Arrows and armor and halberds, Oh my!
Col_Pladoh said:
Greetings Drifter Bob,
have not seen "The Riddle of Steel", but from the sound if its name I should suppose it is a combat game rather than an RPG.
No, it's a game alright, and a pretty good one. Kind of in the spirit of the old Robert E Howard Conan stuff, with a lot of historical influence as well. It's actually been quite well recieved in general, in spite of some unpopular features like it's magic system. The combat s very fast, strategic, and even incorporates role playing elements, but it is quite lethal. It wouldn't have to be, IMHO, but that's how they wanted this game to be.
There is indeed a need for lethality in a single successful attack when simulation of actual combat is desired. [snip] As combat is the most popular activity in the RPG game form, it is pretty well necessary to allow for plenty of it, so...
With all due respect, there is always the issue of quality over quantity. To put it in perspective, I would compare say, an old school D&D game where I might go through 5 or 6 memorable and challenging combats in a game session, to say, any number of vaguely D&D inspired computer role playing games, where you slaughter hundreds of monsters in a more or less indistinguishable flood of bad guys....
Or you could compare a movie like Akira Kirosawa's Yojimbo, to the average Xena episode. The Xena episode has a lot more fights, but the realistic scrapes in Yojimbo are way more exciting to me. (Not that I'm knocking Xena....)
Realism when one deals with magic, fantastic beasts, and all that makes up the FRPG seems a marginal concept to me. Verisimilitude is another matter,
And yet, weapon tables exist, rules for different types of armor and etc. exist, all of which helps make the game more internally consistant. You can have a magical universe with internal consistency. I don't advocate being a 'slave' to realism, but that one can borrow from both history and real physics (and places where they meet, as in the fencing techniques from the Fechtbuchs, which TROS makes ample use of) to find fun mechanics for your game.
Please understand, I'm not trying to challenge your experience! I have immense respect for you and for old school D&D in particular. But consider the way you so successfully borrowed the real mechanics of the Medieval Criminal underworld in your excellent D20 book, The Canting Crew, by incorporating them into the fantasy milieux and making them your own. I think the same can be done with things like realistic combat mechanics, without necessarily screwing up game balance.
Of course, what the hell do I know :0 I'ts just my dumb theory....
When I wrote my parts of the Chainmail military miniatures rules (c.1969) I had done considerable historical research, and my interest in the subject of militray history, arms and armor, has not waned since...althouh my available reading time has. I correspond with a fellow who is studying the old fencing manuals, fights thus. Also last year at this time I was a guest speaker at the Higgins Armory Museum, and gained a considerable insight into matters there.
I do a lot of this kind of stuff as well. I've been playing those old table top wargames since my dad introduced them to me back in the 70's. I just hosted a gathering of ARMA (probably the largest and best established of the new "Western Martial Arts" historical fencing groups) here in New Orleans, about a month ago. I've been sparring with padded swords for 20 years but seeing the Fechtbuch techniques actually applied by some people who have truly grasped them was an eye opener. WMA is every bit as real as traditional "Eastern" martial arts, in some ways it's more impressive, IMHO
Perhaps they should reconsider the genre. It is fantasy. They blench at minor things and accept flying, fire-breathing dragons and working magic, which seems to me quite eccentric, like swallowing a camel whole, then straining at a gnat.
As you note, RPGs are for entertainment and fun. they are not meant to be simulations of something, for that something never existed
Of course, and yet, (again, with all due respect) I think there is always some element of "Sim", to use RPG grognard parlance, in any rpg game. My point is that where we are borrowing mechanics from reality or history, we should get the real ones, (not accidentally transpose fake ones from say, hollywood) and also seriously examine what are the most relevant. Just as you did when first designing D&D.
I don't think many game designers since your day have done the kind of research that you did. Not until very recently at any rate.
Those are valid considerations, but they complicate and extend the time needed for combat. Why include them if a simpler system delivers the same geenral outcome in a shorter period of time?
Well, you are always going to model some factors, whether the system is simple or complex. Personally, from my sparring experience, I think skill and weapon size (and weapon balance) are more important for defense than say, naturally inherent co-ordination. You could take the most agile acrobat from cirque de soleil, give him a 20" short sword, and send him at an old fat guy like me with a 36" arming sword, and I'm going to nail him every time.
I have actually put this to the test (almost!) several times.
Similarly, I think reach is a more important factor than almost anything else in determining who strikes first....
As for armor, I have indeed gone to a system where it provided protection that absorbs damage, losing its "health" on the prosess. This is in the Lejendary Adventure RPG. In it there are basically four kinds of
I'd really like to check out Lejendary Adventures, Iv'e been interested in it ever since I got the canting crew. It's definately on my list the next time I get a little extra scratch.
You are right about bypassing armor too, btw. I think until people started really being armored literally from head to toe in the late 12th century, the best way to defeat armor was to go around it. Excavations at the Wisby battlefield in Sweeden show that 2/3 of the skelletons which showed signs of injury had cut marks to the lower left leg, below the hauberk and below the shield...
Hmmm... Yes, I agree with the value of armor, how it protected well. However, I disagree about field plate being proof against lances and longbow arrows, or even heavy crossbow bolts at close range. There was a serious effort to ban the heavy crossbow from warfare, you know, because it could pierce plate. The French knights fell in droves from English (Welsh) longbow
Well, this still contraversial, and I certainly don't want to start an argument about it, but on the assumption that you are probably interested to know this, the current best evidence suggests that in the famous English longbow victories such as Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt, etc., the longbows did not actually penetrate the armor of the French Knights, in most cases they actually killed their mounts. At Agincourt this apparently led to the French knights slogging on foot uphill through mud toward the English defenders...
(More about crossbows further down)
arrows, and there is an histotical record wherein examples are cited: an arrow piercing shield, armored arm, and then cuirasse, pinning the lot to the
There are always anecdotes like this, but few self bows (i.e. bows) that have been tested recently with a variety of arrows seem to be able to pierce actual plate armor. Again, it's contraversial and I don't want to start an argument, but if you check the forums at ARMA, AEMMA, Sword Forum online, Myarmoury, etc., you can see that several tests have been done recently. Some period weapons like polearms and very heavy crossbows will penetrate armor, but not many can, and it's never easy....
that shows the foot-pounds of pressure on a square inch of metal--the point of a lance being driven at a canter by a man in armor seated upon a heavy warhorse. Only a deflection could prevent it from penetrating the best of steel plate.
Actually, with all due respect, there was another recent event which seems to contradict this. This may be because, as you probably know, there has been revolutionary changes in the understanding of how to properly make medieval armor in the last few years, particularly mail, which they used to make "butted" at Renaissance festivals and such, but have now come to understand was never actually used except when made with each link actually riveted.
There was just very recently an experiment done by Eric Schmidt, the mail maker and armor historian, at Royal Armories in Leeds, where they took a lance head and tried to pierce riveted mail armor with a thin cloth backing, at various amounts of pressure. Supposedly the mail finally broke slightly at only the very highest amount of pressure, but it was estimaed that the lance would not have penetrated through to the flesh.
There is also the example of Charles the Bold of Burgundy whose plate-armor-protected leg was severed, his horse wounded by a single blow from a Swiss halbred.
Yeah, poor Charles had nothing but trouble from those uppity Swiss peasants. I am familiar with this anecdote, and I think it is a true one. The Halberd was specifically designed to penetrate armor, and like most pole-weapons and other specifically armor piercing weapons, it could do so when applied with massive force (i.e., a haymaker).
The same can be said for the very heaviest of crossbows, some of which from that period were made with as much as 1,000 pounds of pressure, but these were specialist weapons and very expensive. The typical hunting crossbow was unlikely to penetrate mail, let alone plate.
And armor kept improving as well as weapons. As I'm sure you know by the Renaissance they were regularly turning out literally bullet "proof" armor which they would shoot with a musket and mark the dent (proof).
If that's just a few of your thoughts, I had better gird-up for some essay-lenght replies if you express many of there here
Cheers,
Gary
yeah, I tend to be quite long winded, one of my many faults. I promise I wont post here often though. I'll take a long time to digest what you have said so I can really learn from it, rather than just replying off the cuff... this is too good an opportunity squander over ego!
thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.
DB
