Imagine a low fantasy setting. No magic. And it is impossible

Full plate mails will remain as the top technology in the world and nothing can stop the knights.

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>>53424102
No gunpowder you say?

>>53424212
This!
Also chemical and biological warfare.

World Peace, all national and personal disputes are settled in duels of words. The great heroes of the time are those who debate rationally with profound expertise.

The great villains of the world are charismatic strongmen with savage rhetoric.

The War of Words unfolds.

>>53424251
That's an interesting idea, but it's not plausible in the slightest
If we didn't have guns we'd still kill eachother
ie, all violent crime without the use guns that happens

>>53424210

Knights werent stopped by guns. They were stopped by plain pike formations and horse archers.

>>53424290
>and horse archers
uhhh
It's not like pike formations were new then either, the shot does matter in pike and shot

Warfare is dominated by pike formations with crossbows (akin to a Tercio) heavy cavalry with long spears (see hussars) and probably classical mongol archer cavalry.

Actually i would say that sufficiently advanced crossbows would do the same effect that early gunpowder.

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>>53424102
We build air rifles and shit gets steampunk as fuck.

Seriously though, Logistics was the only reason the Giradoni didn't take off. With the absence of easier to manufacture and supply competition, compressed air firearms take over.

And yes, we would get there eventually. Some way, somehow. Much more slowly, but we would get there. If there is a way to kill people, we will find it. That's humanities special power. We are murder monkeys.

>>53424102

Winged Hussars were still a thing during world war 1 so i imagine without the threat of gunpowder cavalry would still be a big threat on the battlefield.

>>53424313
Forgot to metion that elephants, if they exist, would be the supreme weapon on the battlefield, as they were until cannons.

Gas / steam guns
magnetic guns
rockets
i dont think much will change. armies would be less numerous and more professional as weapons would probably be too complex and expansive to just give peasants rifles and let them go to war

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>>53424327
The lack of explosive powder holds us back on mining and construction a lot. Obviously it nixes mortars and bombards too. But we'll probably figure out a way to fill shells with greek fire or burning pitch or other shit. White phosphorous maybe.

>>53424347
Well it will mean the professional warrior class will remain in charge at least, which will nix modern republicanism. We'll see more Oligarchies, Feudal societies, and Militant Republics (Service Guarantees Citizenship!)

>>53424310

Horses are cowardly animals. You have to train them a lot to have any notion of bravery.

>>53424347
>rockets
No black powder remember?

>>53424349
Though we may eventually develop chemical explosives not derived from gunpowder

>>53424364
fuck off Lindy

>>53424345
Please, Elephants have been a meme since the Punic wars. Rome QUICKLY figured out ways to dunk all over elephant cavalry.

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>>53424102
armor would still be a big deal. two handed armor piercing weapons would dominate the battlefield. crossbows would become the standard ranged weapon probably. That or all warfare will be based on the work of Joerg Sprave.

>>53424345
Naw not really
Elephants were more a shock thing, effective ways of countering them were deiced in early antiquity, and they're temperamental animals

>>53424364
Which is why they were bred so, and valued as much as they were
Heavy cavalry charging infantry didn't even go out of date so long ago though

>>53424102
It wouldn't develop.
Gunpowder was a lynch pin in multiple industries before heavy machinery and modern chemistry and two of its ingredients are also fertilizer/used in leatherworking. If you simply make these unavailable, you've just raped agriculture and mining to the point civilization as we know it would never have existed.

If the materials exist but they dont bond to make gun powder, that'd mean chemistry doesnt work, which means you get no alloy metals, you get no forged metals at all because they'd remain too soft to use for anything, Im going to assume you see where I'm going with this.

>>53424372
>No black powder remember?
oil and benzin are still allowed
I know, I'm a faggot

>>53424403
>you've just raped agriculture and mining to the point civilization as we know it would never have existed.

That's hardly true. Just because gunpowder doesn't become fissible doesn't mean nitre loses it's qualities for leatherwork and farming. You are totally right about industry and mining though, we would never progress very far beyond the Iron age

>>53424403
>If the materials exist but they dont bond to make gun powder, that'd mean chemistry doesnt work

This is just a little too pedantic for Op's obviously flimsy set up, suspension of disbelief my friend.

Op says no magic, that's not true. Obviously the only magic is all tied up in 'gunpowder don't work'. THAT is the fantasy element.

>>53424424
No thats fine, I theorized cannon shells filled with similar material >>53424349

Any rockets would have to be hueg or fired by air compression though.

>>53424439
It isn't pedantic, if chemistry doesn't work for one thing, that'd mean chemistry doesn't work at all mate. The way chemistry works, is basically that it applies the same everywhere.

Also the first point you attacked, you kind of didn't read at all. I said if he made the materials unavailable, i.e. there is no nitre to use for farming (because it doesn't exist because op is scared of firearms)

>>53424466
He didn't say they were unavailable, just that they didn't work for gunpowder because reasons

>>53424466
>if chemistry doesn't work for one thing, that'd mean chemistry doesn't work at all mate
Magic. The same thing is true of physics, but we don't bitch about that.

The awful truth is ops world is actually HIGH magic, high fantasy. It's just bound up in fucking with chemistry and physics. That's the way I can accept the premise.

>>53424512
>The awful truth is ops world is actually HIGH magic, high fantasy
This. You need God actively intervening to stop gunpowder working while keeping rest the same.

>>53424102
Your premise is shit, OP. And he have those threads at least once per week. It's tiresome at this point. Kindly - fuck off

>>53424512
>Magic
Wasn't the setting devoid of magic?

>>53424573

That is actually a very interesting ides. Why has God intervened personally in order to stop gunpowder form happening?

A personal hypothesis: God´s main objective is to allow humanity to progress to a higher state of existence and reunite with the perfection that himself embodies. He is just blocking a path that could slow or derail the process.

>>53424512
>>53424573
I wish i could enjoy such a poorly thought out excuse for a setting. I honestly do.

Alas, I can't. I can understand why it'd be desired for some(no accounting for shit taste though.) But such a flimsy reasoning that amounts to an autist dm that hates guns and explosives having to say 'god stepped off his pearly throne to say fuck gunpowder' just to masturbate over castles and knights, rather than AT LEAST put effort into his fantastical masturbation.

>>53424596
OP said it was devoid of magic, yes. Which would imply what i'd said >>53424403 here, was true.

>>53424349
OP only said it's impossible to create gunpowder, he didn't say it wasn't impossible to create Nitroglycerin. Also, machinery would have to do more.

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You would get a pulp scifi story in which everyone uses some kind of ray gun or not!Gunpowder, think pic related.

>>53424102
Op here. I forgot something.

>Would we still invent guns, cannons or something similar?

>>53424839

RADIUM MUH NIGGA

>>53424573
Read "There will be dragons" Future society has stagnated and become lotus eaters due to nano-tech doing everything. Then the ruling council has a civil war and takes away all the power being generated, dropping everyone down to the iron age. Here, the main AI in charge of making sure the world doesn't blow up takes away all kinetic energy generated above a certain threshold. Gunpowder explosions end before they can effect anything, but forges still work.

>>53424573
My setting is a post technological medieval setting where humanity forgot what gunpowder was and now they're stuck in technological stagnation since many problems are already solved by certain remains of ancient technology.
So they're stuck with dart guns, intricate arbalests and short blades, since the wide majority of combats happen in close quarters.

>>53424102
>How would war and the military develop instead?
Crossbows and ballistae and melee would probably stick around for a bit longer, until some weapon developer made more breakthroughs in what we would consider to be unorthodox fields. Air rifles, chemical weapons, war engines, etc.

>>53424852
Yes.

Absolutely yes.

>>53424212

/thread

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>>53424852
If it's just black powder specifically that doesn't work then sure, sooner or later someone would figure out a different, suitably exciting chemical to do the same thing. All you need is something that reacts rapidly, creating some heat and a lot of gas, and a reliable way to make it start reacting when you want it to.

Modern day smokeless gun powder for example is chemically completely different from black powder.

If nothing of the sort works then there's still air guns, which saw some military use in the late 18th and early 19th century.

>>53424573
So it's SM Stirling's Change.

Pike and shit with xbows is obvious.

Eventually (with better metallurgy) hydraulically pumped siege engines for artillery - imagine steel-leaved ballistae firing clusters of steel rebar darts. That will punch through any plate harness.

Concrete also makes building castles easier and faster...and a lot bigger.

Overall, the defensive side of war gains most, then artillery.

>>53424313
>Warfare is dominated by pike formations with crossbows (akin to a Tercio) heavy cavalry with long spears (see hussars) and probably classical mongol archer cavalry.
>Actually i would say that sufficiently advanced crossbows would do the same effect that early gunpowder.

This is correct, actually. 16th century Sweden, for instance, fielded extremely missile-troop heavy armies. Not because it was effective, mind you, but because they couldn't convince their levies to bring pikes in sufficient numbers.

Then everything changed when Gustav II came around.

>>53425831
And by missile troops I mean it was (generally -
it differed from company to company) split pretty evenly between arquebus' and crossbows early on.

A tiny fraction only brought melee weapons.

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When we fight, we first use bullets;
When the bullets are gone we use bayonets;
When the bayonets are dull, we use the rifle barrel;
When this is broken, we use our fists;
When our fists are broken, we bite.

>>53424290

knights countered archers, whether on horses or otherwise, unless the horse archers have been trained in the ancient techniques of stutter-stepping

source: Age of Empires 2

>>53424102
Railguns

>>53424102
> It's another "Dies the Fire wat do?" Episode.

The rules will get more and more asinine as the thread goes on.

>>53424102
What's the fantasy part?

>>53424290
You mean longbows anon, the beginning of long bows was the ending of knights.

>>53428569
Chemical explosives can't exist for inexplicable reasons, yet the basic chemistry that allows life to exist is somehow the same.

>>53428615
Okay, but how is it fantasy? I can't answer your question unless I know what exists in your world that doesn't exist in ours.

>>53424275
>That's an interesting idea, but it's not plausible in the slightest
It's impossible to make gunpowder.

>>53428647
It's fantasy because that premise is itself so fantastic that it requires the continuous intervention of God.

We would use liquid propellant.

>>53424102
>And it is impossible to create gunpowder
There is no life because without the ability to make gunpowder, biological life is incapable of evolving in the first place or growing beyond that point.

>>53424102
Air rifles.
Next?

>>53429190
What if it was impossible to make an internal combustion engine?

>>53428601
It really wasn't patay illustrated that knights could stomp the shit out of longbowmen even when badly outnumbered.

>No magic
>Impossible to create gunpowder

Mutually exclusive. Either there is a very trace amount of magic that affects the development of gun powder or the technology used in gun powder works.

This is why low fantasy is shit.

>>53428655

Wars and killing existed long before gunpowder mate. We didn't just randomly start killing each other once guns and cannons came about.

>>53424102
Pikes.
And now the Swiss and the Scots battle for world domination, congratulation

>>53429328
the earliest air rifles were filled with HANDPUMPS.

>>53424102
We would have invented something like gunpowder, but with different ingredients

>>53424345
elephants would get spooked mid-charge and instead of trampling enemies they whip around and trample their guys trying to get away