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It’s all in the scale of the intended game I’d say, well that and the intended focus. For the sake of being able to play a system in a reasonable time I’m of the preference that not every section of the rules is super-detailed, but rather with a targeted block of complexity on the part of the system the author wants to shine; command and control rules seem to be a frequent subject of this.
For that, I am ok with weapons being clumped into fairly broad categories covering the general abilities of the weapon/armour and it’s role when that’s the kind of thing where the extra detail wouldn’t really add anything; that is I don’t want to be accounting for differences between MG42s and MG34s when the smallest base I’m moving around is a full squad, unless one is being mounted on a tripod and crewed by a team, but then that’d defining role more than the weapon’s qualities.
It’s something worth consideration though as to if a certain type of weapon system/armour interaction warrants additional detail even if the scale of battle is quite large. A Fistful of TOWs, a game where you can be swiftly moving multiple battalions of infantry and armour at a time would be a good example of this, it puts more detail with a couple of numbers and letters into tank cannon/armour interactions than many games that aim for far smaller battles, since at the distances represented and technological differences that turn up, that granularity in the detail matters for the sake of the simulation.
When it comes to the more primitive end of the weapons spectrum though I think that even at the level of game where each side might consist of only a half dozen figures on the table, that the detail in the armament can be kept low. After spending several years hitting people with a variety of said primitive weapons and putting in some studying on the matter, I think the most relevant considerations for a game to represent them properly (in individual combat, mass combat blurs things a lot unless there’s a clear mismatch going on) would be:
If the weaponry confers any particular bonus over the opposition (which mostly boils down to who has better reach).
If the weapon makes dealing with any armour easier (does the wielder have to do anything extra fancy to work around it where as an angry Hussite with a flail wont have to worry?)
That could also be taken in reverse; does the equipment make it more difficult for the wielder to harm their target/survive?
Beyond that I think it’s pretty much all down to the user. The differences between a bill and a halberd, or a 14th century halberd vs a 16th century one are just not worth accounting for unless programming some really complex physics simulation.
TL;DR unless the weapons/armour match-up means one side will have a significant (for a given value of significant as dependant on the goals of the designer and all that guff
) advantage or disadvantage, it is ok to be rather broad with how it’s all categorised.I think the most relevant considerations for a game to represent them properly (in individual combat, mass combat blurs things a lot unless there’s a clear mismatch going on) would be:
If the weaponry confers any particular bonus over the opposition (which mostly boils down to who has better reach).
If the weapon makes dealing with any armour easier (does the wielder have to do anything extra fancy to work around it where as an angry Hussite with a flail wont have to worry?) That could also be taken in reverse; does the equipment make it more difficult for the wielder to harm their target/survive? Beyond that I think it’s pretty much all down to the user.
The differences between a bill and a halberd, or a 14th century halberd vs a 16th century one are just not worth accounting for unless programming some really complex physics simulation. TL;DR unless the weapons/armour match-up means one side will have a significant (for a given value of significant as dependant on the goals of the designer and all that guff
) advantage or disadvantage, it is ok to be rather broad with how it’s all categorised.Yes I entirely agree.
I had ample documentation to indicate that effectiveness could vary significantly depending at least as much on the type of bow deployed as (beyond a basic level of competence) by the quality of the combatant.
That’s the point. If you try to calculate all these differences, your rules will be bogged into endless details. What you need is an average factor for each broad type of weapon, and to keep the number of weapon types as low as possible.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/ahhh got it – ‘Ramon, that’s not a horse – that’s a Guanacco’
Those Mycenaean boar tusk helmets fascinate me though. A lot of porkers must have gone into each one.
Yes, but didn’t a chap make one, and it involved splitting the horns?
@NotConnard – ConquistaWalts! ‘I can’t say where I was, hush-hush you understand, but I remember this gigantic Aztec coming at me with his enormous chooper, luckily I had my trusty ’50 cal sword. You are never alone with a ’50 cal sword, as I found out when crouched sobbing in a quonset hut outside Mexico City wishing I had a Girlfriend’
Padded Cotton armour was so effctive the Conquistadors started wearing it themselves, didn’t they? (cut me some slack, I read ‘The Conquest of Mexico’ 20 years ago, otherwise I am utterly ignorant TBH) I would expect an obsidian hacking-club to lose a lot of its effectiveness against a rigid armour. But ‘chopping the heads off horses sounds like classic soldier-BS. It starts with Rosinante getting a nasty neck wound, and by the time the soldier is telling it for the fourteenth time with a glass of Tequila, it’s heads off and still running.
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