np NP Friday, Nov 15, 2019

[hkmaly 490]

51 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I stand by my statement.

And I stand by mine. It is still a building.

Well, I didn't said it's not building. Just that it's very small.

52 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

My point was that the flexibility of the surface you land on can make a big difference.

People have been known to survive falls at terminal velocity or near it. Granted, not many, and usually with grave injuries. Not everyone can be as fortunate as the WW1 pilot who bailed without a parachute from his burning airplane, reasoning that death from fall would at least be less painful, or over faster anyway. He fell almost two kilometers, went through the straw-thatched roof of a convent and landed in a bed. Fifteen minutes later he left the convent walking under his own power.

Yeah, that was lot of luck. Generally, hitting body of water is easier than hitting bed. On the other hand, I suspect that water at terminal velocity won't leave you in good enough shape to swim, and surviving the fall just to drown later is not so big accomplishment ...

56 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I'm sure he did regret skipping that class then.

Yes, but only very briefly.

... yeah, so lousy necromancer as well.

42 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

56 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

Armor at its best causes blows to slide off. Spikes interfere with that and force the energy of the blow into the armor and potentially the wearer. You want the armor to be smoothly convex everywhere it CAN be smoothly convex without interfering overmuch with motion.

Indeed. Please note that I am not against equipping decorative armour with various frills; I merely note that I consider it the height of stupidity to put inertia traps on any actual combat armour merely for the sake of frill. (Don Edwards, wasn't it you who once mentioned that not very bright hero in A Practical Guide to Evil whose armour redirected an arrow upward from his chest into his throat? I have seen suits of armour that had a bit of raised collar apparently shaped to prevent exactly that sort of incident, be it from sliding arrow or blade.)

I would like to point out that we are talking about barbarian. Just because it's stupid doesn't mean it's not present on his armor - barbarians are not exactly known for high intelligence.

(But I definitely agree with the point that you don't want to lower the effectivity of combat armor with decorative elements, and spikes on armor definitely ARE decorative elements, it's very unlikely you manage to actually use them in attack.)

45 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

59 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

(The absolute best armor is to not get hit in the first place, of course.)

I would say 'defence' rather than 'armour', but that is just me quibbling, I guess. I like my definitions and armour is stuck somewhere in my head as 'means of dispersing incoming energy' rather than any sort of avoidance. Bad me.

I agree with that. Armor is something which is supposed to get hit instead of you.

Also, best defense is usually to attack before your enemy. Although not being anywhere near the point your enemy is attacking is also quite good.

9 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

"It can sometimes be inconvenient." -- The Necromancer, speaking of death, in Steven Brust's Paths of the Dead.

Dying is usually inconvenient - T Susan Pompoms
https://egscomics.com/comic/2010-07-26

Susan MIGHT be referencing that, but I would consider more likely it's just cynicism.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I would like to point out that we are talking about barbarian. Just because it's stupid doesn't mean it's not present on his armor - barbarians are not exactly known for high intelligence.

Yes, that is a common prejudice and one that has caused many a 'civilised' force's downfall. As an example, my own Viking ancestors did not actually wear horns on their helmets when entering battle. These served purely as decoration on social occasions.

More importantly, battle itself tended to eventually sort out people who deliberately weakened their own protection for the sake of looks. And should they survive their error, they would feel less inclined to repeat it.

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, best defense is usually to attack before your enemy. Although not being anywhere near the point your enemy is attacking is also quite good.

There is a number of variations on this theme and the best of them very often involve the attack being misdirected or not happening at all. One of our more competent governments decided that the best way to defend Copenhagen was to make it such an uninviting target that the enemy would consider her too expensive to take to be worth attacking. This worked quite well for WW1, where our coastal fortifications (including two island forts with guns powerful enough to give a battleship pause) were judged too potent to be worth bothering with by the German High Command. Especially given that we would quite happily trade the Germans what they wanted at a much lower cost than invading us.

Sadly, subsequent governments did not bother updating these defences after the end of the war, and by the time the Germans invaded us in 1940, they were too out of date to represent a serious problem for the invaders. (Air defences? What's that?)

[hkmaly 490]

9 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

13 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I would like to point out that we are talking about barbarian. Just because it's stupid doesn't mean it's not present on his armor - barbarians are not exactly known for high intelligence.

Yes, that is a common prejudice and one that has caused many a 'civilised' force's downfall. As an example, my own Viking ancestors did not actually wear horns on their helmets when entering battle. These served purely as decoration on social occasions.

More importantly, battle itself tended to eventually sort out people who deliberately weakened their own protection for the sake of looks. And should they survive their error, they would feel less inclined to repeat it.

Let me restate it: We are talking about barbarian in RPG. Surprisingly, RPG players tend to learn much slower than real people, likely because it's not actually their life which is at stake ... and also because not every GM actually applies negative points for decorations on armor.

Yes, real-live barbarians were not really matching the trope. For start, they usually weren't stupid, just not educated. Unless we are talking about people called barbarians and actually having more advanced civilization than the ones calling them that.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Let me restate it: We are talking about barbarian in RPG. Surprisingly, RPG players tend to learn much slower than real people, likely because it's not actually their life which is at stake ... and also because not every GM actually applies negative points for decorations on armor.

Ah! Of course. That is a completely different matter. You can get away with stupefyingly bad ideas in games since you can usually just restore a savegame or create a new character even in worst case scenarios. Thank you for explaining.

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, real-live barbarians were not really matching the trope. For start, they usually weren't stupid, just not educated. Unless we are talking about people called barbarians and actually having more advanced civilization than the ones calling them that.

When I talk about 'civilised' versus 'barbaric' I usually think of 'citified' versus 'basic stationary agrarian.' I am not as much thinking of attitudes as mode of existence. In fact, 'barbaric' is probably a poor word for it. I need to work on my terminology.

[hkmaly 490]

8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

11 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, real-live barbarians were not really matching the trope. For start, they usually weren't stupid, just not educated. Unless we are talking about people called barbarians and actually having more advanced civilization than the ones calling them that.

When I talk about 'civilised' versus 'barbaric' I usually think of 'citified' versus 'basic stationary agrarian.' I am not as much thinking of attitudes as mode of existence. In fact, 'barbaric' is probably a poor word for it. I need to work on my terminology.

... not sure what you mean by "attitude as mode of existence" but note that the most famous barbarians probably didn't do much of agriculture either. The idea of city is not far from the point when you start being stationary due to switching from nomad life to agriculture one.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

... not sure what you mean by "attitude as mode of existence" but note that the most famous barbarians probably didn't do much of agriculture either.

Really? The bronze and iron age Scandinavians were certainly a pre-civilised people. They also happened to be diligent farmers. Contrary to what you may believe, Denmark is not actually a frozen wasteland with half-starved packs of rampaging polar bears running hither and yon. It wasn't that back in ca. 800 A. D. either.

An absolute necessity for metalworking, arts and crafts is a sufficiently large surplus of food to allow classes of people who do not spend all their time gathering or hunting food. Skilled farmers are very good at creating that surplus. Fishing can help, too, obviously.

Forget Conan the Barbarian and the stereotypes from the roleplaying games. You do not get huge barbarian hordes just from hunting and gathering. No, they have settled homelands and they most certainly engage in farming. Once farming started to become common, the societies who engaged in it quickly grew so much in size and ability to produce goods that they entirely outcompeted anyone who didn't. They may even be startlingly advanced -- as you yourself pointed out, the label of 'barbarian' is often applied out of a sheer sense of superiority, right or not.

[Scotty 1,061]

9 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Ah! Of course. That is a completely different matter. You can get away with stupefyingly bad ideas in games since you can usually just restore a savegame or create a new character even in worst case scenarios. Thank you for explaining.

Sometimes even good ideas end up becoming stupid in practice if the dice don't play nice. Case in point, a party consisting of a human barbarian, a gnome artificer, an elf sorcerer and a halfling thief and a warforged construct were fighting a minotaur, the barbarian and artificer had managed to do some damage by the time the sorcerer was up, and they decided to cast Eldritch Blast (they're using D&D Beyond for their rules and classes and such so the characters are not what you'd call standard), they crit failed their initial casting which mean the DM had to roll to see if the spell ends up hitting which turns out to be the Warforged, so they make another roll to see of that gets past the Warforge's AC and promptly critfails that roll.

So after everyone gets done laughing at the back to back critfails, the DM sums it up as "you stumble as you start casting and send the Eldritch Blast bouncing off the Warforged's armour and back into your face." and everyone starts laughing again.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

22 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Yes, that is a common prejudice and one that has caused many a 'civilised' force's downfall. As an example, my own Viking ancestors did not actually wear horns on their helmets when entering battle. These served purely as decoration on social occasions.

Or to mess with the tourists.

[hkmaly 490]

8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Really? The bronze and iron age Scandinavians were certainly a pre-civilised people. They also happened to be diligent farmers. Contrary to what you may believe, Denmark is not actually a frozen wasteland with half-starved packs of rampaging polar bears running hither and yon. It wasn't that back in ca. 800 A. D. either.

That's ok, I don't consider THEM to be most famous barbarians. Also, I'm pretty sure they had if not cities at least permanent villages. Denmark might not be frozen wasteland, but rest of Scandinavia was certainly cold enough during winter to convince people it's good idea to build something which can't be packed and loaded on horse's backs.

8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

An absolute necessity for metalworking, arts and crafts is a sufficiently large surplus of food to allow classes of people who do not spend all their time gathering or hunting food. Skilled farmers are very good at creating that surplus. Fishing can help, too, obviously.

Absolute necessity for ironworking is furnace. I'm pretty sure those tend to be quite immobile as well.

8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Forget Conan the Barbarian and the stereotypes from the roleplaying games. You do not get huge barbarian hordes just from hunting and gathering. No, they have settled homelands and they most certainly engage in farming. Once farming started to become common, the societies who engaged in it quickly grew so much in size and ability to produce goods that they entirely outcompeted anyone who didn't.

With the exception of societies which raided them and stole the goods from them. THOSE are the most famous barbarians. (Also, it's not just hunting and gathering. They had sheep, goats, maybe cattle. Wait, is that considered agriculture as well? It's not farming ...)

... although it's possible that many of those nomadic tribes included significant number of members who were engaged in farming before they joined. If not, their mothers might.

Of course, Conan the Barbarian himself was son of village blacksmith and Cimmerians were the descendants of colonists from Atlantis.

6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

On 11/20/2019 at 4:42 AM, The Old Hack said:

Yes, that is a common prejudice and one that has caused many a 'civilised' force's downfall. As an example, my own Viking ancestors did not actually wear horns on their helmets when entering battle. These served purely as decoration on social occasions.

Or to mess with the tourists.

I imagine they DID wear the horns when raiding villages and knowing in advance there wouldn't be any battle to speak of.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

That's ok, I don't consider THEM to be most famous barbarians.

Oh! I am sorry. I thought we were talking about general beliefs, not the purity of your personal and absolute judgment which of course cannot be challenged!

[hkmaly 490]

12 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

14 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That's ok, I don't consider THEM to be most famous barbarians.

Oh! I am sorry. I thought we were talking about general beliefs, not the purity of your personal and absolute judgment which of course cannot be challenged!

We can do both

I mean, I don't exactly have results of big statistic research behind me, so I can't talk about anyone else with certainty.

But no matter how famous Vikings are, there are two quite famous groups which I would expect to be both more famous and more famous AS barbarians. When we don't count Conan, I mean, because he might be more famous than both of those.

One group are the barbarians who destroyed West Rome. Which would be mostly Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Huns - all Germanic tribes.

Another would be Mongol hordes, with their biggest success under the leadership of Genghis Khan.

And, to return to my point, I wanted to say that you don't change my opinions about barbarians by showing how much farming Vikings did, because I'm more willing to see it as reasons why they were not "typical barbarians".

(Which is in quotes because existence of such group is matter of opinion.)

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

One group are the barbarians who destroyed West Rome. Which would be mostly Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Huns - all Germanic tribes.

I'll look into their farming practices. If it turns out they subsisted solely or even mainly from hunting and gathering, why, then you are correct.

3 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Another would be Mongol hordes, with their biggest success under the leadership of Genghis Khan.

They still engaged in farming, though the main reason they relied more on herding and a nomadic lifestyle seems to have been a lack of arable land. Once they conquered better land and could put the captive populations to work, they certainly farmed like anything.

8 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And, to return to my point, I wanted to say that you don't change my opinions about barbarians by showing how much farming Vikings did, because I'm more willing to see it as reasons why they were not "typical barbarians".

Possibly not. But by showing even one example that diverges from a postulated rule, I nonetheless weaken that rule.

[hkmaly 490]

13 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

22 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

One group are the barbarians who destroyed West Rome. Which would be mostly Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Huns - all Germanic tribes.

I'll look into their farming practices. If it turns out they subsisted solely or even mainly from hunting and gathering, why, then you are correct.

I'm not suggesting they subsisted mainly from hunting and gathering. I'm suggesting they subsisted mainly from stealing and ... yes, herding seems to be the word I was looking for.

18 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Another would be Mongol hordes, with their biggest success under the leadership of Genghis Khan.

They still engaged in farming, though the main reason they relied more on herding and a nomadic lifestyle seems to have been a lack of arable land. Once they conquered better land and could put the captive populations to work, they certainly farmed like anything.

I'm not willing to count as farming when captive population was doing the actual work.

19 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

28 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And, to return to my point, I wanted to say that you don't change my opinions about barbarians by showing how much farming Vikings did, because I'm more willing to see it as reasons why they were not "typical barbarians".

Possibly not. But by showing even one example that diverges from a postulated rule, I nonetheless weaken that rule.

The rule, yes.

You wouldn't weaken my conviction though, because that's already taking information that Vikings were living in villages into account.

(Hmmm ... although in general case, pointing out something I already know MIGHT help - just because I know it doesn't mean I took it into account.)

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

(Hmmm ... although in general case, pointing out something I already know MIGHT help - just because I know it doesn't mean I took it into account.)

That's fair enough, and I'll remember. We can nitpick over the details at other times. For now I suggest we agree to only partially agree

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I suggest we agree to only partially agree

Unacceptable

Anyone who did not look and sound like Ahnold in the Conan movies was NOT a REAL barbarian

Thank you Hollywood for teaching me all I need to know of History

[The Old Hack 2,448]

11 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Thank you Hollywood for teaching me all I need to know of History

How sad you never paid attention to what was going around outside your pyramid in the 3000 years you spent in there.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Unacceptable

Anyone who did not look and sound like Ahnold in the Conan movies was NOT a REAL barbarian

Thank you Hollywood for teaching me all I need to know of History

Conan the Librarian

[hkmaly 490]

5 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Anyone who did not look and sound like Ahnold in the Conan movies was NOT a REAL barbarian

I'm not sure how obvious it was from movies, but the books about Conan are pretty certain about Conan not being typical barbarian.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Conan the Librarian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2qZrz_3LOA

The video quality is worse, but the concept is better
From Reading Rainbow