RuneScape Forum Archive | Khaine's Plate Armor Guide

Aivas

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Eh. For me, sources vary between experience of having made, worn, and used (in several sparring occasions) several components and types of medieval Western European armour, casual research into the subject of pre-modern arms and armour that spanned many a book and many a lonely knight (hue hue) a couple of accounts of battle written by people like Tacitus and Geoffroi de Charny, insight from friends and mentors, among other, less tangible things, like a passion for history and historical accuracy. Some of the more technical terms owe their correct spelling to my rampant use of spellcheck.

But since this guide relates to the real world (albeit in a historical and not a modern context) and a bit of it relates to life and death, I'll just use (and probably bastardize) this tidbit from an ol' jail guard that I admire.

"Take my advice for what it is worth. Use what you can use. Discard anything that doesn't make sense.

You don't know me, you've never seen me. For all the facts you have, I might be a 400-pound quadriplegic or a 70 year old retiree with delusions. Take the information [I give you] and treat it skeptically as hell." -Rory Miller

Sure, I have experience with arms and armour. Sure, there's a lovely 30 second Youtube video called "Armour Aerobics" which shows a skinny dude doing /cartwheels/ (among other things) in full Milanese plate armour. Sure, there's //plenty// of valid research you can conduct on your own that'll validate what Khaine, others, and I are tryin' to say.

But you're gonna need to suit up yourself if you ever really want to find out if plate armour is easier to move around in than mail, among other things.

So go.

Find out.

Report back what you discover.

I just did, for a little portion of what I found out over the years.

15-Oct-2013 01:07:16 - Last edited on 15-Oct-2013 01:10:41 by Aivas

heretic hary

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This thread seems to have been getting a sudden amount of attention while I'm not looking.

Lord Pyro I said :
"Mistakenly believing oneself to possess the correct information on something is a brilliant way to make sure one doesn't learn the correct information on something. The way to avoid this for anyone is to continually strive to improve one's abilities and intellect, and not falling into the trap of believing one already knows what is needed to be known."

Quite right... in which case perhaps you can help me increase my own knowledge by telling me where this information was sourced from?

The original Roleplay Help & Guide was one source. If you want to find a payload of other sources, don't use w*kipedia but instead go to the works cited there (on a related article) and use those sources. That's how I started, and you'll need to exercise a bit of discernment at first. Be sure to examine a good mix of primary and secondary sources as well.

===========================================

Now, to everyone.

I like the requests for additional information, suggestions, improvements, etc. I also enjoy seeing intellectual, back-and-forth conversation here. It makes me happy.

However, I've been working on a larger guide lately that's going to cover a variety of armor, not just plate. Due to the size, it' going to be awhile before I post it. So suggested changes here will be brought to there, and after a long while, we'll see another guide ready. (The length will be longer than my now outdated magic guide.)

I'll take a more in-depth look at what you've all been posting tomorrow, as it's a bit late for me right now. (Still need to pack a lunch, get an outfit for cross-country practice, etc. Usual stuff in the life of a roleplayer who's a high-school senior.)

15-Oct-2013 02:50:36

Aivas

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heretic hary said :

However, I've been working on a larger guide lately that's going to cover a variety of armor, not just plate. Due to the size, it' going to be awhile before I post it. So suggested changes here will be brought to there, and after a long while, we'll see another guide ready. (The length will be longer than my now outdated magic guide.)

Cool. Cannot wait to see. Let me know if ya want some help with it ^u^

Also, I noticed there was no comprehensive section in this guide about various shields, and the different ways they have been effectively used over the millenia. Although some (myself included) would argue that a shield is a piece of armour, a weapon, and something more, it may or may not be worth including a section in your new guide about them. It's a bit sad to see that so few make effective use of a shield in roleplay. A good shield fighter is a scary son of a *****, so much so that reenactment groups such as the SCA have traditionally prohibited effective shield-fighting techniques in their sparring in the interest of safety. It's interesting to note that, although reenactment groups such as the SCA attempt to preserve the historical and martial skills of shield-fighting through making the shield safer to use (similar to how they have attempted to do so with 'safe' replica weapons), such reenactment groups typically frown upon especially violent uses of the shield in combative reenactment due to the ability of offensive use of a shield to injure even an armoured opponent.

*Shrug*

But anyways. Might be worth adding a bit about shields.

16-Oct-2013 02:44:14

Aivas

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In addition, I wondered what you meant when you said your upcoming guide would "cover a variety of armor". Do you mean a variety of real world armours that can relate to armour in rsrp? And even then, do you intend to primarily focus on armours from Western Europe? Or do you wish to branch out to areas such as Eastern Europe (The Byzantines, the Varangians, the Slavs, among others), the Middle East (The Ottoman Empire, among others), or even to the East, and attempt to cover everything from the armour of the Rajput warrior to that of the Mongol Horde, Kievan Rus, Ming Dynasty, and feudal Japanese, and others? Personally, I'd love to see some descriptions of Cataphract armour of Byzantine design, and perhaps a decent description of some feudal Japanese armours. But it's also unrealistic and crazy to expect an insane amount of diversification to be composed for the purpose of a rsrp guide. Then again, rsrp is unrealistic and crazy. I suppose it's however ya want to make the guide ^u^

16-Oct-2013 02:44:29 - Last edited on 16-Oct-2013 03:13:28 by Aivas

Aivas

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Lastly, a test of wit for you.

In an engagement of single combat between a knight and a samurai, who wins?

Why?

16-Oct-2013 02:44:45 - Last edited on 16-Oct-2013 03:20:15 by Aivas

heretic hary

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Shields. Something I'm going to be covering, as I've been lucky enough to find at least two fight-manuals that cover fighting with shields. I personally consider shields to be a weapon, as they're able to be used to jam an opponent's arm and create openings from there. They ertainly have good defensive properties, but someone who tries using the shield to simply block an attack isn't making good use of the shield, be it a pavise, square shield, kiteshield, towershield, buckler, (and other kinds I really have no desire to speak of right now.)

I intend to start with basics that people know or should know if they want to have a functioning knowledge of roleplay combat, such plate, segmented plate, gambeson, aketon, ''scail'' mail, rivetted mail, welded mail, ''generic'' mail (as described in the first edition of the Roleplay Help & Guide). I'll probably make some examples of historical armors that attract my attention the most and work from there.
What I really want to accomplish with it is to give an understanding to the reader that lets him/her be able to know what's going to happen to the armor if X happens. I've one section of armor done, as ''Combat Theory'' took so much time to make (which covered topics such as reflexes and reaction, what constitutes randoming, voiding character death, why we can't have public roleplay without lore, and other stuff.)

Aivas said :
Lastly, a test of wit for you.

In an engagement of single combat between a knight and a samurai, who wins?

Why?

Ah. That question.

I'm going to go work on an answer for that, as there's no way I can answer it off the top of my head. (What kind of knight/samurai are we talking about, weapons involved, etc. For environment, I'll probably just focus on an open, level plain and work from there.)

17-Oct-2013 18:37:49

heretic hary

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So, who would win: a knight or a samurai? Why?

It took me about five minutes of thinking before I realized I was going about this question all wrong.

We can't know who would win, as we have too many unsolvable variables. First, there is no one kind of knight or samurai. Throughout the different centuries there has been different kinds of knights and samurai, and not a single record tells of a knight or samurai fighting against each other. The armor for knights and samurai vary. Different styles of plate armor with mail are associated with knights, and segmented plate that was often lacquered (or different combinations of plates) are associated with samurai. There is no one weapon that is universal to a knight or a weapon universal to a samurai, and the more popularly associated weapons (longsword for the knight and katana for the samurai) both have a massive amount of variants.

17-Oct-2013 21:55:08

Aivas

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heretic hary said :
not a single record tells of a knight or samurai fighting against each other.

You have astounded me with your understanding of the question, and here have given the one real answer to it. We have no historical record of them fighting each other, and they are all dead. It's safe to assume it never happened, and never will.

17-Oct-2013 22:12:02

Aivas

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I'm also glad to hear you'll be covering shields, and managed to find a couple of training manuals to aid you. Sounds like you'll be sticking to European stuff. And the rest of it sounds good.

Will you be covering psychology, and its role in combat?

17-Oct-2013 22:41:39

heretic hary

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I'm covering fear, it's effects, and how immunity to it is a violation of the adherence to realism. Not to mention adrenaline's altering of the fight-or-flight response. I have some other stuff related to psychology, but nothing directly.
Looks like I'll be making another addition to ''Combat Theory''.

After that, I have ''Melee Armor'', ''Melee Weapons'', ''Ranged Armor'', ''Ranged Weapons'', ''Magic Armor'', ''Magic Weapons'', ''Hit-taking and the Human Anatomy'', each section having a small guide on a subtopic.

I categorize armor and weapons simply by what holds the most relevance in the combat triangle, using it as an OOC organizational tool. So mail, although it could be worn by both ''rangers'' and ''warriors'' (in common situations) is placed in the ''Melee'' section for armor.

If something would be considered ''hybrid'', it's title is listed in both sections but the actual article is placed on the ''higher'' part of the combat triangle. So a ''magic/melee'' armor is in the melee section, with a note in the magic section that says ''Please see the title for this in the melee section.''

I'm also going to be covering the katana and some other weapons, and give some of the techniques and footwork for fighting with those as well. Asian martial arts information is passed down through ''living tradition'' more than historical documents, unlike the European martial arts.

18-Oct-2013 01:25:15

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Khaine's Plate Armor Guide