9 ms·

Also guns are boring for character progression. Sword users can learn new techniques. Wizards can learn new spells. Characters can become visibly stronger, or

Also guns are boring for character progression. Sword users can learn new techniques. Wizards can learn new spells. Characters can become visibly stronger, or to learn to wield stronger arcane forces. But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? You take somebody like Magneto and you can have lots of creative applications of the powers, interesting matchups and development. Or you can have Rob Liefeld hero #6, who charges in with big guns. And either the bad guy dies, or the bullets bounce off and there's little ground in between. There's a whole comic book era of big dudes with guns and they're pretty much all pointless because there's nothing much interesting they can do.

artemonster 3y ago
bad argument, imho. you can use you imagination and invent lots of new "skills" for guns the same way you can do for swords and bows: shrapnel shot, crippling shot, blinding shot, rapid fire, etc. Item wise I see absolutely no "logical" difference between guns and "sword A with 10 DMG" and "sword B with 250 DMG and ice damage". This is fantasy worlds we are talking about, cmon.
capableweb 3y ago
> Sword users can learn new techniques. Wizards can learn new spells. Characters can become visibly stronger, or to learn to wield stronger arcane forces. But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? You can imagine wizards but you can't imagine more creative guns and guns-usage? For being into fantasy, you seemingly drop the ball on the whole "made up" stuff. What's to say there aren't different techniques to using guns where one user is better than another? Or since we're in fantasy, that some characters can learn how to avoid getting shot better than others.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  In fantasy the abilities of wizards and sword fighters are plausible within the constraints & difference with the real world. Eg magic isn't real and people don't fight with swords, so we're in an unknown territory where a large range of techniques are plausibly effective. You don't know a wizard so you can't really tell me this spell wouldn't work in this conflict, you know? But people do fight with guns, and the abilities and techniques of guns and what advantages they offer are well understood, pressure tested in real conflict, and easy to find out about. The area of unknown is small, and so mostly the plausible techniques are the real ones. You can tweak the plausibility by fuzzing off from real world uses with things like laser guns or muzzle-loading black powder, though that's still much better understood than wizard magic. You see a similar thing with fantasy melee too. Fencing is well understood even in the modern world, but how many fantasy sword fighters are recognizably fencers?
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  Do you have examples of cool things a guy with a gun can do? As some kind of growth curve? That are on par with, for example, Ged growing to become archmage? I've seen "Wanted" and it wasn't that compelling. Sam Sykes does a decent job in "Seven Blades of Black" ... but even that only works because the gun is a VERY magical device.
  - Shorel 3y ago
    The only good example I know is the gun-kata from Equilibrium.
    - AstralStorm 3y ago
      John Wick being the more recent example.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    I'm no sci-fi writer, so surely someone who is could come up with something better. But basically the development of a wizard could be applied to a gunslinger as well. In the beginning, character has zero skills, they miss shots and not able to succeed in any battles. The character learns to control their breathing, emotions, posture, aiming and so on, to become more proficient. They learn how to "quick draw" in order to shot by instinct, learn how to do tactical reloads and so on. Different guns also have different strengths, some better in close combat and so on. Just like a wizard has different potions, the guns have different ammunition. Some ammunition could have "special" effects, like exploding on impact, EMPs or whatever. Crucially, the character learns that patience, strategy, and emotional control is the most important, just like a wizard would. This is just what I could come up with as I wrote the comment, so again, surely someone proficient in writing sci-fi/fantasy could come up with something much greater. But it's not hard to imagine it's not impossible to have character growth with someone who wields a pistol.
    - Ensorceled 3y ago
      But that's the thing ... that isn't realistic and, hence, not compelling story. I became very good with both a rifle and pistol pretty much on my own. It took years of training with masters of the craft to become proficient as a martial artist.
TomK32 3y ago
Lucky Luke shoots faster than his shadow, there's a skill you can learn as a gun guy in a fantasy world.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Pfft even I can shoot faster than my shadow.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Lucky Luke is a parody of cowboy movies, upped to 11. He's as the very peak and there's nowhere else for him to go. IMO it's one of those things that only works once, and only because it references other stuff to provide context.
  - sgt 3y ago
    Speaking of. Hollywood hasn't tapped into Lucky Luke yet. Imagine what they're missing! (And what we're not missing).
    - TomK32 3y ago
      He's a French figure and they do make movies too. The last one is from 2009 and then there's the 1991 one with Terrence Hill who was already a Cowboy parody all by himself.
astrange 3y ago
JRPGs either solve this problem by giving the gun guy materia slots, new different colored guns, or giving everyone generic magic. (They are very bad at integrating this into the story. In Tales of Vesperia one specific ultra-cool sword is plot relevant, you lose it at one point in the game, and then you find one with better stats in a chest. Also FF7, the #1 gun guy game, has a snowboarding minigame right after a main character death.)
JodieBenitez 3y ago
> But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? Watch a cowboy shooting competition some day, be it with pistols or rifles. As a recreational shooter myself, I sure don't have the techniques these people have.
- teekert 3y ago
  Still Arnie (and you) would mow them all down Predator-style, given "a bigger gun".
  - JodieBenitez 3y ago
    True. But hey... handling a bigger gun is also a skill ! You know... managing that recoil... :)
    - dagw 3y ago
      True, but the difference in practical combat ability between people who have been practicing for 10 days, 10 month and 10 years in tiny compared to swords or magic.
      - Aeolun 3y ago
        Depends on what they’ve been practicing.
defrost 3y ago
> But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? Shoot ULR: https://youtu.be/7owwTz7Z0OE?t=11 https://youtu.be/7owwTz7Z0OE?t=11
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yxhuvud 3y ago
So focus the book on something other than pure fighting! Fantasy is so much more than campaign stories. There happened so much in the early industrialist era, supremacy of gunpowder is one part of that but there is so much more in how society is built and structured that changed in those times. There is so much opportunity for an author that is good at world building.
JodieBenitez 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_y7PL23Cko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_y7PL23Cko
woooooo 3y ago
Guns turn things into an issue of preparedness and position instead of direct martial skill. It's still skill to get into the situation but it's way harder to work into fictional warrior tropes of superior skill at arms winning.. the virtues wind up looking cowardly.
tivert 3y ago
> Sword users can learn new techniques. Wizards can learn new spells. Characters can become visibly stronger, or to learn to wield stronger arcane forces. But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? A guy with a gun can learn skills for shooting better. He starts with Stormtrooper shooting skills, and ends like the Man with No Name. Watch an old spaghetti Western, and there are clear themes that the protagonists are far more skilled at firearms than most people in that world. I'm reminded of a scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (I think) where the character Tuco escapes or something, goes to a frontier store to buy a gun, then disassembles all the guns at the store, quickly and carefully examines all the components, and reassembles all the best parts into the one he then steals, which shows his knowledge and skill. In those movies the characters' skills are taken as given, but I see no reason why you couldn't have a skill-building arc for them any less than for a swordfighter, a martial artist, or, a wizard.
- btschaegg 3y ago
  Another case in point, a movie where the skill disparity is very explicit in the shooting scenes (especially the ending): Quigley Down Under. > He starts with Stormtrooper shooting skills, and ends like the Man with No Name. On the other hand, I imagine writing such a story without it seeming contrived could be rather hard. The problem with western style duels is that they often don't leave the loser with many opportunities to learn. But, on second thought, it's not as if it hasn't been done: Django Unchained is a good example for such a plot.
strken 3y ago
Compare and contrast with westerns, or any movie with an arming montage. The boring answer is just that fantasy is about swords and westerns/crime dramas/action are about guns. "Why isn't historical fiction set in the future?" Well, some of them use that as a secret plot twist, but mostly it's just because anyone who writes about the future already has their own genre with better and more useful conventions. If you put guns in your fantasy then you're breaking a convention, which is fun and profitable in moderation, but you can only break so many conventions before you end up in another genre.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
> Or you can have Rob Liefeld hero #6, who charges in with big guns. And either the bad guy dies, or the bullets bounce off and there's little ground in between. don't forget pouches. presumably, as the character levels up they get more and more pouches.

artemonster 3y ago

bad argument, imho. you can use you imagination and invent lots of new "skills" for guns the same way you can do for swords and bows: shrapnel shot, crippling shot, blinding shot, rapid fire, etc. Item wise I see absolutely no "logical" difference between guns and "sword A with 10 DMG" and "sword B with 250 DMG and ice damage". This is fantasy worlds we are talking about, cmon.

capableweb 3y ago

> Sword users can learn new techniques. Wizards can learn new spells. Characters can become visibly stronger, or to learn to wield stronger arcane forces. But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? You can imagine wizards but you can't imagine more creative guns and guns-usage? For being into fantasy, you seemingly drop the ball on the whole "made up" stuff. What's to say there aren't different techniques to using guns where one user is better than another? Or since we're in fantasy, that some characters can learn how to avoid getting shot better than others.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
In fantasy the abilities of wizards and sword fighters are plausible within the constraints & difference with the real world. Eg magic isn't real and people don't fight with swords, so we're in an unknown territory where a large range of techniques are plausibly effective. You don't know a wizard so you can't really tell me this spell wouldn't work in this conflict, you know? But people do fight with guns, and the abilities and techniques of guns and what advantages they offer are well understood, pressure tested in real conflict, and easy to find out about. The area of unknown is small, and so mostly the plausible techniques are the real ones. You can tweak the plausibility by fuzzing off from real world uses with things like laser guns or muzzle-loading black powder, though that's still much better understood than wizard magic. You see a similar thing with fantasy melee too. Fencing is well understood even in the modern world, but how many fantasy sword fighters are recognizably fencers?
Ensorceled 3y ago
Do you have examples of cool things a guy with a gun can do? As some kind of growth curve? That are on par with, for example, Ged growing to become archmage? I've seen "Wanted" and it wasn't that compelling. Sam Sykes does a decent job in "Seven Blades of Black" ... but even that only works because the gun is a VERY magical device.
- Shorel 3y ago
  The only good example I know is the gun-kata from Equilibrium.
  - AstralStorm 3y ago
    John Wick being the more recent example.
- capableweb 3y ago
  I'm no sci-fi writer, so surely someone who is could come up with something better. But basically the development of a wizard could be applied to a gunslinger as well. In the beginning, character has zero skills, they miss shots and not able to succeed in any battles. The character learns to control their breathing, emotions, posture, aiming and so on, to become more proficient. They learn how to "quick draw" in order to shot by instinct, learn how to do tactical reloads and so on. Different guns also have different strengths, some better in close combat and so on. Just like a wizard has different potions, the guns have different ammunition. Some ammunition could have "special" effects, like exploding on impact, EMPs or whatever. Crucially, the character learns that patience, strategy, and emotional control is the most important, just like a wizard would. This is just what I could come up with as I wrote the comment, so again, surely someone proficient in writing sci-fi/fantasy could come up with something much greater. But it's not hard to imagine it's not impossible to have character growth with someone who wields a pistol.
  - Ensorceled 3y ago
    But that's the thing ... that isn't realistic and, hence, not compelling story. I became very good with both a rifle and pistol pretty much on my own. It took years of training with masters of the craft to become proficient as a martial artist.

TomK32 3y ago

Lucky Luke shoots faster than his shadow, there's a skill you can learn as a gun guy in a fantasy world.

hgomersall 3y ago
Pfft even I can shoot faster than my shadow.
dale_glass 3y ago
Lucky Luke is a parody of cowboy movies, upped to 11. He's as the very peak and there's nowhere else for him to go. IMO it's one of those things that only works once, and only because it references other stuff to provide context.
- sgt 3y ago
  Speaking of. Hollywood hasn't tapped into Lucky Luke yet. Imagine what they're missing! (And what we're not missing).
  - TomK32 3y ago
    He's a French figure and they do make movies too. The last one is from 2009 and then there's the 1991 one with Terrence Hill who was already a Cowboy parody all by himself.

astrange 3y ago

JRPGs either solve this problem by giving the gun guy materia slots, new different colored guns, or giving everyone generic magic. (They are very bad at integrating this into the story. In Tales of Vesperia one specific ultra-cool sword is plot relevant, you lose it at one point in the game, and then you find one with better stats in a chest. Also FF7, the #1 gun guy game, has a snowboarding minigame right after a main character death.)

JodieBenitez 3y ago

> But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? Watch a cowboy shooting competition some day, be it with pistols or rifles. As a recreational shooter myself, I sure don't have the techniques these people have.

teekert 3y ago
Still Arnie (and you) would mow them all down Predator-style, given "a bigger gun".
- JodieBenitez 3y ago
  True. But hey... handling a bigger gun is also a skill ! You know... managing that recoil... :)
  - dagw 3y ago
    True, but the difference in practical combat ability between people who have been practicing for 10 days, 10 month and 10 years in tiny compared to swords or magic.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      Depends on what they’ve been practicing.

defrost 3y ago

> But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? Shoot ULR: https://youtu.be/7owwTz7Z0OE?t=11 https://youtu.be/7owwTz7Z0OE?t=11

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

yxhuvud 3y ago

So focus the book on something other than pure fighting! Fantasy is so much more than campaign stories. There happened so much in the early industrialist era, supremacy of gunpowder is one part of that but there is so much more in how society is built and structured that changed in those times. There is so much opportunity for an author that is good at world building.

JodieBenitez 3y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_y7PL23Cko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_y7PL23Cko

woooooo 3y ago

Guns turn things into an issue of preparedness and position instead of direct martial skill. It's still skill to get into the situation but it's way harder to work into fictional warrior tropes of superior skill at arms winning.. the virtues wind up looking cowardly.

tivert 3y ago

> Sword users can learn new techniques. Wizards can learn new spells. Characters can become visibly stronger, or to learn to wield stronger arcane forces. But a guy with a gun can... what? Get a bigger gun? A guy with a gun can learn skills for shooting better. He starts with Stormtrooper shooting skills, and ends like the Man with No Name. Watch an old spaghetti Western, and there are clear themes that the protagonists are far more skilled at firearms than most people in that world. I'm reminded of a scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (I think) where the character Tuco escapes or something, goes to a frontier store to buy a gun, then disassembles all the guns at the store, quickly and carefully examines all the components, and reassembles all the best parts into the one he then steals, which shows his knowledge and skill. In those movies the characters' skills are taken as given, but I see no reason why you couldn't have a skill-building arc for them any less than for a swordfighter, a martial artist, or, a wizard.

btschaegg 3y ago
Another case in point, a movie where the skill disparity is very explicit in the shooting scenes (especially the ending): Quigley Down Under. > He starts with Stormtrooper shooting skills, and ends like the Man with No Name. On the other hand, I imagine writing such a story without it seeming contrived could be rather hard. The problem with western style duels is that they often don't leave the loser with many opportunities to learn. But, on second thought, it's not as if it hasn't been done: Django Unchained is a good example for such a plot.

strken 3y ago

Compare and contrast with westerns, or any movie with an arming montage. The boring answer is just that fantasy is about swords and westerns/crime dramas/action are about guns. "Why isn't historical fiction set in the future?" Well, some of them use that as a secret plot twist, but mostly it's just because anyone who writes about the future already has their own genre with better and more useful conventions. If you put guns in your fantasy then you're breaking a convention, which is fun and profitable in moderation, but you can only break so many conventions before you end up in another genre.

red-iron-pine 3y ago

> Or you can have Rob Liefeld hero #6, who charges in with big guns. And either the bad guy dies, or the bullets bounce off and there's little ground in between. don't forget pouches. presumably, as the character levels up they get more and more pouches.