General Guns of War Discussion

Blame James Raggi for the d8 damage! :)

Since this is general discussion, I’ve just been reading the Backer’s draft, and saw my contribution to GoW: dragoons. Came about from a very timely conversation with Alex about them. Awesome.

Dragoons have been a favorite of mine ever since a translation mistake in Final Fantasy 4 labeled one of the classes as one!

An additional firearm for Guns of War, predating even the matchlock:

 

Handgonne - the handgonne is a late medieval firearm, developed in the 1300s and still in use in the 1500s. Visually, it resembles a small cannon on a thick pole, held by the gonner and lit by a slowmatch or hot piece of metal. Early handgonnes simply used a small hole in the top, with a slight concavity for the priming powder; later handgonnes used a priming dish to the side, which would be duplicated and improved on by most later firearms. By the standards of later guns, they're primitive and slow to fire, but have the same damage and armor penetration as any other smoothbore.

 

Handgonne - 1d8 damage, range 50/100(-4)/200(-10), reload 12 drilled, 15 undrilled, misfire chance 30%/60%/90%, encumbrance 2 stone, cost 10gp, can be used as staff in melee.

Has there been any consideration for how to include something like the Hussite war wagon?

http://www.peashooter85.com/post/51857782070/medieval-tank-warfare-the-hussite-war-wagon-in

It predates the Age of Pike and Shot, but in a setting where access to guns were limited to a small group such as the dwarves then something like the Hussite war wagon would make a lot of sense. Once guns become relatively common the war wagon is just a nice big target for the enemy guns, but if your opponents are using medieval technology the war wagon can be a valid technology. Could it be modeled as a kind of mobile fortification? Does the combined arms nature of the troops manning the war wagon preclude making this a unit?

In a setting where dwarves control the firearms production I can see them developing the war wagons as a counter to armored cavalry without even having to involve Machinist trying to come up with clockwork tanks.

Bear in mind that Dwarves live in the mountains, which is not prime War Wagon terrain.

Perhaps not, but when they organize trade caravans through dangerous regions, or they travel to another dwarven realm to render assistance making use of war wagons could be a powerful tactic turning the caravan into a fortified position from which firearms and small artillery pieces could be fired. In some settings trade with the dwarves doesn't happen right at their front gate, but at some point relatively removed.

Admittedly this might be an edge case, and not needing resolution for most campaigns. In scenarios where this could exist I can see dwarven realms launching campaigns into other realms using the war wagons as a means of reaching deep into enemy territory without having to worry about their lack of cavalry.

Being mixed doesn't preclude it from existing as a unit. In game terms, wouldn't it just be a high AC unit that can't charge, but is always readied against a charge?

I'm going a bit off on a tangent (as usual), but in my reading on naval ships, I ran across Tudor breech-loading artillery. Most of their artillery was muzzle-loading, but a few items (bases, slings, and port-pieces) used a barrel with a separate chamber, which could be lifted out of the gun, loaded with powder while the shot was placed in the barrel, then set behind the barrel and wedged tightly before firing. I realize the rules are trying to avoid modern breech-loaders, but what sort of rules could be set up around these pieces?

 

Some miscellaneous information:

Breechloaders tended to be light. Most were 2 inch caliber or smaller, although some 8" breech-loading guns that fired stone balls were recovered from the Mary Rose in the 1830s.

Heat dissipation was still a concern, so rate of fire, while it may improve, wouldn't be vastly greater.

Because of the relatively weak seal at the chamber, breech-loaders were known for not firing as strongly as muzzle-loaders.

 

My first thoughts:

Breech-loaders improve rate of fire by 10% (rounded to the nearest), but subtract 10% from all ranges (round to the nearest 10 feet). They also cost 10% more to account for the cost of an additional breech.

Actually, this leads into another question - do any of the drafts have rules for calculating cannon RoF? I went back and checked my copy, and that section is blank.

The backer draft distributed as part of the L&E Kickstarter (v20) had these rules. I've pasted them below for your convenience:

ROF:  An artillery piece may fire a number of shots per day determined by its barrel caliber, using the formula SPD = 90 / (Shot Weight /12)0.4. Using shots per day, ROF is calculated as 1 / [1/ (shots per day / 2880)]. Multiply shots per day for mortars by 0.833. (Note that the ROFs of the artillery pieces presented on the Gunpowder Artillery Characteristics table are often slightly better than the ROFs calculated with this formula. This represents the fact that highly standard artillery pieces should have optimized their rates of fire through years of minor improvements and crew training.)

Ah-ha. I didn't download that one because I didn't notice it was a newer version than the v1.2 I had. That'll teach me.

Where can one download a copy of these rules? I'm running a game more set in the Renaissance and these would fit very well.

the rules have currently only been handed out as a playtest document for backers of two out of the last three kickstarters (Domains at war and Lairs & Encounters).  However, once the final PDFs is laid out, it should go up for sale on drivethruRPG, and you can rest assured there will be an announcement about it on these forums, and probably by Alex on G+ (and wherever else he promotes his products)

Ah okay, cool. I definitely look forward to that. In the meantime, looks like I can use the LotFP rules for firearms. Thanks!

yes, the ACKs rules were inspired by/based on the LotFP rules, so they'll get you most of the way there.  When it's out, Guns of War will add to those rules some ACKsification, suggestions for modifying the price of firearms to make them more or less common, and ways to use firearms/cannons as part of sieges and battles in mass combat.

With artillery cannons and such, I wonder if there will be options for star fort strongholds seen during the rise of gunpowder weapons.

Having read through the playtest, I don't recall anything about star forts, but I believe that's because it focuses on the extremely early era of gunpowder (1500-1600s) so the star forts may not yet have become adopted.

Some history of firearms for those who are curious:

 

The earliest personal firearm was the hand cannon or gonne. The oldest surviving firearm is a 7.8 pound bronze hand cannon excavated in Banlachengzi (China) in the 1970s, and was manufactured in 1288 or earlier (it was used in a battle there in either 1287 or 1288). There are some earlier recorded uses of these weapons, including the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, when the Mamluk Sultanate stopped a Mongol invasion between Acre and Jerusalem with the aid of hand cannon. (Note: This is around 150 years before full plate armor was used, so hand cannon are as medieval as plate armor)

 

A hand cannon was essentially a metal tube on a stick. Pour in some powder, drop in rocks or an arrow with a leather plug or an iron ball, then light off the powder with a smoldering piece of wood, slowmatch, or a hot iron. It was either wielded with a two man team (a holder and a firer), or one person with a forked stick to balance the hand cannon. It was weak and inaccurate (the weakness due to using mealed powder, the inaccuracy because it was a smoothbore), but it required less training than a bow and less strength (or fiddly mechanical cocking devices) than a crossbow.

 

 

The first dated illustration of a developed matchlock occurs in 1475. The matchlock was a slightly refined firearm. It was the first weapon to have the three distinct components of modern longarms – the lock (the firing mechanism), the stock (a means of bracing the firearm against the firer's body), and the barrel (the container of the gunpowder and ammunition, and the director of the force of the weapon). The lock consisted of an s-shaped bar called a serpentine. One end was manipulated by the user, while the other end held a smoldering slowmatch (hemp or flax cord soaked in potassium nitrate), which was lowered into a pan of powder; that pan was under a hole in the barrel that led to the main gunpowder charge, detonating the charge (if all went well). The matchlock was incredibly vulnerable to poor weather. The match also glowed in the dark and gave off a distinct smell, both of which reduced the ability to remain concealed with the weapon. The match also got used up quickly – it was estimated that a single night watchman would use a mile of slowmatch over the course of a year. And of course, there's always a danger from having a smoldering match near gunpowder.

 

The observant will note I mentioned 1475 being for the “developed” matchlock. There is an illustration of a hand cannon with a serpentine in 1411, apparently a transitional type from the original hand cannon to the more developed matchlock.

 

There were some interesting variations on the matchlock. In the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, there is a triple-barreled matchlock revolving firearm, about 21 inches long with 12 inch barrels, with a caliber of 11mm. It weighs 3.5 pounds, making it one of the earliest revolving firearms (of the “pepperbox” type) developed (circa 1540). The Luigi Marzoli Museum in Brescia has a triple-barreled arquebus from 1550, which weighs 10 pounds, is 33 inches long with 20.5 inch barrels, and has a caliber of 11.5mm. There's a German 8-shot revolving arquebus with a single barrel in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg that dates to the 1580s, although I haven't found as much information on that one.

 

 

While the matchlock was easier to use than the hand cannon, it still had the flaws associated with the lit match. Looking for ways to shoot in worse weather and have less chance of accidentally blowing one's self up, the wheel-lock was invented around 1500. It used a steel wheel that had a spring, which spun against a piece of pyrite to create sparks. Pyrite was preferred over flint because it causes less damage to the steel. The wheel was wound up using a wrench-like device that engaged a square in the middle of the wheel. When the trigger was pulled, the wheel would begin spinning, the pan cover would open, and then a lever with the pyrite would drop onto the wheel (if it dropped first, the spring would need to be much stronger to spin the wheel). White-hot fragments of pyrite would be generated in the pan, igniting the powder. The wheel-lock was (compared to the matchlock) expensive and difficult to maintain, but safer, concealable, and able to be carried around without an inconvenient smoldering match. Also, the covered pan made it more weather-resistant.

 

 

The various forms of flintlock began their development in the 1540s, and used flint dropping onto a piece of steel to create sparks (hot pieces of steel) that would fall into the pan. Early snaplocks and snaphaunces had pan covers separate from the steel (the snaplock's cover had to be manually opened, while the snaphaunce's was opened by pulling the trigger), but around 1600 the frizzen (a combined steel/pan cover) was developed, and the true flintlock was born. They were mechanically simpler than the wheel-lock, and quickly became almost universally used (with the exceptions being places where the technology was not introduced, such as parts of Africa or Japan, and weird showpieces like the multi-shot matchlocks I mentioned above).

 

What's this all mean for someone using Guns of War? Honestly, whatever you want it to. It's just a history of what happened on Earth. In your world, maybe nobody hits on the idea of using springs with guns, so matchlocks stay as the most advanced firearms for centuries. Maybe flint's really rare but pyrite isn't, so wheel-locks stick around longer as the guns of the elite. Possibly everyone is bad at chemistry, and slowmatch isn't developed, so the hand cannon is as far as firearms technology advances.

Fascinating writeup! I have a very poor head for dates and creating mental timelines so things like "150 years before plate armor" do a number on my skullsponge