On Lysator's Blog. He says: The knight came armed with full armour, steel shield, broadsword, halberd, crossbow, and morning star. Much better equipped than most of the player knights, though the show didn't have the gratuitous drake mount, pegasus mount, donation weapons, iouns, and lay on hands. The morning star did some heavy damage, as did the halberd, yet neither of these weapons are used to any extent on the mud. I guess players are either narrow-minded about how they have to use the sword, or they are greedy and want all of the special attacks built into the artifact swords. Though there are plenty of crossbows available, they are severely underused, and apparently beneath a knight on the mud to wield one.
Just to clear up some confusion, Lysator is totally right on the historical issue (and it's one I'm interested in and know a little about). In fact he ends the post with: Just as I had predicted last week, and validating that the knights are failing to live up to the legend. However I should point out that most people come to any MUD or roleplaying game, not to study the historical accuracies, but to live up to that legend. I mean if Knights were as amazing as legend and myth (and a lot of fantasy books) they'd never have died out during the gunpowder age. And they did. I don't think dissing peoples choices or poo-pooing on their gaming style or way to pass time is necessarily helpful or productive. I mean, any student of historical warfare knows that the spear was A LOT more useful than the sword in large scale combat, but we all grew up watching Robin Hood and Errol Flynn movies and think that sword-play is a much cooler image in our heads, even if it wouldn't really be that practical in large-scale medieval combat. (Reach being the biggest issue with the sword).
In defense of exotic mounts, fantasy literature is FULL of Dragon Knights and as Lysator's pointed out, Gav's own 'artwork' is really just stolen and photoshopped Warhammer image. So I'm not the first to think Pegasus Knights are a cool idea ;)
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Hmm. I wonder if it's that spears are more useful at 1-to-1 scale, or if it's that spears are more useful in aggregate, because 50 untrained peasant levies with pointy sticks will probably be able to kill 1 mounted knight with full gear and the skill to use a sword and everything else well, and the knight was hundreds of times more expensive to produce, in elapsed time and money/man-hours.
ReplyDeleteSwords are important later (why they existed) for when you're inside the reach of the spear. And the deadly thing for Knights was their en masse charge would could make or break battles. Ironically the only defense was spearmen. Whether they held or broke decided most battles. Swords came in handy for the end stages of a battle when it was more one-on-one. Pistols versus Rifles is how a friend of mine explained it to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, Knights being more expensive was how they ended up in the nobility. I don't remember the exact figures, but it was pretty much so much land, was expected to be able to maintain one Knight. (I think it was a village or two). The expense was his gear, but mainly his warhorse.
ReplyDeleteAnd in time that Knight warrior became the overlord of the area which was used to maintain him in fighting form.
Heh... there's an idea... Bring some actual feudalism into the MUD. Have the quality of knight equipment/followers be dependent upon supporting and defending a fief, so that the happier and healthier the populace is, the cooler stuff the knight can afford. :P
ReplyDelete'Course, there'd have to be some sort of way to keep griefers off, otherwise all the knights would be equipped like paupers. :P