There are a number of reasons that guns and gunpowder appear so often in D&D adventures, not the least of which is the fact D&D itself arose from Napoleonic wargames which revolved heavily on the use of what we would consider early firearms. Often, these translations lean on putting the gun in gunpowder. I'd like to dance past the potential politics of the way these explorations of gunpowder in fantasy are built, but it directly applies to how I've approached this. Often, these works fall into a certain mold; either proliferate lists of firearms that extend far beyond size of list for all other weapons in the game or presenting the only way for a character to be involved in gunpowder to be that their character entirely revolves around this one concept. I've recently seen two works, one with a proliferation of firearms and an entire background that meditates on how focused you are on firearms and another which is a full class entirely centered on firearms. Either way, I feel that doing so misses much of what stands to make gunpowder, and nitrate based alchemy/chemistry in general, interesting in a world where people can literally shoot fire from their fingertips.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Alchemists' Toybox- Gunpowder; Contents (D&D 5e)
There are a number of reasons that guns and gunpowder appear so often in D&D adventures, not the least of which is the fact D&D itself arose from Napoleonic wargames which revolved heavily on the use of what we would consider early firearms. Often, these translations lean on putting the gun in gunpowder. I'd like to dance past the potential politics of the way these explorations of gunpowder in fantasy are built, but it directly applies to how I've approached this. Often, these works fall into a certain mold; either proliferate lists of firearms that extend far beyond size of list for all other weapons in the game or presenting the only way for a character to be involved in gunpowder to be that their character entirely revolves around this one concept. I've recently seen two works, one with a proliferation of firearms and an entire background that meditates on how focused you are on firearms and another which is a full class entirely centered on firearms. Either way, I feel that doing so misses much of what stands to make gunpowder, and nitrate based alchemy/chemistry in general, interesting in a world where people can literally shoot fire from their fingertips.
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