Gaming Things I've Learned

[Christopher R Taylor]

One of my favorite TV shows of all time, and my favorite currently on is Forged In Fire.  For those who haven't watched this show, its about blacksmiths, making weapons and having them tested by a panel of experts, including historians, martial artists, and expert blacksmiths.  They make knives primarily, but really any non-black powder weapon can show up, from bows to broadswords.

 

Watching that show has taught me a lot about the relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as the things that can go wrong with weapons and how easily they can be ruined.  Its been enlightening for a Fantasy Hero writer to see the differences, sometimes subtle, in weapon designs.  For example, a show involving a claymore had two go up against each other: one was light and flexible, the other strong and heavy.  Each had its strengths in various testing, being better in some situations and worse in others.

 

What kind of stuff have you learned for use in gaming from various sources?

 

PS: Sabers are terrifying weapons.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

PS: Sabers are terrifying weapons.

 

 

Actually, that.  I learned that.  I can't remember from where, but it was thirty years or so ago, and it stuck with me.  More than anything, that's what I remember every time someone makes a new post in the "swords / spaceships" thread in the Star Hero forum.

 

I couldn't begin to list all the science sources, and at this point, neither could I list all the medical sources, but I can tell you that including accurate medical situations "for drama" means _way_ more dead people, and it's best to skip. 

 

Rudimentary physics demonstrated to me that Traveller's original movement methodology (the 70's version) was the most accurate in any game, but it's tedious.  However, it helped spur me to generate a "lite" version of that which I still use to this day in our Atomic Rockets setting:  it doesn't hold up in Space Opera, simply because the tech itself in Space Opera is meant to be an enabling device, and not a limiting device to be overcome or worked around.  Modern or Retro Future (like Atomic Rockets) though?  Awesome stuff.

 

Inspired by Clarke's 2001, I spent months researching all I could about the moons of Jupiter, and a couple of years digging into the outer system in general.  I was thinking the moons of Jupiter might make a great setting for a novel or two, or perhaps a Traveller game (ended up going Champion-- well, Hero with it: no supers, but Champions rules).  It was actually a bit disappointing to learn as much as I did, as it made it more difficult to make grand theatrical and world-building decisions.     A couple decades later I read a game called "The Jovian Chronicles" (which I _think_ was based on Mekton, but I'm not sure).  At any rate, if you want a jovian setting, I'd recommend that over any amount of real science.  (Still, the real science works pretty well in the Atomic Rockets setting).

 

 

In all honesty, the absolute _worst_ thing I ever learned, game-wise was something we all learned in-- I don't know... third grade?  The speed of gravity.  32' per second per second has ruined the falling rules of every single game I have ever played. 

 

Bernouli's Principle, gravity, air density, and lift have forever ruined me for "glider capes" in any superhero setting (not that I was ever a huge supers guy anyway, but there it is).

 

 

Projectile speed, mass, velocity, etc: that was really fun information for calculating damage for various game systems except for HERO, where damage just isn't granular enough to bother doing the math: forty handguns, all with identical damage.  Forty rifles, all with identical damage.  We tried decimating the damage system once, just to get the granularity to make the work worthwhile, but that was a nightmare I'm not ever going to revisit. 

 

Physics also demonstrated why, should we ever decide to waste the resources, any mech of more than fifteen or twenty feet will destroy itself--

 

you know what?  I have learned lots and lots of fun an interesting things that have added to my games, but physics?  I love it, but it's the _worst_ possible thing you can know if you really want to enjoy any fictional setting.  It's like going to military tactical training and then trying to watch Star Wars.

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

34 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

In all honesty, the absolute _worst_ thing I ever learned, game-wise was something we all learned in-- I don't know... third grade?  The speed of gravity.  32' per second per second has ruined the falling rules of every single game I have ever played. 

 

9.8 meters per second squared, or thereabouts.  5" or 10m per Segment per Segment.   

[Cygnia]

Since 7th Sea is my game of choice, I do a lot of research on regional cuisines to "give flavor".

 

Also, "Forged In Fire" is our favorite show.

[archer]

There used to be a TV show a long time ago before cable or satellite TV called That's Incredible where people who could do or survive incredible things would go on the show just to demonstrate what they could do to a national TV audience.

 

One evening there was a martial artist who caught arrows out of the air before they hit a target.

 

My DM and I both saw the show.

 

At the time, D&D magic-users were allowed to use only staves, daggers, and throwing darts.

 

We just kind of looked at each other and figured that while we couldn't catch an arrow out of the air, we could probably catch darts. And if not, darts probably wouldn't cause huge amounts of damage to whichever one of us was catching.

 

So we got my darts and dartboard and gave it a try.

 

Turns out my DM could catch darts out of the air pretty consistently within a couple of minutes. I wasn't nearly as good but I could catch maybe three out of ten. 

 

We were throwing hard enough to stick darts in a dartboard rather than throwing as hard as humanly possible.

 

Turns out at that speed, a dart won't even penetrate the skin of your hand and barely stings if the tip hits your hand.

 

That really disillusioned me about the reality of using darts as weapons. 

 

I believe that darts were eventually removed as a weapons type for D&D.

 

We eventually demonstrated how good my DM was at catching darts to a group from school because it looked as impressive as hell and looked much more dangerous than it actually was. Though thinking back on it, I'm sure that a lot of it looking impressive was that the vast majority of the students had seen the stunt on That's Incredible with their slow motion replays and repeated warnings of how dangerous it was and emphasis that the person making the attempt was a highly-trained martial artist.

[Duke Bushido]

Throw them harder. 

 

We learned as kids that you _can_ throw them hard enough to stick them through 3/8 plywood if you really want to.

 

 

[Tjack]

  Let me guess. You were under the age of...14?  After that point (hopefully) the idea of having somebody throw steel darts at you starts to seem like a bad idea.

[Christougher]

4 hours ago, archer said:

 

We were throwing hard enough to stick darts in a dartboard rather than throwing as hard as humanly possible.

 

Turns out at that speed, a dart won't even penetrate the skin of your hand and barely stings if the tip hits your hand.

 

That really disillusioned me about the reality of using darts as weapons. 

 

I believe that darts were eventually removed as a weapons type for D&D.

 

 

To be a little fair, according to one of the D&D books that described weapons, said darts weren't dartboard sized, they were a lot closer to the lawn darts (approx a foot in length) that were eventually banned for people throwing them up in the air and landing on people.

[archer]

7 hours ago, Tjack said:

  Let me guess. You were under the age of...14?  After that point (hopefully) the idea of having somebody throw steel darts at you starts to seem like a bad idea.

 

Junior or senior in high school.

 

I made money splitting firewood with an axe several hours every day after school. I could have taken my own foot off with each swing if I didn't do it right.

 

What can I say? Something the size of a dart that was being thrown past me didn't seem too intimidating.

[Duke Bushido]

Though I have to say, it's a bit refreshing to know that my friends and I weren't the only ones to throw darts at each other.  (though we weren't trying to catch them  :-/)  

 

We also discovered that putting cardboard under your jacket made BBs and pellets hurt a lot less, but that could be overcome by muzzle loading finish nails.

 

 

While all of these are completely true things (and no; I'm not particularly proud of how stupid we were-- at least, not anymore), I admit that they weren't smart and that they continued into our twenties.....

 

I have only shared this now simply to make it a bit more difficult to call out Archer for trying to catch darts.  That was _infinitely_ less stupid than what we were doing.

[Duke Bushido]

Plumbata!

 

Finally!

 

Sorry-- I was trying to remember that since the "Darts v Jarts" part of the conversation.  I have always assumed that D&D's "wizard darts" were essentially plumbata.

 

 

[IndianaJoe3]

24 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Plumbata!

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I mean, its not armored and your skin is actually pretty resilient, but dang... those hit a lot harder than you'd think.  And if the Legionnaires thought they were worth using... they probably were.  I'm going to have to reconsider the dart as a weapon.  Reduced penetration, and not a very accurate weapon at any range, but still, nasty against light or no armor.

[Duke Bushido]

Well, they are basically Jarts, only sharper and heavier, and we know those things will kill people: it's the whole reason I had to order my last set of Jarts from England.... 

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks for the video, IndianaJoe!

 

 

Almost immediately I can see why these would be D&D wizard weapons-- it's far more skill driven than muscle driven.

 

And even more immediately, I can see why you'd want headshots every single time!  These things seem like they'd be real easy to pick up and throw back every time you missed....  Yikes!

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

16 hours ago, Christougher said:

 

To be a little fair, according to one of the D&D books that described weapons, said darts weren't dartboard sized, they were a lot closer to the lawn darts (approx a foot in length) that were eventually banned for people throwing them up in the air and landing on people.

When we were little, my brother and I threw lawn darts at each other, pretending we were ninjas. Grandma got rid of them when she saw us using a claw hammer to remove them from the box elders in her front yard that we had been using as cover. 

[Greywind]

After they stopped with the metal pointed ends, they had blunt plastic ends. Getting hit in the face was painful, but at least it wasn't fatal.

[Ninja-Bear]

Trying to joust on bikes is a bad idea. Plus my friend had access to a scroll saw and plywood. He cut out swords and we swung it at each other. Luckily he also made shields. The worst idea? We had a flail with golf balls at the end. Don’t hit a wooden shield with it. 😜

[Cancer]

For a time I was interested in a fantasy world setting with a "discovery of the New World" sort of campaign setting but lower-than-1492 maritime tech.  So I got interested in maritime technology up to the development of multi-masted ships.  I've got a half-dozen books or so on my shelves bearing on that.

 

Turns out that it's easy to show that any boat/ship driven purely by human rowing has a very hard limit on how fast it can travel through the water, and that limit is about 9.5 knots.  You need more power to go faster, but more power means more rowers, which means a bigger hull, and a bigger hull exposes more area to water, and that means more drag force.  Since drag scales up with speed raised to a power bigger than one, you reach a point where adding more rowers adds drag faster than it adds power.  At that point adding rowers becomes worse than diminishing returns; it means you're losing rather than gaining speed as you add more rowers.  This is even before consideration of the problem of how to arrange human bodies and oars so that every rower's strength is applied optimally to the task of driving the boat through the water.  Putting more oarsmen on a single oar is far from optimal, but above a certain limit it's not possible to get all the one man/one oar oarsmen close enough to the hull so they can reach the water with their oars.

 

Sail-driven boats don't have this limit, but intercontinental sea travel with large cargo capacity requires multi-masted ship technology.  You can put heavy loads (like a couple of pieces of artillery) in an oar-driven galley, but such a ship is both easily swamped and has very limited endurance (you're counting on doing no more than two or three days between landfalls where you can resupply).  Intercontinental travel clearly is possible with watercraft with a single mast and oars -- witness the Maori colonization of the Pacific islands -- but I think intercontinental conquest is not possible without the significant higher tech.