In an alternate universe, the chemical reaction that makes gunpowder go boom is inert. How does this affect history? Do we develop on the giradoni air rifle instead? How would we arrive at the rifle with no early powder weapons to lead us to that design? Do we use gasoline powered guns? Does this affect other areas of technology somehow? Does warfare continue to be about full plate and shit?
>>45084089
Nevermind history. How does this affect organic chemistry?
>>45084089
magic guns that cast a low level spell when fed concentrated magic in the form of a pill or bullet or whatever. guns that shoot magic missile or fireball one at a time that require no casting time and made to be usable by even by the mundane
>>45084089
So combustion doesn't exist?
What kind of gunpowder? You know there's multiple types, right?
>>45084123
>>45084139
That'd also something I'm concerned about but lack the knowledge to comment on. Would this fundamentally end life? Would man never make fire?
Repeating Crossbows instead of rifles
Gatling Crossbows
Tanks mounted with giant crossbows
Long range heat seeking crossbow bolts
Drones mounted with crossbows
Fighter jets that shoot hundreds of crossbow bolts a minute
>>45084151
I know there's powder and Cotton?
>>45084123
What makes gunpowder so explosive? Do electrons get shed when these two chemicals combine/
>>45084089
It would take a while longer to develop, but that's all. There are shitloads of ways to make propellants. We haven't used gunpowder since before WWI.
>>45084193
>Cotton
You mean nitrocellulose?
>>45084195
It forms a lot of gas.
>>45084193
Black powder and nitro powder.
China would be even more irrelevant for not even having invented fireworks as a precursor to guns.
Ok someone whose /k/ as fuck explain how gunpowder works and if removing the explosive combustion of gpowder removes guns from history, and if not how that might be done?
>>45084238
On the other hand they woulfnt have gotten btfo by england
>>45084089
Nitrocelluose
>>45084242
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder
>>45084089
In my setting it's more that the chemicals typically used to create gunpowder don't react naturally.
You need high-level alchemy and magic to actually make it work and it can't be mass-produced.Dwarf alchemists make the best of it but jealously guard it. Human alchemist can make really shitty versions of it.
Essentially, guns are very rare and very expensive magic items that only princes and legendary war heroes.
>>45084089
We send Prince Corwin out to acquire massive amounts of jewelers rouge.
>>45084089
We go back to pike squares and heavy cavalry.
>>45084157
Well depending on how far down you go it could mean "02 can't bind with carbon" which WOULD mean life can't exist
>>45084089
They use jewelers rouge instead.
I mean, the implications of this are beyond staggering.
So many of the reactions involved in the explosion of gunpowder happen in tons of other things vital to existence.
It's not a single reaction, but suffice to say, one of the reactions involved sees Carbon bonding to oxygen to form CO2, and well, if you limit that life ceases to exist.
>>45084473
>>45084540
I take it there's a joke I'm not getting..... care to explain?
>>45084563
Jeweler's Rouge is iron oxide. I'm not sure if you can use it to make explosives, but you can use it to make thermite.
>>45084242
All right, /k/ here.
Gunpowder works by burning charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter, producing carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water, and some other crap in the form of hot gas.
This hot gas expands as the powder burns, pushing a projectile down a barrel.
The reason making gunpowder "not work" wouldn't remove guns from history is that there are a shitload of combustible compounds that pretty much do the same thing; gunpowder is just the first one we figured out how to make.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propellant#Solid_propellant
There isn't really any logical way to make the components of gunpowder nonexistent in any setting. Sulfur is an element essential to many organic compounds. Charcoal comes from pretty much any organic thing you can burn. And you can make saltpeter with piss and hay. All this shit is easy to find / make. You could do it in your backyard if you wanted. Again, there's a reason gunpowder has existed for millenia.
But, you're building a world. It's your world to build; if you don't want guns in it, just say "no guns in it." There doesn't really have to be a reason, and there probably isn't a scientific one if that's what you're looking for.
>>45084499
>>45084547
O-oh.
So much for that idea
How will I ever have the knights of the republic of the Americas now
>>45084616
Instead of changing the laws of physics, change history.
It just never gets invented. BAM done.
>>45084631
This, honestly. It is the default for fantasy settings and it works.
>>45084616
The more I think about this as even a rookie organic chemist, the more it just becomes insane.
Gunpowder is just a fancy redox reaction, which is just oxidization. And if you oxidization can't happen, to say shit gets tricky is an understatement.
>>45084661
Which is pretty lame. Gunpowder is awesome, and needs to be in fantasy more.
>>45084216
Right, but where does the gas come from?
If I may go off-topic, the only real reason that I dislike firearms in fantasy settings is that it causes inevitable and radical changes to combat. If Elves live over a thousand years long, they could see the first gun ever dreampt up turn into an assault rifle. The only logical point where development can stop is at the beginning. Sure you could invent workarounds like "there's no iron good enough to make gun barrels" but the standard fantasy setting already has steel. Fucking with physics is too troublesome, and acts of Gods preventing it feel way too meta.
When I run settings where I want the future to remain relatively stable, I simply rule that the players can't bullshit their way to inventing firearms, and that any attempts so far in history failed or were lost.
>>45084743
You do realize that guns and shit like knights existed side by side on battlefields for hundreds of years, right?
Bulletproof got it's meaning from the fact that they used to shoot plate with a gun to prove it was proof against bullets.
>>45084195
Technically gunpowder doesn't explode, it burns rapidly. This rapid burn also rapidly creates gas, which is why gunpowder only goes "bang" when it's tightly contained in something, otherwise it just goes "fwoosh."
>>45084732
Have you ever burned something, anon? Everything that burns makes gas, gunpowder just does it VERY QUICKLY.
>>45084785
I do realise this. But I also realise that the age of the knight eventually came to an end, due in no small part to the advancement of firearms technology. You can have medieval fantasy with guns, but I don't think it is realistic that it'd persist longer than a few hundred years.
>>45084743
I want a sort of turn of the century/renaissance setting where the elves have the finest firearms on account of having figured out rifling and the minor ball and they hoarde their secrets like the adeptus mechanicus. They whore themselves out as the world's finest irregulars and pathfinders because each of them has decades of combat experience standard.
Basically, Prussian Elf Jaegers
>>45084743
Yeah, I understand completely what you're saying. I'm /k/ as shit though, I love guns and love the history of guns. My favorite historical period as far is warfare goes is the pike and shot era.
Also what this guy said.
>>45084785
Guns have been around in Europe since the early 1300s at the latest. There was never even a time when plate armor existed in Europe without guns; they developed in response to each other.
>>45084743
I'd say the simple solution would be to not have elves live for a thousand years. The whole, "elves are stagnant" thing is already a workaround to the issue that any species who lives for a thousand years would quickly dominate all others due to the massive knowledge accumulation and retention.
>>45084603
>>45084563
It's a reference to the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. One of these many-worlds fantasy settings, and in a cluster of important ones to the protagonist, gunpowder as we conceive of it won't combust, because the laws of physics work a bit differently from world to world.
He discovers, quite by accident, a jewelers rouge from a third world entirely that has similar combustive qualities back in his home plane (it won't burn on earth, it just kind of melts and runs), and eventually does use the stuff to arm a small group of people with modern weapons and stage a coup.
>>45084821
I want to see German Elves. Imperial German Elves. But also with Hitler.
>>45084821
To be honest this type of Mary Sue shit is the reason I don't like 99% of fantasy elves.
They're always just "like humans but better!!!" and it gets fucking old.
>>45084195
Ok, so, here's some learning.
The basics of explosions is pretty simple, really: You take something, usually with a shitload of nitrogen in it, and you create a reaction that results in that something breaking down and forming gas.
Now, depending on the gas formed, various things happen. Black Powder, for example, forms mostly CO2, and as >>45084789 noted, without being contained, it mostly just burns. So you need to put the gas into a container to produce the pressure to explode, or force it a specific way to direct the energy(which is what moves the bullet in a gun)
For the bigger, badder explosives, you see a lot of Nitrogen because Nitrogen gas, N2, has some pretty insanely strong bonds. Indeed, the only time you commonly see Nitrogen gas bonds broken in nature is when a lightning strike happens.
It takes a lot of energy to break the bond, basically. And the reverse is true: when two Nitrogens get together, they release a shitload of energy. So what you want to do is take some thing that is full of Nitrogen and then induce a reaction in it that causes it to decompose and the gas to form, which happens to release a lot of energy.
Take, for example, Azidoazide Azide, or C2N14. Now, if any of you reading this know your chemistry, you're likely going "What the fuck", and with good reason.
C2N14 has the distinction of being the single most sensitive explosive known to man. It is, in fact, so explosive that they can't measure how explosive it is. Now, luckily, explaining how C2N14 reacts is really, really simple: Something happens near it(doesn't really matter what), and a given sample of the compound turns itself into seven times the given sample of Nitrogen gas, releasing a shitload of energy in the process.
And that's a layman's sort of explanation of how explosives work.
>>45084935
>nazi elves
That would be too swag to contain anon
>>45084955
>Mary Sue shit
Ok anon, you keep hating fun over there.
>>45084814
The time period which contained knights as popularly depicted is less than one thousand years already. Removing guns doesn't remove the pike square.
Also any setting with significant magic would logically see the rapid end of a medieval setting, especially in warfare.
>>45084821
>Prussian Elf Jaegers
>>45084814
I mean, the decline and disappearance of the knight as a military force was largely about economic pressures, rather than technological.
>>45084963
Well, they often are pretty nazi anyway, aren't they?
>>45084963
Elfs are gay and ur gay for liking em
>>45084976
>Prussian Immortals
>>45084547
In this >>45084483 book, it basically ruins thermodynamics, and while gunpowder is still combustable, it burns very slowly. I remember reading it like 10 years ago so I can't quite remember the rest
>>45084089
energy weapons/shields and things like vibrating swords sounds like a good alternative to me
>>45084976
In their own way
>>45084977
Sort of. Really it was both. The Knight declined because it became more cost-effective to train and equip a larger group of soldiers than have a dedicated noble warrior class, but this had plenty to do with technological improvements in the mass-production of arms.
>>45085054
Pickelhaube and trenchcoat would look better.
>>45084089
>I have to remove guns from the future because I'm really not very creative
>>45085124
The OP literally suggests air rifles and gasoline rifles. Take the cock out of your mouth and read the fucking post.
A universe without combustion, at least in the form that we recognize it. Perhaps energy is shunted into another layer of matter rather than being released as gas?
>>45084189
A10Crossbow that fires 3cm wide bolts at 4200 Bpm and can drop laser guided crossbow bolts, GPS guided bolts and even Cluster bolts, or bolts with parachutes to allow low altitude bolting.
>>45085157
>help help someone knows that I'm not really very creative
>>45084743
While repeating rifles might be inevitable, machine guns require automated industry. Just make sure nobody invents the power loom
>>45084089
>In an alternate universe, the chemical reaction that makes gunpowder go boom is inert. How does this affect history?
There would be no organic life to speak of. You just completely fucked physics and biology.
>>45085690
I mean, considering the chemical reaction that makes gunpowder go boom is literally just combustion then, yeah, the entire universe doesn't exist as we know it.
>>45084814
Knights declined with feudalism. Not because of guns. The only thing firearms did was make full body armor pretty much useless.
>>45085719
>The only thing firearms did was make full body armor pretty much useless.
Always with this meme.
>>45085718
A universe without fire, assuming other physical properties remained constant, would not look that different. Stars don't burn.
>>45084089
Here's a much more interesting question
What if there's no petroleum on Earth?
>>45085745
>Stars don't burn.
Just everything else.
>>45085729
Learn to speak like a person, autist. Maybe you'll make some headway.
>>45084661
That's odd, D&D includes all the rules needed for muskets.
I've played characters with muskets before... Do you guys have DMs who actually say "no guns allowed"?
>>45085794
Most D&D settings are inspired by Lord of The Rings, Conan The Barbarian, etc, and guns just sort of feel out of place to a modern audience.
>>45085756
The meme, analogous to a gene, was conceived as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.) which is "hosted" in the minds of one or more individuals, and which can reproduce itself, thereby jumping from mind to mind. Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen as an idea-replicator reproducing itself in a new host. As with genetics, particularly under a Dawkinsian interpretation, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host.
Like the idea that firearms made body armor "useless" when in reality body armor was simply seen as a burden and warfare evolved in such ways the benefits of armored protection did not outweigh the detriments.
Now go play, adults are talking.
People bitch about firearms ruining fantasy games because melee weapons and bows don't make sense in that context, but that's not true.
It's fantasy. Just make it so that firearms aren't 1 shot 1 kill tier weapons. Creatures in the fantasy world are faster and sturdier than Earth creatures. Firearms deals damage, but aren't the end all be all. An Elf with a bow is still viable and deadly, as is a guy with a sword rushing your position. Likewise, the guy with a sub-machine gun is going to be dangerous but it's not the only way to play. Just make them a variant ranged weapon and not the end of days.
>>45085811
I thought most D&D settings were based on medieval times but with magic. Kind of like king Arthur. There were plenty of arquebuses etc. Medieval runs nicely into the pike and shot era without any real loss. Still plenty of knights (just with pistols and sabers) and spearmen (supported by musketeers)
>>45085843
Even with a +1 magical fine crafted musket, and a quick reload feat, you still only fire 1 shot per turn, and only inflict something like D12+1 damage. maybe D12+3 if you're lucky. Its not really that much, and thats a maxed out boosted to shit magical musket
>>45085817
So, let's see.
90% of your post is trash from you being analbled about being called an autist. Okay. Have your little sperg moment. Cute.
>Like the idea that firearms made body armor "useless"
Where did I claim that? I said that firearms made full body armor pretty much useless. Soldiers were still wearing breastplates all the way up to the civil war (in rare cases). But by that time, firearm penetration even from a distance had become reliable enough that armor returns were quickly diminishing.
You say things like
>warfare evolved in such ways the benefits of armored protection did not outweigh the detriments.
But you don't list any actual reasoning but your grasp of what you're talking about is tenuous at best. I suggest you stop posting and go read some books, lad. Next time you want to get up in arms about a comment, make sure you
A) read it
B) comprehend it
C) know what you're talking about
Okay? Thanks. Go be a petty little angry shit somewhere else m8.
>>45085887
Bro I am not talking about whatever specific RPG you're referring to.
>>45085749
Coal. Cars used to run on it.
>>45085843
Honestly it's always baffled me that people have no problem at all abstracting the effects of non-firearm weaponry for the sake of a game but when it comes to guns they suddenly need to go full autism-mode.
What exactly is stopping gamers, especially D&D players, from just accepting black powder weapons as something akin to crossbows that go "bang?"
Unless you're playing a system with that level of specific detail built in already there's no fucking reason what-so-ever for them to be treated otherwise. And their inclusion isn't implying any more rapid advancement of the world's tech level than anything else you're probably including in your fantasy setting without realizing the huge impact they've had on human progress (more often than not even bigger impacts than firearms ever did).
>>45085888
>Go be a petty little angry shit somewhere else m8.
Bruh, not that anon, but you're not making your case look good when only your posts are petty and angry.
>>45085896
I'm referring to D&D
I thought if you say +1 magical weapon most people would get that.
>>45085843
>>45085946
Also look at that axgun, that thing is Dwarfy as FUCK.
>>45085888
>>45085863
C'mon there were no arquebuses in King Arthur's time.
>>45085946
>What exactly is stopping gamers, especially D&D players, from just accepting black powder weapons as something akin to crossbows that go "bang?"
There is literally nothing. We've had firearms in many of our D&D campaigns. One full fantasy dungeon crawl, another set in ~16thC pseudo-arabic lands
Those who say "guns just feel out of place in a fantasy setting" probably just dont know enough about the kinds of firearms that were around in medieval and pike and shot times. They were awful, clumsy, smoky things that couldn't hit a large target at 100 paces. The only way to use them effectively was to have masses of musketeers firing in volleys.
They were nothing like modern firearms. They were just as archaic as crossbows or onagers.
>>45085946
>>45085963
>blown out
>>45084275
Explain?
>>45085978
>They were just as archaic as crossbows or onagers.
If you go back to the earliest firearms they're even shittier than that.
Like honestly no adventurer in his right mind would bother using one, they'd be completely and utterly useless pieces of shit in any setting but a mass troop formation.
>>45085977
Eh I guess I was thinking more late medieval than the 5th and 6th century of King Arthur
"Around the late 13th century in Italy, smaller and portable hand-held cannons or Schioppo were developed, creating in effect the first smooth-bore personal firearm. In the late 15th century, the Ottoman Empire used firearms as part of its regular infantry.
The earliest surviving firearm in Europe has been found from Otepää, Estonia and it dates to at least 1396."
This is still within the medieval period, albeit quite late.
>>45085946
Ye olde early guns are pretty shit for most PC parties anyway. If you want to avoid being REALLY FUCKING LOUD you probably don't want to bring the blunderbuss that's going to alert every single monster in the Evil Caverns of the Chaotic Fuckbeasts of your presence when you obliterate some random goblin.
>>45084821
So why doesn't this whole thing fall apart when (not If, fuck you) an Elf dies in battle and somebody loots their corpse?
>>45086033
>REALLY FUCKING LOUD
Ye olde firearms aren't as loud as you're implying. Loud, yes. But nowhere near modern firearms.
>>45086033
>>45086041
Depending on your setting some magic effects are probably just as loud, if not louder.
But either way if stealth is your concern then yeah, a gun is not the way to go.
>>45086007
Pretty much true to life.
The big advantage of early firearms, for a long time, was that they were dead end easy to make and easy as fuck to operate.
Beats both Bows(hard as fuck to use) and crossbows(easy to use, hard as fuck to make).
>>45085946
>Honestly it's always baffled me that people have no problem at all abstracting the effects of non-firearm weaponry for the sake of a game but when it comes to guns they suddenly need to go full autism-mode.
It has a lot to do with modern firearm "mythology" that plays up the lethality of firearms and downplays the lethality of other weapons. It is similar to the "katana is the best sword" mentality, but isn't refuted as regularly.
>>45086034
Knowing what rifling is does not mean you know how to rifle a barrel.
>>45086034
they use tiny hexagonal screws and no one has been able to get into one of the weapons to see how it works without smashing it.
They invented micrometers and toolsmiths just cant reach that level of precision for hex screwdrivers.
That or self destruct chamber that blows the gun to smithereens when the protection spell cast on the user detects his or her death.
>>45086056
>The big advantage of early firearms, for a long time, was that they were dead end easy to make and easy as fuck to operate.
Said no one who knew what they were talking about. They were used for their close range penetration power and for volley fire at choke points. Other than that, they required more resources than a bow or crossbow. They required more specialized industries and skills to create than bows/crossbows.
>>45086041
>The average loudness for all shots fired was 158 dB.
>Black powder (antique/replica) firearms noise averaged about 3 dB less than conventional (modern, smokeless) powder firearms.
Buck, K. (2000). Performance of Hearing Protectors in Impulse Noise. Damage Risk from Impulse Noise — NATO Research and Technology Organization Lecture Series #219, (available from NASA Center for AeroSpace Information, Hanover, MD)
Yeah, man. So much quieter.
>>45086101
>To look at this question another way, let’s consider the sound energy and loudness measures that I introduced last week. A 1 dB change in a sound equates to about a 26% difference in sound energy (remember that a 3 dB difference is a doubling of energy levels). In terms of subjective loudness, a 1 dB change yields just over a 7% change. A 3 dB change yields a 100% increase in sound energy and just over a 23% increase in loudness.
>>45084611
>Piss and hay
You watch Cody'slab too, huh?
>>45085863
Pike and shot is an entirely different feel to 'fantasy medieval', claiming there is no loss is just silly.
>>45085978
>Those who say "guns just feel out of place in a fantasy setting" probably just dont know enough about the kinds of firearms that were around in medieval and pike and shot times
Do you have an argument not based on making stupid assumptions and insulting people? I know exactly what they are and I still don't want them.
>>45086121
A 23% difference is not "nowhere near", it is under one 1/4 louder. So more like "fairly louder".
Also, please provide your citation next time.
>full plate armor
>13th century
>cannons and firearms
>12th century
Let that sink, faggots.
>>45085794
D&D guns are on a small table in the back of the DM's Guide, that same chart also has lasers.
It's not exactly something players always have access too.
>>45086253
For what edition? 2e has guns in the player content.
>>45084971
I've never quite worked out why guns provoke so much angst for static fantasy settings, which are usually an anachronistic mess anyway.
The actual "medieval period" saw continous technological and scientific advances in pretty much all fields (even medicine by the end). Every Arms and Armour thread we have details the often rapid evolution of equipment even within a single lifetime.
A setting that exists virtually unchanged for hundreds if not thousands of years is already unrealistic and completely unlike the period it supposedly apes.
However people seem unable to imagine firearms remaining static when everything else arbitarily is. If you want to preserve firelock hand-gonnes forever, then surely the same global retardation that prevents windmills, mechanical clocks, the flying buttress or the breakdown of feudalism happening applies?
Why single out firearms as the sole area of technological and social development where disbelief in an utterly implausible static setting cannot be suspended?
>>45086333
Because Tolkien didn't have guns in middle earth.
So say an anon wanted to allow players to deflect and parry firearms at close range, and bullets at range with the right feat, like how he allows his players to deflect certain types of spells and arrows.
How would he justify this?
>>45086433
But he did have gunpowder, so he was almost there.
>>45086333
Because most people are historically illiterate. They basically view warfare as:
First Cavemen with sticks
There was swords and shit later
Then people had knight armor
But then guns
Also katanas
>>45086333
Because of ignorants.
When people are ignorant of stages of development of armour and real history, they just accept whatever stats the book has for it.
But when they're ignorant of early development firearms, they subscribe to uber-killy gunz memes.
Note that this may apply to all - players, GMs, developers...
I've had those arguments with Exalted players and had to detail exactly how much handwavium the setting had to layer down to prevent it.
(PCs have easy access to super genius powers, so gunpowder being possible at all means they CAN immediately jump to full on modern rifles. So the setting just tells real physics and other processes to fuck off with "everything works by magic, which generally coincides with RL except when it doesn't", specifically gunpowder not being a thing, and has different gun-like things with specific limits imposed on them by the setting's physics.)
>>45086056
No you dumb shit, there is no advantage to early firearms.
The only reason they really existed is because cannons was THE SHIT, and you wanted a portable carry canon.
The only reason they was carried beyond novelty, is because improvements in armor tech meant you needed a new form of artillery. And mini cannons seemed like a good idea(even if it took ages before it was good enough).
That, and they scared the shit out of horses.
Let's change things up a bit:
Phase changes have zero enthalpy. When an object exceeds the temp/pressure boundary, it changes phase in a half life relative to how far past the boundary it is.
Some heat engines would still work, but the ones that rely on evaporation are effectively useless.
What else changes?
>>45086523
Frankly I think the entire genre should just drop the "medieval" tagline and accept they have no resemblance to any period of history.
>>45084483
Does anyone know of a system that actually does an acceptable job when it comes to firearms?
>>45087152
dnd 2e had an optional combat and tactics book that did a fair job.
>>45084631
Alternative option: barrel rifling never gets invented.
That almost happened. The man who invented it (British) fought an incredibly difficult uphill battle to get his contemporaries to admit it was a improvement on the design. He went as far as convincing the queen of England to test one of his rifles (She bullseye's a target at > 200 yards, in an era when muskets normally had accuracy measured in inches of deviation / feet travelled), but literally nobody listened.
So, barrels of guns have no rifling: now firearms are both deadly and inaccurate. A man with a crossbow can wound the target, or a man with a musket can destroy something nearby.
>>45087394
Except rifled guns only became the standard infantry weapon in the 19th century.
Smoothbore muskets had already replaced bows completely by the 17th century in Europe, and by the end of the 1600s pikes disappeared so that infantry was overwhelmingly armed with shot as their primary weapon.
Rifling has existed since atleast the 15th century in hunting and duelling pieces. It just never became the standard until hundreds of years later, as smoothbore guns had a number of advantages as a military weapon.
>>45086453
I mean, it's a fantasy world. Technically there's nothing stopping you from eyeballing the trajectory of a bullet by looking at the gun barrel and putting your sword in front of it, and with medieval guns there's a bit of a delay between when the trigger is pulled and when the gun actually fires due to the amount of time the primer in the pan takes to burn (or, with a flintlock, that plus the time it takes sparks to fall from the frizzen). In theory even an ordinary human could do it, so if you're an elf with superhuman reflexes and keen vision or whatever, even better.
>>45084960
Thank you Anon-sempai!
>>45088485
So I just ignore all the "but that's weaboo fightan magic!" complaints.
Works for me.
>>45084089
>no guns
Prepare yourself for a world of flamethrowers.
>>45091212
honk honk, here comes your armor support
>>45092247
I shiver thinking about what that thing would do to infantry.
Didn't the Chinese have gunpowder, and just not use it for weapons? You could have gunpowder still be a thing, but no one uses it for weapons because of some religious/cultural belief. Maybe some old king fired the first one and it blew up in his face, so now everyone worries about the "Cure of King Gregory" or whatever, and won't touch them
>>45092447
It's for clearing minefields
>>45091114
Yeah, basically. I mean, it'd still fuck your sword up real good, but theoretically possible for sure.
>>45086007
So at what point would firearms become fairly common with adventurers?
When integrated cartriges become available?
When you can carry a brace of flintlock pistols?
>>45093870
And!? Imagine this thing coming at you! A large bull rushing multi flailed weapon carrage capable of brute force dismemberment that you have very little hope of surviving.
>>45094108
Or you know, you can move slightly to the left.
>>45094009
I'd say around the time of the invention of the wheellock.
While the matchlock required a burning match to fire, making it impractical for wet or windy weather, time-consuming to prepare to fire, and emit light, the wheellock could be carried primed and ready to fire at all times and holstered or concealed beneath clothing; it had an integrated safety and was easy to load, at the cost of being mechanically more complex. Unlike a crossbow, the ammunition was extremely light and compact, meaning a great deal more could be carried.
Overall I'd call it a practical weapon for the discerning adventurer, albeit expensive.
>>45094229
See that turret? There aren't any chains to get in the way of shell slightly to the left.
>>45094308
We had better flame throwers than fire arms back in the day, imagine this thing spewing fire and swinging metal!
>>45094009
The effectiveness of early guns is kind of related to a lot of stuff that's not always translated well into random murderhobo adventuring.
Like people not wanting to rush you even if you can't reload before the rest gets you, because they don't want to die.
Or guns being awesome because hurting someone before he's close enough to hurt you is fantastic. Until you're a superhuman with a sword who somehow survives 5 sword thrusts.
It's like most ranged weapons in D&D-tier fantasy. They suck because being really hard to kill makes them a bit sucky compared to swords that let you stand next to someone and whale on them for a good long while.
If you're playing a "believable" fantasy setting, any tier of firearm is basically a must-have for an adventurer because it's something that can put holes in people or monsters without having to get within arms length of them, and they are even more destructive than crossbows.
>>45094357
I like where this is going. I really do.
>>45094357
So a Zippo with the flail?
>>45094411
Forgot the pic
>>45094392
Be walking through the misty battle field... You pause, your men stopping behind you. Its quiet... but suddenly a rumbling and then from the mist a bright orange light and a heat! So much heat, you dive to the ground and look back just in time to see a monster of metal rushing through your men's marching formation! You can only gaze in horror as the burning pieces of your men are scattered around as it passes.
>>45094411
pretty much!
>>45094380
How come all the other ranged weapons are different from this?
And keep in mind we are talking about a fantasy setting here. Overpowered bows with enchanted arrows can keep up with plade easily.
>the chemical reaction that makes gunpowder go boom is inert
Black powder and modern smokeless powders work through completely different chemical reactions. And they are far from the only possible solid state propellants.
>Does this affect other areas of technology somehow?
Ok, imagine that all of physics, chemistry etc, all the laws of nature and all the building blocks that act according to these laws (and all of it what actually is, not what we think is) as one big house of cards. Basically all of reality is in there.
You just pulled out a random card from in there, and now you're asking if this might have some impact elsewhere.
Yeah, it will. You're going to have to rebuild all of that shit from the ground up. And then run the entire technological progression from zero again working with that reality instead of the one that was before.
>>45094673
Beautifully put Anon, I applaud you.
>>45094530
Jesus Christ how horrifying. Very nice, anon. I've been in some "medievall re-enactment" mass battles, and I know the dread feeling of a formation scattering in front of you - knowing you'll be the next. But when it is done by an unstoppable steel behemoth that spews flames...
>Tank pilot's face when
Wouldn't you basically have to remove the ability for a nitrogen bond to easily break?
Wouldn't that fuck up like most of the universe?
>>45094717
Glad you liked it, the smile on my face while writing it almost matches the glee of pic related.
>>45094807
Was that.......was that some sort of armored terrarian dragon?
>>45085843
>It'll never be the 1630's again
>You will never own a band of mercenaries that battle in the 30 year's war
>You will never witness the new pike and shot formations as the musket grows in demand
>You will never grow rich in Amsterdam
>You will never travel to the New World to purify the corrupt and sinful masses and establish a "City on a Hill" paradigm
>You will never hide a copy of the radical astronomy theories from the Church
>You will never indulge on the new Caribbean sugar and tobacco made by slave labor
I'd take part in a 17th century campaign.
>>45087152
Friday Night Firefight?
>>45084089
Mankind uses heavy alkaline metals suchv as francium, sodium, and cesium.
Bullets would be made up of cartridges containing vaccum ampules (like in modern chem labs) with the bullet - shaped alkali round and a container of water. When the hammer of the gun strikes the amplule and water packet, the alkali bullet from the ampule and water mix, creating a massive amount of pressurized hydrogen, oxygen, and heat that would propel the alkaline slug foreward.
You could cap the end of the alkaline slug with a cap of lead to give it more punch. Cesium or francium would be the most powerful option. Mankind does this until we produce railguns.
https://youtu.be/HvVUtpdK7xw
>>45093843
They used it for tons of weapons, bombs, fire lances, rockets, rocket propelled arrows, pretty much everything but what we would call a gun.
>>45087191
Thanks for this, Anon
>>45084960
That's pretty accurate. GJ. I'm not a chemist myself, so I won't add anything to this.
>>45094584
Bullets could also be enchanted to make guns better.
>>45084089
crossbow tech becomes big, however at some point someone figures out pressurized airguns and everything is developed around that
the real question isn't guns but artillery, in which case europe would be incalculably different
>>45084711
Basically the universe op created would be pretty boring. would just be alot of rocks made out of elements floating about until that universe ends.
>>45084089
What a horrible stupid mcguffin for explaining away guns in a modern/scifi setting instead of just balancing melee weaponry to be better mechanically.
I would fucking never play a game like this.
>>45084157
Essentially yes. Gunpowder's ingredients include nitrates that also exist in fertilizer.
>>45084616
>How will I ever have the knights of the republic of the Americas now
It's the year 2177. 100 years have passed since the Great War and the five kingdoms of the Hudson converge upon the ruins of Jois-eh after the honorable Emperor Rick III of Freehold is assassinated. The player is tasked with finding a Remote Handheld Orbital Systems Relay (RHOSR) device that can control prewar orbital satellite artillery systems.
The kingdoms follow (roughly) the areas served by the former NJT North Coast, Raritan Valley, Morristown lines in the south and the Metro-North Harlem line in the north. The central area, formerly known as the Empire City, is mostly just grassland and concrete foundations connected by a maze of underground utility and rail tunnels. The only thing of value left in the area is on the island roughly in the center of the harbor, where there's a giant concrete fortification. Due west is a massive, irradiated swampland inhabited by the ghosts (automated defense systems, ala bearcat trucks with turrets) of the people that once lived there before the war. The only known location of said device is deep inside this wasteland, inside a heavily guarded armory.That's the best I could come up with.
>>45084960
Isn't that the compound that once exploded when a neutrino hit it?
>>45099322
The quote from the paper that talks about it is amazing.
"The sensitivity of C2N14 is beyond our capabilities of measurement. The smallest possible loading in shock and friction tests led to explosive decomposition. It must be stated that the shock and friction sensitivity of 1 no doubt lies well under the limits of 0.25J in impact and 1N in friction sensitivity that can be experimentally determined."
Beyond that, I don't think they've said. I do know that they've had it blow up when they turned on a spectrometer, and that they had it blow up in a shock proof contained in a climate controlled room that had no light in it.
>>45099212
places of note:
- Seacuaus Junction: trading hub
- Newark: place where Rick I slayed the corrupt Port Authority Director and assumed control of the NJT railroad. The city itself cultivates food in towering greenhouses
- Bay Head: fishing town and port. Idle oil rigs can be found off the coast, defense systems intact. Explorers often die trying to sack them for loot. Can take a boat here to Al-Andus (previously spain) for one-off fun.
- Hobroken: massive swampland/wasteland infested with bearcats. Unsafe for travel, but supposedly there's a lot of intact factories and dungeons to explore.
- Moynihan: giant, half flooded concrete bathtub in the middle of Manhattan Island. Leads into a subterranean tunnel network
- Governor's Island: not much except for a roofless temple. Pretty inside, but litterally nothing except a few mexicans obesssed with la virginia de guadalupe
- Pleasantville: Handful of mines as well that make copper and nickel (for copper wire and magnets)
- Morrisville: maintenance base for the NJT rail system. Steel comes from Flthidelphia from the south.
- Sleepy Hollow: lots of farms and a granary. Local rumors say that there's a prewar military bunker around it.
- Freehold: Rick family dynasty's home town. Not much to see beyond chicken coops and cows. Home to the ruins of the king's ruined palace.
- Indian Point: operational nuclear power plant. Is run by local tech wizards (former DoE employees and security) that take their job of protecting it super seriously. Supposedly still has a connection to prewar moon/mars bases.
>>45084821
>Nazi elves
I'm okay with that.
>>45084955
>They're always just "like humans but better!!!" and it gets fucking old.
Elves being better is pretty rare outside of Tolkien. HFY's are far worse.
>>45084743
I'd take the opposing side and say the elves' long lives set up for an incredible narrative situation, in which elves begin to dread as they watch petty flintlocks outrun metamagic sciences in terms of refinement and efficiency as humans try to develop weapons elves cannot machine. In response, the elves could attempt to go on a crusade against firearm technology to enforce the monopoly of magic-based weaponry,and eventually ending the war with the invention of the Locate City ice nuke synergy during the Mana-Attain project.
>>45084743
>>45084089
Want to nullify guns?
Magic ward: blocks projectiles that are higher velocity and/or large+metallic. Worthless against slower projectiles and organic materials.
Early guns shot balls which can't compete with arrows or bolts at lower speeds, and they'd require solid metal bolts which would be prohibitively expensive and in low-velocity guns is too inefficient compared to existing arrow/bolt shooting weapons with too heavy of a projectile. Cannons at the end of their arc are mostly momentum with low velocity, but the metal ball would be large enough to trip the ward. Anything smaller would lose momentum to drag too quickly and have terrible range, and anything faster would also trip the ward.
>Auto-scorpions with hoppers would be developed before cannons.
>CQC assault would use chinese style auto-crossbows with hoppers but weak shots
backed by powerful poisons.
>Longer ranges and quickest militia would be slower full size crossbows.
>Middle solution for power and firing speed would remain regular bows.
>>45104825
****being grounded shorts the ward.
So a hand-held weapon has no resistance, but projectiles are crap. Throwing weapons are high momentum low velocity, they're fine.
>>45084963
Anon, but that would imply that they are compitent at fighting against humans, for us to give a shit, and we all know that elves are shit at war against humans.
>>45087152
Traveller.
You could do full medieval high fantasy with traveller. Swords are commonly used, there are rules for psionics which could be passed as "magic". early firearms are statted out, and it would all work fine together. I've run vikings with traveller, i've run napoleonics with traveller, I've run Chechenya with traveller. I also played traveller with traveller.
>>45084611
I think what OP was geting at is that while the components of gunpowder DO exist, when you combine them, nothing happens.
>>45085998
Opium wars. It also involved a lot of European powers at the time.
>>45084089
instead of making it completly impossible just make it inpractical. let them simply lack any kind of geological salpeter sources and have a huge stigma against fecal matter (so that people tend to avoid the materials needed to make salpeter). gun powder might still be discovered but much later and its limited availability might make it unpractical for a long time. steam (artillary), or air powered weapons might arise at some point though for most of history better developed crossbows would be the weapon of choice.
>>45084814
you want an interesting setting right? how is the end of an era not interesting?
>>45084089
>How does this affect history?
Well, since the laws of physics are fucked up I'm guessing it's pointless to even give out a vague answer
>>45097162
the problem is to produce alkali metals you have to electrolyse the molten salts of them. thats super inefficient as a weapon.
>>45098797
there are some interesting options though. from napalm over toxic gas to biological weapons (including but not limited to swinging the heads of plage victims over the enemy walls).
>>45108091
Yes, this has been brought up about a dozen times.
>>45085843
>in a world where skinny little fuckers can twitch their fingers to send several explosions your way
>do you really wanna be the guy with a weapon that everyone can hear go off miles away?
>>45084732
http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/07/02/the-chemistry-of-gunpowder/
might not be 100% on the ball, but looks like generation of CO2 and N2 in large quantities compared to the starting ingredients
also the reason alot of chemical reactions like this are so energetic is the end products are more thermodynmically favorable for those elements to exist in so large quantities of energy are released (as heat) as the whole thing goes to a lower energy state
