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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5377226" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, mythically speaking, unless we are talking about as crossbow hero like William Tell, no he can't.  And unsurprisingly, he can't really in D&D either.  When you are talking about the world of fantasy, the impact of myth on the setting is probably even more tangible than the impact of reality.  Hense, the use of terms like versimilitude.  You aren't getting people to believe in a literal reality. but in a mythic reality that engages people sufficiently that they are willing to suspend their disbelief.  It is in fact a fantasy.For the most part, we don't have a 'crossbow myth' outside perhaps Switzerland where they played such a huge historical role.   We are more likely to have longbow heroes like Robin Hood, and because the longbow like the sword was a weapon requiring considerable mastery, it's wielders remain firmly ensconced in the heroic myth.   Not everyone with a longbow can kill a knight, but Robin Hood - a hero - could.  The gun however is a powerful mythic image, and - barring a bit of Western Romanticism - tends to be linked to an everyman myth.  It's impact on the heroic myth is most clearly seen ironicly in Kurosawa's Seven Samurii.  That's what you are up against when you include guns in a fantasy.  You aren't including real guns  any more than you are including real swords and platemail.  You are including mythic guns.  And the more you try to make them real guns, even if that means demythologizing them, the odder and more out of place they will actually seem.But not I would note mythically.  The Trebuchet may have in fact already made any medieval castle reducible by the end of the 13th century, but its the cannon as its successor which really carries all that power mythicly.  We still have cannons, but until RPGs and interest in them brought them back, hardly anyone not a scholar remembered the Trebuchet.</blockquote>

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