Old School Gunpowder Weapons

Question on Discord: Does anyone have any good rules for black powder firearms in D&D? I know LOTFP has some, I’m not sure I like those though. I’m considering using the rules in Dragons Beyond . . .

Dragons Beyond is straight up Chainmail with a minor tweak to the Musket deadliness at short range. Prices are from Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign though he also gives a 15 gp price for an Arquebus earlier in the text.

For commentary/criticism/education/scholarship, here is the section on gunpowder weapons from Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP). When I ran some fellows through through Misty Isles / Palace of the Vampire Queen, I gave one player the advantage of causing the morale check against some bandits (or goblins?) at the cost of alerting everybody in the upper level of the vampire tomb that somebody with a firearm was there.

I’ve also used Firearm rules in my Old School Essentials (OSE) game. I moved Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne setting from X2: Castle Amber forward in time to the Thirty Years War). But for that campaign I cribbed the rules from another ruleset called All for One (1st edition). Here you can see the equipment list and rough comparison of reload speeds and other complications of using gunpowder weaponry along with their relative power.

Carcass Crawler Issue #1 had gunpowder weapons rules for OSE too. These are very simple to add to any old school game. They also provide expert NPCs to support such weaponry - a gunsmith and assistant gunsmith.

The Revolving “Wand” in Midwest Fantasy Wargame was inspired by a picture and play report in Blackmoor Foundations. Pistols have been in D&D before D&D was even written. And yeah, here is where I stuffed that morale check from LotFP.

In an early gaming session ran by Dave Arneson — and played in by Dave Wesely — 5 shots felled a Giant named Oleg (a castle protector in “Blackmoor”). One player had 80% success with his pistol’s “to hit” rolls. Modern revolvers are deadly! I have summarized the encounter with Oleg from this early gaming session in my previous blog post: https://www.rodneyhamptonpc.com/posts/monkey-business/

There are also rules in Iron Falcon (a d20 rewrite of LBB+Greyhawk by Chris Gonnerman of BFRPG fame). You can find them in module Iron Falcon ‘75: The Lakeside Adventures. I really want to run people through an IF75 mini-campaign so if you are one of my players (or want to be one in the future), just look at the rules below and not the module.

Gary Gygax gave us a Boot Hill -> 1st ed AD&D conversion kit in the DMG which is dynamite! This can help with those of you who want to have a Weird West or Wild West crossover campaign.

Lastly, In Best of Dragon 1, there is a reprint of Gary’s Sturmgeschutz & Sorcery article which has conversions for WW2 weapons.

Also, the OPTIONAL idea of a Nazi chaplain turning undead is pretty cool. Thanks Gary Gygax! Now we can run an SS squad through a “keep” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keep_(film)

Also, Gary’s hand to hand rules for WW2 soldiers specially trained in unarmed combat look especially fun.

This completes my TED talk on old school rules to incorporate gunpowder weapons into your games. Don’t be afraid to try them!

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Originally published on Substack on August 30, 2025.