I don't 100% disagree with the notion that historical epochs hold up poorly in DnD, but I do think it's important to stick roughly to an era, and especially not reach too far into the future. I'll try to at least make the start of a case here, without spending an absurdly long time writing a reply.
Door locks have been around since several hundred years BC. Modern tumbler locks have only existed since the 1800's, but other various locks, such as warded locks, existed long before then. They're certainly much more common on Arelith than they were in real life, but door locks absolutely existed, and were very much the norm in castles and such.
I agree, and I've never really been a fan of the frock coats since their introduction, since they very clearly don't match the rest of the setting. I don't think the argument is quite the same as door locks, since it's much more a matter of style than a matter of technological ability, but as far as maintaining a standard aesthetic beyond, "Whatever looks cool", we go a long ways towards an immersive, cohesive world. Compare and contrast with several other popular NWN RP servers with lots of anachronistic clothing choices, and you'll find Arelith has a much more cohesive appearance, without people running around in outfits from every conceivable period of time.
So that's my first main point. Keeping things in roughly the 15th century, technology-wise, keeps us somewhat grounded in terms of maintaining a consistent setting. We want to be lore-friendly, yes, but we also don't want to become a meme server where we just start adding highly anachronistic outfits and technology just because it looks cool. Part of what makes Arelith great is that you aren't just going to run into obviously 18th century pirates with gold buttons and tricorn hats, or 17th century nobles with giant poofy collars and big curly hair. Everything is more or less the same aesthetic that Bioware designed the game with, which they certainly designed to be consistent in appearance.
I'm going to make one more last set of points about your post in particular, then move on to a final point.
monkeywithstick wrote: Sun Sep 08, 2019 8:26 am
Also some of those appear to be wheel-locks which appeared pretty early (EDIT: checked and it's 1500). Wheel-locks look way more complex than a lot of later firearms because they were stupidly over-engineered and too expensive to use as line weapons.)
R1C1 is practically a fairly typical blunderbuss from the early 18th century, so very definitely a flintlock.
R2C4 is, as I said above, obviously a sawed-off shotgun. Double barrel shotguns weren't invented until very late in the 19th century, but even single barrel shotguns weren't invented until the 19th century. You could fire shot with a musket or arquebus, sure, but this gun in particular is a shotgun.
R2C3 doesn't need discussion.
R2C2 is interesting. While it's very clearly a 17th century German axe pistol (it's based on a
pretty common replica people like), and therefore this one in particular is a flintlock, I want to address it later on because it's neat.
That leaves us with R1C2-4, and R2C1.Of these four that could be wheel-locks, we can actually see the mechanism very well three of the first three pretty well and they're all flintlocks. The fourth, R2C1, is just a brighter version of R1C3, so is also a flintlock.
So I'd argue that none of these are wheel-locks by any measure, and are all quite definitely flintlocks.
This brings me to my last point, which is the impact of technology on the setting. The Forgotten Realms is very much (an attempt at) a medieval setting. It might lack feudalism and have the moral values of a Canadian hippy, but from a technological perspective, it has castles, crossbows, catapults, and everything you'd expect from someone whose setting is based on Gary Gygax's relatively tenuous grasp on what constituted medieval.
However not-really-medieval as it is, it's very, very clearly not pre-modern. And while it could be argued that there's nothing inherently pre-modern about flintlock pistols, since they could use the same technology but a different type of firing mechanism, and that's more or less true. But I'd argue that by establishing that Arelith has developed flintlock technology, that we really end up in a situation where we either we ignore every aspect of wheellock and flintlock technology that made them so popular, or we open the door to completely changing how the setting works.
Hand cannons and arquebuses already in the 14th and 15th centuries were capable of blasting through plate armor. However, due both to social norms (their use was frowned upon, similar to crossbows, since they gave the common man the advantage over the traditional knights) and just because they were hard to use. Casting methods of the time didn't allow for consistent bore widths, so the individual hand cannoneer had to shape the Pufferfish to fit their weapon, so they couldn't mass produce ammunition well. Gun powder was expensive, making hand cannons was expensive, and neither hand cannons nor arquebuses were particularly accurate, even compared to the extremely inaccurate muskets that followed them.
Also, they were really hard to fire. You had to put powder in a little exposed pan, keep it balanced there, aim your really heavy weapon, and (early on) use a hand to poke the powder with a lit fuse you were holding, or (later) pull a crossbow-style lever to touch the lit fuse to the powder. If the fuse got wet, it didn't work. If it was a bit misty and the powder was moist, it didn't work. If it did work, the powder lit brightly on fire in front of your eyes, so you'd either keep your eyes on the target and risk lit gunpowder hitting them at worst, or being temporarily blinded at best, or just close your eyes and hope your target didn't move too much.
There were dozens of reasons that full plate armor existed at the same time as hand cannons and arquebuses, but it all depended on the end result of there just not really being that many hand cannons or arquebuses. Why worry that an arquebus ball might pierce your armor when there really just aren't that many arquebuses firing at you, and even if they are, the arquebusier has his eyes closed, and it's probably just going to fire off in the wrong direction anyway?
If we're going to start giving people flintlocks, suddenly we've worked ourselves into a conundrum. If Arelithian smiths can work metal so easily and well that they can make flintlock pistols, then they inherently must have worked out many of the other problems. They've fixed the bore width issues, they're cheaper to make, they're much easier and faster to use, they're more accurate. Now suddenly they're becoming a real, genuine threat. So armor, cities, other adventuring tactics, etc., would all change.
Either that, or they don't change at all, and we're left with "They have flintlocks because flintlocks look cool (arquebuses don't for some reason), but nothing else is allowed to change so there".
We definitely could get into moving up from hand-cannons and arquebuses to wheellocks, and avoid some of the problems (plate armor was more common in the 16th century than the 15th, for example), but it would still take more consideration into which other technologies have developed, which haven't, and why, than it would be to just stick with the Realms-friendly arequebuses.
Edit: I forgot to address the axe-pistol later on. It's neat. I don't think we should have flintlocks, and even wheel-locks should come with a lot of thought and planning into larger technological advancement. But as far as an axe-head being added to an arquebus, I'd love to see dwarves shooting at someone using their dwarven arquebus axe, then flipping it around to use it as an axe. It's cool and seems like a really dwarven thing to do.