Or the enslaved souls of countless human, khajiit, and argonian slaves?

What deliciously Ayleid thinking!

Pressure cannons, like blow darts. Dwemer could have created steam powered projectile cannons. Mages could enchant a device to shoot out fireballs, kind of like a staff, but with replaceable shells once their charges were used up.


Black powder based firearms are only one type of gun style. Any device which puts pressure behind a projectile can be called a gun. Paintball gun uses CO2 pressure. Blow Darts use air pressure. Nail guns use air pressure.

To assume that gunpowder is "integral to what most people consider to be guns" is plane ignorant.

Well then obviously I am plane ignorant. When someone says a person has a gun, or was shot by a gun, or pulled a gun on someone else, etc... I naturally think of something along the lines of .357 Magnum or an AK-47. Nail guns, blowguns, and paintball guns never come to mind.

Except that I know I've read that gunpowder has been discovered and is a closely guarded secret in Sentinel. I know I've read it dammit! So looking at basic history of gunpowder weapons, if the powder exists and large artillery exists, it's fair to say that someone will want to develop a way of putting that power into the hands of the individual peasant.


I know I've read about Sentinel using cannons before but I can't find the book.


So basically we just accept that "a wizard did it" and move on without questioning it?

I used to own a blowgun. My friends and I would use it to play darts while drinking. You need a good set of lungs to play 501.

Two things I might add into this discussion about the possibilities of guns etc.

1: It doesn't fit the setting.

2: We do not care at all about the fact that there might be any social and technological reasons for inventing guns. We just want this series to stay magical-medieval-ish. If you want guns mod it in or if you are on console(like me) I hate to say it, but tough luck.

It's in a Daggerfall book of Jokes:
Why was the Sentinel army so useless during the War of Betony?
The cannons were too heavy, so all three garbage scows sunk.

Paintball enthusiasts prefer the term 'paintball marker' over 'paintball gun.'

I generally agree with this post. I don't feel like they would fit well in the setting.

I'd love to see a few more RPGs with some level of guns (maybe 18th/19th century level - Arcanum is the only one I can think of that fits this, though Ultima VII has a musket you can't get much use out of). Just not the Elder Scrolls games, it doesn't work in this setting.

That's not an argument though... Especially your bolded part. Maybe people back in the 16th century thought "Geez, those don't really fit our setting", but did that stop it from happening? I'm not saying I want guns in the game, but what I'm saying is that they are a possibility and that the whole "but we have magicka" and "it doesn't fit the setting" arguments that people default to on this sub-forum get very frustrating.


Ah yes. And they were also in the game Redguard.


Well they had levers to activate them. But I suppose we are going with the "a wizard did it" approach so I guess not. And when I say guns being a possibility, I don't mean modern machine guns. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KTS8PQ06Qo&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL42ABC841EB8A0C8F, which I don't believe is a stretch for Tamriel which has crossbows, cannons, mechanical traps and other things.


Someone please explain the meaning of this argument. Please, for my sanity. It is not an argument. It is a statement of opinion that has no bearing besides peoples opinion on not wanting guns in the game. As I said, when guns were introduced IRL, do you think people said "Well... people are wearing armor and using swords, so it doesn't really fit our setting, but nice idea..."

Go nuts. We're all offering opinions.

WizardS. Plural. Very powerful wizards who could enchant an entire room if they put their minds to it.

I've already questioned this long ago, by the way, in the very first Tomb Raider game. I think the very first trap in that Peruvian tomb is a dart trap. Darts fly across the hallway just as they do in some dungeons. As long as we're near this area, they fly across. How can this be? In a tomb which has been sealed off for millenia? How can this still work, and work non-stop?

I mean, if you can think of a better explanation, by all means share it, but I'm satisfied with magic.

As far as I know, the cannons only exist in that joke book.

As for the "elevators" (which are called "Corpse Mashers), they are obviously created by Daedric magic along with the entire "world" when the sigil stone is used to open a gate. If you examine the Dead Lands, you'll notice that a lot of the features look "alive," like giant bloody claws, membrane "floors," etc. It's as if the world is "grown."

When you remove the sigil stone, the whole construction collapses.

As am I. Thought out opinions. Not simply saying guns wouldn't exists because they don't fit the setting. That doesn't make sense.


I never meant there is no magick. That's silly. You're right, for those traps magick is the likely reason. However, as I raised the point of them being an example of "tech" in Tamriel I guess they weren't the best point. What I was saying is that people say there is "no tech" but we see it even more evidently in Skyrim in the logging mills. If that isn't "Industrial Revolution" enough (as someone pointed out was the thing necessary for guns which I call bs on) then I don't know what is. I don't want t see it turn into Fable anymore then anyone else does. My original point was that guns could possibly be invented and that the argument of "but everyone has magick so why?!" wasn't valid because not everyone does have magick, and even fewer have strong enough magick to kill effectively. Tamriel clearly has the aptitude for "tech level" thats required by a simple matchlock rifle, plus the fact that gunpowder is something present in the world makes for the very real possibility of guns becoming a real thing in the ES world.

Grr, this is why I didn't want to press my point because I knew everyone would get all defensive but I shouldn't be surprised really.

Perhaps it's my fault for going slightly off the topic on whether I wanted guns, where I pointed out that guns being invented wasn't an impossibility "because of magick".




They are in the game Redguard. Also thank you for actually giving me a valid debate, not just the "because" stuff I'm getting.

Be nice people. You don't want the mods to come and close this down, do you?

Makes perfect sense. This is a video game after all.
Whoa, you act like an ass and people get offended? Isn't that dandy. Maybe if you had presented your case in an alternate manner you would have received a different reaction. But no, you chose the route you did.

Well this is the internet, statements are bound to be misconstrued without liberal use of emoticons. I didn't mean to come off nasty, I was simply presenting it the way I did. Next time I'll know to use more emoticons so that people don't get offended. It wasn't my intention and I didn't think I was being offensive but I apologize to people if I did I was simply having a discussion. It is a discussion forum after all. I haven't been to these parts in a while for an actual discussion and I have forgotten how touchy people get when a legitimate debate starts.



Like I said, it's easy for things to be misinterpreted on the internet as tone is impossible to convey without liberal use of smile faces and the like. Like I said, and you should know best W&V, I spend most time in Fan Fic, where debates can get heated ( ) but the use of millions of emoticons is not needed.

I never played Redguard.

On the debate thing... I try to abide by the old "speak when you really have something to say" method.

There is actually a "because," though!

I personally wouldn't want projectile weapons brought into the TES games. I'm of the opinion that firearms are inconsistent with traditional fantasy, and are unnecessary for game balance. It wouldn't matter to me if there was a mod like that, but I would not like to see that kind of change to the basic TES world.

I've been reading Fantasy novels since I was a kid, everything from the High Fantasy of Lord Dunsany to the Grey Mouser sword and sorcery stuff. The genre has no guns in it, for the most part, even though most of it has been written since the 1800s. Heroic Fantasy is a kind of "rejection" of the modern world, where a nameless nobody with a musket could shoot your Hero out of the saddle at 75 yards. Much of the genre was written by people who lived through the great wars in Europe, and who would not wish a modern battlefield on anybody.

The Elder Scrolls are built on that literature tradition. That's the "because."

It wasn't against having guns in the game formally, but it is a game and a game will always have a certain setting unlike our history. TES has always been without guns and should stay that way.

The bolded part was to simply point out sooner than later that most on this forum will never agree to have guns in the game and you will not get anywhere trying to discuss it. The only reason some use the lore to say no is common decency.

Fair enough, that makes sense. It's certainly possible guns could have been invented for sure, with Tamriel's current technology. I wouldn't say there is no technology in TES, obviously there is. Technology sometimes moves backwards, too, as is evident in Skyrim where magic isn't as developed. But still, Magic seems much more efficient than a messy, crude gun. It's already highly developed, you see.

Assuming Bethesda were to implement guns into Tamriel (which I hope never happens) I would hope they use period pieces equivalent to what was on Earth during medieval or (at the latest) Renaissance times, the way weapons and armors are seen. Make sense?

Tamrielic guns aren't an impossibility because of magic. Far from it. But they are unlikely because of magic. Consider this: the earliest firearms (which is what we would likely see in Cyrodiil) were extremely expensive to make and maintain, and had as much chance of killing the user as the target. If firearms were to exist in Tamriel, they would be heavily regulated (the Legion would most likely be the only place they would be found). You could make several more reliable weapons (i.e. swords and the like) for the cost of one firearm, and thus reliably arm more individuals. Why go to the expense of creating a "gun corps" when you would lose as much as half of them to misfires every time they went into combat (or even during training/practice)? You could arm and field twice as many troops (or more) with "conventional" weapons, and you wouldn't have to worry about those weapons exploding in the troops' faces.

Financially, it's just not feasible for the Empire to invest in guns (and it would have to be an Imperial investment). If the Legion really, really needed highly mobile weapons with a greater range than bows, the Emperor could always order the Mages Guild to supply staves (and filled soul gems to "reload" them). A magic staff would be far more reliable than a crude firearm.

Also, the Empire would be more likely to invest in the advancement of a proven system (such as magic staves). Don't forget that the Empire is run by politicians. Politicians will always go the route that provides the greatest benefit for the least effort and expense. As such, "firearm" research would not get funding (for reasons already stated), while "magic staff improvement" research would. Guns would be deemed a "failed invention" due to their unreliability as compared to magic. Staves and "Hand Staves" (i.e. "wands") would take the place of guns.

Grenades, on the other hand...

Scroll of Fireball.

One of the things I liked in NWN were the potions you could throw, and would explode like grenades.

I think you over-estimate the benevolence of Legion soldiers. If they became standard weapons, at least for a new division of the Legion, then you can bet they'll be on the market in a short time.


I respectfully disagree. The cost a a well-balanced, sturdy blade of even iron (and remember, the Legion seems to favor silver and steel weapons) will far exceed a simple wooden musket with a few small metal parts, and for the time it takes to make said well-balanced sword of metals, you can turn out mass-quantities of these muskets. That's why they became so popular, because a single bow takes a long time to make, whereas a musket can be easily made in the simplest assembly line and churned out in mass.


I think you are over-estimating the amount of mis-fires these things would have in semi-trained hands, but I could be wrong.


As I said, muskets are more financially sound then swords and staves. Remember how expensive it was to recharge those damn things in OB? Imagine doing that for 10,000 Legionnaires after every battle (if they became a standard weapons). The only expensive thing about a musket is probably the research they would have to put into it, but once the design is there, they become incredibly cheap to produce in mass, unlike staves and good blades.

Plus, if they had to rely on the Mages Guild, a non-Imperial organization to do this, that would become way more pricey then government-run factories for muskets in which they have full control over prices, whereas the Mages Guild would undoubtedly monopolize the recharging of Legion staves and drain the coffers dry.