Send these heathens straight to hell!
Gunpowder Fantasy is a fantasy subgenre covering works based on the real-world Early Modern period, roughly corresponding to the 15th-18th centuries — starting around The Renaissance, through The Cavalier Years and the Age of Exploration, going all the way through the Age of Sail, with the usual endpoint being The Napoleonic Wars. This was a time of dynamic and rapid change throughout the world — conquest, colonization, science, and exploration were all in full swing — and works featuring these types of settings often center around change, be it a new land to explore, a revolutionary scientific advancement, or warfare that discards the old rules.
As you might guess from the name, firearms and other gunpowder weapons feature prominently — there's no Fantasy Gun Control here, though they may play a less prominent role in some settings depending on the precise historical inspiration. With advancements in science, particularly medicine and weaponry, the role of magic is more uncertain; sometimes, the the two are in conflict, but other times they can be synergized in new, inventive ways. Many of the old fantasy tropes are still in play here, however, since firearms are still of the primitive variety, making up-close swordplay still a useful art. Of course, that too has changed, with more focus on personal, agile swashbuckling and dueling, rather than armored knights bearing sword and shield or lines of shield walls.
The early modern period was also a time of unprecedented international contact and trade; accordingly, while the genre is still overwhelmingly European-dominated, Gunpowder Fantasy works tend to feature more non-European-inspired peoples and civilizations. This era was the height of power for many non-Western empires, including the Ottoman Empire, China, India, and Persia — analogues to these cultures are very common in this kind of fantasy. If religion is mentioned, expect themes echoing and referencing The Protestant Reformation, Puritans, the Salem witch trials, the Inquisition, and the Thirty Years' War and other European religious wars.
In nautical-focused works such as Pirate Stories, it overlaps with Wooden Ships and Iron Men. As the early modern period also saw the invention and widespread adoption of spring-driven clocks, there can also be overlap with Clock Punk. There are occasional Steampunk elements as well, often with a magical component, as the steam engine was first invented in the late 18th century. However, works making heavier use of steampunk more often emulate the latter part of the 19th century and hence are more gaslamp than gunpowder.
On that note, while the borders of any genre or subgenre are inherently blurry, works based on later periods such as the Victorian era should be categorized as Gaslamp Fantasy. Similarly, for works based on earlier periods such as Medieval European Fantasy, the mere presence of firearms doesn't automatically make it Gunpowder Fantasy — as elaborated in Fantasy Gun Control, gunpowder weapons are Older Than They Think and strictly medieval settings can easily feature them. The key here is the time period that serves as the primary inspiration for a work.
For whatever reason, even such works explicitly set in fantasy worlds are much less likely to feature the stock races of the Standard Fantasy Setting and generally have only humans as characters.
Examples
- One Piece: Early chapters gave the sense that it was a Wooden Ships and Iron Men setting, with several characters possessing either Charles Atlas Superpowers or else having superhuman abilities from consuming Devil Fruit, and most pirates possessing flintlock firearms, with swords still being a preferred method of combat. However, the series progressed to full Schizo Tech as it went on, introducing cyborgs, trains that run over water, and transponder snails, living telepathic telecommunication devices used throughout the Blue Seas and Grand Line.
- Princess Mononoke: The setting is based on the early modern period of Japan, where firearms and industry were becoming major factors in Japanese culture and beginning to displace older cultural and technological norms, and Lady Eboshi runs an extensive foundry operation in Irontown that most notably manufactures matchlock muskets. These are a complete game-changer in the movie's Historical Fantasy version of Japan: iron musket balls from her weapons mortally wound both the Boar God and Moro the Wolf God, and are light enough to be used effectively against attacking samurai by her militia.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: While no specific year is given for any of the films, they are said to take place in the British West Indies sometime between the 1720s-1750s note . The films involve Aztec curses, ghost ships, witch doctors, mermaids, the Fountain of Youth, and a literal sea goddess, alongside gunslinging pirates and British sailors.
- Arcia Chronicles: The first duology features early 17th-century level of warfare tactics, with the mix of musketeers and pikemen ruling the field, but from book three onward, technology actually regresses back to high medieval level, with firearms completely abandoned.
- The Monarchies of God: This five-book series depicts a fantasy version of Suleiman's invasion of Europe in 1526, and the evolving tactics of firearm use form a major part of how the war progresses; one character thinks to himself, after seeing the results of a battle won with the weapons, that he is seeing "the future of warfare".
- The Powder Mage Trilogy (as you might glean from the title) has this setting. It's towards the end of it, though, being set in a rough analog to The French Revolution leading into The Napoleonic Wars.
- The Priory of the Orange Tree: The world is roughly based on the 17th century; Seiiki is clearly based on the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, Mentendon is heavily inspired by the Dutch Golden Age, etc. Muskets and other weapons coexist with magic.
- The Shadow Campaigns series by Django Wexler.
- The Solomon Kane series is a historical fantasy series set during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The protagonist is a wandering Puritan who fights both evil men and supernatural horrors with his sword and his guns.
- Temeraire by Naomi Novik reimagines the Napoleonic wars with dragons, though lacks other fantasy elements.
- The Thieftaker Chronicles is a Historical Fantasy series taking place in Boston during the the mid-to-late 1700s, just before the Revolutionary war. Protagonist Ethan Kaile is a conjurer (or speller) who can call on a spirit of an ancient knight to help him use magic in order to find goods and thieves more easily. Unfortunately, this is in the era of witch hangings, meaning Ethan must keep his magic secret as best he can.
- 7th Sea and its spinoff 7th Sea: The East are set in a world analogous to the 17th century where gunpowder and firearms are already common place as well as the presence of mystical elements.
- Dungeons & Dragons: In the 2nd addition supplement A Mighty Fortress, rules were given for dealing with campaigns set from 1500-1660 and included a chapter of the folklore and fantasy that could be added to the setting. It was the most "modern" of any of the historical settings published for the 2nd edition of the game.
- Ironclaw: Calabria is at roughly a 16th-century level of technology, including wheellock guns (a precursor to flintlocks), as well as having a fair number of wizards.
- Lace & Steel is set in a world based on 1640s Europe, but with magic and fantasy creatures like centaurs and fauns living in it. Firearms are a viable alternative to more traditional weapons, but are a recent invention, so they are not yet accurate and reliable enough to rule the field.
- 'Magic: The Gathering generally adheres to Fantasy Gun Control, but a single plane throughout the known Multiverse fits this trope: Ixalan. The pirates of the Brazen Coalition and the Empire of Dusk both use cannons as they sail the sea between the continents of Torrezon and Ixalan, with the former faction having flintlocks on their person in card art. Add in the fact that all factions on the plane are searching for a City of Gold in a jungle full of dinosaurs inhabited by two different Mayincatec civilizations — the human Sun Empire and the merfolk River Heralds — and you have a plane that will make your inner 8-year-old sing.
- Pathfinder:
- The Golarion/Lost Omens setting has a lot of Decade Dissonance, but the more urbane areas near the Inner Sea comes close to this trope: Cannon and early 16th century firearms have been invented and are a major export of the Duchy of Alkenstar, Andoran is experimenting with enlightenment values and have introduced republicanism and widespread use of the printing press, pirates straight out of the golden age of piracy — complete with guns and cannon — haunt the major trade routes, and the city of Absalom is a gigantic City of Adventure inspired partially by Alexandria and partially by Constantinople under the Ottoman Empire as a major trade hub and crossroads between worlds.
- Rules-wise, the Ultimate Combat book for First Edition adds a Gunslinger base class and multiple Technology Levels for use in gunpowder fantasy campaigns. These range from "no guns at all", to settings where guns are rare and exotic (Lost Omens), to "Commonplace Guns" settings where they're considered martial weapons and cost a quarter of the listed value, to settings where guns are ubiquitous and considered simple weapons.
- Warhammer: While the setting adheres to some lopsided Medieval Stasis and Decade Dissonance, which means that different factions tech levels vary from "stone age" to "magic and cannons", this trope is in full effect within most of the lands of humanity, who are all Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of 16th century civilizations, with the noted exception of Bretonnia, which is firmly High Medieval. Within the Empire, Kislev and Cathay, cannon and matchlock firearms are widely deployed in conjunction with early modern-era cavalry like plate-armored knights or winged hussars, and the Empire having access to prototype multiple-barrel guns, steam tanks and clockwork steeds. In southern Tilea and Estalia, tercio style pike-and-shot formations are favored by the city states and Tilea has a renown regiment of mercenaries equipped with Leonardo da Vinci-style glider wings. Cannon-armed navies also exist, with an infamous vampire pirate in the New World successfully teaching his zombified crews to operate black-powder weapons. Among the nonhuman races, dwarfs utilize Steampunk engineering like early helicopters combined with cannon and wheellock firearms, being the earliest innovators of the weapons. The Skaven, meanwhile, employ a Mad Scientist caste infamous for their ahead-of-the-times invention of "ratling" guns.
- Darklands takes place in a magical version of 15th-century central Europe, and you can find a few forms of early firearms alongside medieval weaponry and alchemical concoctions. As these firearms are still fairly primitive, they're cumbersome to reload and are only useful against armored opponents, where a bow would cause very little damage.
- The vanilla version of Europa Universalis IV already takes place in the Early Modern Period, but the mod "Anbennar
" overhauls the setting with a fantastic revamp, with magic and magic systems, fantasy races like elves, orcs, and dwarves blending with adventure, colonization, intrigue, and gunpowder.
- Fable II takes place 500 years after the original in an Albion going through a time period roughly analogous to the Early Modern Period, with a prominent advancement being the introduction of firearms between it and Fable I, and it leading to the downfall of the Heroes Guild as people were no longer as dependent on often amoral magic users.
- Granado Espada: The game world is based on the Age of Discovery and is set on a newly-discovered continent based on the Americas. A considerable part of the game's identity as a fantasy world is the combination of guns with swords and sorcery. A musketeer class exists separately from standard archers.
- Greedfall is set in a fantasy counterpart to 18th-century Europe as three major powers vie for control of a newly discovered landmass called Teer Fradee. Each major colonizer faction has a rough real-world analog; the Congregation of Merchants (the Italian merchant republics like Venice and Florence), the Bridge Alliance (the Ottoman Empire), and Theleme (a mix of France and the Papal States).
- Grim Dawn: The game takes place in a post-apocalypse of this sort, with 18th-century-level empires collapsing under two simultaneous and brutal extradimensional invasions. You're just as likely to find a legendary magical revolver or rifle as you are a sword or halberd, and warfare is advanced enough one of the game's classes actively uses magical canister bombs and Molotov Cocktails filled with actual hellfire, among others.
- Masquerada Songs And Shadows is set in an analog to Renaissance-era Italy, particularly Republican Venice. Unusually for most examples of this trope, gunpowder weapons are rare — the mascherines that grant the wearer magical powers make them largely irrelevant.
- New World, a 2021 MMORPG, takes place in a colonial-era fantasy setting as major powers fight for control of Aeternum Island.
- Pillars of Eternity straddles the line from Medieval European Fantasy, being roughly based on the Renaissance. Wheel-lock muskets are becoming common enough that wizards are adopting metal armor as a countermeasure, since bullets can penetrate their spell shields. Its sequel Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire even more so, featuring an archipelagic conflict between a hegemonic trading company and the indigenous peoples.
- Sengoku Basara, loosely set in the Sengoku period, with over-the-top characters and gameplay liberally using magic and gunpowder explosions.
- The Embodiment of Sins takes place in a setting where flintlocks coexist with swords and armor. During the battle between the Crimson Knights and Ish's goblins, the Crimson Knights start with pistols, muskets, and crossbows, and switch to swords and polearms in close combat.
