Armoury of Antiquity: Questions regarding archaic arms and armor

[Verjigorm]

Basically, suggestions for the weapon and statistics. It's a tube, attached to a bow, that allows one to fire "mice", which are small darts. These darts apparantly possess good range, and lethality. I'm not sure what do do about it, but I was wondering if anyone else had had one show up in their games.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare...al/weapon.html

I can't find too much that gives me any details, I was hoping one of you smart guys who know so much, and have helped me a bit could come to rescue. Yet again.

I'm seeing alot that seems to suggest these "mice" were multiple small darts fired from the solenarion. Which is kind of interesting.

[jason taylor]

Two uses I could see.
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I forgot to finish that thought. The second idea would be that it would be one of the commodities picked up on a trading voyage up and down the Volga

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Basically, suggestions for the weapon and statistics. It's a tube, attached to a bow, that allows one to fire "mice", which are small darts. These darts apparantly possess good range, and lethality. I'm not sure what do do about it, but I was wondering if anyone else had had one show up in their games.

I happen to have Vol. 2 of David Niccole's Medieval Warfare Sourcebook in my too-small personal library, and it mentions arrow-guides in several places.

p. 36: "This was the arrow-guide which enabled an archer to shoot small, flat-trajectory dart-like arrows using an ordinary bow. Its precise origin remains a mystery, though it is first mentioned in the Middle East by Byzantine sources, where it was known as the solenarion."

p. 74 refers to its use by Mediterranean infantry, and that the dart was short, between an arrow and a bolt in length (the tube would let the bow be drawn farther than the length of the arrow). I'm not sure what the advantages of such things would be, since bolts are very bad aerodynamically, yet they clearly had a purpose. No idea about stats, but heavier arrows give better damage and worse range up to a point, then both start to decline. There are significant problems with the current bow rules in general- there really need to be variant stats for each type of ammunition.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

*I have sometimes thought it sounded like a good plot device in a Medieval game to make the actual players unsure whether they are playing in a fantasy game-their confusion will imitate a real person facing the unknown in an age that was less skeptical, or at least skeptical about different things.

Sounds interesting. Throw in a pile of Medieval superstitions and don't let the players know whether the rituals actually work (real magic) or whether successful outcomes occur because of more mundane events.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Basically, suggestions for the weapon and statistics. It's a tube, attached to a bow, that allows one to fire "mice", which are small darts. These darts apparantly possess good range, and lethality.

Not all that lethal. Joinville recounts a few occasions when warriors were hit by these things and not seriously injured. On one occasion he was hit by five of them. They penetrated his gambeson but not enough to take him out of the fight. He said that he was still sore the following day. On another occasion a knight was riding up and down a street. Each time he made a pass he was hit by these darts but each time he stoppped, he pulled the darts out of his mail and turned his horse around for another charge.

[Anders]

Perhaps we should rename the thread "Bickering regarding archaic arms and armor"... :)

Stats for different kinds of arrows - my guess is that it will be in Low-Tech (or, as it is also known, Cabaret Chicks on Ice). Remember that the GURPS system is still pretty "bare-bones". I wonder if they will adopt mr Howard's thoughts about the various kinds of mail...

Here's another fun weapon: The Thracian/Dacian falx. Stats? I'm thinking either Naginata or Two-handed sword.

[bergec]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Sounds interesting. Throw in a pile of Medieval superstitions and don't let the players know whether the rituals actually work (real magic) or whether successful outcomes occur because of more mundane events.

My wife and I have toyed with running a medieval game with no actual supernatural elements, just lots of religion, superstition, and mysticism. We wondered how long it would take the players to realize that magic and prayer and the like really weren't doing anything and that every supernatural event had a mundane explanation. If, in-character, everything is couched in superstition and spoken of in supernatural terms, it would be hard to tell the difference. Just have to keep in vague and describe stuff through the filter of the mindset and not modern sensibilities or other meta-knowledge.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Not all that lethal. Joinville recounts a few occasions when warriors were hit by these things and not seriously injured. On one occasion he was hit by five of them. They penetrated his gambeson but not enough to take him out of the fight. He said that he was still sore the following day. On another occasion a knight was riding up and down a street. Each time he made a pass he was hit by these darts but each time he stoppped, he pulled the darts out of his mail and turned his horse around for another charge.

to be fair, how lethal are bows, really? I've read one account in Harold Lamb's The Crusades from an arab describing Frankish infantry in mail coats with felt under them walking about with 21 or more arrows in them, and not minding a whole lot. And with the average damage of a ST 11 man using a composite bow(1d+2), it seems pretty fair. The armor described would either be Mail(DR 4/2) or Mail with cloth armor underneath(5/3). That means vs DR 4 you have a total damage of 0-6(average of 2-4), and vs DR 5 you are looking at 0-4(average of 0-2).

I'm of the opinion that a wound of 2-4 HP would be little more than heavy bruising, with maybe a slight penetration. After-all, a credible soldier with HT 11 and Fit, would heal that damage in a few days. Even an average man would be sore for at most a week or so from such a wound.

In a real-world example, friday night I hit my fore-head(left eyebrow, specifically) on a door-edge after some drunken sparring, and I suffered a mild concussion. Now, the wound is slowly closing up, but I'll probably have it for a week or more. I *should* get stitches, but I'm not a fan of needles, doctors or their bills. So how much damage should that be? Probably around 6+ total, to have forced me to check for stun and knockdown.

I think all this is borne by the damage a composite bow inflicts on an unarmored torso(6-16, average 10), which is enough to stagger an average man(ST 10-11), and possibly cause him to fall unconcious very quickly. A blow to the vitals would be 9-24, enough to outright kill many men, and likely enough to put them unconcious.

The effectiveness of bows seems to drop off rapidly as armor is worn.

Anyway, all that aside, what would be appropriate to represent a solenerion? Perhaps:
Solenerion, DAM Thr+1 imp, Acc 5, Range x15/x20, Weight 4/0.08, Shots 1(3), Cost ???, St 10, Bulk -8.

This puts in a kind of strange middle ground. It's accurate enough to give it a sizeable advantage over the composite bow and crossbow, if one targets vulnerable locations. It's RoF and Bulk have been increased due to the added difficulty of use due to the addition of a long tube. I can see a solenerion being useful in the hands of a skilled man, targeting throats, vitals, eyes and skulls. But against armor, I don't imagine it would be too effective.

Range may be too generous, as may accuracy. I've noticed a huge difference in the effectiveness of crossbows and bows(a crossbowmen in my 1091 game lastnight shot our intrepid Holy Roman Knight in the eye, through his great helm. The Knight's ok, thanks to magic.), primarily due to the increase in accuracy, but also due to damage. Rate of fire though, butchers the crossbow's effectiveness.

Do you think the solenerion is more of a one dart launched item, or is it perhaps something like a primitive machinegun, capable of firing multiple darts simultaneously?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by bergec

My wife and I have toyed with running a medieval game with no actual supernatural elements, just lots of religion, superstition, and mysticism. We wondered how long it would take the players to realize that magic and prayer and the like really weren't doing anything and that every supernatural event had a mundane explanation. If, in-character, everything is couched in superstition and spoken of in supernatural terms, it would be hard to tell the difference. Just have to keep in vague and describe stuff through the filter of the mindset and not modern sensibilities or other meta-knowledge.

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Add another complication-having a mundane explanation doesn't have to preclude having a non-mundane one(the existance of keyboards does not prove the nonexistance of Microsoft).
And not all "mundane" explanations are really mundane. Some are positively weird. Look at radiation-that certainly seems weird yet it is natural.

I have often thought if one is to be a pre-modern it would be an easier role to play a Medieval Italian, or Ancient Greek urbanite; say a Venetian trader. Such a person could easily be trained to categorize in a fairly recognizable fashion, thus the problem of deciphering "natural vs supernatural" is more likely to play a role in his mode of thinking-wheras a nomad or peasant might wonder what in the world you are talking about. Thus it would be less easy to roleplay.
Describing things through the mindset of a Venitian trader is also far easier for the GM then through the mindset of a Russian peasant. Most of those who have seen that mindset have done so from the outside and don't really know what it feels like. The one person I do know who would know what that was like, an Indochinese exile(from a tribe hosed by the commies) at my church, I havn't asked for the reason that it is not polite to pry with people who have suffered and he has rebuilt his life over here.
On the other hand steping into the shoes of a upper-to-middle class urbanite of reasonable education from premodern times is a very small step. One has to remember the little complications, which are trickier then the bigger ones and thus less easily avoided. An obvious if rather amusing way to catch what a fairly rich Venetian would have been like is to watch Godfather and then filter out the specifically criminal elements(actually the movie already does that-most of the violence is clan feuds, and the really sordid parts of the Corleone family business is not shown). Godfather is to a large degree a display of traditional Italian family rivalrys in a "peculiar" context-but a context that would be fammiliar in the 1300's. Not all Italian familys lived like Mafioso of course but it was more out in the open in those days.
The old computer game Marco Polo actually does this "Medieval Mindset" sort of thing well, to the point of makeing one or two of the travellers tales actually true. Salamander, the legendary metal from the skin of lizards that live in the center of the Earth, is an actual commodity in the game-and a quite profitable one. Thus they treat the fabulous in a mundane way that is very appropriate to a Medieval. Patrician III(set in the Hanseatic League) does this less well by regularly fining the player because the town council heard that he said the world was round which was fairly well known then(Columbus was attempting to prove the world's roundness could be turned to economic advantage, not to prove the world was round).
Fortunatly minor complications won't be noticed and are easily dodged. What is more tricky is to make the character different-yet-recognizable to a modern. If he is made just like a modern it is really a time travel story disguised as a historical fiction. If he is made more different then history warrants, that also offends. The first flaw is probably more common.
All that said, roleplaying an urbanite character from a different time requires less difficulty then roleplaying someone who is totally uneducated. That requires changing your psychology. Not completly-humans are always human. But to a unrecognizable degree. The is-it-or-isn't-it system for describing uncanny events fits well into this sort of thing. As a bonus it can be made more scary then the rather unimaginitive "throw fireball-roll against targets constitution" stuff which in essence simply changes the rules rather then making the character unsure what the rules are. Ignorance in a RPG is a formidable tool.

[jason taylor]

"Thus they treat the fabulous in a mundane way that is very appropriate to a Medieval"

seems contradictory to:

"As a bonus it can be made more scary then the rather unimaginitive "throw fireball-roll against targets constitution" stuff which in essence simply changes the rules rather then making the character unsure what the rules are. Ignorance in a RPG is a formidable tool."

In fact they both have a place. What is required for my hypothetical Venetian trader is to create a world where the "uncanny" is believed in not just as a philosophical posibility(I.E. as a modern westerner who is religious might), but as an actual rather than theoretical part of their lives, but make the character able to differentiate between one and the other in a way a primative or semi-primative might not. Thus using uncannyness in a mundane fashion is a part of this genre. A "science" of magic doesn't fit.