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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6095123" data-attributes="member: 37579">Only if:1) The nation is interested in expansion2) The island has enough trees for a vast armada of boats3) The nation is populous enough to stand against all other nationsChina had crude had firearms as early as the 1300s and boat-making technology capable of reaching North America. Yet somehow they failed to take over the entire world. But they didn't because they did not consider the rest of the world as worth conquering. Likewise, canons and guns made their way into the European and Arab worlds as early as the 14th century but it took four-hundred years for them to slowly replace and rewrite all the established rules of warfare. People don't react well to change and people in positions of power are not always able to recognise the potential of new weapons and ideas. And even if guns have been around long enough to be slighly more common, that doesn't mean methods of construction or creating gunpowder would be common. It's been shown on MythBusters that even knowing the ingredients of black powder and ratios of the ingredients does not always produce a usable explosive. The knowledge of black powder could be a "secret recipe" kept hidden by gunsmiths and masters and only taught to apprentices. Introducing guns to a world is not going to suddenly cause a wave of interest in firearms and vast revolutions in military technology, especially if there simply are not enough guns to equip an army. In the same way many modern replacements for soldiers or military gear have not become widespread because the individual cost is too high and the reliability is not there yet. There's enough situational wiggle room for DMs to design multiple campaign worlds with guns that have plausible excuse for why guns have not spread everywhere. No, they may not be perfect but they're good enough. No more absurd that many other design flaws that creep into designing a campaign or a fantasy world. You just need a reasonable reason to give to the players when they ask "why doesn't everyone have guns?" to satisfy them long enough to re-hook them with the adventure.</blockquote>

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