Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 12-14-2017, 11:59 AM   #11
Rasna
 
Rasna's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
TL2 Roman and Gallic helmet were already usually made from iron or steel.

Bronze is for contoured officers' breastplates and other ceremonial gear. During the Late Republic and Early Empire, Roman (and neighbouring) military armour is usually made from iron/steel, if it is made from metal at all.
At least not prior the 3rd century B.C.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
Thrusting Broadswords were the norm in Gaul, as elsewhere. And I'm not aware that metallurgy improved in any significant way in Europe after 600 CE over Roman or Gallic metallurgy around the 1st century BCE.
There are several citations of ancient historians which say that, until the 3rd century B.C., a lot of Gaulish swords weren't really suitable for thrusting and Gauls preferred to hit with swings rather than thrusts.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
As it already had been from Gaul, centuries before Caesar ever came there. Gallic allies fighting with the Romans in Britain were probably equally mystified as the common legionaries to see military equipment out of Homer's poems used on the battlefield.
Light chariots were in use in Britain during the first Roman conquest and were used in the Battle of Sentino (Italy, 295 B.C.).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
Aeduin and Remi cavalry, to name examples, were already equipped as heavy cavalry. They had mail, spears and swords.
Mail shirts with exposed limbs, six-feet spears and unarmoured horses make them medium cavalry, not heavy cavalry. As shown clearly in the confrontation betwenn 1,000 Parthian cataphracts and 4,000 Gaulish horsemen in the battle of Carrhae, Gauls were badly disadvantaged against true heavy cavalry, at least in face-to-face charges.

Last edited by Rasna; 12-14-2017 at 12:02 PM.
Rasna is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 12:18 PM   #12
Icelander
 
Icelander's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasna View Post
At least not prior the 3rd century B.C.

There are several citations of ancient historians which say that, until the 3rd century B.C., a lot of Gaulish swords weren't really suitable for thrusting and Gauls preferred to hit with swings rather than thrusts.
There's a reason I specified the 3rd century BCE as the break-point where many Mediterranean civilisations could usefully be described as having advanced a whole distinct TL compared to the earliest TL2 Iron Age civilisations.

The Hellenic world and the Roman world that overlapped it was a wholly different world than the primitive TL2 Iron Age world which came before it.

If we aren't going to add more Tech Levels, the cleanest way to represent this would be to assign the more advanced areas of the world from the 3rd century BCE onward to TL3.

As I noted earlier, the technological differences between Rome in the 1st century CE and pretty much any European polity in the 10th century CE are minimal, not to mention that even if there might be a few inventions that weren't available a millenia or so ago (horse collar, etc.), there will probably be significant areas like architecture, engineering and medicine where Rome was superior.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasna View Post
Light chariots were used in Britain during the first Roman conquest and were used in the Battle of Sentino (Italy, 295 B.C.).
I mention chariots in Britain in the text you respond to. Note that Britain isn't Gaul and that both Romans and many Celts considered the island of Britain a semi-mythological land where painted savages still fought using ancient methods like chariots.

Also note that 295 BCE is, in fact, centuries before Caesar invaded Gaul.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasna View Post
Mail shirts with exposed limbs, six-feet spears and unarmoured horses make them medium cavalry, not heavy cavalry. As shown clearly in the confrontation betwenn 1,000 Parthian cataphracts and 4,000 Gaulish horsemen in the battle of Carrhae, Gauls were badly disadvantaged against true heavy cavalry, at least in face-to-face charges.
I'm not objecting that Gallic cavalry were not useful shock cavalry. I'm simply making the point that the distinction is a tactical one, not based on equipment.

Plenty of real world shock cavalry / heavy cavalry have ridden unarmoured horses. Most of them, in fact.

18th to 19th Cuirasseurs or British Household cavalry didn't ride armoured horses and they wore less armour than Aedui or Remi cavalry. But because they rode on close order and were prepared to push a charge home, they are heavy cavalry and the Gauls weren't.

This isn't something that would necessarily change by changing the TL from TL2 to TL3.

Parthian cataphracts, for example, are TL2 and do not change measurably in equipment when they become TL3 Persian cataphracts.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Icelander is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 12:20 PM   #13
sir_pudding
Wielder of Smart Pants
 
sir_pudding's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasna View Post
The only two exception that come in my mind are Vercingetorix and Boudicca, but only in the optics of fighting a mayor overwhelming threath (Romans in both cases, and only when is too late).
These were temporary tribal alliances under a great chief's banner rather than empires. You see it again and again: Rory O'Connor, Fiach O'Bryne, Gerald Fitzgerald, Hugh O'Neil, the Jacobite Highlanders, and many more. Tribal divisions remained in each of these armies.

Last edited by sir_pudding; 12-14-2017 at 12:25 PM.
sir_pudding is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 01:33 PM   #14
Rasna
 
Rasna's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
There's a reason I specified the 3rd century BCE as the break-point where many Mediterranean civilisations could usefully be described as having advanced a whole distinct TL compared to the earliest TL2 Iron Age civilisations.
TL2, as TL3, includes many centuries of technological progress. In order to write my answer, I've taken mostly as reference 5th to 2nd century B.C. Gauls.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
I'm not objecting that Gallic cavalry were not useful shock cavalry. I'm simply making the point that the distinction is a tactical one, not based on equipment.
True, but the role is determined by the context, and equipment, own and enemy, is a fundamental part of the context. I'd prefer to define Gaulish cavalry as medium cavalry: they were capable of shock tactics and they were reatively well armed, but they often fought on foot, and short spears and unarmoured horses makes them in huge disadvantage against both coeval heavy infantry and heavy cavalry regarding frontal engagement.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
Parthian cataphracts, for example, are TL2 and do not change measurably in equipment when they become TL3 Persian cataphracts.
In this specific example, kinda yes, the two major changes occurred in TL2 (mail armor was introducted from west and gradually replaced scale/lamellar armor - which remained in use, sometimes combined with mail, until the 15th century A.D.; and the introduction of stirrup and the modifies on saddle at very late TL2 - very early TL3). TL3 Persian cavalry changed more radically next to TL4, at the end of 14th century. Mail, lamellar, or the combination of the two were replaced by mail and plates, and later by mail combined with some parts of plate armor (cuirass, vambraces, rerebraces, pauldrons, poleyns and greaves). Maybe Parthian TL2 cataphracts and very late Sassanids/Umayyad Persian cataphracts were similar in appaerance, but confronted with Parthian cataphracts, the second ones were often bow-and-lance horsemen and were more efficients in riding and shock tactics because their better riding equipment.

Cataphracts able to use the bow were a tactical innovation of late TL2, probably a response for the extremely mobile cavalry of Hephtalites and Turks. Being unable to engage in melee the light cavalry of the steppes in open fields, they had at least to be capable to return the arrows back to their enemies.

Last edited by Rasna; 12-14-2017 at 01:44 PM.
Rasna is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 01:44 PM   #15
Bruno
 
Bruno's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
These were temporary tribal alliances under a great chief's banner rather than empires. You see it again and again: Rory O'Connor, Fiach O'Bryne, Gerald Fitzgerald, Hugh O'Neil, the Jacobite Highlanders, and many more. Tribal divisions remained in each of these armies.
If I recall correctly, the Highlander tribes even occasionally turned on each other mid-battle, or one tribe would buzz off to leave another tribe they don't like very much to face the English by themselves.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table
A Wiki for my F2F Group
A neglected GURPS blog
Bruno is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 02:02 PM   #16
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mediolanum View Post
The point of divergence is that carthage and other punic cities in africa were destroyed by the numidians. Rome never expanded outside Italy and had little interest in it. Consequently, Gaul was never conquered and remained independent. Rough idea was that a tribe unites gaul, conquers Spain and England and builds an empire. Then it balkanizes after after several centuries into smaller kingdoms and republics.

Now I have problems forming the society. Feudal like the germanic kingdoms in our history or completely different? I am also uncertain about clothing, equipment and architecture.
It's difficult to keep Rome from having an interest in Gaul because they had a bloody history of being attacked from Gaul for obvious reasons of propinquity. Of course a Celtish kingdom that was united into a real kingdom with strong fortifications and an end to opportunistic raiding, any wars between them and Italia could probably be less common and more inconclusive.

Off hand you could do just about anything with the post-collapse Celts but I'd probably go with the north of France/Gaul being occupied by Germanic invaders, Britain broken up into a psuedo-Arthurian melange of micro-kingdoms suffering from Germanic sea raiders, and the south of France/Gaul being a tottering rump state under pressure from north and south. Meanwhile Iberia is occupied by a complacent Greco-Celtic realm that has gone it's own way and is a center of arts, culture and philosophy but is ripe for catastrophic collapse.

Last edited by David Johnston2; 12-14-2017 at 04:02 PM.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 03:31 PM   #17
JoelSammallahti
 
JoelSammallahti's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

I'm interested in finding out what's going on in the eastern Mediterranean in this alternate history. Does christianity still happen, under some Ptolemaic king instead of Roman rule? Without Rome in the way, do the Parthians or Sasanians swallow up Greece? What about the Arab conquests?

Anyway, without the flourishing of Rome, TL 3 would probably come pretty late to western Europe. Unless somebody invents a heavy plough independent of the Romans, or brings one over from China (they had them, right?), large parts of Gaul are going to stay pretty marginal for farming, and without Roman administrators and the church, is anyone going to bother with literacy? Most societies over human history have not been very inventive when it comes to technical progress; the Romans were an outlier there. Instead of a Gaulish High Middle Ages or even a Carolingian golden age, you might just get century on century of more of the same: the lifestyle will probably be of the clannish, cattle-rustling, Highlander variety.
JoelSammallahti is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 04:18 PM   #18
sir_pudding
Wielder of Smart Pants
 
sir_pudding's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti View Post
without Roman administrators and the church, is anyone going to bother with literacy?
The entire class of poet-priests and their huge formal schools probably do. They had an interest in literacy historically, even beyond the extents of the Empire, and even before Peglacius.
sir_pudding is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 04:26 PM   #19
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
The entire class of poet-priests and their huge formal schools probably do. They had an interest in literacy historically, even beyond the extents of the Empire, and even before Peglacius.
"Historically" they were illiterate. The Druids were poets because poetry is a good way to preserve oral tradition. But of course the Irish did invent Ogham later so there's no reason why the Gauls couldn't. In fact the creation of a strong central government almost guarantees they would either invent writing or adopt a script from the more civilized cultures.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-14-2017, 04:41 PM   #20
sir_pudding
Wielder of Smart Pants
 
sir_pudding's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
Default Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
"Historically" they were illiterate. The Druids were poets because poetry is a good way to preserve oral tradition. But of course the Irish did invent Ogham later so there's no reason why the Gauls couldn't. In fact the creation of a strong central government almost guarantees they would either invent writing or adopt a script from the more civilized cultures.
"Historically" includes everything from Sumer to a minute ago, and Gaels weren't always illiterate forever. There is definitely a period in which Ireland, never conquered by the Romans, and not yet Christianized in which the bardic poets (and largely the entire nuada class) were literate (not in Ogham, which was abandoned shortly after being invented but rather in the Roman alphabet which apparently they acquired through trade) and of course a period in which the bardic poets were active in the Christian Gaelic world (not just Ireland but the Isles and the Highlands) from the 11th through the 17th centuries. Note that Gaelic was one of the first European languages (if not the first) to have a standardized spelling and grammar, in the 12th century.

"A strong central government" is significantly less likely than literacy, IMO. The former requires a level of national identity over tribalism that Gaels didn't demonstrate until the 20th century while the latter is something they had significant cultural institutions which historically (after Rome, since that seems to be confusing)were interested in developing.

Last edited by sir_pudding; 12-14-2017 at 04:48 PM.
sir_pudding is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 09:45 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.