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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 4340774" data-attributes="member: 1879">I'm reminded of a rather dry note under an old revolver actioned cap and ball rifle on display at West Point that observed the weapon "was unpopular with the troops due to a propensity to explode."As I recall a brief history of gunpowder weaponry would start of course in China where black powered was invented. It was used mostly for fireworks and rockets, I don't think the chinese had cannon until they were invented in the middle east and filtered back. So early blackpowder weaponry was flashy and loud but not particularly dangerous. D&D is particularly bad at reflecting the effects of fear weapons unfortunately. (Anybody else remember morale listings in the MM?)Early Cannon were still primarily fear weapons, evolving eventually into decent anti-personel weapons and then into true seige cannon. Small cannons evolved down into hand cannons and then slimmed down into early arqebuses. The original arquebuses were fired by application of slow match, just like larger cannon were. Then were invented Matchlocks which were pretty much crap. Wheellocks came next, but were expensive, complicated and unreliable. These were then simplified to the flintlock which was a very decent weapon. And eventually some chemist figured out impact primers which led to cap-and-ball firearms and finally cartridge rounds. The real advantage of a cartridge round of course is not in it's waterproofness, but it's handiness in a breech loading rifle, and it's superior reloading speeds. Although being waterproof does surely help.It's worth noting that cartridge firearms are dependant on mass production and good distribution networks before they are superior to any of the earlier systems. When your local blacksmith made your rifle it didn't matter a tinkers damm it he made .72 caliber when your buddy had a .78 because he also made you a bullet mold and you made your own rounds as needed. And powder is powder. Things get more complex when cartridges come into play. One of the reasons the S&W Schofield revolvers were never as popular as the Colt peacemaker in spite of a vastly superior reloading system was that S&W was only chambered in the .45 russian which was shorter than the .45 Long Colt. So somebody with a Colt could fire either sort of ammo, but the Schofield user was out of luck if all he could find was Colt ammo. Luckily today we can buy reproduction Schofields chambered for the Colt Longs. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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