History, Mythology, Art and RPGs

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by MichaelSomething

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that Galloglaich is a fan of the Human Weapon TV Series and the Commad and Colors Ancients boardgame!

I did like the Human Weapon series though there were some things about it which were a little off -that's pretty typical for those kind of documentaries. Never heard of Command and Colors maybe I should look it up. Hardly ever play board games any more I miss them, I don't know too many people who are into them any more.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Three things you might be shocked to know about Armor

Ok part II of the armor essay, this should be the more fun part, dealing with mail and plate armor.

The word is Mail not "Chainmail"...

..but call it whatever you like. Current belief is that it dates back as far as about 500 BC, and it was apparently invented by the Celts. The earliest known samples are from Celtic graves in Romania from the 4th Century BC. The Romans adopted it shortly after Rome was sacked by the Celts in 387 BC and it became the principle armor of the Roman Legion (equipping almost every front-line Legionnaire) from around the 3rd century BC until well into the 2nd Century AD, i.e. during the peak of Roman power. Mail armor was also likely a very important part of the rise of military power in Western Europe in the medieval period.

The most shocking thing you might not know about Armor in general and Mail in particular is the same reason the Romans so quickly adopted it and went to massive expense to equip all their legions with it: it worked. When we see armor portrayed in movies it never works. It is pretty much just the ineffective uniform of the bad guy. It never provides any protection unless it's magic. But of course, our ancestors who made and wore this in spite of the cost and weight, didn't have any magic to protect them, no mythril and adamantine, only iron and steel. Did they just wear it for decoration?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baadNmz_NnU"]YouTube - Scared Stormtroopers[/ame]
What is the point of wearing all that armor when a teddy bear with a moldy log can kill you with one blow?

In movies, a bad guy can be dispatched by a gentle draw cut across the stomach by his heroic opponent. In RPGs and Computer Games it's not much better. Pretty much any weapon can defeat armor, it's mostly a minor inconvenience (or a small incremental protection).

This seems to originate from our general modern contempt for the technology and wisdom of our ancestors, but more specifically in the gaming community due to the early attempts of re-enactors to re-create 'Chainmail' in the SCA and at Ren Faires. They came up with a technique called 'butted' mail.



While this is suitible for halloween costumes and arguably, for SCA combat or Ren Faires, it is not historical and provides relatively poor protection against real weapons.

Butted Mail is made from simple crimping the pieces of wire together. It's not very strong. In fact some butted mail lacks the strength to even hold itself together under it's own weight, and is usually made from heavier links just so that it won't develop holes and a 'moth-eaten' appearance spontaneously.

Real historical Mail armor was riveted or welded, meaning each link is riveted with a tiny little rivet, or welded together. This obviously required a much more painstaking process to make. Something the Romans could mass-produce thanks to all the Slave labor they had. Celts and other barbarians had much lower ratios of armored fighters, like one out of every hundred or even worse.



This stuff is hard to make but it is really amazingly effective protection

Riveted mail works very well. Indeed, the Royal Armory at Leeds conducted numerous tests with high tech equipment and came to the conclusion that mail armor was virtually impossible to penetrate by medieval hand-weapons.

I have seen many tests myself, from my experience, Mail is basically invulnerable to sword cuts, even axe cuts, though a large two-handed pole-arm like a halberd can penetrate it. Very high energy missile weapons such as longbows can punch through but only at very short range (inside 20 feet or so), as could the very heavy crossbows of the type which appeared in the 15th century, and the early firearms such as the arquebus, all of which contributed to the eventual development of plate armor in the 14th century.

But why listen to me go on about it when thanks to youtube and the internet, I can show you some of the experiments which have been done and you can judge for yourself.

First look at this kid. He may have a screw loose, and kind of looks a little crazy, but he's not as reckless as you might think to try this experiment:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au9tSDueIko"]YouTube - Test kolczugi na nóż kuchenny[/ame]
don't know what this guy is saying, but the video speaks for itself.

Here is a more serious test conducted by John Clements of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (the ARMA), one of the early pioneers of the HEMA movement.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdSCXJf7kDc"]YouTube - Mail armour cutting test[/ame]
Notice as he easily cuts a tatami mat (used for testing samurai swords) with his messer before attempting to cut the mail. I got to handle this same sample of mail he is cutting here, and witnessed several people try unsuccessfully to penetrate it with knives, swords and axes. This was an exceptionally strong piece of tempered steel Mail, but this strength was not unusual in the Renaissance.


As I said, even against powerful bows using armor piercing (bodkin) arrows at very short range, mail armor protects the wearer.

Test Maill versus Arrows.


Byzantine Princess Ana Comnena described the horror and amazement of the Turks at witnessing Crusaders continuing to advance with arrows sticking in their armor like this.


In fact after decades of testing, modern armor makers finally came to the conclusion that Mail was the only effective way to protect against knives and it is being incorporated into the highest quality modern stab-proof vests for the police in the UK and US prison guards.

Ballistic vest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plate Armor

The most shocking thing you might not know about plate harness (or full body armor), aside from the fact that it works, is that it came quite late. In fact the articulated 'knight in shining armor' type we know so well from movies and RPGs, actually appeared considerably after the invention of firearms.

Simpler forms of plate armor go very far back though. The earliest form of plate armor is the helmet. Helmets are arguably the single most ubiquitous form of protective kit other than the shield, and were made even before the advent of metal armor. For example the greeks during the time of Agamemnon (Myceneans) made helmets out of boars teeth




I don't know how well the boars tooth helmets worked, but helmets made of iron were very good protection, as you can see in this video
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h0e0NSwYNg&feature=related[/ame]

They could be scary too, like this 16th century Totenkopf helmet

This would fit right into a death-knight or anti-paladin villain in a DnD campaign



Articulated plate armor was very effective, even against high energy missiles like Longbows,

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk&feature=related"]YouTube - Longbow vs Plate Armour[/ame]

but it was also extremely expensive.


Contrary to popualr mythology, it was usually well fitted and did not restrict combat movement.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg"]YouTube - Armour Aerobics[/ame]

Nor did you require a hoist to get into the saddle, nor did you need help getting up after falling off your horse as you can see clearly here

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMuNXWFPewg&NR=1"]YouTube - Down from horseback with armour[/ame]

Plate armor survived after the era of the cannon, in the form of the cuirass or breastplate, and of course the steel helmet which never did go away. The term 'bullet proof' comes from armor makers going back to the 1500s who would shoot their armor plates and mark the dents as 'proof' that they were bullet proof.

The tradition lives on to today.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1K2DZ7NUoM"]YouTube - Test shooting[/ame]

In conclusion

So does any of this matter to your DnD game? Maybe not, but it can't hurt to see the reality of armor, if you ever get to the point where the fantasy version simply isn't making sense for you in your game, you can always go back to the source and start with an historical grounding. Because it does make all those funny weapons and tactics that were used in ancient times actually make sense and 'balance' when you put them all together as they really were.

And who knows you might even find historical combat is even more interesting and dramatic than the kind you do in WoW.

G.

[Dannyalcatraz]

The guy from that armor & horseback video is Mike Loades on his show "Weapons that made Britain"- great show!

One of the best points he made in that series was this: The armor of the day was well designed to protect the wearer from the weapons of the day.

The second best point he made was that no armor was perfect- each had a flaw that an experienced warrior with the right tool could exploit.

The main flaw, common to all armors, is the human inside- specifically his soft tissues (esp. the brain). While the armor may prevent a blade from slashing flesh, a spear from thrusting deep, or a mace from crushing a limb, the non-compressibility of the water that makes up so much of our bodies means a solid blow may result in hydrostatic shock that could debilitate a seemingly uninjured combatant. That is why maces were so popular after the advent of full plate. Ditto the development of the Mortschlag- the Murder Blow- where the combatant grasped the blade and struck at his foe's head using the crosspiece of his blade like a hammer or pick.

While a mace blow or mortschlag might not break bone or even cause a bruise, the resultant hydrostatic shock could disrupt the nervous system of the person struck, resulting in a "dead arm" or even a concussion- either of which is debilitating enough to leave the victim vulnerable to more lethal attacks.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Dannyalcatraz

The guy from that armor & horseback video is Mike Loades on his show "Weapons that made Britain"- great show!

Yes it's one of the very few pop history shows I've ever seen that really got it right, Mike Loades really gets it.

One of the best points he made in that series was this: The armor of the day was well designed to protect the wearer from the weapons of the day.

The second best point he made was that no armor was perfect- each had a flaw that an experienced warrior with the right tool could exploit.

Of course, and the primary 'flaw' for 95% of the combatants was that the armor usually did not cover the whole body. The number of people who could afford cap-a-pied armor protection was tiny. So the best way to defeat armor was usually to go around it, something most RPG combat systems don't really model.

But that wasn't easy in the middle of a fight, making even partial armor protection incredibly valuable, if you have ever tried sparring with weapons you know how difficult it is not to be hit, and if you have ever cut with a realistic replica you know how devastating these weapons are to unprotected flesh.

just as an example of that, consider this test cut and this one on deer carcases, (warning those clips are not for the squeamish)

This is the real reason the Roman Legions did so well in attrition warfare of the type so often practiced during their heydey, with both sides exchanging javelins and darts all day, the side with little to no armor is at a crippling disadvantage.

To face a fully armored knight was a daunting challenge indeed. It's no accident that the stunning military successes of the First Crusade coincided with Mail armor beginning to creep toward cap-a-pied coverage, this is one of the principle reasons the crusaders were such a shock to the Turks and the Arabs initially according to their own records.

The main flaw, common to all armors, is the human inside- specifically his soft tissues (snip) That is why maces were so popular after the advent of full plate. Ditto the development of the Mortschlag- the Murder Blow-

Of course, thats why the whole system of "harnichefechten" developed as a seperate martial art from the earlier form which became the default unarmored combat ("blossfechten"), and why all the attendent systems of half-swording etc. (including the Mortschlag)

and the further development of KampfRingen or war-wrestling, (in an almost identical to German fencing as Jujitsu is with Japanese fencing -) became so developed as a means of getting armored opponents into that disadvantageous position.



And of course this is also the reason for the development of not only heavy maces of the European type, but all the specialist armor piercing and armor-cleaving weapons like poll-hammers, war-picks, etc.



which became so prominent in the Renaissance battlefields -- and none of which really make any sense in RPGs because there is really no way in most RPG combat systems to model the differences between an armor piercing weapon like a war-pick and say, a sword.

The unarmored fighter is at a huge disadvantage against even a partially armored warrior- the armored fighter can wield a sword which is extremely effective at cutting flesh, wheras the unarmored warrior had better have either a specialized armor - piercing weapon or a high energy missile thrower like a heavy arbalest (crossbow) or an arquebus.

And of course they did figure that out, the hegemony of the Knight was largely broken by innovative commoners quite early, well before Plate armor became well established. The Swiss defeated the Hapsburg Knights at Morgarten (1315), the Flemish annihilated the French knights at Golden Spurs (1302) by inventing new weapons which could defeat armor. The Flemish had their Guden-Tag ("good morning") the Swiss invented the Halberd and had their heavy Crossbows, and later the pike.

The invincible Czech Hussites, another rebellion of commoners, further perfected new systems for defeating the fully armored knight which included their invention of the pistol, the use of war-wagons, and the adaptation of agricultural flails (and the farmers who knew how to use them) into deadly military weapons by adding spikes and iron bands. This proved effective enough for them to defeat all five international Crusades launched to destroy them.

All of which is potentially interesting stuff you could use in an RPG game


Speaking of Maces, don't you think it's interesting that the Mace, (sometimes masked as a 'scepter') is always, in seemingly every culture, the chosen weapon of Kings? When you consider who a King has to worry about most - his fellow aristocrats, who are likely to have armor, it kind of makes sense doesn't it.

G.

[Dannyalcatraz]

Speaking of Maces, don't you think it's interesting that the Mace, (sometimes masked as a 'scepter') is always, in seemingly every culture, the chosen weapon of Kings? When you consider who a King has to worry about most - his fellow aristocrats, who are likely to have armor, it kind of makes sense doesn't it.

Yeah- the weapon of choice for rulers is either some form of mace/scepter or the sword in probably 90% of the iconography, for that and many other reasons.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Dannyalcatraz

Yeah- the weapon of choice for rulers is either some form of mace/scepter or the sword in probably 90% of the iconography, for that and many other reasons.

yes but as far as I know, the crown jewels, the symbol of rule of basically any King or Emperor of anywhere always include a "scepter" or some other kind of fancy mace.

Swords also of course as they are basically the ultimate prestige hand-weapon.

G.

[Dannyalcatraz]

As I recall, swords as the ultimate symbol of rulership are predominately found in non-European cultures.

[DarenCommons]

Galloglaich
i just wanted to chime in and say I really enjoy the info you're sharing. I appreciate the DnD perspective on historical fighting. I've been dabbling in a sword fighting school called the Western Circle recently myself,,, Even if it never translates into game mechanics it is a great inspiration to the imagination when you have this background knowledge. Anyways, thanks!

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by DarenCommons

Galloglaich
i just wanted to chime in and say I really enjoy the info you're sharing. I appreciate the DnD perspective on historical fighting. I've been dabbling in a sword fighting school called the Western Circle recently myself,,, Even if it never translates into game mechanics it is a great inspiration to the imagination when you have this background knowledge. Anyways, thanks!

Thanks Daren, it's nice to hear that. Good luck in your training. If you have any insights relevant to RPGs post them to this thread

G.

[mmadsen]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

So the best way to defeat armor was usually to go around it, something most RPG combat systems don't really model.

That's something D&D's AC-based system does oddly well, except that many of the attacks -- magic weapons, dragon bites, giant-thrown boulders, etc. -- should be able to overcome armor more directly.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by mmadsen

That's something D&D's AC-based system does oddly well, except that many of the attacks -- magic weapons, dragon bites, giant-thrown boulders, etc. -- should be able to overcome armor more directly.

What I mean is, in terms of how weapons (or other damaging effects) work, there is no differentiation between going through or going around the armor. In D20 / OGL you usually have one variation or the other, either AC, where armor effectively is always part of avoiding being hit (tied in with your fighting defense), or as damage reduction, where armor is always ablative. Neither system really makes sense in isolation, IMO.

In the sense that having someone try to stab you with a knife in a grapple, being shot at by a crossbow, shot at by a death-ray, stepping on a bear trap, having a swarm of spiders fall all over you, and falling off a roof all interact with armor differently, in terms of role-playing, verisimilitude and cinematic visualization. That's why I think it makes more sense to model both coverage and protection.

(that way you don't have to pretend that a 'breast plate' is an entire suit of armor).

G.

[Brainfart]

Some guy on myArmoury did a bunch of tests on the effectiveness of maille. The tests were not conducted with any sort of scientific rigour, but the results are still a good baseline.

myArmoury.com - Riveted Maille and Padded Jack Tests (very photo intensive)

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Brainfart

Some guy on myArmoury did a bunch of tests on the effectiveness of maille. The tests were not conducted with any sort of scientific rigour, but the results are still a good baseline.

myArmoury.com - Riveted Maille and Padded Jack Tests (very photo intensive)

Yeah that is a very good test, Myarmoury is in general an excellent resource for people interested in European swords and weapons of all types, both actual antiques (they have a fatnastic gallery of antique weapons) and a really useful guide to modern replicas including dozens of in-depth reviews, particularly of higher end swords.

I'm going to try to do a little blog on swords and some other weapons later and I'll be discussing Myarmoury a bit further.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Speaking of Myarmoury there was a good thread on Women Warriors on there recently, which I got a few new cool characters for my "Dilbert in the Dungeon" list, including:

Isabel of Conches 1100s AD
Female Norman Knight and Noblewoman who fought at the battle of Hastings

Isabel of Conches - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tomoe Gozen 1157-1241
A female Japanese Samurai (!!)

Tomoe Gozen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hangaku Gozen Another Female Samurai from the 12th Century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangaku_Gozen


Onorata Rodiana 1472
A really interesting character, a female Italian fresco painter and artist who after thwarting an attempted rape, became a Condotierre (mercenary soldier) and eventually a Condotierre Capitan!
« Onorata nacqui, onorata vissi, ed onorata muoio »
“Honored I was born, honored I lived, and honored I die”
Female Firebrands and Reformers - Onorata Rodiana
Onorata Rodiana
Onorata Rodiani - Wikipedia

Catalina de Erauso (1585-1650)

Basque Female soldier, assassin, conquistador, duelist
Catalina de Erauso - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Destreza Translation & Research Project


Here is the Myarmoury thread:

myArmoury.com - Historical examples of female warriors...


I also have added one truly remarkable and colorful male figure,
Götz von Berlichingen (c. 1480 – 23 July 1562; unabbreviated form: Gottfried von Berlichingen) a German knight (Deutscher Ritter), and Mercenary. With one iron hand.
Götz von Berlichingen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Khairn]

Thanks to everyone for this thread. Really outstanding information.

[RFisher]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

What I mean is, in terms of how weapons (or other damaging effects) work, there is no differentiation between going through or going around the armor. In D20 / OGL you usually have one variation or the other, either AC, where armor effectively is always part of avoiding being hit (tied in with your fighting defense), or as damage reduction, where armor is always ablative. Neither system really makes sense in isolation, IMO.

I try not to look at the attack roll and damage roll in d20 as separate things really representing what they’re named after.

But the point I want to make is that GURPS had separate “passive defense” and “damage resistance” for armor. (Though I may be misremembering the exact terms.)

Though, I believe they eliminated PD in GURPS 4/e.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by RFisher

I try not to look at the attack roll and damage roll in d20 as separate things really representing what they’re named after.

Well when you've got things like touch effects for say, paralysis or various spells, you've got critical hits based on weapon type, defensive spell and natural effects (stoneskin, protection from arrows etc.) which resist certain type of attacks and etc. that level of abstraction can get tricky to keep up with.

What we did with the codex was to change the focus of the abstraction to assume that a hit was a hit, a miss was a miss, and try to let it all work cinematically. I think it works at least for slightly more 'grim and gritty' type games.

But the point I want to make is that GURPS had separate “passive defense” and “damage resistance” for armor. (Though I may be misremembering the exact terms.)

Though, I believe they eliminated PD in GURPS 4/e.

GURPS is a great system, but to me their combat system didn't have the kind of dynamic natural feel of the ebb and flow of a fight that I wanted any more than standard 3.5 DnD did (though I haven't tried GURPS 4/e)

Typically in most systems, if you have armor as damage reduction there is no way around it. IIRC in GURPS the way to kind of beat the system was to go around it, but it got ridiculously easy at higher skill levels to throw the proverbial dagger into the eye-slit.

I don't want to make an extra roll every time to determine hit-location, don't want to do a ton of arithmetic, don't want to look up charts, and I don't want for there to only be one way to win a fight (because that's not how a fight really works) I don't think fighting should be routine or predictable in an RPG.

So in our system you can punch through the armor (helps to have armor-piercing weapons but you can also try for critical hits by putting multiple dice into one attack) go around it with a bypass attempt (harder the more coverage the armor has but never impossible) or even take the armor apart by attacking it directly, all basically driven by whatever the player wants to do, neither constraining their options nor forcing them to get into detail they don't need.

G.

[Kordeth]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

Speaking of Myarmoury there was a good thread on Women Warriors on there recently, which I got a few new cool characters for my "Dilbert in the Dungeon" list, including:

She's a bit later than the typical D&D milieu, but one more:

Julie d'Aubigny 1670-1707
French duelist, opera singer, and shameless flirt.
Julie d'Aubigny - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Kordeth

She's a bit later than the typical D&D milieu, but one more:

Julie d'Aubigny 1670-1707
French duelist, opera singer, and shameless flirt.
Julie d'Aubigny - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah she's awesome and an ideal archetype for any kind of swashbuckling / pirates / three musketeers type game. She's in the original list, in the OP, there are two other links on her there which have a bit more detail than the Wiki page.

One of my all-time favorite historical characters

G.

[Jack7]

One argument I have heard many, many times from people who don't like low fantasy, is that they don't want a boring game about some peasant who has fleas and dies of the plague anonymously at age 27. They want to be a hero, someone remarkable, someone who transcended the mundane. Most of all they don't want to be anything like reality, which for some of us is like the life of Dilbert. We don't want to play Dilbert in the Dungeon.

Well, if you prefer high fantasy that is ok, but as someone who enjoys history, I wanted to point out that there are rather quite a few remarkable real people from history who had adventures seldom matched in any Fantasy Novel, DnD game, or all the WoW games ever played, and they were a long way from Dilbert. In fact, many of the people on this list were IMOgreater warriors than Conan, wiser than King Arthur, and more ruthless and intrepid than Elric.

I wholeheartedly agree.

If someone from another world were to read stories of the real lives of some of the most unusual people from human history they would be forced to conclude that such tales were so fantastic as to be utterly unbelievable.

It is not the world in which outstanding men and women live, it is not magical powers, or bizarre cultures, it is that they carry within them an absolute fearlessness to be whatever they desire.

Few fictional characters will ever match real men and women for real greatness, or true heroism.

By the way, I like the historical approach you seem to be taking. I really do, since that is the method I favor, with my group gaming out of Constantinople circa 800 AD, as a milieu base of operations. I also like the emphasis on art and mythology - art, iconography, the Saints, historical personages and events, mythology, real world religion, cultures, etc. all playing a large role in my setting and the campaigns of my players (as far as our D&D game goes).

I have been unable to review every post in this thread, and so maybe I have missed something. And I look forward to reviewing this thread later in more detail.

One thing though that I was curious about. The Codex Martialis, from what I can tell so far is seems a very interesting resource, and I think I'd probably enjoy reviewing it (along with some of your other links, like you postings on Durer), however, and I'm assuming you are playing D&D, or a modified semi-historical D&D hybrid like we do, but many, many combat situations in D&D, and in my game are not duel type situations, but are actually small team tactical engagements. Occasionally we even engage in large scale wargame skirmishes, say my player's (what today would be called Special Forces) Byzantine Team versus the Bulgars, the Vikings, the Goths, the Muslims, or the Persians.

I very much appreciate the ideas you are presenting, and I understand your purpose, but let me ask you a question, and I'm not in any way trying to bait you. But have you ever been in combat? (I do not mean fencing matches or personal duels, but in even small group combat situations?)

If you have then you know group combat, even small group endearments are a very different situation than personal duels. (I have nothing against personal duels. I have noticed however that they are rare in D&D.)

So, what I'm driving at is this, is your system applicable to non-personal, grouped combat situations? (Because in group combat people act differently than when they are engaged in personal combat, even personal combat duels to the death. Let me give an example. In a personal combat situation maneuver for positing is a very different situation that when maneuvering for position where you are potentially surrounded in close quarters with enemies flanking you as well as to the fore. A solid maneuver for repositioning in a duel would lead to exposure and quick death in close quarters group combat. That would be true if you are talking hand to hand weaponry, or engagement with more or less modern weaponry. As an instance of example, with hand to hand weapons in a duel one might miss and then face counter-attack, for which one could reasonably reset to receive a counter-thrust because your focus of attention is limited to a single opponent. In close quarters group combat a miss against your intended target might have multiple effects, it might go unnoticed by those around you, friend and foe, your miss might expose you to an unengaged enemy to your rear including a longbowman or crossbowman, your intended target miss might strike a nearby combatant, including an ally, it might smack into an unobserved obstacle and loosen your weapon from your grip or endanger your balance, it might draw the attention of an attacker who is seeking his next enemy to engage, you might charge - through the momentum of your miss - into another combatant you did not know was there until he was struck, and so forth and so on. Group combat is a very different procedure with very different effects and concerns from man-to-man, single issue duels.) I put up a thread of my own to deal with some of these general issues: The Tactical Repertoire
(So I like your emphasis on realism in combat. And I'm going to be writing an essay on Real World Historical Elements in the development of Milieu and Adventure Design.)

I know in D&D it is basically turn based really, with it seeming to break down group combat into a series of, generally speaking, man-to man encounters, with one party acting, then the other reacting, and so forth and so on, so game combat presents the tactical engagement illusion that this (a man-to-man duel) is what group combat is really like. But I'm just curious, is your system designed for the duel primarily, or for small teams combat, large scale combat, or does it, for lack of a better game and analogical term in comparison to real life, "scale differently according to circumstance?" Does it model group combat as group combat really is, or as closely as game mechanics may allow for such realities?

If so this would be of real interest to me as a simulation tool.
If it is just based upon the combat paradigm of the man-to-man duel then that is fine too, I'd probably still be interested in trying to understand how your system works. But if it really did simulate actual group combat situations better than the current system (I know it is only a game and made for the ease of most players, it is not in any real way designed to simulate actual combat aspects, or to in any way mimic the maneuvers or activities of a real battlespace) then I'd be interested in seeing that kind of thing.

Anyway I enjoyed the thread, what I've been able to review thus far, and I appreciate the angle you have taken in regards to history. I hope your product has taken into consideration combat potentialities in and around the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as Western Europe and Japan. If not I hope you will consider investigating that aspect of world combat as well.

In any case this is a very good thread.
I've enjoyed it so far, and wouldn't mind seeing more like it.

Good luck and Godspeed with your project.
I've got to hit the sack.