i think my favorite single fantasy trope is when the ancient and primal civilizations and elements of the world that are traditionally depicted as "the fading glorious old world", instead move with the world, keep up with the times, and grow and change along the rest
this in itself is an inversion of a LOT of classic fantasy tropes, but i adore it when the dragons are in parliment, when the elves apply their silver-filigreed craftsmanship to equip their forest rangers with masterwork firearms, when these Old And Storied And Mythical things are as part of a changing and ever-evolving world
it's a big theme in the Archipelago.
I think this is the third time I've gotten on my "we should give elves guns" soapbox on this website
I'm right though like come on do you not want the wood elves to hide in the canopy for hours before taking a single perfect rifle shot or the high elves to have disciplined regiments of elite arquebusiers and shining silver light cannon towed behind their graceful steeds
I'm kind of torn on this sort of thing. It's a short hop to a military-industrial complex and militarized police kinda world, which if you wanna have fun seeing how magic integrates into a world like that go ahead, I just get enough of violent oppressors with overwhelming firepower in real life.
But on the other hand, like, being just some fucking dude and when a big fuck-off asshole comes up you pull out a revolver to do an Indiana Jones can be real fun.
You're just again teetering on the edge of taking "the great equalizer" to its extreme and turning everything into a shootout. Which yeah, shooting takes some skill but now you're just playing Call Of Duty: Fantasy Warfare??
just like in our own past, matchlocks and flintlocks slot in perfectly well and even existed alongside a lot of your classic Swords And Crossbows!
i mean in this case im thinking more about a setting like Warhammer Fantasy and how the humans and dwarves in that setting have whole regiments of Ye Olde Musket Gunners but the elves don't even tho that would Absolutely fit the setting (especially as like a specialty of the more modern and cosmopolitan city of Lothern for example).
A good deal of fantasy settings are actively anachronistic in terms of firearms. D&D's Forgotten Realms for example, is extremely fifteenth-to-seventeeth century Europe in terms of much of its' technological presentation and the structure of its' societies, yet firearms are Conspicuously Absent. I played through Baldur's Gate 3 continually annoyed by the presence of gunpowder barrels and bombs but not a single pistol to be seen.
