Technology

[stv2brown1988]

So if you have a knight, then he/she should have a squire and a shield bearer. Does anyone remember the old Cavilier from the original Unearthed Arcana? They had a whole group of followers each. I think they even had a herald and a standard bearer.

[RaspK_FOG]

Actually, if we go about the whole company thing there, you should be counting a lot of retainers, all in all.

[Gman]

The higher your prestige - the more personal guards and protectors you should have to stop you from being successful in getting yourself killed.

Gotta love those last desperate charges when all reserves are committed and the Leaders standards meet on the battlefield... (Sun Tzu would not recommend this but Lots of fun for BR players).

I tend to use and organic system of contested tactics rolls taken in part from Pendragon battles. If your king does well he positions the army well. If you king has done well then your Lord gets a bonus as he maneuvers your unit. If your Lord succeeds then your unit gets bonuses on the attack/defence.

[stv2brown1988]

I tend to use and organic system of contested tactics rolls taken in part from Pendragon battles. If your king does well he positions the army well. If you king has done well then your Lord gets a bonus as he maneuvers your unit. If your Lord succeeds then your unit gets bonuses on the attack/defence.

Gman,

I'm interested in your system. Do you any more info on the system you use that you could share with the rest of us?

Steve

[geeman]

At 06:50 AM 11/21/2007, Steve wrote:

>How does a Bronze Age Vos family get water and cook meals? How does
>this differ from a Brecht (renaisance?) family? Has someone already
>looked at this in any detail at all?

The various metal ages aren`t going to be fundamentally different in
terms of domesticity. The expense and abundance of various
implements will change, of course, but stew cooks in a bronze pot
just as it does in an iron one, and wells are still dug using bronze
tools just as they are using iron ones. Though there are plenty of
examples of large scale irrigation and water transport systems during
the Bronze Age one does see larger and more complex projects as
technology advances, so on average a Renaissance family is going to
have easier access to water than a Bronze Age family. That depends,
of course, on where the family lives. A family living in a Bronze
Age capitol city like Rome is probably more likely to have running
water than an Iron Age family living in, say, London.... It takes
longer and the work is more labor intensive, so the difference
between such families is a higher level of scarcity (expense of the
respective items) for such things, but not a basic change in kind.

You have to go back a bit before things start to become demonstrably
different. Earlier, Stone Age tech sometimes has techniques that
seem strange nowadays. If a culture is pre-metal then they may not
have done things like master fire fully. Certain cultures, for
example, don`t even have ceramic cooking pots, but they are able to
weave baskets so well that they are water tight and they can still
cook by filling those baskets with food and then placing a heated stone in.

More significant differences between your Bronze Age and Renaissance
families are likely to come in things like textiles, architecture,
the amount and variety of foods available, and the size of urban areas.

>I would guess that a spy glass is only available in Brechtur. What
>about glass containers?

The ability to use carefully refine glass of the quality that can be
ground into a lens is pretty advanced, but glass itself is very old
technology, so glass containers will still exist. Again, glass will
be relatively rare and expensive in early compared to later levels of
technology. In addition to lenses, glass for windows starts to
become practical at Renaissance levels of technology.

>Or even stirrups for mounts? Where those available during the
>Bronze Age? Iron Age? Without stirrups can you still use a
>lance? Or fight very well at all from a mount?

Nope, no lances without stirrups. In fact, I doubt one could even
level a heavy lance and stay in the saddle at a full gallop let alone
hit something with it and expect to keep one`s seat. If such a thing
is even possible one wouldn`t do appreciably more damage than
throwing a spear from horseback since one would have to drop the
lance immediately to keep from being knocked off the horse. The
stirrup means you can get a big guy wearing lots of metal on back of
a similarly heavy mount and have him locked in place so as to
withstand the shock of impact from all of that material.

In BR terms, the stirrup means two things. First, there is no heavy
cavalry (knights) without it since that technology is what allows for
a heavily armored warrior to wield a long spear in battle. There
will be an equestrian "knightly class" of warriors, but what we think
of as a "knight in shining armor" can`t really exist without a
stirrup. Second, other forms of cavalry are going to be slightly
less effective since the stirrup also allows a more stable platform
for other types of weapons. Even archers are more effective on
horseback with stirrups. Other things can compensate for the lack of
technology like stirrups (such as training, cultural aptitude,
etc.) All of those factors should be figured into the stats for the
various mounted units from various cultures and regions.

Some folks suggest that the stirrup leads to a sort of stratification
of the social order since a special class of people are designated to
fight from horseback, heavier and heavier horses are bred for that
purpose and the feudal system of government is developed to support
the financial costs of the whole process. So one might argue that
the most significant differences between the lifestyle of a Bronze
Age and a Renaissance level family is that the Bronze Age family is
dealing with social conditions that are going to lead into the feudal
system while the Renaissance family is living in social conditions
that are post-feudal and still shrugging off the feudal system.

Gary

[ConjurerDragon]

Gary schrieb:
...
>> I would guess that a spy glass is only available in Brechtur. What
>> about glass containers?
> The ability to use carefully refine glass of the quality that can be
> ground into a lens is pretty advanced, but glass itself is very old
> technology, so glass containers will still exist. Again, glass will
> be relatively rare and expensive in early compared to later levels of
> technology. In addition to lenses, glass for windows starts to become
> practical at Renaissance levels of technology.
With "glass" meaning the thick uneven stuff that looks like the bottom
of coloured bottles and comes in small pieces that are held together by
a wooden frame?
Without explanation some might understand "glass for windows" as if from
that age on they had glass windows as nowadays with large, thin sheets
of glass.

[geeman]

At 01:06 PM 11/21/2007, Michael Romes wrote:

>With "glass" meaning the thick uneven stuff that looks like the
>bottom of coloured bottles and comes in small pieces that are held
>together by a wooden frame?
>Without explanation some might understand "glass for windows" as if
>from that age on they had glass windows as nowadays with large, thin
>sheets of glass.

Good question. Thanks for asking for the clarification.

By "glass for windows" I mean sheets of relatively clear glass that
could be cut into panes up to a foot or so across, but usually
smaller. Usually, the glass that looks like the bottom of glass
bottles comes along with actual sheets of (small) glass panes as part
of the same manufacturing process. During the "early" Renaissance
they figured out how to spin a bubble (a "crown") of molten glass
into a large circular disk 5-6 feet in diameter. Then they`d cut
that disk into squares for windows with the outer edge of the disk
having the nicer, thinner, more transparent glass squares while
towards the center the glass was thicker, more opaque, and rippled
panes, while at the very center there was a large "bulls-eye"
formation where the craftsman`s rod held the disk as he spun it.

You can still see this in various places where they are using "old
fashioned" glass that has a weird, circular dimple in some of the
panes. That`s the center of the circular plate where the craftsman
held it on a rod and spun out the glass. (Actually, a lot of the
"old fashioned" glass windows in which one sees that dimple feature
isn`t really classically produced glass at all. The dimple has been
stamped into it during the modern glass making procedure in order to
make it look like the old, hand produced stuff.) Historically, the
dimpled portion of the glass was often discarded, but people like
that feature now for some "old fashioned" buildings as it is a
reference to the old technique. Such window glass is generally
thicker and more likely to have bubbles and imperfections in it than
we might consider typical for window glass, but it basically worked.

Later they figured out how to blow the glass into a large cylinder,
reheat it, cut the ends off the cylinder and down one side then lay
out the glass flat to create one "broad piece" glass that was thinner
and more regular than the earlier type and less wasteful since the
"crown" method meant the rounded sections had to be cut away. Once
that technique was developed we start getting panes of glass that are
larger than few inches across, and not much later craftsmen created
"blown plate" glass by painstakingly polishing the inevitable ripples
and imperfections of a broad piece of glass to the point that it
could be used for "perfect" windows, mirrors, etc. That`s a pretty
similar to the process of crafting lenses.

Gary

[RaspK_FOG]

Excellent information on glass making.

On the matter of the lance, though, I have to make a point: you are correct only when it comes to the modern notion of a lance; a lance is, in fact, a long, thin spear, commonly but not exclusively used by horsemen. In fact, the word lance is very ancient (i.e. the Latin word lancea, and its Greek cousin λόγχη). What we know is that cavalry did not benefit from the tremendous momentum of horses in the use of a spear; rather, the horseman would use the swiftness and bulk of the horse to deliver a blow to a possibly cowering or fallen foe and gallop to the next position he could make use of. On the other hand, people could swing some of their shorter melee weapons, benefitting from the ability to transfer part of that momentum without falling off their steeds.

[kgauck]

The reason I posted the picture from the Bayeaux Tapestry was because it depicts people using a lance over handed and people who have been speared by lances. Note how high the spearing is done. There are a lot of depictions of horsemen going way, way back, up to the 11th century showing horsemen carrying their lances over handed, as if to throw, rather than under handed, using the momentum of a charging horse to do extra damage.

In D&D, charging on horseback gives you double from a lance, and if you take a feat you can get double damage with all weapons and triple damage from a lance. This is all based on the stirrup. Without the stirrup, no double damage for any weapon, because the energy on impact would not go into extra damage it just knocks you off the horse.

There are rules for other kinds of dismounting actions based on the trip mechanic, this would be much easier without stirrups.

Without this invention, horse cavalry is primarily a platform for missile attacks, not shock.

[geeman]

At 10:51 AM 11/28/2007, kgauck wrote:

>The reason I posted the picture from the Bayeaux Tapestry was
>because it depicts people using a lance over handed and people who
>have been speared by lances. Note how high the spearing is done.
>There are a lot of depictions of horsemen going way, way back, up to
>the 11th century showing horsemen carrying their lances over handed,
>as if to throw, rather than under handed, using the momentum of a
>charging horse to do extra damage.

My favorite take on the Bayeaux Tapestry comes from the historical
satirist Will Cuppy in his book _The Decline and Fall of Practically
Everybody_.

"The Bayeaux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of
life and the fine points of history in the eleventh century. For
instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies,
yellow manes and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed
and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings."

His take on Alexander the Great is similarly classic:

"He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of
more different kinds than any other man of his time. He did this in
order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly
a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I
to deny it?"

Gary