The Rules

Black Powder. Ranged attacks hit on a 12+ regardless of the target’s AC. Cannot be reloaded in combat. If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, roll on the misfire table.

Matchlock. Your match must be lit before you fire. Matches last 1 hour real time, provide light within Close, and the foul smell may alert enemies to your presence.

Misfire Table.

New Gear.

The Reasoning

I want to focus on emulating fiction, rather than reality, and not introduce anything that conflicts with Shadowdark’s principles or breaks some interaction or combination. We want pulpy adventure, not fastidious simulation. Part of this emulation of fiction is the firearm heralding the death of the warrior class, but that firearms might not be the first choice of the true warriors still around. Firearms should be terrifying in the hands of a mob of peasants, but not so good that they become obligatory for the party Fighter. I think these rules achieve that goal.

In reality, armour did work to protect the wearer against early modern firearms. Shadowdark isn’t reality, and our popular imagination is full of bullets passing straight through plate armour and ending the age of chivalry with a bang. So our bullets ignore armour; they don’t even care about the target’s Dex mod, no-one’s dodging bullets here! This, alongside the misfire table, gives our firearms some mechanical alienation that ensures they don’t just feel like a different kind of bow. You might notice that the misfire table is the same die size as all the firearms’ damage: for faster combat you can roll your damage dice at the same time as your d20 and apply the damage or misfire as appropriate.

Now I know that muzzle-loading firearms can be reloaded in a matter of seconds with practice, but what about the movies? Black powder riflemen take pot shots at each-other from across a clearing or river, but once the real fight is engaged guns are one-and-done as it becomes a matter of blades. The dashing protagonist will even throw aside their pistol after the first shot. So, our guns aren’t reloaded in combat. Of course the DM might allow for multiple exchanges of fire between two groups using ranged weapons, in which case I might rule it takes two rounds to reload a firearm.

What happens when a thief has a gun, and starts rolling piles of d10s with Backstab? Making all of our firearms have matchlock firing mechanisms is a great balancing factor here, even in real life the potent smell of burning match-cord would give away an arquebusier’s position sight-unseen. The light it emits is also more of a hindrance than a benefit, seeing only within Close isn’t going to help much but might give away your position. If you wanted to introduce some new powerful treasure you could add a wheellock firearm to the mix, which would function almost the same but not require a burning match-cord to fire.

Try It Out!

These rules have been play-tested to a limited degree, and are a Shadowdark adaptation of rules I used more extensively for my own AD&D-ish house rules back in the day. If you use them in your game, though, I would love to hear how it went!