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Firearm

2019-09-14T14:32:50Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A545:DBC4:B08:AFF0: /* Modern Firearms */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that doesn't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
1. Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. In either case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone. Also hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]].

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work it's action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some fool came up with an explosive that would go off if you slam a hammer into it, which led to the first explosive primers. This basically involves putting explosives in ur explosives to explode your explosives. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons. in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still an both accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce), getting iron to contain the explosion without deforming and leaking gas, thus weakening the shot, was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the concept of "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders."

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns, the first automatic infantry weapon, are developed by the German Empire and issued to their stormtroopers, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns. Not liking to be one-upped, the Americans came up with the trench gun (a 6 shot, pump-action renforced shotgun with a bayonet that was pure murder in the confines of a trench) that ultimately evolved into the modern combat shotgun.

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. To go back to an early quote "God made man, Sam Colt made them equal and John Browning (designer of a large number of machine guns including the m2 .50 cal or 12.7mm) made them civilized!". We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.
[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]
'''1950s-1990s''': After World War II, the US Army performed a study and determined that it took 20,000 bullets to confirm one enemy casualty; most of those rounds would miss or be spent suppressing an enemy. With numbers like that, people now realized the power of a fully-automatic rifle since they allow you to fire more and more rounds and increase your chance of hitting as compared to a bolt action rifle. As such, assault rifles become more and more common with armed forces of the world and are extensively developed upon, largely, if not completely, phasing out the old bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles used back in WW2. Iconic assault rifles such as the AK-47, M14, and M16A1 are created and show the world the power of an automatic rifle through the the numerous wars going on during the 1960s-70s, such as the Communist wars in Korea and Vietnam, along with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, to name a few.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms become more deadly than they were ever before. Fine-tuning how every aspect of how a firearm would work has allowed numerous countries to develop better and efficient ways on how to kill on a scale unseen since the Europeans developed the musket.

'''2010s''': Development of more robust weapons (such as the POF P416 and HK 416), modularity (FB MSBS, similar to the ACR with the variation count of a Lasgun), practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT project), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory currently working with a practical version (i.e. can reload at the same rates as an Abrams 120mm loader). Apparently, it can fires rounds with 32 megajoules of energy, or 23,601,988 foot-pounds.) So apparently even in 2017, we outpace the Imperium in development, makes you wonder what the Dark Age of Technology holds. Few of these have progressed far enough to get fielded and may just be dead ends. The main innovation at this time comes from optics, where even cheap sights makes the professional equipment of old look like crap. Also cheap rifle parts and market (at least for Americans) due to advances in manufacturing. No seriously, you can get a basic AR for $500 or even just make it yourself from parts for less than $400 (Firearms are taxed 10-11%, parts are not. Thus there is significant savings by only buying a small block of aluminum), and that's if you aren't diving into sub-milspec stuff. New designer rounds to outpace rounds such as the 5.56 and .308 in performance are also coming out, such 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 MPC, .224 Valkyrie, .300 Winchester Magnum, and so on. These only see widespread uses among snipers however, as the cost of replacing existing guns and ammo for what is a marginal increase in performance is of questionable budget use.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| An example of humanity developing practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be light weight while not compromising muzzle energy, it'll bring much benefit to anyone needing to bearing the ammunition (assuming the kinks are worked out).]]

Many countries around the world are now looking for new ways to either improve or adapt combustion-based firearms as a whole, and are looking for ways to make what were once sci-fi-only ammo and weaponry, such as [[lasgun|laser]], [[plasma]], direct energy overall (involving the last two), [[gauss]], telescopic/caseless ammo, and more, a reality. While met with some degree of success, nobody (pardoning America, 'cause you gotta do something with that large budget) has found a way yet for these weapons to be man-portable (or cost-effective in the case of telescopic and caseless ammo) that a single soldier could carry these into combat or be affordable/reliable to an extent that it would be more feasible to make these instead of the traditional ballistic weaponry. There is also the problem that if you get a hard projectile (think tungsten and steel) going fast enough, it will just over-penetrate and go through a target, doing little actual damage as compared to our modern bullets that hit, create a temporary cavity the size of a dinner plate, then tumble going through the target sideways (which means that against unarmored targets your average 5.56 round would likely do comparable damage to a bolt round). Rounds that fragment and inbuilt post-penetration destabilization fix this, however the main point here is that there is little reason to equip your soldiers with some [[Bolter|fancy dandy overly complex and costing a half-million dollar gun and ammo]] when a [[Lasgun|good ol' service rifle and some traditional ammo costing a few hundred bucks]] will allow them to do their job just fine. Leading off from the previous statement, even if such projects were successful, there is a strong point to be made that, as least as far as infantry weapons are concerned, chemical-based firearms will remain both cost effective and lethal enough to last at least another century or two, if not longer. While elite units will certainly benefit from new developments, the ordinary grunt will have to wait until they become cheap enough to mass produce. Most modern work is either completely experimental, or fine tuning already present technologies with developments from other areas.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter(like frangible rounds made of sintered metal)can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Also pretty much self explanatory.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive guns gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be really technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time. The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. Because these fuses were unreliable, they were eventually replaced with flintlocks, which ignited by generating sparks in the firing chamber. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles became a feasible thing, who did what a musket could, but better.

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have 2 or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large and heavy).
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category; machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and range, but remain popular with personnel like bodyguards, who require a highly portable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts".

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (revolvers in all generations were a pain in the ass to reload. If you had an old revolver with a loading gate; you had to eject each round by hand, ''then'' load new rounds. If you had a newer one; you had to empty the cylinder, load the rounds, then cock the hammer. This is in contrast to modern guns where you just had to eject the magazine, load a new one, and charge the weapon). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it; revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a non-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though military shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on fractions of weight rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm.

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 and M2 Carbine are considered to be the earliest ones fielded in any quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (atlest for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't.
:*Elephant Gun - A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down big game like elephants, but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in America, see NFA for detail). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts (such as the RPK), or else scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun - HMGs fire large caliber rounds (like the famous .50 BMG). Unlike the other two, HMGs are exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight, which makes them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]. It would be impossible for a man of lesser strength to reliably fire these things with live ammunition without it being in a fixed position), unlike the light and medium machine guns. Generally a squad would carry the parts necessary to move such a beast and its needs if the mission requires it. HMGs are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them a formidable weapon. Examples of HMG are Russian DHSK and American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft or anti-aircraft emplacements, as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangably, but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the bottom of the barrel can be unhinged so that you can load a new round into it. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that the mechanism would chamber a new round. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2.
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well, and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.

*Automatic action: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires three (or sometimes two) rounds in rapid succession. This is used as a way to allow automatic capability without wasting bullets, as keeping the trigger held too long on anything other than a mounted weapon tends to cause it to lose accuracy very quickly.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use and are only available to military.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, compared to the traditional setup, as most of the gun's mechanism is located in the stock area. but has the disadvantage of not being ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, left-handed shooters are forced to shoot from the right to not get their faces burned off) unless specifically designed to be so. This is usually resolved by cutting out ejection ports on both sides and swapping parts over, or else ejecting bullets downward or forward. And typically suffer from poor triggers due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out of ammo. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun by just making the magazine bigger and made it easier to reload ammunition (after all if you're reloading a gun with 30 rounds; its much faster to just load an entire mag than cramming 30 rounds worth of clips down it). High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it.

==Ammunition themselves==
Ammo

To call a round, or cartridge, a bullet would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wraith of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder, but those clouded the air and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally gun cotton or nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot". For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that dead 'ard. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.

*Hollow point (HP)- Expands on impact, creates a bigger hole on impact. Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too.

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Non-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of plastic these days instead. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances, though. Airsoft this ain't.

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade).

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much) and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end; the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols.

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range.

*Non-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon (which would give a warcrimes committee a field day); blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels.

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.)

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*Zip gun: Usually a metal tube attached to a piece of wood or object, within it some sort of trigger and striker. One example of this is a slam fire gun. Generally a 12 gauge shotgun shell loaded into a 3/4 inch tube that can be shoved into a 1 inch tube that has cap containing a nail at the end. When shoved in, the cap's nail will be more than enough to set off the shell, making the tubes effectively a shotgun.

*Experimental design: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*CNC Manufacturing: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily mill out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be drilled out. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway. Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with there longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to die out. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get there hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore then making a sword does they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive. You're better off with magic crossbows.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Isekai

2019-09-14T01:20:51Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A545:DBC4:B08:AFF0: /* Why do people hate it so much? */

{{topquote|1=Hey guys, today I wanted to talk about the newest, hottest anime to come out this season. All right, get this: It's about a completely normal shut-in Otaku with a very specific skill set that makes him useless in the real world, who is suddenly transported to a fantasy world kinda similar to any JRPG you've ever seen where he suddenly becomes the hottest shit, and he has two jobs: Messing up any poor soul who looks at him the wrong way and getting some 2D bitches. Wait, doesn't this sound oddly familiar?|2=Gigguk, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFR2nvw19h4 "Isekai: The Genre that Took Over Anime"]}}

Proof that Japan has no publishing standards or quality control. '''Isekai''' is a Japanese word assimilated into the /tg/ lexicon from the [[weeaboo]] faggots at /a/ and /jp/. Literally meaning "another world" or "parallel world", it refers to a genre in which the main characters are from "our" world and taken to a foreign world resembling [[RPG|some form of fantasy game]], where they proceed to become [[adventurers]]. Usually, plot reasons prevent them from heading home until something is taken care of - typically whatever big bad evil guy is threatening everything - but sometimes they're stuck there forever and have to adapt as best they can. Methods of transportation are vast and varied, including but not limited to: stumbling into a portal, activating a magical McGuffin, getting run over by [[Meme|Truck-kun]] and reincarnated (''Tensei'' in weeb, a genre isekai ate), being summoned by the denizens of the world, or the ever-popular getting your brain downloaded into your favorite [[MMORPG]].

The term (and to a lesser extent the genre) have been kicking around the weeaboosphere for a while, but around 2015 publishers started flooding the market with insufferably awful series (with insufferably long titles) that sell both in Japan and internationally like hotcakes, no matter how bland and generic they get. This once again proves that no matter which side of the planet you're on, otaku are autistic retards with no taste. As of 2018 this seems to be tapering off; Kadokawa has banned isekai stories from their light novel competitions, and fewer and fewer isekai light novels get adapted into anime each season, and parodies are becoming more and more common, leaving it only a matter of time before the genre hits [[Zombie|"even the parodies are stale" levels of played out.]]

==Why do people hate it so much?==

As noted below, stories of people entering other worlds are nothing new, and speaks to a common desire to experience strange and exotic lands. Yet Isekai stories still get a lot of flak for many reasons. Besides there being way too many anime/manga that are all basically the same story with slightly different premises, it boils down to a number of common gripes:

* The biggest one is that rather than trying to tell a compelling and interesting story, too many Isekai stories are just the basest wish fulfillment fantasies for the lonely basement-dwelling neckbeard. Most of the other complaints are derived from this one.
* The hallmark of isekai stories is defining of the world in terms of RPG mechanics. People in isekai worlds speak of levels, classes, and experience as real and tangible things as opposed to the mechanical abstractions fa/tg/uys normally recognize them as. Outside of Isekai stories that actually take place inside of RPGs or videogame RPGs, this is pretty much inexcusable.
* Isekai protagonists tend to be [[Neckbeard|big fucking nerds]] who immediately recognize what's all about and exploit it, often aided by [[Plot armor|unreasonably high stats relative to their abilities in real life.]] The unstated implication is that the overweight slimeball watching/reading the isekai story would be just as successful as the protagonist because of his [[Trivial Pursuit|valuable and hard-earned RPG knowledge]].
* The protagonist frequently is overpowered in a way that puts him way ahead of his peers, despite lacking any useful combat, intellectual, or even social skills from his homeworld. Rarely does the protagonist have to put that much effort in overcoming his obstacles.
* Even more offensive protagonists will be actively unlikable or even outright repulsive, despite not suffering any consequences for it.
* And on top of that, 99.9% of the time, the protaganist has an all-female <s>harem</s> party who hang on his every word. [[Mary Sue|Is this starting to sound familiar?]]
* For more Isekai-specific gripes, while many stories are just copycats of one another, some will ''attempt'' to put an "original spin" on the genre, usually by adding a gimmick. If done well, then the story still has some value in being interesting and explore otherwise ignored facets of an overused genre. Done poorly, and it comes across as just plain tiresome, especially if the gimmick is the only thing keeping the story afloat when the characters and plot fail to impress.
* Almost all the protagonists in isekai stories have tragic background. Not saying it is a bad thing, but it is almost as if the author is trying to pushing it, forcing the reader to go through 1 or 2 chapters of flash backs. Worst if they are all cliches in common manga tropes. But some tragic backgrounds are so well detailed it's almost as if the author self inserted their past there. Here is a few examples:
** Daddy/Mommy issues - According to various manga, Japanese parents are some of the worst in all of Asia since their working conditions over there have a very high demand and busy schedule that the parents are too busy at work to spent time with their children. Other than that, the parents can be highly demanding, oppress their children to work hard on their school grade to the point it can be very edgy. Sometimes, parents can be a drunken scum bags who either abandon their children or just straight up mistreat them. Protagonist with tragic background like these often has low self-esteem and edginess but have it all fixed up in the other world since now they are popular with bitches.
** School problems - Way too many isekai protagonists have school-centric tragic backgrounds where they are either bullied in school or have no friends. Probably that's why they become nerds and are able to develop their very own hobbies alone which they would use in the other world.
** [[Neckbeards|NEET]] - Oh baby, don't even get me started. NEET is an acronym for "Not in Education, Employment, or Training," typically including basement-dwelling adult virgins, unemployed nerds who live alone which makes them the definition of being a loser. It is no surprise such a failure could gets cheat powers in the other world compared how piss poor they did in real life.
* [[weeaboo|O MY GLORIOUS NIPPON STEEL FOLDED OVER 9000 TIMES]]. Basically just to show how superior the Japanese are compared to the other world. GATE is the worst example of this where the Japanese military in the other world id wrecking havoc with their modern weaponry (keep in mind real life modern Japan don't have their own army, but a self-defense force that cannot be compared to the actual military might like American or Chinese military, no offense). Other than that, various Japanese food and their favorite katana blade are also introduced in the other world to prove their superiority. Is almost if these mass produced Isekai stories and manga are just to advertise Japanese's superiority.

== Isekai and /tg/ ==

Although most isekai stories get panned on /tg/ for [[TVTropes|annoying meta-humor,]] [[Double Cross|generic shonen bullshit,]] [[Maid RPG|generic fanservice bullshit,]] or [[Extra Heresy|a combination thereof]] (if not the characters being blatantly Mary Sues, or presenting something even more absurd), a handful of series are decent enough to merit genuine approval. Or they're tolerated because they have [[monstergirls]]. Check our [[Approved anime|anime]] and [[manga]] pages for the current scoop.

While isekai is a distinctly Japanese form of [[Skub|cancer]], the basic idea of people from our world getting chucked into a fantastic world and forced to fend for themselves is practically universal and turns up moderately often in Western fantasy with the earliest example perhaps being ''"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"'' by Mark Twain which was published in 1889. Oddly, when this happens it tends to be rather less shit perhaps due to it being less common. L. Frank Baum's ''Oz'' series, ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' by Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' ''Barsoom'' novels are iconic examples of the core premise that predate cliche fantasy, and C.S. Lewis ''The Chronicles of Narnia'' uses the plot for Christian allegory. ''The NeverEnding Story'' is the flagship modern western example, and right in the heart of the fantasy cliche storm; Yet it is the purest anti-shit, either despite or because of this. Or at least, it avoids being the self-indulgent wish-fulfillment for irredeemably unlikable losers that makes Isekai so widely hated. One could make the case that ''The Matrix'' is an isekai story (it basically reverses a couple of the key tropes), though classifying it as "less shit" may not be accurate for some people. A /tg/ example that (in hindsight anyway) fits the isekai mold well is [[GURPS]]' flagship fantasy setting, which revolves around people from across the universe getting isekai'd to the planet of Yrth by an extradimensional "Banestorm" and proposes that players could [[Stat me|stat themselves]] and then play as themselves on Yrth after getting deposited there by the Banestorm.

Isekai also has its influence on [[Old School Roleplaying]]; as stated above, there are plenty of pulp fantasy novels involving ordinary souls getting sucked into a strange, alien world and becoming heroic [[adventurer]]s as a result. Hell, [[Greyhawk]] has several deities who actually originated on other worlds - [[Murlynd]], [[Saint Cuthbert]] and [[Mayaheine‎‎]] have all been implied to have come to Oerth from "real" Earth - whilst the [[Forgotten Realms]] was, once upon a time, hinted as being connected to Earth by various portals to different times and places; the not!Egyptian race was actually supposed to be peopled by real ancient Egyptians who had been summoned to the Realms en-masse by evil sorcerers as slave labor, only to break free of them. Then there's the [[D%26D_Cartoon|D&D Cartoon]], whose plot ''was'' D&D by way of Isekai. That being said, unless your DM was being really lazy, if you tried to talk in-universe about stats or levels or other meta game content like they do in Isekai stories, NPCs would and should treat you like a madman.

==Reverse Isekai==
Occasionally, reverse isekai plots, where supernatural elements from other dimensions have invaded the "real" world, have appeared in /tg/. [[D20 Modern]]'s default for supernatural entities is that they a dropped onto Earth from another plane, "The Shadow", and can't go home (though their corpses vanish upon death). The [[Adventure Path]] ''Reign of Winter'' has a trip to World War I era Russia where the party fights Mosin-Nagant and machine gun wielding Russian soldiers, tear gas elementals and Rasputin.

One odd feature in Japanese Reverse-Isekais is an emphasis on how Japanese food is so much more awesome than whatever bland, flavorless food the peasants of the fantasy world have to eat. In fact, there actually is more than one anime about people from a fantasy world visiting a restaurant in modern Japan. Which in fairness: the modern world wide food distribution networks that can ship sun ripened lemons and meat to any point in the world within 24 hours is likely going to compare favorable to all but the highest fantasy fare. Even so, even the lowliest peasant would put ''some'' effort in using what they had to make food taste good; even if they couldn't afford spices, herbs were still easy enough to get a hold of, and rural cooks knew enough about how to prepare meats to make them taste good. Whereas fantasy peasants may as well be eating dry, stringy meat with a side of boiled, unseasoned vegetables and mud for dessert.

==List of Isekai==
===Good Ones===
* '''Aura Battler Dunbine''': The first classic, pre-SAO isekai anime, or at least the earliest one worth remembering, which at its most basic can be described as Isekai Fantasy Gundam (apt, considering that both were made by the same guy). Sho Zama, a dissatisfied japanese youth about to get himself killed in reckless motorcycle stunt on a busy highway, is suddenly summoned into an alternate medieval fantasy world, Byston Well, where a local duke by the name of Drake Luft forcibly recruits him and other summoned into his army. Drake Luft was gradually jumpstarting an industrial revolution with a help from other "Upper Earthers" he summoned via a captive fey to give him an edge in his plans to conquer Byston Well while he holds the first adopter advantage, and one of these advantages are the titular mechas, the Aura Battlers which are powered and enhanced by the pilot's Aura (which the summoned Upper Earthers have more powerful ones compared to the locals) with one called Dunbine to be piloted by Sho, who later steals it to join the resistance. The show can be divided into two halves: The first with gradual escalation from guerilla warfare with medieval weaponry supported by Aura Machines to open warfare between kingdoms fielding 100% Aura Machine Armies led by huge Battlecarriers, while the second half starts with the Fey Queen deciding that all Aura Machines were evil and at a cost of her life chucks them all, pilots and armies included, back to Upper Earth, which is in the middle of Cold War.
* '''Overlord''': A gamer gets trapped in the body of his max level Lich avatar and sent to another world, bringing with him all of his treasures and minions (who now are real people) and guild base. He even has a shitton of [[EA|cash shop items]] that he pulls out once in a while during the few encounters that his OP powers aren't enough. He starts out trying to be a good guy in the new world, but he ends up turning into a villain on a path to conquer the new world due to a combination of losing a lot of his ability to feel emotions and his minions expecting him to play the role of a villain.
* '''That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime''': A man dies an wakes up in the body of a super powerful [[Slime]] creature with the ability to copy the powers of whatever they eat. They end up becoming the chief of a goblin village and expanding it into a new nation. Something interesting about this series is that it plays with the idea of how most monsters in games are just nameless mooks and only named monsters are an actual threat; here, nearly all monsters are born without a name, but a more powerful entity (usually a demon, or in our slime's case, his elder dragon BFF) can lend a monster some of their power simply by naming them. The protagonist abuses the shit out of this and names every monster tribe in his confederation, giving them all a newfound sense of purpose and identity along with it. While being on good terms with the human & dwarf nations, the demon-controlled nations are not too happy about this upstart slime and scheme to bring him down.
* '''Kiba''': What happens when you combine Pokémon with Game of Thrones and a bit of 1985, and then give everyone lightsabers. An obscure but definitely worth watching show about two friends who separately end up in another world where some people have the ability to pull marble like objects out of one part of their body which are used to cast spells, power up lightsaber like weapons, and summon powerful monsters called spirits. Each of them ends up possessing one of the six most powerful spirits in the world which the nations of the new world are fighting for control of. The first boy ends up in the only truly nice nation, while the other ends up in a country that at first seems nice but turns out to be a horrible dystopia where the population is so brainwashed that they are willing to accept capital punishment with a smile for minor crimes even if they committed them accident.
* '''MÄR''': A boy named Ginta gets summoned to another world populated by people based on characters from fairytales and popular classic fantasy books who fight using magical items called ÄRMs. He gets a hold of an intelligent ÄRM named Babbo who can turn into anything he can image. He and several characters including Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk team up for a tournament to decide the fate of the world against a villainous organization called the Chess Pieces.
* '''Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?''': A parody of typical trapped in a video game wish fulfillment stories. A boy's wish to go into a video game is granted, but it is ruined because he is forced to bring his extremely embarrassing and attractive mother with him, who is a lot more powerful than him in the game world.
* '''Spirited Away''': A [[Loli|girl]] and her parents accidentally wander into the world of spirits and the parents get turned into pigs by a witch as punishment for stealing food. With the help of a mysterious boy who can turn into a dragon, she gets herself a job working for the witch at her bathhouse for spirits until she can find a way to set her parents free. This one is by Hayao Miyazaki and has all of the Studio Ghibli flare that weebs constantly point to to say that anime is more than just stupid cartoons.
* '''Those Who Hunt Elves''': A comedy about a group of people are summoned to another world and can't go back until they can find 5 tattoos placed on 5 random elves somewhere in the world. To find them they strip every elf they meet naked.
* '''Youjo Senki: Saga of Tanya the Evil''': A sociopathic atheist is murdered by somebody he sacked for being a lazy stupid bum, and meets a being who claims to be God. He refuses to believe it really is God (Being X, sort of like how [[Star Trek]] treats a number of hyper-advanced races with god-like powers) and as punishment gets reincarnated as a female child solider in a world resembling WWI Europe, only with magic. Said female child ends up duckfacing her way up the ranks of not!Germany and acquiring a number of orbiters who either fear or respect. Her main problem is that she keeps getting posted to incredibly dangerous missions despite desperately wanting nothing more than a desk job away from the front lines so as not to die again and face Being X.
* '''Drifters''': Written and drawn by the author of [[Hellsing|HELLSING]]. This is a story about fighting against fate where historic heroes, wise men and generals from the real world (mostly those who get ambiguous or "missing in action/no body was found" ends) are intercepted at the point where they ''should'' have died by rather mundane looking-but-apparently divine office worker named '''Murasaki''', and given a choice: to either meet their fates and die, or to live on but get transported to another world -- one that happens to be in the middle of a massive fight for survival. Needless to say many choose the latter, including the main viewpoint character, Shimazu Toyohisa of the Shimazu clan. Called '''Drifters''', this group includes of historical badasses (including Oda Nobunaga, Butch Cassidy, Abe no Senmei, Scipio Africanus and Hannibal Barca), he whips up an alliance made up of demihumans and other peoples into a force that ''might'' be able to stand up to the force that's threatening to overwhelm the "civilized" peoples: the forces of the '''Ends'''. Unlike the Drifters, these are people who in the real world had unambiguously nasty ends -- like Joan of Arc, Rasputin, and Anastasia Romanov -- and are given nasty powers as a result. Led by someone implied to be Joshua bar Joseph (aka '''Jesus Christ'''), the Ends want to wipe the slate clean, and give leaving the so-called monstrous races (Orcs, Goblins, etc.) to inherit the world. Compared to other Isekai, the series is themed around second chances (aka don't die the same way as they did before) and was heavily reinforced in the first encountered with the black king. By the way, [[Berserk|this series is being slowly released and is on multiple hiatus for unknown reason since it is kind of a trait now days for good mangaka to fucking around their job]].
* '''Konosuba''': A comedy series, and one of the first to take the piss out of the Isekai genre. It begins with a NEET shut-in dying to save a girl from being hit by a truck, whereupon he's met by a goddess in the afterlife. She reveals that the girl was actually not in danger (it was actually a tractor moving at around 2 miles an hour) and he died of a heart attack, followed by pissing himself, which she mocks him relentlessly over. She then offers him to reincarnate in another world and defeat the devil king, and in return he can have any powerful item he wants. Out of revenge for her mocking him, he picks her and the two end up trapped in a fantasy world. The goddess turns out to be pretty damn useless 90% of the time and a huge bitch, and later they are joined by two other girls (a bratty pyromaniac wizard [[Loli|loli]] who can only cast one [https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Deathstrike_Missile_Launcher spell] a day, and a [[/d/|masochistic]] knight who can't hit anything for shit and makes both enemies and allies alike uncomfortable) to form one of the most dysfunctional parties in existence. It manages to be both a clever deconstruction of isekai and a pretty hilarious fantasy-themed sitcom all at once.
* '''Escaflowne''': A Japanese high school girl is teleported to a magical world (one that can see the Earth but Earth can't see it due to magical stuff or something) where the weapon of choice are "Guymelefs"; [[magitek]] [[mecha]] that resemble fantastical giant [[knight]]s powered by the crystalline hearts of [[dragon]]s. She gets caught up in a whole slew of crazy as the evil empire shows up and starts conquering the world while the male lead, the heir to one of the conquered kingdoms, and a ragtag group of rebels struggle to overthrow the empire and restore things once more. Had a very pretty anime movie made of it but the movie mashed a lot of plot elements and characters together while also cutting a huge chunk of the story as well.
* '''Inuyasha''': A rarity in that the teleported protagonist is female, and travel between the fantasy world and the real world happens frequently. Ordinary school-girl Kagome Higurashi learns that her crazy grampa's ramblings about the ancient well in the shrine her family lives at really is magical when a [[monstergirl|many-armed big-tittied centipede woman]] pulls her into the well and transports her into Feudal Japan, ranting about killing her and taking a magical "Shikon Jewel" that can make demons into gods. To not be killed, she reluctantly releases Inuyasha; a bad-tempered [[Half-Fiend|half-inugami (dog demon)]] who looks like a bishie boy with long, flowing white hair, claws, and a pair of cute dog-like ears. During the struggle, the Shikon Jewel is shattered, forcing her to reluctantly team up with Inuyasha (who used to be in love with her previous incarnation, the shrine maiden Kikyo) to track down the shards before they can wreak havoc across the land. Their party grows to incorporate Shippo (a baby [[kitsune]] boy), Sango (a badass warrior-woman who uses a giant boomerang made of demon bones), and Miroku (a perverted but handsome young monk who sports a miniature black-hole in his right hand... [[grimdark|that will ultimately devour him whole, as it has his entire family]]), and their mission expands to tracking down and destroying Naraku; a bandit turned [[Demon Prince]] who has his own evil plans for the Shikon Jewel and who was responsible for the misery that befell Inuyasha and Kikyo.
* '''Rising of the Shield Hero''': Four heroes are summoned to another world to defend it against a phenomenon called the Waves of Catastrophe, where the sky turns red and armies of monsters appear. Each of them is assigned a powerful holy weapon (sword, spear, bow, and shield) and forms their own party to help them level up. However, the hero assigned to the shield immediately gets robbed and falsely accused of attempted rape by his only party member, who seemingly did it just so they could give his stuff to the spear hero as a present. With that horrible start, the shield hero loses interest in saving the world and only cares about going home or getting revenge. To survive, he is forced to build up his reputation, wealth, and power from nothing while all of the other heroes (who turn out to be all be idiots) soar ahead of him. And since nobody wants to ally with him and his shield keeps him from wielding any other weapons, he forced to buy a slave to help him fight.
* '''.hack''': One of the earliest isekai to make big waves in the US, .hack is a franchise made up of several anime, manga lines and video games that take place in the near future (at the time they started, the year chose being 2009) where VR video games are not only wildly popular but one (simply called "The World") is the most popular game in existence. People the world over play the game and form guilds and play together. The main character from .hack//Sign, Tsukasa, does ''not'' want to play with others though due to some deep-seated weirdness and quickly find out that they cannot log out of the game. Oh, and some weird floating slime monster attacks and kills other player's avatars, those so attacked fall into comas in the real world. And there is some sort of floating [[Loli|loli]] that Tsukasa communicates with as well. Fairly quickly a group of people begin to hunt Tsukasa while another group tries to helm him (later to find out "he" is actually a "she"). Series ends kind of meh but kicked off a major franchise that then pretty collapsed under its own weight (multiple games within a handful of years, multiple manga stories, spin-off anime and more that, in the end, couldn't pay for themselves).
* '''[[Log Horizon]]''': A new update of old-school PC MMORPG '''Elder Tale''' ends up dragging its entire logged-in player base into the world it portrayed. Veteran player Shiroe and a few of his friends try to figure out what to do with their new existence, before finally deciding to take an active stance in influencing their current reality for the better. This, on top on trying to find out just WHY everyone got dragged into Elder Tale, or at the very least, a world that seems to look like the game world.
*'''Thermae Romae''': A comedy about a Roman Thermae architect accidentally traveled to modern Japan after he slipped into Thermae bath water. There, he learned a great deal of knowledge about the flat-face (how he calls the Japanese) and using these knowledge to improve Roman Thermae when he got back. Later chapters turns into [[/tv/|time traveler's wife]] where he met this Roman culture obsessed Japanese girl (and the only "flat-face" he could communicate in latin btw) and fall in love with her.
* '''Re:Zero''':

===Bad Ones===
* '''Sword Art Online''': One of shows responsible for the explosion in the popularity of Isekai. Was very popular when it came out, but as Reki Kawahara continued the series: the quality of the story degraded slowly over the years, and along with it the general fanbase's opinion. It still has it's fans, along with a sizable amount of detractors (as most feel SAO's popularity is undeserved, and taking the spotlight off other shows worth the praise, [[skub|or because its just popular]]). Technically speaking the other world is just a VR MMORPG instead of an actual fantasy world, but everyone else just copied SAO even when it didn’t make sense to include game mechanics like HUDs with skill trees. It also doesn’t help that the protagonist, Kirito, is an unabashed [[edgy]] [[Mary Sue|Marty Sue]] (although the edgy part eventually mellows down, he's still a Marty Sue in all depictions. On a side note, Kirito is also responsible for the painful influx of terribly written edgy teenage dual sword-wielding OCs in the early 2010s, to the point there's now a slight stigma with using dual-swords for your character in RPGs) and the first season ended on a nonsensical conclusion. The female characters that make up Kirito's not-harem are [[waifu]] material though, if that's any consolation, and SAO at the very least has the decency to write them as their own relatable characters, instead of being orbiting cumdumpsters for the protag to cockblock at will (and as bad as his character is written, Kirito still has a wholesome relationship with his in-game waifu, turned IRL waifu: Asuna.).
*'''GATE: Thus the JSDF Went There''': This was a series that had some potential as the premise was somewhat similar to Stargate; A gateway to another world suddenly appears right in the middle of Tokyo, and almost immediately a bunch of monsters and medieval soldiers start pouring out and attacking anyone in sight. Naturally, the modern Japanese military beats them back, then decides to invade the other world to hold those responsible for the attack accountable. This could've been a good story as there's some actual political intrigue on both sides of the gate, but besides the usual Isekai problems (The protagonist is a lazy underachiever and yet has specops credentials, and has a harem of girls who are or look half his age) its also in-your-face nationalistic, to the point where the Japanese Self-Defense Force effortlessly curbstomps any enemy they go up against, including three different spy agencies and the capital of the enemy empire. Besides removing any tension from the story, its also pretty much transparent pro-military propaganda, where all of the military's more pacifistic political opponents are portrayed as self-centered opportunists. Nevermind that the JSDF basically claimed the other world as their sovereign territory by virtue of being connected to Japan and are seeking to exploit its resources. [[The_World_Wars#The_Second_World_War|This should set off alarm bells for those of you who know history.]]
* '''In Another World With My Smartphone''': The protag gets accidentally offed by God, and as an apology resurrects him with god-tier stats and a smartphone with several, mostly unfair features. He is, without a doubt, the most unironically-blatant [[Mary Sue|Marty Sue]] to grace recent times. Also its a romance-less harem animu on the side, they're not even trying to aim above the 13-year old demographic.
* '''The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar''': Even worse than Smartphone. Possibly the worst isakai ever. Take everything people hate about isekai and turn it up to eleven. Lazy animation, a harem that includes disturbingly young girls, and an unwatchably boring plot. Also has a guy with a smartphone, oddly enough.
* '''Garzey's Wing''': 1996 release, widely hailed as one of the worst anime ever made; particularly, the Central Park Media dub made an already incoherent plot even more nonsensical. For example, one notorious line goes "We have to circle quickly. We need a stirrup to do this. But don't be unduly concerned. We can use our spears to stand our ground firmly."
* '''[New Life+] Young Again in Another World''': This is just another generic isekai about a MC that was killed and sent to another world by God. But what's so bad about this one that it deserves to be mentioned here? Well, it turns out the MC of this one in life was a soldier who participated the Second Sino-Japanese War in China where he used his [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|GLORIOUS KATANA FOLDED 9000 TIMES]] and killed over 3000+ people. You still with me? Good. After the anime was announced, controversy obviously started and China threw its weight around and forced the publishing company to not only cancel the anime, but canned the publishing of the novels as well. Every shipment about this piece of trash was stopped. To make matter worse, many anons also found old tweets from the author on Twitter made before the first volume of his isekai was published, [[/pol/|where he demeans both Chinese and Koreans, calling them inhuman and lacking morality]]. These incidents have proven that Japanese isekai authors not only suck in writing, but can be some of the worst scumbags in Japan as well as the overall world.

===Weird Ones===
* '''Isekai Quartet''': Take the main casts of "Overlord", "Konosuba", "Saga of Tanya" and "Re: Zero" find themselves in a middle school. Most of them want to return "home". The result? A somewhat interesting gag series about an Isekai squared situation. Weird because it blurs the line between Isekai, Reverse Isekai, and Not Isekai. Funny, but only if you have some awareness of at least one (and preferably more) of the four series, and are willing to tolerate "HILARITY ENSUES" grade "hi-jinks".
*'''Restaurant to Another World''': One of the few Reverse Isekai stories. There's no overarching plot or villains, just a bunch of fantasy folk visiting a restaurant in Japan. Each patron has their own quirks and favorite dish, as well as their story of how they came to discover the restaurant and the friends they make inside.
*'''Plus-Sized Elf''': Another reverse Isekai featuring a cast of [[Monstergirl]]s in Japan who can't return home because they all got fat from eating too much delicious but unhealthy food. They're being helped by a health and fitness expert to lose weight, but each girl's obsessions and constant infighting keeps them from making too much progress. The manga has some actual fitness tips sprinkled throughout, but it's also pretty lewd at times.
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