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Guns in D&D - A Hot Take
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7554073" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>No, if you look at a time line, they developed at about the same time - they all were introduced into Europe around the 13th-14th century. Cannons, gonnes, plate, and trebuchet all developed nearly simultaneously in the West. The impetus behind plate armor initially was the crossbow and the longbow could easily penetrate mail even at fairly long ranges. Gradually as the "hand gonne" and eventually the musket began to show up on the battlefield, then impetus behind plate increasingly became protecting command and control assets (the people in charge) from musket fire, allowing them to maneuver around the battlefield and keep control of the army. Plate like you tend to see in paintings or movies didn't really become a thing until the 15th-16th century, by which point it was standard for armorers to prove your plate was good enough by shooting it with a pistol at close range and proving that it would resist the impact. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Not that many. The Chinese as everyone knows invented gunpowder, but they were never really quite sure what to do with it to weaponize it. They initially used it as rockets, and tried a variety of designs for using it to propel arrows, but they really never came up with a great design. For the longest time they used 'fire lances', which had a lot of the features of a "gonne" but weren't a true high velocity missile weapon like modern firearms. The true "gonne" was invented in the East just shortly before it started appearing in the West, and the rate of innovation in firearms was much higher in the West so that within rather short order firearms technology in the West was superior to the East.</p><p></p><p>Exactly why this happened is hard to pin down, but I think the biggest clue is that when the Portuguese introduced the musket to Japan, they very quickly started innovating and improving it, so that there was actually a decade or two where advances in Japan were leading those in Europe (independently). However, in Japan the aristocracy so hated the weapon because it meant any old peasant could kill a Samurai in what was not a fair fight, that they pretty successfully banned it and wouldn't really use it again until the Meiji restoration. The West had had similar issues with weapons like the crossbow, which the Pope had even banned at one point, but no one was ever able to successfully ban a weapon in the west. Someone was always willing to break the rules to get an advantage, and you had nations with individualist traditions like England and Switzerland, and the Hanseatic League, and later the Low Countries where they preferred weapons that impowered the ordinary citizen.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Generally you wore a gambeson underneath your plate armor. But a gambeson alone wouldn't stop a musket ball, and would tend to fill the wound with bits of cloth that would then cause the wound to get infected.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7554073, member: 4937"] No, if you look at a time line, they developed at about the same time - they all were introduced into Europe around the 13th-14th century. Cannons, gonnes, plate, and trebuchet all developed nearly simultaneously in the West. The impetus behind plate armor initially was the crossbow and the longbow could easily penetrate mail even at fairly long ranges. Gradually as the "hand gonne" and eventually the musket began to show up on the battlefield, then impetus behind plate increasingly became protecting command and control assets (the people in charge) from musket fire, allowing them to maneuver around the battlefield and keep control of the army. Plate like you tend to see in paintings or movies didn't really become a thing until the 15th-16th century, by which point it was standard for armorers to prove your plate was good enough by shooting it with a pistol at close range and proving that it would resist the impact. Not that many. The Chinese as everyone knows invented gunpowder, but they were never really quite sure what to do with it to weaponize it. They initially used it as rockets, and tried a variety of designs for using it to propel arrows, but they really never came up with a great design. For the longest time they used 'fire lances', which had a lot of the features of a "gonne" but weren't a true high velocity missile weapon like modern firearms. The true "gonne" was invented in the East just shortly before it started appearing in the West, and the rate of innovation in firearms was much higher in the West so that within rather short order firearms technology in the West was superior to the East. Exactly why this happened is hard to pin down, but I think the biggest clue is that when the Portuguese introduced the musket to Japan, they very quickly started innovating and improving it, so that there was actually a decade or two where advances in Japan were leading those in Europe (independently). However, in Japan the aristocracy so hated the weapon because it meant any old peasant could kill a Samurai in what was not a fair fight, that they pretty successfully banned it and wouldn't really use it again until the Meiji restoration. The West had had similar issues with weapons like the crossbow, which the Pope had even banned at one point, but no one was ever able to successfully ban a weapon in the west. Someone was always willing to break the rules to get an advantage, and you had nations with individualist traditions like England and Switzerland, and the Hanseatic League, and later the Low Countries where they preferred weapons that impowered the ordinary citizen. Generally you wore a gambeson underneath your plate armor. But a gambeson alone wouldn't stop a musket ball, and would tend to fill the wound with bits of cloth that would then cause the wound to get infected. [/QUOTE]
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