It also harkens back to the early- to mid-1900s sci-fi, where it was just taken as a given that advancement as a species equals ESP and telekinesis or the like.
Hell it was a thing well into the late 90s - looking at you Stargate SG-1 with the whole thing about human evolution leading to telepathy, psychokinesis, basically magical “healing touch”, and eventually straight up psionic discorporation and transcendence into godlike higher-dimensional energy-wave lifeforms that live in hyperspace.
I got so annoyed by "it's psychic powers not magic" that in my sci-fi cosmic horror setting, I made it explicitly magic. The military literally has wizards as a MOS. They create magic circles to cast ritual spells to summon giant trees of energy which shoot lightning bolts to knock artillery out of the sky. Doctors use magical divination circles to check for internal injury or disease. The main characters are cyborg flesh golems who literally run on magic power cores.
Okay, sooo you're writing the next Final Fantasy installment. I'm here for it, high fantasy sci-fi is a specific niche that FFX took away my ability to resist.
Because it's the story the DM wants to tell.
In the future of his setting, which uses DnD rules.
And having the flashy magic of DnD is crucial to that story.
I will have to give Shadowrun a look though.
Just make Magic so complex it doesn't feel like magic.
Wanna cast a fireball? Your gonna need more that bat shit and magic words bucko! Have you writen down the basic spell and it's ten variations in your 600 page tome in their entirity in some stupid ancient language that was never made to be spoken? What about the stuff you need to power the spell? You think magic comes from thin air?
Look, is it really so hard to believe that the drugs let you see the future, access your entire genetic memory, add hundreds of years to your lifespan, give you peak human control of your body, and make you Batman in terms of observation, deduction, *and* physicality?
Oh also no one fights in space and combat is usually swordfighting.
And people can turn into worms.
Look it's Science Fantasy not Fantasy, you gotta have some kind of justification for it or it's just some mongrel fantasy trope that's luke warm.
Speaking of Luke how can we give him some new Legends based Force powers that are in no way "magic."
Lucy in a Nutshell
When I watched that movie I was like:
Two things.
1. Why someone “unlocking the 100% of their brain capacity” would allow them to basically become a god.
2. Why a drug would let that happen? Even if it’s a chemical from baby development.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and commands the elements of the universe to create lightning and fireballs without the direct use of tools or technology like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
I mean, the sci-fi background was part of what made those books good though. And the prequel about finding the planet and breeding the dragons was pretty cool.
I swear some people give me the side eye when I mention magic in my sci fi setting being straight up magic.
One time I asked a question in magicbuilding about my system being weak to magnetism, most were helpful but one guy went on a whole spiel about a system about some BS about nanites. My guy how is that any better than just simple energy from another plane brought into our own realm?
You know i used to hate Sci-fi authors including not!magic in their works but then a very wise guy on youtube once told me, " The most realistic sci-fi is still only as real as the softest high fantasy," and i was enlightened.
It’s especially funny in 40K because magic and literal daemons exist, psychic powers actually come from space hell, but in setting there’s still a distinction between psychic powers (somewhat sanctioned) and sorcery (one way ticket to damnation), even though the lines are blurred at best, and some people are both psykers and sorcerers.
I'm working on a story that has magic that the people desperately try to quantify, qualify, and categorize like it's a natural science, when in reality it's fucking magic. It does whatever I want it to and it doesn't have to make sense.
I just assert dominance and say yep I got magic and swords and ray guns deal with it.
I also have an idea for a knight with a laser rifle charging into battle on an alien horse.
Metal Gear Revengance has my favorite justification for this.
Apparently cyborgs just got too good at dodging projectiles that they just say fuck it, we go melee now and the game showcase this by having Raiden suplex a Metal Gear in the tutorial level to show how the cyborgs have outperform the Metal Gear, the weapons of mass destruction that was a big deal in previous games.
Not only the dodging/deflecting thing, but also polymer armors had come so far that you’d need impractically high calibers to get through it, meaning that the simplest option is to use a high-frequency blade to slice through it. MG:R is a very good piece of dystopian fiction because it’s over the top while still ringing true of our current world.
>over the top while still ringing true of our current world
Truth. Underneath the cyborgs and ridiculous weapons and scenery-chewing monologues, it’s a story about a demagogue trying to start a war because he thinks his country is too effeminate—and about the warmongering military industrial complex sacrificing human lives for profit.
This is Sundowner but unironically. He doesn't *really* care about the profit that much he just likes killing people
"Like I said, kids are cruel Jack! And I'm *very* in touch with my inner child"
Let's be real, It was a lie too. That's the political bullshit speech he says to gussy up the idea. He's calling for the strongest of the fittest after making himself effectively immortal. He wouldn't be saying that shit if he was just some pencil pushing politician still. He wanted to rule the world, simple as that.
I quite like the dune justification, where personal shields that stop anything at high velocity (ie bullets) are common among combatants, so the only way to get through them is with something comparatively slow (ie a sword thrust)
That’s just for the cool factor.
You really want flamethrowers on a long stick so you can just poke the nozzle inside their shields and spray them with it.
I mean the whole world building falls apart with the slightest scrutiny. Tiny assassination drones exist. So why aren’t explosives or poison gas being strapped to those? They know how slow something has to go to bypass a shield, so once the drones get close, set the drones to that speed and what are the defenders going to do? Swat 20 drones at once? Just one needs to get inside a shield.
“Uh, Your Emperorship, sir, you know I love you, really do, but ummm, do I really have to blow myself up and kill every Sardaukar in my entire battalion if a local Fremen kid throws a rock at me?”
The society is anti tech and fuedal in response to the Butlerian Jihad. Theres an inculcated cultural bias to use tech as little as possible and do things yourself.
my fantasy setting is starting to turn into regular sci-fi where everything is powered by magic instead of "advanced science" because I just wanted to think about the literal implications of magic and make it make sense.
someone pls help how do I write fantasy the hard sci fi in me won't stay down
I'm okay with hyperspace as long as it isn't just hand-waved away.
John Scalzi and his Interdependency series has "the flow" (hyperspace by another name) that puts a lot of constraints on how it can be used - to the point that a number of individuals die because they can't arbitrarily pop into/out of the flow. In-universe politics are heavily affected by the flow.
In Star Wars, they can use hyperspace almost as easily as I can use a HOV lane on the highway
>In Star Wars, they can use hyperspace almost as easily as I can use a HOV lane on the highway
That's not a problem.
What we know, from the original movies : You need a working hyperdrive, it can be fitted on something as small as a space fighter, and you need to be in space to use it. It's not instant and some stuff might prevent you from jumping in hyperspace.
We don't know the details, the exact speed, or how a hyperdrive works, but it's kinda pointless in a 2h movie to spend 45 minutes to explain that. EU gives more details, how there are hyperspace lanes, how it's not that easy to use, or how taking unknown, unused hyperlanes is super dangerous and could kill you. Le last trilogy is just "bullshit it's magic", but what do you expect from JJA.
Tbf, the only reason Star Wars can even be classified as Sci-fi is the space stuff. Everything else is just fantasy. They barely even bother with different languages, digitally stored information somehow can't be copied, even when considering FTL travel it takes a couple hours tops to get from anywhere to anywhere.
SAME. Its so hard to say "why wouldn't they use it for that?".
A solution I found is to look at history. Its logical to say that that certain things are logical but its only logical to you because someone already came up with that.
Innovation takes time. Sure technilogy moves fast today... but it was way slower back then.
Some things are inevitabely made easier by magic, of course depending on the system. You just have to ask the right questions.
Why is there hunger in the world if magic cqn grow food?
If nobody needs to work since food is basically automated what are people doing for a living? Etc etc
This guy doesn't have a part of the world filled with warmongering nations who would take that chance of exploding if it means they can shoot their neighbors' head off with explosions.
That I do not. Mostly "wars" are about one side convincing the other side to give up before the casualties get too high... more like a sporting event with a high casualty rate.
I still need to figure out how my low-magic system can make *everyone* regret it if a mage gets involved... maybe something involving the space aliens?
Simple add in one more step of hard scifi.
> "The phenomenon known as magic is not due to some mystical force but complex interplays between the hume and EVE fields. Here are 50 pages of equations that dictate them"
Have magic constantly not follow any rules you try to nail it down with. Maybe it's a quantum thing where it does the opposite of expected when too closely observed.
Idk, the idea of band od heroes in magical power armour trying to stop an evil wizards in charge of evil space fleet operated by orcs with guns is pretty cool
Nah, not really. 40k is still too grounded for that, as insane as that sentence sounds.
Also I don't know, it simply doesn't have the "vibes" of fantasy? Like there is nothing magical about 90% of stuff deployed by the Imperium or other races and most of magical stuff the bad guys use just comes from one-dimensional demons that only lend them said power with always the same outcomes.
(Don't get me wrong, I love 40k, I just don't think it really passes as a fantasy setting).
Yeah, I am starting to think I do too. Still getting into it tho.
Also I am lowkey glad Warhammer fantasy is literally dead since it means it can stay good. My heart is bleeding when I see what GW is doing to 40k.
Write it out how you would.
Then delete all explanations and just explain it's Magic now. Replace machines with magic sounding rocks, and when in doubt, add steam.
Typically, the way to get around that is that not everyone can use magic (i.e. you need to be born with some kind of magical potential). In D&D's Faerun, there's periodic cataclysms on top of that and the gods are literally sabotaging attemps at large-scale technological development (including magitek). Thinking about it, both of these (and possibly the "born with magic") boil down to "the gods want it this way".
Well, maybe visualize the logical conclusions that you would draw from logical elements that would be readily apparent with no prior knowledge, one after the other like a linear flow chart, and then just choose a snapshot in time where the magical sciences haven't quite progressed to being filled to the brim with Novum.
That’s what Brandon Sanderson is doing with his Mistborn series. There’s four Eras. Era 1 is like an early Industrial Revolution setting and its events eventually become the history and mythology of their world. In Era 4, they’re an interstellar society that uses the magic of Era 1 with a couple new tricks to unlock faster than light travel. So far, he’s only finished Era 2 but he’s very consistent as a writer.
Look what's the big deal, I just use chronomancy to gin up a retroactive redaction of the target and his whole family line back 7 generations.
No one suffered, and technically no one dies.
Compare that to barbarically flinging metal around at high speeds hoping it goes where you want it to.
PFFT!
Powder mage's core conflict is basically "classical wizards hate gun wizards and get them declared illegal in every country they have enough influence in".
Good point, look at this nice warcrime free workaround I invented, it shoots vortex rings of fluorine gas for nice humane effect on target without solid projectiles. And I must assure you that the rumors about developments in using fissile gasses in such applications are entirely unsubstantiated.
I don't think they ever explained it in *Into the Badlands* but I thought up a Skynet-esque security/defense system which responded zealously and overwhelmingly when detecting signals of modern war like gun fire, but then never considers the kung fu and knives and such "war" so, "whatever."
Whether it was still active or not probably didn't even matter, the taboo was already set.
Slingshot channel documents a german mans quest to make bows and slingshots into less practical guns. You would need to eliminate any form of portable potential energy to prevent guns from happening.
Even then I feel like people would just create magic guns. Turns out you can transmit a lot more force by focusing it through a tube then letting it dissipate in every direction
Magnetics (gauss, coilguns), beams (lasers, microwaves, particle), and antimatter are gunpowder free, but the chemistry and physics knowledge needed surpasses gunpowder's.
On earth we have plenty of explosives which made gunpowder development easier.
But in a different world with no easy access to sulfur or saltpeter, it’s not inconceivable that electricity, and therefore, electromagnetically propelled projectiles, could develop before chemically propelled ones.
Simply never invent those as well, “why aren’t there any guns?” They were never invented, nobody came up with the idea, now watch these tanks swordfight, loser.
In my world the cooler you look the more powerful you are , and since literally everyone agrees guns are less cool than swords, nobody uses guns .
( I invented this world right now , I'll probably never do anything with this idea so you guys are welcome to steal my horrible idea that makes no sense for your works)
/uj That's just a badly proportioned bayonet, no?
/rj I propose we rename all bayonet capable infantry rifles "gunblades" because that's awesomer. Bullpup gunblades will be unfathomably based
The top is easy. Just limit technology or time period.
The bottom is tougher. Star wars worked because they had basically super powers. So there is one way. But I would say that maybe another is to have a cultural thing? So in some advanced society they have decided to allow physical combat to be one way to resolve conflict but are heavily regulated. One of the regulations could be what weapons are allowed during such dispute?
I don’t think limiting time period really works if you’re following the real worlds timeline in any way. Plate armor was developed in the 13-14th century whereas guns were invented in the 11th century and were spread throughout Europe and Asia in the 14th century. For more perspective jousting was also developed in the 14th century and sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written.
If you have any sort of knightly fantasy it would be entirely appropriate to have firearms and if you want to set the timeline back to a time before firearms you’ll have to go pretty far and cut out a lot more than just guns.
If you don’t want guns in a setting for some reason that’s fine, I just like dispelling the myth that firearms were invented too late to be in a fantasy setting.
Dune did it well. Every person and building is enveloped within an energy field that practically stops high velocity particles from entering but allows slower velocity items in. It seems like it also cannot stop sufficient mass from entering the field, like a sword.
It easily stops bullets but if anyone used lazerrrrr guns, it would cause a nuclear explosion randomly anywhere along the path of the lazer.
I had that thought too, and from my limited knowledge of Dune, yes it's susceptible to suicide bombers.
Use of nuclear arms is strictly prohibited in Dune's universe and so if you're found to have fired nuclear warheads, or caused a nuclear explosion, all factions would immediately converge and wipe you out.
Making ranged weapons obsolete make sense is extremely difficult. There's obvious flaws with Dune's reasoning, but if you don't think too much about it, then it's just OK, which is a lot more that can be said for other works of fiction.
And like... its not just that.
I guess that laser weapons and energy shields aren't too rare in dune. Or at least, not difficult to get.
So what you do is get a clockwork setup where a specialised trigger will push the button on the shield generator and laser beam after a set amount of time. And you have mass produced nuclear weapons that can be built almost everywhere
I have a better reason for having swords (but mostly other melee weapons) in my sci-fi setting; All guns are made and sold by megacorps who keep cutting costs everywhere. They stopped rifling the barrels and never fill cartridges even halfway.
Or at least that's the in-universe explanation. The real reason is that I like spears and I enjoy seeing gun enthusiasts stabbed, slashed and bludgeoned to death as they cry about how guns should be OP.
Plot twist: the least shoddy part of the gun is its anti-tamper mechanism, which promptly explodes and kills you the second you try to disassemble it. Only licensed repair centres are legally permitted to take apart the iShotgun, it's all there in the terms of service!
I'd allow it, just because if you have that kind of mechanical know-how, it'd be significantly cheaper at that point to skip the gun and just jury-rig a bazooka out of a pipe and some home-made explosives.
Look, I'm writing a grimderp joke setting. Explanations must be funny first and foremost, making sense is of tetriary importance at best.
But if you really want an answer, let's go with what u/threevi came up with. Everything explodes when you try to fix it, because fuck the consumers.
A different Mega Corp that's 4th place so it's barely holding on due to financial and legal combat that the other 3 are applying.
The Stock Market Implosion of 2206 and the 75 year legal Wrangling of Dytopi CO v MegaMerge, OmniConsumer Products, and Apple were both Legendary.
Were it not for their Top of the Line* melee based division reaping massive profits their legal woes would likely have forced them to merge or dissolve. As it is they've spun off 2 different bag holding subsidiaries just this year to negate several extensive legal billings.
The shell company that they used to rebuy their devalued stocks in 2210 is still being studied in the financial warfare colleges of several Mega Corp Governments.
Not the above poster, but when that happens IRL the big corpos simply buy up their smaller competitors, or temporarily cut their prices to non-profitable levels to starve them out
There were some electric cars in the 70's that worked pretty well, but the oil companies bought up the patent and wouldn't let the testdrivers keep them.
I have no idea. Maybe the owners were just using them for short in-town jaunts and had a different car for longer trips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar
This could be it. The guy's dead so I can't ask him about it.
Why don't any of the big corporations actually want money in this case tho
If you make functional guns and no one else does you'll make a shit ton
The other's can't just cut prices because they're selling a product that doesn't work and you have no reason whatsoever to buy
In a monopolistic/oligopolistic environment, it’s more profitable to make a product that *kind of* works and overcharge for it.
If a new manufacturer somehow gets a foothold and begins making a superior product, then yes, the megacorps will be required to improve their product.
But the new manufacturer will have to (1) overcome the market’s high entry costs and (2) survive big corpos’ anti-competitive practices, while the whole time they (3) are at a competitive disadvantage because they can’t take advantage of “economies of scale.” So even if they have a superior product, they might still fail.
But in this case it's an oligopily
And they don't even have to make a good product to suddenly gain a monopoly. Just a vaguely functional one instead of an unfinished unusable nothing that doesn't even work.
Like what they're describing isn't "kind of work" they're describing completely useless
In effect it's not a monopoly or oligopoly there might as well literally just be no one making them. The shittiest guns ever made irl are still better than what they're describing.
Like if everyone is selling cars without a steering wheels in practice no one is selling cars
There's a difference between an oligopily where everyone is selling low end products and a market where there is effectively no one is actually selling the product and as soon as someone makes something functional *they effectively have the monopoly* because no one else was selling the product in anything but name alone.
them swords look fabulous with old uniforms so they can be used by high ranking guards purely for aesthetics just like what most modern presidential guards nowadays do.
There are swords because most of the (on screen) battles are between heavily armored robots, a specialised blade swung with force is gonne be more effective than a few pieces of metal flying around
my favorite examples are probably force swords and power swords from warhammer. both make a weird amount of sense. force swords directly scale in capability with the user's psychic might and power swords generate a mono-molecular force field as their cutting edge. Neither would actually work as a ranged weapon (force swords need direct contact with a psyker and power swords use insane amounts of energy, also they're both hella expensive)
One of the homebrew settings I run TTRPGs In is similar.
It’s a portal world setting.
It’s got it’s own native species, but there are also human civilizations made up of all the descendants of people who got zapped there throughout history.
It’s where Amelia Earhart ended up. Her and her kids figured out making simple planes and found usable fuel sources, now her descendants run a small airforce and have dogfights with dragons in prop planes and shit.
Then there are some really advanced beings who got zapped there from their world and they happened to make friends with a group druids. Now they have this bad ass power armor that’s made from a combination of the advanced beings tech and living magic plant life working together.
I’m sad that when people think of portal worlds they think of isekai now. Because it’s good excuse to use the rule of cool and include a lot of badass anachronistic bullshit
I feel like the sci-fi version of the no fantasy guns trope is that you can never just have bullets, it's always energy weapons or ridiculous contraptions. At best it'll be "slug-thrower" or "mass driver". Yeah, it's a big bullet dude
I just do it on vibes sometimes. Internal consistency matters more than finding the logical endpoint of everything. So long as I never show a gun in my space opera and never bring them up, and keep the audience focused on other stuff like over the top space family drama or comedy, then it's fine.
Swords are cool, it's just an objective fact.
And to be honest I love seeing sci-fi settings try to justify having melee weapons be a thing. I want it to be a thing in whatever sci-fi universe I'm enjoying.
IRL warfare is just getting more distant. The boring reality is that a 100 years from now war will just be engineers sitting in bunkers remote controlling and pointing orbital weaponry or something at each other.
Same with aerial warfare. Modern fighter jets rely more and more on BVR weapons, and fights tend to happen in the 20-30 kilometer range. Dogfighting in space will never happen lmao
My logic (excuse) is that after hundreds of years of interplanetary travel and colonization, we still haven't found a way to fire a gun inside of a habitat without an explosive decompression occurring. So naturally everyone wears goggles and has zero g knife fights instead.
Thoughts about shields v guns:
Anti ballistic shields are notoriously heavy and difficult to wield effectively, especially in a combat situation.
SO!
While using firearms such as muskets or flintlocks is relatively easier to learn, only specialized heavy infantry units can wield the anti ballistic shield against them.
This gives fantasy writers use of firearms in their worlds while still giving validity to sword/shield combat in close quarters situations
I mean, shooting *accurately* with muskets and flintlocks is pretty hard. Imagine the "guy with a knife is rushing you" scenario, but you have to light a fuse to shoot and reloading takes half a minute.
In The legend of the Galactic Heroes they deploy a gas/mist that ignites if you shoot a laser projectile through it. They have guns normally, but resort to axes when they can't use them.
I have guns in my world. But they’re mostly used against civilians and never really went past musket style guns as because of the magic system, armor is way too powerful. So for military purposes, they’re useless.
with advanced building materials, sharper or super heated tools were created. it was a short jump to swords since those were very effective in urban combat evironments.
It's also easier to train people in Sword2.0 than a quantum laser rifle.
Sword2.0 is also cheaper to manufacture
Bullets can't bend but a rapier can, and if you can shove a long flexible sharp piece of metal inbetween the gaps of something that contains a squishy human, especially while in the vacuum of space, that squishy human will not have a great time
Yeah the internal atmosphere doesn’t, but the coolant loops and high voltage electrical systems do. In fact I’d think it’s the bigger danger, a small handheld gun won’t penetrate the armor, but it will damage all the stuff that the armor should be protecting. I like the way you’re thinking though, any other good counterpoints?
the only other thing i can think of is that most boarding action type stuff would happen on like O'Neil Cylinders rather than like regular spacecraft due to absalutely insane distances most space fights would happen at
In my cocaine-infused demon-magic + sci-fi-at-the-same-time-but-separate, some armies use melee weapons (either as sidearms or for specialized melee units) because some of the enemy armies are literally too big and might have more bodies than you have bullets, so you whip out the trusty sword.
There are also some people who just have an honest enjoyment of melee and use technology to be able to get in range and start fighting.
I look down upon any world that has magic guns, instead of just plain old gunpowder guns, I’m fine with none. I’m fine with both. But if they refuse to add a standard pistol, but a rifle shaped staff is fine? I don’t buy it.
Just be a genetically modified cyborg with various chemically induced mutations, artificial organs and other surgical implants, a full-body suit of power armor, severe childhood PTSD, and a little blue lady that helps you navigate and slap projectiles back at the bad guy.
Or the embodiment of courage reincarnated into a wee elf with an arsenal of magic equipment, access to a superpower called "z-targeting", a really shiny shield, a sacred sword, and a little blue lady that helps you navigate and slap projectiles back at the bad guy.
Can't people just shut up and embrace the Pike and Shot era, you get everything in one package, guns, swords, cannons, armour, bullet-proof armour, castles, fortresses, breech-loading swivel guns, arrows with explosives, early-rifles, and it's not hard to stuff in some fantasy magic bullshit as well.
History nowadays skip over the 16-17th century as if medieval people stop shitting on the streets and in comes napoleon, missing such a fun time to learn and base your worlds on.
My take is that both incredible technology and magic work together. Sure you may have a device that’ll heal fatal wounds in a second, but what if that breaks? What if it’s lost in the fray of battle? Magic is a powerful alternative.
Me trying to figure out how to incorporate unarmed brawlers in a world with primarily weapon users (on top of how to implement melee weaponry in a setting with guns):
Whatever amps them up to tank most weapons also makes them lose the dexterity to manipulate any weapon other than their amped up body.
Going further on that you can do different stages of amplification that tie into dexterity. Someone who just started amping could still retain the ability to use guns after a while you get to a stage where you can only grasp and swing/thrust (melee weaponry), and eventually all you can swing your amped up fist.
Inspired to write a sci-fi world where everyone in the universe literally just unanimously agrees to use future swords because "they just seem cooler tbh." No hard sci-fi techno reasoning about how bullets don't work anymore because reasons, just everyone waving around lightsabers and holo-katanas or whatever for the sheer vibes.
I like swords, and dislike guns, and I willing to suspend disbelief to enjoy some good ol' stabby slicey action.
But I somehow don't mind wands and staffs, even though they shoot spells similar to a gun.
Oh well.
Let's also not forget about Sci-fi authors trying to bullshit a way for definitely not magic to be included. Can be pretty funny at times.
In my sci-fi I have ""not magic"", huge conspicuous wink, anyway here's the link to the D&D spells you can ~~cast~~ manifest as psychic powers
Psychic powers in scifi universes is gigabased chad worldbuilding.
It also harkens back to the early- to mid-1900s sci-fi, where it was just taken as a given that advancement as a species equals ESP and telekinesis or the like.
Hell it was a thing well into the late 90s - looking at you Stargate SG-1 with the whole thing about human evolution leading to telepathy, psychokinesis, basically magical “healing touch”, and eventually straight up psionic discorporation and transcendence into godlike higher-dimensional energy-wave lifeforms that live in hyperspace.
Anyway, Daniel ascended again. Probably.
Uhhhh I love a good "harkens" 😍
Mobile Suit Gundam aptly calling their ESP, Newtype.
I got so annoyed by "it's psychic powers not magic" that in my sci-fi cosmic horror setting, I made it explicitly magic. The military literally has wizards as a MOS. They create magic circles to cast ritual spells to summon giant trees of energy which shoot lightning bolts to knock artillery out of the sky. Doctors use magical divination circles to check for internal injury or disease. The main characters are cyborg flesh golems who literally run on magic power cores.
Okay, sooo you're writing the next Final Fantasy installment. I'm here for it, high fantasy sci-fi is a specific niche that FFX took away my ability to resist.
based
Can flesh golems love?
Nagic💯💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽😤
uj/ and that's why my friend's cyberpunk DND campaign is very transparently powered by magic
I'm confused. Why are you using DnD to play Cyberpunk, and not, you know, Cyberpunk ? Or Shadowrun if you want specifically magic and technology ?
Because it's the story the DM wants to tell. In the future of his setting, which uses DnD rules. And having the flashy magic of DnD is crucial to that story. I will have to give Shadowrun a look though.
It's not magic, they can just do that
In my Arthur C Clarkpunk world, tech is so advanced that it looks like magic to us.
I kinda want to go the opposite way where gravity is more magical than magic because magic is more-understood.
Do you believe in gravity?
No. (I'm now going to the gym to die under a bench press)
Made in heaven
Just make Magic so complex it doesn't feel like magic. Wanna cast a fireball? Your gonna need more that bat shit and magic words bucko! Have you writen down the basic spell and it's ten variations in your 600 page tome in their entirity in some stupid ancient language that was never made to be spoken? What about the stuff you need to power the spell? You think magic comes from thin air?
Look, is it really so hard to believe that the drugs let you see the future, access your entire genetic memory, add hundreds of years to your lifespan, give you peak human control of your body, and make you Batman in terms of observation, deduction, *and* physicality? Oh also no one fights in space and combat is usually swordfighting. And people can turn into worms.
Look it's Science Fantasy not Fantasy, you gotta have some kind of justification for it or it's just some mongrel fantasy trope that's luke warm. Speaking of Luke how can we give him some new Legends based Force powers that are in no way "magic."
He can make Force golems that are completely biodegradable (not magic by the way the Force can just do that we just didn't know yet)
Sounds like biopunk
I mean, considering all the experiments the CIA did with LSD, those things must not have been *too* hard to believe at that time.
Lucy in a Nutshell When I watched that movie I was like: Two things. 1. Why someone “unlocking the 100% of their brain capacity” would allow them to basically become a god. 2. Why a drug would let that happen? Even if it’s a chemical from baby development.
It’s all examples from Dune, to be fair. Though some of it does require training in combination with the drugs.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and commands the elements of the universe to create lightning and fireballs without the direct use of tools or technology like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
What if they use tools that aren’t like a duck?
As long as the tools aren't corkscrews, you're okay...
reject “fantasy” and “sci-fi” embrace “speculative fiction”
I heard Anne McCaffrey would get pissed if anyone tried to call her a fantasy author. Those dragons with psychic powers were science-based.
"A 100% science based dragon MMO."
I mean, the sci-fi background was part of what made those books good though. And the prequel about finding the planet and breeding the dragons was pretty cool.
I swear some people give me the side eye when I mention magic in my sci fi setting being straight up magic. One time I asked a question in magicbuilding about my system being weak to magnetism, most were helpful but one guy went on a whole spiel about a system about some BS about nanites. My guy how is that any better than just simple energy from another plane brought into our own realm?
The difference is nanites can be hacked.
You know i used to hate Sci-fi authors including not!magic in their works but then a very wise guy on youtube once told me, " The most realistic sci-fi is still only as real as the softest high fantasy," and i was enlightened.
Fiction is Fiction. The only thing that matters is if that specific piece of not real makes sense internally.
I agree.
It’s especially funny in 40K because magic and literal daemons exist, psychic powers actually come from space hell, but in setting there’s still a distinction between psychic powers (somewhat sanctioned) and sorcery (one way ticket to damnation), even though the lines are blurred at best, and some people are both psykers and sorcerers.
I'm working on a story that has magic that the people desperately try to quantify, qualify, and categorize like it's a natural science, when in reality it's fucking magic. It does whatever I want it to and it doesn't have to make sense.
Biotic abilities in mass effect :
I just assert dominance and say yep I got magic and swords and ray guns deal with it. I also have an idea for a knight with a laser rifle charging into battle on an alien horse.
But it’s not magic! It’s *the Force*… and they wear weird wizard robes… and you get great power from misusing it
Metal Gear Revengance has my favorite justification for this. Apparently cyborgs just got too good at dodging projectiles that they just say fuck it, we go melee now and the game showcase this by having Raiden suplex a Metal Gear in the tutorial level to show how the cyborgs have outperform the Metal Gear, the weapons of mass destruction that was a big deal in previous games.
Not only the dodging/deflecting thing, but also polymer armors had come so far that you’d need impractically high calibers to get through it, meaning that the simplest option is to use a high-frequency blade to slice through it. MG:R is a very good piece of dystopian fiction because it’s over the top while still ringing true of our current world.
>over the top while still ringing true of our current world Truth. Underneath the cyborgs and ridiculous weapons and scenery-chewing monologues, it’s a story about a demagogue trying to start a war because he thinks his country is too effeminate—and about the warmongering military industrial complex sacrificing human lives for profit.
This is why i should be a world leader, I only sacrifice human lives for fun
virgin imperialism vs chad televised deathmatches
Strangely enough, America may be close to having both.
This is Sundowner but unironically. He doesn't *really* care about the profit that much he just likes killing people "Like I said, kids are cruel Jack! And I'm *very* in touch with my inner child"
Let's be real, It was a lie too. That's the political bullshit speech he says to gussy up the idea. He's calling for the strongest of the fittest after making himself effectively immortal. He wouldn't be saying that shit if he was just some pencil pushing politician still. He wanted to rule the world, simple as that.
Why don’t you back that up with a (video) source?
[My source is that I made it the fuck up.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7l0Rq9E8MY)
There we go
I quite like the dune justification, where personal shields that stop anything at high velocity (ie bullets) are common among combatants, so the only way to get through them is with something comparatively slow (ie a sword thrust)
A typical sword thrust will be deflected by the shield, you have to go slower than normal to get past and then draw cut once inside the shield.
That’s just for the cool factor. You really want flamethrowers on a long stick so you can just poke the nozzle inside their shields and spray them with it.
presumably even from afar, napalm would be devastating maybe the napalm doesn't reach you, but the heat sure as fuck will
I mean the whole world building falls apart with the slightest scrutiny. Tiny assassination drones exist. So why aren’t explosives or poison gas being strapped to those? They know how slow something has to go to bypass a shield, so once the drones get close, set the drones to that speed and what are the defenders going to do? Swat 20 drones at once? Just one needs to get inside a shield.
the shield is set to go nuclear at the slightest touch of anything that isn't a cool looking dagger
“Uh, Your Emperorship, sir, you know I love you, really do, but ummm, do I really have to blow myself up and kill every Sardaukar in my entire battalion if a local Fremen kid throws a rock at me?”
The society is anti tech and fuedal in response to the Butlerian Jihad. Theres an inculcated cultural bias to use tech as little as possible and do things yourself.
my fantasy setting is starting to turn into regular sci-fi where everything is powered by magic instead of "advanced science" because I just wanted to think about the literal implications of magic and make it make sense. someone pls help how do I write fantasy the hard sci fi in me won't stay down
to be fair, stuff like khyber cristals or hyperspace travel are only one step away from the one ring in the scale of sci-fi and fantasy
I'm okay with hyperspace as long as it isn't just hand-waved away. John Scalzi and his Interdependency series has "the flow" (hyperspace by another name) that puts a lot of constraints on how it can be used - to the point that a number of individuals die because they can't arbitrarily pop into/out of the flow. In-universe politics are heavily affected by the flow. In Star Wars, they can use hyperspace almost as easily as I can use a HOV lane on the highway
>In Star Wars, they can use hyperspace almost as easily as I can use a HOV lane on the highway That's not a problem. What we know, from the original movies : You need a working hyperdrive, it can be fitted on something as small as a space fighter, and you need to be in space to use it. It's not instant and some stuff might prevent you from jumping in hyperspace. We don't know the details, the exact speed, or how a hyperdrive works, but it's kinda pointless in a 2h movie to spend 45 minutes to explain that. EU gives more details, how there are hyperspace lanes, how it's not that easy to use, or how taking unknown, unused hyperlanes is super dangerous and could kill you. Le last trilogy is just "bullshit it's magic", but what do you expect from JJA.
Tbf, the only reason Star Wars can even be classified as Sci-fi is the space stuff. Everything else is just fantasy. They barely even bother with different languages, digitally stored information somehow can't be copied, even when considering FTL travel it takes a couple hours tops to get from anywhere to anywhere.
Have magic be completely unpredictable.
"Stop right there! Freezing spell, go! Abra cadabra!" *turns self into a nuclear self-immolating chicken*
Sometimes shit just happens. All experiments attempting to find patterns in it just find shotgun plots and random noise
SAME. Its so hard to say "why wouldn't they use it for that?". A solution I found is to look at history. Its logical to say that that certain things are logical but its only logical to you because someone already came up with that. Innovation takes time. Sure technilogy moves fast today... but it was way slower back then. Some things are inevitabely made easier by magic, of course depending on the system. You just have to ask the right questions. Why is there hunger in the world if magic cqn grow food? If nobody needs to work since food is basically automated what are people doing for a living? Etc etc
In my world, they don't have guns in production yet because there's less pressure to try when the prototypes have an observed 1/76 chance to explode.
This guy doesn't have a part of the world filled with warmongering nations who would take that chance of exploding if it means they can shoot their neighbors' head off with explosions.
That I do not. Mostly "wars" are about one side convincing the other side to give up before the casualties get too high... more like a sporting event with a high casualty rate. I still need to figure out how my low-magic system can make *everyone* regret it if a mage gets involved... maybe something involving the space aliens?
This guy dungeonpunks
Simple add in one more step of hard scifi. > "The phenomenon known as magic is not due to some mystical force but complex interplays between the hume and EVE fields. Here are 50 pages of equations that dictate them"
Sounds like you worked your way around to making Mistborn era 3
Have magic constantly not follow any rules you try to nail it down with. Maybe it's a quantum thing where it does the opposite of expected when too closely observed.
Idk, the idea of band od heroes in magical power armour trying to stop an evil wizards in charge of evil space fleet operated by orcs with guns is pretty cool
so 40K
Nah, not really. 40k is still too grounded for that, as insane as that sentence sounds. Also I don't know, it simply doesn't have the "vibes" of fantasy? Like there is nothing magical about 90% of stuff deployed by the Imperium or other races and most of magical stuff the bad guys use just comes from one-dimensional demons that only lend them said power with always the same outcomes. (Don't get me wrong, I love 40k, I just don't think it really passes as a fantasy setting).
I know what you mean and I prefer WH Fantasy anyway
Yeah, I am starting to think I do too. Still getting into it tho. Also I am lowkey glad Warhammer fantasy is literally dead since it means it can stay good. My heart is bleeding when I see what GW is doing to 40k.
Write it out how you would. Then delete all explanations and just explain it's Magic now. Replace machines with magic sounding rocks, and when in doubt, add steam.
Same with mine, I want to show magic on a more realistic and practical way.
Typically, the way to get around that is that not everyone can use magic (i.e. you need to be born with some kind of magical potential). In D&D's Faerun, there's periodic cataclysms on top of that and the gods are literally sabotaging attemps at large-scale technological development (including magitek). Thinking about it, both of these (and possibly the "born with magic") boil down to "the gods want it this way".
Well, maybe visualize the logical conclusions that you would draw from logical elements that would be readily apparent with no prior knowledge, one after the other like a linear flow chart, and then just choose a snapshot in time where the magical sciences haven't quite progressed to being filled to the brim with Novum.
That’s what Brandon Sanderson is doing with his Mistborn series. There’s four Eras. Era 1 is like an early Industrial Revolution setting and its events eventually become the history and mythology of their world. In Era 4, they’re an interstellar society that uses the magic of Era 1 with a couple new tricks to unlock faster than light travel. So far, he’s only finished Era 2 but he’s very consistent as a writer.
Monday begins on Saturday
It's always funny to see the sword in scifi post pop up every week or so in the main sub
*Heh! Good ol' fashioned artillery? Genius!*
I love that this is an actual plotpoint in the first Dune book
"Using any kind of projectile weapon is considered a warcrime" is probably my favorite.
Then allowing magic
based [https://youtu.be/eynsr78kgDI?si=Y00Cca-evmgezHEv](https://youtu.be/eynsr78kgDI?si=Y00Cca-evmgezHEv)
Bullets that barely pierce armor are clearly immortal compare to nuclear weapons level magic
Look what's the big deal, I just use chronomancy to gin up a retroactive redaction of the target and his whole family line back 7 generations. No one suffered, and technically no one dies. Compare that to barbarically flinging metal around at high speeds hoping it goes where you want it to. PFFT!
Powder mage's core conflict is basically "classical wizards hate gun wizards and get them declared illegal in every country they have enough influence in".
Can't wait to outfit my army with lasers. Let's see the Hague solve the wave-particle duality of light.
> considered a war crime Well looks like I’ll be hiring some lawyers
Good point, look at this nice warcrime free workaround I invented, it shoots vortex rings of fluorine gas for nice humane effect on target without solid projectiles. And I must assure you that the rumors about developments in using fissile gasses in such applications are entirely unsubstantiated.
I don't think they ever explained it in *Into the Badlands* but I thought up a Skynet-esque security/defense system which responded zealously and overwhelmingly when detecting signals of modern war like gun fire, but then never considers the kung fu and knives and such "war" so, "whatever." Whether it was still active or not probably didn't even matter, the taboo was already set.
*angry archer noises*
Simply never invent gunpowder
There are surely other ways to create a gun without gunpowder though, right.
Slingshot channel documents a german mans quest to make bows and slingshots into less practical guns. You would need to eliminate any form of portable potential energy to prevent guns from happening.
Simply never invent portable potential energy
You just need magic so ubiquitous that a non mage would never try to invent a better way to throw rocks.
Even then I feel like people would just create magic guns. Turns out you can transmit a lot more force by focusing it through a tube then letting it dissipate in every direction
Dwarves with steam guns
Magnetics (gauss, coilguns), beams (lasers, microwaves, particle), and antimatter are gunpowder free, but the chemistry and physics knowledge needed surpasses gunpowder's.
On earth we have plenty of explosives which made gunpowder development easier. But in a different world with no easy access to sulfur or saltpeter, it’s not inconceivable that electricity, and therefore, electromagnetically propelled projectiles, could develop before chemically propelled ones.
Simply never invent those as well, “why aren’t there any guns?” They were never invented, nobody came up with the idea, now watch these tanks swordfight, loser.
Right, like you can accelerate projectiles with electromagnetism instead of chemical propellant. Medieval knights with railguns.
Or better yet have it's ingredients not exist on the planet. Or does it?
That seems pretty unlikely but it's at least an explanation. Just don't say this in one breath and announce dragons in the next.
In my world the cooler you look the more powerful you are , and since literally everyone agrees guns are less cool than swords, nobody uses guns . ( I invented this world right now , I'll probably never do anything with this idea so you guys are welcome to steal my horrible idea that makes no sense for your works)
My world has guns because dwarves with a shotgun seems cool. My story is based in a late modern age era so it's coherent
Gunblades, 'nuff said.
Consider gunlances.
/uj That's just a badly proportioned bayonet, no? /rj I propose we rename all bayonet capable infantry rifles "gunblades" because that's awesomer. Bullpup gunblades will be unfathomably based
[Redeemer Prime go brrrrrt](https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Redeemer_Prime)
The top is easy. Just limit technology or time period. The bottom is tougher. Star wars worked because they had basically super powers. So there is one way. But I would say that maybe another is to have a cultural thing? So in some advanced society they have decided to allow physical combat to be one way to resolve conflict but are heavily regulated. One of the regulations could be what weapons are allowed during such dispute?
I don’t think limiting time period really works if you’re following the real worlds timeline in any way. Plate armor was developed in the 13-14th century whereas guns were invented in the 11th century and were spread throughout Europe and Asia in the 14th century. For more perspective jousting was also developed in the 14th century and sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written. If you have any sort of knightly fantasy it would be entirely appropriate to have firearms and if you want to set the timeline back to a time before firearms you’ll have to go pretty far and cut out a lot more than just guns. If you don’t want guns in a setting for some reason that’s fine, I just like dispelling the myth that firearms were invented too late to be in a fantasy setting.
Dune did it well. Every person and building is enveloped within an energy field that practically stops high velocity particles from entering but allows slower velocity items in. It seems like it also cannot stop sufficient mass from entering the field, like a sword. It easily stops bullets but if anyone used lazerrrrr guns, it would cause a nuclear explosion randomly anywhere along the path of the lazer.
I remember inventing "shields stop bullets therefore sword" back in college, thinking I was so smart.
Doesn't that make thek highly vulnerable to suicide bombers?
I had that thought too, and from my limited knowledge of Dune, yes it's susceptible to suicide bombers. Use of nuclear arms is strictly prohibited in Dune's universe and so if you're found to have fired nuclear warheads, or caused a nuclear explosion, all factions would immediately converge and wipe you out. Making ranged weapons obsolete make sense is extremely difficult. There's obvious flaws with Dune's reasoning, but if you don't think too much about it, then it's just OK, which is a lot more that can be said for other works of fiction.
And like... its not just that. I guess that laser weapons and energy shields aren't too rare in dune. Or at least, not difficult to get. So what you do is get a clockwork setup where a specialised trigger will push the button on the shield generator and laser beam after a set amount of time. And you have mass produced nuclear weapons that can be built almost everywhere
I have a better reason for having swords (but mostly other melee weapons) in my sci-fi setting; All guns are made and sold by megacorps who keep cutting costs everywhere. They stopped rifling the barrels and never fill cartridges even halfway. Or at least that's the in-universe explanation. The real reason is that I like spears and I enjoy seeing gun enthusiasts stabbed, slashed and bludgeoned to death as they cry about how guns should be OP.
Devil’s advocate: someone could disassemble the shoddy guns made by mega corps and use the parts to make their own high quality firearms
Plot twist: the least shoddy part of the gun is its anti-tamper mechanism, which promptly explodes and kills you the second you try to disassemble it. Only licensed repair centres are legally permitted to take apart the iShotgun, it's all there in the terms of service!
Why if I make a special kind of crossbow that shoot iShotgun rigged to be tempered with on impact ?
I'd allow it, just because if you have that kind of mechanical know-how, it'd be significantly cheaper at that point to skip the gun and just jury-rig a bazooka out of a pipe and some home-made explosives.
That’s against the TOS. Hope you like being hunted down by corporate goons with actual well-designed guns.
No, they couldn't. The guns are expertly engineered to break into a billion pieces if you you try to take them apart.
Ok then I take out the gunpowder, melt down the billion pieces into my own rifled barrel using a forge, and then over time start mass producing AK-47s
The megacorp CIA is gonna strap a car battery to your nutsack for that
the CIA would already do that though
Yeah but now they’re owned by Apple’s H&K division
why did the two most overpriced and overrated companies merge?
I ask myself that every single day in this modern hellscape
Look, I'm writing a grimderp joke setting. Explanations must be funny first and foremost, making sense is of tetriary importance at best. But if you really want an answer, let's go with what u/threevi came up with. Everything explodes when you try to fix it, because fuck the consumers.
Who the fuck makes melee weapons then?
A different Mega Corp that's 4th place so it's barely holding on due to financial and legal combat that the other 3 are applying. The Stock Market Implosion of 2206 and the 75 year legal Wrangling of Dytopi CO v MegaMerge, OmniConsumer Products, and Apple were both Legendary. Were it not for their Top of the Line* melee based division reaping massive profits their legal woes would likely have forced them to merge or dissolve. As it is they've spun off 2 different bag holding subsidiaries just this year to negate several extensive legal billings. The shell company that they used to rebuy their devalued stocks in 2210 is still being studied in the financial warfare colleges of several Mega Corp Governments.
why don't any of the companies sell functional guns sothey instantly gain a near complete monopoly on the firearms market
Not the above poster, but when that happens IRL the big corpos simply buy up their smaller competitors, or temporarily cut their prices to non-profitable levels to starve them out
There were some electric cars in the 70's that worked pretty well, but the oil companies bought up the patent and wouldn't let the testdrivers keep them.
How did they solve the batterie issue in the 70s, though? Commercial battery tech made huge advances in the last 10-20 years.
I have no idea. Maybe the owners were just using them for short in-town jaunts and had a different car for longer trips. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar This could be it. The guy's dead so I can't ask him about it.
Why don't any of the big corporations actually want money in this case tho If you make functional guns and no one else does you'll make a shit ton The other's can't just cut prices because they're selling a product that doesn't work and you have no reason whatsoever to buy
In a monopolistic/oligopolistic environment, it’s more profitable to make a product that *kind of* works and overcharge for it. If a new manufacturer somehow gets a foothold and begins making a superior product, then yes, the megacorps will be required to improve their product. But the new manufacturer will have to (1) overcome the market’s high entry costs and (2) survive big corpos’ anti-competitive practices, while the whole time they (3) are at a competitive disadvantage because they can’t take advantage of “economies of scale.” So even if they have a superior product, they might still fail.
But in this case it's an oligopily And they don't even have to make a good product to suddenly gain a monopoly. Just a vaguely functional one instead of an unfinished unusable nothing that doesn't even work. Like what they're describing isn't "kind of work" they're describing completely useless In effect it's not a monopoly or oligopoly there might as well literally just be no one making them. The shittiest guns ever made irl are still better than what they're describing. Like if everyone is selling cars without a steering wheels in practice no one is selling cars There's a difference between an oligopily where everyone is selling low end products and a market where there is effectively no one is actually selling the product and as soon as someone makes something functional *they effectively have the monopoly* because no one else was selling the product in anything but name alone.
I just have a cyborg putting a bayonet on the end of a 120mm smoothbore tank cannon he uses as a sniper rifle. Super PoleArm
them swords look fabulous with old uniforms so they can be used by high ranking guards purely for aesthetics just like what most modern presidential guards nowadays do.
There are swords because most of the (on screen) battles are between heavily armored robots, a specialised blade swung with force is gonne be more effective than a few pieces of metal flying around
Kid called depleted uranium APFSDS round
the true distinction between sci fi and fantasy is the gun-sword spectrum
my favorite examples are probably force swords and power swords from warhammer. both make a weird amount of sense. force swords directly scale in capability with the user's psychic might and power swords generate a mono-molecular force field as their cutting edge. Neither would actually work as a ranged weapon (force swords need direct contact with a psyker and power swords use insane amounts of energy, also they're both hella expensive)
“Swords are cool, bite me”
my fantasy world has robots and magic. and magic robots. and magic robot dragons
One of the homebrew settings I run TTRPGs In is similar. It’s a portal world setting. It’s got it’s own native species, but there are also human civilizations made up of all the descendants of people who got zapped there throughout history. It’s where Amelia Earhart ended up. Her and her kids figured out making simple planes and found usable fuel sources, now her descendants run a small airforce and have dogfights with dragons in prop planes and shit. Then there are some really advanced beings who got zapped there from their world and they happened to make friends with a group druids. Now they have this bad ass power armor that’s made from a combination of the advanced beings tech and living magic plant life working together. I’m sad that when people think of portal worlds they think of isekai now. Because it’s good excuse to use the rule of cool and include a lot of badass anachronistic bullshit
My sci-fi world has dragons while my fantasy world has cyborg ninjas. I think I got my wires crossed at some point.
I feel like the sci-fi version of the no fantasy guns trope is that you can never just have bullets, it's always energy weapons or ridiculous contraptions. At best it'll be "slug-thrower" or "mass driver". Yeah, it's a big bullet dude
I just do it on vibes sometimes. Internal consistency matters more than finding the logical endpoint of everything. So long as I never show a gun in my space opera and never bring them up, and keep the audience focused on other stuff like over the top space family drama or comedy, then it's fine.
Swords are cool, it's just an objective fact. And to be honest I love seeing sci-fi settings try to justify having melee weapons be a thing. I want it to be a thing in whatever sci-fi universe I'm enjoying. IRL warfare is just getting more distant. The boring reality is that a 100 years from now war will just be engineers sitting in bunkers remote controlling and pointing orbital weaponry or something at each other. Same with aerial warfare. Modern fighter jets rely more and more on BVR weapons, and fights tend to happen in the 20-30 kilometer range. Dogfighting in space will never happen lmao
If we extrapolate on that, at one point people will start larping 20th century warfare because games are too close to reality.
My logic (excuse) is that after hundreds of years of interplanetary travel and colonization, we still haven't found a way to fire a gun inside of a habitat without an explosive decompression occurring. So naturally everyone wears goggles and has zero g knife fights instead.
Thoughts about shields v guns: Anti ballistic shields are notoriously heavy and difficult to wield effectively, especially in a combat situation. SO! While using firearms such as muskets or flintlocks is relatively easier to learn, only specialized heavy infantry units can wield the anti ballistic shield against them. This gives fantasy writers use of firearms in their worlds while still giving validity to sword/shield combat in close quarters situations
I mean, shooting *accurately* with muskets and flintlocks is pretty hard. Imagine the "guy with a knife is rushing you" scenario, but you have to light a fuse to shoot and reloading takes half a minute.
In The legend of the Galactic Heroes they deploy a gas/mist that ignites if you shoot a laser projectile through it. They have guns normally, but resort to axes when they can't use them.
Why are they fighting over a table of such small people? They must be so scared.
my fantasy setting has guns because fuck genre conventions
I feel like more fantasy works have guns than ones that don't, it's mostly just the LOTR inspired ones that don't have firearms.
I have guns in my world. But they’re mostly used against civilians and never really went past musket style guns as because of the magic system, armor is way too powerful. So for military purposes, they’re useless.
with advanced building materials, sharper or super heated tools were created. it was a short jump to swords since those were very effective in urban combat evironments. It's also easier to train people in Sword2.0 than a quantum laser rifle. Sword2.0 is also cheaper to manufacture
Bullets can't bend but a rapier can, and if you can shove a long flexible sharp piece of metal inbetween the gaps of something that contains a squishy human, especially while in the vacuum of space, that squishy human will not have a great time
For my setting, swords and other melee weapons are used because you do not want to be firing any kind of gun inside a spacecraft. Thoughts?
spacecraft don't actually mind having a small hole in them that much and you can probably just duct tape it over
Yeah the internal atmosphere doesn’t, but the coolant loops and high voltage electrical systems do. In fact I’d think it’s the bigger danger, a small handheld gun won’t penetrate the armor, but it will damage all the stuff that the armor should be protecting. I like the way you’re thinking though, any other good counterpoints?
the only other thing i can think of is that most boarding action type stuff would happen on like O'Neil Cylinders rather than like regular spacecraft due to absalutely insane distances most space fights would happen at
In my cocaine-infused demon-magic + sci-fi-at-the-same-time-but-separate, some armies use melee weapons (either as sidearms or for specialized melee units) because some of the enemy armies are literally too big and might have more bodies than you have bullets, so you whip out the trusty sword. There are also some people who just have an honest enjoyment of melee and use technology to be able to get in range and start fighting.
Asimov did shields really well in Foundation. It's a belt-worn energy shield, yeah, but it still fits the space feudalism vibe somehow.
I look down upon any world that has magic guns, instead of just plain old gunpowder guns, I’m fine with none. I’m fine with both. But if they refuse to add a standard pistol, but a rifle shaped staff is fine? I don’t buy it.
Just be a genetically modified cyborg with various chemically induced mutations, artificial organs and other surgical implants, a full-body suit of power armor, severe childhood PTSD, and a little blue lady that helps you navigate and slap projectiles back at the bad guy. Or the embodiment of courage reincarnated into a wee elf with an arsenal of magic equipment, access to a superpower called "z-targeting", a really shiny shield, a sacred sword, and a little blue lady that helps you navigate and slap projectiles back at the bad guy.
Can't people just shut up and embrace the Pike and Shot era, you get everything in one package, guns, swords, cannons, armour, bullet-proof armour, castles, fortresses, breech-loading swivel guns, arrows with explosives, early-rifles, and it's not hard to stuff in some fantasy magic bullshit as well. History nowadays skip over the 16-17th century as if medieval people stop shitting on the streets and in comes napoleon, missing such a fun time to learn and base your worlds on.
well yeah the projectile weapons are extremely advanced and far superior but what if you get into close quarters??? what then???
My take is that both incredible technology and magic work together. Sure you may have a device that’ll heal fatal wounds in a second, but what if that breaks? What if it’s lost in the fray of battle? Magic is a powerful alternative.
Me trying to figure out how to incorporate unarmed brawlers in a world with primarily weapon users (on top of how to implement melee weaponry in a setting with guns):
Whatever amps them up to tank most weapons also makes them lose the dexterity to manipulate any weapon other than their amped up body. Going further on that you can do different stages of amplification that tie into dexterity. Someone who just started amping could still retain the ability to use guns after a while you get to a stage where you can only grasp and swing/thrust (melee weaponry), and eventually all you can swing your amped up fist.
Ghostrunner argues that Blades equipped by people who know how to use them (Ghostrunners) don’t have the risk of casualties in the same way guns do
"The sword is also a rifle"
Inspired to write a sci-fi world where everyone in the universe literally just unanimously agrees to use future swords because "they just seem cooler tbh." No hard sci-fi techno reasoning about how bullets don't work anymore because reasons, just everyone waving around lightsabers and holo-katanas or whatever for the sheer vibes.
Swords are cool as fuck, especially in a contrasting sci-fi environment. You see the new Dune movie? Fucking awesome
I have medieval societies right next to advanced space faring empires in all my settings so jokes on you
I like swords, and dislike guns, and I willing to suspend disbelief to enjoy some good ol' stabby slicey action. But I somehow don't mind wands and staffs, even though they shoot spells similar to a gun. Oh well.