02-04-2023, 07:47 AM | #31 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
Mail requires the metal to be highly refined so that most of the slag has either been removed or finely distributed throughout the metal. Otherwise it can't be pulled through the drawplate. Plate can be made from poorer quality iron.
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02-04-2023, 07:49 AM | #32 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
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http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html The only plate that is more expensive than mail, is a custom tailored fully articulated suit. Giovanni Michiel was a Venetian Ambassador to Queen Mary and King Philip. This comes from his "Report of England", written to the Venetian Senate on the 13th May, 1557. He is describing what regular English fighters wore to battle and tells us that plate armour was the least preferable of all the armours available - only worn by those who couldn't afford something better such as mail or a jack or a padded doublet. "... and for the body they either use some sort of breastplate (qualche petto di corsaletto) which guards the forepart, although indifferently, or else more willingly (especially those who have the means) some jack (giaco) or shirt of mail (camicia di maglia); but what they usually wear are certain padded canvas jupons (giubboni di canevaccio imbottiti), each of which is double high, two fingers or more in thickness (doppi alti due dita); and these doublets are considered the most secure defence against the shock of arrows. Upon their arms they place strips of mail (liste di maglia), put lengthways, and nothing else."
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Compact Castles gives the gamer an instant portfolio of genuine, real-world castle floorplans to use in any historical, low-tech, or fantasy game setting. Last edited by DanHoward; 02-04-2023 at 08:00 AM. |
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02-04-2023, 07:53 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
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02-04-2023, 12:57 PM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
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People throughout history have wanted there to be a just or fair or true price of things, but it's a fantasy and always has been. I've said before than I think game prices would be more "accurate" if they were all rounded to the nearest power of 10, but nobody would stand for that.
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02-04-2023, 02:03 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
And when did one-piece helmets become standard? Looks like early helmets (unless bronze) were more likely to be constructed of multiple pieces (spangenhelm).
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02-04-2023, 02:23 PM | #36 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
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02-04-2023, 03:53 PM | #37 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
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Case in point: one of my more prized volumes is Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, by the eminent economic historians Robert Lopez and Irving Raymond. It's largely commentary wrapped around hundreds of original documents and sources, which I appreciate -- I want to read the original documents for myself and make my own conclusions. Among the many documents in the book is a comprehensive list of nearly three hundred trade goods as given in Pegolotti's 14th century Florentine text The Practice of Commerce. There are over three dozen footnotes in the section, either giving the authors' interpretation (or best guess) of what they think a particular item is, or in a number of cases leaving the term untranslated from the original Italian, conceding that they had no idea what it could have been. And this from two of the most eminent medieval economists of the past century. So I'm thinking, with the best of intentions, that we aren't going to come up with more accurate answers among us for some of these thornier questions.
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02-04-2023, 04:00 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
Nah, there is no power n such that x^n = 0 for x !=0.
It does make cheap useful things cost $10 or $1 or $0.1. And yeah, it flattens out a lot of resource allocation decisions when most hand weapons cost $100 and most good armors cost $1000, but that's sort of the point about unrealistic pricing by utility, it's largely there to [enable] those kind of play issues, which may well not be realistic.
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02-04-2023, 04:27 PM | #39 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
The Romans turned out thousands of them.
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02-04-2023, 04:41 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: [Low-Tech]Question about silk horse armor
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Around the year 1500, Henry VIII's Great Wardrobe paid about 4s (48d) a yard for the cheapest silks (saracenet, perhaps similar to modern taffeta), and 6d an ell for basic linen shirting. The linen was probably 50-100% wider than the silk and an English ell is longer than an English yard, so that gets you silk being ~10 times as expensive as linen. Source: Caroline Johnson, The King's Servants
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