Imagine our world has been merged with a classic high fantasy world. Or maybe an alternate history where fantasy elements have always existed on earth.What are the implications for how military tactics, strategy, logistics, culture, or society would be different? How would biology/magic alter the way weapons are used or what's practical?
>>65450908>classic high fantasy worldwell the problem is those are all different
>>65450910True, but that's kind of up to you to decide.Yea Warhammer Orks would be a different enemy than LotR Orcs. Which one do you want it to be?
Warhammer/Warcraft Orks>Orks can wear enough metal on them to render 556 ineffective at center mass>Battle Rifles never go out of style>human/Ork conflicts mostly revolve around humans trying to remain out of Close Quarters against 8 foot tall balls of muscle and rage>Orks favor large caliber shotguns and .50 BMG smgs they are able to fire like 9mm thanks to their large size
>>65450908I’m teaching the Goblins gang signs and giving them Mac 10s and Hi Points
>>65450908We'd need explosive crossbow bolts to fire into the dragon's mouth because tanks and apaches don't work for some reason, but axes and what is basically a really shitty grenade launcher do for some reason.
>>65450927This but with the /k/obolds
Oh fuck yeah KFG/WFG is back! Just keep it alive until I get back from work.
>>65450929>but axes and what is basically a really shitty grenade launcher do for some reason.Did they actually work though? Off the top of my head the American Soldiers only killed exactly one regular dragon on screen in the movie, and that was with a harpoon cannon. Every time they tried doing the sky diving with axes shit they just got ineffectually slaughtered.
>>65450908>modern world and tech but with fantasy races and magicThat's just Shadowrun.
>>65450927If you released Goblins into a modern American ghetto, does any ethnicity stand a chance against them?
>>65450981Eh I mean sort of, but Shadowrun has a big emphasis on future tech that doesn't exist in our world, like cybernetics. Also the implications on their different biology I found to be underwhelming. DnD has the same issue. You can't have meaningfully different races that are also still balanced for an RPG
>be me.>an old rancher near the border of the so-called 'great merge'.>military has checkpoints, but the border's too big to have constant watch over.>peace deals have been made, but intrusion still happens until the damn wall is built (they promised this years ago).>me and the boys have to constantly grab our shotguns and rifles and ride out and scare intruders off with shots in the air.>some take a tiny bit more encouragement to get them moving, but some are real peculiar.elves? i aint see em, they're probably going out at night and being stealthy little buggers, not even the trail cams pick em up, and if they do, they're already gone anyhow>goblins? they take a bit more to encourage, and usually come in numbers, but when one starts running, they all run.>orcs? nah, you just shoot them, they don't understand nothin but a bit of lead tween the eyes.>"b-b-but thats illegal!">don't care, the local authorities thank me for culling their population, aint nothin but trouble anyhow.Guns I use? Why, a Winchester 1894 and God's given Browning Auto 5 shotgun, friend. Maybe my ol' single action as backup, but if .30-30 don't do it, a twelve gauge shot surely will.
>>65450973I mean, their most competent guys bother to carry them, and they look really inconvenient to carry around if they don't do shit. You'd assume they do something, right?The answer to all of these problems is clearly castles and FALs.
>>65450925>Rhodesian Bush War where it never endsBe the Ork equivalent of Valhalla. >>65450986Hispanics would merge with them.
>>65450986Nurgle’s abominations (Jeets) and Skaven (Hasidic Jews)
>>65450908HEDP grenades get a comeback
>>65451042I always thought of Jeets as being more poo undivided rather than patrons of a particular Chaos God?
>>65451077I always imagined them as Skaven. They love technology that is more dangerous to the user than to the person they are trying to kill. They live in filthy, irradiated ruins. They are slaves to a crazy caste system and backbite each other all the time. They're affiliated with like 7000 chaos demons but they aren't strongly devoted to any of them. And the skaven are almost entirely hunched, disgusting, vile, weak little male rats trying to win access to some bloated twisted broodmother churning out more little hideous creatures back in their lair. What were we talking about again?
>>65450943Kobolds get HK products
>>65450908Elves and Orcs would be the biggest gamechangers. Even with guns serving as an equaliser, an elven force will always surpass a human force due to the sheer disparity in physical prowess and endurance. Yes, they have low birth rates so obviously you cannot create a mass army out of elves, but you don't have to restricr yourself with just using elves as Special forces. They can fill officer roles, serve as pilots and more importantly, have the intelligence and willpower to become the new ruling class. Even discarding magical powers, Elves would become the new Warrior Aristocracy.Dwarfs don't have much of a use. You can use them as tunnel rats, tank crews or pack mules, but they'd onyl be a slightly more effective small human and not worth the effort to create new lines of production for equipment specifically tailored towards dwarfen bodies.Orcs depend on the interpretation as they are the race where writers usually deviate the most from Tolkien. I'll just go by Tolkien where the term Orc describes a wide range of below-average humanlike creatures to what we refer to as goblins (though in Tolkien's Mythos Goblin and Orc were just interchangeable words). They would be best served for logistical and industrial roles. Orcs are cowards and poor fighters, but their cowardice makes them excellent workers as they will almost never dare to rebel over shitty conditions like human workers. They can also be easier mass bred.Trolls are useless. It is a worse pack mule than a truck, a worse tank than an actual tank, a worse worker than large industrial machines and you have to deal with an unstable freak that is prone to kill your own men.
>>65450908Speaking of /k/ fantasy's, check out this amazing fantasy football league with 8 spots open!
>>65450908
Undoubtedly a few rascally younger Dragons would wind up unpleasantly surprised by modern weapons, but a species which combines physical might, longevity, intelligence, and magic would be devastatingly effective in the long run. If the Dragons can assume mammals' forms it's pretty much a wrap. Quite frankly I'd take a draconic banker over the goblins we have now.
>>65450908>>65451139Monster Hunter International probably has my favorite portrayal of elves ever. They’re basically a bunch of rednecks living in mobile homes and supporting themselves through illegal poaching. They still have the usual elven traits, being faster and more agile than humans, with quicker reflexes but they combine that with modern weapons (I think they were using ARs specifically) which makes them elite-tier snipers.
Good to see these threads back again. I will build a harem of elves to churn out child soldiers until I become a fantasy African warlord!
>>65451392I feel like Goblins would be more efficient. Their pregnancies are like what, 3 weeks?
Oh if anyone wants it, here is the discord link to the /k/ Fantasy Server. We were kind of inactive for a while but we're trying to get back in the swing of writinghttps://discord.gg/un9DCZbKY
>>65451042>Skaven>jewsSkaven are cool and funny though.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH9VdFvHiO8
>>65451139Elves live on a longer time scale than humans inherently and are slow to take action, they'll always be behind the technical edge of humans and dwarves. Conflict is fought with logistics. Dwarves will probably win by having uranium nuke powered hole drillers that can burrow under enemy territory and use explosives to destabilize industrial capacity/ kill. Think of carpet bombing in ww2 but due to it being underground you don't get to see it coming with radar/fight it with drones.Humans will likely either form agreements with dwarves because we are an inherently industrious species as well, or become bitter rivals/enemies, in which case, better build a bunch of aircraft carriers/floating cities in the ocean/along the coast. Neither dwarves nor elves are as good of sailors as we are. Open coastlines and the ocean also reduce cover and camouflage for elves if they try anything and sonar can detect burrowing attacks sooner in water than 500 feet of ground penetrating radar.Likely we would have to use off shore drilling too supply fuel and move to hydroponics and then go scratched earth and starve out the dwarves and elves if possible with defoliation. Dwarves may delevop underground UV groweries but still with air superiority, paratroopers and and billions of gallons of napalm and leftover tar we could dam up their air vents and suffocate them into an unconditionally surrender. Tolkien even admits that dwarves, as from the stone they may be, have their limits about underground QOL
>>65451205“I’m gon’ make you squeal like an orc”t. Cleetomir. Probably.
>>65454650Dwarves and Elves would probably basically require every member of their species to start at the bottom of their tech tree. Apprenticeship? Bah. learning from those who came before? that's for humans. You figure it the fuck out on your own talents.
>>65454688>Dwarves and Elves would probably basically require every member of their species to start at the bottom of their tech tree.Why?
>>65454705Because he's an HFYtard that thinks things that evolved the same body and close enough brain structures would somehow have wildly different ways of doing things instead of, you know, doing things in a way that would make sense.
I'm gonna use DnD/Forgotten Realms for my interpretation because that's one I actually know.>races with racial cantrips would exterminate those withoutElves and drow would make up the master races, if they even allowed the other races to survive. Everything else (forest gnomes, genasi, tieflings) would be a minority at best. Being a child with the ability to throw firebolts and acid splashes around puts an elven child on par with adults of other races. As they get older, they get very powerful spells that don't even need a spellslot (ergo, no magical training to use them). They also live a very long time, so waiting them out isn't an option when they go to war with other races. Darkvision, some only need 4 hours of sleep, and natural weapon proficiencies (particularly with bows) make it so they would dominate before any of them could become strong enough to resist. Forest gnomes and deep gnomes could survive via guerilla warfare, tiefling populations could survive in the Hells, some dwarves could hack it if they literally never left their caves. Humans would be bred out, orcs would likely have been genocided.>weapons and tacticsOur gun designs are honestly just natural and practical in terms of launching a projectile, so we'd see the implementation of combat wands/staffs shaped like long guns/pistols. They'd improve spell damage and speed and improve accuracy. Ammunition might begin to appear later on, but only to the end that you could compress a leveled spell into a shot.Anti-magic armor would be the hottest commodity imaginable once it was invented. Pure spellcasters would not be terribly common as combatants simply because the benefit of having a few leveled spells would be outweighed by the benefits of having a few cantrips and weapon skill. Pure casters would be backliners like snipers and medics.Tactically war would be frightening. Your enemies can teleport, see in the dark without NODs, become way better at every aspect of sneaking around on a whim.
>>65454712Elves would probably have a different brain structure because of their close ties with magic. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so to speak. Magic might actually mentally handicaped their problem solving abilities and have slowed tool usage brain pathways.Dwarves are known to be stubborn and hold grudges and likely would be very secretive about tech they develop, keeping it within their own clan and probably use it to kill each other/sell to humans to kill other dwarves.
>>65454790>weapons and tactics cont.For those early centuries where elves were establishing dominance, druids and rangers would play a dominant role due to much of the world's fauna being able to act as actual war machines paired with these class' ability to commune with or become said fauna. Imagine real-world ancient warfare, but one side is riding dinosaurs and flashfreezing the others' legs. High-level druids can also create fortifications by speaking a few words, making combat impossible for anyone who can't do all of the above.After this period, combat would follow a similar path to our world's because regrettably, combat favors gay tactics.As technology began to develop more, we'd see the same tech used in combat staffs applied to cannons and later tanks and aircraft that would make everything except the biggest creatures ineffective in combat. During this historical period, caster classes would spend most of their time just manufacturing spell bullets and become irrelevant on the battlefield, with the exception of a few druids for utility purposes (casting Wall of Stone from a "rifle" would probably be disastrous). Wizards, clerics, sorcerors, etc. could put all of their relevance into a 5.56 round and the average soldier would be able to use all of their spells in the span of one combat load.Battle would become increasingly gay as drones were invented and equipped with spellshots.Surface-dwelling elves would probably outlaw spells like cloudkill/circle of death because they're kinda gay, drow would be all over that shit.
>>65454826>civilian lifeForget your dreams of private wand/staff ownership. If the feds could cast Detect Ammunition, we wouldn't have guns either. We'd likely get bands of outlaw rangers and druids that could hold onto some and hide away in nature, but anyone trying to live in the city will be unarmed.
>>65454793Tolkien's understanding of Elves is not that they were mere magicians who use magic better than the other races, but the wisest of the races who understand the metaphysical plane of existence. Their understanding of magic is like our understanding of science, just even more perfect. In fact, in LOTR magic and Science were not two mutually exclusive concepts, but heavily tied to each other, hence why the Elves were also expert craftsmen and more advanced than the other races.Granted, many pop-culture fantasies forget the original Intention behind the Elves, so they just depict them as the race good with magic, but even then Elves in Stories usually still have superior craftsmanship over the humans, they just get overshadowed by the Dwarfs who often get flanderized as the industrial race.And realistically, Elves would be more advanced than the humans. Before the industrial revolution, a significant part of the scientific progresses in history were done by bored aristocrats with too much time on their hands. And an elve with infinite life would make much quicker progress than a human institution. The problem with them is that even if we have a genius, eventually he passes away and he has to spend a significant amount of time teaching a new guy to pick up everything he discovered before the replacement can even continue to progress. The Elves on the other would have exponential progress because they have inifite time to perfect their understanding of whatever they are studying.
>>65454712>things that evolved the same body and close enough brain structures would somehow have wildly different ways of doing thingsYeah I mean have you ever seen the way indians do things?
>>65451029Not to be too anally retentive, but technically wouldn't those all be SLRs, not FALs?
>>65454790>some only need to sleep 4 hoursD&D elves do not sleep at all. They have something do that is similar, but is explicitly stated to not be the same as sleep. This is the source of their immunity to magical sleep effects, as presumably the magic is trying to trick the brain into doing something that an elven brain does not do, so it's relying on a mechanism that in the eldest case, does not exist.
>>65454851Interesting take, but we see even in humans, a lot of "experts" get stuck following dead ends after years and years devoted to something, whereas the best innovation comes from constantly looking outward and updating a strategy, often incorporating differing elements from others because we don't have the time to individually develop everything. Modern engineering is built on the logistics of incorporating pre existing components and such, to save our always limited time. Expert craftsmanship is great don't get me wrong, but ironically, the United States actually got to fight the entirety of WW2 on this principle. The weapon of supreme craftsmanship was the M1 garand. They are obnoxiously difficult to make, but superbly made resulting in an excellent weapon. C&Rsenal has a good breakdown of the topic, but Julian Hatchers book of the garand illustrates it great as well. The M1 carbine on the other hand, was an extremely rushed design, incorporating other weapons parts to save time, usually the Winchester self loading rifle... Guess which of the two they ended up making and issuing more of, and practically speaking ended up being a better firearm? 1/2
>>65454851>>65455537 The select fire, intermediate caliber, ,15/30 round detachable mag fed, half as expensive to produce, produced more of in a shorter period of time, m1/m2 carbine which weighed half as much as a garand, was of course the winner. The elves might have very experienced and talented individuals, but war is logistics, and by the numbers, the m1/m2 carbine was a much better rifle in WW2. Better than the STG as well, which while 7.92 kurtz was ballistically superior, had worse mags and a wayyyyy higher reject rate of raw stampings than m1 carbines had. The m1 carbine was designed to be made by anyone and everyone, and it was and was made well enough. Mags were made to be disposable and when used as such, worked well. Dwarves with their lifespans likely would fall into similar failings. The elves in LOTR literally did not give a fuck about middle earth and said "I'm going to the undying lands" when their first attempt at getting rid of souron with their alience with men didn't work out. They're pampered babies in 1000 year old bodies who can't stand the idea of having to evolve, try again, and change strategies, like having hobbits be the key. Tolkien was a human and he decided frodo had to to it, and Aragorn being a main character, was kind of a self insert, who shunned the power of being a king until he had no more choice to do so and deciding to live as a ranger, building skills and staying humble is human ingenuity and flexibility on the face of the failings of establishment elves and dwarves and is thusly and illustration of human superiority baked into classical fantasy through and through weather you like it or not 2/2
>>65454851Further on the topic of Tolkien having a boner for human superiority (justified and based), hobbits represent the state of individual humans rather than humanity as a whole. In the lense of the great war, reading tolkiens works shows that all hobbit characters are embodied by being on paper, weak, but through their choices and will, being irreplaceable and capable of great impact. Their hearts mirror our real human hearts, hobbits being a people fond of family, pleasure but ultimately kindness, above all else(as illustrated but the fact that people in first world countries generally become overweight, fattness being an explicit sign of a prosperous hobbit as per "The Hobbit") the world is largely at peace today, especially compared to the 19th and 20th centuries, and that speaks to our ultimate desires as humans to do well, even when we have individuals who have never been more powerful(the president of france, Macron, could've nuked anyone he wants af this point, but hasn't, indicating even our lowest beings are capable of empathy and love in the presence of extreme power(analogous to the one ring,( you know Emanuel jerks off to thinking he's Napoleon right?))
>>65455537>The weapon of supreme craftsmanship was the M1 garand. They are obnoxiously difficult to make, but superbly made resulting in an excellent weapon.The M1 garand was the rifle issued to actual frontline combat troops. >Guess which one they made more of?I had more to say but this so disingenuous and/or monofocused on proving humans superior to the point you're just talking out your ass means you aren't worth engaging with. Arbitrary production metrics mean I might as well say a glock is a superior combat firearm to the garand by your logic because they've made more of them.Just go write HFY shlock.
>>65455109A FAL is a FAL but those are indeed SLRs because the guys towards the back have their rear sights folded down lmao
>>65451176Fuck off NIGGER
>>65455584The garand was supposed to be the Frontline rifle. As was the 1903 Springfield, cue the 1917 Enfield. And also in ww2, the 03A3 and the Johnson because we couldn't make enough Garands/there were situations where we had to adapt and choose other rifles better suited to the job/what the. Marines thought wouldve been better. But the. M1 carbine was what Audie Murphy had when he performed his acts of noteriery and is present among a multitude of other Frontline combat instances such as IWO jima and Normandy to name a couple. The point is that in war, shit will hit the fan, things won't be able to be planned for and the backup shit will have to get used as the primary, intended to or not. Logistics, logistics, logistics. More of good enough is better than some excellence. The Glock analogy falls apart because a Glock isn't good enough. The carbine role and following adopted m1 from Winchester was invented specifically because it needed to be better than a handgun or submachine gun. Maybe if you spent more time reading than deepthroating knife ears you would understand that. You seem like you used to fall for the "one million folds nippon samurai katana craftsmanship" meme being better than knights crucible steel as well.(Maybe you know better now, but that's just a feeling I'm getting from your autism aura)
>>65455711* On the Glock point, that's just my autism getting side tracked in the weeds. The point that I got away from does circle back to "more good enough" being better than "some excellence" for the task at hand. In this case being war.
>>65455711>. Maybe if you spent more time reading than deepthroating knife ears you would understand that.I think it's fine to write a story where elves are superceded by other races, including humans. I just think your examples and rational for it are stupid and would make for a poor story.
>>65455719Fair enough, Ive been having trouble writing lately anyways.
Isn't this genre 100% slop?
>>65458051see>>65455674New nigger go home
>>65454793I guess it depends on how far you take "magical affinity." If it means that 1in every 1000 Elves is a mage, as opposed to 1 in every 10,000,000 humans, then they'd probably still do things mostly "normal," but with a significant boost from their magic users. You'd get magic guns.If every single Elf is a functional wizard, then at that point they may not see the necessity of anything non-magical and have a difficult time even conceptualizing why they would want a gun. This would make them on the same level as African natives who think their spells can block bullets, only with slightly more truth to it. They'd be totally un-inovative and get rolled over by humanity given enough time.
>unit finally gets an observation fairy>voluntold to carry her ruck, usgi waist pack sized>her English is really good, likes to talk about human technology and plants>crawls into my puffy jacket at meal breaks>eats half my mre jelly>does lewd things while on night watchNot so bad.
>>65458630Do not the fairy.
>>65458822There isn’t enough vanilla fairy works.
>>65455560See this is why I have some distaste for settings that flanderize hobbits into a 1 dimensional "food lover," race who are always feasting and cooking. It's a subversion borne out of ignorance of what a Hobbit *is*
