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Greece Campaign Questions.
- Thread starter Darklance
- Start date
I don't know, but I'd think it would be like non-acid-free paper. It would slowly decay over time, but if a scroll isn't handled too often, it'll last as long as the guy who wrote it.
Parchment, on the other hand, lasts a long, long time. In fact, one of the funny things about parchment is that you can erase old text and use the same parchment for a new document.
bmcdaniel
Adventurer
I have actually just begun a campaign in heroic age Greece, so I happen to have a bunch of facts on hand:
Armor:
As mentioned above, Greek hoplites wore bronze helmet, bronze breastplate or linothrax (linen stiffened with resins), bronze and tin hoplons, and (usually) tin greaves.
The reason that the Greeks continued to use bronze for their armor rather than iron is because of their method of manufacture. Since iron is forged, rather than cast, and tends to be more brittle than bronze, early armorers couldn't forge iron armor to match the curves of the body well enough. Weapons were easier since they were flat and straight.
I have no idea why they used tin for their greaves, but they did.
Nobody is really sure how heavy Linothrax armor was. I replaced studded leather with it.
Remember the Greeks didn't have chainmail, so you need to eliminate chainmail and chain shirt also.
Finally, is you are placing a Mycenaen-age campaign, archeologists have discovered a set of articulated plate armor. Do a google search for "Dendra Armor." IMC, I gave it half-plate stats and said that it was only used for charioteers.
Territorial Maps:
You will find it difficult to find good territorial maps because the territories controlled by city-states were very fluid. To begin with, cities and villages regularly switched both who they were allied with and the depth of their alliance; for example, how would you classify the land surrounding a small village that usually supported Athens against Corinth, but would stay neutral between Athens and Sparta? Second, the terrain and nonprofessional nature of their armies (except for Sparta) meant that the Greeks had large difficulties in projecting their military power over land.
Resources:
I used the following sources, although remember that my campaign is set in Heroic (Mycenaen) Greece rather than Classical Greece.
Boardman, John, et al. (ed.), Oxford History of the Classical World.
Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch’s Mythology - The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (http://www.bulfinch.org/)
Durant, Will. The Life of Greece.
Elliot, Paul. Heroes of Delphi (http://www.geocities.com/zozergames/delphi-intro.html)
Encyclopedia Mythica (http://www.pantheon.org/)
Georg Luck, Axis Mundi.
Hare, J.B. (ed.). Sacred Texts (http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm)
Homer, The Iliad (Robert Fagles trans.).
Homer, The Odyssey (Robert Fagles trans.).
Kaine, Thomas M., GURPS Egypt.
Keegan, John. History of Warfare.
Osborne, Robin, Greece in the Making 1200-479 B.C.
Oxford Classical Mythology Online (http://www.oup-usa.org/sc/0195143388/index.html)
Parada, Carlos. Greek Mythology Link (http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/index.html)
Perseus Digital Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/)
Short History of the Trojan War (http://www.stanford.edu/~plomio/history.html)
Zeigler, John F., GURPS Greece.
I have a rather large player's handout (including simple maps) I could send you if you're interested.
BM
Armor:
As mentioned above, Greek hoplites wore bronze helmet, bronze breastplate or linothrax (linen stiffened with resins), bronze and tin hoplons, and (usually) tin greaves.
The reason that the Greeks continued to use bronze for their armor rather than iron is because of their method of manufacture. Since iron is forged, rather than cast, and tends to be more brittle than bronze, early armorers couldn't forge iron armor to match the curves of the body well enough. Weapons were easier since they were flat and straight.
I have no idea why they used tin for their greaves, but they did.
Nobody is really sure how heavy Linothrax armor was. I replaced studded leather with it.
Remember the Greeks didn't have chainmail, so you need to eliminate chainmail and chain shirt also.
Finally, is you are placing a Mycenaen-age campaign, archeologists have discovered a set of articulated plate armor. Do a google search for "Dendra Armor." IMC, I gave it half-plate stats and said that it was only used for charioteers.
Territorial Maps:
You will find it difficult to find good territorial maps because the territories controlled by city-states were very fluid. To begin with, cities and villages regularly switched both who they were allied with and the depth of their alliance; for example, how would you classify the land surrounding a small village that usually supported Athens against Corinth, but would stay neutral between Athens and Sparta? Second, the terrain and nonprofessional nature of their armies (except for Sparta) meant that the Greeks had large difficulties in projecting their military power over land.
Resources:
I used the following sources, although remember that my campaign is set in Heroic (Mycenaen) Greece rather than Classical Greece.
Boardman, John, et al. (ed.), Oxford History of the Classical World.
Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch’s Mythology - The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (http://www.bulfinch.org/)
Durant, Will. The Life of Greece.
Elliot, Paul. Heroes of Delphi (http://www.geocities.com/zozergames/delphi-intro.html)
Encyclopedia Mythica (http://www.pantheon.org/)
Georg Luck, Axis Mundi.
Hare, J.B. (ed.). Sacred Texts (http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm)
Homer, The Iliad (Robert Fagles trans.).
Homer, The Odyssey (Robert Fagles trans.).
Kaine, Thomas M., GURPS Egypt.
Keegan, John. History of Warfare.
Osborne, Robin, Greece in the Making 1200-479 B.C.
Oxford Classical Mythology Online (http://www.oup-usa.org/sc/0195143388/index.html)
Parada, Carlos. Greek Mythology Link (http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/index.html)
Perseus Digital Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/)
Short History of the Trojan War (http://www.stanford.edu/~plomio/history.html)
Zeigler, John F., GURPS Greece.
I have a rather large player's handout (including simple maps) I could send you if you're interested.
BM
Re: player handout
I'm just finishing a Roman-style campaign, so my interest is mostly speculatory, but if you could I'd love to see the handout, too.
wordstudio@hotmail.com
word,
will
I'm just finishing a Roman-style campaign, so my interest is mostly speculatory, but if you could I'd love to see the handout, too.
wordstudio@hotmail.com
word,
will
Klaus
First Post
Arsene Vulpin said:
Well, EN World does host my website. And I illustrated several accessories so far, like Counter Collections I & II, Psionics Toolkit, Queen of Lies, Of Sound Mind, Dark Quest's Cyber Style.
Back on topic:
Even though the Greeks didn't use it, the Persians did use a form of chain shirt (maily the elite Immortals).
Arsene Vulpin
First Post
To Moulin_Rouge :
What we call bronze is 9 times out of ten an alloy of tin and copper indeed. Tin is relatively sparse in europe. The two main sources being Anatolia and Zagros Mounts (Eastern modern-day Turkia) and the British Isles.
And indeed the Greeks did import it. It is even the reason why there was such important greek settlements in (modern-day)France such as marseilles (Phocean colony)....
The trade route between Marseilles and the British isles went along the rhone river, and it is such a trade which made such cities as Lugdunum (Lyon-Starting point of the navigable Rhone river) and Lutecia (capital of the Parisis, hence the name Paris (only bridge over the River Seine) so proeminent as to become main cities in the gallo-roman world anduntil today.
They also imported from Persia, yet this mine was less known.
The tin ore most used in this day is called cassiterite (and I quite remember it is the same word in greek, I'll check)
But, other elements have been used to alloy with copper. For example, Bronze Age Egypt used a Copper-Arsenic alloy for weapon and tool bronze, and only used (Priceless, precious) Tin in high-tin alloys for the making of mirrors (the tin content is then so high that bronze becomes a white metal, reflecting light just all right)....
To Bmcdaniel : It's heroic age you're speaking of then... Trojan Era, isn't it ? Then what you say seems correct. Tin used on greaves (as opposed as tin in copper-tin alloy aka bronze) is probably meaning that they would coat their base piece with tin (either by dipping it in molten tin (easy to it melts at aboout 250°C) or by directly brushing a tin rod against the hotted base) It would give the piece a silvery finnish)
Hey guys,
Don't blame me for posting boring technical stuff : someone actually asked !!! ;°)
Oh, and when I said some crap like 'W-E over', it's broken english for, 'give me a W-E to go and find the reference.'
What we call bronze is 9 times out of ten an alloy of tin and copper indeed. Tin is relatively sparse in europe. The two main sources being Anatolia and Zagros Mounts (Eastern modern-day Turkia) and the British Isles.
And indeed the Greeks did import it. It is even the reason why there was such important greek settlements in (modern-day)France such as marseilles (Phocean colony)....
The trade route between Marseilles and the British isles went along the rhone river, and it is such a trade which made such cities as Lugdunum (Lyon-Starting point of the navigable Rhone river) and Lutecia (capital of the Parisis, hence the name Paris (only bridge over the River Seine) so proeminent as to become main cities in the gallo-roman world anduntil today.
They also imported from Persia, yet this mine was less known.
The tin ore most used in this day is called cassiterite (and I quite remember it is the same word in greek, I'll check)
But, other elements have been used to alloy with copper. For example, Bronze Age Egypt used a Copper-Arsenic alloy for weapon and tool bronze, and only used (Priceless, precious) Tin in high-tin alloys for the making of mirrors (the tin content is then so high that bronze becomes a white metal, reflecting light just all right)....
To Bmcdaniel : It's heroic age you're speaking of then... Trojan Era, isn't it ? Then what you say seems correct. Tin used on greaves (as opposed as tin in copper-tin alloy aka bronze) is probably meaning that they would coat their base piece with tin (either by dipping it in molten tin (easy to it melts at aboout 250°C) or by directly brushing a tin rod against the hotted base) It would give the piece a silvery finnish)
Hey guys,
Don't blame me for posting boring technical stuff : someone actually asked !!! ;°)
Oh, and when I said some crap like 'W-E over', it's broken english for, 'give me a W-E to go and find the reference.'
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