MichaelSomething
Legend
What we really need is the setting from Thomas the Tank Engine. That has lore spanning back centuries!
D&D General Famous franchises reimaginated as D&D settings.
Oofta
Legend
Because we don't have bow-casters and energy swords in science fantasy depictions?
Mass Effect
Halo
Star Wars The Bad Batch
Not to mention Chewbacca's bow caster, Worf's Bat'leth. The list goes on.
Oofta
Legend
Okay, not plot armor (although it's just about all that saves John Wick), then personal shields, "advanced" armor, nanotech mumbo jumbo, etc.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
In many of those franchises, people still mostly use firearms. Just about every character in the Bad Batch except the one pictured for example. Why would you expect players to do that, if every weapon is the same except for aesthetics?
Oofta
Legend
I don't. It is an option.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Sci-fi trappings help, definitely.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
An option the players have no reason to take.
jmartkdr2
Hero
Genre acceptance?
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Well I am looking at this from a trad or classic point of view. In such a game, concrete differences between weapons tend to matter more. A sci-fi version of 5e that doesn't discourage longbows will see PCs with longbows. In a narrative/storygame, genre emulation might be adhered to without a mechanical difference.
I am not interested in no kind of official nothing these days, but ever since the first season of Star Trek: Picard I've been dreaming of a Pathfinder setting based on the setting of Star Trek: not a space fantasy, just a standard D&D world with all of the standard (PF1) classes and all of the standard D&D races replaced with the Star Trek aliens. Based in the Picard era/timeline, where the mighty Romulan Empire has just fallen and the (undead) Borg invasion has left disassimilated survivors and weird magical artifacts all across the continent. No phasers or disruptors or replicators and warpdrives... just swords and crossbows and magic.
I'm imagining setting this down in front of my gaming group from twenty years ago, and I already know what everyone else is playing.
Only problem with firearms in fantasy games is that most gamers and game designers don't understand jack about guns or their history. Primitive firearms in real-life replaced bows and crossbows on the battlefield, in professional militaries, because 1) guns are cheaper to manufacture than military-grade bows, 2) guns are easier to carry and maintain than bows, 3) powder and shot are cheaper to manufacture than arrows, 4) powder and shot are lighter and easier to carry than arrows, and 5) training a rifleman takes weeks, compared to months for an arbalest and generations for an English longbowman.
Guns in D&D are 1) expensive and rare, 2) consume ammunition that is also expensive and rare, and 3) require special, elite training beyond even the standards of the special, elite warriors represented by martial character classes. They're balanced accordingly.
Another part of the problem is... to put it bluntly... people actually believe that weapon damage dice are realistic. This problem is twofold. First, a longsword or a greataxe realistically does not do more damage than a dagger. A solid, square blow to a vital area with any of these weapons kills the crab; a glancing blow with any of these weapons does not kill the crab and doesn't substantially limit the crab's capacity to fend of the solid square blow that will. They have significant advantage (and disadvantages) compared to a dagger and there are reasons they're considered more primary weapons than daggers-- though most swords are merely sidearms-- but damage dice aren't among them.
Second... modern people from most walks of life-- excluding soldiers, first responders, and professional murderers-- dramatically underestimate how much damage non-firearm weapons really do, and dramatically overestimate how much damage firearms actually do. Bullets do a lot of tissue damage compared to their size, but they're still subject to the same principle as other weapons: a bullet that tears through specific vital organs or major blood vessels turns your birthdays off, and a bullet that doesn't... doesn't. A non-lethal bullet wound is more likely to do permanent, disabling damage than a wound from a lesser weapon, but it isn't any more likely to incapacitate the target.
The two most important factors for determining whether a non-lethal gunshot wound knocks the target down are 1) whether or not the target realizes they've been shot, and 2) whether or not the target has seen enough gunshots on television to know they're supposed to fall down.
Of course, if we're being honest neither gamers nor game designers want firearms to be mechanically realistic. We want them to behave like they do on television, which doesn't mesh well with the entire Hit Points model of combat.
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