Re: Muskets and Magic
I may not have expressed myself well. I apologize. I meant "commonplace" as in "pretty much everyone and their dog." That rate has substantially dwindled and continues to do so, which is what has led...
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I have no idea what sort of mathematics and statistics you're using that you think a whopping 40% isn't "commonplace"... even considering that "only" a third of the population have useful magic. ;) I...
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I've definitely noticed a growth in this sort of setting lately (and a deviation from the standard "Medieval England" setting in general). I think it's really interesting to introduce varying levels of...
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Keolah makes a good point about weapons in general as technology. Firearms existed alongside knights and melee-armed infantry for a long time. What really pushed the rapid development of firearms in...
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I had an idea for a world where all the great wizards destroyed themselves in a great war. Magic was lost because much of the knowledge on how to use it was destroyed. With magic removed from the...
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Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword has British-style colonists (the Homelanders) with muskets against the Hill Tribes, who use magic. The magic of the Hill Tribes specifically makes things go wrong like...
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Oh yeah, I've also got one setting where my elves have steam engines. I figured, well they have long lifespans, so shouldn't they be able to advance their tech faster than humans? Of course they live...
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Sorry, I was having a bad day and decided stupidly to take it out passive aggressively on the Internet - never a good idea. Your questions have actually raised a lot of interesting questions in my...
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[quote=keolah] ... And my point about technology isn't that firearms aren't a relatively advanced technology, but that the invention of gunpowder didn't spark (no pun intended) the existence of...
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Heh, no, I'm not making personal comments, I'm just posing questions that an author should think about. And I certainly wasn't saying you should avoid firearms in fantasy. Far from it. I actually can't...
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Don't forget mounted infantry, who could maneuver rapidly, dismount, and then go to work.
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Why did guns overtake bows in real history? A lot of reasons. A lot less skill and training is required for one, meaning that the average general could just pick up fighters when necessary and train...
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Because, as Dave Grossman documents in "On Killing" and "On Combat", when one side makes the sound "ploink" and one side goes BOOM", the side that does not go "BOOM" tends to break and run away first.
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verra nice ... although I gotta say I cracked up at the idea of a goddess having "atheists" as followers. also, you don't need to dig trenches to slaughter a line of charging infantry. A barbed wire...
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My story is set in a WWI sort of era, but the war is mostly in the background and it focuses on home front conflicts (elves are all conscientious objectors, etc). I know a decent amount about the war...
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That's an amazing, fresh, and interesting world you've got going on. I particularly like that divine conflict between goddesses.
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My story is kinda like a protest against High Fantasy books set in Medieval-esque settings. Magic exists in this world. It pervades all living things, and is especially drawn to sentient minds, in this...
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I rather like the idea, as long as it's not treated simplistically, or as "magic good, technology bad" (or vice versa). What would guns actually mean for the economy, and how would people react to...
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Mages can pretty much do one spell at a time because of the effort involved in casting. I'm thinking that they could ignite gunpowder grenades, or cause some sort of chain reaction, and maybe a mage...
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Yeah, I was actually asking whether anyone here was doing the same thing. I may have phrased it badly in my post. I've been looking up the genre for almost a week now. I just wanted to find people with...
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I am writing this. It's growing in popularity too, Chris Evans wrote the Iron Elves years ago, WoW kind of has it with gunpowder being used by dwarves, Promise of Blood coming out soon has it as well....
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Muskets & Magic (also known as Gunpowder Fantasy and Flintlock Fantasy) is a sub-genre that has been gaining a lot of traction recently. It covers everything from early wheellock muskets to late...
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[quote=keolah] Why does no one advance the knowledge of magic? Why is it magic is so often depicted as being static with nothing new ever being learned about it, rather than it being capable of...
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Also, question--why don't mages use muskets? And why are muskets so much better than magic? And why are they easier to get ahold of than swords, spears, slings, etc.?
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I'm writing a couple of different fantasy worlds where firearms exist (one sort of equivalent to 1830's, one more 1870s wild west). There's printing presses and other stuff too. I like the idea of more...
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I think modern people have this tendancy to overestimate the impact of early firearms and underestimate the power of bows. It took centuries of development for firearms to become more effective than...
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Reminds me of the game Dishonored a bit, but with less whale oil.
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Yes, Temeraire is the series I was referring to with dragons... I just forgot the name. Sounds like you've done some homework on historic warfare, so congrats. Although muskets must be pretty new if...
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Mid-seventeenth century. Post Civil War, Interregnum. So, a bit earlier than the series you're talking about. All weapons are smooth-barrelled and the bayonet hasn't come into use yet (though I might...
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well, cavalry was around as late as World War 1, although 20th-century weapons made it useless. Muskets were overtaken by rifles in the early 19th century. Printing presses were widely used by the 17th...
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Aren't there muskets in some of the D&D settings? I specifically remember reading (and somewhat disliking) a TSR book in High School or College set in a Forgotten Realms version of the...
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That sounds like a wonderfully fresh setting. Quasi-medieval psuedo-Europe is the natural homeland of fantasy, but everyone needs to leave home from time to time and experience new things -- even if...
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Yes, it's similar to what I have in a lot of ways, although they "use" magic instead of gunpowder, but the principle is the same. It's medieval in a lot of ways. Their governmental structures haven't...
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I hadn't thought about PotC like that before. But I suppose it is. Huh. The magic in that always seems less fantasy to me, though I have no idea why. It shouldn't, because the characters don't act like...
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Ooh, that sounds interesting, getting more into the argument between magic and technology. In my world that's sort of a backdrop thing, it affects the political climate but doesn't come into the main...
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I've not written it, but it sounds kinda like Pirates of the Carribean, but with more magic. Outside of that, I've not heard of anything else that's similar. Personally, I think it'd make a great...
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My current story actually has a reference to gunpowder being suppressed by a wizarding order specifically to prevent this from happening-it helped that it was wizards who discovered gunpowder....
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So, I thought I was writing Sword and Sorcery, but then I realised that the civilisation I was going to write about was more advanced than that. Muskets and cannons exist and are a major part of...
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