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Saturday, March 6, 2010

You Got Your Guns in My Fantasy

I remember 1st Edition AD&D having short conversion notes on using Boot Hill and Gamma World Characters in AD&D. Back in the day it struck me as strange. Who would want to mix guns with their fantasy? It seemed unrealistic to me (in retrospect how can that be any more unrealistic then fantasy itself, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms).

Then we were introduced to the Quasi Deities of the World of Greyhawk. Muryland (guessing at the spelling there) was a Paladin with a six shooter. Obviously guns were around in EGG's campaign. Yet if I recall correctly gunpowder was inert in Oerth... no gun powder, no guns. (copout way to handle it if you ask me)

Not that I would want guns to be a part of my fantasy gaming. For me they never felt right for the genre, but that doesn't mean it couldn't work. I did try to integrate them into a campaign years ago... the players to a man preferred the firearms they weren't proficient in over their usual weapons. I ended that experiment shortly there after by removing usuably ammo from circulation.

See what happens when I watch a special about marksmen and trick shooters on the History Channel? Of course my favorite segment was hitting an arrow with an arrow (if it had split the original arrow it would have been even cooler).

4 comments:

  1. Guns are a tricky thing. We pulled it off in GURPS years back, but that's because GURPS lends itself well to weird fantasy, time traveling, cross over campaigns.

    Not sure I'd like it in D&D, although a Mutant Future campaign with a heavy lean toward fantasy would be bitchen.

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  2. Roger Zelazny's Amber series utilized a theory that alternate realities or planes operated under different rules of Physic's. I always felt that was an interesting part of the series. The effort that went into finding a usable gunpower the true Amber plane was difficult but doable.

    The difficulty in doing such a set of tasks to make gun power, even for the godlike powered Amberites, kept rule breaking to a minimum.

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  3. Although Corwin did clean house when he found a powder that would combust in Amber.

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  4. Damn, It's been years since I read that series. Reminds me that I have a copy of Amber Dceless packed away somewhere...

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