Guns in Fantasy

[Rezcore]

Reminds me of this novel I Have a Military Shop Tab in Fantasy World by Hayme01. I dunno if SH has it, but I won't post a link as I'm reading it via aggregate.

 

[Placeholder]

One of the better japanese webnovels:

"The skill "Market" connects me to the black market on Earth from another world
Author: Isawa"

【完結＆書籍化】スキル『市場』で異世界から繋がったのは地球のブラックマーケットでした

R15 残酷な描写あり 異世界転移 ロボット チート 冒険 ミリタリー 年の差 ネトコン12 ＡＫＭ Ｍ１９１１ ＵＺＩ 俺TUEEE ケモ耳 銃撃戦 ガンアクション 戦車 戦争

ncode.syosetu.com

 

[Zagaroth]

You might want to consider looking into these ammunition types:

Full metal jacket (ammunition) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Armor-piercing bullet - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Incendiary ammunition - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Have every magazine loaded with, say, 45% AP, 45% FM, and 10% Incendiary. You want to make a lot of holes, and if you get lucky, set the monster on fire from the inside. Note that modern incendiary rounds do explode as well as set things on fire.

Do this with the belts of ammo for .50 caliber machine guns too, and have the defensive line against monsters basically entrenched instead of advancing. It will be really hard for the monsters to advance against that sort of wall.

Also, shoulder launchers with HEAT rounds should really help with the bigger ones.

High-explosive anti-tank - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[OokamiKasumi]

... I guess the problem is, I have no idea how to write gun-related combat. I've mostly dabbled in hand-to-hand, so even melee weapon writing is foreign to me though I feel like I could pick that up easily...but guns?

Sorry I rambled big time here.

Watch the movie; Equilibrium.
-- It has Gun katas.

Find movies that have the type of combat you want to write. Watch Them. Take notes on what you See because that's what you want to appear on the page.

Tutorial:

[Tutorial] NSFW! Creative Narrative - A Description EXERCISE​

And for the sake of all the gun-fanatics that WILL be reading your story, Do Your Research!!!

 

[BearlyAlive]

"Your Gun-Fu isn't strong enough."


The Powder Mage series by Brian McClellan had an interesting take on guns (ok, flintlocks, before the murricans protest) vs magic.

 

[georgelee5786]

No.

 

[Elmir_Arch-Ham_of_Omega]

Nice! I thought I was the only one thinking of mixing melee, magic, and machines together.
That said, my fight scenes are usually group battles, i.e. the hero team vs a horde of monsters. The MC also organizes sub-groups and squads.
As for the guns themselves, I too have yet to make the individual gun action into something gripping, they're mostly a device for:

1. Making their gunners: fluffy dog-sized intelligent rodents, cute and interesting, and cool for taking down threats. In hindsight, war movies and games like CoD and Battlefield campaigns tell me there's a lot of communicating and call outs but I guess I screwed myself with squeaking mice.
2. A way to make the melee fighters and mages manage the sheer numbers of enemies, if not handle the small fry while the melee and mages handle the tougher threats.

The one exception is this gun-kata Hannibal Lecter character and her flying little mushroom friend working in tandem, each having an analog to the other's attacks i.e. shotgun = spray of firebolts, FRAG-12 = magic missile MIRV

 

[melchi]

And for the sake of all the gun-fanatics that WILL be reading your story, Do Your Research!!!

THIS

I was excited about blue steel blasphemer but then it became apparent that the author had no idea about guns. Just threw terms around that were gun-ish like sprinkling toppings on an action scene.

 

[OokamiKasumi]

THIS

I was excited about blue steel blasphemer but then it became apparent that the author had no idea about guns. Just threw terms around that were gun-ish like sprinkling toppings on an action scene.

Gods... I HATE when an author doesn't bother with the research because they think their readers Won't Know.

 

[Lysander_Works]

Play or watch someone play a bit of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Gamma or Call of Chernobyl. You can then see the possible tactics of using effective cover, mags, jam possibilities, etc.

 

[CrimsonGenius]

Take lessons from Ratchet and Clank and rip them a new one.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

You could always take the route Zelazny did in Chronicles of Amber or Silverburg did in Guardians of the Flame and just rewrite the laws of physics so that the guns don't work the same way (jeweler's rouge in one case, and a chemical that explodes when wet in the other)

 

[Gray_Mann]

You could always take the route Zelazny did in Chronicles of Amber or Silverburg did in Guardians of the Flame and just rewrite the laws of physics so that the guns don't work the same way (jeweler's rouge in one case, and a chemical that explodes when wet in the other)

That would require me to research the laws of physics as it pertains to guns and so on...which I am EXTREMELY unwilling to do. The furthest I got into the sciences in school was Biology 101. I was bored to tears and slept through the majority of the class. I passed with a B- ONLY because I wrote damn good essays and reports.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

That would require me to research the laws of physics as it pertains to guns and so on...which I am EXTREMELY unwilling to do. The furthest I got into the sciences in school was Biology 101. I was bored to tears and slept through the majority of the class. I passed with a B- ONLY because I wrote damn good essays and reports.

Change that to A- and you have 90% of my high school career... if you Add in "takes tests well" too... Heck, that skill almost landed me a job in Chicago that would have paid more than I've ever made before or since - was tested on Microsoft Access from having spent about ten hours working with the code (total not "per day or per project") and about two hundred hours fixing broken search strings to function correctly over two years, I had the second highest score they had seen at that point, and the highest was from a guy who had been a Access Beta Tester and worked with it daily for six years (and HE had scored two points above the minimum for a pass, while I was eight - out of, IIRC three hundred - short of passing)

 

[CheekiBreeki]

Be creative about it. Mages can do a lot more than just pulling the trigger.
- They can make the guns lighter with gravity magic to lift an entire nebelwerfer rocket rack into the air and rain death on their enemies.
- They can singlehandedly power up weapons requiring enormous energy supplies like railguns and plasma cannons.
- They can create ammunitions for guns by modifying and combining metals and other elements in the soil, giving a small squad an infinitive supply of ammo.
- They can spot enemies from much further away (with clairvoyance/farsight/whatever sensory spell), calculate the distance & angle and land a perfect shot at much longer range than a normal sniper could.
- The most simple: they can telepathically control a lot of small arms to unleash on their enemies at once. This was done at least once in pretty much every game, anime, novel and other media featuring both guns and magic.

If you want to write something modern in fantasy, or conversely, include magic in modern settings, you must first learn how these modern techs work.