Guns and Psionics in D&D

One of the never-ending debates in D&D circles concerns the big question of whether or not guns and/or psionics 'should' be in D&D. Some people really like one or both of these elements, while some others really don't - typically based on some notion of purity in fantasy and/or historical accuracy.

A large part of the issue with purity in fantasy is that the genre has been very self-referential for a very long time - Tolkien was by far the biggest influence prior to D&D, and much of fantasy since the late 70's has aped either Tolkien or D&D. That's why we keep seeing the same Tolkien-derived races over and over again, it's why we keep seeing the same pseudo-medieval trappings, and so on.

But D&D's influences were much wider than just Tolkien, and while neither the Conan or Lankhmar stories featured guns, Barsoom did (and not just Renaissance-era flintlocks, either), while Elric had all sorts of things going on.

Indeed, much of D&D in actual play resembles the old He-Man cartoon, or the "Flash Gordon" movie, or indeed something like "Guardians of the Galaxy" a lot more closely than it does "Lord of the Rings". (And, in fact, the two "Avengers" films show a much better example of high-level play than just about anything else.)

So, yeah, it's probably a good thing for D&D to support firearms and psionics both - as options. In fact, ideally, the game should be much more modular across the board, so that the DM can build his setting and/or adventures to suit his group. (Want "Guardians of the Galaxy"? Include everything. Want "Lord of the Rings"? Use only the divination and enchantment spells. Or something like that.) So, yeah, let's have firearms suitable for pirates and swashbucklers, and also ray guys for He-Man and Flash. Lets have telepaths, and empaths, and weird scientists and artificers, and elementalists and diviners, and...

Of course, that requires that the DM be empowered to pick and choose from the available options as he sees fit, which was something WotC resisted for a long time (since player empowerment sold books), and it also requires that those various options actually exist (which is, unfortunately, not so much the case now).

(Also, it would really help if WotC would step away from their D&D branding iron. While I can understand why they want to say "in D&D, psionic powers are this", that tends to be less than helpful for the DM who wants to flavour things differently - especially if what the DM wants proves incompatible with the mechanics WotC construct to support their concept. But that's not going to happen - given the size of the beast, the needs of the brand are going to triumph over all else.)