Guns In Fantasy

This is why the "fantasy western" genre exists.

I guess the question I'd ask is: why can't guns work in fantasy? It seems a lot of fantasy authors (no I'm not pointing fingers at anyone here) shy away from guns, because they're somehow perceived as inherently "bad".

Now, if you do have guns in a fantasy story, you'll have to account for things. Like why armor isn't obsoleted. Or why people would bother using bows/crossbows anymore. Or why castles are still around.

My way around these obstacles is that guns are still relatively primitive, are expensive to produce and maintain, take time to reload, are prone to jamming, and the equivalent of gunpowder, Fireseed, is a plant (seed) that's slow to grow. Hence Fireseed is also quite expensive.

Look at a flintlock pistol or a blunderbuss for examples of older guns that could work fine in fantasy.

Another (less-used) alternative is to have the guns themselves run on magic, inasmuch as say, a wand might do. Compartively, they might not be that much different from the energy guns or railguns of sci-fi.

It's always interesting, and flintlocks/blunderbusss could be used to mark out a steampunk fantasy. Some game universes have incorporated firearms into a more "traditional" fantasy setting, such as Warcraft.

Colin McHale said:

Now, if you do have guns in a fantasy story, you'll have to account for things. Like why armor isn't obsoleted. Or why people would bother using bows/crossbows anymore. Or why castles are still around.

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Not all fantasy takes place in medieval times. There's urban fantasy, fantasy set in Victorian times, Regency fantasy....all kinds of fantasy where guns would make sense without any special explanation.

I once wrote a fantasy story with cell phones and computers.

Colin McHale said:

Look at a flintlock pistol or a blunderbuss for examples of older guns that could work fine in fantasy.

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I am using flintlock in my story for the specific reason that I really like swords and don't want to render them obsolete.

I think my story actually qualifies as science fiction, but the reason relates.

Beth Bernobich said:

Not all fantasy takes place in medieval times....

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Thank you.

dempsey said:

I am using flintlock in my story for the specific reason that I really like swords and don't want to render them obsolete.

I think my story actually qualifies as science fiction, but the reason relates.

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I find guns of various kinds to be very useful in many fantasy settings. Light machine guns for example can trash evil beings in trucks at several hundred yards...often with spectacular results when the flame-thrower sponson blows sky-high.

Any reasonable gun will stop the average chainsaw-wielding assailant pretty quick.

And you can show a lot about a character by describing how they
pace their use of ammo or not.

Plus you can suggest the helpful nature of helpful mysterious demonic forces by having them leave helpful notes about what range a given weapon is zero-ed on.

I woud like to see a lot more guns in fantasy. If Voldemort had shot Harry in the face, there wouldn't have been all that trouble. No lightning scar, just a mess of brains all over Godric's Hollow. Love doesn't protect against bullets.

Just a historical note; those composite gun/sword, gun/knife, gun/axe things were basically really expensive novelty items. None of them were particularly practical at either role, and were far more expensive than just buying one of each.

In fantasy literature and art, you see all kinds of compound weapons-I've seen spear/flails, and all those horrific 'double' weapons in the latest dnd system, and all kinds of things like that. The point is, if a weapon does't have a widespread historical precedent, it probably wasn't very effective, or even possible to use.

It took a very long time for "swords and armor" to be obsoleted by guns. Baoynets and calvary swords killed plenty in the American civil war. Body armor is still in use today against guns. Sulieman the Magnificant put the Hostpitaler Knights under siege at Rhodes and their fortress withstood months of bombardment by his massive array of cannons, because it had been built with cannon defense in mind. Back to the civil war, Forts Sumter and Fisher survived massive bombardments by powerful cannons with exploding rounds, their defense? Big mounds of dirt.

There were still calvary units prior to WWII, didn't do so well, but they did do well recently in Afganistan, especially when backed by air power

Before guns there were longbows, crossbows, and trebuchets, all of which were more than adequate.

I would submit, too, that people would have created bullet-resistant spells in a fantasy world where both magic and guns are in use. That might be a good way to keep armor, if you want it: the metal can be enchanted to resist bullets or even deflect them.

This is called on a wiki I sometimes contribute as Fantasy Gun Control


http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyGunControl

Army of Darkness, anyone?

hammerklavier said:

It took a very long time for "swords and armor" to be obsoleted by guns. Baoynets and calvary swords killed plenty in the American civil war. Body armor is still in use today against guns. Sulieman the Magnificant put the Hostpitaler Knights under siege at Rhodes and their fortress withstood months of bombardment by his massive array of cannons, because it had been built with cannon defense in mind. Back to the civil war, Forts Sumter and Fisher survived massive bombardments by powerful cannons with exploding rounds, their defense? Big mounds of dirt.

There were still calvary units prior to WWII, didn't do so well, but they did do well recently in Afganistan, especially when backed by air power

Before guns there were longbows, crossbows, and trebuchets, all of which were more than adequate.

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The modern reader, though, finds guns an inherently convincing form of violence...so if you have a violent story, but prefer to keep the fights simple and relatively comprehensible...guns have some narrative advantages even against vaguely supernatural evil creatures.

orion_mk3 said:

I would submit, too, that people would have created bullet-resistant spells in a fantasy world where both magic and guns are in use. That might be a good way to keep armor, if you want it: the metal can be enchanted to resist bullets or even deflect them.

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But they could also make hyperpenetrative spells that would blast the bullets right through the magic fields using magical heavy ions.

Βοανηργες83;2271721 said:

One day I came across this book of guns and I looked inside of it and saw a pic of a halberd; as I was looking at it I noticed that at the top of it was a little hole...and at the bottom of the shaft there was a trigger!!!!!!!

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In human history, gunpowder was the first substance discovered that was easy to make, portable, and explosive enough that it could propel projectiles around for distances comparable to those of bows and arbalests. But it still took centuries for gunpowder and gunsmithing to become so commonplace that archery, siege engines and armour disappeared. Economics alone can allow guns and mediaeval weaponry to co-exist quite happily. When each shot costs you a week's lodging, you won't shoot your matchlock a whole lot!

But on the other side of it, even if gunpowder doesn't exist, I'm often surprised that fantasy weaponry is so blockheadedly limited. If you have air elementals, you can have compressed-air weaponry. If you have cave-trolls, giants etc... then you can have some truly terrifying spring-based siege equipment. And if you have air support from dragons, griffins and the like, then you have a perfect delivery mechanism for both biological and chemical weaponry - not to mention that dropping fire elementals into a siege from a great height must be far more effective than braving the archery to belch a bit of flame. If you have alchemy or some sort of transmutational magic then you can do some really evil things to food and water supplies. If you have scrying, geasa and mind control then your intel and espionage can increase enormously too.

Higgins said:

But they could also make hyperpenetrative spells that would blast the bullets right through the magic fields using magical heavy ions.

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You could have a magical arms race, in a sense. Where you have counters, anti-counters, anti-anti-counters, anti-anti-anti counters, and so on and so forth.

Although, in a real-world sense, offensive based technology eventually seems to surpass defensive based technology. I'd like to see the piece of armor that could stop a hypervelocity slug fired from a railgun.

And I'd like to see a railgun that can hit a moving target.

I wish I could remember the series, but I remember one where a group of people wound up getting whisked back in time to a very different Renaissance England where Arthur III was on the throne. They did have blunderbusses and cannon as well as magic, but in this series, the church controlled the making of gunpowder. I remember the heroes got in trouble because one of them had been a gunsmith and knew how to make gunpowder, getting himself declared a heretic, but he passed on the secret to Arthur, who used the ability to create gunpowder to create the schism with Rome (vice Henry VIII's interest in Anne Boelyn).

It was an entertaining trilogy, and I wish I could remember what it was called or who wrote it. It came out about the time The Dragon and the George did, but this series wasn't written by Gordon Dixon.

*fhtagn*

Sarpedon said:

And I'd like to see a railgun that can hit a moving target.

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As a matter of fact, a proposed use for railguns is to shoot down artillery or missiles before they reach a target. Though some lasers already can do this.

I would like to see that

loquax said:

I woud like to see a lot more guns in fantasy. If Voldemort had shot Harry in the face, there wouldn't have been all that trouble. No lightning scar, just a mess of brains all over Godric's Hollow. Love doesn't protect against bullets.

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LOL! I agree one hundred percent.

Beth Bernobich said:

Not all fantasy takes place in medieval times. There's urban fantasy, fantasy set in Victorian times, Regency fantasy....all kinds of fantasy where guns would make sense without any special explanation.

I once wrote a fantasy story with cell phones and computers.

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Indeed. My WiP is set in a world with muskets powered by magic. They still fire lead balls, but there's a mage who charges each rank's weapons instead of using gunpowder. Makes it interesting when the mage gets shot.