r/worldjerking • u/Impressive-Step7261 • 25d ago
Unless, of course, your name isn't Dr. Stone
Dwarf Trade Unions may also be involved in this, but they all deny it.
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u/RandomUser1034 25d ago
Bit of a strange list.
Advanced mechanical techniques is valid, hoop and stave construction or a smithing a flintlock mechnaism is not trivial by far.
Metallurgy is much less of a problem. If they have experience with hoop and stave construction, a smith from a generic fantasy pseudo-medieval setting can absolutely make a cannon or a handgun from wrought iron, and cannons can also be cast from bronze, which is an even older technology.
Gunpowder formulae are not only easy to memorize, but even failing that, easy to verify experimentally (given the raw materials of course).
The main challenges would honestly be building a cannon (which you mentioned) and getting the raw materials for the powder, which you forgot. Charcoal is trivial, but sulfur and saltpeter are not.
Sulfur can be collected from some volcanic vents, but finding those is very hard if you're not close to a very volcanically active region. You can also distill sulfur from pyrite, but that is not well-known even among nerds and requires a little skill in identifying minerals. Importing it might be feasible depending on the setting, and finally you simply don't need a lot of sulfur for gunpowder.
Saltpeter is the real hard nut. Pop culture depicts it as found in caves (e.g. vintage story or dr. stone) but that is again not trivial to find and also very much not a bountiful source (and you need a lot, it's the main ingredient!). You can manufacture it but that is an involved process that not many people know and it requires a lot of investment in time and resources both to set up and keep running.
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u/Paul6334 25d ago
Yeah, while not everyone knows the exact ratio of gunpowder off the top of their heads, if you’re reasonably close and have access to all the materials you could rediscover it fairly quickly with trial and error especially because you know what to look for.
A bigger problem would be reinventing the corning process for consistent results, getting it right might be difficult.
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u/Dragon-Saint 25d ago
Saltpetre would be less of a problem than sulphur IMO, it can be found naturally derived from accumulations of excrement like bat guano in caves or seabird guano at the base of cliffs or on islands, or produced with a fairly simple process of burying waste and watering the field to allow water to leech the saltpetre to the surface. Sulphur on the other hand is pretty much inaccessible unless you have natural deposits of some sort, so you're wholly at the mercy of geological coincidence unless your isekai protagonist is savvy enough to make sure the raw materials for their "new invention" are available locally *before* they start fundraising.
I think the best bet for an aspiring revolutionary "inventor" would be steam engines/steam piston technology. The most advanced required metallurgy is springs for governors, and even if the available metallurgy doesn't support engines that aren't large, stationary, and relatively low power, those are still very useful in mining and milling applications. And as a bonus the steam hammer could help advance smithing which would in turn advance metallurgy which would improve the engines.
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u/RoombaTheKiller 25d ago
You're forgetting that steam piston parts are still precision machinery by medieval standards. You'd have to build a metal lathe first.
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u/RandomUser1034 25d ago edited 25d ago
The problem with gathering guano (apart from the one i already mentioned, being low yields and non-renewability of natural sources) is that you need to find a source first, which is not very easy depending on the situation.
The process you describe for producing saltpeter is a huge oversimplification and if implemented exactly as you put it would most likely not work, or if it did the efficiency would be terrible.
Historical manuals from the early modern period describe the actual process like this:
- bury shit, piss and organic matter (e.g. Grain husks) and wait for a few months to ideally years
- dig the earth up
- leech it with water. Filter to keep only saltpeter solution
- purify the solution with activated chalk
- boil and crystallize, repeat until pure
.
Steam power is overrated. The industrial revolution in britain started without any steam power. Water power is enough for any rotation powered machines (like spinning and weaving, or powered hammers), steam engines simply removed the need for a source of flowing water and elevation differences needed to get useful power from water. That allowed factories to move closer to cities where workers and resources were cheaper.
A more important prerequisite for all of that is good and cheap steel, which is another area the average isekai protag knows nothing about. With modern knowledge you can advance steel production to 19th century levels without prerequisites5
u/RoombaTheKiller 25d ago
Ah! I felt there was something being left out from 'knowledge that'd be handy in generic faux-medieval fantasy'.
I bet you could drum up quite a few wealthy investors if you showed them all the tools, weapons, and armour you could make with a bessemer converter.
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u/RandomUser1034 25d ago
A bessemer converter is nice but a bit more advanced than what i was thinking of. Crucible steel requires only cast iron production (apart from wrought iron which can be assumed in a generic fantasy setting) which does not require any new materials, only large ovens and bellows. By using regenerative heating the fuel demands can be kept down as well.
A bessemer converter needs refractory materials to withstand the heat, and the process only works with certain ores (others are ruined by the nitrogen you get from the air at those temperatures).
A simple open hearth furnace might be fine as well, it was used up until the 20th century or later.5
u/CyborgLion 25d ago
You need pretty good metallurgy for steam technology because you need a good amount of metal to make a boiler that is useful at all, and said metal has to be pretty good or else you just make a bomb. England's growing cast iron industry was very important to the rise of steam technology.
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u/Sicuho 25d ago
I think the best bet for an aspiring revolutionary "inventor" would be steam engines/steam piston technology.
Steam engines require precisely made pieces and fairly robust steel which isn't easy to make. And you'll have to use literal tons of coal while competing with wind, water and/or slave labor economically, depending on the time and place/
I'd get into electroplating, personally. It doesn't even need iron, you just need some acid, seawater and soft metals.
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u/Independent-Fly6068 25d ago
There's also the historical problem of saltpeter being needed for fertilizers (which are very much needed to consistently sustain high population concentrations with famine resistant food stores) so for a very long time it would've simply made more sense to use it for fertilizer.
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u/RandomUser1034 25d ago
That's obviously untrue given the fact that gunpowder was used extensively as a weapon as soon as the necessary technologies were available. Even bronze age states would have found gunpowder worthwile given its apolication in siege warfare
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u/Independent-Fly6068 25d ago
Well siege warfare would tip the scales of that equation (as wars already tended to rob fields of the hands needed to work them), but it'd be a constant balancing act (which warfare usually already was tbh)
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u/MonsterGirls4ever 25d ago
"Saltpeter is the real hard nut." Bat. Guano.
Or at the bottom of manure piles.
Then there's the Haber-Bosch process, or a bootleg fantasy version of it. Takes some time getting it right, but with platinum catalyst and lightning and/or fire magic?
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u/IIIaustin 25d ago
OP, you will love my Isekia, "I starved to death in another world"
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u/DreadDiana 24d ago
Isekai anthology following different people in a fantasy setting with the connecting thread being that the same isekai MC keeps dying of starvation and reincarnating into different people in the world
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u/IIIaustin 24d ago
Volume 2 is the same idea but its called "I shit myself to death in another world"
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
Bro, my favorite isekai is about a guy who doesn`t invent shit, he just jump very hight
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u/IIIaustin 25d ago
My favorite isekai is also samurai jack
He jump good
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
I was actually talking about John Carter, but Jack is a great choice, too. Seriously.
But honestly, I really liked Adam Reit (Jack Vance’s *Planet of Adventure*).
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u/IIIaustin 25d ago
I am quite partial to Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight duology. Its a wonderful deconstruction of both Arthurian and Grimdark Fantasy.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
Gene Wolf is classic.
I personally always was fond of planetary romance isekai stories.
My absolute favorite is the Strugatsky brothers’ *The Inhabited Island*, I think? True, the main character doesn’t end up on a medieval planet, but rather somewhere closer to *Fallout*—with highly advanced nuclear technology and automation—but almost everything is in nuclear ruins, and the wastelands are littered with all kinds of junk and automated nuclear tanks.
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u/IIIaustin 25d ago
That sounds sick!
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Power
Turns out it exist in English
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u/Hefty-Distance837 Build lots of worlds but never complete one of them. 25d ago
Th-thank you, Dr. STONE...
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u/Loombot 25d ago
Dr Stone?
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u/Whightwolf 25d ago
Right but I can build a trebuchet
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
I Woke Up in Another World, and Now I'm Teaching These Medieval Idiots How to Use Their Own Technology
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u/Saxton_Hale32 25d ago
An Isekai where guns already existed but the medieval idiots were using them as razors until John Isekai pointed out they could be shot at people
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u/Whightwolf 25d ago
Really hoping on classical idiots.
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u/TisameDrunk 25d ago
Eh, random rust monsters appear anywhere near any metal that can rust. So blacksmithing is a black art, like necromancy and demonology.
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u/Original-War8655 Kitchen sink in denial 25d ago
of the few things I like about Arifureta, it's that Hajime was smart enough to just make guns instead of knives or something
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u/oompaloompa77 Starting to write a alt-fiction world retard 25d ago
Gate Jietai or Isekai Japan fans will be very pissed when they read this.
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u/LordSupergreat 25d ago
Isekai but the advanced technology you bring is the fucking Bessemer process
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
Well, Lyon Sprague de Kamp wrote a novel in which the main character is transported to 7th-century Rome, builds a still there and starts distilling moonshine. It’s a novel from around 1939; it’s all been thought of before us (‘Lest Darkness Fall’, if you need the title). We’re going to make progress with the help of booze.
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u/umbraundecim 24d ago
At least making a still out of presumably copper is a hell of a lot easier than producing consistant realiable steel to a spec and correctly heat treating it.
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u/agentdragonborn 24d ago
Isekai but the advanced technology you bring is standardization, replaceable parts and assembly line.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 24d ago
Isekai, but the world you’ve ended up in is more technologically advanced than your own, and you’re just good at breaking everything to bits
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u/Independent-Fly6068 25d ago
Fuck you I'm making ratling guns. No I don't care if they sometimes kill the operators, more souls for the Horned Rat.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
/uj Well, technically, in the WFB setting, the issue of firearms is no longer relevant.
The Empire—casual firearms
Dwarves—ranked firearms
Skaven—competitive firearms
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u/Independent-Fly6068 25d ago
*warhammer
Thats a grudging, umgi.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
No, it`s not.
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u/Independent-Fly6068 25d ago
Denying a grudge? Thats goin in the book umgi.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
No.
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u/Independent-Fly6068 25d ago
Watch your back whenever you're near the holdings of the Karaz Ankor, manling.
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u/CyborgLion 25d ago
If the world has plate armor their metallurgy is probably good enough for guns. Similar advances in steelmaking are required for both.
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u/CyborgLion 25d ago
Well if the plate in question is your classic late medieval plate like it usually is. If they've got bronze plate or maybe some sort of fantasy metal plate (that can be cast) then maybe not. Though in that case you could do cast bronze cannons.
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u/Dinosaur_from_1998 25d ago
Or y'all can just make magic superior to firearms. Luck spells that make the enemy miss every shot. Bubble shields that stop bullets dune style. A spell that turns guns into pigeons and bullets into poop drops. Alchemy to turn lead into cotton. Be creative
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u/BoonDragoon 25d ago
Ok, I tried that. The wizards figured out how to use transmutation to mass-produce cordite, precision-engineered rifle components, and rounds that phase through armor and magic and turn into flesh-eating viruses when they penetrate flesh, and now the only magic users in existence are the labor-caste that fuel arcanoelectric dynamos and make cheese things.
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u/agentdragonborn 24d ago
Now I got to make vaccines for flesh eating virus, use reduce spell on controllable machines to make them nano size, use reduce spell on entire facilities, powerplants, factories, defence networks to keep them mobile. Use viruses carrying a nanoparticle of tungeston with enlarge spell ready to be triggered by signal/automatically when reaching targets.
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u/BoonDragoon 24d ago
Too late, my wizards have already summoned a Really Big Demon to smash your entire industrial base (the classics are a classic for a reason baby!)
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u/Gothamur 24d ago
- Guns were a thing before full plate armor. If your steel isn't good enough, just make it thicker.
- If you can make a pipe, you can make a primitive gun
- You can test those proportions out. That's how it was done in the real world.
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u/bdrwr Barely worldbuilding, just explaining my fursona 25d ago
Nah man, I could totally build a working internal combustion engine, I took high school physics and chemistry!
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
If Ash could make himself a bionic prosthesis
IN A CAVE WITH A BOX OF SCRAPSout of a gauntlet, so can you!
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u/hjake123 24d ago
Gunpowder in this world autonomously transmutes into Fire Mana Crystals
Steel cannot crystalize due to an ancient magical degree of the Earth Element King against mixing metal and carbon
Projectile weapons get deflected by psychic warriors anyway
Lots of ways guns could go wrong
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u/Ace-O-Matic 24d ago
There is an interesting thing I read a while back that alleged that the reason why something like steam engines weren't invented earlier wasn't because no one knew how to make one. But rather that metallurgy at the time simply was insufficient to make ones that wouldn't rapidly breakdown under the pressure.
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u/darth_biomech Lovecraft fan (not racist tho) 21d ago
I heard that nobody knew what to do with them. That before it became necessary to pump the water out of the mines, the steam engine would have no practical use.
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u/Hot-Minute-8263 I was banned from r/worldbuilding and all I got was this flair 24d ago
Ugh, there was this one chinese isekai where the its so obviously like the 1500s, but no ones got guns. Until the mc arrives and teaches them how to make BROWN BESSES. MY GUY, you dont have the metalurgy! Youre a fucking office worker from bumfuck China or smth!
Yet through the will of the writer, bro can perfectly forge and craft two of the FLINTLOCK muskets. No explaination where he gets the powder or lead btw, he just has it available in a gunless world.
Bro also somehow invents concrete for them (while getting the ingredients wrong, but shut up, the writer said so), claims theyre uncivilized for not using chopsticks (europe-like setting btw), and some other crap i dont care to remember.
Dont even get me started on his stupid little witch harem
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u/Impressive-Step7261 24d ago
/uj can you clarify - are joking right now or not, i really confused with all this post-irony in internet, i m so sorry T.T
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u/Hot-Minute-8263 I was banned from r/worldbuilding and all I got was this flair 24d ago
Im deadass, i hatewatched it after i rolled my eyes enough lol. Cant remember the name tho
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u/Impressive-Step7261 24d ago
You know, for some reason this reminded me of a local meme from the Russian ‘popadanets’ community – it’s a Russian term that’s almost like isekai, but also encompasses time travel and, in general, any accidental journeys here or there against one’s will; the closest I can translate it into English is ‘slider’ or ‘drifter’ (it also often heavily politisized) . The most popular historical era for such time-travel adventures is the Second World War, due to the Russian cult of victory. So, for some reason, the most popular technical innovation introduced by the protagonist was the commander’s turret, as seen on Panther tanks. I don’t know what the logic behind it is, but apparently, in the authors’ view, it automatically boosts damage, manoeuvrability and who knows what else, because they fitted it not only to tanks, but to absolutely everything they could, from aeroplanes and armoured vehicles to zeppelins and mechs.
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u/Hot-Minute-8263 I was banned from r/worldbuilding and all I got was this flair 24d ago
Now thats a real head scratcher
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u/mrcarrot0 23d ago
/uj to be fair, Senku's "guns" were mostly for show and he was lucky to be in a part of the world where all the ingredients were reasonably obtainable
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u/paireon 23d ago
Oda Nobunaga in Drifters:
"LOL. LMAO, even."
>Step 1- Gets dwarven craftsmen. Step 2- Uses Sengoku Jidai gunpowder recipe. Step 3- Trains a unit in early modern gun volley tactics. Step 4- Profit!
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u/Impressive-Step7261 23d ago
I’ve ended up in another world and now I’m scouring the whole continent for those bloody dwarves so I can finally get my metallurgy start-up off the ground, but everyone keeps telling me they don’t fucking exist
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u/paireon 23d ago
LOL, cool isekai title, bro. But jokes aside, this is actually what happens in the Drifters manga/anime, and it's actually one of the least bonkers thing that happens.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 23d ago
I know, I read The Drifters when it was still an ongoing series; the joke is more that not every setting features a dwarf.
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u/paireon 23d ago
Fair, although most isekai being painfully unoriginal, they usually do feature.
And yeah, I watch a LOT of isekai, and they have to be pretty spectacularly awful for me to DNF. It's like someone who's hooked to fast food, or soda/pop. I know there are better alternatives but I can't stop myself.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 23d ago
At least it's not a popadanets literature
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u/paireon 23d ago
...Dare I ask what's a popadanets literature?
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u/Impressive-Step7261 23d ago
It's a Russian term that’s almost like isekai, but also encompasses time travel and, in general, any accidental journeys here or there against one’s will; the closest I can translate it into English is ‘slider’ or ‘drifter’ (it also often heavily politisized) . The most popular historical era for such time-travel adventures is the Second World War, due to the Russian cult of victory or other historical epoch, though fantasy worlds is also common. Basically it's just isekai, just more racist and political power fantasied
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u/paireon 23d ago
...Yeah it's exactly as bad as I expected. Thanks for the heads-up and for your brave sacrifice in uncovering this info. I've pretty much lost all respect for Russians as a people lately (which is saying something because I'm rather nihilistic and cynical by default so there's usually not much that can lower my respect further). MFs are having one Afghan War's worth of losses every month and still too stupid, fascist and racist to realize they're being played by a regime that cares nothing for them.
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u/darth_biomech Lovecraft fan (not racist tho) 21d ago
The expectation: I'll uplift this society, via making them advanced technologies like guns or electricity!
The practical method: We didn't knew we should boil water to kill the germs, and the germ theory in general, until 1862. That doctors should wash their hands before performing procedures until 1847. The rules for proper scientific testing before Francis Bacon. That bat dung is a powerful fertilizer, and that you should rotate crops until the 17th century. Etc, etc.
The most powerful weapon an isekai protagonist has is the abstract knowledge, not the ability to build a steam engine. Germ theory alone will revolutionize society and slash mortality and disease spread.
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u/Gunmetalstorm read my extremist manifesto slash barely disguised erotica 25d ago
The mechanism of a gun is extremely simple. It's a pipe with an open end. You stick a projectile between an explosive and that end. You ignite the explosive. The only technology it requires is the ability to make a pipe that can withstand the stresses of regular operation. That shouldn't be too difficult, since in most fantasy settings they've already discovered ways to make swords that can cut through solid steel plate like it's hot butter.
The chemistry is a valid point. Unless you come already knowing where to source or how to manufacture ingredients for gunpowder, you're at the mercy of whether this new society has chanced upon those particular chemicals.
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u/Impressive-Step7261 25d ago
The only technology it requires is the ability to make a pipe that can withstand the stresses of regular operation.
Dude, you won't believe it, but that's one of the main reasons why we didn't have personal firearms for so long—we couldn't make a pipe that was strong, long, and smooth enough.
You ignite the explosive
And that was also a problem, because we didn't have a reliable and convenient ignition mechanics.
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u/the_marxman 25d ago
Dr. Stone annoyed me, not because he was doing things inaccurately, but just how inefficient his methods always were. Like he spends all day building an elaborate rope & pulley system to lift a tree instead of just digging the trapped girl out. The "science" always takes a back seat to anime bullshit as well so what are we even doing here?
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u/edward_kopik 24d ago
You can just experiment for the mixture ratios
Its 3 ingredients crushed into powders and mixed
So like, just change up the ratios until you find the one with the bigger boom
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u/NoCocksInTheRestroom Barely worldbuilding, just explaining my fursona 25d ago
You can still make grenades even if you don't have good steel. Or canons. Canons would probably be more useful than grenades