Off To War... Recriutment/Discussion

btw, Myth, I really like the "slick" though it has nothing at all to do with how i imagined the character.:D
Hmm yes but that is how Lora is percieving him at the moment. She has a rather twisted view of strange men.

DW is totally right in the points he makes. Holy Man, if you want to do some off-the-clock reading to help with your gaming and DMing, go here.

This article is a good start. It has a link to the swords weight issue (point 6)
 

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Thanks DW know how to make a guy feel dumb, LOL

I get most of my armor ideals from the old Excaliber movie (with Patrick Stewart before Star Trek but still bald?//go figure). They seemed to have the right of it. they moved around just alittle bit slowly.

HM

Not my intent, I assure you.

Excalibur is one of the best for armored combat, though they are a bit on the slow side.

A pretty good fight scene is also the last one in Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves (the fight between Costner/Robin and Rickman/Nottingham), though that is only with longswords, no armor.

The work they did with Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) in LotR is pretty good (but Legolas and Gimli's action is generally over-the-top, for realism).
 

DW is totally right in the points he makes. Holy Man, if you want to do some off-the-clock reading to help with your gaming and DMing, go here.

Thank you. I should hope I'm right, as I do historical combat as a hobby. :p

Good recommendation on the ARMA website. Those guys do a ton of research and are extremely well-versed on the subject of medieval warfare. I actually used them and their website as a source for a research paper I wrote on the evolution of weaponry through the Middle Ages.
 

(but Legolas and Gimli's action is generally over-the-top, for realism).
Of course it's not realistic, they are an elf and a dwarf (which are not real) so how can we expect them to operate the same way humans do?


This is my philosophy on the matter, in full so you can see where i'm coming from. This is not meant to be argumentative it is just the basis of the logic of my argument. Please do not take this as an attack on any of you.

If you look at the Many Worlds Theory (basically every time a decision could have gone another way it did in another dimension) if you go to a dimension where the change was far back enough, the whole of human development has completely altered what we would perceive as normal.

We judge something like LotR as not behaving the same as our world, but their history is totally different. They have had to deal with orcs, trolls, and evil magicians (if not far worse), they have had magic, elves, dwarves, all sorts of things that we have not had in our history. At the very worst, we've had psychos, bears, alligators, and sharks. This constant state of war has left them in what we would refer to as the medieval age for millenia (far longer than we experienced it), so they've had a lot of time to develop in and evolve to best suit that particular situation.

We can't assume that Dwarves and Elves have the same musculature and limits that we do. We can't assume that they make their bows and armor the same way we do just because our technology is better (modern science still can't recreate Greek Fire, yet we assume we are smarter than the people who did create it) the fact of the matter is that we aren't the masters of the physical universe yet so we can only base our judgments on our own historical record (which often has huge chunks missing) and ability to recreate it in modern times (the above GF example relates how limited that can be)

Robin Hood is just a story, so it is really up to the director to decide to make it true to period or a true fantasy (with fantastic occurrences) If they try to tell you it is period or historical and it is not....then we have a right to complain, but if they chose to tell a fantasy story as a fantasy then complaining just shows your own ignorance to the concept of fantasy.

On the same note, LotR is not a period story, it is a story in a fantastic world that happens to have humans and a geographical location with Earth in the name. If one wishes for it to agree fully with our recreation of our past, we must remove elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, and magic as actual existing in the world, in which case it becomes the story of a LARPing group.



So, in short, because these worlds are not exactly like ours, and because our own picture of our history has flaws that are constantly being redefined, I see it as plausible that in the course of their development the world has changed, that the physical stature of people has changed and the nature of materials (think composites) has changed from what we understand them to be, and culturally people have not developed the same so words and meanings won't be the same as they were for us (if they really were what we thought they were). This is my logical basis for allowing Fantastic occurrences in Fantasy worlds.
 


If you guys want good fighting scenes watch Rob Roy. Although the hero holds his 16th century claymore like a rake, the villain is quite good with the smallsword. His acting is superb as well - he was nominated for an Oscar for this role.

Gondsman i can see your point about LOTR, and in general yes i agree - if Elves can be immortal they can have stronger backs and shoulderplates due to thousands of years worth of archery, and not get deformed by it etc.

What i dislike in movies is the pompous Holywood flashiness and eyecandy, that completely screws up even basic historical accuracy to please fifteen year olds. I've read the LOTR books and there you get a lot more mythology, stories, songs and a lot less flashy action.

In general, when i see someone using two swords because it's so much "cooler", or wielding a huge double-bitted axe in combat, or cutting trough fullplate with a longsword, or drawing the bow using arm strength alone i just sigh and try to bear it. When the movie has too much of this though It just ruins it for me.

BTW a good historical medieval movie is The lion in winter. Although there's virtually no fighting there, the actors are good and the setting is very accurate as far as the medieval castle is concerned.
 

To tell you the truth i prefer the flashiness and eye-candy. I hate to say it but my favorite "period" film is probably the worst offender ever, but they did it entirely on purpose. The film is.....A Knight's Tale. Their purpose was to present the situation in a way that better related to modern people. Replacing music, clothing, even word choice to reflect just how cool the tournaments and their participants were at the time to the people of that time. In my mind the Fantasy RPG world should in some way reflect that attitude, because for the most part, that Olde Timey stuff just isn't as exciting to us modern folk.:p

While I do appreciate effort put into historical accuracy, I can also appreciate the Artistic License of the director. Doesn't mean I don't complain when I disagree with the Artistic Interpretation......;)
 


Of course it's not realistic, they are an elf and a dwarf (which are not real) so how can we expect them to operate the same way humans do?
<snip>
So, in short, because these worlds are not exactly like ours, and because our own picture of our history has flaws that are constantly being redefined, I see it as plausible that in the course of their development the world has changed, that the physical stature of people has changed and the nature of materials (think composites) has changed from what we understand them to be, and culturally people have not developed the same so words and meanings won't be the same as they were for us (if they really were what we thought they were). This is my logical basis for allowing Fantastic occurrences in Fantasy worlds.

My point in marking their actions as over-the-top was to show that they are not a good basis for proper combat. Shoving an arrow through a bad guy's eyeball and pulling it back out, then shooting it (however AWESOME I think it is) doesn't work. Climbing up the Oliphaunt (again, however AWESOME I think it is) is an insanely stupid, crazy thing to do and would be much more likely to get you killed.

Personally, I do like big special effects and flashy moves, but when they're trying to be passed off as "proper" or used as an example of the same, I have a problem. In particular, spins, jumps and other "acrobatic" moves... get you killed, not win the fight. It may look really cool and fun, but it is not how to fight and live to fight again.
 

Shoving an arrow through a bad guy's eyeball and pulling it back out, then shooting it (however AWESOME I think it is) doesn't work. Climbing up the Oliphaunt (again, however AWESOME I think it is) is an insanely stupid, crazy thing to do and would be much more likely to get you killed.

you mean get a Human killed right? Tolkien's elves might as well be superman compared to humans.

i do have to ask though, how much actual sword fighting experience do you have killing people who do stupid acrobatic moves? That is an interesting opinion. I do agree that some of the fancier moves do occur in opportune moments for the opponent to simple skewer his foe:p...but to completely generalize that such moves have no place whatsoever in real battle?:erm:...

It's not that I'm saying i have better credentials that say it is good, it's just that I'm a little slower to put such things down when i don't have the credentials.
 

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