Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Thayne
The impact of black powder might be limited at first, if people don't have the know-how to make effective black-powder firearms from raw materials. Once they run out of percussion caps they might be forced to fall back on essentially TL3 designs. I had not thought about the impact of printing, though. Since the standard DF world is really TL4 in a ton of ways, it is probably ready for the printing press in terms of e.g. metalworking technique.
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DF is, as you say, TL4-ish and at the master smiths and dwarves end of things their metalworking is
at least that good. You might be able to hold off the arrival of
mass produced firearms but it will not take long at all for top artisans to be able to make flintlock muskets and pistols with rifled barrels and Minié balls. Which would only be slightly outdated by uptimer standards, and more modern than some of the guns used in the Civil War.
Dungeon Fantasy alchemy probably would provide a way to make percussion caps but they might be a lot more expensive than uptime industrial production.
It might take a bit to get good powder production, though. I don't think a 1860s-70s town would necessarily have any expertise there as opposed to bringing the stuff in from factories back East. Probably someone knows enough theory to get things started but there might be working up from bad serpentine.