What "level" of firearms do you prefer in RPGs?

[WaterMage]

I'm talking about preference, because firearms in RPGs vary a lot. In some settings, it makes no sense to even have firearms; in others, they are so common that everyone should have one. Hence, I'm talking about personal preference.

You can also have variations in the same setting. For example, in Warhammer, Bretonnia doesn't use firearms. The Empire of Sigmar uses mostly muzzleloaders, and the Dwarfs, who have much more advanced metallurgy, use mostly breechloaders. Image bellow showing Dawi guns.

[rusty_shackleford]

probably should have been less autistic and went with "very early black powder", "black powder(muskets)", "breechloader/lever/bolt action(19th century)" "modern"

[Tadeusz]

I like Underrail's guns so chose "Futuristic but realistic". They look cool and are practical in combat.

[Rand]

For fantasy?
None. Crossbow maximum.

[Oyster Sauce]

I was devastated when, after playing a Medieval 2 campaign for many hours, I discovered that gunpowder units exist but the faction I chose didn't have access to them. Still got the cannon tower upgrade for walls those. Loved watching them blow apart Mongol hordes.

[WaterMage]

For fantasy?

You can have modern Urban fantasy, can have Wild West fantasy...

I like Underrail's guns so chose "Futuristic but realistic". They look cool and are practical in combat.

Yep. Firearms in UR and ammo types are great. I loved that game.

[Rand]

For fantasy?

You can have modern Urban fantasy, can have Wild West fantasy...

To most people, sword and sorcery classic fantasy is THE fantasy when no other descriptor is attached.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Why can I only vote for a single option?

[Xenich]

I am not picky, as long as it matches the world setting, lore, etc... simplistic is fine, but I really dislike silly mistakes due to ignorance of firearm mechanics. I don't mind fantasy concepts, as long as it is logical in its design/function and can be explained within the worlds reality.

I do dislike crazy stuff and I never liked weapons in general that are absurd (ie FF style swords and the like). I tend to be more "realistic" style in weapons, regardless if it is a firearm or a sword.

[Vaako]

Berserk Guts style 1 arm canon with long reload. Thats all. Usually dont like anything with guns unless its like turok with ridiculous funny effects like the inflator or cerebral bore.

[WaterMage]

I do dislike crazy stuff and I never liked weapons in general that are absurd (ie FF style swords and the like). I tend to be more "realistic" style in weapons, regardless if it is a firearm or a sword.

I think that fantasy weapons can be "realistic," e.g., the Hellsing 454 Casull full auto pistol. It would be ludicrous and impractical for regular humans, but for Alucard, it is a BB gun. I don't like when the guns become utterly nonsensical; it is just silly. It would be like playing a racing game where the car has sails, random wheels blocking the driver's view, and no way to turn around or even move properly.

[Tweed]

I like World War 1 era firearms and some of the weird stuff they did to try to advance their guns. I.E. the Pedersen Device and the M1915 Howell conversion.

I used to own a Lee Enfield Mk3.

[DemoGraph]

Setting dependent.

[rusty_shackleford]

late 19th century is right on the edge of having it in a setting where you could, given enough effort, feasibly maintain it yourself which opens up a lot of possibilities
most firearms after that are mass produced around the idea of modern manufacturing

[Tangerine]

I don't mind if weapons are exaggerated, but I lose suspension of disbelief when too many practical questions on how it works come up.

[WhiteShark]

If it were just about aesthetics I would have voted bolt action, but I went with futuristic because that implies other things about the setting that I enjoy.

[The_Mask]

Personally I love every single "level". Firearms are pretty great from start to finish.

Even the last bullet point, the "non-sensical" one, can be great when handled by people that know firearms and have a lot of creativity, although this doesn't happen nowadays.

Next time we want an "All" option!

[UltraFan123]

I think that Warhammer Fantasy is a good standard for blackpowder weapons in a magical world. If the weaponry becomes too close to the modern age, then combat spellcasters would be redundant in the setting.

Renaissance-era firearms in particular are something that I feel could blend well in a fantasy setting, as they are a few centuries before the Industrial Revolution when weapons began to be mass-produced.

Depending on whether the "magic" of the setting is a mysterious supernatural force as in classical literature, or an arcane science as in some modern RPGs, Renaissance firearms could be enhanced in a similar way to how fire swords and fortitude armors are created.

Using pocket dimensions to store extra gunpowder inside the guns, enchanting the bullets with wind magic to make them rotate faster than normal after being shot, bullets with "seeker" effects that follow the target. You could have sci-fi guns in a fantasy setting if the magic of the world is sophisticated enough.

Gunners could be a good middle ground between the "mundane" spearmen troops that are easy to arm and train, and the super exotic and expensive wizards who throw fireballs and mini-nukes.

[WaterMage]

Why can I only vote for a single option?

Because "prefer" and "like" are two different things. I honestly can like all except Bethesda nonsense. But I prefer late 19th-century firearms in aesthetics alone.

late 19th century is right on the edge of having it in a setting where you could, given enough effort, feasibly maintain it yourself which opens up a lot of possibilities
most firearms after that are mass produced around the idea of modern manufacturing

The 19th century is where people experimented and developed firearms the most. Pepperbox, early Colt revolver, Colt Walker percussion revolver, Henry rifles, Springfield trapdoor, Snider-Enfield to smokeless powder in the late century, and firearms tech developed a lot. Not only in action, in precision and accuracy too. Billy Dixon with a Sharps blackpowder rifle hit an native at over 1500 yards.

I think that Warhammer Fantasy is a good standard for blackpowder weapons in a magical world. If the weaponry becomes too close to the modern age, then combat spellcasters would be redundant in the setting.

Psionics and Guns in UnderRail are vastly different. You can have "spellcasters" and advanced guns.

However, if you want to have melee & guns, any fantasy setting with more advanced firearms than Warhammer Fantasy and any historical setting with more advanced firearms than WH Fantasy will have no way to have melee viable. You can have a Bretonnian cavalry charge supported by a damsel, making them more resistant against projectiles, charging against a bunch of dudes with muzzleloaders, taking heavy losses but killing them when they reach melee range. You can't have Bretonnian cavalry doing the same against Gatling guns and not either make them immune to the Gatling gun or all of them dead to the gatling gun fire.

Warhammer fantasy where most human weapons are muzzleloaders with some experimental and ultra expensive repeaters and breechloaders is the sweetspot to have melee & spellcasters & guns all viable.

[Norfleet]

However, if you want to have melee & guns, any fantasy setting with more advanced firearms than Warhammer Fantasy and any historical setting with more advanced firearms than WH Fantasy will have no way to have melee viable.

Melee in an RPG is viable even in an advanced firearms setting if the setting isn't simply open combat everywhere. In the real world, it's not generally appropriate to fire your gun in public, and will certainly draw unwanted attention. Nor should every conflict necessarily be resolved with lethal violence. Shooting and stabbing people in a bar brawl is generally very frowned upon. These constraints imposed on an RPG can easily make melee a viable and relevant proposition. If every single combat encounter in your game consists of open combat to the death with little to no consequences for what environmental disruption you cause, then yes, melee is pretty much irrelevant, but then you're also playing a Tacticool game more than an RPG.

[WaterMage]

Melee in an RPG is viable even in an advanced firearms setting if the setting isn't simply open combat everywhere. In the real world, it's not generally appropriate to fire your gun in public, and will certainly draw unwanted attention. Nor should every conflict necessarily be resolved with lethal violence. Shooting and stabbing people in a bar brawl is generally very frowned upon. These constraints imposed on an RPG can easily make melee a viable and relevant proposition. If every single combat encounter in your game consists of open combat to the death with little to no consequences for what environmental disruption you cause, then yes, melee is pretty much irrelevant, but then you're also playing a Tacticool game more than an RPG.

Yes, but in RPGs, mainly fantasy ones, you are not dealing with humans. You are dealing with supernatural creatures like werewolfs when not something grotesque like an Nurgle spawn carrying all kinds of diseases. I'm not getting close to such abominations, I'm blasting it far away as possible, with guns, spells and artillery... In VtMB, melee is viable because we are talking about supernatural ultra strong and fast undead creatures

[Norfleet]

Yes, but in RPGs, mainly fantasy ones, you are not dealing with humans. You are dealing with supernatural creatures like werewolfs when not something grotesque like an Nurgle spawn carrying all kinds of diseases.

Honestly, whether or not firearms exist, I don't think you'd realistically want to be fighting something like that melee weapons ANYWAY. Hell, take the typical opponent of a generic fantasy RPG: A dragon. In a vidya game, you're typically hitting it with your sword until it dies. Visually, this looks manifestly stupid, because a dragon is ******* huge, and trying to stab it to death with your sword is like a squirrel trying to stab somebody to death with a toothpick. If you actually wanted to fight a dragon in a serious way, you'd be using siege equipment or at least a lance from horseback. You will notice in the movies, people do not fight dragons with their swords, because on-screen, it would look ******* ********. Even in VTMB, your choice of weapon for fighting a werewolf is not your gun, or a melee weapon, but a non-OSHA-compliant automatic door. Melee weapons and even firearms as we know them are meant for dealing with human-scale enemies. Against non-human-scale enemies, they are not realistically effective.

[WaterMage]

lee weapons and even firearms as we know them are meant for dealing with human-scale enemies. Against non-human-scale enemies, they are not realistically effective.

Disagreed. There are firearms made specifically for big game hunting or for dealing with armored vehicles, etc. For example, the Sharps rifle was made to hunt a buffalo at a very long distances. The US Army chose the .45-70 as the standard cartridge in 1873 precisely because it could reliably stop a charging horse in a single shot. I doubt that an world of darkness werewolf could survive an hit in the face from a .50 BMG silver bathed round. No one will pick an .32 Short Colt gun to hunt werewolfs.

[Norfleet]

Disagreed. There are firearms made specifically for big game hunting or for dealing with armored vehicles, etc. For example, the Sharps rifle was made to hunt a buffalo at a very long distances. The US Army chose the .45-70 as the standard cartridge in 1873 precisely because it could reliably stop a charging horse in a single shot.

"Animals" qualify as human-scale targets on the upper ends, yes. Anti-materiel rifles, on the other hand, are more in the classification of "heavy weapons". Certainly they're as clunky or more so than something like a Javelin. These are more equivalent to siege weapons. You do not carry them around on your back ready to fire like a common assault rifle and use them in random firefights that break out with human enemies.

[Tinky Winky]

Tacticool game more than an RPG.

Jagged Alliance 2 is a better RPG than 99% of scifi and fantasy slop though.

[Norfleet]

Funny thing is that in vanilla JA2, melee is a requirement and dominant, otherwise you get practically no loot since enemies drop basically nothing if shot to death. To get loot, you must sneak up on every enemy and pummel them into unconsciousness with your bare hands. Having thus established this meta, guns are actually useless. I didn't really thus warm to the gunplay in it until 1.13.

[TKVNC]

Guns are great. But I find mid 17th century blackpowder guns very kino.

I also like modern guns. So really it depends on the setting.

[Norfleet]

Coherence and relevance to the setting is more important than what kind of guns there are. Worth nothing, however, is that modernesque guns are the easiest to do WRONG, as modern weaponry has very poor game balance, and attempts to force them into a game balance mold typically results in weird jank.

[TKVNC]

Coherence and relevance to the setting is more important than what kind of guns there are. Worth nothing, however, is that modernesque guns are the easiest to do WRONG, as modern weaponry has very poor game balance, and attempts to force them into a game balance mold typically results in weird jank.

Truly the best way to put things into a game is authentically. I think guns that effectively one-shot are good. You learn to play around it, rather than bullet-sponging everything.

[Norfleet]

Truly the best way to put things into a game is authentically. I think guns that effectively one-shot are good. You learn to play around it, rather than bullet-sponging everything.

The catch is that handling that requires that the game be specifically balanced around it: If guns are effectively one shot, they need to be sufficiently impactful to justify that, able to kill or severely injure an opponent in that one shot. If they do 1d10 damage to an opponent with 200 HP, this is effectively meaningless. All ranged weapons, really, are sensitive to this kind of thing. Whereas melee weapons resolve themselves into DPS, ranged weapons are highly dependent on stopping power for their value: Will they be able to actually win the fight while it is still an actual ranged battle, or do they do an insignificant fraction of damage before the battle inevitably devolves into a melee anyway? Nowhere is this more apparent than if you only get one shot.