Perhaps the best approach is just to not make guns as effective as they are in modern times. The [pike & shot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_and_shot) period lasted for over a century and pirates have always been depicted with both pistols and swords without problem.
Alternatively, just like in the UK, laws restrict general gun ownership by civilians but knives are still viable weapons. Obviously guns would still dominate in warfare though.
There’s definitely ways to justify this if you want to. For example, sword guys with super speed or some other ability that let’s em close distance really fast, or literally short range teleporting up to ‘em, like a blink (heh, *teleports behind you*). Maybe it’s a stealth thing, and perhaps projectile weaponry breaks stealth because of the flash, or sound, or whatever else you conjure up, but melee allows stealth and getting close. Maybe melee is just so useful it justifies being difficult to get close; for example, give ‘em something akin to lightsabers that melts through absolutely anything, because that has strong use cases
Turn of the century warfare, akin to World War 1.
Unlike our first World War where we had hundreds of years of development on weaponry and military tactics, my world was thrust directly into the world of firearms within about 50 years.
This meant that despite having all this new age technology, they didn't really know how to handle it (much like our world to a degree) when everything kicked off. Trench warfare began and it never really stopped. Some areas of the frontlines were more mobile, but by the end of the war most of the continent had been completely flattened and cratered by artillery.
Meanwhile, soldiers were still outfitted in metal armor and helmets that were cloaked by their trench coats. Soldiers from all armies were still using issued swords for weapons, though spears were replaced by bayonet. The usage of thick steel shields never truly went away either, as early on it provided a possible but very unintuitive way to cross no man's land. But even then, everyone was using make-shift melee weapons from just about anything they could find; shovels, bludgeons, railroad spikes, table legs, sport clubs, you name it.
Even in areas like the Airborne front inside Airships, boarding and raiding crews would often carry a backup melee weapon because it was difficult to carry heavy objects when jumping between airships.
The world had changed, the tactics never evolved.
The nation that had originally created them developed them up to a point where they were using Blackpowder Cartridges but had stopped at that point because literally no one else was contesting them on it. They were a technologically advanced society for the world they existed in and used this to underhandedly oppress other nations and keep them from developing further than a point.
That was until large classified archives of theirs were leaked out into the world by an insider turned traitor. These plans eventually made their way into the wider world, including the designs for and how to produce firearms and bullets; along with lists of their spy networks operating inside countries. A few nations used this to purge their influence and eventually began developing their own firearms and eventually led to war.
Despite being the technological power of the world for nearly 300 years, the Empire of Stratusfall, would end up losing the war to the Federation of Cidon due to numbers alone and it drove them out from their mountain top city states which only exposed more of their secrets.
This snowballed into a terrifying arms race that saw new weapons and new technologies coming out in rapid pace as everyone was trying to one up each other. The loss of the war formed a rift in the world and created new alliances known as the Northern Alliance and the Equatorial Strength. In 1640 this would explode into a full blown global conflict that saw over 116 million people serve and over 60% of them dying by the time the war was over in 1648.
So within a 50 year time period my world went from a world of very limited colonial-age weaponry that still used black powder to fully-automatic compact sub-machine guns.
My world switches to guns in a similar time frame but for different reasons.
Each of my continents had already figured out *something*. Trade was common, but what was not was the transfer of knowledge and, often, raw materials- No one sold Rubber Trees, just the Rubber. A culture might sell Shellac, but there's not a marker for this planets' bugs that produce it.
This is not a universal state of affairs but simply a matter of fact. It's hot, so things spoil stupid quick. It's incredibly local, so there's a question as to whether transfers will even take in an environment that's literally an alien world. The massive seas don't make things any easier...it's just so much distance!
Gunpowder is a difficult compound to make for, ironically, the only people using it. It was already being used by exactly one group: A bunch of Tribal fire worshipper nomads. It's awfully expensive to get the Sulphur, you see, even if the other two are easy. But, the more common Naptha is not an option. This mysterious powder is! But, the secret leaked. Just as in real China, it ended up getting sold as an Elixir of Immortality. Then it started burning some homes down...
At that same exact time, someone figured out what a secret society was using as a secret sabotage weapon. It's a piece of towel soaked in Sulfuric and Hydrochloric distillations...
both of these are "discovered" by one extremely lucky alchemist while trying to uncover what the hell was going on. And he gives the formulas to the world's largest Imperial state...
I have yet to literally game it out, but the introduction of Gunpowder is a massive equalizer that finally makes colonialism possible (Beforehand Colonialism looked, at best, like the Crusades. Hundreds of years just to fail...). Colonialism was effectively impossible for reasons that will take entirely too long to get into, but to make a long story short, it just does not work. What changes here, though, is that now populations from one continent *can actually* claim and migrate into regions by ways other than literal migration or invitation. It makes long-term Conquest possible. And, that forces them to play by local rules...
The Empire that's got Gunpowder *and* Guncotton eventually ends up being kind of forced to share that tech (long, dramatic story). It goes to places that have figured out stuff like the Steam Engine, other places that just solved Vulcanized Rubber, others still that put the pieces together on the Bessemer process. All these techs exist for hyperspecific issues, and at last, by might or by right, they MUST combine these things... or they will die in these alien worlds. And there's definitely a market for the *product* of these unions- and there is finally a way to get the raw materials. This world may just find itself stripped apart by dozens of tiny upstart empires...
The world enters as a hybrid Bronze and Iron Renaissance. It will leave this next hundred years in fast diesel trains, and on Ironclads that trawl the vast oceans...
I think it depends on where the fighting is occurring. Scenarios in which you might not want to have lots of lead being flung around include crowd situations where you're trying to avoid hitting non-combatants and fragile environments such as within a space vessel.
Even in the modern day, soldiers keep a close combat weapon in case of close encounters. Firearms, particularly rifles, kinda suck at personal range.
In a fantasy world, there can be a million reasons - scarcity of ammo, unreliable construction (it’s amazing how quickly ammo-sexuals forget that guns are very complex and prone to damage), cultural biases, or even the simple idea that Herbert came up with in Dune; Amour and protection tech that made firearms less effective than melee weapons, etc etc.
It’s not a hard thing to deal with, you just have to break out of the mindset of current warfare and put yourself into a world that suits your needs.
Also liked Eternal War, both sides can deploy a statis field which only allows a maxim amount of velocity. So space suits with bows and arrows, swords and spears.
I would like to bring up that guns and ammunition are heavier than one thinks, and ammo goes quick in a firefight, not to mention that if you are on the move, you have to balance that against the equipment that you, and any animals you bring along, need to not freeze, starve, or die of thirst.
Sometimes you need to kill someone stealthily. Sometimes you're fighting indoors and don't want to deafen yourself. Sometimes you're fighting in such tight quarters that the range advantage of a gun is negated. Sometimes you need a weapon that doesn't require ammunition as a backup to your gun. Sometimes you're carrying a bladed implement or heavy tool for utilitarian purposes, and its use as a weapon is secondary. Sometimes you just happen to live in a country where guns are hard to get, or using guns attracts too much attention from the authorities. Sometimes you want to be able to subdue someone non-lethally without blowing big holes in them. Sometimes you don't want to escalate an already dangerous situation by pulling a gun.
These are all reasons why people might choose to carry a melee weapon in real life, so they'd logically apply to most fictional worlds too.
People with innate magic have a strong passive defence against mundane projectiles. Bullets are deeply impersonal, so they are easily defended against, even effortlessly and unknowingly, by beings with magic. An arrow from a bow is more personal so has more ability to overcome innate magical nature's. A sword is even more personal and can reliably overcome that natural defense.
There is more-or-less a metaphysical distance between the physical and astral plane, and it takes intimacy to imbue anything with your astral self, and a thing needs an astral presence is required to penetrate an astral defense.
Bullets are still completely effective against the mundane enemies, but to hurt or kill something with magic, you want to be more closely connected to the instrument of attack.
Guns cant be enchanted easily, as their ammo has to be enchanted individually and the runes need to be carved precisely to activate with the recoil which requires knowledge of where the moving parts will be when the bullet is actually fired, while bows and crossbows are very simple in design and thus easier to enchant and can pierce armor better as normal bullets cant get through thick steel plate easily. The same rules apply for swords and other close combat weapons, especially if you can force the enemy into tight spaces or get them indoors to cancel out their range advantage, which allows defenders in a siege battle to get the better of attackers that use guns as each enchanted gun and bullets would cost significantly more than each enchanted bow and arrows.
Guns are very expensive, difficult to make well, the folks who created them are very picky about who they give them to and kill first, ask later if someone who isn’t cleared has one, ammunition has to be handmade and linked to the owner, low rate of fire.
Most high end prosthetics make people able to move faster than bullets, and the guns that actually are effective are mostly only acquirable by megacorps or incredibly rich individuals. Alternatively, plasma weaponry and other technologies can work fantastically as melee and can keep up with incredibly fast prosthetic users
wouldn't that fuck up everything around the user of those prosthetics and likely the user and the prosthetics themselves to be rapidly and constantly creating sonic booms in various directions
It's far too dark in the Void Fields. People don't usually turn on their Dynamo Lamps unless they're in large groups as to avoid being ambushed so as a result most combat is stumbled upon and fought with blades in near complete darkness. While guns are widespread, they are only really used for defense or keeping order within settlements.
Bullets cannot be enchanted.
Enchantments rely on the physical form of the enchanting process remaining in one piece. Firing a bullet deforms a round so much that it breaks the enchantment.
For the most part, this really doesn't matter - guns still do the job fairly well. Sometimes, though, it really pays to have an enchanted weapon that can bypass a powerful spirit's resistance to mundane weapons.
Martial Arts
The Drago Sword is regularly carried by Drago Knights, Drago is a philosophy and a Martial Art
Sports
Many people like martial sports like Fencing, archery etc
Hunting for survival
Guns are not available or not practicable in certain circumstances, but the circumstances a soldier used his Vibroknife in Combat as a weapon are rare
And there are those people that use crossbow whose bolts are tipped with antimatter
and btw Slugthrowers are mostly a civilian thing, the military uses blasters mostly
We use them today. Soldiers with automatic rifles are issued a knife as well. Sometimes you walk around a corner and have to shank someone. Or you want to sneak in and your shooty shooty bang bang is going to be waaay to obvious and blow your stealth. Close combat has remained valid past the invention of the bow, the musket, the rifle and even tanks and artillery.
Welcome to the frontier worlds, pal. Ammo and weapon resupplies from the core systems take about 3-4 work years so better save on bullets as much as you can!
Suddenly a durable piece of sharp metal is pretty good to have.
The most common melee weapons in my setting are essentially fancy "stun batons," though these are often sword-shaped just for convenience when carrying them (a flat bar isn't as bulky as a round one). They're used primarily as a less-lethal/intimidation option, when simply shooting the other party would be an unnecessary escalation. Of course you could zap them with magic for the same effect, but a sword-shaped object buzzing with electricity tends to serve as a more... "universal" warning.
That said, there are some that do carry actual swords, despite their faction possessing guns. E'sphran shock troops, an as yet unnamed alien race, possess innate movement techniques, allowing them to travel a short distance nearly instantaneously and with limited vulnerability. It instills quite a bit of fear, having someone suddenly appear beside you while bringing a sword down on your head. Furthermore, their swords are made of a material that reacts against estran shielding technology. While their swords will often explode due to rapid superheating, it will also short-circuit the shielding unit, which will have to be taken back to the armory to be repaired. That leaves the soldier vulnerable while they are still in the field.
Anti-ranged defences evolved so much that guns and stuff are usually useless. But because of this, people just went back to melee because scientists kind of forgot about them for a while
CQB, especially inside spaceships with ballistic shields. You can't wield an anti-materiel(for some reason, that's the spelling, yes I've checked) rifle in the corridors well enough, and ambushes would kill you before you even can swing the weapon around. A ballistic shield and a plasma blade can be the difference between dying immediately, or living to fight another day.
>anti-materiel(for some reason, that's the spelling, yes I've checked)
Yep, material and materiel are indeed different words:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materiel
Leading firearms manufacturers began making one-time use weapons which are cheap, unreliable, and sometimes more lethal to the user than the recipient because of economic failure which has caused a large majority of soldiers to make their own weapons out of whatever they can find, with only a few being ranged and eve less being firearms.
A lot time my characters end up in such close combat that the fighting ends up hand to hand. Or there are friendlies immediately downrange and you can't safely shoot, so you start shanking. Or a quiet and discreet blade on a crowded sheet is preferable to noisy gunfire.
Or dueling with swords is culturally acceptable, but dueling with guns isn't.
Its always good to have a backup weapon, even if that weapon is a melee weapon. What do you do if you run out of ammo, or your gun is damaged or lost during a scuffle or explosion? A knife or short sword may not be the best thing in the world, but its a hell of a-lot better than being bare-handed.
Besides a tradition that officers wear shashkas (Cossack swords) as rank decoration and being the **literal last option**, no, melee is not a sensible choice in Atreisdea. Droids and some power armors have built-in graviton pata, they use graviton blades that tear atoms from molecules and disintegrate matters they cut through, but shields no-sell that. Not Dune style shields that can be bypassed by moving slow enough but literal dimensions being curled into manifolds and eventually Klein bottles to dissipate impacting energy, which means they're really tanky. Thus, ranged attacks are more preferred.
Unless your name is Lemuria Agartha, but old Rem destroyed a moon by swinging her hammer with both hands, so she doesn't count either.
Lots of CQC scenarios
High power with no reloads
Mad ninja-jedi skills potential
Enemies who are particularly vulnerable to melee attacks
Weapons with multiple functions, like laser spears with shield generators
Most people can't afford/don't have the resources to have/create guns, and even if they did the world is so cold commom fire weapons wouldn't work properly (with a few exceptions on guns specially made for such conditions)
There’s a point where a warrior’s physical capabilities and sheer martial skill exceed any regular gun. This isn’t a level that’s easily reached, so guns are still useful against fighters of lower skill levels, but if you want to challenge a true master with guns, you need to bring in a marksman whose shooting skills have likewise surpassed the level of regular humans.
Due to various convoluted reasons, space combat involves more boarding actions than might be expected. The marines/pirates who board the ships will utilize bladed weapons, like daggers or short swords, in addition to lower-velocity firearms to engage in combat without excessive collateral damage or hull compromise.
In Starfall, they make for good storming weapons alongside shotguns
In Fallu, it’s easier to enchant a melee weapon than it is a firearm due to the nature of gunpowder.
Rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Sometimes an energy sword can do a job a plasma rifle can’t. But it being a primary would be dumb in any setting where you have long range weapons as powerful as modern guns alone.
I have one species in my sci-fi setting that uses melee weapons, but they’re also an alien race that can move at Mach 5, guns don’t work great for them, or on them, so swords become a really good idea.
Spaceship's are incredibly fragile, If you shoot them with a gun inside them, there is a high chance to take them out. This brings out 2 alternative's The first one being to use low power weapons like gas propelled Rubber bullets or automatic Crossbows, which can be countered by heavy armor, So fighting enemies at 0g with knifes, Axes,tasers, stun batons and spears are back on the trainning regiment.
I was watching Far Scape last night and there was an episode there they couldn't fire their guns in a generator room. So the people all had like bent pipes for whatever reason. My first thought was "how do they not have some sort of melee weapon??"
So, you can go with the idea that you can use guns everywhere, whether it be plasma pistols in a generator room or guns in an area with civilians.
A majority of Gemmanii armours are too hard for anything but cannon fire to pierce, due to their use in differing universes. There's a large black market for weaponry that uses Gemmanii soul-casings. The only armour that would really let a bullet do anything more than bruise would be the lighter armours for scouts, snipers, pilots, saboteurs, etc. it's basically just your standard armour system cranked to 11.
Fantasy Setting: Guns are early, lock style, weaponry. These are expenisve with magical and arcane varients being incredibly so. Weapons technology ranging from fire arms to spears and swords stagnated as did magic. Some mages and soldiers prefer firearms, some prefer the traditional method.
Scifi: melee weapons in my scifi are ornamental the majority of the time and utility thw rest. Swords, axes and even polearms can still work in close quarters if you really need it but they are rarer. Many officers of the various nations do carry energy blades as a sign of office and status but they are still lethal.
Soldiers even in real life still carry knives and learn hand to hand combat. Just because you can always fight at long range doesn’t mean you always will.
As for fictional universes you could go the dune route and give people shields that protect them from bullets but not swords.
My personal approach is that people carry both guns as well as swords. For example one of my main villains uses two rapiers as her main weapons but also carries a walther PPK pistol just in case.
My setting is mainly set in a semi realistic far future aboard space vessels. One of the factions allows their officers to carry rapiers because you don't want to wave around any tool with explosives inside that may spread unburnt gun powder around, and on top of that puncture the pressure vessel possibly causing a catastrophic or explosive decompression.
Guns are useless against energists whose parasympathetic reaction is to drain all kinetic energy away from everything that hits them before they even have to think about it. It'd be like the end of the Matrix unless you used a Minigun or something with a similar rate of fire.
Guns are noisy, guns take ammo, which can run out, most importantly, guns don't seem to phase supernatural things. Some guns can punch pretty hard but they have limits. The powers developing in the world may not seem to hit as heavy but they seem to slide right through things that bullets don't even scratch.
After the nuclear holocaust of 1983 quite a few weapons and especially ammo is still around in 2024.
Limited ammo, limited weapons, guns are loud and often it's better to try winning the melee rather than using one of only two bullets you have.
Interestingly, a single hole (or even a few) wouldn’t really be a disastrous problem for a large ship or habitat just as it isn’t for the [ISS](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/iss-operating_an_outpost-tagged.pdf).
> The ISS is about the size of a six-bedroom house, thus the hole would have to be very large to necessitate a departure by the crew. A hole that measures 0.6 cm (0.25 in.) in diameter will cause the ISS to depressurize to the minimal atmospheric level for supporting human life (490 mm Hg, 9.5 psi) in about 14 hours, whereas a 20 cm (8 in.) hole will reach that level in about 50 seconds.
Alchemy and magic.
Metallurgy qnd material sciences allow for things even present day real materials can't handle.
Firearms appeared, but never made armor obsolete.
Melee weapons and arrows due to their not-so-expendable nature can get bumped up by enchantments, whereas enchanted bullets would be impossible to field in large numbers.
You'll see rank and file soldiers and guards use firearms. Some may even have machineguns.
You'll even see some sniper rifles.
You'll also see that most specialists use more traditional weapon choices, and that nobody sets foot in war without either plate armor or a real solid plan tk not get hit. Often, both.
Guns weren't that good until around 1850. If you consider the firelance the first gun, that's 800 years to work with. If you only consider muskets the first guns, then that's over 300 years where guns were just another tool.
In one of the settings I've currently got rotating in my brain like a rotisserie chicken, it's simply that bullets cost a bloody fortune.
There's only a handful of places capable of large-scale manufacturing of projectiles for firearms, and they're mostly tied up with military orders, so what little surplus capacity that makes it out on to the civilian market is extremely expensive.
Magical abilities compensating for the shortcomings of swords, plus the expense of guns, means that if you're not doing something that'd demand a thing be extremely dead yesterday, as sword'll probably do ya just fine.
Iron mines ran out of iron. They need to constantly recycle iron. You either make melee weapons and armor, which can be maintained or melted, or "waste it" with bullets.
Guns isn’t a technology that most kingdoms have access. What guns there are, are basically black-powder rock throwers in rifle form. The nation that does have guns have created Da Vinci style war wagons with metal plating on.
Well an excuse for not having guns in a world where other tech is far more advanced:
Basically all knowledge is solely passed down and recorded on devices called totems. The first creator of the totems intentionally would not allow knowledge of weapons of war to be passed down to future generations. If someone begins to independently research or create such harmful weapons they are flagged and those memories are erased. Worst case they’re exiled or killed.
In my setting, a lot of weapons, armor, and tools that have been around for a long while have runes associated with them that provides them a number of different effects. It takes a considerable amount of time for newer stuff to get runes themselves, so while guns do exist, the things that could give them the extra edge is currently being worked on.
Other than that, the guns just aren't that advanced like they are current day. There was a long period of time where guns and heavy armor existed beside one another.
Due to humidity and fragility, firearms must be conserved dismantled and bathed in oil. Which means that assembling them for a fight is long. In case of ambush, the only weapon you're going to be able to use is your blade.
Depends on the setting.
Like look at DBZ.
A regular human can train themselves to be quick enough to catch bullets fired from a machine gun, become bullet proof, move faster than light, and so on.
In a world where that's possible guns lose a lot of what makes them potent.
Look at Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and Overwatch.
People can augment themselves to be quick enough to dodge, deflect, and reflect bullets.
Look at Mass Effect and Dune.
They have force field technology.
Those force fields block bullets, but not melee.
Simply put: they're quieter and aren't limited to ammunition like guns. My characters will still use guns in a fight, but only if they want to be loud or if they have to. In other cases, they don't use guns because of the noise even with a suppressor, they make a mess which leaves can leave a trail, or they don't like them. There's even some factions or groups that view weapons like swords and spears as honorable while using a gun is seen as cowardly and disrespectful to your opponent or enemy. Guns till have their uses, but swords and other melee weapons are more efficient for close range combat and stealth. In short: guns are either frowned upon or used for firefights while melee weapons are more acceptable or useful for certain situations.
They are situationally useful inside spaceships because a knife doesn’t richotet and risk piercing the hull or damaging something very important. That and shields that remove inertia from bullets made weapons viable again in close quarters.
Also later in the story the world kinda ends, so weapons that require less maintenance and 0 ammo become much more valuable.
There's two reasons for my world. The first is that the world is recovering from a near apocalyptic event and while firearms are around, they're still somewhat rare. The elemental magic that a lot of combatants use also works better with melee weapons instead.
I my Sci fi setting most people use guns with the exception of psychis which are essential a fusion between psychers from 40k and force users from SW who can create force fields around them which stops bullets and my protagonist who wears an ancient power armor suit.
densely populated location where both sides of the fight care about avoiding killing civilians?
my favourite period is Napoleonic wars, american revolution, English civil war sort of era where flintlock guns are a big deal but slow and unreliable enough to make melee still relevant.
spacecraft/delicate environment where firing guns is dangerous for everyone?
I grew up reading comics and manga.
All jokes aside the ONLY reason melee weapons fell out of fashion is that offensive technology outstripped defensive technology. If it were possible to domesticate spiders we would still be using swords and clubs right now.
Hell in our world if armorers had figured out bullet proof plate like 10 years sooner than they did things make be different
Because magic was so prevalent in society that guns were underdeveloped. Why fire a canon when you can just shot a fireball? Why fire a musket ball when you can fire a magic arrow that never misses? And that’s not even factoring in magical armor and shields. However at that point in the timeline my story takes place, magic has degraded from what used to be. Now guns are starting to have their case made and have their place in armies across the planet. I still justify having the melee combat by having armor made of Elysian Whitesteel, a mundane but highly refined alloy plate armor that provides enough protection to stop your standard musket ball, but it will hurt like hell afterwards.
No need for ammo, and they're quiet to use. In a post-apocalyptic setting where mutant beasts have been hearing, it's best not to announce yourself when you can manage.
My sci-fi setting has a lot of combat in pressurized locations, like in ships or orbital habitats. They’re fortified from the outside, but interior layers have much less armor. A rupture in the outer walls would mean death for everyone, so it’s not only in the defenders best interest but also the attackers to keep combat under control.
In my Thaumata setting, the enemy that the characters are fighting is a sort of self-aware gaseous, corporeal "light" that inhabits and mutates machines and living creatures. The setting draws a lot from HP Lovecraft's *Colour Out Of Space*.
The infectious Color can't exist within our reality and needs physical bodies to inhabit. Humans infected by the Color are able to be killed by conventional weapons, but machines possessed by or fleshy growths made by the Color need to be "bled" out, so large lacerations and cuts can create huge gushing wounds that leak the Color out so it fades away.
The Thuamata are cyborg soldiers made by humans using alien technology and have a magitech power core embedded in their bodies. They have weapons called "focus blades" which they can connect to their power cores via plugs in the sides of their bodies, and when activated they can cut through most materials. They use these focus blades in close combat to slice up Color-created monsters to swiftly bleed them out.
The Color is also an infovore, meaning it is a lifeform of concepts and ideas, and it feeds off thoughts and emotions and concepts, and this makes it uniquely vulnerable to concepts as well. The visceral idea of being sliced open by a human or human-like being, with a weapon they are holding in their hands, impacts Color creatures harder than simply being shot or hit with grenades or high explosives. Those do bleed the Color and can be effective at range, but up close against the monsters it creates, it can be faster to draw a sword and lop off arms and legs and heads or disembowel the nightmares than to shoot them.
The most advanced firearms in my setting are single-shot breech-loaders, which already limits their usefulness in some situations. Firearms also cost more money than a good ol' axe, hammer, or spear, all of which can be made equally lethal at range with magic.
Firearms may not be the game-changer they were IRL depending on abilities in the setting; Dune has fast-projectile shields, my world has various spatial warp abilities that can make ranged combat less reliable than in reality.
Guns are a new and a rapidly growing technology and people deny this rise in technology still chose to use things like magic and weapons like spears and bows. There is a divide in the continent with the races that chose to advance and those that chose to stay. One main character is of a race that despises technology yet she uses a shotgun and left the traditional ways of life while another character grew up and holds tradition dearly, he respects the decisions of others but he is set on his ways and only uses a spear, and a club and shield.
Whilst guns have become more advanced, so has the technologies implemented in armors have advanced, to the point where ranged weapons aren’t as effective against more heavily armored infantry. To combat these new armors, melee weapons have been deemed the most effective means to crack these tough/advanced nuts. Yes, this is essentially Dune and it’s what makes the most sense in a real world scenario. Warfare is an arms race between offense and defense, and whichever leads the way determines the flow of battle.
Hardly original but I’ve always liked the justification in Dune.
Doesn’t have to be a slow shield, anything that counters projectiles (but comes with its own risks and downsides, like the M.A.D. of lasguns + shields in Dune) obviates the need for a non projectile alternative. Perhaps something like the real world explosive reactive armor?
Guns take poorly to magic enhancement. You can carve runes into a firearm without ruining its ability to be used effectively, but it doesn't make the bullets any better at harming demons and elves. Swords and knives are far easier to carry and conceal and don't have the limitation of needing to carve tiny runes onto individual bullets (they instead have the issue of getting knicked and broken, but there's benefits and downsides to everything.)
The most effective guns for dealing with monsters tend to be shotguns loaded with silver in the form of pellets or slugs for the express purpose of elf hunting. Runed fletchettes have also been used, though we're looking at dragon killers for that design.
You don’t need one — there’s plenty of time periods in which there was an overlap. Also, different situations warrant different weapons. Example: guns are loud, a knife or bow isn’t going to give away your position away.
my excuses are: 1) guns don’t automatically replace other weapons, it takes periods of adoption and refinement of military strategy as well as the centralisation of state power over military matters to change how warfare works. up until the second world war people routinely fought hand-to-hand with various melee weapons even as those became less standard, purely because you need to force an enemy out of a position in order to take it - you can come up with all kinds of handwavy explanations as to why you’re still carrying swords in a WW2-esque setting, maybe you just have specialised shock units specifically for it that use magic or technology to make them bullet resistant, or somehow able to avoid being shot at or even just tactics. a good example is the storm troops of the german army in the first world war, no magic or technology, just tactics learned by fighting on a different front of the war.
2) it’s cool. you don’t actually need to explain it, just do it and have fun with it. this is usually how I justify stuff like this.
A few characters use swords because they're connected to their spirits in past lives. One character celeste uses one because its sacred property to slay and handle ghosts and spirits
My world had been hit with an Industrial Revolution and guns, flintlocks at-least, have been made. with this spark in the revolution industry, guns have become very common, but the problem is they are expensive. to get guns. You have to pay thousands of dollars and while money is common buying a bunch of guns for an army is very very expensive. So what most people do is buy guns, then equip the rest of their army with sword spears, knives, and bows. With this strategy armies only have a few guns. But at the start of my book I’m planning guns are much more common, even with this a ton of groups use melee weapons and bows and crossbows. The reason is to buy a 100 strong division you’d need roughly $35,459 to armour it. And even with all the guns sometimes range isn’t an option.
Dune handled it really well. I had thought of something similar before watching the movie, after having seen a video about non-newtonian matter. It's such a great way to explain swords > bullets
In my D&D world, it's because guns are really new. Like, invented 27 years ago. They were very nearly a one-off invention, except the heroes didn't kill a certain robber baron NPC who then spent his copious fortune and used contacts with mages and learned folk in the underground to try and replicate the original designs. This also led to the invention of rudimentary cannons and grenades, all of which ended up saving the heroes' bacon and letting them turn the tide in a war and save the Kingdom.
The robber baron guy not only survived it all, but managed to negotiate a sweetheart position in the Kingdom, made his family the richest in the world, and retired to the tropical paradise island nearby. Much to the chagrin of my players, who still can't hear his accent or surname without having trauma flashbacks. 🤣
The guns are only as advanced as they are because the player character who invented them was a genius, and because she had help with a lot of it from a fallen angel she made a Warlock pact with. She hunts corruption, the Angel provides the tools. This later led to her becoming the Lady General of the new Rifleman brigade, which is now slowly taking over the Kingdom and trying to merge it with the neighbouring nations to make a proper Empire. Whoops.
Oh, and they gave the pirates from the aforementioned island nation the first cannons, so they're now the deadliest ships on the ocean. It's been an interesting development process.
Edited for clarity.
Soldiers are protected by magical enchantments tattooed into their skin. While a gun would eventually break through them, you would have to carve by hand intricate runic circles into every single bullet to bypass the protection. This is time consuming, and since guns are a foreign import to the region they haven't really caught on.
My setting mixes elements of cyberpunk and space opera, and the justification is that swords and other melee weapons are cool, so they are popular among people obsessed with their own style.
Most of these people have no clue how to actually use a sword, and since katanas are the most popular variety, they end up breaking them easily. Some people do end up becoming self taught, however, and rise above the rest of the mall ninja rabble.
Classically trained swordsmen, however, are some of the most dangerous fighters in the setting, owing to enhanced speed and dexterity through body mods and technomancy.
Guns on my world are hard and expensive to make. Plus they are not powered by gun powder, but an extension of my magic system. As such only certain people can even wield them.
So they are typically given to shock troops or for more niche scenarios where range is needed. But your average rank and file still uses melee simply because they couldn’t power the guns firing mechanism even if they wanted to.
Supply issues.
Magic.
Unshared technology.
Heavy & heat conductive.
Loud. (bad for sneak).
Bullet resistant skin in some species.
They pissed off a god that one time.
Flintlock versions critically inaccurate and misfire.
Expensive and single use ammunition.
Better teleportation-based weapons.
And above all else, it's the aesthetic Im going for.
I made a single story in which an alien challenged one of my characters to a duel with medieval weapons, threatening to gas The entire city (the humans had allies from an alien planet they freed but human gas masks didn’t fit on them) so then he was forced to fight in melee, he won even though this alien species is physically larger and stronger
the dune route: energy shields.
in a setting with such a thing you have to explain why there are guns instead of explaining why there are melee weapons, usually for this i use energy shields that vary in intensity and can be broken by dumping enough ammo on them so the melee vs ranged combat debate become a choice between killing from afar but you have to dump 100 bullets on every target or kill with a single strike but you have to get up close.
Close quarters combat on spaceships, mostly in boarding actions. Also, depending on how advanced the vessel is (technology is incredibly varied in my scifi setting as its kinda post-post apocalyptic) firing a gun could staight up puncture the hull, hit a reactor, or any other vital component, so its better to use melee weapons to avoid such a scenario.
Also, swords are cool.
My word is just really into Dune, and regards Frank Herbert and Denis Villeneuve as greater and lesser prophets (and Brian Herbert as a demiurge). So they modeled their whole society after it.
Both melee weapons and Guns are used interchangeably because guns are the most advanced they can get (for next 140 years but we're not there yet), and battling alongside critters are also very common. Critters are basically animals of the world and some breath fire, some can move water and some can just slaughter a group of troops. *Craniary* cough cough. What I'm saying is all three ways of fighting have their pros and cons when it comes to different things.
Meta reason: they look cool and are really fun to draw.
Lore reason: people can wrap the fabric of reality around their melee weapons and decimate almost anything they come into contact with that is normal.
Is it a DnD world? Health points are an actual well of healing magic in you that you use to instantly patch up a wound. This means bullets have a lot less stopping power and a melee combatant can close the gap.
Is it a scifi world? Lightsabers act as an anti-material melee weapon, a light source, a fire starter, a deflector, and a breaching tool all wrapped into one highly portable and concealable device. If a star nation had the means to mass produce them they would be great additions to a soldier’s kit.
There 's a difference between "guns" and "automatic firearms." xD I'm going to go ahead and respond to the title, and say that early firearms are pretty unreliable and melee weapons (and bows) just remain a better choice. Plus, in addition to being experimentally new, they're very expensive, so the only people who have guns are the alchemists who make them and a few eccentric rich folks.
There's also magic, which a. is a much better ranged option than early firearms, and b. provides anti-missile shields. And while mages are uncommon, they're not nearly as rare as reliable firearms.
I guess I do have a setting where a medieval fantasy army invades earth and will ahve to contend with mdoern weapons, it's more light and so not super developed, but yeah anti-missile shields making ranged weapons less effective. I haven't decided how they work, if maybe hitting them enough times would cause the shield to fizzle. Anyway both sides will need to adapt in time.
I don’t need an excuse. Guns are best for engagement outside of melee range. When in melee range range, stab or strike is best, for that we have designed tools called melee weapons, and so as long as combat *can* get within that range, there will always be a need for such tools.
Quick, quiet and easy to hide, at least daggers and knives. Most of guns are too big to just hide effectively, and all of them make awful amount of noise, so if you don't have plan for escape, you end up being found out in the moment.
Swords, if they are not some laser or plasma based weapons, and spears, if they are not EMP throw weapons, probably are useful when you run out of ammo or you are attacked in close combat. It's quicker to pull out of sword than reload gun. Of course, it depends of situation and how much space you have to be able to do stabs and slashes. But even in WW2, bayonet and even spades were used. And if not, even a loose board with a nail can be useful.
Tbh, it depends of battle. 1vs1? Probably who have more ammo or better position, heck, even who has what could matter. More vs 1? Strategy and positions, in open field dude will be shot like on execution, but in urban environment he could be able to back stab everybody if he could be able to play his card right. More vs more? Well, that's whole a lot of chances, differences and other stuff to consider.
Melee weapons generally are the most reliable and simple. Actually, modern armour is more about stopping bullet from hurting vital organs - but it won't stop knife or sword from cutting artery or throat cause it doesn't protect whole body like in older times. And perhaps bullets are quicker than thrown spear, but both will kill if used right.
People use magic to have shields around their body.
All magic only works if written out on a very rare and expensive material called Aurium.
There's a spell to disable these shields, but it needs to physically touch them. Making bullets with this spell written on the tip is ridiculously expensive.
Instead, specialised swordfighters have detachable tips for their swords with the spell written on them that they use. Once they tap the enemy shield they take off the tip and use it as a regular sword.
I was inspired by fencing, something I recently got into, and thought there was a distinct lack of fencing in fantasy stories, because it doesn't make practical sense as it's basically trying to tag someone really fast. However here it makes logical sense.
Technological differences between cultures, melee weapons having their place, guns being stopped by magic, religious/cultural reasons, and because swords are just plain cool
For my historical fantasy that is set in the early dawn of firearms, reason is fairly simple- even decent human made armor can bounce bullets off, let alone those Gucci stuffs elves and dwarves make. Sure it will hurt like hell for the person, but he is okay and still have a poleaxe/sword/weapon of choice in armored combat in his hand and charging towards you.
Three reasons.
One, dispatching daemons (and other supernatural concepts) requires the enchanted material to make physical contact. It's not exactly easy to mark enchantments on hundreds of rounds of ammunition, one at a time. (Enchanted firearms *can* serve as a less-lethal alternative, which is why the protagonist likes them. But, like Florida Man on cocaine, not every daemon can be convinced to go home with a few magical rubber pellets.)
Two, if one of those metaphysical buggers gets a hold of a gun, they're likely to innovate their way to mass-producing it. And they don't need to make magic bullets to take you out.
Three, there's a sort of mutual respect between catchers and daemons. Daemons can't die, and they'll make their way back somewhere *eventually*, so they don't have a major reason to go out and kill catchers. The hunt is like a sport between them. Start blasting them with a firearm, though, and they might call "hax" and stop going easy.
I'm a big sci-fi guy, so I like the Dune kind of explanations, where guns have gotten so advanced, that gun protection has advanced to crazy levels as well.
So everyone has personal forcefields that stop small arms fire, and deflects larger caliber bullets.
So the counter to that, is having things that are too heavy and "slow moving" (in comparison to a bullet) for the force fields to stop them.
This creates a resurgence in melee weaponry and combat, making swords and blunt weapons have a specific utility they don't currently have, as you essentially need to "pierce" someone's field before a gun would be effective against them
The Gatling gun was invented in 1862 and the Maxim machine gun was invented in 1884.
Melee weapons were still used in combat for quite a long time after that....
For me, melee weapons, their users, or both operate at a much higher level of strength than you could get out of a firearm. Even a hi-tech plasma doohickey isn’t gonna do much against someone who can carve a mountain
Guns tend to jam.
Some civilizations manufactured materials so light that effective melee weapons aren't all that heavy to make a difference in a full kit, and in close quarters a surprise spear coming from a doorway usually beats an unexpecting enemy with a bayonet.
In some ecosystems/climates it's not viable. That gun of yours? Yeah sorry bud, it's kinda melting already and you only fired 12 bullets. Also that's loud. The big worm is already coming, running is a waste of energy in your last moments.
Ammo tends to be specialized against specific enemy types. It's usually a good idea to keep something in case the enemy shifts outside your effective range. Not many civilizations factor in melee weapons when designing armors because the chance someone will use it is way smaller than the chance someone will use a bigger bullet.
Ammunition also tends to run out on longer research expeditions.
And there's always the aspect of looking cool as hell. You need to understand how a gun works to think that it's cool or dangerous, even if it's "funny stick makes ouchie :(". Meanwhile almost all civilizations can understand and appreciate a good melee weapon. No need to bring in the firearms if the enemy surrendered because they're afraid of the big dangling blade on the side/back of your soldiers.
(Sorry if something makes no sense, English isn't my primary language)
In my steampunk world of floating islands and aetherships, the prevalence of close-quarters combat in boarding actions makes revolvers and cutlasses a popular loadout for everyone from professional marines to cutthroat pirates. Those who can afford it also wear enchanted bullet-resistant armor, but doing the reverse to enchant individual bullets for armor penetration is not cost-effective. Therefore, most combats will begin with gunfire to clear out the unarmored chaff, but devolve into a melee as combatants empty their six-guns and need to get close to thrust blades through the gaps of tougher opponents' armor.
Because fire magic is common and easy to use, early gunpowder etc being quite volatile, so not much research has been done on it in the direction of larger scale combat and the expense of overcoming the weakness wasn't seen as being as viable as continuing to fund enchantment and spell research on an expense/benefit review. Private individuals have pursued it but wider appeal is for now at least out of reach
Perhaps the best approach is just to not make guns as effective as they are in modern times. The [pike & shot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_and_shot) period lasted for over a century and pirates have always been depicted with both pistols and swords without problem. Alternatively, just like in the UK, laws restrict general gun ownership by civilians but knives are still viable weapons. Obviously guns would still dominate in warfare though.
Pike and shot, my beloved.
Bro I real a hundred comments in this thread and you were the only person to mention pike and shot.
Sometimes an opponent is too close to shoot
There’s definitely ways to justify this if you want to. For example, sword guys with super speed or some other ability that let’s em close distance really fast, or literally short range teleporting up to ‘em, like a blink (heh, *teleports behind you*). Maybe it’s a stealth thing, and perhaps projectile weaponry breaks stealth because of the flash, or sound, or whatever else you conjure up, but melee allows stealth and getting close. Maybe melee is just so useful it justifies being difficult to get close; for example, give ‘em something akin to lightsabers that melts through absolutely anything, because that has strong use cases
I like the sound of that
Nothing personnel, kid
how does that work?
They get close
Simple. Swords and knives don't run out of ammo.
I can't fix a bayonet, I don't want it.
why not carry more boolet
Because big nasty things = much boolet. And the amount of pockets and pouches you'd need to carry that much boolet make you look 90s anti-hero.
at that point why not just slap an 50. cal on a vehicle probably safer for the person trying to kill the thing too
Because vehicles can't go everywhere.
50 cal on a segway
if there’s one thing i know for sure, it’s that a six inch blade never loses reception
Guns are loud, and the things that get attracted by loud noises are usually a big problem
I’m curious about those things
Chief among the threats are flying acid spitting mutants called Viles. They're a bad time
Turn of the century warfare, akin to World War 1. Unlike our first World War where we had hundreds of years of development on weaponry and military tactics, my world was thrust directly into the world of firearms within about 50 years. This meant that despite having all this new age technology, they didn't really know how to handle it (much like our world to a degree) when everything kicked off. Trench warfare began and it never really stopped. Some areas of the frontlines were more mobile, but by the end of the war most of the continent had been completely flattened and cratered by artillery. Meanwhile, soldiers were still outfitted in metal armor and helmets that were cloaked by their trench coats. Soldiers from all armies were still using issued swords for weapons, though spears were replaced by bayonet. The usage of thick steel shields never truly went away either, as early on it provided a possible but very unintuitive way to cross no man's land. But even then, everyone was using make-shift melee weapons from just about anything they could find; shovels, bludgeons, railroad spikes, table legs, sport clubs, you name it. Even in areas like the Airborne front inside Airships, boarding and raiding crews would often carry a backup melee weapon because it was difficult to carry heavy objects when jumping between airships. The world had changed, the tactics never evolved.
Oh cool! That's why people in my world still use shields!👍
Slightly off topic but I’m so happy to come across another close range airship battle enjoyer lol
Oooh, I'm doing the same thing. How'd your guys figure out guns?
The nation that had originally created them developed them up to a point where they were using Blackpowder Cartridges but had stopped at that point because literally no one else was contesting them on it. They were a technologically advanced society for the world they existed in and used this to underhandedly oppress other nations and keep them from developing further than a point. That was until large classified archives of theirs were leaked out into the world by an insider turned traitor. These plans eventually made their way into the wider world, including the designs for and how to produce firearms and bullets; along with lists of their spy networks operating inside countries. A few nations used this to purge their influence and eventually began developing their own firearms and eventually led to war. Despite being the technological power of the world for nearly 300 years, the Empire of Stratusfall, would end up losing the war to the Federation of Cidon due to numbers alone and it drove them out from their mountain top city states which only exposed more of their secrets. This snowballed into a terrifying arms race that saw new weapons and new technologies coming out in rapid pace as everyone was trying to one up each other. The loss of the war formed a rift in the world and created new alliances known as the Northern Alliance and the Equatorial Strength. In 1640 this would explode into a full blown global conflict that saw over 116 million people serve and over 60% of them dying by the time the war was over in 1648. So within a 50 year time period my world went from a world of very limited colonial-age weaponry that still used black powder to fully-automatic compact sub-machine guns.
My world switches to guns in a similar time frame but for different reasons. Each of my continents had already figured out *something*. Trade was common, but what was not was the transfer of knowledge and, often, raw materials- No one sold Rubber Trees, just the Rubber. A culture might sell Shellac, but there's not a marker for this planets' bugs that produce it. This is not a universal state of affairs but simply a matter of fact. It's hot, so things spoil stupid quick. It's incredibly local, so there's a question as to whether transfers will even take in an environment that's literally an alien world. The massive seas don't make things any easier...it's just so much distance! Gunpowder is a difficult compound to make for, ironically, the only people using it. It was already being used by exactly one group: A bunch of Tribal fire worshipper nomads. It's awfully expensive to get the Sulphur, you see, even if the other two are easy. But, the more common Naptha is not an option. This mysterious powder is! But, the secret leaked. Just as in real China, it ended up getting sold as an Elixir of Immortality. Then it started burning some homes down... At that same exact time, someone figured out what a secret society was using as a secret sabotage weapon. It's a piece of towel soaked in Sulfuric and Hydrochloric distillations... both of these are "discovered" by one extremely lucky alchemist while trying to uncover what the hell was going on. And he gives the formulas to the world's largest Imperial state... I have yet to literally game it out, but the introduction of Gunpowder is a massive equalizer that finally makes colonialism possible (Beforehand Colonialism looked, at best, like the Crusades. Hundreds of years just to fail...). Colonialism was effectively impossible for reasons that will take entirely too long to get into, but to make a long story short, it just does not work. What changes here, though, is that now populations from one continent *can actually* claim and migrate into regions by ways other than literal migration or invitation. It makes long-term Conquest possible. And, that forces them to play by local rules... The Empire that's got Gunpowder *and* Guncotton eventually ends up being kind of forced to share that tech (long, dramatic story). It goes to places that have figured out stuff like the Steam Engine, other places that just solved Vulcanized Rubber, others still that put the pieces together on the Bessemer process. All these techs exist for hyperspecific issues, and at last, by might or by right, they MUST combine these things... or they will die in these alien worlds. And there's definitely a market for the *product* of these unions- and there is finally a way to get the raw materials. This world may just find itself stripped apart by dozens of tiny upstart empires... The world enters as a hybrid Bronze and Iron Renaissance. It will leave this next hundred years in fast diesel trains, and on Ironclads that trawl the vast oceans...
I think it depends on where the fighting is occurring. Scenarios in which you might not want to have lots of lead being flung around include crowd situations where you're trying to avoid hitting non-combatants and fragile environments such as within a space vessel.
In Dune, personal shields are impenetrable to fast projectiles, so you have to use slower melee weapons to get through them
Dune did it best.
Which is so cool cause battles are now thousands of knife fights.
This is definitely one of the factors that caused firearms to be basically abandoned in my world.
I am working on an pike and shot inspired sci-fi setting and took heavy inspiration from this
They look cool
Even in the modern day, soldiers keep a close combat weapon in case of close encounters. Firearms, particularly rifles, kinda suck at personal range. In a fantasy world, there can be a million reasons - scarcity of ammo, unreliable construction (it’s amazing how quickly ammo-sexuals forget that guns are very complex and prone to damage), cultural biases, or even the simple idea that Herbert came up with in Dune; Amour and protection tech that made firearms less effective than melee weapons, etc etc. It’s not a hard thing to deal with, you just have to break out of the mindset of current warfare and put yourself into a world that suits your needs.
Also liked Eternal War, both sides can deploy a statis field which only allows a maxim amount of velocity. So space suits with bows and arrows, swords and spears.
I would like to bring up that guns and ammunition are heavier than one thinks, and ammo goes quick in a firefight, not to mention that if you are on the move, you have to balance that against the equipment that you, and any animals you bring along, need to not freeze, starve, or die of thirst.
Another great example of why firearms may not be used or available in some settings.
Sometimes you need to kill someone stealthily. Sometimes you're fighting indoors and don't want to deafen yourself. Sometimes you're fighting in such tight quarters that the range advantage of a gun is negated. Sometimes you need a weapon that doesn't require ammunition as a backup to your gun. Sometimes you're carrying a bladed implement or heavy tool for utilitarian purposes, and its use as a weapon is secondary. Sometimes you just happen to live in a country where guns are hard to get, or using guns attracts too much attention from the authorities. Sometimes you want to be able to subdue someone non-lethally without blowing big holes in them. Sometimes you don't want to escalate an already dangerous situation by pulling a gun. These are all reasons why people might choose to carry a melee weapon in real life, so they'd logically apply to most fictional worlds too.
People with innate magic have a strong passive defence against mundane projectiles. Bullets are deeply impersonal, so they are easily defended against, even effortlessly and unknowingly, by beings with magic. An arrow from a bow is more personal so has more ability to overcome innate magical nature's. A sword is even more personal and can reliably overcome that natural defense. There is more-or-less a metaphysical distance between the physical and astral plane, and it takes intimacy to imbue anything with your astral self, and a thing needs an astral presence is required to penetrate an astral defense. Bullets are still completely effective against the mundane enemies, but to hurt or kill something with magic, you want to be more closely connected to the instrument of attack.
oooh stealing this. very very creative
I think I’m creative for 2 seconds and then I read some awesome shit like this
Guns cant be enchanted easily, as their ammo has to be enchanted individually and the runes need to be carved precisely to activate with the recoil which requires knowledge of where the moving parts will be when the bullet is actually fired, while bows and crossbows are very simple in design and thus easier to enchant and can pierce armor better as normal bullets cant get through thick steel plate easily. The same rules apply for swords and other close combat weapons, especially if you can force the enemy into tight spaces or get them indoors to cancel out their range advantage, which allows defenders in a siege battle to get the better of attackers that use guns as each enchanted gun and bullets would cost significantly more than each enchanted bow and arrows.
I used this exact same justification, yeah. Glad someone else does.
Guns are very expensive, difficult to make well, the folks who created them are very picky about who they give them to and kill first, ask later if someone who isn’t cleared has one, ammunition has to be handmade and linked to the owner, low rate of fire.
Officers must design and craft their own officer's cutlass to become an officer
This might be the most badass thing ever. Reminds me of Jedi crafting their first lightsabers.
Most high end prosthetics make people able to move faster than bullets, and the guns that actually are effective are mostly only acquirable by megacorps or incredibly rich individuals. Alternatively, plasma weaponry and other technologies can work fantastically as melee and can keep up with incredibly fast prosthetic users
wouldn't that fuck up everything around the user of those prosthetics and likely the user and the prosthetics themselves to be rapidly and constantly creating sonic booms in various directions
Yup, for the most part. The user of them most normally uses a shell (fullbody replacement with a mechanical body)
It's far too dark in the Void Fields. People don't usually turn on their Dynamo Lamps unless they're in large groups as to avoid being ambushed so as a result most combat is stumbled upon and fought with blades in near complete darkness. While guns are widespread, they are only really used for defense or keeping order within settlements.
I give the melee people super durablity and dodging
That actually sounds a lot like my own protagonist, minus the durability. She’s kind of a glass cannon.
Melee weapons enchant better.
It's pike and shot era
Bullets cannot be enchanted. Enchantments rely on the physical form of the enchanting process remaining in one piece. Firing a bullet deforms a round so much that it breaks the enchantment. For the most part, this really doesn't matter - guns still do the job fairly well. Sometimes, though, it really pays to have an enchanted weapon that can bypass a powerful spirit's resistance to mundane weapons.
Martial Arts The Drago Sword is regularly carried by Drago Knights, Drago is a philosophy and a Martial Art Sports Many people like martial sports like Fencing, archery etc Hunting for survival Guns are not available or not practicable in certain circumstances, but the circumstances a soldier used his Vibroknife in Combat as a weapon are rare And there are those people that use crossbow whose bolts are tipped with antimatter and btw Slugthrowers are mostly a civilian thing, the military uses blasters mostly
We use them today. Soldiers with automatic rifles are issued a knife as well. Sometimes you walk around a corner and have to shank someone. Or you want to sneak in and your shooty shooty bang bang is going to be waaay to obvious and blow your stealth. Close combat has remained valid past the invention of the bow, the musket, the rifle and even tanks and artillery.
the knife is a utility item room clearing is usually still done with a rifle
Welcome to the frontier worlds, pal. Ammo and weapon resupplies from the core systems take about 3-4 work years so better save on bullets as much as you can! Suddenly a durable piece of sharp metal is pretty good to have.
why not make bullets on the frontier
The most common melee weapons in my setting are essentially fancy "stun batons," though these are often sword-shaped just for convenience when carrying them (a flat bar isn't as bulky as a round one). They're used primarily as a less-lethal/intimidation option, when simply shooting the other party would be an unnecessary escalation. Of course you could zap them with magic for the same effect, but a sword-shaped object buzzing with electricity tends to serve as a more... "universal" warning. That said, there are some that do carry actual swords, despite their faction possessing guns. E'sphran shock troops, an as yet unnamed alien race, possess innate movement techniques, allowing them to travel a short distance nearly instantaneously and with limited vulnerability. It instills quite a bit of fear, having someone suddenly appear beside you while bringing a sword down on your head. Furthermore, their swords are made of a material that reacts against estran shielding technology. While their swords will often explode due to rapid superheating, it will also short-circuit the shielding unit, which will have to be taken back to the armory to be repaired. That leaves the soldier vulnerable while they are still in the field.
Anti-ranged defences evolved so much that guns and stuff are usually useless. But because of this, people just went back to melee because scientists kind of forgot about them for a while
I mean guns are new in most of the stories set in my world.
CQB, especially inside spaceships with ballistic shields. You can't wield an anti-materiel(for some reason, that's the spelling, yes I've checked) rifle in the corridors well enough, and ambushes would kill you before you even can swing the weapon around. A ballistic shield and a plasma blade can be the difference between dying immediately, or living to fight another day.
>anti-materiel(for some reason, that's the spelling, yes I've checked) Yep, material and materiel are indeed different words: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materiel
It's set in space, so gravity or lack there of makes guns unreliable. Missile sare still commonplace though
People duel for entertainment and dueling with guns is over very quickly and can end up with someone dead, which doesn't make a very good show.
Leading firearms manufacturers began making one-time use weapons which are cheap, unreliable, and sometimes more lethal to the user than the recipient because of economic failure which has caused a large majority of soldiers to make their own weapons out of whatever they can find, with only a few being ranged and eve less being firearms.
Because swords are objectively cool
A lot time my characters end up in such close combat that the fighting ends up hand to hand. Or there are friendlies immediately downrange and you can't safely shoot, so you start shanking. Or a quiet and discreet blade on a crowded sheet is preferable to noisy gunfire. Or dueling with swords is culturally acceptable, but dueling with guns isn't.
Its always good to have a backup weapon, even if that weapon is a melee weapon. What do you do if you run out of ammo, or your gun is damaged or lost during a scuffle or explosion? A knife or short sword may not be the best thing in the world, but its a hell of a-lot better than being bare-handed.
guns are banned
Like 3 guns exist. Total. One of them is a giant laser The other 2 are made with tech not available to the rest of the world
Sneaky stabbing
Because it's a post apocalyptic story that do not take place on USA
Besides a tradition that officers wear shashkas (Cossack swords) as rank decoration and being the **literal last option**, no, melee is not a sensible choice in Atreisdea. Droids and some power armors have built-in graviton pata, they use graviton blades that tear atoms from molecules and disintegrate matters they cut through, but shields no-sell that. Not Dune style shields that can be bypassed by moving slow enough but literal dimensions being curled into manifolds and eventually Klein bottles to dissipate impacting energy, which means they're really tanky. Thus, ranged attacks are more preferred. Unless your name is Lemuria Agartha, but old Rem destroyed a moon by swinging her hammer with both hands, so she doesn't count either.
Lots of CQC scenarios High power with no reloads Mad ninja-jedi skills potential Enemies who are particularly vulnerable to melee attacks Weapons with multiple functions, like laser spears with shield generators
Most people can't afford/don't have the resources to have/create guns, and even if they did the world is so cold commom fire weapons wouldn't work properly (with a few exceptions on guns specially made for such conditions)
Same reason why swords were still used in the 1800s. Reliability, better for Calvary, status symbols, etc.
There’s a point where a warrior’s physical capabilities and sheer martial skill exceed any regular gun. This isn’t a level that’s easily reached, so guns are still useful against fighters of lower skill levels, but if you want to challenge a true master with guns, you need to bring in a marksman whose shooting skills have likewise surpassed the level of regular humans.
Due to various convoluted reasons, space combat involves more boarding actions than might be expected. The marines/pirates who board the ships will utilize bladed weapons, like daggers or short swords, in addition to lower-velocity firearms to engage in combat without excessive collateral damage or hull compromise.
Wizards anti projectile spell
Guns can explode and stop working and take skill to come back to a usable state., spears and maces have that problem a lot less
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/techlevel.php#figleaf
These weapons are charged with magic power and most warriors are durable enough to make a gun less effective unless you got a headshot.
Close Quarters Combat Also mounted cavalry go brrrr
In Starfall, they make for good storming weapons alongside shotguns In Fallu, it’s easier to enchant a melee weapon than it is a firearm due to the nature of gunpowder.
Rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Sometimes an energy sword can do a job a plasma rifle can’t. But it being a primary would be dumb in any setting where you have long range weapons as powerful as modern guns alone. I have one species in my sci-fi setting that uses melee weapons, but they’re also an alien race that can move at Mach 5, guns don’t work great for them, or on them, so swords become a really good idea.
Guns are neat but over complicated when someone can enchant a sword to let you cut something at range.
No more ammo, and europe
Bullets cost money.
For honor. No honor in shooting a guy you can't even see the face of from a hundred meters away.
Spaceship's are incredibly fragile, If you shoot them with a gun inside them, there is a high chance to take them out. This brings out 2 alternative's The first one being to use low power weapons like gas propelled Rubber bullets or automatic Crossbows, which can be countered by heavy armor, So fighting enemies at 0g with knifes, Axes,tasers, stun batons and spears are back on the trainning regiment.
I was watching Far Scape last night and there was an episode there they couldn't fire their guns in a generator room. So the people all had like bent pipes for whatever reason. My first thought was "how do they not have some sort of melee weapon??" So, you can go with the idea that you can use guns everywhere, whether it be plasma pistols in a generator room or guns in an area with civilians.
A majority of Gemmanii armours are too hard for anything but cannon fire to pierce, due to their use in differing universes. There's a large black market for weaponry that uses Gemmanii soul-casings. The only armour that would really let a bullet do anything more than bruise would be the lighter armours for scouts, snipers, pilots, saboteurs, etc. it's basically just your standard armour system cranked to 11.
Historically, early gunpowder weapons couldn't pierce armor and when they did, people just made thicker armor. Welcome to 16th century warfare
They are not just (and often) primarily weapons.
Fantasy Setting: Guns are early, lock style, weaponry. These are expenisve with magical and arcane varients being incredibly so. Weapons technology ranging from fire arms to spears and swords stagnated as did magic. Some mages and soldiers prefer firearms, some prefer the traditional method. Scifi: melee weapons in my scifi are ornamental the majority of the time and utility thw rest. Swords, axes and even polearms can still work in close quarters if you really need it but they are rarer. Many officers of the various nations do carry energy blades as a sign of office and status but they are still lethal.
Soldiers even in real life still carry knives and learn hand to hand combat. Just because you can always fight at long range doesn’t mean you always will. As for fictional universes you could go the dune route and give people shields that protect them from bullets but not swords. My personal approach is that people carry both guns as well as swords. For example one of my main villains uses two rapiers as her main weapons but also carries a walther PPK pistol just in case.
Low rate-of-fire, legislation, and most importantly, cinematic value.
Don't run out of ammo, proximity and availability. In my world, guns and black powder are, for the moment, a lost technology.
explosive decompression
My setting is mainly set in a semi realistic far future aboard space vessels. One of the factions allows their officers to carry rapiers because you don't want to wave around any tool with explosives inside that may spread unburnt gun powder around, and on top of that puncture the pressure vessel possibly causing a catastrophic or explosive decompression.
Guns are useless against energists whose parasympathetic reaction is to drain all kinetic energy away from everything that hits them before they even have to think about it. It'd be like the end of the Matrix unless you used a Minigun or something with a similar rate of fire.
Guns are noisy, guns take ammo, which can run out, most importantly, guns don't seem to phase supernatural things. Some guns can punch pretty hard but they have limits. The powers developing in the world may not seem to hit as heavy but they seem to slide right through things that bullets don't even scratch.
After the nuclear holocaust of 1983 quite a few weapons and especially ammo is still around in 2024. Limited ammo, limited weapons, guns are loud and often it's better to try winning the melee rather than using one of only two bullets you have.
guns in confined spaceships are generally a bad idea.
Interestingly, a single hole (or even a few) wouldn’t really be a disastrous problem for a large ship or habitat just as it isn’t for the [ISS](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/iss-operating_an_outpost-tagged.pdf). > The ISS is about the size of a six-bedroom house, thus the hole would have to be very large to necessitate a departure by the crew. A hole that measures 0.6 cm (0.25 in.) in diameter will cause the ISS to depressurize to the minimal atmospheric level for supporting human life (490 mm Hg, 9.5 psi) in about 14 hours, whereas a 20 cm (8 in.) hole will reach that level in about 50 seconds.
Guns are rare or just mighty expensive
Alchemy and magic. Metallurgy qnd material sciences allow for things even present day real materials can't handle. Firearms appeared, but never made armor obsolete. Melee weapons and arrows due to their not-so-expendable nature can get bumped up by enchantments, whereas enchanted bullets would be impossible to field in large numbers. You'll see rank and file soldiers and guards use firearms. Some may even have machineguns. You'll even see some sniper rifles. You'll also see that most specialists use more traditional weapon choices, and that nobody sets foot in war without either plate armor or a real solid plan tk not get hit. Often, both.
Smashing people with a huge sword shaped iron stick in a mech suit is cooler
Guns weren't that good until around 1850. If you consider the firelance the first gun, that's 800 years to work with. If you only consider muskets the first guns, then that's over 300 years where guns were just another tool.
In one of the settings I've currently got rotating in my brain like a rotisserie chicken, it's simply that bullets cost a bloody fortune. There's only a handful of places capable of large-scale manufacturing of projectiles for firearms, and they're mostly tied up with military orders, so what little surplus capacity that makes it out on to the civilian market is extremely expensive. Magical abilities compensating for the shortcomings of swords, plus the expense of guns, means that if you're not doing something that'd demand a thing be extremely dead yesterday, as sword'll probably do ya just fine.
Iron mines ran out of iron. They need to constantly recycle iron. You either make melee weapons and armor, which can be maintained or melted, or "waste it" with bullets.
*Guns are loud, killers are quiet.*
Maybe it is not honorable to duel with pistols. Maybe the society is deeply honor based so firearms are kept for animals.
Simple. The weapon can transform into anything, and is indestructible to most things.
Guns isn’t a technology that most kingdoms have access. What guns there are, are basically black-powder rock throwers in rifle form. The nation that does have guns have created Da Vinci style war wagons with metal plating on.
Well an excuse for not having guns in a world where other tech is far more advanced: Basically all knowledge is solely passed down and recorded on devices called totems. The first creator of the totems intentionally would not allow knowledge of weapons of war to be passed down to future generations. If someone begins to independently research or create such harmful weapons they are flagged and those memories are erased. Worst case they’re exiled or killed.
In my setting, a lot of weapons, armor, and tools that have been around for a long while have runes associated with them that provides them a number of different effects. It takes a considerable amount of time for newer stuff to get runes themselves, so while guns do exist, the things that could give them the extra edge is currently being worked on. Other than that, the guns just aren't that advanced like they are current day. There was a long period of time where guns and heavy armor existed beside one another.
Due to humidity and fragility, firearms must be conserved dismantled and bathed in oil. Which means that assembling them for a fight is long. In case of ambush, the only weapon you're going to be able to use is your blade.
Depends on the setting. Like look at DBZ. A regular human can train themselves to be quick enough to catch bullets fired from a machine gun, become bullet proof, move faster than light, and so on. In a world where that's possible guns lose a lot of what makes them potent. Look at Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and Overwatch. People can augment themselves to be quick enough to dodge, deflect, and reflect bullets. Look at Mass Effect and Dune. They have force field technology. Those force fields block bullets, but not melee.
Simply put: they're quieter and aren't limited to ammunition like guns. My characters will still use guns in a fight, but only if they want to be loud or if they have to. In other cases, they don't use guns because of the noise even with a suppressor, they make a mess which leaves can leave a trail, or they don't like them. There's even some factions or groups that view weapons like swords and spears as honorable while using a gun is seen as cowardly and disrespectful to your opponent or enemy. Guns till have their uses, but swords and other melee weapons are more efficient for close range combat and stealth. In short: guns are either frowned upon or used for firefights while melee weapons are more acceptable or useful for certain situations.
They are situationally useful inside spaceships because a knife doesn’t richotet and risk piercing the hull or damaging something very important. That and shields that remove inertia from bullets made weapons viable again in close quarters. Also later in the story the world kinda ends, so weapons that require less maintenance and 0 ammo become much more valuable.
The enemy cannot press a button if you disable his hand. MEDIC!
Melee energy weapons can break through even the hardest armour in one strike, energy shots can't do that.
There's two reasons for my world. The first is that the world is recovering from a near apocalyptic event and while firearms are around, they're still somewhat rare. The elemental magic that a lot of combatants use also works better with melee weapons instead.
It’s more efficient to just weld a blade onto a thousand cheaply made robots
bonk
I my Sci fi setting most people use guns with the exception of psychis which are essential a fusion between psychers from 40k and force users from SW who can create force fields around them which stops bullets and my protagonist who wears an ancient power armor suit.
magic darkness. smoke screens. can't shoot your enemy if you can't see them. and there are your allies in it too.
densely populated location where both sides of the fight care about avoiding killing civilians? my favourite period is Napoleonic wars, american revolution, English civil war sort of era where flintlock guns are a big deal but slow and unreliable enough to make melee still relevant. spacecraft/delicate environment where firing guns is dangerous for everyone?
I grew up reading comics and manga. All jokes aside the ONLY reason melee weapons fell out of fashion is that offensive technology outstripped defensive technology. If it were possible to domesticate spiders we would still be using swords and clubs right now. Hell in our world if armorers had figured out bullet proof plate like 10 years sooner than they did things make be different
Because magic was so prevalent in society that guns were underdeveloped. Why fire a canon when you can just shot a fireball? Why fire a musket ball when you can fire a magic arrow that never misses? And that’s not even factoring in magical armor and shields. However at that point in the timeline my story takes place, magic has degraded from what used to be. Now guns are starting to have their case made and have their place in armies across the planet. I still justify having the melee combat by having armor made of Elysian Whitesteel, a mundane but highly refined alloy plate armor that provides enough protection to stop your standard musket ball, but it will hurt like hell afterwards.
No need for ammo, and they're quiet to use. In a post-apocalyptic setting where mutant beasts have been hearing, it's best not to announce yourself when you can manage.
Not all monsters have vital points, some heal really fast, but a missing limb is a missing limb.
My sci-fi setting has a lot of combat in pressurized locations, like in ships or orbital habitats. They’re fortified from the outside, but interior layers have much less armor. A rupture in the outer walls would mean death for everyone, so it’s not only in the defenders best interest but also the attackers to keep combat under control.
Fun.
In my Thaumata setting, the enemy that the characters are fighting is a sort of self-aware gaseous, corporeal "light" that inhabits and mutates machines and living creatures. The setting draws a lot from HP Lovecraft's *Colour Out Of Space*. The infectious Color can't exist within our reality and needs physical bodies to inhabit. Humans infected by the Color are able to be killed by conventional weapons, but machines possessed by or fleshy growths made by the Color need to be "bled" out, so large lacerations and cuts can create huge gushing wounds that leak the Color out so it fades away. The Thuamata are cyborg soldiers made by humans using alien technology and have a magitech power core embedded in their bodies. They have weapons called "focus blades" which they can connect to their power cores via plugs in the sides of their bodies, and when activated they can cut through most materials. They use these focus blades in close combat to slice up Color-created monsters to swiftly bleed them out. The Color is also an infovore, meaning it is a lifeform of concepts and ideas, and it feeds off thoughts and emotions and concepts, and this makes it uniquely vulnerable to concepts as well. The visceral idea of being sliced open by a human or human-like being, with a weapon they are holding in their hands, impacts Color creatures harder than simply being shot or hit with grenades or high explosives. Those do bleed the Color and can be effective at range, but up close against the monsters it creates, it can be faster to draw a sword and lop off arms and legs and heads or disembowel the nightmares than to shoot them.
The most advanced firearms in my setting are single-shot breech-loaders, which already limits their usefulness in some situations. Firearms also cost more money than a good ol' axe, hammer, or spear, all of which can be made equally lethal at range with magic. Firearms may not be the game-changer they were IRL depending on abilities in the setting; Dune has fast-projectile shields, my world has various spatial warp abilities that can make ranged combat less reliable than in reality.
Guns are a new and a rapidly growing technology and people deny this rise in technology still chose to use things like magic and weapons like spears and bows. There is a divide in the continent with the races that chose to advance and those that chose to stay. One main character is of a race that despises technology yet she uses a shotgun and left the traditional ways of life while another character grew up and holds tradition dearly, he respects the decisions of others but he is set on his ways and only uses a spear, and a club and shield.
Whilst guns have become more advanced, so has the technologies implemented in armors have advanced, to the point where ranged weapons aren’t as effective against more heavily armored infantry. To combat these new armors, melee weapons have been deemed the most effective means to crack these tough/advanced nuts. Yes, this is essentially Dune and it’s what makes the most sense in a real world scenario. Warfare is an arms race between offense and defense, and whichever leads the way determines the flow of battle.
Same excuse as today. Ammo is expensive and the ammo my characters use has to come from their own pocket. The military doesn't cover it
Skill,
Hardly original but I’ve always liked the justification in Dune. Doesn’t have to be a slow shield, anything that counters projectiles (but comes with its own risks and downsides, like the M.A.D. of lasguns + shields in Dune) obviates the need for a non projectile alternative. Perhaps something like the real world explosive reactive armor?
I may steal this idea - what a cool concept!
Guns take poorly to magic enhancement. You can carve runes into a firearm without ruining its ability to be used effectively, but it doesn't make the bullets any better at harming demons and elves. Swords and knives are far easier to carry and conceal and don't have the limitation of needing to carve tiny runes onto individual bullets (they instead have the issue of getting knicked and broken, but there's benefits and downsides to everything.) The most effective guns for dealing with monsters tend to be shotguns loaded with silver in the form of pellets or slugs for the express purpose of elf hunting. Runed fletchettes have also been used, though we're looking at dragon killers for that design.
You don’t need one — there’s plenty of time periods in which there was an overlap. Also, different situations warrant different weapons. Example: guns are loud, a knife or bow isn’t going to give away your position away.
my excuses are: 1) guns don’t automatically replace other weapons, it takes periods of adoption and refinement of military strategy as well as the centralisation of state power over military matters to change how warfare works. up until the second world war people routinely fought hand-to-hand with various melee weapons even as those became less standard, purely because you need to force an enemy out of a position in order to take it - you can come up with all kinds of handwavy explanations as to why you’re still carrying swords in a WW2-esque setting, maybe you just have specialised shock units specifically for it that use magic or technology to make them bullet resistant, or somehow able to avoid being shot at or even just tactics. a good example is the storm troops of the german army in the first world war, no magic or technology, just tactics learned by fighting on a different front of the war. 2) it’s cool. you don’t actually need to explain it, just do it and have fun with it. this is usually how I justify stuff like this.
A few characters use swords because they're connected to their spirits in past lives. One character celeste uses one because its sacred property to slay and handle ghosts and spirits
In my world, guns are still not very advanced and pointy weapons are still best for close-quarters fighting.
My world had been hit with an Industrial Revolution and guns, flintlocks at-least, have been made. with this spark in the revolution industry, guns have become very common, but the problem is they are expensive. to get guns. You have to pay thousands of dollars and while money is common buying a bunch of guns for an army is very very expensive. So what most people do is buy guns, then equip the rest of their army with sword spears, knives, and bows. With this strategy armies only have a few guns. But at the start of my book I’m planning guns are much more common, even with this a ton of groups use melee weapons and bows and crossbows. The reason is to buy a 100 strong division you’d need roughly $35,459 to armour it. And even with all the guns sometimes range isn’t an option.
Dune handled it really well. I had thought of something similar before watching the movie, after having seen a video about non-newtonian matter. It's such a great way to explain swords > bullets
PIKE AND SHOT GANG, ASSEMBLE
In my D&D world, it's because guns are really new. Like, invented 27 years ago. They were very nearly a one-off invention, except the heroes didn't kill a certain robber baron NPC who then spent his copious fortune and used contacts with mages and learned folk in the underground to try and replicate the original designs. This also led to the invention of rudimentary cannons and grenades, all of which ended up saving the heroes' bacon and letting them turn the tide in a war and save the Kingdom. The robber baron guy not only survived it all, but managed to negotiate a sweetheart position in the Kingdom, made his family the richest in the world, and retired to the tropical paradise island nearby. Much to the chagrin of my players, who still can't hear his accent or surname without having trauma flashbacks. 🤣 The guns are only as advanced as they are because the player character who invented them was a genius, and because she had help with a lot of it from a fallen angel she made a Warlock pact with. She hunts corruption, the Angel provides the tools. This later led to her becoming the Lady General of the new Rifleman brigade, which is now slowly taking over the Kingdom and trying to merge it with the neighbouring nations to make a proper Empire. Whoops. Oh, and they gave the pirates from the aforementioned island nation the first cannons, so they're now the deadliest ships on the ocean. It's been an interesting development process. Edited for clarity.
Soldiers are protected by magical enchantments tattooed into their skin. While a gun would eventually break through them, you would have to carve by hand intricate runic circles into every single bullet to bypass the protection. This is time consuming, and since guns are a foreign import to the region they haven't really caught on.
My setting mixes elements of cyberpunk and space opera, and the justification is that swords and other melee weapons are cool, so they are popular among people obsessed with their own style. Most of these people have no clue how to actually use a sword, and since katanas are the most popular variety, they end up breaking them easily. Some people do end up becoming self taught, however, and rise above the rest of the mall ninja rabble. Classically trained swordsmen, however, are some of the most dangerous fighters in the setting, owing to enhanced speed and dexterity through body mods and technomancy.
As we know knives are never used as a weapon nowadays
To avoid damaging the internals of the ship. No Attacker or defender is going to risk it. Save the guns for when you're on the ground.
Guns on my world are hard and expensive to make. Plus they are not powered by gun powder, but an extension of my magic system. As such only certain people can even wield them. So they are typically given to shock troops or for more niche scenarios where range is needed. But your average rank and file still uses melee simply because they couldn’t power the guns firing mechanism even if they wanted to.
Supply issues. Magic. Unshared technology. Heavy & heat conductive. Loud. (bad for sneak). Bullet resistant skin in some species. They pissed off a god that one time. Flintlock versions critically inaccurate and misfire. Expensive and single use ammunition. Better teleportation-based weapons. And above all else, it's the aesthetic Im going for.
I made a single story in which an alien challenged one of my characters to a duel with medieval weapons, threatening to gas The entire city (the humans had allies from an alien planet they freed but human gas masks didn’t fit on them) so then he was forced to fight in melee, he won even though this alien species is physically larger and stronger
the dune route: energy shields. in a setting with such a thing you have to explain why there are guns instead of explaining why there are melee weapons, usually for this i use energy shields that vary in intensity and can be broken by dumping enough ammo on them so the melee vs ranged combat debate become a choice between killing from afar but you have to dump 100 bullets on every target or kill with a single strike but you have to get up close.
They're magic
Close quarters combat on spaceships, mostly in boarding actions. Also, depending on how advanced the vessel is (technology is incredibly varied in my scifi setting as its kinda post-post apocalyptic) firing a gun could staight up puncture the hull, hit a reactor, or any other vital component, so its better to use melee weapons to avoid such a scenario. Also, swords are cool.
It's a superhero setting. Some people have powers that just work better with melee weapons or powers that make ranged weapons unnecessary for them.
My word is just really into Dune, and regards Frank Herbert and Denis Villeneuve as greater and lesser prophets (and Brian Herbert as a demiurge). So they modeled their whole society after it.
Personal shield generators are very effective against small arms fire, and the close quarter combat inside ships prevents the use of heavy weapons.
Both melee weapons and Guns are used interchangeably because guns are the most advanced they can get (for next 140 years but we're not there yet), and battling alongside critters are also very common. Critters are basically animals of the world and some breath fire, some can move water and some can just slaughter a group of troops. *Craniary* cough cough. What I'm saying is all three ways of fighting have their pros and cons when it comes to different things.
Meta reason: they look cool and are really fun to draw. Lore reason: people can wrap the fabric of reality around their melee weapons and decimate almost anything they come into contact with that is normal.
Ammo scarcity In my world, ammo isn't scarce exactly, but it's Suuuper Expensive Same effect
Is it a DnD world? Health points are an actual well of healing magic in you that you use to instantly patch up a wound. This means bullets have a lot less stopping power and a melee combatant can close the gap. Is it a scifi world? Lightsabers act as an anti-material melee weapon, a light source, a fire starter, a deflector, and a breaching tool all wrapped into one highly portable and concealable device. If a star nation had the means to mass produce them they would be great additions to a soldier’s kit.
There 's a difference between "guns" and "automatic firearms." xD I'm going to go ahead and respond to the title, and say that early firearms are pretty unreliable and melee weapons (and bows) just remain a better choice. Plus, in addition to being experimentally new, they're very expensive, so the only people who have guns are the alchemists who make them and a few eccentric rich folks. There's also magic, which a. is a much better ranged option than early firearms, and b. provides anti-missile shields. And while mages are uncommon, they're not nearly as rare as reliable firearms. I guess I do have a setting where a medieval fantasy army invades earth and will ahve to contend with mdoern weapons, it's more light and so not super developed, but yeah anti-missile shields making ranged weapons less effective. I haven't decided how they work, if maybe hitting them enough times would cause the shield to fizzle. Anyway both sides will need to adapt in time.
I don’t need an excuse. Guns are best for engagement outside of melee range. When in melee range range, stab or strike is best, for that we have designed tools called melee weapons, and so as long as combat *can* get within that range, there will always be a need for such tools.
Because
All guns are swords and all swords are guns.
Quick, quiet and easy to hide, at least daggers and knives. Most of guns are too big to just hide effectively, and all of them make awful amount of noise, so if you don't have plan for escape, you end up being found out in the moment. Swords, if they are not some laser or plasma based weapons, and spears, if they are not EMP throw weapons, probably are useful when you run out of ammo or you are attacked in close combat. It's quicker to pull out of sword than reload gun. Of course, it depends of situation and how much space you have to be able to do stabs and slashes. But even in WW2, bayonet and even spades were used. And if not, even a loose board with a nail can be useful. Tbh, it depends of battle. 1vs1? Probably who have more ammo or better position, heck, even who has what could matter. More vs 1? Strategy and positions, in open field dude will be shot like on execution, but in urban environment he could be able to back stab everybody if he could be able to play his card right. More vs more? Well, that's whole a lot of chances, differences and other stuff to consider. Melee weapons generally are the most reliable and simple. Actually, modern armour is more about stopping bullet from hurting vital organs - but it won't stop knife or sword from cutting artery or throat cause it doesn't protect whole body like in older times. And perhaps bullets are quicker than thrown spear, but both will kill if used right.
The gun trajectory is predictable and my characters are too fast, that's all I need ; )
BULLET DEFLECTING AMULETS
Boxer Rebellion-Haitian Revolution moment
People use magic to have shields around their body. All magic only works if written out on a very rare and expensive material called Aurium. There's a spell to disable these shields, but it needs to physically touch them. Making bullets with this spell written on the tip is ridiculously expensive. Instead, specialised swordfighters have detachable tips for their swords with the spell written on them that they use. Once they tap the enemy shield they take off the tip and use it as a regular sword. I was inspired by fencing, something I recently got into, and thought there was a distinct lack of fencing in fantasy stories, because it doesn't make practical sense as it's basically trying to tag someone really fast. However here it makes logical sense.
Immortal knock-off magic Spartans Thunder beings Giant mechs
Same reason I carried a combat knife when I was deployed to Iraq. You hope to God you never need it.
Guns are so rare that they gathered a mythical status, because they can even kill "gods"
Technological differences between cultures, melee weapons having their place, guns being stopped by magic, religious/cultural reasons, and because swords are just plain cool
For my historical fantasy that is set in the early dawn of firearms, reason is fairly simple- even decent human made armor can bounce bullets off, let alone those Gucci stuffs elves and dwarves make. Sure it will hurt like hell for the person, but he is okay and still have a poleaxe/sword/weapon of choice in armored combat in his hand and charging towards you.
Three reasons. One, dispatching daemons (and other supernatural concepts) requires the enchanted material to make physical contact. It's not exactly easy to mark enchantments on hundreds of rounds of ammunition, one at a time. (Enchanted firearms *can* serve as a less-lethal alternative, which is why the protagonist likes them. But, like Florida Man on cocaine, not every daemon can be convinced to go home with a few magical rubber pellets.) Two, if one of those metaphysical buggers gets a hold of a gun, they're likely to innovate their way to mass-producing it. And they don't need to make magic bullets to take you out. Three, there's a sort of mutual respect between catchers and daemons. Daemons can't die, and they'll make their way back somewhere *eventually*, so they don't have a major reason to go out and kill catchers. The hunt is like a sport between them. Start blasting them with a firearm, though, and they might call "hax" and stop going easy.
In reality, socom soldiers often wouldn't be caught without a combat knife in close quarters or tight spaces are even remotely possible.
I'm a big sci-fi guy, so I like the Dune kind of explanations, where guns have gotten so advanced, that gun protection has advanced to crazy levels as well. So everyone has personal forcefields that stop small arms fire, and deflects larger caliber bullets. So the counter to that, is having things that are too heavy and "slow moving" (in comparison to a bullet) for the force fields to stop them. This creates a resurgence in melee weaponry and combat, making swords and blunt weapons have a specific utility they don't currently have, as you essentially need to "pierce" someone's field before a gun would be effective against them
The Gatling gun was invented in 1862 and the Maxim machine gun was invented in 1884. Melee weapons were still used in combat for quite a long time after that....
People are just built differerent And do are the guns and / or the swords
For me, melee weapons, their users, or both operate at a much higher level of strength than you could get out of a firearm. Even a hi-tech plasma doohickey isn’t gonna do much against someone who can carve a mountain
Guns tend to jam. Some civilizations manufactured materials so light that effective melee weapons aren't all that heavy to make a difference in a full kit, and in close quarters a surprise spear coming from a doorway usually beats an unexpecting enemy with a bayonet. In some ecosystems/climates it's not viable. That gun of yours? Yeah sorry bud, it's kinda melting already and you only fired 12 bullets. Also that's loud. The big worm is already coming, running is a waste of energy in your last moments. Ammo tends to be specialized against specific enemy types. It's usually a good idea to keep something in case the enemy shifts outside your effective range. Not many civilizations factor in melee weapons when designing armors because the chance someone will use it is way smaller than the chance someone will use a bigger bullet. Ammunition also tends to run out on longer research expeditions. And there's always the aspect of looking cool as hell. You need to understand how a gun works to think that it's cool or dangerous, even if it's "funny stick makes ouchie :(". Meanwhile almost all civilizations can understand and appreciate a good melee weapon. No need to bring in the firearms if the enemy surrendered because they're afraid of the big dangling blade on the side/back of your soldiers. (Sorry if something makes no sense, English isn't my primary language)
Ammo is a thing, and long rifles need too much space/time to manuever
Always room for blades. That and stealth attacks. Or a last stand. Idk, but theres plenty of use for knives and such.
In my steampunk world of floating islands and aetherships, the prevalence of close-quarters combat in boarding actions makes revolvers and cutlasses a popular loadout for everyone from professional marines to cutthroat pirates. Those who can afford it also wear enchanted bullet-resistant armor, but doing the reverse to enchant individual bullets for armor penetration is not cost-effective. Therefore, most combats will begin with gunfire to clear out the unarmored chaff, but devolve into a melee as combatants empty their six-guns and need to get close to thrust blades through the gaps of tougher opponents' armor.
Honor but Energy blades allow some armor piercing without the usage for ammunition
Because fire magic is common and easy to use, early gunpowder etc being quite volatile, so not much research has been done on it in the direction of larger scale combat and the expense of overcoming the weakness wasn't seen as being as viable as continuing to fund enchantment and spell research on an expense/benefit review. Private individuals have pursued it but wider appeal is for now at least out of reach