So you can control firearms in your RPG’s by controlling the munition supply. Even if the players start loading improvised bullets into their primitive firearms, you can still deal with it by controlling the supply of gunpowder… guns and magic can coexist.

The Recusion King´s last blog post: Difficulties with miniatures and dungeons

Let me tell you, you are spot on. Add to the mix;
1.) The cost in time and materials to craft a single set of full plate vs. the cost to build a matchlock or even wheellock and you begin to see that ugly economics angle creeping in.
2.) I can’t agree enough with the weight issue. The specific battle reference escapes me at the moment, but somtime in the early 1600’s there was a large field battle nvolving an entire company of “knights” or heavy cavalry. They were de-horsed by blunted longbow arrows (40″ long by 1″ diameter averaging 10-15 lbs each.) The peasantry then descended on the helpless turtles and dismembered them with hand axes.

The world was changing. It’s still happening, look at the move away from large field battles to proxy insurgencies and such.

Great article!

Donny_the_DM´s last blog post: A little late, but a little fixed as well.

I think that’s fine if you want your fantasy setting to be in setting similar to 15th or 16th century Europe but it does change the feel & dynamics of the campaign if your campaigns up to now were based more on 10th century
Europe.

New weapons technology can change the whole world, for better or worse. So I would caution any DM to think carefully before introducing firearms into their fantasy RPG world. Having said that, though, I think playing in a world like 15th century Europe, in terms of technology, would be interesting.