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No Horses For You


Chris-M

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Yeah. And lack of consistency, the fact that any jobu can edit anything, the fact that certain factions of Wikipedia's management tend to edit things for a specific slant, etc.

 

Wikipedia is about worthless for anything other than the list of links at the bottom where you can do real research.

 

Crabs would make a pretty good mount, if a bit odd in terms of movement. Very smooth ride, tough, has some offense.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Yes. There's a reason nearly every college and high school on earth tells students they cannot use Wiki as a source.

 

When I was in college we weren't allowed to cite any encyclopedia as a source, not because the information was assumed to be false but because we were required to research our own source material and corroborate important claims with at least three independent sources. I don't really feel that's the level of intellectual rigor required of message board discussions. :)

 

There has been a lot of sensational stuff written about political vandalism and personal/biographical character assassination on Wikipedia, but I'm not too concerned about net hooligans posting false information about horses in the Middle Ages. I would certainly go do my own research if I were going to write an authoritative work on destriers or something, but I think in most instances it's a more credible source than not knowing anything or what some person I don't know personally says about something. And I figure if it says something wildly and nakedly untrue, someone who knows more about it than I do won't be able to resist pointing this fact out with some enthusiasm, discussion will ensue, more credible sources will be cited, and we will all be made wise. :)

 

All of this and more will be covered in my upcoming -- and highly authoritative and historically accurate -- book, The Lazy Intellectual. [Please note, the presence of any actual intellectual content will be purely coincidental. ]

 

Anyway, getting back to the horse/no-horse thing, I think a spell that turns horses into savage, man-eating beasts, cast by an evil cleric on an adventuring party at an inopportune moment, would be a really mean (but fun) trick.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Anyway, getting back to the horse/no-horse thing, I think a spell that turns horses into savage, man-eating beasts, cast by an evil cleric on an adventuring party at an inopportune moment, would be a really mean (but fun) trick.

 

In a long ago D&D game, my character Fonographix the bard was annoyed when his trusty horse of the week would get fireballed (or lightning-bolted or cone of cold'd or whatever) out from underneath him. He went up north managed to capture (and charm) a pair of Tyrannosauruses and then had our mage polymorph them into horses (for ease of riding).

 

There never were more foul-tempered warhorses, but it was worth it just to have an 18 HD warhorse!

 

cheers, Mark

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Anyway' date=' getting back to the horse/no-horse thing, I think a spell that turns horses into savage, man-eating beasts, cast by an evil cleric on an adventuring party at an inopportune moment, would be a really mean (but fun) trick.[/quote']

 

You are one sick puppy . . . but that's just sheer genius.

 

Repped

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Re: No Horses For You

 

You know I have never seen anyone use giant crabs as a mount. Or giant goats for that matter. I've never seen a plant mount either' date=' like a walking venus flytrap or living lily pads. [/quote']

 

I recall the old Gamma World game setting had a mutated "centaur cactus." The illustration for the plant had four branches arranged like the legs of a horse, with part of the truck horizontal and the rest upraised like a head. The cactus had the capacity to walk from one water source to another.

 

That could make a cool steed, if you were willing to take the time to trim its needles, at least where you sat. ;)

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Yeah one of the demons I created is a Corrupter, I built a template of fel- for animals and such that can be added on, giving them various nasty abilities. The Corrupter has a transform he can use to turn pets and mounts into fel- pets and mounts and turn them against the party. Very high point cost, nobody has run into one ... yet.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Yeah. And lack of consistency, the fact that any jobu can edit anything, the fact that certain factions of Wikipedia's management tend to edit things for a specific slant, etc.

 

They put political slant into horses of medieval ages or in math? I know it, like any source edited by people has slants when it comes to some topics, but that doesn't invalidate the entirety of the body of work...

 

Wikipedia is about worthless for anything other than the list of links at the bottom where you can do real research.

 

http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

 

Wikipedia is about as good a source of accurate information as Britannica, the venerable standard-bearer of facts about the world around us, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Errors_in_the_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_that_have_been_corrected_in_Wikipedia

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Re: No Horses For You

 

One my friends ran a very interesting campaign. I never had the chance to partake in it, but it was basically a civil war between the forces of Hell, after they had conquered the earth. The devils were trying to establish themselves as the world order, and the demons...well...were still spreading chaos. Anyhoo, the PCs (who were devils) rode around on fel steeds: monstrous, jet black horned horses with flaming eyes and hooves. Just throwing that out there...

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Re: No Horses For You

 

But it's rare and probably takes an entire kingdom to keep the dragon fed.

There's nothing wrong with riding carnivores - if you don't break reality too much and create some kind of infrastructure to support them.

Very rich folk could afford to maintain the more outrageous mounts.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Good point, Curufea. That actually reminds me: I've always liked Moorcock's idea about the Melnibonean dragons sleeping for decades or centuries (whatever it was) after being awakened and used in battle, and I think that's an idea that could be applied to other exotic mounts/war-beasts in different ways.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

I'm all for fantasy elements, but if you as a GM, don't have some valid reasons for things, or a bit knowledge on how it could work - sooner or later your PCs will pull you up on it. Most likely by exploiting a plot hole, or continuity error you hadn't thought of yet. So it's best to make the continuity whole before introducing PCs to it (in my opinion).

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Re: No Horses For You

 

In a long ago D&D game, my character Fonographix the bard was annoyed when his trusty horse of the week would get fireballed (or lightning-bolted or cone of cold'd or whatever) out from underneath him. He went up north managed to capture (and charm) a pair of Tyrannosauruses and then had our mage polymorph them into horses (for ease of riding).

 

There never were more foul-tempered warhorses, but it was worth it just to have an 18 HD warhorse!

 

Please tell me that at some point you ran up against some bad guys and had the wizard un-polymorph them. :eg:

 

(Hmm...how many d6 of extra Presence Attack would you give for that?) :)

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Re: No Horses For You

 

I'm all for fantasy elements' date=' but if you as a GM, don't have some valid reasons for things, or a bit knowledge on how it could work - sooner or later your PCs will pull you up on it. Most likely by exploiting a plot hole, or continuity error you hadn't thought of yet. So it's best to make the continuity whole before introducing PCs to it (in my opinion).[/quote']

 

I think part of the fun of fantasy worldbuilding/GMing is coming up with fun, new, crazy, fantastical stuff. That said, I think yours is sage advice that any GM would be wise to follow. The balance between creative freedom and logic can be a challenging line to walk, and I suppose we each choose which side we err on.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

I recall the old Gamma World game setting had a mutated "centaur cactus." The illustration for the plant had four branches arranged like the legs of a horse, with part of the truck horizontal and the rest upraised like a head. The cactus had the capacity to walk from one water source to another.

 

That could make a cool steed, if you were willing to take the time to trim its needles, at least where you sat. ;)

 

I remember the Pinetos or horse cacti!. one controlled it with a sharp goad behind its sensory root clump where the head should be. `

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Re: No Horses For You

 

I think part of the fun of fantasy worldbuilding/GMing is coming up with fun' date=' new, crazy, fantastical stuff. That said, I think yours is sage advice that any GM would be wise to follow. The balance between creative freedom and logic can be a challenging line to walk, and I suppose we each choose which side we err on.[/quote']

 

It's a style thing. If you prepare beforehand you'll get a more epic-type fantasy setting. If you come up with stuff on the fly (like I do with Western Shores) - you get a more pulp serial type of fantasy. It's better for the more light hearted adventures where there isn't a lot of planning by the PCs involved, or the background history isn't delved into too far.

 

I also recommend copious notes - just in case.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

IIRC, Heinlein used horses in "Glory Road", but they had eight legs. If you want a nonstandard mount, maybe a standard mount with some subtle differences. Not quite a pushme-pullyou, unless your tastes run that way.

 

I'd use the new Spore Creature maker to create new mounts. They're a little cartoony, true.

 

Personally, I'd like to ride a Ki-rin.

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Re: No Horses For You

 

By the way, the Wikipedia article above was not distorting quotes from the acknowledged expert, Ann Hyland (The Medieval Warhorse, 1250--1600 [{an address in the U.K deliberately chosen because the publishing group hates librarians}*: Sutton Publishing, 1998). She doesn't pull in zooarchaeology, but people might be interested in knowing that Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer and others made scale drawings of medieval warhorses.

There's also a neat picture (p. 38) of the Lithuanian draft horse (15.5 hands, but a little more robust than the modern saddle horse) that the Royal Armouries have bought to show off their collection of late medieval panoply. It fits to a "T," indicating, as suspected for a long time, that the references from late medieval times referring to efforts to buy larger horses were targetting animals the size of the modern hunter/Olympics equestrian horse.

The knight's charger was smaller, albeit more solidlly built, than the modern saddle horse.

 

 

*Phoenix Mills, Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. You type that into your dissertation bibliography a few dozen times....

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Re: No Horses For You

 

I'm all for fantasy elements' date=' but if you as a GM, don't have some valid reasons for things, or a bit knowledge on how it could work - sooner or later your PCs will pull you up on it. Most likely by exploiting a plot hole, or continuity error you hadn't thought of yet. So it's best to make the continuity whole before introducing PCs to it (in my opinion).[/quote']

 

 

Yeah, but if its fantasy, isn't there a point where its legitimate to just say "Magic!" and let it go?

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Re: No Horses For You

 

Just remember' date=' nobody wants to ride a penis creature, even if they are apparently easy to make with Spore.[/quote']

 

My collection of pr0n says that you're wrong -- half the human race wants to, if you just bring a pizza or come over to fix the plumbing. :yes:

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