Why DON'T people like guns in D&D?

[Kraydak]

Good points - early firearms were basically only effective at short range and when using massed firepower. A primary value of them was the shock & awe of the loud noise and smoke scaring horses.
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This is different from the value of bows and crossbows... how? Well, other that the fact that early firearms could actually hurt someone, whereas bows and crossbows had been completely sidelined by mass armor introduction. Loud noises and smoke scaring horses might, just conceivably have been of some value up to, say, 5 years after significant adoption of firearms, but we know that you could train horses to deal with it, so it completely fails as a major component of the utility.

Bows *suck* as weapons in RL. Bows *are not* long range weapons. Bows *are not* armor piercing weapons. There is a reason that the only people who used bows were people who could actively avoid melee (siege, navy, horse archers), *and even those people at best used bows as coequal military arms*.

Which does, I suppose, bring us slightly back on topic: part of the reason guns do poorly in DnD is that DnD overstates the performance of bows.

 

[Tale]

People don't like guns because they hate fun. Prove me wrong.

 

[Lhorgrim]

I dislike guns in D&D for the same reasons I dislike tophats and spats in D&D.

It has nothing to do with balance of power for me, it has everything to do with breaking the mental images I have of my campaigns.

The Freeport stuff doesn't bother me in the least, but it isn't found in my campaign world. If I were playing in a Freeport game I'd happily run a character with a gun, but a fully armored knight would cause me the same issues in that campaign that the tophat and spats cause in my "sword and sorcery" game.

 

[Barastrondo]

I find that Warhammer scratches my black-powder fantasy itch more than a homebrew D&D game would; it's more a solid unity of theme, and I do like themed games a lot. The fashion evokes a black powder era, and the art does a lot to get players' heads around the conventions.

D&D is more the game I go to for the romance of the sword, be it scimitars in the desert, swords against sorcery, or something in the chivalric romance genre. If I'm feeling more in more of a romance of the gun kind of mood, I think a Weird West sort of game is more what I'd do.

 

[Mallus]

I think it boils down to this: some people don't like guns in D&D because neither Conan nor Strider used one. Ditto Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Sure, John Carter often used radium-based Red Martian firearms, but I think most people forget how much sword-and-planet fiction informed early D&D.

It's all about genre conventions and genre-emulation. For some folks, guns just aren't fantasy. What I don't quit get is why some people think guns make heroes less heroic? What about other martial technologies? Are the Knights of the Round Table cheapened by their plate armor and stirrups?

As for me, I like 'em. Then again, my 1st character was named "Severian", and I would have loved to kit him out with an ancient laser pistol and a mercury-filled two-handed sword...

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is different from the value of bows and crossbows... how? Well, other that the fact that early firearms could actually hurt someone, whereas bows and crossbows had been completely sidelined by mass armor introduction. Loud noises and smoke scaring horses might, just conceivably have been of some value up to, say, 5 years after significant adoption of firearms, but we know that you could train horses to deal with it, so it completely fails as a major component of the utility.

Bows *suck* as weapons in RL. Bows *are not* long range weapons. Bows *are not* armor piercing weapons. There is a reason that the only people who used bows were people who could actively avoid melee (siege, navy, horse archers), *and even those people at best used bows as coequal military arms*.

Which does, I suppose, bring us slightly back on topic: part of the reason guns do poorly in DnD is that DnD overstates the performance of bows.

Bows useless in combat? Please! Tell it to the French at Agincourt and Crecy. Tell it to the legions at Carrhae. Tell it to the Samurai. And there's a reason the archers outnumbered the melee specialists in each of those battles on the winning side.

Yes, White Plate defeated arrows. Even with Bodkin heads. But White Plate defeated just about everything, ranged and melee. Late medaeval europeans were the best armour makers the world had ever seen. And it took some of their best work to stop the English Longbow. But if you think the Lorica Segmentum of the Roman legions wasn't decent armour that's your issue. Or for that matter the armour that was still being worn by the French in the first two thirds of the Hundred Years War.

The longbow had its place on the battlefield pretty much from the dawn of warfare until the mid fifteenth century. With good reason. Not all armies used it - but many did (and it was particularly effective against horses).

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is different from the value of bows and crossbows... how? Well, other that the fact that early firearms could actually hurt someone, whereas bows and crossbows had been completely sidelined by mass armor introduction. Loud noises and smoke scaring horses might, just conceivably have been of some value up to, say, 5 years after significant adoption of firearms, but we know that you could train horses to deal with it, so it completely fails as a major component of the utility.

Bows *suck* as weapons in RL. Bows *are not* long range weapons. Bows *are not* armor piercing weapons. There is a reason that the only people who used bows were people who could actively avoid melee (siege, navy, horse archers), *and even those people at best used bows as coequal military arms*.

Which does, I suppose, bring us slightly back on topic: part of the reason guns do poorly in DnD is that DnD overstates the performance of bows.

Bows useless in combat? Please! Tell it to the French at Agincourt and Crecy. Tell it to the legions at Carrhae. Tell it to the Samurai. And there's a reason the archers outnumbered the melee specialists in each of those battles on the winning side.

Yes, White Plate defeated arrows. Even with Bodkin heads. But White Plate defeated just about everything, ranged and melee. Late medaeval europeans were the best armour makers the world had ever seen. And it took some of their best work to stop the English Longbow. But if you think the Lorica Segmentum of the Roman legions wasn't decent armour that's your issue. Or for that matter the armour that was still being worn by the French in the first two thirds of the Hundred Years War.

The longbow had its place on the battlefield pretty much from the dawn of warfare until the mid fifteenth century. With good reason. Not all armies used it - but many did (and it was particularly effective against horses).

 

[Holy Bovine]

In D&D the fantasy worlds I use tend to assume a low tech level where technological innovation has been supplanted by magical innovation. You still have the lowly peasants toiling away at the farm but the cities are often wonderous in comparison with 'continual' flame streetlights and animated statues as city guards. Guns just seem out of place although I have used things like cannons and crude mortars as static castle defenses so gunpowder isn't usually unknown.

Compare that to a Warhammer Fantasy RPG and guns are not only commonplace but very important to the feel of the setting, imo. Just one of the reasons I love WFRP.

 

[Kraydak]

Bows useless in combat? Please! Tell it to the French at Agincourt and Crecy. Tell it to the legions at Carrhae. Tell it to the Samurai. And there's a reason the archers outnumbered the melee specialists in each of those battles on the winning side.

I didn't say useless. I said they sucked. We have 2 battles won by heavy infantry (in a strong defensive position) with archer support and 1 battle won by horsearchers with heavy cavalry support. The Carrhae description makes clear that without the heavy cavalry the battle would have been indecisive.

Yes, White Plate defeated arrows. Even with Bodkin heads. But White Plate defeated just about everything, ranged and melee. Late medaeval europeans were the best armour makers the world had ever seen. And it took some of their best work to stop the English Longbow. But if you think the Lorica Segmentum of the Roman legions wasn't decent armour that's your issue. Or for that matter the armour that was still being worn by the French in the first two thirds of the Hundred Years War.

Historically, all bows have struggled against all armor. Bows have always been marginal weapons. Which has a whole lot to do with people not really fielding them much. Interestingly, the people who did use horsearchers who also *had money for armor* that I know of (Sassanids/Byzantines) treated the horsearchers as a secondary arm to the heavy cav.

The longbow had its place on the battlefield pretty much from the dawn of warfare until the mid fifteenth century. With good reason. Not all armies used it - but many did (and it was particularly effective against horses).

And no army (other than in siege and maybe naval circumstances) used the longbow as a primary arm. Fancy that.

 

[NewJeffCT]

This is different from the value of bows and crossbows... how? Well, other that the fact that early firearms could actually hurt someone, whereas bows and crossbows had been completely sidelined by mass armor introduction. Loud noises and smoke scaring horses might, just conceivably have been of some value up to, say, 5 years after significant adoption of firearms, but we know that you could train horses to deal with it, so it completely fails as a major component of the utility.

Bows *suck* as weapons in RL. Bows *are not* long range weapons. Bows *are not* armor piercing weapons. There is a reason that the only people who used bows were people who could actively avoid melee (siege, navy, horse archers), *and even those people at best used bows as coequal military arms*.

Which does, I suppose, bring us slightly back on topic: part of the reason guns do poorly in DnD is that DnD overstates the performance of bows.

Umm, longbows were noted for their ability to penetrate armor at range - it wasn't until steel full plate armor came into regular use in the later half of the 14th century that longbows (and crossbows) started losing their popularity as a weapon.

Similarly, crossbows were noted for their ability to kill armored knights.

Early firearms also did not penetrate heavy armor, and men still wore armor into combat as late as the early 20th century for the protection it afforded.