Renaissance Mandate

Back to the guns.

When firearms start to become common, they’re going to change the world.  My previous post dealt a little with that — the adjustments knights would make, the probable decline of blast-spell wizardry.  There are larger matters to consider, too, though.

If you were inclined to oversimplify, you might divide people of the early Middle Ages into three groups:  the knights and nobility, who held the power; the peasantry, who had none, and were, under a system of serfdom, little better than property; and the church, the only major social force outside of the nobility.  (There were also artisans, yeomen, and others, but let’s forget about them for a moment.  Of those outside the nobility, only the church was a big enough social force to be considered separately, and we can lump the others in with the peasants.)

During the later Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, an odd thing happened:  a power outside of the nobles and the church emerged.  Namely, the merchant class.  These merchants, and the guilds they belonged to, were commoners (for the most part) — yet they had money, and therefore they had political influence.

The power of kings in the feudal system had already diminished somewhat by this point; the Magna Carta, for instance, was issued in the early 13th century (the first time in 1215).  That document set forth certain rights for freemen — largely nobles — and the Church of England.  It also laid the grounds for the development of Parliament; originally, it was merely a council whose permission the king had to gain in order to raise taxes.  (Charles I’s levy of “ship money” without Parliament’s permission, in fact, was one of the factors leading to the English Civil War and ultimately the Interregnum.)  The rise of the merchant class would tip the social scales further.

Guns didn’t have much to do with any of that.  Not directly, at least.  But as the weapons became more common, it became easier for an armed commoner to stand against an armored knight.  When common soldiers have considerable capacity to harm elite soldiers, the thought of war might give them some pause.  Meanwhile, the guilds would use their money to exert pressure on the nobility, steering the political situations to their own benefit.

In short, as the Renaissance progressed, commoners gained both more political power and rights, and more ability to defend their new rights.  It wasn’t exactly a flowering of democracy, but it laid the groundwork, and there was the emergence of what we might consider today “the middle class.”

What’s this mean for in-game societies?  Well, many games already feature developed merchant classes, with guilds, large trade caravans or ships, and other Renaissance trappings.  The spread of firearms will probably increase the power of these institutions, and the rights that commoners enjoy, while diminishing the power of the sovereign.  The lesser nobility fall somewhere in between:  they’ve probably pressed for guaranteed rights and privileges, and risen in power relative to the crown, but at the same time they have less of a grasp on the peasantry.  They may be indebted to the merchants; in any case, the force of money is difficult to ignore.

But this is a fantasy world, right?

Nobles aren’t the only ones who need money.  The guilds are likely to “donate” to, or even hire on, specialists.  Wizards, for instance:  a diviner, even a low-level one, could be of enormous benefit.  They could help a guild’s shipments avoid disaster, or even divine the future price of a commodity, helping to determine where that shipment is sent in the first place.  (Just imagine you could determine stock prices two days in advance.  Same idea.)  They’d doubtlessly like to spy on their rivals, too, which means they’d want their own hired wizard to set up defenses against such spying, because those rivals will probably have the same idea.

The spread of firearms is already likely to reduce the number of invokers in the world, but this sort of social pressure amplifies that change — while encouraging new wizards to develop their divination skills instead.  (Enchantment and illusion might also be sought after, but there are greater risks involved with those…)

What about the other denizens of the world?  Some of the humanoids will no doubt take to the new weapons.  Dwarves will appreciate the craftsmanship of a well-built gun, and might even be responsible for the first rifling, or the first wheellocks or flintlocks.  Gnomes have a reputation as tinkerers.  Kobolds already have innate mechanical prowess; perhaps they’ll turn their trapmaking expertise toward black powder weaponry instead.  If your player characters dismiss kobolds out of hand, an encounter with a squad of kobold musketmen might be a rude awakening!  The militaristic hobgoblins would probably love the gun, too.

Others will be less sanguine.  Elves probably find the musket a clumsy and inelegant weapon compared to the bow.  Drow are likely to recognize its usefulness in certain circumstances but still favor their crossbows; among other things, it’s easier to poison a hand crossbow bolt than a musket ball.  Eladrin are likely to simply favor the tried-and-true arcane method of lightning-bolting enemies rather than resort to some newfangled contraption that only does what someone who’s studied for a mere two decades or so can do through sheer will.  Orcs might use the guns grudgingly — they’d recognize their ease and effectiveness, but it just isn’t the same as burying your axe in your opponent’s skull.

Firearms tend to make large creatures less of a threat, especially at close range.  Giants are pretty scary, but they’re big targets; they might treat the first couple of shots as mere insect bites, but eventually those insects are going to spell their end.  Rampaging ogre?  Even faster.  A purple worm has a pretty thick hide, but enough muskets will make a dent in that, too.  Especially once rifling comes along.

A purple worm doesn’t really have the intelligence to adjust its tactics to account for firearms, but giants and ogres do.  They’ll learn to do what they can to take cover and disrupt lines of musketmen when faces with masses of musket-wielding soldiers.

And a dragon?  Dragons have a thick hide, not to mention scales that are generally considered at least equal to plate armor.  As such, they’ll remain relatively impervious to bullets at moderate to long ranges, as they are to arrows.  Massed volleys are still likely to hurt — but the dragon’s breath weapon is a ready-made counter to massed formations of musketmen.  Dragons have little to fear from early pistols and rifles.  The cannon on the city walls, though — that might be another story.  When more advanced rifles become more capable of penetrating all that scale and hide, dragons might be in serious trouble.

Dragons are, however, smart enough to realize this, which means that dragons might see a vested interest in keeping firearms from spreading, or in impeding the technological advancements necessary to develop powerful ones.  The former is nearly impossible unless they catch it early on; once gunsmithing becomes reasonably common, there just aren’t enough dragons to wipe out the knowledge, in the typical fantasy world.  The second approach might be more likely; if dwarves and gnomes are responsible for many advancements in firearm technology, the dragons just might wage an all-out war against them.

Of course, they might turn out to be their own worst enemies.  After all, kobolds are good with guns, too — but kobolds are easily pressed into service as lackeys.  It couldn’t hurt for the dragon’s own servants to possess such weapons, right?

Well, perhaps not, but remember how the power of the sovereign declined during the Renaissance?  Why not apply that to kobolds, too?  Kobolds with guns might make a far more effective case for their rights.  If the dragons dismiss them out of hand… well, it could mean a rude awakening.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be an armed rebellion, either — all the kobolds need to do is to let some of their knowledge “slip” to the dwarves and gnomes, or perhaps to the humans.  A sufficiently clever kobold leader might even succeed at playing each side against the other.

Want a Renaissance that shakes up the world?  You can’t ask for better than a horde of rifle-armed kobolds rising up to all but annihilate the region’s gnomes, dwarves, and dragons and establish a hegemony of their own.  And just think of the satisfaction the little guys would probably get from bossing around orcs, ogres, and whatever else used to push them around…

Related posts:

1. Renaissance Unfair
2. Renaissance Mentality
3. My Dwarves are Roman
4. White Knights and Black Powder
5. The Year is 1806…