Not surprising in the least. Historians don't get their names in the news much, but one way they can at least try, is to become revisionists. Thus Chris Hitchens gives us Mother Theresa as an evil, oppressive villain... but I digress.
I have never read anything to convince me that knights did not remain the strong arm of the middle ages, and the evidence that they were so is overwhelming.
The fact is that, contrary to popular belief, horses will run into a mass of people, unless they had prickling spears and pikes sticking out, a horse will stop or shy away from running itself into a point. Swords or axes will not stop this, and the infantryman must be sufficiently disciplined to still be there, sticking his spear out, when the horse gets close.
Victor Davis Hanson describes cavalry as the jet fighters of their day. Imagine being a pilot, a world above the soldiers on the ground, a highly manuverable vehicle and weapons system at your fingertips. Now imagine being a cavalry trooper, a whole body above the rest of the soldiers on the ground, a large beast which can make you move faster than your enemies, and the added leverage which comes with being a whole man's length higher.
John Keegan believes that when correctly prepared against (such as by improvising fortifications) and, especially, by standing firm in face of the onslaught, cavalry charges often failed against infantry, with horses refusing to gallop into the dense mass of enemies, or the charging unit itself breaking up. However, when cavalry charges succeeded, it was usually due to the defending formation breaking up (often in fear) and scattering, to be hunted down by the enemy.
The cavalry charge was a significant tactic in the Middle Ages. Although cavalry had charged before, a combination of the adoption of a frame saddle secured in place by a breastband, stirrups and the technique of couching the lance under the arm delivered a hitherto unachievable ability to utilise the momentum of the horse and rider. These developments began in the 7th. century but were not combined to full effect until the 11th. century.
The Battle of Dyrrachium in 1081 was an early instance of the familiar medieval cavalry charge; recorded to have a devastating affect by both Norman and Byzantine chroniclers. By the time of the First Crusade in the 1090s, the cavalry charge was being employed widely by European armies.
Ah, well now you really are digressing, because whilst I have every interest in arguing the point (and heartily disagree with some, but not all, of what you are saying - Hanson is certainly in the minority these days) I doubt this is the place to really give it a thorough going over. Keegan is quite right that breaking up an infantry formation is a necessary prelude to a successful cavalry charge, and cavalry charges were significant, but they were also frequently successfully resisted. The way Chain Mail is set up, even after checking to see if infantry stand against cavalry, the advantage is still massively on the side of the cavalry, spears or not. However, the point I am making is that different ideas of what is historical will give you different design paradigms, and so it is not sufficient to say Chain Mail gives historical results (and there are numerous battles where it would be very difficult to present it as a decent simulation). What it gives you are results that you may or may not consider historical. For my part, I do not, and nothing is likely to convince me that Light Horse versus Heavy Foot should transpire as it does in this system.
Remember also that our medieval history gets a serious pro-English bias, and the English like foot soldiers with longbows, not mounted knights.
Thus, Crecy Poitiers and Agincourt get a lot of press, where the English bowmen won, but battles like Patay (June 18, 1429) which was the real turning point of the Hundred years War (which the English lost) and Formigny are quietly forgotten.
Well, I think that is a bit of a whitewash. It would be hard to describe Agincourt as a victory of infantry over cavalry, given that the majority of the French army was dismounted, for instance. Patay and Formigny are less famous, but quietly forgotten they are not. Indeed, that is the whole direction of modern study, away from the over-simplistic infantry-cavalry-infantry/long bow superiority explanations and towards more complex understandings of ancient and medieval warfare.
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
Yes, Gary and Jeff Perrin were indeed influenced by Oman.
Based on many years of actually PLAYING the d**n game, I'm going to say it's still a pretty fair simulation. And Swiss and Landsknecht will usually butcher anything but huge numbers of heavy horse.
How often have you actually PLAYED the game rather than just sit and look at the rules?
I disagree I'm giving the authors too much credit. I think you're playing Monday Morning Quarterback.
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
Well, it is certainly fair to say my experience with Chain Mail is less than yours, Mike. A bare handful of times comprises my experience of the game, and not always correctly either! But playing quarterback I am not (nor in the same sense armchair general... yes that is a joke!), not that it would matter given that what you are saying bears out my observations and experiences of the game. That is to say, Chain Mail has a fairly straightforward mathematical structure, with deviations reflecting what Gygax and Perren considered an accurate reflection of medieval battles. Things have changed in the intervening years, and if you want hard historical evidence there is plenty out there.
Reducing the structure back to an underlying mathematical pattern provides an insight into how it was developed and may help in the decision making process for adjusting the rules to either make the game 1) more fun for the participants or 2) closer to current historical opinion. After all, altering the game to suit the preferences of the participants and to address any perceived insufficiencies was anticipated by the authors. The usefulness depends on what you want to achieve. Knowing that there is an identifiable mathematical structure relatively independent of historical concerns (and there is) speaks to the need for a game to primarily be a game, rather than a simulation. Seeking to balance these two aspects (playability and historical authenticity) can inform any further changes made to the game system.
Looking at the combat chart has certainly given me something to think about for the next time I play Chain Mail (perhaps next weekend, but more likely we will play Field of Glory). Since heavy cavalry seem over powerful to me, and light cavalry too potent relative to heavy foot, I am quite liking the second alternative chart, but the first is closer to the original and may overall do the least violence to the game. Without play testing it is hard to predict, but analysing the numbers can give a sense of how it will work.
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
You have indeed hit upon one of the keys to CHAINMAIL. In Gary's own words, it is "first and foremost a game". Alas, those forum posts on Rob Kuntz' "Pied Piper Publishing Forum" were lost in a server crash.
I applaud a sincere effort to update CHAINMAIL based on historical research since the late 60s; I would be very interested in how it goes.
One of my profs, Bernie Bachrach of the U of MN, was big on the concept that knights fought dismounted a lot more than was usually thought. Even when CHAINMAIL was written, Oman was on the way out.
I'll also admit as I get older, "close enough" looks better and better.
I'm not nearly as annoyed by his reliance on Oman as I am by his reliance on Ashdown (chain mail, scale mail, plate mail... ecch!) and Stone (Glaive-guisarme-voulge-fauchard-fork).
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
I'm not nearly as annoyed by his reliance on Oman as I am by his reliance on Ashdown (chain mail, scale mail, plate mail... ecch!) and Stone (Glaive-guisarme-voulge-fauchard-fork).
I seem to remember some (Space Gamer?) article that had a table for random D&D weapons, that went something like:
Quite so, it is a great pity that the Pied Piper Publishing forums lost so much data. I will certainly report our experiences of adjusted Chain Mail play here when the opportunity presents itself.
Bachrach is an excellent scholar, and his insights have served the academic community well time and again, not least his destruction of White's stirrup thesis. His contention that knights were well suited to fighting on foot early in their history (and did so in practice) has exercised a well deserved influence on modern studies of medieval warfare. I have always enjoyed reading his articles. That is not to be too critical of Oman, it is only to be expected that our ideas be refined, and some old ones discarded, as the study of the subject develops.
I can thoroughly sympathise with the problems of weapon and armour taxonomy stirred up by Gygax's use of Ashdown and Stone. Whilst the use of "chain mail" can just about be gotten away with, there is no excuse for "chain mail armour", which although never seeming to appear in Gygax's own work can certainly be found in relatively early TSR products, and is a natural consequence of the way the PHB and DMG are organised. On the other hand, the DMG has a good go (two in fact) at describing what it means by the armour designations, which at least absolves it of too much vagueness! If I had to get on my hobby horse about something Gygaxian, though, it would be clerics, maces, bloodshed and life in a medieval manor.
These days I plump for a more abstract take on armour class with the classification number taking precedence over the type. For the interested, a short article I wrote on the subject can be found here: Armour Class. In that sense "close enough", along with "sufficiently abstract" to allow for multiple interpretations, has a strong appeal for me. Certainly I no longer look for the exact and precise simulations that I did in my teens and early twenties! For what it is worth, the emphasis on the strength of cavalry, because it also found its way into the AD&D system, is also causing me some consternation in the War & Battle project. It is a good example of how concerns over playability, historical authenticity and system faithfulness intersect for this sort of game design.
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350), Tsurezure-Gusa (1340)
Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 4,676 Location: Near Chicago Karma: 178
Reducing the structure back to an underlying mathematical pattern provides an insight into how it was developed and may help in the decision making process for adjusting the rules to either make the game 1) more fun for the participants or 2) closer to current historical opinion.
Looking at the combat chart has certainly given me something to think about for the next time I play Chain Mail
This is close to my perspective as well. I suspect that actual battle has far too many variables to completely simulate in any miniatures rules set, let alone a relatively simple one like Chainmail.
While I think that making Chainmail a more histoical game is neat, my interest in being histoically accurate isn't that strong anymore as I read more fantasy and less history. For me, the study of the game is the cool thing.
I think that nowadays my interest is mostly along the lines of (1) trying to understand the underlying design mathematics of the Chainmail simulation, and (2) looking at how this game evolved into OD&D.
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" - Dave Arneson
Patay and Formigny are less famous, but quietly forgotten they are not.
Depends on what you mean. Professional and amateur historians certainly know about them, but when have you heard a quote about one of these battles in popular culture, as opposed to Agincourt?
As a kid, I was an avid reader of things ancient and medieval, but, despite this, it was a very long time before I realized that the French won the Hundred Years War, and gradually drove the English out. It was an equally long time before I realized that the French were the real innovators (artillery) and that the English longbow was an anachronism.
Depends on what you mean. Professional and amateur historians certainly know about them, but when have you heard a quote about one of these battles in popular culture, as opposed to Agincourt?
As a kid, I was an avid reader of things ancient and medieval, but, despite this, it was a very long time before I realized that the French won the Hundred Years War, and gradually drove the English out. It was an equally long time before I realized that the French were the real innovators (artillery) and that the English longbow was an anachronism.
Well, I mean it is not forgotten in modern scholarship. We were taught about the hundred years war in school, both how it started and how it ended (if we can say as much), as part of an overview of English history. My biggest misperception as a result of the course was that it was a continuous conflict. As I recall they were not interested in teaching us about the battles (very disappointing for my eleven year old self), but more interested in political and social history. That was about twenty years ago, no idea how it goes now.
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
I approve of updating CHAINMAIL where needed to reflect current historical thinking.
Mechanically, though, because we're only using a 6 sider... I wonder if the changes will ultimately be so small that by the end of the battle, they really don't get noticed.
Don't take this as saying that you shouldn't do it... this is more of me musing idly upon my "Close is good enough" gaming style now that I have to look backwards to see 50.
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
Mechanically, though, because we're only using a 6 sider... I wonder if the changes will ultimately be so small that by the end of the battle, they really don't get noticed.
Don't take this as saying that you shouldn't do it... this is more of me musing idly upon my "Close is good enough" gaming style now that I have to look backwards to see 50.
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
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