Has anyone ever successfully integrated smokepowder and primitive firearms into a Greyhawk campaign? I am conflicted on this; on one hand I like the idea of adding something like this to Greyhawk in a balanced manner to add flavor, but on the other hand it would be easy to have something like this, no matter how well balanced, disrupt the flow and feel of Greyhawk.
Of course if this was done I would make the substance either minor magic or an extremely difficult alchemical process which would keep the price tag high.
I used some guns in a 2nd ed campaign, limiting them to dwarves and very expensive. It worked oout alright; didn't break the game. Wizards are still able to bring more firepower to battle than guns. _________________ Greyhawk is dead; long live Greyahwk! It is not heresy; I will not recant!
I agree; the only reason not to have firearms in Greyhawk is due to flavor of the world. When you compare the reload time of primitive firearms as well as the range factor and the misfire factor (this happened very often) to other ranged attacks, they are really no more powerful than bows and crossbows (in fact, if you have a "strength" bow and are fairly strong (as fighters tend to be), the average damage is more than with a firearm). The craftsmanship needed to create the firearm (which would increase the price and decrease the availability) as well as the cost of smokepowder and ammunition should keep firearms exotic, more of a curiosity.
All that being said, there is still a bit of a hesitation to add to a Greyhawk campaign. After all, Murlynd's ability to create technology like firearms is not quite so wondrous if all mortals who attain a certain level of craftsmanship can likewise do so. Of course an interesting idea may be that in order to craft a firearm, one must be a cleric of Murlynd. Murlynd's followers for now are small, there are probably not too many with the level of craftsmanship needed to create these weapons.
Smokepowder creation I would allow a high alchemy DC to create (on the order of 35). Anyone with the craft (alchemy) skill may attempt to create, but it cannot be easy. The most important thing to remember in allowing the creation of smokepowder would be to have it's creation worthwhile for personal firearms but make it's creation in amounts large enough for larger projectiles (like bombards and cannons) not worth the time and resources to create. _________________ Count Telemachus, Archmage of the Unicorn Conferderation
Well, considering there were firearms in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor (according to First Fantasy Campaign, though I don't know if they were in the hands of PCs) when it was run at the same time as Gary's Greyhawk and Rob Kuntz's El Raja Key (and PCs from all 3 settings were noted for crossing between the various worlds rather easily at times) I don't really see that there is a problem. It should not be beyond the means of the Alchemists in Greyhawk to create smoke powder.
Besides, if blasters work in Blackmoor (USS Beagle/City of the Gods) and Greyhawk (crashed colony ship in The Barrier Peaks) its not like firearms cant work. Heck, the Clone Spell that Mordenkainen, Robilar, Tenser and the rest got ahold of CAME from The City of the Gods! It was technology that they stole and were able to translate into the milieu of their world.
I think as long as they are kept as relatively exotic they should not be a problem. Few but nobles will be able to afford to buy cannon or arquebus's for their troops.
It can be a slippery slope. If humans of Oerth are anything like humans of Earth, highly accesible smoke powder could and very much would trigger an arms race. Of course one could correctly make the argument that an arms race has already occurred on Oerik, albeit a magical one (leading to the Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire). _________________ Count Telemachus, Archmage of the Unicorn Conferderation
Well, one has certainly started in Blackmoor with the start of the Clock & Steam technologies. The Dwarves and High Thonians (Great Kingdom) are in an arms race to develop greater technologies to use. One such use was a 'steam tank' that the Dwarves of Mount Uberstar decided to roll out in battle against a group of Orcs, with the resulting squished green skins running for the hills.
I don't really see that is a game breaker even pre-Greyhawk Wars, the various nation-states of the Flanaess appear to be jockeying for position and an arms race technically is a given. If they can produce Plate armour, that means they have the Blast Furnace which allows them to cast high quality (relatively speaking) steel.
How do you get around the devine injunction against gunpowder; Murlynd is the sole exception to the divine decree.
IRL the original creators of GH after testing the various options - Murlynd, space ships - decided the tenor of GH worked better without firearms. So the gods proscribed them except for Murlynd since it caused a howl of protest from some fans who refused to accept the idea that Murlynd never existed.
How do you get around the devine injunction against gunpowder; Murlynd is the sole exception to the divine decree.
Because its absurd since the original Greyhawk most certainly had people that used gunpowder as well as advanced technology who came back and forth from alternate realities (USS Beagle, Temple of the Frog and Stephen 'The Rock' Rocklin', The Blue Rider etc).
We are talking of smokepowder, which is actually magical. It is not that the chemical mixture of gunpowder could not be created, it is that the chemical reaction of gunpowder simply cannot occur on Oerth (except for Murlynd, which I would say since he is wizard, he might alter his gunpowder accordingly so it will function).
Smokepowder is an alchemical substance and I would say one that would need the Craft Wondrous Item Feat as well. With a price of 25 gp or so cost for one discharge in a firearm, the reason why it would only be a curiosity is that there are cheaper ways for a fighter to inflict better damage. Remember also that the firearm itself would cost quite a bit to manufacture. Each weapon would be handcrafted; there would be no interchangeable parts at this time so each weapon would be unique and require custom repairs. Also only the most experienced smiths in the larger urban areas would most likely know how to create a firearm, if they even could. I like the idea of clerics of Murlynd solely possessing this knowledge. Maybe firearms are magical as well and require craft feats respectively.
As I said before, it could change the flavor of a campaign if misused. If used as a magic item, however, I do not see how this could alter the landscape of Greyhawk. _________________ Count Telemachus, Archmage of the Unicorn Conferderation
As I said before, it could change the flavor of a campaign if misused. If used as a magic item, however, I do not see how this could alter the landscape of Greyhawk.
Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced Technology is indistinguishable from Magic.
As I said according to The First Fantasy Campaign supplement the original Blackmoor (which predates Greyhawk, but had crossovers with such luminaries as Lord Robilar and Mordenkainen) had firearms including Muskets, Pistols, Arquebii, Bombards and Cannon. I don't see it as a game breaker since there is little difference between a Fighter firing his 1-shot Arquebus and the Mage tossing a fireball. At the high end, the Mage still can kill with his Finger of Death spell before a Fighter could with a firearm. Also, firearms should have a failure chance to be anything remotely 'balanced' (let alone historically accurate).
Whether you call it Smokepowder or Gunpowder is irrelevant in my opinion as its semantics. Both would require Alchemy to create and both would be relatively expensive.
As for the Divine Injunction, sorry I don't see it. The Gods of Greyhawk generally don't interfere (they wouldn't have allowed Lloth and Iggwilv to play their schemes otherwise). I can't even remember if that is a Greyhawk Folio/Boxset 'injunction' (ie - from Gary) or a Greyhawk Wars/From the Ashes 'injunction'.
How do you get around the devine injunction against gunpowder; Murlynd is the sole exception to the divine decree.
IRL the original creators of GH after testing the various options - Murlynd, space ships - decided the tenor of GH worked better without firearms. So the gods proscribed them except for Murlynd since it caused a howl of protest from some fans who refused to accept the idea that Murlynd never existed.
Wait what???
I've never heard this before. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks has freakin' robots in it and gun powder is two much for the gods to handle? Where does this come from?
No gunpowder combustion is an artifact of the Manual of the Planes. At the baseline established there (Oerth), magic and Newtonian physics are at opposite ends of a sliding scale. Oerth's level of magic precludes the physical property of combustion so guns (using gunpowder) and steam engines, while they can be exactly duplicated, will not function as gases will not expand in the necessary manner.
In 3E, only paladins of Murlynd who take the feat Secret of the Firebrand (limited to characters with Divine Grace and Murlynd as a patron) have access to the blackpowder weapons made by the church of Murlynd. With Craft (Weaponsmith) and Alchemy, they can create the weapons and powder respectively. While published in a Living Greyhawk supplement, the feat was unique in that it was not legal for LG.
YYMV
EDIT: I forgot this is the heretic forum. I really have no problem with, as termed in 3.X, Rennaissance Firearms. If you want them in Greyhawk, particularly as an exotic weapon used in The City, let me know what happens.
In running my Hold of the Sea Princes campaign, I’ve been contemplating whether to include “smoke powder” cannons and other firearms. Hence, I revisit this old thread.
Telemachus wrote:
Has anyone ever successfully integrated smokepowder and primitive firearms into a Greyhawk campaign? I am conflicted on this; on one hand I like the idea of adding something like this to Greyhawk in a balanced manner to add flavor, but on the other hand it would be easy to have something like this, no matter how well balanced, disrupt the flow and feel of Greyhawk.
Early in my current campaign, one of the players assumed that the ship on which the PCs were sailing was armed with cannon, but since it was a “small sloop,” per Margaret Foy, "High Seas: Ships, Fore and Aft, in Fantasy Gaming," Dragon #116 pp. 10–27 (1986), used primarily for trading within the Hold and occasionally for smuggling (e.g., to Saltmarsh or obscure anchorages on the Keoish coast), he was nonplussed when I explained that the ship's main armaments were a couple of ballistas.
If you recall, Foy's excellent article discusses sailing ships at length, features graphics of various types of sailing ships, includes a magnificent table listing numerous ship types and their characteristics, and introduces several useful additions to the AD&D (1e) rules. It was my primary source when preparing for the sailing aspects of the campaign. If you've not read it, I highly recommend it.
Relevant to this thread, rather than cannon, Foy recommended that ships in AD&D games would use ballistas and "mangonels." She described the latter as "direct-fire artillery engines that use small, round stones of lead shot for ammunition. They are powered by torsion, either from twisted thick ropes or heavy metal springs." Foy, supra, at 15. As she explained, "Mangonels are used since arced fire is generally not possible aboardship." Id.
Since then, all D&D editions have kept ballistas but some have replaced mangonels with catapults. D&D 5e again uses mangonels. See, e.g., Warship, D&D Beyond (citing (DMG 5e, ch. 8, and statting mangonels as follows: Armor Class 15, Hit Points 100 each, Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, range 200/800 ft. (can't hit targets within 60 ft. of it), one target. Hit: 27 (5d10) bludgeoning damage).
Although I was satisfied with arming a smuggler's “small sloop” with a couple ballistas, as play has progressed, I've occasionally wondered whether to include primitive “smoke powder” cannons and firearms, perhaps through a naval invasion or exploration-in-force from western Oerik (e.g., Behow, Jahind, Sa’har, or even Xamaclan) sailing through the Densac Gulf.
This post, the first of several that I anticipate, presents some of my thoughts on the matter, addressing Telemachus's concerns about, "adding something like this to Greyhawk in a balanced manner to add flavor," and offering thoughts on how to avoid "disrupt[ing] the flow and feel of Greyhawk."
In this first post, I gloss the historical development of firearms on Earth, relying mostly on various Wikipedia articles. According to Wikipedia's History of the Firearm, firearms originated in the 10th century CE "fire lances" of China's "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period . . . an era of political upheaval and division from 907 to 979." Later, "In the 13th century, fire lance barrels were replaced with metal tubes and transformed into metal-barreled hand cannons." History of the Firearm, supra.
Another Wikipedia article, History of Cannon, claims, "The cannon first appeared in China sometime during the 12th and 13th centuries. . . . Cannons were used for warfare by the late 13th century in the Yuan dynasty and spread throughout Eurasia in the 14th century." Later, that same article dates the earliest known European depiction of a cannon to 1326 and then discuses several documented battles in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) that featured early cannons like the pot-de-fer and ribauldequin (a.k.a., the organ gun), both which reportedly initially fired leather-wrapped bolts and "simplistic grapeshot." Beyond England and France, the article notes the use of cannons in various Italian city-state and during the Ottoman Empire sieges of Constantinople from 1396 to 1453 (i.e., until the Fall of Constantinople), and it credits the "Ottoman advancement in arms production" to "a somewhat mysterious figure by the name of Orban (Urban), a Hungarian (though some suggest he was German)."
Returning to small arms, History of the Firearm, supra, asserts "Firearms appeared in the Middle East between the late 13th and early 14th century." Later it specifies, "The first references [to] what may have been arquebuses (Ottoman Turkish: tüfek) by the Janissary corps of the Ottoman army date them from 1394 to 1465. However, it is unclear whether these were arquebuses or small cannons as late as 1444, but the fact that they were listed separately from cannons in mid-15th century inventories suggests that they were handheld firearms." Finally, the same article notes, "The musket first appeared in the Ottoman Empire by 1465." (In turn, the musket article explains, "Evidence of the musket as a type of firearm does not appear until 1521 when it was used to describe a heavy arquebus capable of penetrating heavy armour. This version of the musket fell out of use after the mid-16th century with the decline of heavy armour[.]")
To recap, on Earth, firearms originated during the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907–979). From the 10th century fire lance, it took several centuries to develop and deploy the hand cannons of the 12th and 13th centuries and another century for the knowledge, production, and use of cannons and other firearms to spread through Eurasia, particularly the Ottoman and Byzantine empires and Italian city-state. Thus, in the 14th century, the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) provided one crucible for cannon technology to develop as did the various wars between the Ottoman and Byzantine empires that preceded the 1453 Fall of Constantinople.
With the foregoing in mind, I think that one could introduce "primitive firearms" (to use Telemachus's phrase) in ways that add flavor but not disrupt the flow and feel of Greyhawk. The key would be to avoid introducing cannon and other firearms to Greyhawk based on a relatively late stage in their (Earthly) development. Murlynd's six shooters can be unique. His "paladins" might have pistols, but if you introduce firearms at the hand cannon stage, Earthly history justifies restraining the development even of or even arquebuses for over a hundred years.
I close this post with a few observations.
First, consider that, "One of the major hurdles that prevented matchlock guns from large-scale adoption was complaints that strong wind and rain could either blow away or ruin priming powder placed in the flash pan." History of the Firearm, supra. If one doesn't rush past matchlock guns, then the longbow and heavy crossbow will be less expensive, more reliable, and quicker to reload than hand cannons and arquebuses.
Second, consider that the wheellock was not developed until "around 1500," and that "it was used alongside the matchlock and later the snaplock (1540s), the snaphance (1560s), and the flintlock (c. 1610s)." Wheellock.
Finally, my campaign uses D&D 5e, but I note that Pathfinder 2e has a rulebook, Guns and Gears (2021), which looks highly relevant and provides a nuanced array of early firearms. See Archives of Nethys, Firearms (statting the fire lance, hand cannon, arquebus, and blunderbuss, inter alia).
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