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Gavin Kisebach




Location: Lacey, Wa US
Joined: 01 Aug 2004

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Posts: 650

PostPosted: Mon 14 Jan, 2008 3:38 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Actually I have a seven foot spear, not intended for throwing per se, but I have thrown it for giggles. I can throw it 18 paces, or about 54 feet. I'm sure an extra foor of ash isn't going to affect that much.
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Gavin Kisebach




Location: Lacey, Wa US
Joined: 01 Aug 2004

Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 650

PostPosted: Mon 14 Jan, 2008 4:00 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

By the by, the study of polearms isn't amywhere near as refined as swords; categorizing polearms beyond a very narrow context may well be impossible. You can go to a dozen different sources and get a dozen conflicting definitions of Guisarm, Fauchard, Bill/English Bill, etc.

At least part of the problem is that while swords are fairly straightforward, polearms are often as wild as the maker's imagination. It's kind of like the food at Taco Bell. The same ten ingredients can be rearranged any number of ways, and it takes a full time marketing team to keep coming up with unique names for them. In this case there are myriad combinations of hooks, flukes, spikes, axes and hammers, plus blades of almost infinite geometry. Naming them all or categorizing must be a nightmare, and as far as i can tel there is no accepted convention.

A few pieces like pikes and bardiches have very specific meaning, that are pretty well accepted, but where does a sparth end and a bardiche begin? It's tough to say.
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Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Joined: 08 Dec 2004

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Posts: 3,636

PostPosted: Tue 15 Jan, 2008 12:07 pm    Post subject: Re: Hey I'm back         Reply with quote

Martin Evensen wrote:
GURPS, hmm? Well I must admit I have some bad experiences with the system. It seemed overly complicated and detailed for a roleplaying game. At least, with the modern combat rules - our GM in Conspiracy X made us change from that simple yet effective system over to gurps, which took hours of conversion. .

GURPS is far less complicated than the latest offering of DnD. The introduction of feats make it impossible for a beginner to create any kind of useful character in less than a day. Try downloading GURPS Lite. It is free.
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Martin Evensen




Location: Norway
Joined: 12 Dec 2007

Posts: 12

PostPosted: Tue 15 Jan, 2008 3:28 pm    Post subject: Re: Hey I'm back         Reply with quote

Dan Howard wrote:
Martin Evensen wrote:
GURPS, hmm? Well I must admit I have some bad experiences with the system. It seemed overly complicated and detailed for a roleplaying game. At least, with the modern combat rules - our GM in Conspiracy X made us change from that simple yet effective system over to gurps, which took hours of conversion. .

GURPS is far less complicated than the latest offering of DnD. The introduction of feats make it impossible for a beginner to create any kind of useful character in less than a day. Try downloading GURPS Lite. It is free.


I think you're excaggerating a bit now - feats are not that complex, hardly more than the many qualities, quirks, merits and flaws you find in many systems, I remember GURPS having quite a few of those. And I can make a 1st level fighter in 10 minutes. A new player probably needs an hour or two to make a good character.
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Lafayette C Curtis




Location: Indonesia
Joined: 29 Nov 2006
Reading list: 7 books

Posts: 2,698

PostPosted: Thu 24 Jul, 2008 9:45 pm    Post subject: Re: Hi, and a few quick questions regarding medieval weapon         Reply with quote

Lafayette C Curtis wrote:
Elling Polden wrote:
The maximum length of your one handed spear depends on the thickness of the shaft. The Byzantine skutaoi carried one handed spears 4 m (13ft) long! (Now, where did those go in MTW?...) These where made from light wood, with shafts 2cm or less in diameter, and typically thrown.


Umm...really? I thought the Early Byzantine skoutatoi who carried throwable spears of the Late Roman spear--as modelled on the Emperor Maurikios's Strategikon--was quite different from the thematic/tagmatic skoutatoi (later renamed to kontaratoi) who carried pikes. Neither were the same as Nikephorian skoutatoi who operated in combined formations of spearmen and archers. We must be careful not to conflate details from different periods here.


Now that I think of it, I might have been wrong. In a recent discussion I came across a mention that the supposedly throwable spears prescribed in the Strategikon were rather long, though I think they were some eleven or twelve feet long rather than fourteen.

Must check back with a good translation of the real Strategikon....
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