Lawnmower Boy

Re: Malvans (possible spoilers) Malva just has a bad rap because it's where Mandaarians go for Spring Break.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? "Chiefs and big men.." I could regress and regress and regress, but I'm a historian ('cor, you guessed?), not an anthropologist, and that's what we do. Back before the modern days of flying spaghetti theory, everyone was into this "evolution" paradigm. Animals evolved, the Earth evolved, human society evolved, starting with families, tribes, "primitive states," and so up an evolutionary tree leading from tyranny to democracy. Contextual anthropology and prehistory has brought the field to the point of rejecting this. Instead of regarding, say, Cahokia, as the capital of a redistributionist big man, we see it as the site of a "ritual heptarchy." And no, I don't know what that means either. So, no evolution: any kind of government is possible at any stage of development. (Actually, I'd rather say that talking about "kind of government" sets us on the wrong path to start with.) Just take your favourite setting and make it a democracy. If it needs to pass a sniff test, model it on Venice, the United Netherlands, Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, 18th century America...Or, heck, Cahokia.

Re: Soldiers marching. While we're recommending books, Garnet Wolseley's _Soldier's Pocket Handbook_ sold in the millions in the last century. It is _way_ harder to find than Sun Tzu, but much more crunchy, and it is the one crunchy book on this stuff that you can find. Plus, it has a kicka--s plum pudding recipe. Information animal, vegetable and mineral, in one easy volume.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Isn't that just The Producers?

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Thanks to Assault for that great summary of the "franchise=military service" theory. As a description of 19th century politics, it is grand. But 19th historians did not know the sources we have now. And on this one, they were wrong. Just out in paperback and easy reading is William J. Hamblin, Warfare in the Ancient Near East to 1600BC: Holy Warriors at the Dawn of History (2005: Routledge: I have ISBNs 0-415-25588 and 978-0-415-25589-9). Hamblin tells us about the first societies to describe themselves in writing had kings, but also senates and popular assemblies. The old historical premise had it that primitive societies were automatically tyrannies and that the task of political science was to explain how democracies came to be. It is not, anymore. Of course, any number of higher-capital-cost modes of war can lead to the emergence of a class of military technicians. That is why today we are ruled by a dictatorship of the air, and pilots are our gods. Specifically, by 405BC, a small class of knights had emerged in Athens. They got involved in politics. It wasn't pretty. Nineteenth century Liberal politicians loved to talk about it. But they didn't know what modern scholars such as Hugh Bowden and Nicholas Jones know. (Looking these books up would be easy on Discworld. They'd be the crowd of big, muscular jocks menacing puny Victor Hanson books for lunch money.)

Re: Soldiers marching. Or, in other words, your mileage may vary.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? But it's so hard for us wankers.... Seriously, I can think off hand of two early modern European states that combined "equestrian classes" with functioning republics, the Polish Commonwealth and the Republic of Venice. The antebellum United States would probably be a third example if its army had run to cavalry regiments. when we start talking about how good infantry is essential to a democracy, we really are caught in a nineteenth century debate. The ghosts of Bismarck and Lloyd George (both anti-cavalry men) rise before us and conjure up Swiss pikemen and Welsh longbowmen, the Light Division and Greek hoplites in the name of their fight with the populist conservatives who challenged their parties in the 1890s.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Why is the question of training at all relevant here? There is no reason whatsoever that a fantasy republic cannot have a cavalry arm, or that infantry have to reach some magical threshold of effectiveness versus cavalry before a certain kind of government can exist. This is like the ghost of century old partisan rhetoric overwhelming the real historical specificity.

Re: Help: WWI Espionage References Hew Strachan, The First World War, vol 1: Call to Arms. 'Nuff said.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? You know one way of making an old-timey window? Smear parchment with tallow and hang it across. I guess in a bad, windy winter (where you had a lot of parchment and tallow) you might patch over a few times. Ten? Twenty? That's how many layers we're seeing Athenian democracy through. These people live in a universe that is vastly far from our idealistic conception of things, although much closer to our world as it is. Think of Robert Heinlein, Jerry Falwell, Socrates and Aristotle as shamans, and you'll be on the right track according to some extraordinary (if typically academically unreadable) books published in the last few years beginning with _Cosmic Republic_.

Re: Soldiers marching. Marching armies is _very_ complicated. The bigger the army, the more you have to know, and execute on the landscape in order to move quickly. One of the reasons the Romans got around so well is that their infrastructural costs were so low. Low cavalry strenghs will be punished harshly by a well endowed enemy, but not having it has its advantages. A well-organised army is actually going to cope with the landscape pretty well. Here's what an organised army looks like as it marches through your countryside. i) a screen of light cavalry, often a herdsman militia that might be anything from Romanian mercenaries to Volga Kalmycks moves through. Probably organised in "hundreds" that are actually closer to 20--60 men, they ride light, nimble horses with range-trained digestive systems. They're not the animals of choice for mounted combat, but they stay out of trouble well. The idea is that these guys generate intelligence for you and trouble for your enemies. Don't approach these guys and offer to sell intelligence. Wait for.... ii) A formal vanguard consisting of a mixture of staff dragoons (a guard of experienced country men, probably on good horses, accompanying a staff officer who is going to draw/survey the countryside and regular cavalry, probably carabiniers and mounted grenadiers if available, who will take local fortified points at first shock. iii) the first dismounted element consists of crack infantry (probably the army's grenadier companies grouped into a "corps", light infantry if you've got'em) and probably the army's pioneer corps, as grenadiers above. The first general will appear on the scene, the Major-General of the Day, who will be tasked with organising the army's camp at the end of this stage of the march --usually, but _not necessarily_ at the end of a day's march. (Marches requiring men to sleep one or more nights in the open are not that uncommon.) This unit will build minor bridges. iv) the main body of the army. v) the "artillery" train; probably a more accurate rendering of the traditional language than "baggage train." The latter implies that the army has packed more books and clothes than it really needs for the trip. The former suggests that even if it isn't dragging along guns, it needs what it has in the waggons/pack animals. A typical escort is more dragoons, because you then have lots of organic horsepower to move the wagons through the countryside when things bog, ditch, break wheels and so on. There will be a workshop, too. A century of corporate records going back from 1820 are available for Russell's Flying Waggons of London (thank heavens for the early nineteenth century civil trial records, found and used by Dorian Gerhold ); they suggest 6 breakdowns/1000 waggons/hour, if I recall correctly. This unit will launch major bridges and do much of the work of building a major fortified camp/road, since any of the army's specialised equipment, such as block tackles, felling saws, shovels and picks (and assorted stuff up to and including a horse-powered sawmill. The technology, although available, is not mentioned until the 19th century, though.) Both cited infantry marching speed and march time (per ideal one day stage) is so variable that a 20 mile day is hardy inconceivable. Sometimes you get the impression that Middle Ages people were such sticks in the mud that they had never travelled 20 miles, never mind walk that distance in a day. But even in the day a fit young man could run 100 miles a day, and often did; and, bizarrely enough, jogging for fun and fitness was hardly unknown, at least in the early 1700s. Something to keep in mind is footwear. In an account of a battle in the 1690s, a British observer describes seeing troops coming up that they thought were Dutch, because bare-footed, but instead they proved to be French dragoons. The implication is that Dutch troops marched in clogs and kicked them off before fighting (like Highlanders) and that dragoon-boots were so awful that they weren't worn in battle. (Robert Parker's memoirs were editted and published by David Chandler). An army like this is not likely to take the field except when there is fodder, ie standing grass crops, available. Campaigning ideally begins right at the tail-end of the spring freshette when the rivers go down, so that armies are first on the water meadows (first grass being deemed particularly healthy for horses according to a crazy Hungarian whose work is near impossible to find and), with a break at high summer and a resumption in the fall going until the very end of the harvest and a safe bit beyond. After a Christmas break you can begin planning a winter campaign, which will have to be fought out of magazines by a limited force. (Incidentally, watch your enemies at this time of year. If they close the sluices on their rivers and begin to build up a water supply, they might well be planning a sudden campaign up a river in your territory, which they will backflood with their "waters of manoeuvre." This was a favourite trick of Louis XIV's.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares "Lord of the Trek:" Bare-chested Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty dancing up a storm in the front, a vast legion of green-skinned girls in kilts a-hoofin' behind them.... Enter Khan in jete for a showdown Why don't producers ever give me what I want to see?

Re: old general army I think we re talking past each other here - because to me, what you are saying is "No, such a general should not have KS: civil engineering" - essentially the same as the previous posters. He knows the importance of bridges, and how they relate to his troops, but not necessarily the technical details of building them. Fair enough. I know there's a range of debate over what exactly a KS gives you in Hero, and 15 points in skills is a lot for a Heroic character. A given general could have KS: civil engineering. I'll throw out Marchese Gianluca Pallavicini, ship's captain-turned-admiral-turned bridging specialist before being promoted to governor of Milan. He's clearly a skilled naval architect, and designing boats seems to have been a hobby for him. Others, like Khevenhuller, are not going to have this KS. They'll whip out a textbook and fumble through. Call this a Familiarity. On the other hand, K. had to make his name doing something, and that was a massive restructuring of the army budget in 1739. Granted that even the best accountants in 1739 were pretty awful. I would pretty much have to give him a KS: accounting. He might not wander around the boatyard schooling the lads, but he's definitely going to take a personal interest in budget documents that come across his desk.

Re: old general army I'm going to dwell on this "building a bridge" thing just a little bit more here. They can be pretty important to war. Heck, the great Austro-Hungarian war song the "Prinz Eugenlied" (sort of an Austro-Hungarian "British Grenadiers" or "Marlbruck") specifically says that "Eugene launched a bridge." That is, his great victory at Belgrade would have been impossible without building some remarkable bridges. What do you need to know to build a bridge? I could summarise, but if you really care to know, there are some great nineteenth century manuals. They're not exactly easy to get hold of, but a major univeristy library should have something. (I like William Douglas, _Military Bridges_ for its completeness, but most surveys of military engineering will have a discussion). In short, you need to know the geography of the river, and the resources. Besides any boats that might be available ready made, you have to consider lumber, cordage, work boats and ironmongery on the material side, skilled rivermen, carpenters and other artisans on the human side. Material, geography and strategy will determine design. There are many options, and the more detailed the design, the more options emerge. Clearly individual decisions about how to fix the chess to a give boat bottom are beyond the purview of a general. But the guy at the top _is_ going to have to decide how many decks there will be fairly early in the assembly/construction process. These are the same kind of "high level management decisions" that result in modern major engineering project having engineer managers. Only in the frustrated fantasies of cubicle drones does the pointy-haired big cheese spend his day playing golf at management retreats. And there is _no-one_ other than the big cheese general who can do this. That is why Prince Eugene is the guy who launched the bridge, and not any of the 25 or so engineer officers ranked colonel or higher in the Belgrade campaign, many of whom were aristocrats, and several of whom went on to be well-regarded field-marshals in one army or another. I know I hear you saying, "But old Generals didn't _start_ as cubicle slaves. They started as upper class twits!" It is okay to be jealous of the rich and privileged. It motivates the rest of us to work harder. But we are _all_ privileged compared to some poor Third World slum dweller. That doesn't stop us from competing with our peers. Merit does not always rise to the top, but that's why I am focussing on an unquestionably good general like Khevenhuller. (Who was very good at military accounting by the way. It is why he was appointed governor of Vienna and was in a position to save the monarchy.)

Re: dungeon Yeah, but if Schliemann's in charge he's going to mistake a Hackmaster module for the actual Tomb of Horrors.

Re: old general army "Lower class skills." Okay, that's it, I'm opening a can of spam:) Ever been to Vienna and seen the Maria Theresa Memorial? The Empress-Queen is supported by the various generals who supported her in her great wars. Two of them are from a single campaign, Ludwig Khevenhuller [blah blah noble titles] and Count Traun. This was the big campaign, the one where the French, backing the Bavarians who were fighting to annex the Austrian crown lands and take over the Imperial title, were pushed right back out of Germany temporarily in 1743/44. Eventually Paris had to beg Frederick the Great to come back into the war, getting its hands thoroughly dirty and guaranteeing that Maria Theresa's husband would be elected the next Holy Roman Emperor, which mattered a whole lot more at the time than you might realise. Never heard of the campaign? Not surprising given how it played out. What did they do? Simple: Khevenhuller materialised an army out of thin air and trumped the Bavarians by suddenly appearing with it in the middle of Bavaria in a winter campaign.Then he went on to the bank of the Rhine and posed in a threatening way. And died, so Traun got to finish the campaign. Traun's problem was simple: he had to make Paris, then pursuing its own strategic objectives, pay attention and get Louis XV down to French Lorraine with his army, thereby putting _political_ pressure on Paris. So he had to cross the Rhine. But it is a wide river with plenty of fortifications on the French side and a small covering army. He could hardly dislocate French foreign policy by "leaking" across. He had to land like a thunderbolt. Which he did. Traun's generalship consisted of organising one heck of a floating bridge across the Rhine and getting his army across quickly. And then, when the French army did come down on him from the front and the Prussians (in a general sense) from behind, he astonished military observers further by recrossing back to Germany quickly enough to save the day. That's right. These great generals made their names by finding uniforms, recruits and money, feeding an army through a winter march, building a big bridge, and marching an army across said bridge faster than anyone expected. By doing so they forced the political resolution to the war that Vienna was looking for. That's it. While there was plenty of fighting, there was not a single battle, not a single moment when Traun or Khevenhuller were asked to do "aristocratic," or "high class" things like identify some heraldry or lead a cavalry charge. I know you might say that there must have been some anonymous lower class people doing all the work, but if you go through the Vienna war archives, you will find the documents and letters these men wrote and read. They were _not_ figureheads.

Re: old general army Operating heavy weapons is a more likely skill for a general than, say, specialist weapons. More importantly, running an army is the same as running any large enterprise, so the basic package of managerial skills are required. How about PS: Accounting, Civil Engineering; Persuasion, Seduction, System Operation (large agricultural estate. The list can be extended. What do you think a successful manager should be able to do?

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved Following up on what has been said above.... i) Not to blow a paradigm or anything, but what if the Black Death never happened? (That is, 1349 saw the usual cold and flu epidemics and then a bad outbreak of oh, say, measles, and a few authors proceeded to exaggerate like heck, then, and, more importantly, in the nineteenth century.) More specifically, there is ample evidence of a labour shortage before the Black Death, most notably in the low returns of European field agriculture, which generally imply that it was less expensive to accept poor harvests than to pay for weeding. ii) Things that Magic Can Do Other Than War, Medicine and Agriculture: masonry structures that don't subside; ships that don't sink/wagons (and wheels) that don't fail; clothes and makeup that turn heads; food that doesn't kill people; bread that rises/beer and wine that doesn't go sour; putting the nets down where there turns out to be fish; whales that come within reach of oar-powered whalers; timber that regrows overnight; forest fires that turn aside; dykes that withstand the flood. (On the last I can easily imagine a high level magician blowing as many spells on a major flood as in a battle.) And, above all, foretelling the future. There's a reason why ancient peoples valued their shamans and it wasn't the off chance that they'd throw a lightning bolt at a wandering army.

Re: Need Book Recommendations The Baen "complete [author] line recently republished James Schmitz, making _Witches of Karres_ readily available. (Also, _Endless Frontiers_, which may have some resonance in Israel right now.) A faster read than Norton, Schmitz does far better with the old sense of wonder thing than Heinlein, who, at the end of the day, is a man whom I regret giving my time. [insert _Starship Troopers_ argument here.]

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Uh, what Von D-Man said. Except that academic vetting doesn't mean that it is any better. Give a person a degree and an impressive writing style and he can still proceed to make up what they please, especially when "Indo-Europeans" cast their pixie dust over the writer. Anyone else read Arvid Steffanson on _Aryan Idols_? If you're interested in what strong academic writers have to say about the nature of early states, I recommend Norman Yoffee, _Myths of the Archaic State_, and, less readable but more rewarding, Adam T. Smith, _The Political Landscape_. In short, there's no reason that you can't put a "primitive democracy" in your setting, but there _is_ reason to think that it will look like a particularly strife-torn place. Latest literature also suggests good reason to be cautious about using ancient Athens as a model, too. This "democracy" may be a projection on the past by writers of the next century.

Re: Champions Worldwide? New Zealand hero? I'm a newbie on the board so I'm supposed to talk out my rear, anyway. Uhm, Kiwi Man: an ancient Maori hero who reincarnates the spirit of the kiwi bird. He's like, in touch with the land and stuff. And he throws magical kiwi fruit grenades. And he flies. No... he rides a kiwi-bird shaped glider. With razor blades. But (here's the catch) it's technological! And it's shaped like New Zealand. That was easy. Erik Lund (Hi, Scott!)

Re: Interesting Aircraft: Dornier 335 Pfeil Sources, sources... The thing about the Do--335 is that it looks amazing, as aggressive as it is unconventional and the numbers are great. We really need to have an altitude attached to the max velocity figure for it to be really useful, but it is certainly a high number. The point is, too high. This is faster than the (production) de Havilland Hornet, an aircraft with a famously aerodynamic design and a slightly higher thrust-to-weight ratio. How did Dornier do it? Forget the piffle about lower profile drag. Wing area is a much more important contributer than the minimal inefficiences caused by having two wing nacelles. That's why (along with ejection problems) the push-pull ratio never succeeded in a production aircraft. Except the Do-335. But look at the production details. Here is an aircraft that is coming into squadron service for years, but just never quite arrives. Of course Dornier says that it is because of engine delay problems. Meanwhile, Heinkel manages to get his 219 into limited service. It doesn't help that what is basically a prototype (the A-0) series is being passed off as a production type. Something smells here. Unfortunately, the people who write about aeroplanes tend to like impressive numbers too much to track down smells. The simple way of avoiding the problem is to compare service aircraft to service aircraft. Once they're in the hands of regular joes, company deception is stripped away and we can begin to see that, just perhaps, the Bristol Blenheim is not a 300mph bomber, for example.

Re: Interesting Aircraft: Dornier 335 Pfeil Sources are a common problem. I'm trying to remember which WWII 'plane splatbook I'm basing my slam of the Pfeil on. IIRC correctly, it mentions a proposed 4-engined (so apparently a twin-engined type, but more like the P-82) that would have weighed in at 70,000lb dry. Hey, it's a fighter as big as a B-29! On the bright side, power to burn on pushing the thing through the air. On the downside, probably some manoeuvre issues.

Re: Foxbat....Where can I find Him? Foxbat's in Port Moody? I thought he'd be cooler --Kitsilano cool. ('Course then he'd have no time for master plans because he'd be lining up at Safeway all day.)

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Dittmarsch, Ditmarsch, Dithmarsch are all orthographic possibilities for contemporary German. Adding the "en" at the end either pluralises it or (I think, cuz I'm too lazy to look up my list of case endings) can be a genitive that's been incorporated in the word by traditional usage. I take it as the latter, having had more than one argument over endings in weird 17th century German names and placenames. Wikipedia cites it in a crapulous article on "village communities" lifted from the 11th ed. of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, but, oddly enough, omits the actual article, s.v. Dithmarschen. "A territory between the Eider, Elbe and the North Sea, forming the western part of the old ducy of Holstein.... about 550 sq miles including 90,000 inhabitants [in 1909]," all coastal marshland, some of which was reclaimed, some not. Like many similar communities its independence was rooted in the competing claims of local potentates like the Archbishop of Bremen and his rival, the King of Denmark. The territory was divided into four "Marks" and governed by a Landrat of 48 elective "consuls." Dittmarsch defeated several invasions by the Duke of Holstein [politics in this corner of Europe are nothing if not complicated] during the early 1500s --cue heroic peasants waging guerilla war from their marshy fastness-- before sad reality triumphed.