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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5394008" data-attributes="member: 18253">Here's another way I look at it. At a high level, a useful mental exercise might be to consider a high middle ages setting in a roleplaying game. Let’s say this setting is modeled closely on European technology and society in 1100. Now to this setting, let’s add D&D magic. Would the addition of magic cause any changes to the setting? Well, as a game setting the designer can do what he or she wishes, but should magic cause a change? The answer is we can’t say just yet. There is some tiny amount of added magic that is little more than the case of no magic, this would cause no perceptible change to the setting. On the other extreme, there is a large amount of magic that clearly would cause a change in the setting. Somewhere in between, the addition of magic would start causing changes to the setting, subtle at first but eventually one would expect changes to armies, fortifications, quality of life, all sorts of stuff. How much magic is required? Well, here reasonable people can differ. We don’t really know and you can construct credible ranges of magic for the “tipping point”. I happen to think the level of magic described in the D&D rules is sufficient, others don’t. Many years of arguments have not resolved this. Now let’s add firearms to the equation. From earth history, we know they perturb the setting as well. Moreover, it is difficult to control the “how much” of firearms. Magic can be restricted by various means of controlling access, percent of population that can acquire it, time required, etc. Firearms are technology that is well understood and not so easy to limit, given time. And what can be done from an initial introduction through the modern era can be easily extrapolated from Earth history. So, for setting designers wanting to restrict changes to a setting, in this case a high middle ages one, but one that could as easily apply to any pre-firearms setting, it seems to me firearms are problematic. In game terms, as long as the setting creator and players are comfortable with it, it’s fine. But some players will have reasonable objections to firearms that might affect their acceptance of the setting.</blockquote>

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