Medieval facts

I am a late comer to this. Enjoy the like bombs everyone. Now for me to add my two cents to various things.

They had wooden parts, they had medieval equivalents to concrete (which date back to Roman times and before). Every castle was different, usually reflecting the availability of local materials.

Yes and no. The most important thing is often how it fits. Perfectly fitted fifty pound is generally much less constrictive to movement than poorly fitted twenty pound armor.

If it's sharpened to cut then yes. But for the most part it was a waste of time to sharpen rapiers that much. A big problem with ueber sharp blades in general is that you lose a lot of sharpness as soon as you start hitting things.

Not as much as people thing. Most modern humans have only swung a blunt replica sword. These are generally heavy and less balanced than a real fighting sword.

I don't know. I do know that the distance an arrow travels is based on the strength of the archer, the angle of the shot, the elevation of the shooter, the weight of the arrow head, the direction and strength of the wind and a bunch of other things. I'm guessing that in ideal situations an archer could fire an arrow a half mile.

I have a friend who really dived deep into naval history. The literal answer is, sometimes the ship is faster, sometimes the ox is faster but at the end of the day, if you goal is move large amounts of cargo from point A to point B, water travel is pretty much always better when available. Even if you have oxes towing a barge loaded with grain up river against the current, that's generally more economical than moving the grain over land in wheeled carts.

I've heard there were once breeds of horses larger than cyldsdale that are not longer around. I guess I would say look at all the dog breeds and how different they look. Most dog breeds came from seletctive breeding in the last few centuries. Horses have been carefully bred for thousands of years. They can be bred for all sorts of sizes.

That's subjective. Psychology is a fairly young science.

Compared to most peasants. Yes. I would say, owning a horse in medeiveal Europe put you in in the top 20% of medieval society. Horses trained for battle were pretty expensive. Armor was fairly expensive. More people have swords and other weapons but they still aren't free. Most knights either had a parcel of lands with peasants to work the land or they got a stipend from their lords. So yeah, I'd say they are rich. They couldn't really often sleep on feather beds and eat steak every day, but they were comparatively rich.

"The war is over, go home. We are done paying you."
...
"Oh crap, there are a bunch of highly trained and heavily armed warhardened soldiers that miss their old lifestyles!"

Though you could have knights that have horses, weapons, and armor and very little else to their name. These knights often would become robber knights that put the "dark" in the Dark Ages.

In some cases if the metal warps around the bullet and pierces the skin again, a person who is wearing metal armor is more vulnerable to firearms than a person who is not wearing armor because if they weren't wearing armor the shot would have been cleaner.

From what I understand for the internet videos I've seen, if I was being shot at by musket balls I wouldn't mind wearing metal armor to cushion the blow but against guns modern riflling, antique armor is a liability.

Are ______ better than swords? I'm not an expert but I do like to watch Youtube videos about medieval weaponry and one thing that I got from Shadiversity which was echoed from other Youtubers goes along the lines of.

Knights fought with lances
Pikemen fought with pikes.
Archers fought with long bows.

But all of them carried a sword as a backup weapon.

Even in the Samurai era of Japan, Samurai were likely to fight with polearms (nagatas!) and bows on the battlefield rather than their katanas even though katanas are so iconic to samurai. Katanas were mainly for self-defense, not the war. Same in medieval Europe. Men who wanted a weapon for self-defense generally carried a sword.

When you factor that swords were carried by everyone and that swords were the self-defense weapon of choice until the invention of firearms, this means swords were more visible, so that's why swords are probably more iconic in historical fiction today.

They had wooden parts, they had medieval equivalents to concrete (which date back to Roman times and before). Every castle was different.

Yes and no. The most important thing is often how it fits. Perfectly fitted fifty pound is generally much less constrictive to movement than poorly fitted twenty pound armor.

If it's sharpened to cut then yes. But for the most part it was a waste of time to sharpen rapiers that much. A big problem with ueber sharp blades in general is that you lose a lot of sharpness as soon as you start hitting things.

Not as much as people think. Most modern humans have only swung a blunt replica sword. These are generally heavy and less balanced than a real fighting sword.

I don't know. I do know that the distance an arrow travels is based on the strength of the archer, the angle of the shot, the elevation of the shooter, the weight of the arrow head, the direction and strength of the wind and a bunch of other things. I'm guessing that in ideal situations an archer could fire an arrow a half mile.

I have a friend who really dived deep into naval history. The literal answer is, sometimes the ship is faster, sometimes the ox is faster but at the end of the day, if you goal is move large amounts of cargo from point A to point B, water travel is pretty much always better when available. Even if you have oxes towing a barge loaded with grain up river against the current, that's generally more economical than moving the grain over land in wheeled carts.

I've heard there were once breeds of horses larger than cyldsdale that are not longer around. I guess I would say look at all the dog breeds and how different they look. Most dog breeds came from seletctive breeding in the last few centuries. Horses have been carefully bred for thousands of years. They can be bred for all sorts of sizes.

That's subjective. Psychology is a fairly young science.

Compared to most peasants. Yes. I would say, owning a horse in medeiveal Europe put you in in the top 20% of medieval society. Horses trained for battle were pretty expensive. Armor was fairly expensive. More people have swords and other weapons but they still aren't free. Most knights either had a parcel of lands with peasants to work the land or they got a stipend from their lords. So yeah, I'd say they are rich. They couldn't really often sleep on feather beds and eat steak every day, but they were comparatively rich.

That also doesn't mean that knights didn't struggle. My favorite foreign movie is Twilight Samurai which chronicles the life of a samurai that is a member of the ruling class on paper, but in reality he is far closer in lifestyle to the peasants under him.

"The war is over, go home. We are done paying you."
...
"Oh crap, there are a bunch of highly trained and heavily armed warhardened soldiers that miss their old lifestyles."

Though you could have knights that have horses, weapons, and armor and very little else to their name. These knights often would become robber knights that put the "dark" in the Dark Ages.

In some cases if the metal warps around the bullet and pierces the skin again, a person who is wearing metal armor is more vulnerable to firearms than a person who is not wearing armor because if they weren't wearing armor the shot would have been cleaner.

From what I understand for the internet videos I've seen, if I was being shot at by musket balls I wouldn't mind wearing metal armor to cushion the blow but against guns modern riflling, antique armor is a liability.

Are ______ better than swords? I'm not an expert but I do like to watch Youtube videos about medieval weaponry and one thing that I got from Shadiversity which was echoed from other Youtubers goes along the lines of.

Knights fought with lances.
Pikemen fought with pikes.
Archers fought with long bows.

All of them carried a sword as a backup weapon.

Okay, so I’m not the first person in this thread to say that...but I must continue spewing my own two cents.

Even in the Samurai era of Japan, Samurai were likely to fight with polearms and bows on the battlefield. Katanas were mainly for self defence, not the war. Same in medieval Europe. Men who wanted a weapon for self defense generally carried a sword.

When you factor that swords were carried by everyone and that swords were the self-defense weapon of choice until the invention of firearms, this means swords were more visible, so that's why swords are probably more iconic in historical fiction today.

Also there were a lot more swords that were created as works of arts than there are axes and spears that were created as works of art.

Yeah. This is especially true when you consider all the weapons that are derivatives of spears. Even Bayonets are sort of a derivative of spears. As armor got better this opened the field to warhammers and military picks. Not very efficient weapons on the whole, but these can pierce heavier armors more than spears or swords.

True on the whole, but I was under the impression that nobles wanted to make their noble status very obvious. That way if they lose the battle, they are kept alive and ransomed. Common born soldiers didn't often get that privilege.

That was one of the historical reasons the 300 killed so many Persians. The Greeks’ weapons could cut right through the Persians’ shields.

Get out of my head! This is my opinion EXACTLY. I will add that Shad seems to be more accurate when talking about castles and least accurate when talking about not castles. I do like his Fantasy Rearmed Series if I don’t agree with all of it. Fantasy Rearmed is right up my alley because I am trying to create my own fantasy setting and I’d like it to make as much sense as possible considering my world has dragons and pixies in it.

In medieval periods, most peasants couldn’t afford the best weapons but in the 21st century, we have billion dollar bombers and we now have smart bombs that individually cost many times more than the buildings they blow up.

You can always count on large quantities of resources going to the best weapons in every era even as basic needs are barely met. Huzzah!


@Aginor, Of all the videos, the medieval food videos are my favorite videos from this thread.

I think it’s interesting that in pre-modern times (even as recent as the early twentieth century) left handedness was viewed as backwards or sinful.

Now left handedness can be an asset in physical contests. In baseball a mediocre left handed pitcher can strike out about as many batters as an exceptionally skilled right handed pitcher.

I noticed HEMA people talk about lefties having advantages in certain circumstances. Same thing with southpaws and professional boxers.

He said it better than I would have.

There are difficulties carving fortifications in solid rock but the main limiting factor is food. The rugged terrain may make near unassailable fortresses but you have to feed the people in the castle or fortress. Thats why you got a lot of castles and fortresses built in the middle of excellent farmland.

Underground is even worse. No sun, no photosynthesis. Because my fantasy world has magic in it, I've created things called lifestones which allow underground plants to flourish without the sun. This keeps my dwarves alive, though most of them still import food when they can.

 

Now my own questions.


Pre-Renaissance it was pretty uncommon for ships to sail out of sight of sight of land. Was the main reason for this a need for fresh water and provisions or was the main reason for this fairly primitive compasses and crude maps.

For instance, in my fantasy world, it is relatively common magic to turn a modest quantity of salt water into fresh water. Would having someone like that on your ship be a large boon to medieval sea travel or only a mild boon to medieval sea travel?


Along the lines of sea travel. I know that modern freighters can ride pretty low in the water. They cannot stop just at any coastal port. They need deep water ports.

My fantasy world has a lot of places where the sea overtook the land and the sea is relatively shallow. How deep does water have to be to allow the largest medieval ships to navigate them safely?


When did the fact that you can purify water by boiling it become common knowledge?


Where did most fabric for clothes come from in the medieval? I looked up that flax and cotton was cultivated in ancient times but they were until the industrial revolution, luxury goods for the rich.


Barring magical hand waving, how many specimens for complex mammals, amphibians, or reptiles do you need to have viable genetic diversity for a sustainable breeding population? Mainly I’m concerned about big things like dragons and unicorns.


How do you properly factor realism, ease of playability, and the Rule of Cool into an abstract system of combat represented by dice rolls?

(That last one is half in jest, but it is something I’ve working on a lot).

Generally when designing rules I try to favor playability over realism and the Rule of Cool but when making snap decisions in the middle of game play I like to favor the Rule of Cool.

 

Ships were awful at weathering storms. Keels were all relatively shallow and this made capsizing common in sever weather. Also the reasons you mentioned.

It really depends how laden the ship is and what type of vessel.

Skins/furs, wools, cotton, & linen. Silk if you were wealthy.

This would be heavily impacted by generation span. If it is a species that reproduces infrequently then you would need less of it to prevent genetic diversity issues.

Personally, I DM screen it.... I lie, more often than my players would want to know. If you use a D20 system then it is pretty easy to gage the "needed" roll for a skill check.

 

Hmm, Google says that some ancient societies thought boiling water made it taste better, but it was only discovered that boiling water was the safe way to drink water in the nineteenth century.

Mahrlect. I wonder where we would be today if earlier man knew this.

Me and my friends are big fans of White Wolf Games which is based on d10 dice.

I like the simplicity where you never to have ask what dice you need but the down side of using d10s intead of d20 is you don't have a lot of room for nuance. There is a huge difference beween difficulty 7 and difficulty 9. Even a one point difference is huge.

But I'm sticking it with, because d10s and d6s are most of what I own and d6s 90% of which are Lizard themed dice which just seem wrong to use elsewhere.

via Imgflip Meme Generator

 

City planning, or its lack there of, could be a large factor in why we don't have any Mountain Hold Cities. Most cities did not have have their site and layout chosen on an empty slate. They happen organically as people gathered around an abundance of resources. Although there are certainly some examples of cities, even in antiquity, that had more than the average amount of designed city lay out. Something like a Mountain Hold would require the desire, imagination, planning, and available resources to create.

The benefits gained don't seem equal to the resources expended. Like, consider the amount of time it took to build standard masonry. A lot of the time expense was due to the cost of quarries (when loose stone wasn't used). Now instead of having to quarry enough stone to build the walls and columns you have to quarry out a negative space. That is significantly more stone that has to be quarried as you're now dealing with volume instead of surface area (plus whatever the thickness of the constructed wall would be). The only time expense you save is transporting the stone to location. And I imagine you lose much more labor to cutting stone than you would to moving it in those quantities. Maybe that is why the dwarf race is so long lived in fantasy.

 

If the lack of depth is known then special ship types might have been developed, like they were in the Netherlands for being used on the Ejsselmeer or the Wadden Sea. In German those ships are called Plattbodenschiff (flat bottom ship). Not sure how they are called in English.
Those are - sometimes fairly big, up to 30m long - cargo ships that need only 6 feet of water under them. Very impressive.

Other medieval ships will most likely need something between 15 and 25 feet, depending on their size.

As @Canas said: people did know that, even though they only did know why a lot later, in the 17th century.
They might not even realize it is the boiling water. They might "make tea" because "tea is more healthy than pure water" and think that the herbs are doing that, while in reality it is the boiling and the herbs do nothing.

Contrary to what many people think leather, especially big parts of leather, were rather expensive, because breeding an animal and kill it for its skin is more expensive than planting some hemp or having some sheep. Depending on the society hunting might only be allowed for nobles, so that's where most of the leather goes, too.

The term you are searching for is this one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population

The short answer is: below 500 is extremely dangerous, and below 50 means almost certainly that the species is done.
There are exceptions to that, but they require a lot of luck/and or modern knowledge of genetics.
A pretty safe bet is 5000 individuals or so, at least for vertebrates.

Edit; that's why many post apocalyptic scenarios are so cringe inducing to me. If only a few hundred humans are left then they are basically extinct, they just don't know it yet.

Edit: example: Tigers are considered a very threatened species, their overall population is around 3800.

 

Indeed, especially when you think of some herd animals that require a very low number of males and a high number of females. As long as your new bull is not related to one of his predecessors (at least four or so, to be on the safe side) then that should work.
It does require a number of populations to do so, though.

So that's basically more like the first number of the 50/500/5000 rule.
And yes, if you do it carefully you could maintain a race of cows that has a total of only a few hundred members in a handful of sub populations if you always swap bulls between the herds.
That's what I meant with knowledge of genetics. If you know what you are doing then you can save a species that has less than 300 members. It is hard though, and in the wild they would be gone.

An example is the Giant Panda. It was already at some 1000 individuals or so, only a massive effort saved it - for now at least. But there are now more than 2000 around again it seems, so they might make it.

And without wandering too deeply into genetics: there are of course species that can take it more easily than others. Insects or rodents for example are a LOT more stable than gorillas for example. High production rates and low damage by inbreeding is nice to have when there aren't many options for mating.

 

Yes, the horses we have today are breed for something completely different than in the old days. I would assume that the warhorses would be from the largest workhorses, as you would want a horse that can handle the weight and basically become a steam locomotive, not necessarily very fast speed.

Our national breeds of workhorses are almost extinct, and those that exist are now just used for joyriding, etc. My grandfather was the last one that used horses for the work at the farm I grew up, and he said that just between he was a kid and until they stopped with the horses, the sizes were getting significantly smaller (i.e. breed smaller), due to the need for a large horse was not there anymore like before, and a smaller horse need less feed.

 

You don't have to go to Rome to go on a pilgrimage. There was a joke that 19 of the 12 apostles had their remains in one country. Pilgrimages routes and destinations had a lot in common with modern tourist traps. Pilgrims would get tacky souvenirs, vendors sold them junk food, and inns jacked up their prices. Some people would try to fill up booklets or backpacks or jackets with badges from all the pilgrimage sites they got to.