Steve Jackson Games Forums - Medieval Horse Types and Traits

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Re: Medieval Horse Types and Traits

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celti (Post 1913385)

They're a reasonable approximation, to my mind, but suffer greatly from lack of granularity. I'd like to hear other opinions on the subject.

I feel they are too granular for good playability and prefer to merge multiple levels together (None with Light, Medium as it is, Heavy with X-Heavy).

Let a computer track the weight and mobility differences down to 1/100th of BL; I'm not going to do it in IRC or at the table.

Re: Medieval Horse Types and Traits

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1913523)

So even super strong creatures of mass X should slow down as much, by percentage of move, as weaker creatures of mass X given weight Y?

The physics of muscle behavior are a bit complicated, so in real-world situations that's a maybe. If you simplify, it becomes an unqualified yes.

To give an example with human performance, let's say we have a bicyclist with a combined mass (including cycle) of 80 kg, and he can bicycle up a 5% grade at 5 m/s (this is about 200W). Let's say a second bicyclist is twice as strong (and also has twice the cardio output) but has the same weight. He will manage about 10m/s up that same grade.

Now, add a 20 kg load to each of them. The first one will slow down to 4m/s, the second will slow down to 8m/s. Once we start talking about walking, running, etc, it becomes grossly more complicated, mostly because of people being unable to fully take advantage of their strength and thus moving slower than they technically could.

Re: Medieval Horse Types and Traits

I really wish mass wasn't a zero point NEVER a (dis)advantageous feature in Gurps. It disallows such interesting aspects of real world physics.

I wonder how we could house rule it into things.

Re: Medieval Horse Types and Traits

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flyndaran (Post 1913383)

In what ways are they fairly poor?

They have no money and live in books ; even in Detroit that's considered poor .

Re: Medieval Horse Types and Traits

Icelander, this is great!

The only thing I'd want further would be a table which shows what the typical range is in each class, which is a quibble I have about GURPS templates in general. I.e., these seem to be specific examples within a class, but then it takes some deduction to determine how much to vary each piece or not for other examples of the same class. You give good descriptions though, so it's relatively easy.

The costs look good to me, but it's been a long time since I analysed any horse costs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icelander (Post 820441)

... I know that each type needs a longer flavour text and rules for upkeep and care are missing. I direct you to the Pyramid article Horse Sense by a Mr. Mortimer for both, with my 4e stats replacing the 3e stats in the article. It's even a free article, I think, and should have survived the Pyramid changes.

Ah, I was about to ask where the good horse rules were in 4e. I guess they’re still in that awesome classic Pyramid article.