How did guns change medieval societies?

OK, I know this has been discussed before. I've found some great sources for how to introduce guns into D&D, but very little about how guns change a fantasy world.

So I ask you, oh great ENWorlders: How did the introduction of gunpowder change real-world societies? What was so great about an unreliable, clumsy, expensive rifle? Why was it better than the good old longbow?

I've heard that China was one of the first societies to develop guns. And I've heard that early guns essentially made armor obsolete.

I suspect guns were favored beacuse they were many times more deadly and accurate than bows. But it's difficult to model that in D&D, given that it's a HP-based system. The only way I can see to reflect their increased deadliness and accuracy would be to have guns do huge amounts of damage (like 6d6 per shot), and have big circumstance bonuses to hit (+5 or more). Who knows, maybe even make them ranged-touch attacks and simple weapons. But before we start talking house-rules, I'd love to get some feedback on the real-world history of firearms and how they changed the world.

Thanks,
Spider

I've seen games run that use 'guns have open ended damage, and are considered ranged touch attacks agianst archaic armor'. It was particularly lethal.

I think the real draw of the gun (even the clumsy version) was the realtive deadliness on speed to target. Get about 20 men standing in a line firing into another line, and people will go down.
And, if timed right, they go down faster, take greater casualties, and can't hide behind a shield wall.

For anyone out there: Weren't early European armies using a combination of both during the transition to firearms? Bows DID have a higher rate of fire.

Spider said:

What was so great about an unreliable, clumsy, expensive rifle? Why was it better than the good old longbow?

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Training someone to use it takes a lot less time.

Well for starters, the annual number of shootings started to rise sharply, causing parents to call for a ban on Paganini's music (he totally made a deal with the devil).

Okay, seriously...

Spider said:

I suspect guns were favored beacuse they were many times more deadly and accurate than bows.

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I suspect you'd be wrong there. Early muskets were like shooting a single pellet out of a modern buckshot blast, and you didn't get to pick which one. If you were really lucky, it might be the one that travelled roughly where you were pointing. By contrast, a well-trained longbowman could put an arrow in your face from several times the difference, and probably do a good bit more damage (I may exaggerate a little here, but I think it's largely based in truth). Of course, as the old saying goes, if you want a well-trained longbowman, start with his grandfather. Someone with a few days of playing with a musket, on the other hand, was probably as good as it got.

--Impeesa--

I guess it depends on how you define "medieval" because I would say that guns and gunpowder had very little to no effect on medieval societies. If you are really interested I would recommend two books, "The Military Revolution" by Geoffrey Parker and "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy. Neither book focusses exclusively on the effects of guns and gunpowder though both address various military innovations and how they affected some societies. Parker's book covers 1500-1800 A.D. and Kennedy's book covers an even broader span of time. IMO it is more interesting to look at how the medieval mindset was transformed from one of "being" into one of "becoming".

Guns revolutionized warfare for two reasons and--as others have said--accuracy was not one of them. Early firearms were notoriously inaccurate (to say nothing of being prone to misfires, and slower than hell to reload).

1) Guns were powerful. Armor was all but useless.

2) Guns were easy to use. If you have two dozen conscripts, and give them two dozen guns, they can make use of them with at least some effectiveness with very little training. If you take those same two dozen conscripts, and give them longbows, you're looking at two dozen corpses if you try to field them in battle.

That is, incidentally, why the crossbow was considered such a devastating weapon when it was first created. It was powerful, and it was easy to use. People were so scared of the crossbow, the Roman Catholic Church attempted to have them declared illegal--and, IIRC, even a sin to use, though I could be mistaken about this last part.

Mouseferatu said:

1) Guns were powerful. Armor was all but useless .

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Armor was still being worn in 1650, 300 years after guns appeared on the battlefield, so it can't be that simple. The true relation between guns and the decline of armor is a little more complex. Armorers could easily make suits of armor that could stop bullets. In fact, the armor was "proofed" by shooting a pistol or longarm at it. The resulting dent was proof that the armor could protect you from guns.

My suspicion is that rank-and-file soldiers began to tire of wearing armor because it was heavy and uncomfortable, not because it was useless against guns. The economics of war was changing too, with much larger armies that would have been ruinously expensive to put in full armor. Fresh conscripts were much cheaper.

Mouseferatu said:

2) Guns were easy to use.

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Firing a longbow has three steps: nock, draw, and shoot. Don't leave it strung for long periods, don't get the string wet, and that's about it for maintenance.
Firing a matchlock gun has at least half a dozen steps, depending on how you define a step, and has to be maintained on a daily basis unless you want to foul it the next time you shoot. Easier?

It's not that guns were easier to use, it's that compared to longbows, they did not require constant physical/ conditioning in order to be effective, because the force driving the projectile was coming from a low explosive rather than from muscle power. Sunday afternoons, traditionally reserved for archery practice, became open to other amusements, much to the dismay of contemporary moralizers.

Mouseferatu said:

That is, incidentally, why the crossbow was considered such a devastating weapon when it was first created. It was powerful, and it was easy to use. People were so scared of the crossbow, the Roman Catholic Church attempted to have them declared illegal--and, IIRC, even a sin to use, though I could be mistaken about this last part.

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You are correct. The crossbow was banned "under anathema" as "hateful to God" and unfit for use "against Christians". Pretty specific ban IIRC, when Richard I (the Lionheart) of England was slain by a crossbow bolt at Châlus-Chabrol, it was seen by some as divine retribution due to his ignoring the ban and taking a squad of crossbowmen to the Third Crusade.

Actually cannon changed Medieval society a lot more than guns. They rendered the castle a much less effective defensive structure and took away a lot of the knights command and control advantage

"Handguns" OTOH had two crucial advantages -- they operated with the same hitting power tired or not and they rendered soldiers more based on skill rather than "fitness"

Skill with a gun mattered a lot less on strength and that opened up a larger pool of men for military service. Since training times were reduced as well when firearms increased in capability bows were rendered less strategically usefull --

In terms of hitting power a decent matchlock was roughly equal to a longbow -- both had an effective range against armored target of 20 yards. The longbow had a greater maxium range (200 yards vs 100 yards for musket) but neither weapon was worth anything much past 100 feat

by roughly the 17th century longbow and crossbow were obsolecent. There were longbows in use as late as the early 1600's (they had them atthe early American colonies) Heck a few romantics wanted to return to them as late as the American Revolution (c.f Ben Franklin) Still by the 18th century bows obsolete

I recommend two recent threads:

Changing firearms to martial weapons
making firearms more deadly (deadlier?)