Further to my most recent post about Medieval armour, there's an interesting blog called How To Make Armour. This provides some insights into how various types of objects from the period can be made, which could come in quite handy when trying to draw such things. I've always found that it's much easier to draw something if you know how it's constructed - that includes the human body, armour, cars, etc.
Similar information can also be found at Age of Armour, which also includes a some great photos of compeleted commissions.
Medievalists.net may also slake your thirst for further knowledge about the Medieval world.
Twilight: 2000 is an RPG born out of the Cold War.
I was born in 1969, and the Cold War started to come into focus for me in the
late 70s and early 80s – and I didn’t like it at all. The one thing that really
terrified me was the threat of nuclear war. I grew up near a major air base
(RNAS Yeovilton) and a principal aviation factory (Westland Helicopters), so I
knew that I would be vaporised should the Cold War turn hot. Because of this,
life did sometimes feel like there was a lid on it – sure, I carried on with
things (going to school, playing RPGs, listening to heavy metal, watching a lot
of bad straight-to-video movies, etc), but there was always this nagging sense
that somewhere in the background things could get nasty very quickly. Various
themes from the time fed into that sense – the Falklands War, the Soviet Army
fighting in Afghanistan, the Lebanese War and various other conflicts covered
by the news on TV. TV also did much to add to my fears by showing programmes
such as Threads...
To this day, watching it still makes me uncomfortable. The US attempt at such scariness, The Day After, was (to my mind, then and
now) somehow watered down and almost more like sci-fi. British TV was once very
good at creating gritty, stark programmes and I don’t think anyone really
topped their output.
I remember reading an issue of White Dwarf at school in 1984
and seeing an advert for Twilight: 2000, deciding then and there to buy it
whenever I got the chance. I liked the idea of a game where you had to try and
survive after World War III. As with my recent Ebay trawling for Car Wars, I’ve
just gotten my hands on a pretty decent copy of Twilight: 2000...
I've included the FFE compendium (top right) as I'm a completist. Note the original game dice.
If you’re not familiar with the game’s back story, there’s
an overview here.
What follows is an overview of the 1st Edition rules that I’ve
played the most – I’ll state here and now that this version does a better job
than later reworks. Over the years I’ve read various articles slating it as
both a game and a system. Some think that nowadays the game seems ‘unrealistic’
(and this is coming from people who probably don’t use the same critiques for
D&D etc), because the world it creates no longer seems plausible. Others
think that the system is clunky. I don’t share the view of either point. Firstly,
I don’t think people are really judging the game for its ‘What if...?’ value. Like
all RPGs, the game works from a certain premise. Sure, real world events
overtook the premise of Twilight: 2000, but that doesn’t make it defunct. You
could still play it for the story it’s trying to tell. Nowadays, it’s simply a
fantasy that has links to certain realities.
As for the game system, one of its strengths is the way it
tries to model some quite complex concepts (combat, illness, survival,
radiation), and I don’t think that any other RPG has topped the way things were
done in Twilight: 2000. Skills are easy enough – your character (some form of
military personnel) starts with some, and you can buy others on a point for point
basis. As these work around percentile values, there’s nothing difficult about
it. These percentages affect the outcome of an action or event, and are modified
on the basis of whether they are Easy, Average or Difficult to carry out. This
covers anything from riding a horse, to making things, to firing weapons. At
the same time, even high level skill values don’t make you some sort of god.
Your rolls are always modified by the difficulty of the task at hand, so
success isn’t necessarily a given. As the game is strongly based around its
combat system, some may feel that it’s a bit complicated. On the surface, this
is true – especially so of modelling the effects of rounds striking vehicles.
However, some basic familiarity with it soon pays off. If anything, things can
happen fast and can be resolved quickly, especially as the game seems more
geared towards firefights. You just have to take various factors into account –
range, whether you can fire before the other guy, etc. At the same time, combat
very much has the potential to be lethal and players who understand this have
to think and plan what they want to do, certain in the knowledge that resorting to
combat has some stark consequences. Death is somewhat likely, and surviving
with wounds isn’t a given. The environment is just as likely to finish you off
as a bullet if you get things wrong.
To my mind, this forces players to be a bit more cerebral
about combat. The same can’t be said for many RPGs. As I was the referee for
our Twilight: 2000 sessions, it was always interesting to see my gang of
players trying to figure out consequences before the fact. This was especially
so because when playing other RPGs they tended to have a much more cavalier,
gung-ho approach of the ‘shoot first...’ variety. On top of all of this, the
world setting in the game pitched the players against odds which were never in
their favour. They were, after all, trying to survive in a (probably) foreign
country that had come off the worst for nuclear exchanges and many years of
bloody fighting. As soldiers, no-one was telling them what they should do – the
last radio message from their HQ was ‘Good luck. You’re on your own, now’. The
game, sensibly, provides no moral compass for what they should do. Because of
such factors, it was a challenge to play and referee as an RPG.
We played Twilight: 2000 a great deal. As it was a GDW game,
it was strongly supported by reference material and scenarios and these did
much to add flavour to the experience. My guys managed to survive quite well
over the years. Most of them were from the US infantry (i.e. Rasche, a giant
Yiddish-speaking Spec 4, and Markowitz the medic), although we had one or two Warsaw
Pact deserters - all being led, in a way, by a British combat engineer. Nomadic
for most of the time, they teamed up for a while with a NATO-friendly Polish
commander who was trying to rebuild his area of control. They finally managed
to rejoin a more organised NATO force, only to then be moved to the Middle East
in an effort to secure Iranian oil fields...
I decided to get the FFE compendium of the 1st
Edition stuff because it seems to have some interesting extras (i.e. details of
the games sales figures, various scenarios) and it’s handy for me to have
everything bundled together. At the same time, it’s great to have the actual 1984
issue of the game back in my hands again. It’s actual approach to the subject
(and I think this was lost in later editions) is sobre and measured. This is
particularly true of the interior artwork, as there’s no attempt at going for clichéd
approaches to the subject matter. One other factor of note is that it features
women on the box cover who aren’t in silly poses and are depicted as sensibly
as the male figures.
Could it still be played today as an RPG? Well, you may have
to explain the Cold War to players born after 1990 – or research it yourself if
the same time-frame applies to you. Even if you narrow your approach to the way
things were in the 1980s, taking some time to research the period would pay
off. To be honest, if you’re more familiar with the idea of ‘The War on Terror’,
the idea of the Cold War isn’t all that different – it could be said that the
latter is just not as nebulous and as open to interpretation as the former. It
would also be possible to abandon the idea of playing in the post-apocalyptic
world of the original game and instead use the rules to play in some other
setting. There are conflicts, old and new, in which the game system would still
work.
One thing to always bear in mind, however, is that is first
and foremost a game about survival...
Before I sign off the the holiday and disappear into the wilds of Somerset, I thought I'd point you at this interesting clip on Youtube:
I gather that this demonstrates the use of what could be called an Arbalest, as this seems to be what we can see in the footage. These would be what D&D would call a 'heavy crossbow', and seems to be a bit more dangerous than the D&D version. That said, there are accounts of brigandinebeing able to provide protection against crossbows - although what type of crossbow and at what range, I'm not sure.
See you in the New Year - providing I haven't suffered death by cider...
When I first started playing D&D, I had no idea what a Bec de Corbin
was, nor something as exotic sounding as a Bohemian Ear Spoon. The name
alone was enough to conjure all sorts of mental images. Although recent versions of D&D seem to forgo the roots of the game with regard to the medieval influences, some of you may still want to include the variety of weapons 1e etc included.
Luckily, there are various ways of finding out what those weapons looked like and what they did. You could, for example, get your hands on a copy of G.C. Stone's A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times, Together With Some Closely Related Subjects. I advise getting a used copy, as they're cheaper (mine was less than 20 quid and seems to be an ex-library copy from Canada). It's a weighty illustrated tome that describes a variety of weapons that could be used in D&D or a similar fantasy setting. You just have to try and ignore the fact that it was written quite some time ago and still lists some cultures as being 'savages'. I kid you not.
If, however, you want a quick overview you could always try YouTube. For starters, there's this:
Or this:
Okay, the presenter is a bit creepy but neverthless it's interesting to see a reconstruction of these items and, to a certain extent, how they were used.
If you don't mind the somewhat flippant approach to the subject matter, there's this:
Parts 2 and 3 can be found hereand here. This gives a good basic overview of the sort of weapons one could use in earlier versions of D&D.
One interesting factor about some of these weapons is that they have more than one use. The pole axe has, for example, three different parts that can attack in different ways and these could be handy for different situations.This is isn't really covered by the 1e D&D weapon rules aside from what happens when being charged by an opponent. I guess that one could, as is the case with some monster attacks, divide up the potential damage into different types.
From an artistic point of view, such footage can come in handy when trying to visualise how someone might look when putting such weapons to use. There's also the fact that most of the people involved in these videos are wearing armour etc similar to the sort of kit adventurers would in a fantasy RPG setting (although perhaps not all that plate...). It seems that quite a bit of fantasy art owes more to LARPing or Renaissance festivals - which isn't a good thing.
Anyway, hopefully the above stuff shows that you don't have to resort to silly giant two-headed axes, massive manga-esque swords etc in order to have some interesting weapons to hand in D&D and other similar RPGs. As I've said before, history has usually already provided a tried and tested precedent that you can borrow from - and a fair few of these are somewhat exotic.
Right, I'm off to the shops. Now, where did I put that Earspoon...?
An interesting article appeared today on the BBC website about the demise of the ninja. It seems that once the last generation of actual ninjas dies there will be no more of them. I hope that there is going to be some sort of effort to set down information about what they did for the historical record.
I also imagine that, once this last generation has gone, the way ninjas are portrayed will probably get even sillier than has been the case over the years. As a subject, they've had a rough handling from film and TV - not to mention RPGs. Even basic ideas about what they look like have been disposed of, for various reasons. For example, this is what a ninja actually looks like:
And this is an example of how a modern RPG tries to do things:
Note the difference between reality and a badly researched image. Poor ninja. And in the above case, poor female ninja. I also imagine you could hear her approaching a miles off with all that kit clunking about.
Why is this a big deal? Well, even in a fantasy setting, what enriches any given subject is how much it can tap into what's already real. I mean, what's the point of doing anything about ninjas if it's not taking a lot of cues from the real ones? Add to that the fact that, if you're going to borrow ideas from the history of any given culture, are you doing yourself any favours by trying to rewrite that for your own ends? Too many people have done a bad job of it - do you really want to add to that? If you're going to borrow, do a good job of it. Likely as not, the realities of how your chosen subject matter has developed during it's existence is going to a rich source of ideas and inspirations. Chucking all of that out of the window to make some half-assed presumptions is probably not a good idea.
One thing that's always bugged me about RPGs - especially those with a fantasy setting - is that they can tend to be chock full o' clichés. Not so much in how they read as a system or a world as such, but how they present themselves to potential players (and everybody else, for that matter). I noticed this as a new player back in the 80s, and it still seems to be a thorn in my side today. It doesn't seem to be as much of a 'problem' for, say, sci-fi or horror RPGs. Okay, this may be more about artwork than anything else, but art can sometimes be it's own strong theme within any given RPG. We can't deny that it's used in RPGs as a way to help frame the overall vibe of the game - but it seems that some clichés just won't go away. So let's consider a few of them...
Women
Let's face it, women are usually portrayed pretty bloody poorly in a lot of fantasy RPG art. This isn't just the case in '70s era D&D, where the social mores of the time were a little... different (not that that excuses it). It's still the case nowadays. WotC and Paizo are both guilty of this with D&D and Pathfinder. Much as they may try and wriggle out of it (i.e. see this interesting post over at the excellent Gaming As Women blog), they still tend to churn out the same old crap. Or variations on it. It's not exactly original nor is it something that sends out any sort of positive signals. Do I blame the artists? Well, yes and no. Maybe they just like to draw scantily-clad women. Or maybe their art directors say they should draw them that way. Either way, it's lazy.
The interesting thing is that the game world of D&D etc doesn't really mention anything about the role that women have in them. Okay, maybe these can be inferred in some way, but that's perhaps down to who's playing the game. Things seem to be inherently less polarised than real-world modern societies. But the way RPG art handles things tends to ignore this and instead plumps for tried and tested fantasy portrayals. To my mind this actually makes things less interesting. It seems that such portrayals have missed the plot.
Equipment
What do I mean by equipment? Well, I mean clothing, weapons, armour and general kit. There seems to be a tendency in modern versions of fantasy RPGs - and, again, D&D and Pathfinder being obvious examples - to seem to want to go down the World of Warcraft/Japanese digital RPGs route. That is, equipment is portrayed in a rather silly way, and some bits tend to get ignored completely. So the overall picture of any given character type focuses on certain things at the expense of others.
Let's take armour and weapons, for instance. Originally, D&D took it's influences for such things from the Medieval period, and with good reason. The way armour and weapons evolved up to and throughout that period fits the setting well, whilst at the same time suggests a plethora of styles and designs. However, this tends to get ignored. Your average depiction of a fighter-class person tends to owe more influences to Frank Frazetta than anything else. Or, as I mentioned above, World of Warcraft in mordern versions of some fantasy RPGs. Thus we see depictions of madly impractical armour and weapons - huge swords and double-headed axes, armour that you can probably only stand up in because of the spikes, huge curved sections, etc. Again, who's to blame? Well, I'd say artists. It seems that people haven't done some actual - even basic - research. Perhaps all that actual history just isn't enough. This is a real shame because if they stopped looking at how other lazy artists have done the same thing (a copy of a copy of a copy...), they'd see that armour and weapons from history can be interestingly eccentric. To give one example: many moons ago I created some artwork for the 'Ultima Thule' sourcebook for Ars Magica. I dug into my research and looked at how Viking and Scandinavian clothing, weapons, etc should look. This fed directly into my illustrations. All of that was then undone by the cover artwork, which decided instead to resort to clichés. The Viking even has a horned helmet. Oh well. Anyway - have a look atthis page on medieval weapons and armour. Lots of odd designs there, but all evolved to be that way from practical use. This doesn't have to mean that it's boring. Similarly, if we have a look at the historical artwork of an artist like Angus McBride we can see that there's a variety of interesting shapes, designs and colours.
As for other bits of kit, things tend to get worse. Practicality is out the window. If a woman is wearing anything, it tends to be scanty in some way. If it's a magic user or magical character class, they wear some sort of elaborate cassock - unless they're a female magic user, in which case they wear something scanty but long-flowing (i.e. see the Pathfinder core rulebook cover). You rarely see 'in-action' scenes with the characters lugging about the stuff we all know they should have: rope, baggage, lighting, bedding rolls, etc. No-one seems to be wearing anything that would help you in a cold, dirty, inhospitable dungeon environment. Why can't someone depict a magic user in a more practical garb? A cassock-like thing doesn't seem all that sensible to me. Imagine the draughts, for starters.
To sum up (for now)...
Okay, this may seem like a bit of a rant. Perhaps I'm taking things too literally. But why should the depictions in fantasy RPGs be doomed to stick to clichés? It seems a bit half-arsed. Things don't seem to have changed all that much since the '80s. It's all a little too staid and predictable. Whilst I'm not saying that fantasy RPGs have to take their influences from medieval stuff, it might actually help drive things along more original paths. Failing that, is it perhaps too much to ask that something more imaginative gets added to the mix?
That's it for now - until I can write about some other stuff along similar lines. Please feel free to pick holes, disagree, etc...
