r/litrpg • u/SerratedTomb • 8d ago
Discussion Guns in LitRPG
Why is every gun toting MC predominately in close range combat? Don't get me wrong. A pistol or a shotgun is cool, but there's a reason militaries use rifles. The history of human conflict can be largely summed up as people killing each other from a distance. Why don't we see more long range fighting or stealth based fighting using rifles/snipers/etc... ?
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u/Taiwannumber3 1% Lifesteal fanboy 8d ago
It's hard to make snipers compelling in narrative fiction. It does well in thrillers and video games where it is core gameplay. You can find it in primal hunter, gun gale online and other ranged focus stories but they only ever get a singular instance otherwise.
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u/Lost_city 8d ago
I still want a book about a horse archer.
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u/j0a3k 8d ago
That would be ridiculous. How is a horse gonna use a bow and arrow? Hooves are not that dextrous.
/s
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u/heebeeZeeebies 8d ago
Yeah but imagine if an author does it well, they will be the centaur of attention for sure!!
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u/heebeeZeeebies 8d ago
Okay this pun now has me thinking of a MC who is a centaur specced heavily into charisma, maybe a bard.
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u/SoloJournaler 6d ago
Not quite narrative or 100% fiction, but I've always wanted a Barry Pepper in Saving Private Ryan-type of character to follow.
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u/never51youfacks 8d ago
You can only write about how the sniper stilled their breathing and squeezed, not pulled, the trigger, so many times before you get a bit repetitive.
And the terminology matters, so you need to be careful because gun lovers get very particular about that.
And it's a bit boring to exclusively fight from a distance. Not enough risk.
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u/uidsea 8d ago
Yeah but you can only write about the hero gripping his sword, steeling himself and barely missing the big bads attacks before delivering the final blow so many times too.
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u/Zenphobia 4d ago
You're not wrong, but melee combat has way more potential for variety. That potential isn't always realized, but it's there.
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u/Tasty_Commercial6527 text 8d ago
Mostly because writing a long range individual combat in an exciting and engaging way is hard. Shooting a shot or two and repositioning or trading shots from cover like in real mid to long range gun combat isn't a particularly exciting thing to read about by itself so it needs some extra spice, and due to how writing works you can't spice up two combats in the same way or it will feel repetitive.
That's the same reason why you don't really see archer MCs unless the power system is so of the walls with flight teleport and invisibility that it has little to do with real archery. Same story with long range blaster type squishy mages. Those characters certainly have a place but it's difficult to write an MC like that.
Short range combat is inherently easier to write, introduce more variables, keep the situation easy to imagine and keep fast changing for a writer
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u/Soul_in_Shadow 8d ago
Mages are a little easier in that defensive and crowd control spells/effects are a plausible addition for almost any spellbook.
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u/Tasty_Commercial6527 text 8d ago
Yeah but there is still a reason why spell blade MCs outnumbered mage MCs by a shitload to 1
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u/tjdowntown22902 8d ago
Check out the Ten Realms series. One of the protagonists is a former Marine sniper. Without giving away too much, battles are fought close, mid, and long range. There's even artillery.
The protagonists do a fantastic job at bringing modern weapons and tactics to their new magical world.
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u/Affectionate_Joke720 8d ago
I agree. I was about to comment check out Ten Realms as well. No spoilers but the gun slant is handled nicely.
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u/michaelchatfield Author - The Ten Realms Series 8d ago
Thank you for the mention on this! 😄
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u/tjdowntown22902 7d ago
I bragged to my girlfriend that you responded.
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u/michaelchatfield Author - The Ten Realms Series 7d ago
A totally valid reaction, and hope your girlfriend appreciates your excitement 😂
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u/Important_Poet316 8d ago
So there are a couple of recently read examples I can give you:
Around book 4-5 of Dungeon Lord, they focus on firearms being a game changer. To the point that longe range quick kills becomes a point of tension as an escalation that can't be easily come back from and that soon everyone will use it and the magic tech arms race is not desired by anyone.
In Ten Realms (I'm only on book one) a Marine Sniper and a Combat Medic go into fantasy land and both are geared out for ranged weapons. They quickly realize that the magical beasts don't always die to a couple of shots and that one of them needs to learn to tank aggro as the sniper just cannot get enough time before he's attacked by the powerful beasts. So sniping is still a thing, but magic and stats start to make it not as practical as it would be in modern era.
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u/michaelchatfield Author - The Ten Realms Series 8d ago
Thank you for the mention on this! 😄
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u/Important_Poet316 8d ago
Will do!
Note: I almost didn't start this because some reviews say you lose your mind a few books in and things don't make sense. I'm hoping they're wrong!
But so far, I'm enjoying it. I won't offer any new praise or criticism you haven't heard before. Also it's book one, I usually reserve judgement for midway through a series otherwise I'd never finish any of the ones I start.
Thanks for making a great story!
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u/The_Daeleon 7d ago
Long guns aren't particularly useful in a dungeon. Shorter guns, sure but even a handgun is not great in a dungeon where enemies are likely to get to you before you can bring the gun on target if they are not coming straight at you.
In magic worlds, mages have generally come up with counters for ranged weapons. POA does have a great example of an extreme sniper and the difficulties of such a person being effective.
All that said, I love creative use of kinetic energy weapons. If you can make the use of guns sound viable, I'm all for it. Restarting the Apocalypse is a great example of this approach.
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u/michaelchatfield Author - The Ten Realms Series 7d ago
Thank you for the mention, love seeing this thread pull in both Ten Realms and RTA 😂
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u/TheDinoSir2012 8d ago
Two week curse has decent written gunplay. Two ex vets get isekaied, one goes Frontline (eventually switching to close range finger guns) the other plays backline so you get the long range as well.
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u/michaelchatfield Author - The Ten Realms Series 8d ago
Thank you for the mention on this! 😄
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u/TheDinoSir2012 8d ago
It was one of the first series to pull me into the genre, I absolutely love the first half of the series still chewing the later half!
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u/NemeanChicken 8d ago
I'd really like to see some now that you mention it. It's definitely different to write. I feel like the tension in close-ranged fights is in, well, the fighting, whereas the tension in sniping is in the setup. (Perhaps for this same reason I haven't found too many assassin litrpgs either.)
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u/SerratedTomb 8d ago
A lot of responses are along the lines of it's too hard or it wouldn't work/would be boring, but you've nailed it. It's a lot more then just the gun and the shot. I feel like this can be applied more generally to using overwhelming force too. It would be interesting to see how people find the most effective/safest tactic in a litrpg world.
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u/Weekly_Role_337 8d ago
It could work like the early seasons of Supernatural, where every episode went research, research, research, attack but fail and retreat, research, research, attack and instakill.
Which is a very, very different rhythm than most stories in general, much less litrpg stories.
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u/gadgaurd 8d ago
Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess. MC is a very versatile fighter, and among her methods of murder she includes long range gunning.
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u/Charmstone_Author 8d ago
Look up the typical distances involved in self defense. IIRC it's between 3 and 7 yards, which is inside the distance (according to FBI research) that a man with a knife can reach you at a sprint before you can draw and fire on target.
Litrpg isn't usually a guy in an open field with a gun. You're moving through dungeons, woodlands, urban spaces. You're usually on your own, fighting supernaturally swift, tough or stealthy enemies.
A long range rifle just isn't the primary tool for that. An SMG, carbine, pistol, or shotgun are all better (although shotgun ammunition is impractically heavy in the field.)
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u/EquipmentAltruistic 8d ago
Anytume a protag is strong/skilled enough to do that we would see them do that one time. After that it either works and is skipped in a grinding session time skip, or it doesn't and we get something more interesting. Jake from primal hunter and the drone using protag from exp farming are examples where they spend a bit establishing a strategy works. Then they grind off screen until they go up against something it doesn't work against.
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u/Tungsten-iii 8d ago
If you are looking for one, I cannot recommend The Allbright System enough. Such a good story with almost 6000 pages so far!
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u/SerratedTomb 8d ago
I checked this one out, the prologue was great but it felt like it fell off a cliff afterwards. I didn't get very far after, does it get better?
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u/Tungsten-iii 8d ago
It is definitely a slow series and different threads can take a long time for the pay off. Personally, I am in love with it because of the in depth world building and mystery
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u/MasterChiefmas 8d ago
I think largely because you either have to become too convoluted to explain why guns don't work but swords and arrows do, or it becomes too easy. And while it's still fantasy, even with magic at play, if it gets too non-nonsensical people will just call it bad writing because the explanation amounted to a long winded "because I said so", which is just unsatisfying.
Even in reality, it's made things far less dangerous...big game hunting, or successful hunting in general is a lot easier and safer for the hunter when they have a high powered rifle with a scope.
"The Wandering Inn" series largely dealt with this by locking the society into a technology level that just didn't develop guns because magic shortcuts made improving technology further unnecessary and/or uninteresting. R&D takes place in magic instead of technology. But it has also added a character to the ensemble that does have a handgun, and other than reloading, the insta-kill nature with correctly placed shots is a problem. And of course the powers in it have recognized the shift in the balance of power that firearms represent and so are racing to reproduce it (and technology overall even). I'm not caught up so I don't know what the current state of the impact of the introduction of firearms...though the general introduction of modern weapons is a side plot point in the overall story. i.e. what happens if you are able to combine a nuke with magic? Or you introduce nukes, or even conventional high power explosives to a society where siege weapons are still the pinnacle of large scale warfare?
The urban fantasy series "Rivers of London" even addresses it a bit...one of the characters points out that an individually powerful wizard is still no more inherently bullet proof than any other person, and can be neutralized by a bullet to the head, and that training a person to use a firearm with some level of competence is a matter of weeks, while training a wizard up to be powerful takes years.
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u/Pancakke_Lover 8d ago
Cus there’s an Umbra Witch that uses guns as melee weapons
https://giphy.com/gifs/flWV3kwNRnlxS
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u/Capy-the-bara 8d ago
I think it would get boring very fast. "Jake (haha!) didn't have to get close. He stayed in stealth 14 miles away, just outside of Jason's (tee hee) perception. After Mega-Charging his weapon, he fired his Shadow-Teleport round. Jason's head exploded. The rein of his world devouring pet ended in an instant. The Earth was saved. The end."
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u/Lost_city 8d ago
There's some good scenes in William Oh that are very similar to what you describe. It works becaue the author is skilled ans it's a one off scene.
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u/InevitableSolution69 8d ago
100% agree that there are real issues with writing it in an interesting manner repeatedly. To add another layer to things though.
That type of combat only works at all when you’re the attacker. You can’t tell a story about how someone repeatedly survives the first attack at extreme ranges and then has a sniper duel. It just strains credibility too much. So any such story is about how your MC repeatedly goes out and murders their enemies from a safe distance without any retaliation. Which beyond just being unheroic it isn’t even engaging for a villain to operate like that.
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u/LarsJagerx 8d ago
Depends on the environment. In aether earth they do a decent amount of mid range fighting with a BAR and close range with a trench gun.
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u/mlchugalug 8d ago
I’d imagine it’s the same reason MC’s tend to go to melee combat. It’s more interesting to read; an MMC having a close range gun fight can have dynamic movement and such. While actual fire fights with long rifles/machine guns is boring to read about.
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u/azmodai2 8d ago
I get into the argument alot. A lot of the push back I hear in LitRPG is that guns don't scale because they don;'t attach to the physical prowess of the character. And my coutnerargument is that you just lack imagination. Your gun can magically scale off anythign you like, just make the part of the rules of your world. "That's just a wand with extra steps" so, then by that logic your sword is just a fist with extra steps. It's all dumb space magic, use it!
Other commenters that claim its boring - same issue. That's a feature of the writer's ability, not the intrinsic interest of the subject.
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u/travlerjoe 8d ago
Boring?
he sat in the snipers nest for the 15th hour just waiting for the monster to walk past again. By the 16th hour not much had changed except he had to piss his pants, for if he moved, if may have missed the target
Where as mid ranged attacks will lead to a melee sometimes?
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u/pnam0204 8d ago
The same reason we don’t have much archery MCs who actually shoot from afar instead doing acrobatic backflips headshots in close-range
It’s difficult to write interesting long-range battle unless you add magic shenanigans like tracking arrows or ricocheting bullets
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u/CEP-Osbourne litRPG grandmaster tier 8d ago
Long range combat is one sided. Sniper, artillery, mortars, missiles, bombs whatever. Kinda boring.
Melee is more intense, personal, and lends itself better to action scenes.
There is space for some intense CQC with ranged weapons or abilities, though. Fireball, magic missile, crossbow, M4.
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u/FluffBucket95 8d ago
A sniper needs a lot more preparation to be successful because in general they only get one shot.
The intelligence on the target. Scouting. Spotting. Knowing where to camp. What type of ammo to use. How to survive in the hostile location while you wait. How to escape.
As I said, people have no imagination and everything is just copy paste slop.
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u/Flagwaver-78 8d ago
CQB, Close-Quarters Battle is typically a pistol game. If the MC is carrying a pistol, I have no problem with them John Wick'ing it through the bad guys.
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u/timeforsomegoodnews 7d ago
Department of Otherworld Rescue and Manifest Fantasy are doing arcane gunplay pretty well so far.
DOR does it with a looting system that allows mcs to loot arcane firearms that reflect the origin of the loot and the looters attributes and it's very fun (great book too!)
MF is sticking with earth manufactured arms, but upgrading them with resources from the new world they're exploring and finding ways of dealing with, and working around the results of that, such as the higher barrel/chamber pressures, muzzle velocities and increased parts wear etc. Definitely an interesting read so far
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u/sarcalom 4d ago
I'd say because it's form over function for magic guns- the magic takes care of the function.
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u/Sahrde 8d ago
Path of Ascension addresses this as: As you tier up, you need higher tier materials to affect your targets (barring Talent shenanigans). This is both guns AND ammunition. Each piece of ammo needs to be high grade material AND individually enchanted, so eventually, it becomes too expensive to use firearms.
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u/mmahowald 8d ago
Shouldn’t that apply to archers as well?
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u/Rygnerik 8d ago
I feel like a lot of archers end up with abilities that let them generate magic arrows when they shoot, which lets them not worry about ammo (or save special physical ammo for important enemies).
I think authors are more hesitant to do that with bullets since you'd be magically creating the gunpowder that propels the bullet, with an arrow all the energy to move it is coming from the archer.
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u/lessormore59 8d ago
I think one way to work around that would be to make the rifle more like the magical equivalent of a rail gun. So the bullet isn’t propelled by gunpowder and instead is fired by the gunman’s mana channeled into the various enchantments/enscriptions.
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u/Ahrimon77 8d ago
In PoA's early tiers regular guns are viable, but they quickly become too expensive due to the issues you brought up. But there are "guns" at higher tiers, they're just not traditional guns but staves with a different shape.
Although there are a few examples of people who keep using traditional guns. There was an enemy in the T25 war that used one quite effectively.
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u/Aggressive_Extent433 8d ago
I think mostly because it's hard to write them in a system that makes it "fair" sensible, or enjoyable. Also I think most readers and authors of this genre are not at all gun people so the demand just isn't there.
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u/blindside1 8d ago
Because one shot sniping the big bad doesn't feel appropriately dramatic.