So, I'm homebrewing a setting and the tech/magi-tech level (in some areas) is bordering WW1 esque stuff.
Mainly I'm considering the ramifications of giving the players guns though. Partly because I've never seen or played a campaign before where the players had access to say a breach loading firearm, or a leaver action rifle or revolver pistol. So for anyone who has, how does this effect gameplay heavily.
Does Wilderness survival become pitifully easy? Should combat be more oriented around other creatures who can use guns? ect ect....?
Does melee combat basically vanish? Should a lot of quests be focused on stealth? I.E. a load gun shot could alert people. Ect.
I don't see how wilderness survival would become much easier compared to parties laden with bows and crossbows. Food is already trivially easy to come by under the Survival skill rules. The real trick to survival adventures is incorporating environmental challenges — getting lost, storms, droughts, avalanches, etc.
Melee combat won't vanish, but it will become more rare. A fair bit of melee combat goes on in the USA every day and this place is lousy with advanced firearms.
However, most people understand the implications of guns far better than they understand the implications of magic, for instance. So it should be something the players can grasp and act accordingly.
Cadenzo wrote: So, I'm homebrewing a setting and the tech/magi-tech level (in some areas) is bordering WW1 esque stuff.
Mainly I'm considering the ramifications of giving the players guns though. Partly because I've never seen or played a campaign before where the players had access to say a breach loading firearm, or a leaver action rifle or revolver pistol. So for anyone who has, how does this effect gameplay heavily.
Does Wilderness survival become pitifully easy? Should combat be more oriented around other creatures who can use guns? ect ect....?
Does melee combat basically vanish? Should a lot of quests be focused on stealth? I.E. a load gun shot could alert people. Ect.
1) Know your players before you start. I live in Toronto, so a big city in Canada, and expected noone knew anything about guns. (I sure don't.) Boy was I wrong. Half the players are probably proficient in guns in real life, and many of them know a lot about 30 Years Wars or Napoleonic guns.
And then insist on being realistic about them. Guns aren't balanced in real life, ancient or modern, but they need to be in-game. Ancient guns take a long time to load, sucking the fun out of gaming, but some people won't accept them without this. Game weapons are also far less complicated in real life, but few complain because few modern people know much about ancient guns. (One player is a kendo competitor though.) So before you know it, people want rules about smoke being emitted from guns creating concealment, and how long it takes for wind to clear, etc. Or, you know, not. Your players might be far nicer about that kind of thing. So all I can say is ask first.
Advanced firearms can cause balance issues, or so I hear. We only ever had one gun-using PC in our Pathfinder campaign, and I don't believe he had more than a couple of levels of gunslinger, and possibly none at all. (He was a rogue.)
2) If anything, wilderness survival would be harder. You can make a bow out of woodland material, and most of an arrow. Not so with guns. Not that most campaigns track how many arrows used up during hunting. I figure in most campaigns, in practice, this won't matter, but some groups make this a big deal.
3) If guns are balanced in game-terms, there's no need to change how often melee comes up. You might replace bow-using opponents with gun-using ones, but that's about it.
Guns didn't initially replace bows because they're "better". They are now, but not "back then". Guns are really easy to use compared to the decade of training it takes to create a longbowman (something the game does not simulate at all well). Guns weren't that great at personal scale combat, and were generally only used in large battles where aiming at very large masses of men was less important than the ability to load quickly.
In practice, there would be more ranged combatants, if only because guns should realistically be simple weapons, and more of the population would then have the option of using guns rather than, say, clubs. (Of course, owning guns was expensive. You shouldn't see lots of non-warrior commoners with them.)
4) Guns are bad for stealth. Then again, if your PCs can't one-shot-kill opponents it hardly matters. If you half-kill someone with a bowshot, they tend to scream, immediately, as a free action. Plus, you could cast the Silence spell, since your setting still has magic.
How similar to World War I is this? Machine guns change the battlefield to such an extent that melee becomes pointless anytime they appear. There might not be machineguns in dungeons, but you better believe bandits will get their hands on these as soon as possible, if only to defend their base camps.
Kimera757 has a really good point. A major factor in the levels of bloodshed in early WWI was that machine guns had only recently been invented (I mean really high-powered machine guns, not assault rifles), and the tactics hadn't had time develop. The Battle of the Somme was an absolute bloodbath because the English commanders kept trying to charge the German forces, who were entrenched across a river, on a hill, with lots of machine guns. Even one, operated by a bunch of goblins (who, with their love of fire and chaos, would love a machine gun), could cause a TPK in the first few rounds.
A game with weapons like that would focus a lot more on stealth, trying to get up to the machine gun nests and destroy them before anyone notices. Have you stated out the more powerful weapons yet? I think letting us see them could help.
Regdar wrote: Kimera757 has a really good point. A major factor in the levels of bloodshed in early WWI was that machine guns had only recently been invented (I mean really high-powered machine guns, not assault rifles), and the tactics hadn't had time develop. The Battle of the Somme was an absolute bloodbath because the English commanders kept trying to charge the German forces, who were entrenched across a river, on a hill, with lots of machine guns. Even one, operated by a bunch of goblins (who, with their love of fire and chaos, would love a machine gun), could cause a TPK in the first few rounds.
A game with weapons like that would focus a lot more on stealth, trying to get up to the machine gun nests and destroy them before anyone notices. Have you stated out the more powerful weapons yet? I think letting us see them could help.
So far I'm tentatively borrowing the weapons in "Rasputin Must Die," but I'm still unsure about Machine guns. It might be simple enough to say that Gatling guns are as far as the technology has gone. With some people developing interests more in weaponizing magic on a sort of industrial scale. For example magic energy weapons and Eberron esque things.
I'm kind of trying to balance the practicality of "Well not everyone has spells and magi-tech is hard to make," so guns and conventional technology would develop but also people being supremely interested in the possibilities of magi-tech which the world is on the cusp of figuring out.
Right now this is what I've got:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15831891&postcount=15
An equally important question is the state of other technologies.
Has electricity been discovered? Is there a telegraph, et cetera? That will have a larger effect on the landscape than the presence/absence of guns ...
Has someone like Alfred Nobel discovered high explosives? Those are much deadlier than guns ...
How about interchangeable parts and assembly line manufacture? Industrial revolution?
Bicycle?
These things will have a large effect on the flavor of the world.
Regarding guns, you will almost certainly have to drastically scale DOWN the lethality of guns, else your PCs won't last long. A 6 second combat round is long enough to fire several accurate high-power rifle shots from 300 meters. Modern (e.g. post 1870ish) firearms are easy to use, and are very lethal.
I'm running a campaign with Commonplace guns, although it's still relegated to only basic firearms. The players have only used the firearms once, and it hasn't really affected melee combat. Though when they fought a group of pirates with pistols, they learned quickly that cover is very needed.
Odraude wrote: I'm running a campaign with Commonplace guns, although it's still relegated to only basic firearms. The players have only used the firearms once, and it hasn't really affected melee combat. Though when they fought a group of pirates with pistols, they learned quickly that cover is very needed. Electricity is fairly new. Mostly held by one country that is seeking better ways to both power itself, its rural hinterlands and eventually neighboring countries. Telegraphs yes, There is also a single neighborhood in one city with a Telephone. Primitive automobiles, Blimps, Ironclad ships and the basics of the Industrial Revolution, and assembly line production in some countries.
Part of my plan might be to have guns be more simple, or simply single shot breach loading guns as perhaps the technology of firearms hasn't been developed as readily due to some focus going on magic and attempts to develop magi-tech since its known previous civilizations wielded magic as technology and a power source before.
Ah okay. Well, my setting isn't anywhere near that advanced, so unsure if I can really be of help. Mine is honestly more Cusp-of-Renaissance styled Age of Sail, Pirates, and Discovery. So there are less medieval things in the game, like muskets & pistols, caravels, and printing presses, but there still exist some of the classic fantasy trappings of chivalry, sword & sorcery, and armor.
Odraude wrote: Ah okay. Well, my setting isn't anywhere near that advanced, so unsure if I can really be of help. Mine is honestly more Cusp-of-Renaissance styled Age of Sail, Pirates, and Discovery. So there are less medieval things in the game, like muskets & pistols, caravels, and printing presses, but there still exist some of the classic fantasy trappings of chivalry, sword & sorcery, and armor. To an extent, the world would be anywhere between 1850-1914 as far as tech and advancement. With one notable exception for one country I have given a few 1920-29 toys.
The worlds main race are actually a eugenics project, created by Elvens selectively breeding with humans eons ago when the world was dying. The Elves used their magic to make contact with ethereal beings, offering to build them bodies in return for help terraforming the world back into a virgin new world of life. The Elves themselves were dying out so this project was to ensure some piece of themselves survived into the future.
Basically I took Dark Sun and hit the restart button. XD
That sounds pretty cool. Sounds like a Victorian/Edwardian based setting with some eugenics. I dig it. I'd have to think back a bit more. I'd say, if you are doing commonplace weapons with advanced firearms, definitely be mindful about giving the PCs cover when they fight. Let the players know about kneeling and going prone (free actions for both) to increase their cover. Melee fighting with advanced weapons may be more rare than with Simple Firearms, especially if you are using the firearms from Rasputin Must Die. Beyond that, maybe new armor that gives DR for those that wish to keep playing melee characters?
Odraude wrote: That sounds pretty cool. Sounds like a Victorian/Edwardian based setting with some eugenics. I dig it. I'd have to think back a bit more. I'd say, if you are doing commonplace weapons with advanced firearms, definitely be mindful about giving the PCs cover when they fight. Let the players know about kneeling and going prone (free actions for both) to increase their cover. Melee fighting with advanced weapons may be more rare than with Simple Firearms, especially if you are using the firearms from Rasputin Must Die. Beyond that, maybe new armor that gives DR for those that wish to keep playing melee characters? I'm thinking of even changing gun rules to where depending on the range increments you simply have "Penetration" power over someones AC.
Or give people DR armors or special metals armors that resist bullets. For example maybe I could re-purpose Mithril to be a kind of Kevler potential metal. Or Adamentine at specific thicknesses can grant DR.
I'm also planning on having some campaigns with some like Cold War spy games flair. Nations seeking technological advancement over rivals. Or discoveries of magi-tech and trying to reverse engineer said things. Several nations are curious about the possibilities of merging magic and technology in order to save fuel and prevent ecological damage. Alchemical engines and Alchemical sciences being promoted heavily as the "Path to Tomorrow."
Right now the world is in a cold war/armistice stalemate between two powers. One is very industrialized, has a more advanced understanding of alchemical sciences and to some degree a lot better understanding of Transmutation magic. The other side is far more numerous and has a strong understanding of magic but weaker technology and they focus more on Arcana studies then Alchemical sciences or the creation of magical devices. Artifice and Alchemy versus Magi and Raw Sorcery. However both sides have begun using ancient relics dug up from previous peoples. In one case they discovered a vault of canisters containing strange Alchemical fluids. Divining it as a weapon they used it. Likewise the other side discovered magical devices that work effectively like a magical Nuclear bomb. Both sides are terrified yet in awe of the power these things wield and are looking to figure out how they work spawning an arms race.
One Idea I've had is simply to homebrew knew guns and weapons to fit the setting more instead of straight replicating real world firearms. For example I could have a type of gatling gun or even a machine gun but change how it operates, or how many people it requires to use. Other mechanics might be the ability of spellcasters to create shields that can hold back or grant DR. Plus the possibility of magical guns or energy weapons. Ect ect.
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