[martinl]

I thought a combination of gnomish engineering, Gondish inspiration, higher TL, and adventuring convenience had made wheel locks appear in FR about the same time smokepowder became widespread. Given the cost of the powder, it's worth it to spend more on the gun.

I'm not sure how much you've integrated the DnD flavor into GURPS, but in traditional FR, any significant town needs an anti-adventurer option, and any significant nation needs an anti-high level adventurer option. The books tended to scatter high level wizards and priests around for this purpose, but a squad of musketeers might be as useful for that purpose as against dragons.

As for smokepowder abuse, well, suicide bombers are much easier with golems, zombies, mind control, and such.

Careful manipulation of air spells and elementals might lead to "smart dust" explosives that seem mere wisps before suddenly condensing and exploding at the target site.