D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Lanefan]

Further to age-of-sail ships etc. some of you might find this of interest...

Götheborg II: Replica 18th century ship plans to re-sail the trading route from Sweden to China | CNN

Nearly 200 years after the original sank, the rebuilt galleon Götheborg II is retracing its namesake's path around the world.

www.cnn.com

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I just replace cannons with ballistae and go from there. It works, sort of, and keeps the no-gunpowder idea intact.

This. Also, the cannons could be force (or fire, or cold, or...) cannons powered by arcane rituals or trapped elementals or...

 

[Nefermandias]

What's the problem with gunpowder, really?

 

[tetrasodium]

What's the problem with gunpowder, really?

Its unfun similsr to deck of many things to make it early gunpowder levels of unstable & dangerous. Plus carrying capacities are so large that it's not even a big deal to carry a whole barrel or more so it winds up being modern c4 plus fireball in a can without the drawbacks unless the GM goes hard on reining it in.

Even games like shadowrun and stuff treat explosives different from self contained ammunition but a barrel of gunpowder is both so needed

 

[Swarmkeeper]

What's the problem with gunpowder, really?

Gunpowder is the path to the dark side … gunpowder leads to anger … anger leads to hate … hate leads to suf-fer-ing.

 

[Lanefan]

What's the problem with gunpowder, really?

The problem with it is, in most settings, it - and the weapons that use it - will have had enough time to develop that most traditional fortifications (particularly any made of wood) will be rendered almost pointless. And that takes away from the general look and feel of the setting I otherwise want to present.

@tetrasodium - decks of many things are the opposite of unfun - if you don't want yours, send it on over here!

 

[Mordhau]

Castles and gunpower existed side by side for at least a century. Gunpower does of course make it easier to storm a castle, but D&D games are rarely based around warfare. Fortifications made of wood never stopped being used, they were used in the Americas for centuries.

If you have early cannon then they are expensive to maintain and require baggage trains and the like to move them around. Most D&D settings seem to be set (quite logically) in frontier settings where the threat is not going to be from organised invading armies. A wooden fort to protect from monsters seems quite reasonable.

I think the historical aversion to gunpower is mostly based around one thing. Gunpower has become symbolic among military and combat obessesd gamers of the transition from the medieval to the early modern period. (Even though it's actually a pretty bad symbol).

There's also perhaps the fact that Gunpowder is also a symbol of the march of history and technological development. It seems break this weird idea a lot of people have of endless medieval timelessness in which empires and kingdoms rise and fall for 1000s of years without any technological progress. Once gunpower appears, people have a hard time time with the idea that history is not going anywere. (i.e people are willing to accept that Plate Armour has been around for millenia, but as soon as primitive guns appear we're only a few hundred years from the industrial revolution).

 

[Hussar]

Plate Armour has been around for millenia,

But, plate armor was around for millenia. They did make plate out of bronze at one point. Plate armor is very much older than chainmail.

Pointing to the wooden forts in the Americas isn't really realistic though. For one, those forts tended to be replaced by stone fortifications very, very quickly. You had stone fortifications in Canada by the 18th century.

And, really, sure, while gunpowder weapons and castles did co-exist for a while, it was a pretty short while. As in a couple of hundred years before the "castle" as in that big hunk of piled stone rising above the countryside, was replaced by things like citadels. It does radically change the aesthetic of the game when you replace rank and file archers with gunpowder weapons.

 

[Mordhau]

But, plate armor was around for millenia. They did make plate out of bronze at one point. Plate armor is very much older than chainmail.

Don't be silly you know what I mean.

Pointing to the wooden forts in the Americas isn't really realistic though. For one, those forts tended to be replaced by stone fortifications very, very quickly. You had stone fortifications in Canada by the 18th century.

And, really, sure, while gunpowder weapons and castles did co-exist for a while, it was a pretty short while. As in a couple of hundred years before the "castle" as in that big hunk of piled stone rising above the countryside, was replaced by things like citadels. It does radically change the aesthetic of the game when you replace rank and file archers with gunpowder weapons.

I think you're proving the point I was making. How much span of time do you actually need for a campaign? How many western movies and books take place within about a generation or so after the American Civil War? It seems to me the issue here is the idea that fantasy worlds have historical development at all.

 

[Oofta]

Gunpowder and fantasy worlds is a separate topic, but I think there are several reasons it doesn't get developed and several impacts it would have. Probably an entire separate thread.

However, my quick take is multiple.

• Gunpowder, initially, was expensive and not particularly effective as a weapon. It was more about shock and awe.
• It took centuries to go from the initial development of gunpowder before we get things like flintlock rifles, it took advances in chemistry to make even blackpowder relatively inexpensive.
• The chemistry may work differently
• Even if the chemistry works, there could be magic that counters it, gunpowder only takes a spark to ignite and I can imagine a spell that would cause it to ignite it prematurely.
• Things like mephits love the taste of gunpowder and have fun making it go "boom"! Same goes for other technologies like the steam engine. You can create magical guards against it, but it's expensive.

Because of this, there are some gnomes that experiment with the stuff occasionally but it's use has never been widely accepted. I've thought about running a campaign with guns and probably a steampunk vibe, but there's always questions of balance and maintaining some of the D&D tropes.