Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 248 - Guns in Fantasy and Review of Guns and Gears Remastered

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

Should you let your baby shoot you down in RPG games?  Do you allow pistols and rifles in your world with dragons and gnomes?  If your immediate reaction is no, why?  In this episode I discuss guns in fantasy worlds and offer a brief review of the new Paizo book Guns and Gears Remastered.   Disclosure:  I did receive a PDF copy of the book for free but that never taints my review and I give you an honest take on the quality and value of the book.   #pf2e #Pathfinder #gmtips #dmtips #dnd #rpg #gunsinfantasy #GunsandGears Resources: Guns and Gears Remastered - https://paizo.com/products/btq05498  

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. My take is you can have guns in your world or not. I'm not going to yuck your yum. But I would say don't dismiss it out of hand because you think, quote, it doesn't fit in a fantasy world. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 248, where I talk about guns in a fantasy world and a review of the new remastered version of Guns and Gears for Pathfinder 2E. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Gems.

Gymnasiums, not people named Jim. I had to break up with my gymnasium. We just weren't working out. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends about it. I'm never going to get rich doing this. In fact, I'm basically hemorrhaging money at this point. But I'd love to get the message out far and wide about inclusivity in gaming and maybe bring more people to the hobby.

So please help me spread the word. As I started to prepare this episode, as I usually do, I discussed it with some of my fellow DM and GM friends and asked them what they thought about guns in their D&D and Pathfinder games. The results were surprisingly polarizing. I got quotes from them such as, I'd never allow guns in my game, and this is a fantasy world, not a technology based one, and a couple others said that it wasn't a big deal and that they were just another form of ranged weapons. The discussion became a bit more heated than I expected. Frankly, I don't know why. First of all, it should go without saying that if you want guns in your game and there

are rules for guns in your game, or if you want to homebrew some rules, then by all means include guns in your game. If you don't want guns in your game, don't. But I wanted to walk through some logic about guns in a fantasy game, because first of all, chances are you're playing a game like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder or a similar game where it's a type of fantasy world. But just because it's a fantasy world, does that mean that guns can't exist? I mean, there are flying ships, people can conjure explosions from their hands, and our hydras are just over the next ridge. But

gunpowder is somehow beyond the realm of possibility and is a bridge too far? I don't buy it. During the discussion, one of my GM buddies said that in his fantasy world, it's based on early medieval Europe, and that's why he didn't like firearms in the game. I told him hey I understand I get it but if you look up early medieval period in Europe you'll see different date ranges for that but most agree that it goes from the late 5th century into the 10th century CE. That's 500 years! China invented gunpowder in the 9th century, so there's some overlap between guns existing and the early medieval European time period. Another person mentioned that the original versions of D&D he played didn't have guns, so he's never adopted them into the game. Okay, fair enough. Going purely by my memory, I remember 2nd edition AD&D had guns and I almost stopped my research there but I went digging

through various documents I had and websites I could find and archived print editions and I actually found mention of the archibus which is a long gun from the 15th century in the game chainmail and chainmail is what the original D&D is based on. I mean rules for guns were discussed in a few editions of Dragon Magazine back in the day, but in those early editions of the game, I'll grant you. Guns were very rare, and the concept was not that well developed. So if magic can exist, couldn't firearms exist, and if your game is based on European fantasy somewhere around the middle ages, then couldn't guns, at least primitive ones, exist in your world? Again, my take is you can have guns in your world or not.

I'm not gonna yuck your yum. But I would say don't dismiss it out of hand because you think quote it doesn't fit in a fantasy world. They are weapons just like any others and have advantages and disadvantages for their use. Page 8 of the Pathfinder 2e remastered book Guns and Gears says it best, and more about that book in a moment. Over the last two decades, Galarian, especially the Inner Sea region, have been beset by catastrophe after catastrophe. Armies of demons pouring forth from a wound in the world itself, time displaced wizards

inciting chaos to restore their faded glory, armies of giants and hobgoblins and an evil lich leading undead hordes have all assaulted the people of Galarian. While these events have delayed certain technological advances, they have spurred others. Assuming that you're with me and you're not willing to dismiss the use of guns entirely, I will say different rulesets handle guns different ways. Pathfinder first edition, for example, had guns pretty much from the start. Heck, one adventure path even goes further than primitive guns and has semi-modern rifles. I'm not going to tell you which one because it's kind of a spoiler. Either way, the game system had options for a number of different types of guns, pistols,

rifles, even scatter guns. Pathfinder 2e really embraced guns. They were included from the earliest books of the Pathfinder 2e rule system. There's even an area of Galarian where magic is unreliable called the Mana Wastes due to two high-level immortal magic users dueling it out for centuries and it burned out magic in the area. In those areas where magic fails, science has reigned. The dwarves who lived there embraced technology to increase their chance of survival and developed

guns to fight off the deformed and enhanced creatures that also call that area home. But Jeremy you're saying, that's Pathfinder. I play Dungeons and Dragons. Okay sure. D&D 5e and the 2024 version have at least a smattering of guns in the rule books. They're in weapons tables so guns are present in the rules. Now what's interesting is that the guns that are there generally have like worse range than a bow but more damage than something small like a hand crossbow. But Jeremy I still think guns but more damage than something small like a hand crossbow.

But Jeremy, I still think guns are more powerful than swords or bows. I'd argue it depends on the game and the game system. In D20 modern, yeah absolutely, guns give you more flexibility, more range, and usually more damage. No doubt about it. If you bring a sword to an M60 fight, it's not automatically going to be a bad time,, it's not automatically gonna be a bad time, but it's probably gonna be a bad time. The PF2E remastered version of Guns and Gears addresses this by either limiting damage from the firearm or its fire rate. Gunpowder on Galarian is derived from alchemy and evolving at a different rate and along a different path than it is on Earth. Which makes sense, I mean a different planet would undoubtedly have a different technological and

evolutionary path. After all I'm over 50 and I've yet to see a dragon fly over my house. Similarly airplanes don't exist on Galarian. Hang on but airships kind of do and those are magical though not technologic. You know what never mind Galarian is different from Earth. Now let's take a step back and return to my original question. Aren't guns more powerful than bows? Here in the South, for example, there are separate bow and gun hunting seasons

for things like deer. And everywhere I've lived, the bow hunting season is longer. Why? Because it's a hell of a lot harder to drop a 12 point buck with a bow than it is with a gun. Sorry, I chased a rabbit there.

Now with modern firearms, sure, they're going to be a lot more powerful, longer range, generally easier to use than even modern bows would be. So yes, if you introduce a Tac-50 sniper rifle into feudal Japan, the gun wielder is going to have a distinct advantage at range. Needless to say, I don't recommend that. So if you're thinking about introducing guns to your game, how should you do it? Honestly, I love the way Critical Role handled it in Season 1 with Percy's gun. Don't worry if you haven't seen it, no major spoilers here.

Percy invents a Pepper Box, a type of gun, and it's one of the first of its kind on the planet. Materials for black powder are rare and expensive, and those that see the killing potential of the gun start to covet one for themselves. I think the first key to introducing guns to your game that has never had it before is just like Critical Role, make them rare and expensive, and same for the ammunition and black powder. It wasn't impossible for Percy to acquire the materials needed to craft ammo or improve his weapon, but it wasn't available at the corner drugstore either. He had to stock up, make crafting checks, and generally have the right feats, traits, and abilities to craft something the rest of the world had never seen before.

If you want to introduce guns to your game, make them primitive maybe, closer to flintlock weapons than modern revolvers or chain-fed machine guns. If they have higher damage than other weapons, maybe make them slower to fire or load. Watch a video about what it took for a Civil War soldier to fire their weapon. They had to take like nine separate steps to prepare the gun to fire. At best they could fire once every 20 seconds, but most soldiers it was only once every 30. I'm going to pause here and let you think about that. Can you imagine if you allowed guns in your game and but the wielder could only fire one once every 30 seconds? That's

once every five rounds. Seems a little punishing, but it would be realistic. If you allow guns and they do more damage than a bow or crossbow, maybe make it a little cumbersome to fire like requiring a full round action to shoot once or requiring more actions in order to prepare and fire it. Besides making them expensive and harder to use, maybe make them a rare proficiency and give them a misfire chance like on a natural one that requires an action or even a full round to clear the jam. Early guns were very prone to misfire incidents so this would certainly be realistic. Further you could have a minimum range for longer guns like rifles. Firing a gun at close range target is difficult if you're wielding a long rifle. They're unwieldy, they're hard to spin quickly,

and require a lot of space to use effectively. So with all that, now that 1d10 damage rifle can only fire once per round, requires expensive ammunition, takes an attack penalty if the enemy is within, say, 15 feet, and requires special training to use. That, to me, brings the weapon in line with others that don't use gunpowder. My next tip would be to make them fragile. So I mentioned that these weapons were prone to misfire and if you wanted to further limit guns, maybe the gun barrels were only good for a certain number of shots. Say you allow a revolver with six shots but after six there aren't speed loaders

there so it takes a full round action to fully reload the cylinder. Then every 12 shots you have to replace the barrel, which is another full round action besides having to reload. Now a character specializing in using guns who can fire two shots per round gets three rounds between reloads, requiring a one full round break, and six rounds between having to take,

I'm sorry, that's wrong, seven rounds between having to take a 2 round pause until their gun is ready again. That will put the breaks on characters jumping in guns akimbo firing wildly left and right. That being said, if one of your players really, really wants to use a gun and there are rules for it, give it a chance. Maybe allow it in a one shot to test it out. Make sure the player knows that hey, we're just testing this idea of guns. We may have to adjust the rules for balance or I may ban it entirely.

If worse comes to worse, use the stats for a long bow but flavor-wise make it a gun. The player's happy, you're happy since the game is still balanced. Now let's shift gears from generic talk about guns to the remastered version of Guns and Gears. Guns and Gears Remastered is a source book for Pathfinder 2e. It is 242 pages, it's available from various bookstores in print, and you can also get print and PDF versions from Paizo.com. The print version retails for about $70, but the PDF version is about $30 if you'd rather go that route. This isn't a Pathfinder 2e only podcast, so I'm not going to dive into the gritty details

of every page of the book. For those of you who play Remastered Pathfinder 2e, there are quite a few review videos out there online and even podcasts that cover it, so some of them even do side-by-side comparisons of the pre-Remastered version versus the new version of the book. That's not the purpose of this podcast. I just want to give you a quick overview of the book. Now before I do get into this, I will disclose that Paizo provided me a free PDF copy of the remastered version a couple of days before everybody else was able to buy theirs, but per usual that does not affect my review at all. If something is good or bad or ugly, I'm going to tell you. I apologize that I couldn't squeeze in a decent read and review before the last episode,

and that makes this review a little later than usual. Speaking of which, if you bought the PDF version of the non-remastered Guns N' Gears in the past, Paizo should have given you the remastered version for free. Log on to your Paizo account and see if it's there. The reason for the remastered version of Guns N' Gears is to bring the rules in line with the new remastered version of second edition Pathfinder, which removed a lot of the old D&D terminology and rules because of the licensed shenanigans Wizards of the Coast pulled. Per usual everything that Paizo makes the artwork is fantastic. Paizo books really they really are top quality when it comes to the pictures. The three primary sections that will garner the most attention in this book is the automaton ancestry and the classes of

inventor and gunslinger. After giving this a read for a couple of weeks it really feels like the classes inventor and gunslinger both got buffed. Inventor it enhanced the three possible innovations which are kind of sub classes of the inventor class where you have a signature weapon or signature armor or maybe a signature mechanical companion. Like the early version, the remastered versions have an ability called overdrive which gives inventors the ability to take one action in combat to possibly enhance their weapon armor or companion. This is by the way is great to use in the three action economy as

your third action rather than risking a third attack which will almost undoubtedly missed. Inventors can also learn things like unstable actions where you know you can take a certain action but you have a roll the chance of losing it because it was unstable and maybe it partially broke your machine. Remastered versions though create better versions of armor than the one pre-remaster. The other thing I would say is that your companion now has a wider variety of weapons available to it.

It's a lot of little bitty changes, none of them were just overwhelming, but it improved the class overall and I think improved its survivability and contributions to a party. Moving over to the gunslinger, like the Inventor, there isn't one Titanic improvement, but they made the class better overall from the non-remastered version. They generally left alone what worked and corrected some aspects of the

class that were wonky or punishing in some way. They buffed damage on crossbows and guns in the hands of a gunslinger. Weapon familiarity has expanded and greatly helped the gunslinger. Now if you're familiar with a weapon you're one proficiency level higher with it than you would be with a non-familiar weapon. Pre-remastered this affected guns and bows differently but now that's been fixed so now it's broader and can be applied to it more weapons than it could previously. Ammunition crafting is now easier with a single feat, and now gunslingers won't run out of ammunition as often,

making them feel like they're worthless once they've fired their last bullet. Overall, the book is nice for players who want to add a bit of steampunk or firearm fun to your game, but... being honest, I'm just kinda whelmed. arm fun to your game, but being honest, I'm just kind of whelmed. Don't get me wrong. The Arda is fantastic and it's great to get updated rules for those two classes that needed improving along with a few new backgrounds and feats and vehicles. And the steam horse that I was reading about sounds awesome, but the contents kind of feel like they could have been an addendum or an errata rather than a full

book. $70 is a lot for a book and if I'm dropping that kind of coin I'd want a little more content than you get with this version of the book. I'd recommend waiting for a sale, picking it up used, or buying the PDF version. But if you just want the rules, they'll be available in the Archives of Nethus. They're not already, it should be there soon. That's N-E-T-H-Y-S by the way, Archives of Nethus, if you want to search for it. And golly, that site is fantastic. It contains all of the rules that you might need and you can play the entire game with just what's on that site.

Furthermore, there's a great utility Path Builder 2e that's available as an app on Android or via pathbuilder 2e that's available as an app on Android or via pathbuildertoe.com. It allows you to build characters according to the rules and I did check and the remastered guns and gears rules are already in there. Make sure you get the second edition by the way of Path Builder, not the first edition that that won't really help you much. Both of these tools are legitimate sources for Pathfinder 2e content and the only thing they're missing is artwork and some very specific Paizo intellectual property. But they are complete rulesets for the game and they are free. Please check them out. So should you allow guns in your game? D&D and Pathfinder both make it DM or GM fiat.

You can decide if you want to allow guns at all, and if you do, what kind, what technology level, etc. The guns included in the rules for those two game systems seem to be pretty fairly balanced, but if you start playing and they seem to swing the balance too far in that character's favor, consider adding things like misfire chances or complications for using the firearms or make them very rare and expensive. Just because your world contains elves and dwarves doesn't mean it can't also have a little black smoke and cartridges. Consider adding guns to your world,

especially if your player really is interested in wielding one. And if you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Hey, if you're interested in donating to the podcast, we have a Ko-Fi.com slash taking 20 podcast. I haven't gotten any donations in a while.

I would greatly appreciate any support that you'd be willing to give. Tune into the next episode where I'm going to talk about a player centric topic, some questions you can ask while character building to give your character some depth. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Gems. It seems like the workout machines are always in use when I go to use them, but using them always makes me angry. I hate weighting. This has been episode 248, a review of Pathfinder 2E's remastered guns and gears, and a discussion

of guns in your campaign. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 podcast is Copyright 2025 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.