Gunpowder in your games

[Fenes 2]

You may try running a "side-trek" type of adventure, possbily with "one off" characters and see how everybody feels about it. THe main thing is to see if you can maintain the atmosphere you want while these things are in use.

If I want guns in Fantasy, I play Shadowrun (which I GM in a weekly campaign). Metaquests offer me the possibility to run ANY setting, SF or fantasy, as a side trek in my Shadowrun campaign. (So far I have run Metaquests in Jade (from Fred Perry's Gold Digger), a couple Roman settings built after Thomas Harlan's series, or the Belisarius series, or the series where the empire of Rome was still around in the last century, a couple of homebrews, the Deathstalker setting, Anita Blake, the wild west, the US civil war, second world war, and others.)

I don't want guns in D&D - I play D&D to play heroic fantasy, and guns and heroic fantasy don't mix imho.

 

[Gellion]

Firearms enter my D&D campaigns only over my dead body. Their presence completely ruins a Fantasy campaign for me.

To each his own.

 

[the Jester]

There's no gunpowder imc, but there is sunpowder.

The main LG god of the campaign is Galador, the god of the sun, law, authority, etc. His worship has spread almost everywhere, and there's a spell- distill sunlight- that lets his clerics turn sunlight into a volatile, very flammable sort of improved holy water. It evaporates quickly, however.

There's also a subrace of orcs that is strongly Lawful- these guys harken back to 2e- and has been trying to join the Free Trade Alliance and be accepted as a civilized race for a couple of centuries. Part of their attempt involves adopting Galadorianism as their religion. These orcs have learned secret techniques of taking distilled sunlight and rendering it into a powder that's highly flammable- sunpowder. It's the orcish secret weapon, and their ships have cannons, there's an orcish pistoleer prestige class, etc.

 

[Gellion]

Its kinda funny, because i used to hate the idea of gunpowder in D&D. Now im quite fond of the idea. But im also growing tired of the Pseudo Medieval setting and Tolkienic influences in the game.

 

[shadow]

I've been working on a fantasy campaign for some time. I've strongly thought of adding gun powder. I envision the dwarves, gnomes, and goblins (I base my goblins of those warcraft 2 goblins) as technological races. I'm thinking of having the dwarves and goblins (maybe the gnomes too) knowing the secrets of gunpowder. There wouldn't be any handgonnes (arquebus, handheld fire arms) since it is just in it's infancy but there would be early mortars (the first gunpowder seige engines, I think). This would go well with the "waning age of magic" theme of my campaign, but I'm a little worried about the repercussions of allowing gunpowder into my games. What do you all think?

 

[Gellion]

If i was a DM, i would let Magic&Technology interact normally. Meaning that gunpowder would not weaken magic and vice versa. I never liked the whole gunpowder weakens magic thing.

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

There's no gunpowder imc, but there is sunpowder.

The main LG god of the campaign is Galador, the god of the sun, law, authority, etc. His worship has spread almost everywhere, and there's a spell- distill sunlight- that lets his clerics turn sunlight into a volatile, very flammable sort of improved holy water. It evaporates quickly, however.

There's also a subrace of orcs that is strongly Lawful- these guys harken back to 2e- and has been trying to join the Free Trade Alliance and be accepted as a civilized race for a couple of centuries. Part of their attempt involves adopting Galadorianism as their religion. These orcs have learned secret techniques of taking distilled sunlight and rendering it into a powder that's highly flammable- sunpowder. It's the orcish secret weapon, and their ships have cannons, there's an orcish pistoleer prestige class, etc.

This is the coolest and most original way of putting firearms into a fantasy campaign that I've ever heard of. 2TU

 

[FraserRonald]

In my campaign, the tech is Age of Enlightenment era, like around the early 1600s, which means gunpowder. It's worked very well because guns are not the end all and be all of combat. They are very expensive, and pretty much everyone who has them fires them off and then charges into melee.

Of course, in my campaign, the Church of a certain culture persecutes those who use magic, another culture's religion accepts magic, but is wary of it, and the underdog, scapegoat religion accepts it whole-heartedly (which doesn't help their case with the other religions). As such, there aren't a lot of fireballs and magic missiles, save being thrown by the bad-guys and a few underground renegade good guys.

I can't speak to the fantasy feel, as even magic realism (which certainly can have firearms) is still fantasy to me. I would say that it doesn't have the standard D&D feel, but for my players, that was a good thing.

 

[Yeoman]

In my campaign firearms technology is roughly on par with the late 19th century, mostly bolt and lever action rifles, revolvers and the occasional black powder weapon. I keep the damage for firearms on par with bows, and I see a mixture of all weapon types in the party. Works well enough for me.

 

[frankthedm]

There is a type of "gunpowder' in mine, its still magic derived from the proper mixtures. Dwarve use it along with the humaniods they are on good terms with.

Its not very reliable though. 1 = trouble.