I'm curious what others thoughts are on this. The equipment table in Realms of Terrinoth only lists bows and crossbows. There seems to be possibilities in the lore for guns though. The crafting section mentions clockwork contraptions. The pirate land Torgue-Albes (or however it is spelled) has a city filled with alchemists. In the city it mentions being able to find grenades and shells. There isn't much of an explanation beyond that sentence, but shells sound like ammunition. The existence of other explosives lead themselves to the existence of refined explosives in the form of guns.

I'm thinking about ruling in my campaign that guns exist but are extremely rare. The only way to acquire one is by nominating it as your signature weapon or through crafting a clockwork gun. Does anyone know the official stance on this?

If you want guns in your game.....then there are guns in your game

THAT is the best part of this toolkit. You want it in your universe, plug it in!

On 4/23/2018 at 8:43 AM, BringBackForbiddenStars said:

I'm thinking about ruling in my campaign that guns exist but are extremely rare.

Then it would behoove you to think of a credible reason why. Real gunpowder is simple, the ingredients common, as is the steel required to contain such an explosion. Once it was all figured out, guns immediately became the opposite of rare.

FWIW, the rationale I've always used to explain how a timeless fantasy world never stumbled across gunpowder is to tweak the laws of physics such that the stuff doesn't burn fast enough to explode.

RoT makes some references to things in first edition Descent's 'Seas of Blood' (quite subtly and more would have been nice but I'm working on that anyway) such as pirates and ships. The ships in this had cannons - I can't remember if the pirates had guns- I'm digesting lots of Terrinoth info at the moment for my campaign build! But if the ships had cannons then that suggests yes, firing weapons had been invented. It's entirely optional to the fantasy setting you want, guns will of course make it have a slightly later-in-time feel, it's an interesting question for me as that time factor affects the flavour of the fantasy, no guns feels slightly more further back in time. Although an RPG is happening 'now' and my Terrinoth campaign is set 'now' the time flavour of the 'now' 'live play' factor is influenced by such decisions of what kit is or isn't available.

Cannons don't have to be conventional though (or guns)- they don't have to fire cannonballs/bullets, they could fire magic or in a steampunk setting spew out cogs. Pirates may have guns and swords or just one or the other.

It's all up to what you want your adventure to be! Just remember that such choices affect it's flavour and timey wimey feel! So think what setting you're aiming for.

I'm not sure why but in my head Terrinoth feels like somewhere just on the verge of gunpowdering its nose- it feels in a time when guns are just coming in but not yet widespread, I think this logic is planted by the fact most Terrinoth games focus on other weapons with limited references to explosive type weapons. I can't recall guns being in it (this may be on purpose, guns are an understandably sensitive subject, weirdly people can be uncomfortable with them in games, swords, big choppy things, spiky things, teeth etc etc, fine, but guns nooo). But the idea of guns not being a weapon in common use seems to fit, it also feels in my head like they may not even have ben invented yet, the grenades and shells may be early ones, perhaps even of magic or some non-conventional form. I think that logic would suit a Terrinoth-set game as it feels right somehow.

It could be one of the quite interesting twists on the game too and provide some interesting stuff to think about in your fantasy setting- what if people are starting to experiment with stuffs that go bang and early primitive forms of such new weaponry. Perhaps the pirates and bandits are the start of this discovering the unpleasant benefits of guns and cannons. This could give a nice dynamic to your games and plenty to work with ideas-wise, do your heroes see the dangers these new devices could bring to already tainted worlds? Do they resolve to work against such 'progress' or have to wrestle morally and otherwise with having to match up to catch up? Do they try to stop the flow and creation of such new tools of conflict or accept their inevitability? Is the gun mightier and more dangerous than the sword or magic? And so on.

This is just what's in my head but for some reason Thaiden's crossbow feels like what would be the most recent weapon of the games lore, I'll have to look out for this more closely now to unpick if this is the mind playing tricks or true to the setting. I need to do some digging to see what the bangy stuffs situation is in Terrinoth!

1 hour ago, Watercolour Dragon said:

Cannons don't have to be conventional though (or guns)- they don't have to fire cannonballs/bullets, they could fire magic or in a steampunk setting spew out cogs.

Ooh, I like this. I'm having my players start in Dawnsmoor, and one of my players is a pirate from Torue Albes. She's just using a bow at the moment but her presence means there are ships arriving from Gafford, the alchemical city in question, who may be bringing black powder weapons with them. I do like the halfway idea of magical cannons or explosives but no small arms.

In the old earthdawn game, they had cannons that worked by combining elemental fire and elemental air. In that world, you could mine chunks of pure elements that leak into the world. So smash a fire crystal into a water or air and you'd have an explosion.

In the Iron Kingdoms setting guns used an alchemical powder. A small bag of part A was sealed inside a bag of part B. when a needle pierced the two...boom.

Runes seem like a neat way to make guns work. But the Warhammer method of making them powerful, expensive, and dangerous, is my preferred fantasy method.

I was thinking of adapting guns but I would make them rare. There is only one place where you can find the equivalent of gunpowder. This means that the further you get from that country, then the more expensive gunpowder is.

In the opening narrative text of RoT it’s made clear that Runeshards are rare and believed untrustworthy outside of Terrinoth, guns could certainly be very rare outside the pirates lands

A sentence on page 143 may be interpreted as Lorimor having gunpowder:

"Others exist only as ruins, the remains of spectacularly unsuccessful attempts at duplicating Lorimor Fire or fashioning new alchemical potions."

I'd just add em in if you want them. Warhammer has them and it never seemed like a 'lesser' fantasy setting for it imo.

Hi. I'll share a bit of my knowledge on guns in Terrinoth from my time playing Sea of Blood , a 2010 game.

In Descent: Sea of Blood, ships (both player and NPC) could have cannons. These weapons could be used for an attack instead of the regular weapon the hero was holding. Cannons generally traveled far and were the only weapons that could damage enemy ships, but increased the chance of a critical miss (due to inaccuracy) when targeting smaller figures.

Cannons in Sea of Blood were considered either "ranged" or "magical" weapons. A character skilled (i.e. rolling extra power dice) in ranged weaponry, such as bows and crossbows, would apply the same bonuses when using a ranged cannon. Likewise, a character skilled in magical weapons, such as staves and runes, would apply the same bonuses with magic cannons. The two ranged cannons were Hawkeye Cannons (which had excellent range and did not suffer from inaccuracy when targeting small figures) and Runeblast Cannons (which created an explosion). The two magical cannons were Coldsteel Cannons (which did not overheat) and Dragonfire Cannons (which expelled a fire breath from the endpoint of the attack).

There are eight cities in Torue Albes according to Sea of Blood : Dallak, Gafford, Garnott, Hardell, Orris, Shellport, Tarianor, and Trelton. According to the rulebook, " The gunsmiths of Hardell are famed throughout Torue Albes. They are the only ones who know the secrets of crafting rune cannons, and while their guns may show up for sale in other places, they all originate in Hardell." (pg 9). This implies that cannons, ranged and magical, are considered runic weapons . The rulebook, which contains a detailed map of Torue Albes and lore of the eight cities, can be found in the Product Document Archive on FFG's site.

However, there are no hand-held guns in the original Descent, including in Sea of Blood . They were only reserved for ships. If you want to include hand-held guns into your RPG, and simply make them a style of ranged or magical weapons, that could work, using the above as a possible background.