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Im a new Pathfinder DM but a 30+ year gamer. Im loving the InnerSea and am building my campaign within it. Ill admit however that the inclusion of firearms is a big turn off. Sure, easy enough to just drop them but Im wondering how much of a problem this is for you guys? Are there that many gamers who want to include gunpowder in their fantasy setting out there to warrant its inclusion? I would have thought it a pretty rare notion.
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The rules are there, use them if you want them, ignore them if you don't. In terms of the world canon, they're pretty darn rare.
That being said, I'm running Skull & Shackles for my game crew and they like their pirates with a fair bit of black powder mixed in, so I've upped the amount of firearms available (and encountered) in the Adventure Path to suit their tastes.
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I like firearms and even reduce their prices and make them martial weapons in my games among a few other changes, although I do not use advanced firearms.
That being said, if I remember correctly the only place that firearms even come close to being common is Alkenstar and a person outside of that area may go their entire life without seeing a single firearm.
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Over the past decade, tastes have changed considerably. This, combined with the philosophy of how Golarion can be used for any sort of adventure (with each nation having its own theme that ties heavily to some archetypical fantasy notion), means that there'll be a nation where firearms are being used.
It's getting to the point where firearms are somewhat popular, perhaps somewhere a bit further behind where the Asian-themed adventures are, but still in the same ballpark.
As perhaps proof that tastes have changed, Paizo recently announced the Iron Gods adventure path. This takes place in Numeria, which is a land heavily influenced by things like Conan the Barbarian, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks by Gary Gygax, etc. This is Numeria. And I have never seen fans as excited about an AP as I have seen for this one. The closest I can recall was when Rasputin Must Die! was announced. Before that book even came out, there were more posts in its discussion thread than the post count for the first 4 books of some APs combined. This is the book where the PCs must go to the planet Earth. Because Rapsutin. Must. Die.
Fantasy is a large umbrella. I personally ignore most Asian themed things. I know some people go gaga over them. Some people ignore firearms. I greatly enjoy the clash of technological might and eldritch magic.
The times, they're a changin'.
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Personally I don't see the fear or ill thoughts about firearms in a campaign. As DM I think there are enough checks and balances to make them as viable as any other weapon. They are very noisy and the party might not like the gunslinger shooting while they are sneaking. Because of their damage potential, people watching will get envious and may put a target on the bearer to try and get them for themselves. Weather plays havoc with them...water obstacles. ...yeah theres enough that a DM can use in his toolbox to make them as viable as any thing else.
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I think part of the problem is some gamers appear to live in glass houses with one opaque wall they cannot see through. On the other side of the wall magic and technology have been cohabitating just fine.
Ultimaely, it really doesn't matter if the golem is a golem or a robot. Its all in presentation. Firearms are really only ass big a deal as they are made ro be.
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Im a new Pathfinder DM but a 30+ year gamer. Im loving the InnerSea and am building my campaign within it. Ill admit however that the inclusion of firearms is a big turn off. Sure, easy enough to just drop them but Im wondering how much of a problem this is for you guys? Are there that many gamers who want to include gunpowder in their fantasy setting out there to warrant its inclusion? I would have thought it a pretty rare notion.
If firearms are triggering your anachronism alarms, you may want to do yourself a favor and not look into Numeria. The sixty-foot tall robot spider with miniguns and lasers might just blow your mind.
Yes, Ive noticed a few Numeria references and neadless to say, that region is going to have to be heavily reworked! LOL
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I think it's long, long, LONG past time that firearms became a standard component of most fantasy settings. Golarion is flirting with the 1700s, for petes sake! A time in which firearms had been a daily reality on European battlefields for four hundred years.
I don't :) Then too, I don't use Golarion. The utility of gunpowder, like everything else, depends on the type of setting you're building.
Basically - The long held notion in fantasy seems to be that firearms were a relatively recent innovation and that when they appeared they appeared all at once as fully functional flint-lock weapons. Moreover, folks seem to believe that the appearance of firearms led to the immediate abandonment of armor, melee weapons, and so forth. None of this is remotely true or accurate.
So? Some of us just don't want to mix the beginnings of modern military technology with our swords and sorcery. If you noticed the guns in Pathfinder tend to be more advanced than medieval hand guns / cannons (although you could limit it too very early weapons). I'm quite familiar with the history of gunpowder weapons, I just don't want them in my game. Gunpowder marks the beginning of some serious social change and I like my feudalism. Crossbows have tactical limitations and didn't serve as an equalizer the way gunpowder did. Longbows, while an excellent weapon, were limited in their impact by their training requirements and limited geographic availability.
While it hasn't come up yet my campaign is going to feature early hand guns as relatively widespread, albeit uncommon, weapons. Cannon will be present, rare, and very valuable. Simple rockets are in use, as are gunpowder bombs. I'm aiming to represent firearms technology at approximately a 1450s level of technology. This means that the simple hand gonne is relatively well developed, simple, un-corned gunpowder is in use, and Alkenstar is right at the cusp of unleashing the matchlock gun on the world.
I came out of a historical miniature background (and earned multiple degrees in history later). Inevitably my players wanted to use gunpowder to do all kinds of things I didn't want done. Breaching castle walls, assassinating important figures (gunpowder / bomb plots), cauterizing troll wounds, blowing up dragons, etc. I decided then that gunpowder, in particular, and science, in general, were not going to work in my game. My world looks "normal" on the outside, but what's under the hood is different. Very different. It works for me.
I do intend to depart from history by making military rockets a bit more effective than they were in the 1450s simply because I think the hwacha and fire-arrows are awesome.
The more effective gunpowder weapons are, imo, the more deviation you'll have from the basic tropes of fantasy / D&D. I've flirted with doing a 1600's game with magic and gunpowder but it would be a very different setting from the standard D&D / PF game. Arquebus, magic and pike :) A 17th-18th century pirate themed game might also be cool. But it wouldn't be your typical game (which is all right of course).
Many prevalent tropes in fantasy RPGs are based on wildly inaccurate conceptions of the late medieval world that built off the appallingly poor scholarship of the first half of the twentieth century. The truth - Knights in full high plate crashing through clouds of handgun smoke or archers crowding the fighting castles of carracks amid the crack and boom of canon - is far more exciting and offers more verisimilitude than the current paradigm.
Verisimilitude is in the eye of the beholder. And I'm not talking an eye tyrant here :)
Of course it helps that the historical guns of roughly the period most RPGs cover were not overwhelmingly powerful or effective. There was a period of hundreds of years when hand gonnes and cannon shared the field with longbow, crossbow, horse archers, foot and horse knights, massed pike infantry, and so forth. The 13th, 14th, and 15th century were a wild mess of a time when every kind of military technology available was being employed in massive conflict between states and entire cultures.
It could certainly be done. But I think it erodes heroism. The lone hero / knight in shining armor becomes a Don Quixote. Masses of soldiers armed with polearms and gunpowder weapons end up dominating the battlefield and providing a challenge to the roll of the typical knight / hero / magician.
Another point that I find in favor of gunpowder - it acts as a leveler to help explain how mundane humans can have the same kind of social and cultural structures found in the real world when the threat of dragon attack is a real thing. Hand gonnes level the playing field with wizards and ogres and a handful of cannons can take down any giant. It doesn't necessarily carry into the past of the world, but for the present of a setting it does help answer the question of "Why hasn't everyone been chewed to bits by one creature with CR10/magic". I think gunpowder can compliment magic as much as anything else does. I'm quite fond of settings like Bas Lag where the integration of magic and technology is seamless - They're just various ways of manipulating the laws of reality to a desired outcome.
Leveling the field in a class based fantasy RPG is not quite what I want. Mundane humans have numbers and heroes. They don't need a technological edge to go with it. Imo, of course. As for the high CR monsters, they are what make the high level heroes valuable. Soldiers might dominate the battlefield but a dragon's breath can lay waste to them. While the high level hero braves the flames and slays the dragon. Hopefully. Supporting the heroic idea and the continuance of feudal social systems which support those heroes. So, given the prevalence of high CR monsters in the world, your society is better off supporting more high level characters than huge armies. That's the logic my world is built on anyway. The wars remain feudal / medieval and limited in scope (outside the occasional crusade or national war) while heroes roam the world having adventures.
BONUS: Goblin hand-gonners. I mean seriously. Goblin hand gonners. If that's not enough to sell you on gunpowder I don't know what would.
Those little pyro Golarion Goblins would probably be extinct if they had gunpowder :D
*edit* OK, back to grading papers. Thanks for the diversion!
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While I accept your premise and right to run your game as you like R_chance I would point out one thing I am okay with that you seem to not be:
Masses of soldiers armed with polearms and gunpowder weapons end up dominating the battlefield and providing a challenge to the roll of the typical knight / hero / magician.
I'm fine with that. For me this part makes the later heroic; not that what they did cannot be done by 'lesser' people in mass, but that they did it alone.
Could the problem be solved by a large troop? Yes, but that has problems of its own (more casualties, lost production, possibly lower success rate, supplies, etc). Sometimes it is better to simply rely on a single hero rather than throwing more people at a problem even if both methods can solve it.
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The anachronism has nothing to do with comparing golarion to rl cultures. First, alot of gamers somewhere came to the horribly mistaken conclusion that dnd or any of its descendants have ever been a medieval fantasy. This is wrong. Dnd has always been a giant melting pot of fantastic imagery that has only a painted backdrop to fool the unwary into thinking its a medieval fantasy.
It honestly irks me that theoretically intelligent people start to get upset when guns are added to their fantasy. They are not bothered by all the stuff in the game invented after gunpowder like plate armor or haliberds.
Why are gollems okay but robots bad? The jewish folklore that introodeces the clay gollem has a list of instructions put in its head. That sounds an aweful lot like a robot.
Really, technology lasers and robots have been in the game for 40 years one of the iconic and figures mulynd (sp?) Comes from the wild west. Conan and many other stories that heavily influenced the creation of tge game all had scifi elements. The workd doesnt end.
Really if you want to dislike the firearms mechanics go ahead but the guns themselves have been around longer than many games have been alive.
Sure, easy enough to just drop them but Im wondering how much of a problem this is for you guys?
It's weird how you literally answered your own question and then went ahead and asked the question anyway, all in the same sentence.
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Personally, I like them. Love them, even. But then again, I also love psionics, eastern themes and ideas, epic levels, and most of the other unpopular-to-like or at least don't-get-that-in-my-fantasy things around here. :)
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I would guess the reason why there are firearms in Golarion is that Paizo wanted to craft an all-in-one-world for ease of publishing. One of the things that drove TSR out of business is that they created all kinds of different product lines with too few customers per line to make it work.
So it was pretty natural for them to make a steam punky setting with firearms and plop it down somewhere on the map. If you don't like guns and steam punk material then Alkenstar isn't for you just as Tian Xia isn't your cup of tea if you don't like oriental culture. Personally, I really enjoyed the advanced firearms rules when I did a low-level homebrew set in the (more or less) historical Wild West.
While I accept your premise and right to run your game as you like R_chance I would point out one thing I am okay with that you seem to not be:
Masses of soldiers armed with polearms and gunpowder weapons end up dominating the battlefield and providing a challenge to the roll of the typical knight / hero / magician.
I'm fine with that. For me this part makes the later heroic; not that what they did cannot be done by 'lesser' people in mass, but that they did it alone.
Could the problem be solved by a large troop? Yes, but that has problems of its own (more casualties, lost production, possibly lower success rate, supplies, etc). Sometimes it is better to simply rely on a single hero rather than throwing more people at a problem even if both methods can solve it.
I see your point, but heroes are largely "heroic" because they accomplish what otherwise could (or would) not be done and save the day when, perhaps, no one else could. If they do what could only otherwise be accomplished by armies I'm OK with that :) But it does leave "less room" in the world for heroics if those armies lurk around every corner. If you are running a themed AP style campaign that isn't an issue; the characters will end up the, perhaps unlikely, heroes. If you are running a open world sandbox where you want adventure, potentially, around every corner, it's more of a problem.
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never claimed said armies are everywhere, only that where they exist they can get the job done.
personally i am not fond of worlds that can only survive because of a continuous stream of heroes, but some people do and it can be a fun game.
I've kept the system feudal. Warfare, and armies, exist but they don't overwhelm the setting and render heroes obsolete. My setting started out as a setting for Chainmail fantasy supplement miniatures campaigns in 1972. Armies have always been there as have wars. I just prefer it on a limited scale that lets heroes shine. When you get to the point of numerous large national / continental wars it submerges heroism, my 2 cp on that of course.
I should say that armies / warfare are important in my games. One of my players is establishing a new barony on the frontiers of an existing duchy. She owes allegiance to the duke and a war is brewing on the frontier with the woodland Goblin tribal confederacy. With, of course, something big and bad behind it :) Nonetheless, the battles will be on a scale where a high level character(s) can make the difference on either side. I'm thinking of using a "flowchart" for the battles and use ideas from the 3.5 Heroes of Battle book to make it character centric rather than a miniature campaign this time... alternatively I still have my old AD&D Battlesystem rules from 1E and 2E... they could be adapted... decisions, decisions.
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Good stuff guys, thanks for the feedback. Theres a lot of "history" up there and to my mind it doesnt really have a place in the typical fantasy setting. I run a Hyborian Age campaign and given that Howard created the setting as a pre-history of our own I spend a lot of time and effort to try and get the cultures 'right'. In a conventional swords and sorcery setting however (aka. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Inner Sea or what have you) I think its all about the 'feel' over historical realism. Sure, gunpowder predated Halberds and Plate but a fully platted and halberd wielding knight fighting a dragon "feels" right while one pulling a blunderbuss doesnt. Now thats just my opinion of course.
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Right, specific setting changes things. Although If i recall, even Howard Had an Alien or two Although, right now the name of the story escapes me. It was large elephant headed guy that was being held prisoner. Though Id have to go back and read a lot to nail things down more specifically.
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I for one loves me some techno-fantasy/science fantasy. From the early days of Blackmoor and Barrier Peaks to China Mieville's more magitech stuff and even Eberron.
As for firearms? Well, Alkenstar and Numeria don't have to have too much of an impact on your Golarion if you don't want to. Golarion's pretty big, after all.
I swear, the angst over firearms is what killed off some potentially cool content for 3e Forgotten Realms. The prototype for the product had all sorts of applied magic and even magical firearms. Sweet! Not to mention, 4th took it a step further and turned Lantan into Atlantis... (Or if you play with my bunch, the dystopian city of Rapture!)
It's easier to ignore/subtract yourself than add yourself. (Again, which is why Golarion is my new Forgotten Realms.) And that almost toolbox nature of Golarion is one of the things I like about it the most!
I know it was mentioned, but Howard has indeed used alien beings. Conan punched out Cthulhu once, for Crom's sake!
I currently just finished running a Renaissance-inspired Psuedo-Caribbean campaign, with a mixture of Age of Sail/Discovery, Colonial 1700's. and Golden Age of Piracy all rolled together with firearms (though, only simple ones. No revolvers). Was fun and everything meshed pretty well together. I think next time, though, I'd probably run a more Stone/Bronze Age primitive, almost Conan-esque game to give it a try. I think it'd be fun.
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And something else -- a LOT of people overstate how 'horrible' things were during the middle ages (which spans a HUGE swath of history).
There was a lot of innovation, luxury and easy living going around as a whole. Not saying it was perfect, but it wasn't the hellish slave live all the time living by the skin of your teeth crap people try to make it out to be.
Mojo rat, that was "the tower of the elephant" an original Howard story of Conan as a thief in Zamora. Good stuff. Again..a strange alien being from the cosmos doesn't bend belief the way a flintlock does, oddly.
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My favorite time period has always been the 16th-18th centuries, so early firearms are alright with me.
And thanks to Rasputin Must Die, I can run during my second favorite era. The Second Industrial Age! :)
Though now I do want to run a Hyperborea.
Mojo rat, that was "the tower of the elephant" an original Howard story of Conan as a thief in Zamora. Good stuff. Again..a strange alien being from the cosmos doesn't bend belief the way a flintlock does, oddly.
Yes because I've seen aliens all the time, but flintlocks are purely a work of fiction and completely absurd!
Personally i think that the problem lies with the gunslinger class and less with black powder weapons
Mojo rat, that was "the tower of the elephant" an original Howard story of Conan as a thief in Zamora. Good stuff. Again..a strange alien being from the cosmos doesn't bend belief the way a flintlock does, oddly.
Yes because I've seen aliens all the time, but flintlocks are purely a work of fiction and completely absurd!
No. Because you don't associate the real world artifact of flintlocks with knights, magic, dragons and other mythological / fantastic creatures. Aliens are, on the other hand, essentially "mythological / fantastic". Unless you've had a close encounter of course :)
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Tongue in cheek has no meaning to you does it?
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Well said R Chance, that was my earlier point... is a matter of perception. Still, as someone said, its easy enough to rule out. My Numeria for example has no sign of downed starships, or techno constructs rather if and when my campaign ever moves in that direction they are more likely to find the mutation effects of a downed asteroid or something and the wizards studying the strange radiation and power released instead.
Tongue in cheek has no meaning to you does it?
And smiley faces don't to you? If I had taken it dead seriously, no smiley face for you :)
For me personally aliens are a bigger throw off than gunpowder is, but to each their own of course.
Well said R Chance, that was my earlier point... is a matter of perception. Still, as someone said, its easy enough to rule out. My Numeria for example has no sign of downed starships, or techno constructs rather if and when my campaign ever moves in that direction they are more likely to find the mutation effects of a downed asteroid or something and the wizards studying the strange radiation and power released instead.
That's pretty much it for me too. Some things fit a setting, others just don't.
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For me personally aliens are a bigger throw off than gunpowder is, but to each their own of course.
If you're talking "Greys" in flying saucers I might agree. Ctulhu on the other could be considered an "alien" or just a strange mythological being. Depends on presentation and description. And, as you say, to each their own.
No aliens in my setting btw, although there are some fairly strange mythological beings :)
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No. Because you don't associate the real world artifact of flintlocks with knights, magic, dragons and other mythological / fantastic creatures. Aliens are, on the other hand, essentially "mythological / fantastic". Unless you've had a close encounter of course :)
Mojo rat, that was "the tower of the elephant" an original Howard story of Conan as a thief in Zamora. Good stuff. Again..a strange alien being from the cosmos doesn't bend belief the way a flintlock does, oddly.
Yes because I've seen aliens all the time, but flintlocks are purely a work of fiction and completely absurd!
I actually do associate flintlocks with magic and such, but that's because I grew up on Final Fantasy, Princess Mononoke, and Warhammer Fantasy.
But but... Arthur C. Clarke told me that technology IS magic...
That liar!!!
;)
I actually do associate flintlocks with magic and such, but that's because I grew up on Final Fantasy, Princess Mononoke, and Warhammer Fantasy.
Different perspectives. I played Warhammer when it first came out and gunpowder was a part of the historical medieval rules I'd played for years (well before D&D) but, for me, in literature and mythology gunpowder signaled technology that interfered with magic / fantasy. In a "D&D type setting". Technology didn't bother me in other games (i.e. Empire of the Petal Throne).
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thejeff to me it seemed more like everyone else was busy going, "but I can have a wand of fireball for the same price... why would I waste time developing this less reliable method that might kill me when used?"
At which point I can understand why the rest of the world would consider it rubbish. It's not that it isn't available, it's that people don't care because in their minds it doesn't stack up to what they are use to.
This combined with alkenstar being a bit paranoid about people using their own invention against them seems to me to be enough that most people simply don't care to develop it.
my 2 cp at least.
fair enough on the price -- fireball was a bad example -- almost 3 magic missile wands then (200gp short).
Less damage per hit but 'sure fire' hits -- other first level spells are always options of course
Of course even with a wand you have to have the right guy -- but again a wand generally won't blow up in your hands if you roll anywhere from a 1 to a 4 (depending on ammunition and what weapon you are using).
All in all I'm fine with firearms in my games -- I'm just saying I could see why people wouldn't be interested in firearms overall...
especially when time and distance are going to cause confusion on exactly what these weapons are (costs, dangers, etc).
thejeff to me it seemed more like everyone else was busy going, "but I can have a wand of fireball for the same price... why would I waste time developing this less reliable method that might kill me when used?"
At which point I can understand why the rest of the world would consider it rubbish. It's not that it isn't available, it's that people don't care because in their minds it doesn't stack up to what they are use to.
This combined with alkenstar being a bit paranoid about people using their own invention against them seems to me to be enough that most people simply don't care to develop it.
my 2 cp at least.
Well, except that you can't. Wand of fireball: 11,250 gp
Musket: 1500gp. +550gp for 50 shots = 2050gp.Not to mention you need to be a caster with fireball on your spell list or have a high UMD to make the wand at all reliable.
The muskets you can pass out to your troops. Granted, they'll all need EWP, but that's easier than training casters or getting a high UMD.
And, unlike wands, guns get cheaper with them becoming more developed. So in a world with Guns Everywhere, they are 10% the price and simple weapons. So that musket is suddenly 150 gold.
Yeah AFTER you get past the initial research they really do get better and cheaper -- I imagine magic could be used to make that work even better too.
It's just a matter of getting to that point.
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Im a new Pathfinder DM but a 30+ year gamer. Im loving the InnerSea and am building my campaign within it. Ill admit however that the inclusion of firearms is a big turn off. Sure, easy enough to just drop them but Im wondering how much of a problem this is for you guys? Are there that many gamers who want to include gunpowder in their fantasy setting out there to warrant its inclusion? I would have thought it a pretty rare notion.
This may have been mentioned up thread. Golarion has a bit of a "kitchen sink" design philosophy. The core regions of Varisia and the Inner sea are fairly standard fantasy.
When you get to the edges of the map you begin to see some variation. Land of the Linorm Kings= Vikings. Irisien= Land of the white witch, Realm of the Mammoth Lords= Pleistocene mega fauna and barbarians, World Wound= Demon infested waste land, Mendev= Crusader nation holding the line against Demons. Ustalav= dark gothic horror, Nex= magic realm, Geb=undead nation. Mana Wastes= twisted warped waste land with malfuncitoning magic, ALkenstar: guns, Mwangi expance= Jungles and dinorsaurs and flying winged demon apes... so on and so forth.
If you do not want nor like guns in your pathfinder games, you have no need for them. It is an easy matter to remove alkenstar from the map......whenever I run a home campaign I do...Either i blame it on a volcanic eruption, or I blame it on the Alkenstari alchemists who managed to blow themselves, their foundry, and the entire city state up. The end desired result is no guns.
I have no guns in my home pathfinder campaigns.
We get along just fine without them.