Where does this mindset come from?

[infected slut princess]

I don't see why people get so bent out of shape if there are guns in fantasy. After all, if there are guns, then there can be bad ass motherfuckers who DEFLECT BULLETS WITH THEIR SWORDS.

[TheFlatline]

DeadDMWalking: Fantasy is defined entirely by the presence/absence of magic.

Bullshit. The genre staple of Lord of the Rings is *nearly* a zero magic setting. I've read plenty of fantasy that has zero magic in it.

Magic is a *very* common staple of fantasy, but is not required to qualify as fantasy. The separation between fiction and fantasy for me is that fantasy fundamentally changes or gets something wrong about reality, to the point where it couldn't exist in reality.

And one idea why guns aren't "sexy medieval fantasy", despite being the primary method of war for something like 600 years now, is because guns are empowering. Think of the D&D tropes: The martial fighter who learns combat tactics, the mage who spends years pouring over musty tomes, the cleric who devotes himself for years to his or her god and receives miracles, the thief who is an expert of stealth and traps and shit... with the exception of the thief, who is kind of Han Solo of the bunch, you basically have "champions" of a feudal society. You are experts of your trade, and through that expertise you become heroes.

It took *years* to learn to shoot a longbow with any real proficiency within the capacity of fielding archers in battle. Crossbows were easier to train with but were far more mechanically complicated. Firearms are the proper mix of simple and rugged enough, yet easy to train with. It takes years to become a proficient swordsman: it takes weeks, maybe months, to make a rifleman.

As firearms in Europe became more useable on the battlefield, you saw shifts in the nature of armed combat. The rise of the mercenary, the landsknechte, who embraced firearms in addition to pikes & other weapons, came from inauspicious origins. With firearms, combat no longer was a noble's endeavor. The battle of Pavia in fact is sometimes referred to as the last "chivalrous" battle in Europe, because the landsknechte were such a major force.

In D&D terms, the dirt farmer you passed by without a glance a few years later could be a member of an elite, mercenary fighting force that is kicking your ass. It's just not romantic or noble.

In tabletop terms, firearms are complicated. Unless you really muck with varying technological levels, firearms are inaccurate, take forever to load, are quirky, have a relatively short range, are expensive, but fire a great goddamn large ball of lead. They're best used in volleys against large groups of targets, because you're more likely to hit a crowd of 100 than you are to hit a single man. In other words, they don't have a place in small skirmish battles like D&D focuses on.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Bullshit. The genre staple of Lord of the Rings is *nearly* a zero magic setting.

What.

Approaching zero credibility on this subject.

[Lago PARANOIA]

In D&D terms, the dirt farmer you passed by without a glance a few years later could be a member of an elite, mercenary fighting force that is kicking your ass. It's just not romantic or noble.

That's only true for a narrow band of fantasy. As far as empowerment goes once you start introducing any kind of impressive and exclusive superpowers, not only is that uppity dirt farmer groin-kicked back into his place but you fuck his wife and kids in front of him for good measure.

Of course since most fantasy doesn't exist within this narrow band, even in games in which firearms are useful and good still has the underclass being crushed underfoot even more badly than in D&D. WHFB and Exalted come to mind.

[name_here]

I highly, highly doubt that the main issue is that guns are empowering. Fantasy is almost entirely about Steve the Crap-Covered Farmer becoming some sort of mighty champion within an excessively short timeframe. Also, Fantasy protagonist nations seem to default to English Longbow powers more than anywhere else, so the net effect that random farmers can kill people remains because everyone already put in years of practice.

But I think the bit about tabletop rules is more widely applicable than that. Guns weaken the influence of personally hardcore people, because they do die just about as easily as anyone else when shot and the guns of the period work best in mass formations that deemphasize the importance of individuals. Since Fantasy likes solo protagonists, that's out. It's also why you don't see pike formations; any one guy with a sword does not appreciably threaten a wall of pikes, and any individual pikeman isn't really that important.

[kzt]

Have you seen the volume of gun rules players make? Touch attacks, exploding damage dice, extreme critical hits, save or dies; the presence of Instant Death Bullets is a very prevalent trope. The only time bringing a sword to a gunfight isn't a bad idea is when that sword is a katana, which already offends the anti-weeabo crowd.

It's odd how few people who write game rules about guns actually have any understanding of their capabilities and limitations. And yeah, 15th century guns are hardly going to be world shattering in any fantasy game I can think of. Now hand grenades have potential, but black powder grenades are going to be a lot less impressive that people might think.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Bullshit. The genre staple of Lord of the Rings is *nearly* a zero magic setting.

What.

Approaching zero credibility on this subject.

What magic exists is so subtle it might as well not be there.

[Lago PARANOIA]

What magic exists is so subtle it might as well not be there.

I've only seen the movies, but, isn't there actually quite a bit of magic? I mean, it's definitely not enough magic to prevent being a crap-covered farmer with a shield and a pointy stick a viable combat combat choice, but the series did have things like magic doors and balrogs and ghost armies and glowing swords and giant eagles and shit.

[deaddmwalking]

I think most people recognize, at least intellectually, that being run through by a sword is just as deadly as having a bullet pass through your body. Sure, lots of people survive being stabbed, and lots of people survive being shot - but both are pretty effective ways of killing someone.

The thing is, that while people can accept that neither is more deadly than the other (assuming a hit) the idea of deflecting a 'deadly sword blow' is easier to reconcile with reality. The idea of taking damage with a 'minor blow' is somewhat acceptable when it comes from a sword (hitting with the flat, or turning a critical strike into a mere fleshwound). With the speed of bullets, actively doing any of these things stretches many imaginations beyond the limit. It's possible, though, to modify things a little and possibly make them more acceptable.

In 3.5, you're at 'full strength' until you're at 0 hit points. So most 'hit point damage' is not of the flesh wound variety. In that case, taking 8 hit points of damage from a musket might not represent a hit in any way, shape, or form. That simply represents the 'loss of vitality' that jumping around like a maniac to present a more difficult target would naturally cause.

Still, the idea that a 'hit' as rolled on a d20 is actually a 'miss' as far as description can also cause a disconnect. Of course, the same is saying 'your sword hits solidly, but the blow is entirely absorbed by your opponent's armor'. I've used that description and the player tried to insist he had to do at least 1 point of damage because he 'hit'. Explaining he rolled high enough to hit the touch AC but too low to hit the 'actual AC' was less fun than you might imagine.

[angelfromanotherpin]

What magic exists is so subtle it might as well not be there.

I've only seen the movies, but, isn't there actually quite a bit of magic?

I particularly enjoyed the subtlety of the entire civilization of giant tree-men who can knock down buildings with their voices, tear stone like bread-crust, and herd different tree monsters which wrap themselves in shadow to move without being seen.

Again, what.

[Chamomile]

And the Elven rope that ties itself to things and the cloaks that basically turn you invisible and the wizard who can actually shoot fireballs and the other wizard who can talk to animals and plants and the other wizard who can mesmerize people with his voice and the magical metal that makes you practically invincible and the swords that glow when a certain kind of creature draws near and the fact that the entire plot revolves around a clearly magical artifact with an overt magical power along with only slightly more subtle magical powers of corruption, longevity, and attracting ring wraiths. Also, ring wraiths.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I mean, if you want to define a low-magic setting I'd accept Star Wars or Van Helsing, but Lord of the Rings? Did you mean that it's low-magic in that it's not available or even relevant to the plebes at large, like in Harry Potter? Because that I can see, though I'd also argue that the low-magicness of Lord of the Rings is more due to its pastoralism than it's 'ha ha the muggles can't have any magic' like HP does.

[John Magnum]

I can only assume that they mean that Gandalf isn't personally running around shitting fireballs and jizzing prismatic sprays.

[Chamomile]

There is, in fact, quite a bit of space between "the world is so saturated with magic that every adventuring party is expected to have a wizard capable of bending the laws of physics to his will multiple times a day" and "there is no magic at all ever."

[tussock]

People don't want guns in fantasy because they think guns are perfectly functional automatic no-save death rays. They're OK with a Fighter shaking off a hit from a 20' long sword that's sharp enough to cut a main battle tank in half, but not if someone fires a medieval cannon-lock gun at him.

Like, in real life, when people are stabbed they mostly keep coming, and when people are shot they mostly fall down, and the only real difference in the first few minutes is the injured party's expectations of what those injuries will do to them. A .45 pistol knocks people over better than a 9mm because it makes a louder, deeper noise.

Basically, it's down to movies. Swords clash and slide off armour because you can see that, bullets wound because the blood is the only way to "see" them. Real knife fights are a fucking mess, huge sprays of blood go everywhere and you both end up with terrible and permanently crippling wounds if you don't die of blood loss. Real people who aren't "trained" to fall over when shot can take dozens of bullet wounds and carry on, with mostly the same sort of debilitating injuries and potential for a slow death by blood loss. But people don't believe that, because of movies and TV.

Modern assault rifles leave seriously big wounds in the torso, but actual two-handed swords will vertically bisect you, and big axes were famed for beheading heavy horses in one blow. They are all amazingly lethal, as is a 2" knife blade to the liver.

[Prak]

No, fantasy is not defined entirely by the presence/absence of magic.

A fantasy wherein a man engages in carnal acts with three or more attractive ladies is often just as much a fantasy as being a wizard with a pointy hat. Some fantasies are just a little more likely than others.

Sadly, I think in my case, the Wizard in a Pointy Hat fantasy is the more likely one.

[TheFlatline]

What magic exists is so subtle it might as well not be there.

I've only seen the movies, but, isn't there actually quite a bit of magic?

I particularly enjoyed the subtlety of the entire civilization of giant tree-men who can knock down buildings with their voices, tear stone like bread-crust, and herd different tree monsters which wrap themselves in shadow to move without being seen.

Again, what.

And none of that is *magic* in Lord of the Rings. It's nature. Nobody says "oh shit magic trees!", they say "wow, a race of trees that can walk and talk!". You might as well say elves and dwarves and hobbits are magic.

Even the elven ropes and cloaks and shit, the hobbits in the book flat out ask "is this magical?" and the elves look at them funny and say "no... it's just elven-made."

Dragons don't cast "fire breath" to breathe fire, they breathe fire because that's what dragons can do biologically.

Elf runes are ink that lights up only under the light of the moon, much like we have invisible ink that lights up only under black light.

The rings, yes, they are "magic" even by the standard of wizards in LOTR. The shit gandalf does, he does because he's in the Wizard's order, which is actually a handful of angels still in Middle Earth. And the Balrog is a demon still stuck on Middle Earth. Most of the "magic" in Middle Earth comes from angels and demons and shit. The only "real" magic is that which Sauron and his master basically ripped off from the angels and elves and synthesized into their own juju.

[TheFlatline]

In D&D terms, the dirt farmer you passed by without a glance a few years later could be a member of an elite, mercenary fighting force that is kicking your ass. It's just not romantic or noble.

That's only true for a narrow band of fantasy. As far as empowerment goes once you start introducing any kind of impressive and exclusive superpowers, not only is that uppity dirt farmer groin-kicked back into his place but you fuck his wife and kids in front of him for good measure.

Really?

A person who has never fired a gun before in their life but maybe has seen one fired once or twice stands an excellent, siginificant chance of shooting someone if they pick up a gun and try to shoot someone. And that someone can be the king, the hero, whatever.

Contrary, if he picks up a sword and attacks the hero, he probably is more of a threat to himself than to the hero.

I'm not talking about a narrow band of fiction, I'm talking about the actual disenfranchisement of chivalrous combat in our history. "Gentlemanly arts of war" lose out to the dirt farmer that you spent two weeks teaching how to shoot a gun, and shoots your duke dead during his valiant charge at the enemy lines.

That's not fiction, that's the grim truth of history.

[Chamomile]

And none of that is *magic* in Lord of the Rings. It's nature.

Firstly, those aren't mutually exclusive categories, secondly when a rope can untie itself from something that rope is either bursting with all kinds of advanced electronics or else it is magic. Ents are walking trees. They are animate despite not having any kind of nervous system. That is magic and if Tolkien wants to call it something different for stylistic reasons he can do that, but in meta-terms of whether or not there is magic in Middle-Earth, there are ghosts and wizards and magic rings and swords that glow because a certain kind of monster is nearby. Unless you can find me an actual plausible explanation as to how swords can be made to glow when a certain race of people draws near or a rope can be made to untie itself, all using medieval technology, that is magic.

[TheFlatline]

I mean, if you want to define a low-magic setting I'd accept Star Wars or Van Helsing, but Lord of the Rings? Did you mean that it's low-magic in that it's not available or even relevant to the plebes at large, like in Harry Potter? Because that I can see, though I'd also argue that the low-magicness of Lord of the Rings is more due to its pastoralism than it's 'ha ha the muggles can't have any magic' like HP does.

I mean low magic in that there are two groups that can use "magic". First, there's the Valar, aka the wizards. They're archangels. What they're using might not even fit our concept of magic from their point of view. Any sufficiently advanced technology and all that. I'll roll with that though and call it magic because it breaks the rules of LOTR's reality. But even then, the wizards don't use magic much (in the books... I don't consider the movies in this argument because of all the artistic liberties taken). Gandalf throws fireballs yes... In The Hobbit. Once. He makes a crystal light up. He makes a thunderclap once or twice (it's unknown if he uses magic for this or fireworks, which is established he's a master of. See fireballs above too). He shoots a beam of light at the wraith king. That's... really it. He fucking stabs the balrog to death with a sword. Saruman has a coat that shifts colors constantly and a hypnotic charm person voice. That's *all* we see of his abilities. We hear about a couple other mages but they never actually do anything

The balrog is a demon, and thus in the same boat as the the archangels. And he sticks to using his whip and shit. I'm assuming there are other demons hidden in Middle Earth, so they'd qualify as "magical" as well.

Second is Sauron and his old master. Who took the knowledge of the Valar and the Elves and Dwarves and "Everyone Else They Could" and made "something else" that broke all the rules.

So essentially, you have *maybe* 20-30 individuals who can do "magical" things clearly.

The grey area is the Elves. They themselves do not consider what they do magical. That includes Sting and the other orc-sensitive swords. It's never established that they are actually magical, or if an elf could teach a human how to make the exact same thing. In some cases (galadrials phial) you boarder on magical.

In LOTR the dead can rise, it's just shit that happens. The Barrow Wrights weren't raised by a necromancer, they stuck around because they f*cking had enough hatred in them to keep them mobile (hatred of the humans who became the ring wraiths in one of the most convenient plot twists of all time).

Shit, even the army of the dead that Aragorn commands isn't still kicking around because of a magical spell, they're undead because oaths and betrayal and curses have real, tangible effect in LOTR.

*We* would call all that "magic" if that transplanted into our world, but in my book magic has always needed to break the rules of the reality that it's based in. Inside of LOTR, all of that shit is natural with a handful of extremely unique circumstances.

Counterpoint- Channeling in, say, Wheel of Time is a valid call for "magic", because without people who touch the Source, that shit doesn't breach over into the world, and can otherwise break the rules of reality within the setting.

[TheFlatline]

And none of that is *magic* in Lord of the Rings. It's nature.

Firstly, those aren't mutually exclusive categories, secondly when a rope can untie itself from something that rope is either bursting with all kinds of advanced electronics or else it is magic. Ents are walking trees. They are animate despite not having any kind of nervous system. That is magic and if Tolkien wants to call it something different for stylistic reasons he can do that, but in meta-terms of whether or not there is magic in Middle-Earth, there are ghosts and wizards and magic rings and swords that glow because a certain kind of monster is nearby. Unless you can find me an actual plausible explanation as to how swords can be made to glow when a certain race of people draws near or a rope can be made to untie itself, all using medieval technology, that is magic.

Or the rope is made of some fiber/weave that shrinks when tugged but holds firm when steady pressure is applied. We don't know what the f*ck the rope is made of. Only that it's elven.

And please point to me the reference quote that ents have no nervous system. I didn't realize Tolkein published biology on the creatures he made up.

Oh wait, you're *assuming* that.

And I said that fantasy breaks the rules of our reality by definition, not that it *must* contain magic within that world. Adamantium is supposed to be some unbreakable element in comics and fantasy and shit. It doesn't exist. Does that auto-qualify it as a magical metal? No. It's a fantasy element.

Magic breaks the rules of the world it's in. Fantasy breaks the rules of *our* world. That's my differentiation.

And if the only two items you can suggest for a magic-rich setting are a rope that unties itself when tugged and three swords that glow when orcs are near by, I stand by my statement that Middle Earth is pretty low magic.

[TheFlatline]

Oh wait, there's one thing I forgot that probably should fall under "magical".

In the old woods between The Shire and the Barrow Wraiths the trees would actually try to trap people. That's magical. I'll chalk that up to Tom Bombadill, who tends that forest, and who according to Gandalf is so old he predates the concept of good & evil. Which means he's some kind of weird-ass pagan demigod or something. He's so primal and off the good-evil axis that the One Ring has no appeal to him and also would have no corruptive power over Tom, which makes him probably the single most powerful entity in LOTR and amusingly enough makes him a rhyming, silly, Elder God.

[tussock]

The grey area is the Elves.

Oh, fuck off. I mean, they eat magic food and drink magic drinks under their magic lights wearing their magic shoes and magic cloaks held on by magic clasps, magically hidden away in their magic forest. They can magically weigh nothing while having magically perfect traction and impressive mass behind their attacks, with which they are supernaturally proficient. They have magic eyesight, magic voices, and seem to craft magic swords like like it's no harder than boiling water. When the elf queen saw the ring, it was all storms and darkness and fear magic because she had a single dark thought. They probably shit rainbows.

Everything they gave the PCs was magic in D&D terms, regardless of what they called it. Even the boats were magic. That party has more items on them than a high level 3e group by the time they leave elfton.

[angelfromanotherpin]

*We* would call all that "magic" if that transplanted into our world, but in my book magic has always needed to break the rules of the reality that it's based in.

I mean low magic in that there are two groups that can use "magic". First, there's the Valar, aka the wizards....Second is Sauron and his old master.

Even if I grant your premise, which is a stupid redefinition of a term until it agrees with you, you are wrong. Beorn turns into a giant bear. The dwarves of Thorin's company are explicitly described as casting spells. If you're going to argue with the omniscient third-person narrator when he describes things as magical (like hobbit stealth and dwarven crafts) then our only recourse is to point and laugh at you.

Zero credibility reached.

[OgreBattle]

They probably shit rainbows.

and wipe using (magic) leaves: