advanced (magical?) semi automatic flintlock. Then there's Guts from Berserk. He's also the deadliest human fighter in the setting, and his ace in the hole is his hideously powerful black powder arm cannon hidden in his prosthetic arm. Or Uther Doul from the Bas Lag series - who (again) is the most skilled and lethal fighter in the setting, and fights with an eldritch sword and multiple flintlock pistols. He's described drawing his guns and blades so smoothly and quickly that it seems to happen in the blink of an eye, and hits all of his shots dead on. Also, what you said about Ancient Greek mythology not glamourising archers is completely wrong. There are more legendary archers than there are swordsmen. Philoctetes is so deadly with a bow and arrow that he can slay a man from hundreds of meters away, even while he's laying sick and only being able to use his feet to shoot. Heracles has many incredible archery feats, which are valorised just as much as his wresting and quick wits. He isn't even known for using his sword, his iconic weapons are the bow and club. And for most of their history, the Samurai warriors of Japan considered their primary role on the battlefield to be horseback archers. Their yari spears and tachi/katana swords were secondary weapons, of lesser importance.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and assume they mean the contemporary use of firearms (and ranged weapons in general) in combat involves a lot of suppressive (or, if older, volley) fire, having a lot of people in general, and larger overall strategic plays being more important than small tactical victories. These make individuals less important and the brigades they compose more important, which can be hard to write if the story is just supposed to be about a handful of guys who fight on their own. Yes, it's not like ranged weapons aren't also famous in their own ways, but these tend to be snipers of gun and bow, cowboys and their companions, or small, highly trained spec ops teams. On their own, these guys can be pretty good, but they all tend to fall flat if you remind the reader of situations where they'd suck, e.g. snipers fighting more than a handful of people, cowboys fighting more than a handful of people, spec ops teams fighting more than a handful of people, etc. So, to avoid reminding people that they would probably be little more than a fancy trooper in terms of actual strategic value, you tend to not see ranged weapon users too often. (In general, if these heroes needed to fight more than a handful of people, their skills would be rendered useless by the sheer volume afforded with ranged weaponry and their suppressive capabilites) Volley fire, incidentally, dates back to bows, which is why the archers were probably thrown to the wayside in favor of swordsmen and mages, for the reasons seen above.
sure, in real life, logistics, economies and overall strategy play a far greater role in military victory than individual skill. Individual skill does still matter, of course, but usually in the context of how well soldiers work in tandem to conduct an operation, not so much their ability to win a skirmish or one on one duel. (though there are rare exceptions, like with WW1 era dogfights or sniper duels) The important individuals tend to be spies, special forces and military leaders - and they're not so much the "deadliest fighters" as they are performing difficult and critical jobs that allow regular troops to be in the right time and place to win the war. Alan Turing and Green Berets and agent Zigzag aren't one man armies, even if they were disproportionately important to their respective war efforts. However, fiction isn't bound by those constraints. It really is possible for one insanely skilled fighter to turn the tide of the war based on their combat skill alone. The factors in real life that diminish the role of the individual combat skill (volley fire, disciplined formations, professional soldiers etc.) are negated by the fact that fictional badasses can do things like dodge or deflect bullets, fire handheld blackpowder cannons and wield massive swords in a manner physically impossible for any real human, survive grievous injuries through sheer force of will etc. So even if society had developed into kingdoms, or centralised imperial states, or even modern nations - it's possible for warfare to more closely resemble small scale tribal warfare, or even "champion warfare", because of the outsized impact of just a handful of one man armies. And firearms aren't incompatible with that.
I get you, but that explanation doesn't hold water when you remember Equilibrium and John Wick exist.
I'd still consider them cowboy-styled highly skilled gunslingers tbh Like, I don't think this is a hard and fast rule, but I do think it's a general trend. Like... you wouldn't give a no-nothing fantasy protagonist farm boy a gun if you wanted to show them growing in skill over time in combat, necessarily. You'd probably give them a sword, because the relationship between skill and success *feels* closer. As I said, obviously not a hard and fast rule, and it varies by story.
Honestly that’s what I love about guns in fantasy. They are a great equalizer. Guns don’t require as much training or conditioning as bows or spears, and armor isn’t as effective against them. Guns were also used for hunting unlike warbows or swords so they are tools and weapons. Guns allowed peasants to be as powerful as their lords. I think people also just forget that you can still have sword fights in a world where guns were invented. I’ve seen so many people argue that guns led to less sword fights or melee combat in general which may be slightly true by the 19th century but there’s still 500+ years where people were constantly having sword fights even after guns were introduced and melee weapons are still used today. That’s why I’m such a fan of 15-19th century fantasy because such a wide array of weapons and military strategies were developed.
Ikit claw moment
Gunpowder "weaponry" is much older. 14th century is the very beginning of the hand held "gun" Bombards (big canons) were already popular in the 13th century
But we already have gun fantasy at home! Gun fantasy at home: Shadowrun
its kinda funny how people say "muh guns will change the world" yet their world has so many fucking end of the world scenarios but society still is similar to ours n shit all normal n safe fuck this lol
Yeah. Like you have a caster that was so powerful his 10th , 11th or 12th circle spells changed the entire world and had the power to steal the power of gods, causing anything above spell level 9 to be universally banned by gods, but NoOoO, you can't have a 1d12 damage gun.
how dare you don't have spell sluts
Hell, *we* have enough nukes to bomb ourselves back into the stone age and (used to have) enough poison gas for a lot of people to never breathe again, but life goes on because nobody would be so dumb to try and use it. Doubly so in the case the case of nerve gas; most of it got destroyed. New tech in warfare will change warfare because that's how tech works, but none of it will end the world because nobody (usually) wants to do that.
we have skibidi toilet tho
Science fantasy: the best of both worlds
In Weirdos 4 Hire (a sci-fi story) they don't use laser weapons or fancy stuff, they use regular modern day guns and blades. Unless that's an atomic weapon or organic one from within.
There are no nuke-bombs, man-thing! The rat-Skaven needed to make nuke-bombs do not-not exist!
Guns are an ancient weapon archeologists are starting to dig up
my fantasy world is based on the 13th century so suck on that nerd
Nice try but small cannons and flintlock rifles were already widespread even then
They were just figuring out rudimentary hand-cannons in the 13th century, they definitely didn’t have flintlocks, much less *rifled* flintlocks
guns were invented 100 years and came to europe 10 years before plate armour was invented
And what about a chinese-inspired fantasy setting where you have gunpowder very early on?
Boring ass fantasy discussuon: guns don't exist here, and even if they did, wizards have shield spells. Awesome fantasy discussion: guns are, in fact, a magic spell created by other mages to give to the common man so they can serve in armies to kill their foes Brought to you by the Technocratic Union.
Fantasy is more about aestethic than historical accuracy. If the writer doesn't want guns there won't be guns. But anyway, this strawman is so old that guns in fantasy has almost become the norm rather than the exception
you fool, fantasy IS historical accuracy, and the more historically accurate the more fantasy it is
Just make Early Modern fantasy it's not that hard 🥱
yar there be treasure
Right, but early guns were 1 shot and take a minute to load, potentially explode in your hand, among other problems. I don't have a problem with guns in fantasy so long as they don't invalidate other mechanics.
Less than a minute to load. Depending on method one could load an early handgonne much quicker than a windlass crossbow for instance. Could potentially explode on your hand, but it wasn't exactly normal. A bow string snap. Crossbow explode. Both of which could be highly dangerous to the users
That said, old smoothbore guns were HILARIOUSLY inaccurate over longer distances, so forget about using guns for sniping prior to the invention of Rifling
Which to be fair happens fairly early too. It's argued but either later 15th century or early 16th. So if you are going for renaissance style setting rifling is very plausible. Albeit expensive
EVERYWHERE I GO I SEE YOU, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!
Waahhh
Actually I let my sailing ships have guns cause I like Master and Commander and my land soldiers have swords cause I like Game of Thrones and it works cause I like it
I want my landsknechts to run with two pistols.
They don't care if it's a melee weapon though. 🙄