"Alternatives to gunpowder?" Topic

I'm running a fantasy campaign based very loosely on the early Italian Wars period, and want to introduce "gunpowder" type weapons, without using gunpowder. I want a very limited supply of these weapons, so that those who have them need to be careful in using them, and those who don't are apprehensive of facing them, and want to capture them for their own use. The problem is, I haven't thought of a really good alternative to gunpowder. The explanation that dwarves (or any other race) has special access, manufacturing techniques, etc., doesn't quite sit well, since there is nothing preventing other peoples from acquiring the technology and using it. "Gunpowder", or whatever it ends up being called, should be impossible to recreate independently, so it remains a manageable, but on occasion a decisive, part of the campaign.
I'm hoping that others have dealt with this in a more imaginative way than I seem able to, and can give me some suggestions. Thanks in advance.

The Austrian army had a small number of air rifles during the Napoleonic era.

You could do "gunpowder" weapons but have the ingredients be very rare. Perhaps the active ingredient is dragon dung. That might be difficult to acquire on a regular basis.

"Something other than gunpowder" is still gunpowder by another name.#

H. Beam Piper probably had the "best" way to handle it in the "Gunpowder God" (i.e. Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen). A priest of a minor god discovers gunpowder. They quickly realize they can corner the market by declaring that the explosion is created by "demons" and only they have the spells/prayers needed to dispel the demons after they are released (explode).

As the only suppliers of the "fireseed" they quickly become rich and powerful. Anyone using "unconsecrated" fireseed are quickly put on the "short list". They no longer can get legitimate supplies of fireseed and the church declares a jihad against them.

# Old George Carlin joke: You can't fool me, "Shoot" is "Sh#t" with two O's.

I'm assuming you have mages and other magic users so what your asking for is a sort of magic projection device that normals can use. So if you want to keep the rifle part and fuel it with magic imbued magic stones or gems.

You can think a bit further outside the box and just try to come up with an over powering force mechanic that has the same function of gunpowder. In Thor 2 they had guys that cut themselves and inserted magic rocks to transform them into corrupted warriors who are basically suicide troops.

Maybe a similar gem device that had limited power and could be used to cast a single spell a few dozen times and special elite soldiers carried them into battle. This would give the same feel as say flame throwers or Anti-Tank weapons in WWII. Only carried by a few specialized soldiers but game changers in the right situation. Make them out of rare material like in FF7. Magicite sorta stuff that can hold magic power and mages have to charge them up before battle.

Make it like Star Wars Jedi. There are few people with special powers capable of constructing and utilizing such a weapon. These are not mages because their power is specific.

I was in an rpg once that used Mage Shot, same as gunpowder but the stuff was extremely corrosive to metal.
You could carry it around in a leather pouch but once you loaded it into a gun it began eating the barrel away, meaning you had to load just before you fired and had only so many turns before the gun became useless so at the end of the battle you needed a new gun.

The Fantasy Trip had an idea you can use. Gunpowder exists just like on Earth today but there is a microbe that loves the stuff and makes it go boom prematurely (or not fire at all) most of the time. Just add a special spell, that only Dwarves know, which makes it less accident prone and voila.

You can also keep in mind the Author C Clark quote about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

I'm thinking that Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series had some alchemists develop a magical gun propellant to fight against the heroes (who, IIRC, had introduced gunpowder to the world. As well as constant-flow toilets). Naturally, the magical propellant was harder to obtain (and use) than gunpowder, but the secret of gunpowder was for a time kept private by the heroes and their allies.

After all, once you *know* the components of gunpowder, it's not hard to make… but if you don't know, how easy is it to guess what they are? Especially in a world that probably hasn't developed much in the way of the Scientific Method…

You can also keep in mind the Author C Clark quote about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

And Howard Tayler's maxim that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a really big gun.

Harry Turtledove's "Darkness" books which are a fantasy analog of WWII had rifle like sticks that projected something like a D&D magic missile. There were various ways of recharging them, one of which involved using a human sacrifice.

As an aside, I normally like Turtledove, but I couldn't make it through the second book of the series.

Also, in Steven Brust's Phoenix Guard books, they had things called flash stones, which was a rock with a magic charge that did damage similar to a pistol.

David S.

Maybe lightning in a bottle?

Lightning Pirates from Stardust, 2007.

Ron

Privateer Press uses 'blasting powder' which comes in red and black parts. You mix the two together and they blow up, pushing a metal slug down range. It's still basically gunpowder by a different name.

Exalted uses 'firedust' which doesn't blow up, it sprays fire. Very limited range, 8 yards for a flame piece (pistol), 10 yards for a firewand (long gun).

Spring guns or air guns are a very good option if you want a historical version. In fact, the Italian Girandoni air rifle is frighteningly powerful. 30 round magazine repeater, just as powerful as a .46cal muzzle loader but no smoke cloud. Very complex to make. link

Fairy dust, touched off with a tiny, tiny drop of the liquid that dragons turn into their flame breath (the theory being that two disparate types of magical materials don't like to mix, and become quite disagreeable when they do so…)

(Note that both materials would also be very hard to acquire in any large quantity…. ;-)

Thanks, all, some very good ideas there. I really like Dynaman's idea, but have never heard of The Fantasy Trip. Is it a novel?

The Fantasy Trip:

link

Broken Blade, a manga turned into six anime movies, has an interesting idea. Magic users can manipulate quartz: they can make a small crystal float by the age of two, can use it to project their voice, can power vehicles, and built kinetic rifles that shoot quartz bullets (that are pyramid-tipped cubes).

Of course, everyone but the protagonist is a magic user.

To add to Cyrus answer, I think parts of The Fantasy Trip are available as PDFs now. Most likely through Steve Jackson Games but perhaps through drive through RPG. Not really worth buying them just for the Gunpowder idea however. TFT was the core of what would later become the GURPS game system.

Outlaw Star caster gun, with shells

The 1998 anime Outlaw Star featured a weapon called a "caster gun", which used cartridges that contained encapsulated spells; the shells were numbered to identify which spell was in each. The user didn't have to be a sorcerer, one could just point and shoot. Many shells drained the user's vitality, so one couldn't just blaze away. Besides, most of the shells were very rare.

Ron

I favor the magic idea. The weapons work just like firearms but are in fact of a magical nature and therefor only mages who can harness that energy can produce them. The magic can also have a safeguard that only allows certain people to actually use them.

However another possibility is that whatever element is used in creating firearms in your world is only available in location X, conveniently controlled by the fact you want to have guns. Should this ground fall into enemy hands then they too can begin to research the properties of the element. Such research taking as long as you like; either so long that the original owner has time to take back the supply…or not.

Bob

One thing to consider, not all gunpowder is built the same. Early gun powder was crude stuff, not very powerful, had impurities that clogged your weapon, and didn't burn at a even rate (increasing miss fires and hang fires). It took several hundreds of years of trial and error to get the refined material (and since your errors tended to kill all those experimenting at the time, it was a slow process).

Michael Crichton's time travel book, Timeline, used that as a central theme. Travels go back to the 14th century and one uses his knowledge of making gunpowder to refine the crude stuff everyone was using, thus giving his side a distinct advantage. (By the way, except for the exposition about refining gunpowder, the book isn't really worth reading in my opinion).

There is also the RPG game FVLMINATA who's' central theme is that the Romans discover gunpowder, and it's control is not though gunpowder itself, but the process to make it. Only the priesthood knows the special rites and spells that apiece the god Vulcan into placing some of his power into the substance.

This get's glossed over in RPG's quite a bit.

On a different note, there was some old fantasy movie I remember where the elf had a rifle that used a special seed that was filled with gas, explosive, or something and he would use that as the charge for his musket and I think a special thorn for the bullet.

I really like the idea of common ingredients, which maybe explode when the average person combines them, but which dwarf magic changes enough to allow it to be used. And this way different dwarf holds, which are insular and secretive by nature, can have different effects. That opens up several possibilities to exploit in future game sessions.

What about those really odd vocalization explosions in the old 1980's Dune.

YouTube link

Youtube "the weirding way" if the link doesn't work. Could definitely limit who can use it if the triggering sound is sub-vocalized or involves some special combination of movements with sound (which I guess gets us back to something more like spell casting). :-)

The rarity of Caster gun shells is because they're old tech, not really used very much anymore. Phenomenally powerful, though.

I'm kinda leaning towards a 40k-ish knowledge of how exactly gunpowder works. All the 'Rituals' that go into making the stuff are really required safety prep, like wetted tools, etc.

You need one book. "Weapons &Warfare in Renaissance Europe "by Bert S Hall. This book explains the development of gunpowder in Europe and firearms also. Wonder why it took so long from the introduction of gunpowder until it became the main weapon used by armies several hundred years later? He explains it.

Simple answer is saltpeter supply. Outside of Spain the only natural occurring saltpeter is in India. It took several centuries before saltpeter manufacturing in Europe was able to reduce the price enough to make it economical to use.

So unless you are in the tropics sitting on natural occurring saltpeter, you need to be able to manufacture it. Your world could have a power located in the tropics using natural occurring saltpeter in their gunpowder. They have a monopoly on saltpeter so no one else can make any quantity of gunpowder.

The other option is to have a power that has mastered basic chemistry, has lots of horse urine and basic manufacturing. If I remember right it takes about a year for the whole process of making saltpeter. So it is something that limited it to only a few nations.

So it would not be odd at all that one power has gunpowder and others don't. There was a reason after all why musket armed Europeans went forth to slaughter those without gunpowder.

The rarity of saltpeter is a good rationale for the limitation, and also an explanation as to why dwarves might have gunpowder while other above-ground races might not— one of the greatest natural sources of saltpeter is bat guano! So a race that dwells in areas rich with natural caves, who are born miners, would have access to vast quantities of bat guano. I can also see how they might "accidentally" discover gunpowder, perhaps out of an effort to dispose of bat guano by burning it. A little charcoal to begin the rubbish fire, some rock chips from a sulfur deposit in the mine happen to be nearby, and "By the Hammer, did ye see that, cousin Bromli?"
"Aye, an' I did, cousin Galin. Let's do it again!"
And the rest (after several small explosions and some scorched beards) is history… or mythical history, at least.

I can also see how they might "accidentally" discover gunpowder, perhaps out of an effort to dispose of bat guano by burning it. A little charcoal to begin the rubbish fire, some rock chips from a sulfur deposit in the mine happen to be nearby, and "By the Hammer, did ye see that, cousin Bromli?"
"Aye, an' I did, cousin Galin. Let's do it again!"
And the rest (after several small explosions and some scorched beards) is history… or mythical history, at least.

Dear lord, I read that with a redneck accent and heard a "hold mah beer an' watch *this*," too!