01-25-2021, 10:54 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
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Someone who just sharpened iron and steel blades might only have the Smith Skill for those metals (and maybe only at 12) and might not be repairing anyone's leaky copper pot (the default is probably too much for minimal Skill). An _Army_ might well have a dedicated armorer but he's got a whole wagonload of stuff. He might have a plain Smith(Iron) as a helper and someone to make horseshoes.
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Fred Brackin |
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01-25-2021, 10:54 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
Or a tinker could travel with a peddler as a junior partner/assistant. After all, there is safety in numbers.
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01-25-2021, 10:56 AM | #33 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
Well, he might be lying. A wandering huckster who claims exotic skills is realistic enough. Though there are usually safer people to defraud than the people who carry around swords.
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01-25-2021, 11:15 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
Quote:
Armies with money attracted people like this like a carcass attracts flies.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 01-25-2021 at 11:19 AM. |
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01-25-2021, 01:26 PM | #35 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
Quote:
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
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01-26-2021, 03:57 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Udine, Italy
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
Sure, and there's a nugget of useful information in that racist thing. I.e., that the tinker job was associated with wandering people; and that association is unlikely to have come into being recently (i.e., over just the latest dozen centuries).
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01-26-2021, 06:30 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
Quote:
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“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...” Marcus Aurelius |
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01-26-2021, 07:03 AM | #38 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of slurs when you go international, but it has a much more positive meaning in the USA. Tinkerers are considered clever and capable folk who, while not professional inventors, create amusing and odd little contraptions during their spare time. To 'tinker about' is to work on improving something inferior or to set about fixing something broken, so a pharmacist might tinker about to improve the proportions of a drug compound for a customer or a cook might tinker about a failed recipe to see how it might be salvaged.
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01-26-2021, 07:55 AM | #39 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
I live in a large city in North America and a guy in a little cube truck with a workshop in the back rolls through our neighbourhood every couple of months. He drives slowly and clangs a bell, and if you have work for him you hail him over. I don't know the full range of his work but sharpening things is what we've had him do.
I am not from this city, but old people told me they remember it being commonplace here from their earliest memories. |
01-26-2021, 08:18 AM | #40 | |
Join Date: Apr 2019
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Re: The "Tinker" fantasy trope or historical occupation?
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Most of this discussion has taken historical info from cultures that didn't even speak English. "Tinker" was just a convenient way to conjure the image I was referring to, and specifically with regard to the "fantasy trope". To start making bold "factual statements" like "He wouldn't call himself XXX" you need to first figure out if we are using the word the same, and if your application applies to mine (which it would seem it does not, to each his own). The guy is proud of being a Tinker, so deal with it. We can argue all day long about the various skills of someone that claims to be able to do "something" to a sword (which was also pretty vague, he might try to convince you he can magic it up, and maybe he can). Im not going to debate the point other than to say, I specifically said in my initial post the question was not one of simulation, and the answer would not change the way I use them in my games. It was an idol thought/question about the trope in general. The comment about the Army was me dropping a plot hook, not trying to insinuate he's an armorer... which I found an odd thing for you to take away from the discussion, and I would have enjoyed immensely at my table watching you as a PC gallivant off in the wrong direction because you assumed he meant something he never said or even intimated. So far I think I agree with Polydamas. Its most likely true, or true enough that you would have to get into specifics of Time, Location, and Culture but that answer would only be good for that set of variables. Thats good enough for me. If you want to argue the ins and outs of the word Tinker as you apply it, I will just bow out of that conversation as it doesn't interest me greatly nor will it alter my view of the world or how I construct medieval fantasy. |
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