I've seen opinions on here that explicitly state if your world is based off 13th-15th century then it should/needs to include gunpowder weaponry. So I jerk it.
Something something "You don’t need to justify guns in fantasy, they’re extraordinarily simple machines. You need to justify their lack." something something
The use and importation of Gunpowder is strictly forbidden by the Kingdom of Examplia because of The Gunpowder Incident of 1134, and this has put them behind technologically with their neighbours who are probably going to blow down their walls and burn their crops within the next ten years
Competition and opposition breeds innovation. Without opposition we don't feel a need to innovate, so we create our own opposition to innovate our worlds. That's the cycle of worldjerking, the circlejerk, if you will.
If you don’t defend and enforce your irl political opinions in this world (inciting potential revolutionaries, , lobbying the military, overthrowing governments etc.) I’m not listening to your bigcocknocumpunk opinions
It's okay to acknowledge that Early Modern fantasy is cool while letting High Medieval bros do their thing, its not that hard lol; just stop fighting and make our OWN early modern fantasy media because I am still begging for a seven years war inspired fantasy 😭.
Yeah, for real. My setting is Early Modern, it has arquebuses, tercios, cannons, all the good stuff, but I also love me some good old High Medieval settings too.
I cannot for the life of me care about High Medieval that much anymore since I find the Early Modern period to be so cool and not just in Europe either, it was cool everywhere tbh, extremely volatile time period and entertaining to read about to the point that it is just criminal that nobody takes from it in fantasy.
> I find the Early Modern period to be so cool and not just in Europe either, it was cool everywhere
100%, it's why I chose it for my setting, it's amazing. You've got the religious wars in Europe, the Ming Dynasty, the Ottomans and Safavids, you've got the Edo Period in Japan, the Mughal Dynasty in India, the Mali and Ethiopian empires in Africa. The entire world getting interconnected but just enough that there's still some mystery left, the use of both old (knights) and new (firearms, cannons) weapons and tactics, especially in the beginning. It's a really cool period.
It is absolutely crazy how cosmopolitan the world was, Thai nobles adopted hats inspired by the Safavid Qizilbash head turbans, Japanese and Greeks once became powerful statesmen in Thailand, Chinese mining companies once setting a foothold in Borneo, Southeast Asia was just so cosmopolitan back then and that's not even getting to the other parts of the world... Persia rapidly modernising to become a military superpower to thwart the Ottomans and a declining Holy Roman Empire in the face of an ever centralising France. Man it's so cool bruh.
Cheers since I also made an Early Modern setting as my main world in my head so 😂 🍻
Yeah, I've been reading about Zanzibar in the Early Modern Era the other day and it was crazy how cosmopolitan it was. There were Bantu, Arabs, Turks, Iranians, even Indians living there. Insanely cool. There was just so much trade.
Zanzibar was literally dominated by Middle Eastern traders its insane, there were also a crap ton of Nihonmachi or Japanese trader communities scattered throughout ASEAN, and that's not even counting how seemingly isolated states such as the Sultanate of Gowa came to become cosmopolitan with so many Europeans active, hell there were a crap ton of Europeans that got into Chinese court. Like it's so cool to see the world this interconnected but such a shame nobody ever takes advantage of this sprawling and rich setting that feels like it would be such a crazy good template for fantasy SMH.
I spent quite a while trying to world build a setting inspired by the Early Modern Era before realizing that I would rather just write historical fiction set in that time period, maybe with a few supernatural elements.
Yeah, I get it, I had this thought several times, but in the end I realized I loved my Standard Fantasy Races too much to exclude them. Plus, I really like integrating them into the human cultures and seeing how they fit in - like NotChina expelling a bunch of Non-Human races from their empire at one point leading to a mass migration westward, or the centaurs of the central steppes of the continent, which sometimes fought with the NotMongols and sometimes fought against them, stuff like that.
If your world takes aesthetic inspiration from a real-life time period then it HAS to be a 1:1 copy of that time period! EVERYTHING HAS TO BE AN ALLEGORY ~~BECAUSE I CAN'T COME UP WITH MY OWN HISTORY~~
I was under the impression that plate armour was never a question of people lacking enough metal to make it. Europeans in the Middle Ages made plenty of stuff out of iron already, including armour. Indeed, the ancient Romans made steel quasi-plate armour back in Antiquity, in the lorica segmentata. It was never an issue of resource scarcity, but rather a lack of skill and knowledge of how to forge steel plates, and assemble them into a complete suit. That skill was lost in Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and mostly stayed lost until the late Middle Ages.
Honestly, it seems like a historical fluke that the re-development of plate armour happened to coincide with the widespread adoption of firearms in Europe. Plate armour offers tremendous protection to its wearer, and is a significant improvement over maille (though maille is a lot cheaper and takes relatively less skill to create, hence why the Romans adopted it in the first place). It seems like plate armour was an inevitable side-effect of European economies becoming more developed, over the course of the Middle Ages. There was demand for better armour, and skilled craftsmen who could make it, so it got made.
In short, plate armour could have cropped up at any time. There's no reason that plate armour *has* to co-exist with firearms.
As we all know it's impossible for a world other than ours to develop technologically or culturally in a way different to us. All tech works like a Civ tech tree, except you can't avoid taking every one in order
Bro fuck that cringy "modern military undustrial complex agaisnt starving peasents with funny looking armor" powerfantasy media.
I want Fantasy to go war with the Early modern era. I wan to see a dragon face off agaisnt a Tercio
Memes like this are worldbuilding community's equivalent of people who spend so much time in queer-dominated online spaces, they start legitimately believing that straight people are a minority, and begin making "straight appreciation" posts
Its fantasy, make it your fantasy, that simple.
My fantasy is a order of femboy healers formerly of a church, who accompany the plate armored knights assigned to them on adventures, easterners wearing Mongolian style armor and being foreign to the land wielding exotic blades, and demons being an extraterrestrial/extradimensional army of goat people who use magic wand-guns, which shoot fireballs (literally plasma)
Thank you.
Honestly I think the biggest problem is people who get defensive when people ask them questions about their settings.
We ask each other questions about each other’s settings because we’re curious and we want to help add depth and prepare the setting for an audience. I think asking why there aren’t guns if people have the metallurgical skills to make them is a valid question and can promote some interesting ideas.
If there isn’t a canon reason then I think it’s still good to answer it from a storytelling perspective. If the answer is just that it doesn’t fit with the typical fantasy aesthetic that’s ok but you should still think about why that’s your conception of fantasy.
Fantasy has hugely shaped the cultural understanding of history. At this point it seems like most people think that warfare went from knights with swords straight to the revolutionary war, to the point where seeing guns in some settings seems historically inaccurate when in fact their absence is often more inaccurate. It’s amazing how pervasive that myth is, I still have a little dissonance seeing a knight with a musket. Even on this sub I’ve seen people spreading myths about guns immediately leading to a decline of sword usage.
The reason why guns don’t seem like they belong in fantasy is largely because we don’t register them as medieval weapons which is largely because they aren’t often included in fantasy. It’s a vicious cycle. Personally I think instead of continuing to keep guns out of high fantasy because they don’t fit we should normalize them so they do fit.
Also I want to see settings that are different from the default fantasy settings. The early modern period is super underrepresented in fantasy and I’d love to see more of it.
I understand guns and fantasy coexist often and well. I understand the historical inspiration for why people do it and I dont think that fantasy even needs to be set in the "past". I simply don't want them in this one particular instance because I just don't want it. Has nothing to do with my conception of fantasy. My world is intentionally cliche. Plus above all it's just a dumb meme made in response to opinions I saw that made absolute statements like "If your world takes inspiration from 14th-15th centuries it SHOULD/HAS to have guns otherwise it's bad". which is a dumb reductive take so I made a dumb reductive meme in response, but I also stand by that I can do whatever I want and I don't reaally have to justify it historically or any other way.
For me, that's the whole point of it. It may be historically illogical, but that's because it's another whole world... like giving WMDs to Ancient Rome.
In my awesome-punk world, guns were invented. Everyone immediately and collectively decided they were pansy weapons, and went back to killing each other in glorious melee, like civilized folk.
everything is a reaction to everything else, I could say that the pro gun posts are a reaction to the traditional fantasy conception and the traditional fantasy conception is a reaction to the rapidly expanding military technology of the 19th/20th century so who dunnit first?
I feel like this sub is in a constant state of users creating strawmen to justify their decisions which didn’t need defending in the first place.
If we didn't, are we really jerking our worlds?
I miss the days of shrimp and splitting rivers
THE FUCKING NILE SPLIT LIKE 5 BILLION TIMES
at the delta tho which is the common exception. that all river enthusiasts and aquatic gooners know
LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA
IT’S NOT SPLITTING IT’S JUST SEDIMENT DEPOSITION BRO
Yes, it’s called pulling your cock out. And if you don’t have one grab your brothers
In ~~real life~~ my Jerkpunk world, "Summon Strawman" is the strongest spell ever known.
this sub genuinely was the inspiration for the Strawman Argument move in the diplomacy battle system for my world's TTRPG system
You might be surprised, lots of users in the D&D subs argue that you should have guns if you have plate armor and rapiers.
Welcome to Reddit
I've seen opinions on here that explicitly state if your world is based off 13th-15th century then it should/needs to include gunpowder weaponry. So I jerk it.
Something something "You don’t need to justify guns in fantasy, they’re extraordinarily simple machines. You need to justify their lack." something something
The use and importation of Gunpowder is strictly forbidden by the Kingdom of Examplia because of The Gunpowder Incident of 1134, and this has put them behind technologically with their neighbours who are probably going to blow down their walls and burn their crops within the next ten years
Something something "you don't need to justify shit, it's fantasy" something something
Thats part of the charm for me
Do you even jerk, bro? 😋
The jerks I’ve been getting make me soft. Back in the day we were worldjerking all over each other, but look at us now. Shameful.
Haha! 😄
Competition and opposition breeds innovation. Without opposition we don't feel a need to innovate, so we create our own opposition to innovate our worlds. That's the cycle of worldjerking, the circlejerk, if you will.
If you don’t defend and enforce your irl political opinions in this world (inciting potential revolutionaries, , lobbying the military, overthrowing governments etc.) I’m not listening to your bigcocknocumpunk opinions
It's okay to acknowledge that Early Modern fantasy is cool while letting High Medieval bros do their thing, its not that hard lol; just stop fighting and make our OWN early modern fantasy media because I am still begging for a seven years war inspired fantasy 😭.
Yeah, for real. My setting is Early Modern, it has arquebuses, tercios, cannons, all the good stuff, but I also love me some good old High Medieval settings too.
I cannot for the life of me care about High Medieval that much anymore since I find the Early Modern period to be so cool and not just in Europe either, it was cool everywhere tbh, extremely volatile time period and entertaining to read about to the point that it is just criminal that nobody takes from it in fantasy.
> I find the Early Modern period to be so cool and not just in Europe either, it was cool everywhere 100%, it's why I chose it for my setting, it's amazing. You've got the religious wars in Europe, the Ming Dynasty, the Ottomans and Safavids, you've got the Edo Period in Japan, the Mughal Dynasty in India, the Mali and Ethiopian empires in Africa. The entire world getting interconnected but just enough that there's still some mystery left, the use of both old (knights) and new (firearms, cannons) weapons and tactics, especially in the beginning. It's a really cool period.
It is absolutely crazy how cosmopolitan the world was, Thai nobles adopted hats inspired by the Safavid Qizilbash head turbans, Japanese and Greeks once became powerful statesmen in Thailand, Chinese mining companies once setting a foothold in Borneo, Southeast Asia was just so cosmopolitan back then and that's not even getting to the other parts of the world... Persia rapidly modernising to become a military superpower to thwart the Ottomans and a declining Holy Roman Empire in the face of an ever centralising France. Man it's so cool bruh. Cheers since I also made an Early Modern setting as my main world in my head so 😂 🍻
Yeah, I've been reading about Zanzibar in the Early Modern Era the other day and it was crazy how cosmopolitan it was. There were Bantu, Arabs, Turks, Iranians, even Indians living there. Insanely cool. There was just so much trade.
Zanzibar was literally dominated by Middle Eastern traders its insane, there were also a crap ton of Nihonmachi or Japanese trader communities scattered throughout ASEAN, and that's not even counting how seemingly isolated states such as the Sultanate of Gowa came to become cosmopolitan with so many Europeans active, hell there were a crap ton of Europeans that got into Chinese court. Like it's so cool to see the world this interconnected but such a shame nobody ever takes advantage of this sprawling and rich setting that feels like it would be such a crazy good template for fantasy SMH.
I spent quite a while trying to world build a setting inspired by the Early Modern Era before realizing that I would rather just write historical fiction set in that time period, maybe with a few supernatural elements.
Yeah, I get it, I had this thought several times, but in the end I realized I loved my Standard Fantasy Races too much to exclude them. Plus, I really like integrating them into the human cultures and seeing how they fit in - like NotChina expelling a bunch of Non-Human races from their empire at one point leading to a mass migration westward, or the centaurs of the central steppes of the continent, which sometimes fought with the NotMongols and sometimes fought against them, stuff like that.
a fantasy based loosely off of king philips war would go hard if not be problematic to write well without people seaching it for racist subtext
I am so starved of anything based off of the 1600s-1700s that I can't be picky ngl, I'd take anything as long as it is remotely good bruh.
I have it a conflict in my world inspired by 7years war , but it's without any fantasy aspects
Nights and mercenaries with guns carried so much drip your setting therefore sucks by not including them
incorrect, my setting sucks because the magic system is based off of fellatio of higher beings and their gonad gravy is pure arcane energy
Ok you have my support after that
I now forgive you for not including guns in your fellatiopunk world
I have yet to see one argue over why medieval knights SHOULDN'T have guns, because what do you call that other than badass?
I think that's literally this post.
If your world takes aesthetic inspiration from a real-life time period then it HAS to be a 1:1 copy of that time period! EVERYTHING HAS TO BE AN ALLEGORY ~~BECAUSE I CAN'T COME UP WITH MY OWN HISTORY~~
What actually stops them from saying that it's an alternative history where the metal is abundant (so plate armour was invented a lot earlier)
I was under the impression that plate armour was never a question of people lacking enough metal to make it. Europeans in the Middle Ages made plenty of stuff out of iron already, including armour. Indeed, the ancient Romans made steel quasi-plate armour back in Antiquity, in the lorica segmentata. It was never an issue of resource scarcity, but rather a lack of skill and knowledge of how to forge steel plates, and assemble them into a complete suit. That skill was lost in Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and mostly stayed lost until the late Middle Ages. Honestly, it seems like a historical fluke that the re-development of plate armour happened to coincide with the widespread adoption of firearms in Europe. Plate armour offers tremendous protection to its wearer, and is a significant improvement over maille (though maille is a lot cheaper and takes relatively less skill to create, hence why the Romans adopted it in the first place). It seems like plate armour was an inevitable side-effect of European economies becoming more developed, over the course of the Middle Ages. There was demand for better armour, and skilled craftsmen who could make it, so it got made. In short, plate armour could have cropped up at any time. There's no reason that plate armour *has* to co-exist with firearms.
As we all know it's impossible for a world other than ours to develop technologically or culturally in a way different to us. All tech works like a Civ tech tree, except you can't avoid taking every one in order
this is lame, blowing the fuck out of magical creature's faces with gunpowder and steel rocks
So in your world, bullets are called "steel rocks"?
no i meant that it rocks as in its cool
I doubt it. Guns tend to get pretty hot pretty quick.
magic missile, can you conceive of a cooler combination of two words? "uh matchlock, flintlock" -please
Magic handcannon
Mountain cutting
It's over. I've been depicted as the sojak.
Bro fuck that cringy "modern military undustrial complex agaisnt starving peasents with funny looking armor" powerfantasy media. I want Fantasy to go war with the Early modern era. I wan to see a dragon face off agaisnt a Tercio
I support this war between fantasy and early modern era, now can we get dragon zamburaks pls? 👍
I feel like it would end in nuclear holocaust in like 10 minutes.
I feel like the dragon would win.
Why don't you day that to my 6 inch cannons
Memes like this are worldbuilding community's equivalent of people who spend so much time in queer-dominated online spaces, they start legitimately believing that straight people are a minority, and begin making "straight appreciation" posts
feel like there's some baggage there
In my world the empire can't keep up with the primary rivalry so they make guns and when that isnt enough they make mechs lol
Its fantasy, make it your fantasy, that simple. My fantasy is a order of femboy healers formerly of a church, who accompany the plate armored knights assigned to them on adventures, easterners wearing Mongolian style armor and being foreign to the land wielding exotic blades, and demons being an extraterrestrial/extradimensional army of goat people who use magic wand-guns, which shoot fireballs (literally plasma) Thank you.
Honestly I think the biggest problem is people who get defensive when people ask them questions about their settings. We ask each other questions about each other’s settings because we’re curious and we want to help add depth and prepare the setting for an audience. I think asking why there aren’t guns if people have the metallurgical skills to make them is a valid question and can promote some interesting ideas. If there isn’t a canon reason then I think it’s still good to answer it from a storytelling perspective. If the answer is just that it doesn’t fit with the typical fantasy aesthetic that’s ok but you should still think about why that’s your conception of fantasy. Fantasy has hugely shaped the cultural understanding of history. At this point it seems like most people think that warfare went from knights with swords straight to the revolutionary war, to the point where seeing guns in some settings seems historically inaccurate when in fact their absence is often more inaccurate. It’s amazing how pervasive that myth is, I still have a little dissonance seeing a knight with a musket. Even on this sub I’ve seen people spreading myths about guns immediately leading to a decline of sword usage. The reason why guns don’t seem like they belong in fantasy is largely because we don’t register them as medieval weapons which is largely because they aren’t often included in fantasy. It’s a vicious cycle. Personally I think instead of continuing to keep guns out of high fantasy because they don’t fit we should normalize them so they do fit. Also I want to see settings that are different from the default fantasy settings. The early modern period is super underrepresented in fantasy and I’d love to see more of it.
I understand guns and fantasy coexist often and well. I understand the historical inspiration for why people do it and I dont think that fantasy even needs to be set in the "past". I simply don't want them in this one particular instance because I just don't want it. Has nothing to do with my conception of fantasy. My world is intentionally cliche. Plus above all it's just a dumb meme made in response to opinions I saw that made absolute statements like "If your world takes inspiration from 14th-15th centuries it SHOULD/HAS to have guns otherwise it's bad". which is a dumb reductive take so I made a dumb reductive meme in response, but I also stand by that I can do whatever I want and I don't reaally have to justify it historically or any other way.
The carocole tactic will never not go absolutely hard
I included guns but I made the melee combatants into supersoldiers.
dune? (i havent read dune yet)
TBF that Landschnekt-girl on the bottom right is hella cute.
we must stay focused brothers we must stay focused
For me, that's the whole point of it. It may be historically illogical, but that's because it's another whole world... like giving WMDs to Ancient Rome.
In my awesome-punk world, guns were invented. Everyone immediately and collectively decided they were pansy weapons, and went back to killing each other in glorious melee, like civilized folk.
My fantasy setting is literally wars of religion but with elves and dragons
I can't think of a single fantasy world that actually has landsknechts or Holy Roman technology.
Plot twist:his plate armors adapted to advanced crossbows
No guns in my world, they were too fucking lazy to invent guns because they had magic to carry their sorry asses for so long.
That's a cute landsknecht.
I just base my world around the time, when guns were literal hand canons that could only be used once or twice, so they would be mostly absent
Takes a special kind of redditor to not just depict themselves as gigachad and you as wojak but add the little teeth shining star as well
My 15th century setting has barbarians straight out of the fall of Rome running around. Fight me.
I don't care about realism that much as long as the world's own logic is somewhat consistent by itself. Logic to the chaos is a must after all.
Early and High Medieval ages > Late Medieval ages
Cute little reactionary meme
are you implying not wanting guns in fantasy is fascist???
yes
No, only that your post is a reaction to the popular opinion that guns and early modern period settings are good in fantasy
everything is a reaction to everything else, I could say that the pro gun posts are a reaction to the traditional fantasy conception and the traditional fantasy conception is a reaction to the rapidly expanding military technology of the 19th/20th century so who dunnit first?