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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 5388346" data-attributes="member: 5948">While conventional Tolkien-inspired 'fantasy', which includes much of the history of D&D generally doesn't include gunpowder, I certainly wouldn't want to limit myself or the genre so severely as I would by saying 'gunpowder = no fantasy, full stop.'For great fantasy which DOES include gunpowder, how about Pirates of the Caribbean, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, His Dark Materials, and China Mieville's Bas-lag?  Iron Kingdoms, the Warhammer World, Mary Gentle, the Bartimeus books, or Stephen Hunt?  And that's just from a quick sideways look onto my bookshelf without even going into the Harry Dresden type modern-day fantasy. The castle problem is ... solvable, in my opinion.  Historically, some of the greatest sieges in history DID coincide with the presence of gunpowder weapons.  Constantinople, Vienna, Rhodes, Malta, and certainly none of these were over in a week.  In fact, this period might actually be easier to use in an RPG, because gunpowder weapons promoted sieges to be solved by storm, which provides an interesting action sequence, rather than by three years of sitting around in your own dysentery hoping that the defenders will run out of rats to eat soon.  And besides, two other factors at work.  Firstly, castles were not always designed with the intent of holding out against serious heavy military assault backed with artillery.  Quite often they were just a force multiplier, to allow fractious conquered populations and rebellious peasants to be controlled with a relative minimum of resources and men.  Secondly, historically building and maintaining castles was a vast investment of time, money and labour.  In a fantasy world, a few earth elementals or walls of stone (or your non-D&D equivalent) can make them a much more economical, survivable, easily repairable, and therefore common measure.  Castles are cool.  Sieges are cool.  Fantasy is cool.  Gunpowder is cool.  Why limit yourself?  Sure they may not have their place in every world or setting (probably not the best fit in Athas...), but saying 'no' sight unseen just because of some arbitrarily defined line where 'fantasy' ends and 'sci-fi' or 'steampunk' or whatever begins is just a waste of potential imho.</blockquote>

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