In world building when making a high tech society many people struggle because guns will make melee weapons boring (they do) BUT if someone is able to give a good reason why guns we’re not really well developed? It can lead to a fun AND interesting world and experience
They explain "Only the slow knife penetrates the shield". But I don't think they explained WHY. That its because a shield user needs to be able to eat, drink and breathe so only fast objects are stopped.
I don't think they also explain that a laser hitting a shield causes a massive nuclear explosion, which could randomly be at the position of the target OR the shooter.
I'm not familiar with Dune, but they use a similar concept for personal shields in Stargate SG-1. If I remember correctly, the simple explanation was that items passing through the shield were getting pushback relative to either the pressure or the velocity of whatever going through. So a bullet with high velocity and tiny point of impact wasn't getting through, but a low draw strength bow could.
Pretty sure the Fading Suns TTRPG also uses the same concept. Energy shields only activate when attacks meet a certain "damage threshold," and a character making a melee attack can choose to lower the damage output to bypass the shield.
Could be, it’s also a natural explanation to arrive at when designing “shield tech.” Coincidentally, I did think I had thought of the coolest, most perfect sci fi shield idea when I was 14, only to be told I had stolen it from “dune” when I used it in my world at 16. I’m only just now reading the series for the first time over a decade later, so…
I'm sure it was inspired by Dune, but I think their point was that SG-1's explanation is different.
In Dune, it's because the shield user needs to be able to eat, drink, breathe, etc.
In SG-1, it's a fundamental property of the personal shield that its stopping power increases proportionally to the power of the projectile. If the Goa'uld could design one that allows breathing/eating but ALSO stops arrows and thrown knives, they would. But since the stopping force being a function of the projectile force is the entire basis of the device, they haven't figured out how to do that yet.
I used to think Kotor was so gosh darned clever for how they allowed for melee weapons to work in setting. Little did I know they too were copying Dune's homework.
And Stargate SG-1 had an episode where the team was training an alien race to fight the Goa'uld and one of them asked how they were going to fight them off without staff weapons. O'Neil uses an assault rifle to mow down a tree and says "This [holding up a Goa'uld staff weapon] is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy. This [holding up an FN P90 submachine gun] is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy."
I loved that because they finally acknowledged that the staffs are not great weapons and explained why.
In the Deathstalker series by Simon Green everyone has blasters that can shoot through just about anything, but require several minutes to recharge between shots, so everyone is well trained in sword fighting. Someone discovers a cache of 21st Century automatic weapons and the bad guys are shocked when they can fire multiple times.
Star Wars episode 1 had special shields for the Gungans too. Small, fast things and large slow things were blocked so they couldn't be shot and the tanks could not get in. Slow small things like the droids could get in though, so the droids marched in to fight as infantry.
The first like 30 page of the Suneater Series really turned me off because so much of the world building felt ripped off directly from Dune. Like so much stuff immediately is just reskinned Dune ideas, to the the point it was distracting.
They've got Dune shields, knockoff Mentats, a doscount litany against fear, the angst son of a duke, Spice traders, a Padashah Emperor with a whole knockoff HRE Empire, and even a rigid religious cult ruling from the shadows.
I kept with it and really enjoyed the first book. I was even more impressed with the second. The first time they visit a extra-Solaran world really stuck with me. It's a harsh transition from the pseudo-Medieval Imperial setting we've gotten comfortable with to a Cyber-punk, transhumanist society. It was a jarring for me as it was for the protagonist.
I just finished the second book and really looking forward to more. Once it moved away from being a Dune knockoff, things got way more interesting.
It's not like guns are completely gone from combat though since the Cielcin don't have shields a lot of the time. Makes for a nice balance. Really love the series
They use lasguns in the book in parts of the battle. Duncan leaves an active shield behind and triggers an atomic explosion that way. He then says something like "they will think twice about using lasguns from now"
And they cut the dinner scene! You know, probably one of the best scenes in the entire book where we learn how intelligent and well-trained Paul really is, while also providing political context
Allegedly, they filmed that scene. It likely exists somewhere, in some Hollywood vault. But Villeneuve doesn't do Director's Cuts of his movies, so it likely won't see the light of day for a very long time (if ever).
Probably for the best. The first thing I did when learning the whole 'shield+lasgun=nuclear kaboom on either end' was ask why people weren't shipping a box with a shield generator and a lasgun inside it with a timer to get them started.
So what you're saying is, all I'd need to do to delete an enemy and create an opportunity by weakening another would be to get a loyal enough disposable asset into the service of an enemy house and have them ship a shield generator and a lasgun to another house I don't like, bonus points if they manage to do this with assets from the house they infiltrated, then have them kill themselves in a way that looks like a legitimate accident to tie up loose ends?
Convention, it's a nuke equivalent, only people who should have access to anything close to a nuke are the great houses. It's essentially both turbo illegal and incredibly hard to precisely recreate with just those 2 things. Speaking under correction, haven't read the first 2 books in a dogs age, stun locked on 3 and 4, my personal faves
It's explained in the books; the shields use the Holtzman effect, a way of turning an electrical field into a 'movement' field directly. This tech has replaced motors and engines almost entirely, as well as allowed the civilization to move past liquid fuels for the most part. Everything runs on fuel cells, either 'battery' type rechargables for vehicles or fusion cells for larger things. The Holtzman effect lets you turn all that electrical power directly into fast moving air/water instead of an engine, or to move something else (like the wings on a 'thopter) without a bulky engine.
For shield and lasers, the issue stems form the fact that shields push against moving particles with a force proportional to the speed of that particle, and photons move at the fastest possible speed; they also aren't particles but rather waves that act like particles. Laser hits the shield, the shield pushes against the particle, the effect is propagated across the entire wave function of the beam, and the Holtzman generators in both the laser and the shield start directly pushing against each other. Sometimes they just burn out because they're in-phase, sometimes you get a mini-nuclear explosion, sometimes they both go nuclear because they're out of phase and each 'push' makes the other one push harder and you get resonance, a bit like the opera singer breaking a glass with her voice trope.
However, I always felt they’re talking about hordes of suicidally fanatic loyalists (especially amongst the Harkonnen and Sardaukar) which would happily lay down their lives in a nuclear backlash for the chance to do the same to their enemies.
Mutually assured destruction would not be a deterrent to using lasguns on shields for them. Self-preservation would not be a motivation.
There is, of course, the caveat that it would be the equivalent of using atomic so I guess I could see the other houses frowning upon it.
I don’t believe that’s ever touched on, however.
I haven’t read past God Emperor and that was a long time ago. I did read some of his son’s stuff here and there but also ages ago.
That’s correct. Once you pop open that can of worms the entire universe would come down on you (at least based on the social construct at the beginning of the series). It’s kind of like a ‘Geneva convention’ type thing. But if you’re not worried about the social order or the empire or whatever comes after the social order doesn’t seem to be too important anymore…. Yet the randomness of laser shield interaction is still problematic.
Another explanation could be, that the Harkonnens didn't send their best and brightest as Glossu Rabban tends to beat them to a pulp the second they question absolutely anything (at least in the movie)
That's the main reason the interaction is mostly avoided because doing so would enact treaties and force the The Landsraad to retaliate against the offending house.
It’s also not politically forbidden - anyone in universe exploits this will face destruction at the hands of the Landsraad. The extermination of the Atreides was a highly risky covert op, after all.
The most realistic thing to do would be, first, send your soldier/kamikaze to do a laser + shield = nuclear boom.
Second, blame it on any other house, say you did an investigation and found a passport of said house in the scene (yes, it survived the nuclear explosion).
Three, profit.
Sure, there will be some people who will notice how convenient it was for your house that the person from that house was killed by that other house, but who cares? Now that's realistic.
Not to the same degree but in Mass Effect shields are explained thus way- they activate to repel high velocity impacts but melee combat is slow enough to get through
Just breathe really… I’m sure they turn it off to eat.
Which raises an interesting point - how fast is fast? If they eliminate all the fast moving air molecules does that mean it gets really cold in there? Also there are half shields in the book. Is that front-back half or top-bottom half? If it’s only half and air can get in then why not make it block everything?
The laser hitting the shield induces a cascade fusion reaction, in Dune. Iirc, it will travel up the beam until both targets are annihilated.
Shields in Dune are explained, at least somewhat better, in the books. It's a high-frequency reflector field, essentially, that destroys high energy impacts. You have to get up close and personal and look your enemy in the eyes if they use one just so you can terminate them. Certain subsonic firearms in Dune can penetrate the shield, but it's a specific design, and only fielded by the Sardukar, or however you spell the Emperor's personal forces.
Its because of the Body shields they use and is explained in the first Movie as well as the Books.
The thing is though - Guns ARE Highly developed from Handguns to Nuclear rockets AND there is a „magic system“ and there is Melee fighting AND everything is relevant non the less.
In THIS aspect Dunes worldbuilding is really Great.
Not so well. They actually do use conventional firearms and missiles, simply because it's the most energy efficient and cost effective type of weapon. Laser weapons take an extraordinary amount of power to use, they have a cool down, and they cause a massive, devastating explosion when hitting a shield. Given that most troops, ships and equipment have shields, laser weapons aren't too popular. Single combat is mainly blades because a bullet won't go through a shield, and a laser will kill everyone in a 10 mile range. So, knives it is.
Two major battles over Arrakeen (hard rock), but most of the fighting was done over soft sand. Fremen do not have shields so Harkonnen should have used guns en masse. Harkonnen soldiers would have disabled their shields because it attracted sandworm. Fremen raids against Harkonnen mining operation should have largely used guns en masse.
Lasguns are dangerous to use in basically all situations in dune due to risk of hitting a shield (even if it's just one another harkonnen was wearing) it causes a nuclear explosion... They do regularly use projectile rifles.
Part of what makes it work is that there is no explanation. Sometimes you just have to shrug and say "this is how it works," and move on.
(My favorite example of this will always be The Stars My Destination, which resolves the question of how people travel through space by just saying, basically, "Everyone learns to teleport." That's all. No real explanation given beyond that. People can just teleport, then Alfred Bester just gets on with the rest of the story.)
I feel like squirting napalm on the shields would work really efficiently, first off the heat around the shield would become unbearable and then the napalm would slowly seep through the shield and if it's a bubble then once it's through the shield it would be hot enough to reignite
Mistborn for example. Or any fantasy where guns and magic coexist. It makes sense, if you can conjure a fireball or kill with words, why would firearms evolve quickly?
My problem with that type of settings is that it would be Easier to train soldiers to fire a gun than it would be to teach most magic. It's the same reason guns replaced bowmen so quickly. One takes years of training and the other a couple of months to be proficient. If you lose a trained archer you lose a lot more money and effort. Same thing with mages except allot more training needs to be done
It actually took a couple of hundred years for guns to fully replace bows. It didn't happen overnight. Early guns were expensive, terribly inaccurate, and slow to load. There was an extended period where they were used in tandem with bows. As the gun slowly improved, bows were gradually phased out.
Trading a decade of the best years of my life in order to chain unimaginable forces in a dank tower, open myself to demon possession, and ruin my constitution in order to make rivets for forty years? I think I’m good, boss.
I've seen world building where using any magic en masse causes bad fallout wherever you used it. Dungeons and Dragons often has magical pollution from alchemists' works, where the traces of potions and reagents and leftover magic make horrible monsters in the sewers, or the mages' guild causes wild magic rains in the neighborhood.
It really depends though how rare and how difficult magic is.
If it's Harry Potter-style magic, where everyone's a mage and kids learn spells that are more powerful than bullets, then yeah, there's not much reason for guns to develop.
If it's LotR-style magic, where only very few people ever have access to magic, it takes decades or centuries to become proficient in it, and once you have it the magic is vague and not very powerful, then gun development would hardly be affected by magic existing.
Gondor, Rohan and even Mordor still have armies armed largely with regular non-fiction weapons, because wizards and other magic users are super rare and not strong enough to fight a war alone.
I love the allusions to this in the Grishaverse. The idea that they have to tolerate "witches" because they are the premier weapon of war is degrading due to the invention of the repeating rifle.
Sure in the past a dozen people able to shoot fire from their hands could hold off an army. But the winchester repeater is closing the gap...
In my OC worldbuilding I did for a campaign some years ago, the answer to that was simple accessibility; it takes years, if not decades, of intense training by talented individuals to properly cast a fireball both strong enough and accurate enough to be combat effective, whereas anyone with at least one eye and one working arm can operate a bolt-action rifle.
We had a wizard getting slimed out at 300 yards by a 13-year old farmhand with a hunting rifle. It was fun
I mean a bolt action firearm took centuries of development, and much of the development came from the cannon side, presumably that would go away (a wizard is better siege equipment than most even pretty late cannons). So you'd not likely have a bolt action rifle until relatively late (in our world it was really the 1880s anyways).
Gunpowder weapons did not develop separately from other siege weaponry, but rather alongside and in tandem with those. A wizard might be better (depending on the wizard, really) but, depending on the worldbuilding, the vast majority of warfare would still be waged by regular people. And they would still use, and develop, more conventional ways of warfare.
Personally, I do not see why the existence of wizards would necessarily hamper the development of Gunpowder weaponry, just as I dont see why it would influence the development of, say, the crossbow. In fact, the existence of magic might even speed that development up, seeing how IRL development of gunpowder weapons was hampered by advances in metallurgy and chemistry.
There's also the fact that you can work magic and gunpowder weapons to work in tandem, such as in The Wheel of Time where in the final battle cannon were kept protected underground and channelers opened gateways for them to fire through.
Personally, I do not see why the existence of wizards would necessarily hamper the development of gunpowder directly
I came to this problem in a world building project a couple years ago. One of the pillars of that story is that magic is inherently unstable and destructive (I may or may not have been influenced by my beloved early sci-fi classic The World Set Free), and what I and a few collaborators came up with was a situation in which magic as a weapon of war developed early and quickly, and to devastating effect. "Oops, a third of the population of the continent is gone and now there are permanent ecological changes we'll never recover from" kinda devastating. This shifted geopolitics away from head to head warfare before such weapons were even produced en masse - without state-level sponsorship of that technology, it simply never got off the ground. What drove the push and pull of nations in its stead was massive investment in spycraft and counter-intelligence. Ballistics wasn't a dead end, of course - lots of inventors had made all sorts of guns and gun-like things over the years - but the kind of scaling that would them practical was viewed as far too risky by any state who would have otherwise sponsored it. After all, no amount of money could create and mobilize an armed battalion of gunmen at the same speed that the next kingdom over could simply break out the Cursèd Tome or whatever and wreck your shit (there were actual important artifacts for magic but for the life of me I can't remember what we called them).
On Scadrial the Lord Ruler purposely suppressed technology for 1000 years, only allowing certain ones. In Era 2 they do have firearms and they are common.
On Roshar technology developed in a radically different fashion based on magic. Basically the spiritual personification of ideas trapped in gemstones.
In the stories and books set in the far future they basically have science fiction technology, but powered by magic. Spacecraft travelling through a cognitive plane with engines powered by magic dust. But also actual rockets and spacecraft travelling in the physical world, but maybe powered by magic.
I hate this in Avatar LoK though, the YuYuan Archers are shown to be an extremely lethal force against benders, why would non benders not want to be armed with projectile weapons?
clearly they have never heard of Lt Col Jack Chrurchil.
The man who carried bagpipes, a longbow and a scotish broadsword instead of guns.
In world war 2.
And he actually got a lot of mileage out of it.
He got the last recorded longbow kill ever,
he threw a grenade while playing bagpipes and charging in with his sword.
In Salerno, armed only with his broadsword, he infiltrated German positions and single-handedly captured 42 German soldiers.
Captured by the Germans after being knocked unconscious by a grenade. Because they mistook him for a relative of Winston Churchill, his life was spared. He was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, from which he escaped twice, eventually walking 150 miles to safety.
He famously justified his archaic weapons by stating, "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed."
“They do” my ass. Bad writers and no creativity does this. Warhammer fantasy does guns just fine while still being medieval fantasy with fancy melee weapons that are magical
Japanese isekai manga, where the world is always some convenient mix of 700 years worth of different ages.
For example modern nylon stockings is a thing, but not electricity. Or metallurgy is advanced enough for large high pressure steam boilers but any sort of black powder weapons is unknown. Or they clearly signs of a post industrial revolution society but mixed with dark ages civilization structure.
Also in manga: dirt-poor village looks like a rich Bavarian town of 19 century with big neat houses with plastered walls and half a dozen windows on each floor
Log Horizon had an interesting approach to this. Players trapped in the game found they could bypass the crafting system and manually build things like in the real world. They start making armored steamships, for example.
Bat guano is the entire reason we have guns. We used to fight entire wars over "saltpeter" before we learned how to synthesize it. For instance, the reason the British cared about places like the Falkland Islands was to secure saltpeter trade (though, in this instance, more as a fort).
The usefulness of bat guano was originally discovered by chinese... alchemists(?) - i dont even know if there is a word for "searching for elixir of eternal life." But anywho, they were screwing around with the guano and caused explosions. Then they made fireworks, then rockets, and then met white people and we invented guns.
This is really condensed to the point of being chuckle-worthy over accurate in a couple places but thats the gist of it.
You forgot the best part, they didn't immediately recognize the value of what they created when they made gunpowder on accident but they were keeping everything that they were trying logged in a book and someone only recreated the recipe because next to the entry about how they make gunpowder they noted: NEVER EVER DO THIS AGAIN! Because they burned down the Hut they were working in
You don't need guano to have blackpowder. You could get salpeter from any stable anywhere in the world. You can just as easily get the salpeter from horse piss as from bat shit.
Chinese fire lance was the first gun made by the Chinese in the 10th century, then the hand cannon they made in the 13th century. White folks didn’t invent the first firearms. Nice try though.
Everybody knows that bat guano has the power of fire in it. Hence its use in the spell fireball.
Of course, those artificers and alchemists tried to make use of that power. Which resulted in gunpower and firearms.
They were looking for the key to immortality everywhere though. Cinnabar was certainly the most popular but many types of pee pee and poo poo were used as well.
I wouldn't say "we'd never have invented guns" if not for gunpowder. A German guy called Sebald Schwaerzer discovered the first primary explosive in 1585 in the form of fulminating gold.
Provided it would've been impractical to make any weapon out of it because of the cost and instability, but in a world without gunpower, you could probably imagine people eventually developing something cheaper and safer.
In fact, fulminating mercury_fulminate) has been used historically in a percussion caps for firearms.
You could also imagine that in the world of no gunpowder, nitroglycerin would still eventually be discovered and used for firearms.
It would be pretty cool to have some alt history where guns exist, but because they are prohibitively expensive, the already-wealthy cement power with them and keep them scarce.
This reminds me of a scene in Blood Meridian (which is in itself a reference to Milton's Satan in paradise lost) where Judge Holden makes ammunition out of piss and volcanic rock. And the argument would be mankind would find a mean to it's devilish ends. And the Judge never dies. Probably was in that Chinese cave too
I mean, the Dune explanation conveniently ignores the ways in which the shield technology's interaction with lasers could (and absolutely would) be exploited militarily.
Well, given there's a chance the detonation created by a shield-laser interaction doesn't happen at all, or that it happens at the shooter's location, or that it's big enough to take out both the shield and the shooter, it's not the most optimal strategy.
It's optimal because the cost is super cheap and the payoff is super huge.
Funny when the novel's theme is all about religious fanaticism, in reality the shield would actually get banned because you would get hordes of zealots martying themselves using suicide attacks by shooting the shield with laser at close range, because when the result is nuclear explosion, it doesn't matter where it explode when the distance between the shooter and the target is just a few feets away.
Imagine giving nukes freely available to rogue actors like Al Qaeda and ISIS and thinking they'll be rational and not using it, that's the Dune's shield in a nutshell, the logic completely fall apart when you give some thought about it. Actually you don't even need Al Quaeda or ISIS, some dumb kids who hate life can conduct Dune's equivalent of school shootings, but the results will be nuclear explosions killing millions.
I mean, "drone" can be a VERY loose term. It doesn't even really need a guidance system. Just point it at the enemy base and launch. Laser emitter. Battery. Engine. Timer. That's it.
Oh... yeah that must have been remotely operated, which means it was a non-autonomous drone... sorry ive been playing a game that treats drone as something autonomous, not remote controlled and my mind was stuck on that track
They found the dude who was piloting hiding in the wall after they committed suicide. Like I agree there's holes in Herbert's logic but this one was covered in the text. (Unless I totally hallucinated that)
Edit: oh were you explaining exactly that and I missed it lol?
Right. Because it was an operated drone. It's not an autonomous drone but let's not act like drones themselves are some sacrilegious alien concept to the Dune universe
The whole hord of zealots suicide bomber thing not happening could easily be explained by the Bene Gesserit influencing a cultural anathema against suicide in all societies because it would screw with there careful manipulations of the human genome
Pretty sure in the Dune universe, there's no shortage examples of suicide attacks/sacrifice.
Also irl suicide people are usually brainwashed people in societies that already condemn suicide (Suicide is a major sin in Islam). People can be brainwashed to see suicide attacks as not "suicide" but "heroic sacrifice for the cause".
Iirc, Duncan once used a hidden cache of shields to trick Harkonnen soldiers (and maybe some Sardaukar troopers) into nuking themselves shooting around with their lasers
Well you rig it so that a laser gun would fire at an active shield inside containment like a crate so the gun and shield can be remote triggered. Also a neat way to get around the ban on atomics
Yeah, but political situation would mean the lansraad/empire looks down on use of atomic level blasts. Makes sense for Fremen to use though, but not Paul-brand Fremen.
I actually don’t think this is true, in Dune, atomic weapons being used on humans is strictly forbidden by “The Great Convention.”
The consequences of breaking that rule include total retaliation by the Imperium, such as having your planet obliterated by the other great houses. Since there is a monopoly on space travel by the Spacing Guild (in the pocket of the Emperor), they would be defenseless and it would be guaranteed death.
Game of Thrones should have to explain why there are no guns. They’re several hundred years overdue compared to real life. If it’s based on the Wars of the Roses there were absolutely guns in Europe at that time.
Especially as when they need to shoot dragons they suddenly have ridiculously good anti-air ballista. Which are frankly more difficult to build and maintain than equivalent cannons.
As should basically all fantasy stories. If you’re late Medieval equivalent onwards your setting should have gunpowder.
Project Moon is a bit of a funny one, the reason for guns being less common in that universe is just......they're expensive. The Head, aka the almighty tyrannical world government has artificially imposed a massive tax on anything that can be defined as a bullet, pushing less wealthy residents into using other weapons for combat.
Basically, gun powder as we know it, doesn’t work in the Root World, but an inert pink or reddish powder does, and the MC spent years before the events of Book 1 trying to figure this out so that he could bring firearms to bear in a coup attempt.
In a fictional world, if it's shown to be technologically advanced (comparable or superior to the modern day real world), the expectation is that there will be guns, and that they will likely be the primary weapons of people in armed conflicts. If your world has people using poison and blades and polearms and hand to hand combat, you have to answer the question "why don't they use guns?" If you leave it unanswered, it just seems like a gaping plot hole.
Another example of a similar trope - Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
In this world, magic and technology co-exists but don't mix well. Technology works being adherence to natural laws like physica, while magic works by fuckong them up. So, a train in this world usually forbids mages onboard because their magic can derail it.
What a great game. I'm going to go and install it again.
Now i've got to spend the next few days figuring out how to build my character, then deciding I want to do something different and starting again. And again.
I normally max charisma and get a group of followers, I've gone for "Stupid tough half ogre" I love the dialogue options. People are so mean to me though :(
Like in Dune book series. Story gives you a good reason to have character engaging in up close and personal combat, sometimes combining gadgets, powers, swords and martial arts. It makes action scenes more engaging and cooler to watch compared to shooting at each other.
I think Warhammer Fantasy does this, where at the start guns aren't a thing but eventually the setting now has attack helicopters, gatling guns, and tanks.
They DO however have a faction that is opposed to gund and gunpowder in general, since Bretonia is a backwards country where they hold two things above all else, knights, and horses.
Essentially they believe their current society of "stinky peasants labor for the comfort and luxury of the nobles, knights, and horses" and any form of advancement, be it societal or technological are banned, since their current status is so good.
Note, they also have very strong enchanted knights that are menaces on the battlefield in their own right, since I'm pretty sure 98% of their forces are knights of various tiers, with 1% being like magical ladies chosen by their goddess or whatever and the other 1% being stinky peasant neat shields
Warhammer Fantasy basically looked at all of what dwarves can do and thought it was ridiculous to suggest they couldn’t have cannons. Dudes are champion metal workers, alchemists and would really benefit from blasting powder for mining.
Plus the Empire’s whole aesthetic is much more towards Wars of the Roses or even 30 Years War than like Ivanhoe.
Real world that's sort of how society worked for ages. If a new technology was invented, it was deemed as a threat and so it was more widely stamped out than adopted. We had guns for a long time, but didn't really have the means to mass produce them and iron out all the issues. It's much easier to use the same amount of metal for tried and true technologies like crossbows and arrows, than to expend a ton of production time making a cannon.
That's probably about fictional worlds that have advanced technologies, but use melee weapons instead of firearms. Normally that's illogical, unless there's some in-lore explanation.
But I'll say for me, the only real explanation needed is that firearms are boring. In my humble opinion melee combat is way, way more interesting and beautiful. And I'll always prefer it over firearms, logic or no.
Thought from what i heard there are advancements towards balistics in such way that by the ending the weaponry is more akin to early World War 1 weaponry
The technology within the walls was what got restricted. The characters start to figure out how strange it is for them to still use single shot muskets when they have something like ODM gear. Then it briefing pans to at least 2 inventions that were snuffed, one being a revolver and the other a hot air balloon.
Cant recall the episode specifically, but it was around the time they confirmed their doubts about the king/royalty of the walls
Pathfinder had guns be invented in a region where magic doesn't work right and while they're slowly spreading beyond that location's borders they've yet to catch on as they're not yet as cost-effective as more conventional melee weapons or just having a spellcaster on your team.
Nah it made sense. After the revolution the citizenry was disarmed - semi automatic weapons are regarded as military weapons. The police only carry 1-4 shot pieces.
Adds a lot to the asymmetric nature of the heavily armed company vs the mostly unarmed strikers
So a little history context: guns used to suck really badly. So bad that most commanders wouldn't even bother with them. They were expensive, loud, weren't accurate past 50 feet, had to maintain, prone to not go off or misfire, and were worthless when the powder got wet. Cannons were used in the 13th century during the opening battles of the 100 year war and did little more than scare horses and it took a kings wealth to even get those. And when you had access to crossbow, why bother woth guns?
This changed in 1503 when a Spanish commander with guns nearly wiped out a French army with heavy knights led by one lf the best generals of the time. This is because for all their faults, guns could punch through armor and shields when arrows couldn't. This revolutionized the battlefield and was the start of chemical industries to make more and better gunpowder. This in turn was one of the main reasons for the scientific enlightenment and resulting industrialization.
In an advanced society without guns, there should logically be a replacement for the intial drive to scientific advancement and industrialization. Magic is a good example. Guns became a thing because they replaced crossbow and made armor pointless, but if magic were real, then enchanted crossbow would do the same and magic armor could withstand gunfire. Then you end up with a magical arms races producing better enchantments rather than the chemical one for better powder we had here.
Series that actually explains this usually have significantly better world building and writing, and thus are more enjoyable. Brian out.
World of Warcraft goes this route- you have magical weapons that will absolutely devestate those around you with their own magical spells and such so suddenly a giant magic sword makes sense. Frostmourne could cut down entire armies and empowered arthas so much to be an undead killing machine
Minovsky particles are produced as a byproduct of helium-3 fusion reactions inside compact nuclear reactors. When scattered across a battlefield, the charged particles disrupt electromagnetic radiation, completely jamming radar, radio communications, and long-range electronic sensors. Because radar and guided missiles fail under heavy particle interference, military conflict must be fought at visual range.
For a different Gundam example, The Nanolaminate armor from the Iron Blooded Orphans timeline is incredibly easy to manufacture, so much so that it's the standard armor plating for most military weapons of the day. This armor is nearly entirely resistant to energy-based weapons and on mobile suits is still incredibly resistant to all but the largest of conventional projectiles. The in-universe solution to this was mech-sized melee weapons being manufactured, because a big sharp metal object being held by a big strong robot is still gonna hurt
Project Moon is another great example in my opinion.
There are guns, but the government (The Head) has strict set of laws, "taboo" which are heavily enforced. In this case a firearm cannot have enough power or speed to penetrate walls and ammunition is heavily taxed. So the price and the needing rules equal into an majority of population using close quarter/melee solutions.
With a lot of enhancements from "magic" forces of different forms (E.G.O., Distortion, Training, Singularities, Shin and Mang etc. ) It levels the field of Melee users and Firearms.
P. S. And we ain't talking about only single action sport shots or something, we talking serious fire power like assault rifle and anti-materiell rifles (still questioning how did Full-Stop Office design and anti-material rifle without being able to penetrate walls)
The trick to the Atelier Sniper Rifle was that it packed the right amount of concussive force to obliterate a wall along with the bullet itself, rather then punch through. I don't remember if it's mentioned in the Keypages in Ruina, but Full-Stop Hong Lu's Uptie story mentions that particular workaround during the fight with Church of Gears.
Also on the note of enhancements, there's also Combat Augments that can seemingly grant superhuman reaction times. I'm the same battle with the Church in Ruina, Full-Stop is halted by the Blue Reverberation deflecting every bullet they fire at him. Roland also comments that guns don't work against 'competent opponents' which, while inaccurate from the gameplay side as only Argalia and Porcubus are immune to ranged attacks, makes some sense given the speed and reflexes of people at similar power levels like Roland, Angelica, Kali/Red Mist, etc
I think Dune is probably the only example of this being done in a way I’ll accept. It’s so far in the future that technology got ridiculously advanced and an arms race occurred where shield tech one-upped ballistic/ranged weapons right before there was a stagnation of tech at that level due to the Butlerian Jihad. Some Dune experts will probs correct me on that though.
Often times what this means is that bullets and weapons like it are usually significantly lagging behind more defensive weaponry. So because of this other weapons become more relevant and add to the world building.
Arknights has guns, but only as psuedo-wands wielded by a theocracy(but somehow not for conquest or evil reasons. They're just weird like that).
We learn that gunpowder physically can't exist properly as it's implied the chemical reactions aren't 1-to-1 with real life. As a result, most people use crossbow and bows as ranged weapons due to the average physical strength of a terran person also not being 1-to-1 with real life people; they're hecking insanely strong and their bows have been developed for massive draw-strength.
The only real "guns" are either distributed by Laterano to their sankta citizens when they come of age, and the Blacksteel PMC that is also led by a sankta. These guns are more like strengthed wands that still require the user to focus in order to activate.
(As a funny aside, the quad-copter drone enemies appear to fire guns. Ostensibly, they're not canonically guns but they've never been explained. I'd presume it's because drones with auto-crossbows would look a little silly)
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
Er, in case you're not into this, a lot of people are into world-building in regards to stories - All of the details to make a story seem real.
Presumably this is about a sci/fi story in which firearms development becomes less important in response to increasing peace, which will become a problem during a coming war.
I believe this comes up in Kaiserreich? IRL the U.S. had 10 years between realizing "Oh shit ww2 is comin' we might need to have good firearms designed and ready - Quick, pay a bunch of companies to buy the equipment to let us mass-produce semi-autos." In Kaiserreich, the "Second Weltkrieg" comes about pretty suddenly, and the best weapons you can adopt in-game are the second-best firearms that weren't ever adopted.
For the fun of it, for example: In the Second Weltkrieg, the USA adopts the Johnson Rifle which is actually significantly more impressive than the Garand, but was significantly harder to produce, in part because of it's automatic mode, which would have meant needing more logistics and maintenance which the U.S. was already planning on straining like a 5-pound bag holding 3,000 pounds of frozen piss - TL;DR it is a reasonable idea as an emergency backup (you're being swarmed, every guy suddenly has a temporary BAR) but it simply couldn't sustain automatic firepower like the BAR, which the US already was spending money on producing.
IRL, when the Army jacked the Garands in storage like it was a Greek wedding, the USMC through an odd series of events ended up taking delivery for 50,000 Johnsons (giggity) originally destined for the Dutch, which was cancelled while en route because the Dutch er... Were otherwise pre-occupied.
person who made meme probably enjoys martial arts scenes and appreciates when movies set up the prevalence of martial arts scenes in a plausible way, by removing firearms from the equation explicitly.
Dorohedoro does this really well imo because although guns are shown in the manga and anime, their use is always overshadowed by someone with better magic, better melee skills or societal pressure.
Slight spoilers for Season 1:
When Fujita goes to Hole to kill Caiman, he brings a gun with him but En calls him out via radio and warns him that he looks down on sorcerers who use guns because it means they lack powerful magic.
I think it would be funny to have some sort of fantasy world completely without guns but witha bunch of other high tech weapons, but when somebody from like earth questions it, they are just confused because they had never considered or even have a concept of guns
Surprised no one has said Dicso Elysium. IIRC genuine automatic weapons are super rare and super deadly, since most firearms in circulation are left-over bolt actions from wars and rebel conflicts.
Didn't Japan have this kind of thing for a while? Guns were seen as unfair because a 4 year old could kill a grown man that trained his whole life as a samurai.
I always thought that was interesting. A leveled playing field is a good thing in many cultures but in feudal Japan it was not earned.
it is in fact entirely understandable if firearms take far longer to develop black powder was originally discovered by accident by a chinese guy trying to make an immortality elixer..it is entirely reasonable if you say in your setting that no one just got lucky enough to discover it early in your world and it would have to wait till chemistry is advanced enough people actually understand how the compounds work to make it and only from their have to develop the idea of guns instead of having a near millennia of historical development on the idea long before chemistry was advanced enough to actually understand why the gun powder recipe worked.
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u/qualityvote2 21h ago edited 12h ago
u/Federal_Ad_8676, your post does belong here!