Guide to Guns in Roleplay

COPIED AND PASTED FROM http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1776589419 for your leisure. Credit to Eugwyn-Argent Dawn.

History
Firearms were invented by the Dwarves of Ironforge being created during the Second Orcen War and put into the hands of Riflemen during the Third War. This means that firearms are truly a new invention being approximately twenty-seven years old. Between the time they were invented and implemented during the Third War, the Dwarves of Ironforge had a significant amount of time, see: eighteen years, to advance their technologies in relative peace.

During this time, they were able to develop such improvements on the base model of the musket such as rifling, Minié balls, the flintlock (as opposed to the matchlock), and even the percussion cap (with limited use). While this does not sound like great improvements, for a span of twenty-seven years, these improvements are massive innovations. While it does seem quite ridiculous that this is the best they have even with Gnomes being their allies, you must remember that the Gnomes lost the majority of their production equipment with Gnomeregan and they are quite preoccupied with creating bigger and better (and quite useless) technologies to out-do the Goblins, leaving more practical technologies to their Dwarven cousins.


Making a Firearm
The creation of firearms is more of an art than any other kind of weapon making and even has its own specialization. Gunsmithing is a mix of engineering and blacksmithing, requiring the smith to be proficient in both, and to have devoted his life to the perfection of his art.

The most common materials to make these weapons out of are iron, brass, and bronze. They are all fairly common, with iron being the most common with hand-held firearms and brass and bronze being used for cannons. This is due to the need for hand-held firearm barrels to be thinner, but still strong enough to withstand the forces of the explosions. The making of the barrel is a fairly complex process. It usually involves a liquefied metal being cast around a rod to make the hollow barrel.

The stocks are made of woods with the type of wood being purely cosmetical for the most part, the only requirement being that it be one piece of a hard wood such as oak or maple. Soft woods like pine would simply shatter under the forces exerted by the explosions that propel the bullets.

The third, and most complicated part, of making a firearm is the firing mechanism. The mechanism varies slightly between flintlock and percussion cap. With flintlock firearms, the trigger is pulled, releasing a hammer that has clamped in it a piece of flint. The flint strikes a metal plate, sending a shower of sparks onto a flashpan containing a small amount of gunpowder that leads inside the barrel to the charge.

Misfires and Malfunctions



Misfires
Warcraft firearms are prone to misfiring. Period. It is a fact of RP that they can and will misfire. Even if made by a tinker. (Note: there are a few special firearms that are unavailable that have extremely low rates of misfire) Many things can make a firearm misfire. Wet or old powder, a charge that’s not packed enough, too small of a charge. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is, you should roll whenever using a firearm to see if it misfires.


Hang Fire
A hang fire is when there is an extended delay between the time the hammer hits and the charge ignites. This is a common malfunction and happens about once in every three shots. This makes it extremely important to follow through with your shots, just like with bows.

Firearm Upgrades

Rifling
A rifled barrel can greatly increase the range of a firearm. This improvement is simply a twist put on the inside of the barrel to force the projectile to spin, giving it stability and increased accuracy. This upgrade is typically only applied to muskets, transforming them into deadly rifles that are accurate up to 300 yards. Pistols may receive this upgrade as well, but it severely reduces the caliber of the pistol, increasing the accuracy, but decreasing the damage caused by it.


Minié Balls
These projectiles are an incredibly deadly upgrade to the standard musket ball. Formed in a conical shape and rigged along it’s body, the end of the bullet is flared so that when fired, it forms to the grooves of the rifling, sealing off all the gas produced by the gunpowder explosion and giving it fins for stability and increased accuracy. These bullets make sharpshooting possible, extending the range of a rifle by another 100-200 yards.


Scopes
Scopes, in the modern sense, do not exist in Warcraft. In the sense of Warcraft, they are simply elongated tubes with a slight magnification to them. Usually about 2x. This does not make it possible to “snipe” targets, only sharp shoot. In fact, the most common scope is simply a tube that narrows the field of vision and zones in on the target.


Silencers
This section will be brief. There is one silencer in the lore. And it is unavailable for use. And technologically, there is no physical way to silence a muzzle loading firearm. Therefore, silencers, for all intents and purposes, do not exist.

Wounds

Guns vs Plate
There are two trains of though on this. One says that plate cannot be penetrated by the kinds of firearms in Warcraft, the other says the opposite. However, both have some merit. Plate can be penetrated by muskets and blunderbusses at close range only. Simply put, pistols do not have the outward velocity to punch through. This does not mean, however, that if you are far enough away that bullets will simply bounce off of you. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Your armor will be heavily dented and you will likely be knocked down and suffer from heavy bruising and possibly broken bones and internal bleeding.


Guns vs Mail
Mail, unlike plate, is not rigid and is much more impervious to penetration. Projectiles from pistols and rifles will obvious knock the wearer down, possibly break bones, and definitely cause some internal damage, but will not penetrate. Blunderbusses, however, have small shot which will penetrate the chains because all of the forward momentum is put into a smaller point. All in all, mail will turn most bullets, but the stun effect will knock you out, assuming it doesn’t kill you.


Guns vs Flesh (Or Light Armor)
All projectiles used by Warcraft firearms are made of lead. Even if the item says it’s made of something else, it’s not. It physically couldn’t be. It’s made of lead. But this is not a problem as lead is far more dangerous than any other metal could be. Lead balls and the Minié balls mushroom when they hit the body. This means that the front surface of the projectile expands, doing more damage to the body, literally ripping flesh, shattering bones, and severing limbs.

A gunshot wound is not a thing anyone could simply shrug off. And such wounds cannot simply be healed by a paladin or priest. Surgery must be performed to remove the lead inside of the person otherwise risk of infection and death will almost certainly be a followup.

Awesome post. I highly approve of fire-arms limitations suggested here!

Let's make all our guild mates read this, Doc.

Thats a great guide!
Wish that random warrior with the scoped gun with a ammo clip from yesterday would read it....

Nice read!

However it misses on another type of gun but it's only ever mentioned once (And not really well known unless you're aware of classes out of the current WoW system but in general lore).

I agree with all this guide apart from the ammo type part however. While yes this rule applies in the real world for sure and is pretty much true, in the world of warcraft that ideal is slightly different as magic has been known to take use as the ammunition instead. Not something that should be regarded a common factor and probs would never be exposed in a Stormwind scene, but I wouldn't devoid that side completely even if you'll never see it anyway.

Nice, finally some useful information to poor Bavragor.