Looking for fantasy/medieval weapon & equipment lists

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

And you know this because you have been to every planet in the universe? What we 'know' about chemistry and physics is based solely on what we can observe on OUR planet and has no bearing on anything else in existence. Your argument is specious at best.

That position is quite simply a denial of the possibility of science. Every major scientific theory goes from one specific set of observations or experiments to a universal assertion that is applied to things that have not yet been observed. Making such leaps to generalization is the only reason we have scientific predictions that can then be tested against further observation.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

I don't know what kind of cows (or pigs, sheep, goats, mares, or camels) they have where you live, but in the real world there is no 'milking season' and never has been. A lactating female mammal will not stop giving milk once a specific time of the year has passed since they will continue to lactate until you stop milking them or they die.

http://www.prairiefruits.com/content/1083 seems to disagree with you, at least about goats. I'm certainly not an expert on animal husbandry, but I seem to recall reading that medieval cattlemen didn't milk year round, perhaps because the shortage of fodder during the winter months made it hard to sustain a process as energy-intensive as lactation.

Bill SToddard

[Anders]

My favorite was a sourcebook which shall not be named, where dried carrots cost 3 times as much as silver and barley flour cost a hundred times as much as barley grain. I envision a world where carrot farmer and millers are the merchant princes, and rabbits are a scourge upon the land.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by hal

Ah well. No one is forcing you to use that price list. But I will make a suggestion to you.

Import that price list into a spreadsheet. Then, do an item by item check of those items such that you have a column that lists the Harn World price for that item, and the GURPS analog price for that item. Care to make a wager? That there will be less GURPS prices for that list than there are Harn prices? Care to bet it would be at least 50% to 25% less? I don't know as I stopped counting a long LONG time ago and ditched the GURPS units of cost for anything except perhaps my THE ARCANUM based campaigns, and even then, I still used the Silver based system from C&S to a large extent...

While the GURPS economic model is useless except for answering "how much do I start the game with," "how much does $foo cost," and (at low TLs) "how much money do I need to pay for downtime," those are the most common question gamers ask.

Its also worth remembering that all those HARN listings like "Scones," "Salmon," "Wheat" are included in generic categories ("Bread," "Fish," "High-Quality Grain" or similar ... I don't have the LT Companions) in GURPS. Others are built from a generic entry with rules for adjusting it, like dogs, slaves, and horses; or lumped into abstractions like Cost of Living or a suit of clothing. That's not better or worse, just different.

One of the GURPS projects I'm considering is taking data from prices and wages in England c. 1300 and turning them into a TL 3 price and wage list with notes on how prices might look in other times and places. We have enough data of prices actually paid to do that.

[hal]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

I don't know what kind of cows (or pigs, sheep, goats, mares, or camels) they have where you live, but in the real world there is no 'milking season' and never has been. A lactating female mammal will not stop giving milk once a specific time of the year has passed since they will continue to lactate until you stop milking them or they die.

They do tend to "dry up" a little relative to peak season from what I heard. Eventually, they produce less and less milk as they get older too, but that isn't anything I can point to saying " by that much..." (I get flashbacks of Maxwell doing his finger and thumb routine while saying that).

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

And you know this because you have been to every planet in the universe? What we 'know' about chemistry and physics is based solely on what we can observe on OUR planet and has no bearing on anything else in existence. Your argument is specious at best.

We are able to observe quite a bit about the rest of the universe, including quite a large number of stars. Spectrography is a fairly well established observation technology, and is almost certainly reliable (if it isn't then then the universe is really weird (like Matrix-weird). The basic model of stellar nucleosynthesis pretty much can't be wrong; if it was discovered in a an earlier more arrogant time we would be calling it a Law of Nature.

[nik1979]

Originally Posted by hal

They do tend to "dry up" a little relative to peak season from what I heard. Eventually, they produce less and less milk as they get older too, but that isn't anything I can point to saying " by that much..." (I get flashbacks of Maxwell doing his finger and thumb routine while saying that).

Id like to add:

The milking season coincide the birthing season and the progress of the calf,s maturity. Unless constantly stimulated, milk production dries up. There is a season for it because moving cows to various fields and getting particular bulls have to be timed for maximum output.

[nik1979]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

We are able to observe quite a bit about the rest of the universe, including quite a large number of stars. Spectrography is a fairly well established observation technology, and is almost certainly reliable (if it isn't then then the universe is really weird (like Matrix-weird). The basic model of stellar nucleosynthesis pretty much can't be wrong; if it was discovered in a an earlier more arrogant time we would be calling it a Law of Nature.

I think this video is highly appropriate and adequately explains.