Art Showcase

I found a bunch of my wife Mona's art scans on a flash drive today, so I thought I'd share.

Two of the more chaste fairies are based on my daughter Ashli and her friend Machele, and the Valkyrie is also my daughter Ashli. The Full Tilt is our SCA baronial newsletter and that cover was nominated for a Blackfox award, the only newsletter in our kingdom so honored that year. The Mermaid is a real crowd pleaser. Freyja was drawn for a Norse Pagan magazine I think. The slutty chick with the whip was on a bet. The Dragon was her first, just to see if she could. Slutty Red Riding Hood just amused her. She is sick today, apparently an allergic reaction to her antibiotics; so I didn't get to start my 43 AD game today like I planned. Now it's looking like Sunday if she's feeling better.

Of Yurts, and Books

I have recently decided that my project for this summer is to build a Yurt for camping. Am I taking this Great Khan thing too far? I don't think so. I have been in the SCA for decades now and Yurts are kind of a pain in the ass to set up, but are the palaces of the tent world. I have actually been trying to get my wife Mona to agree to building Yurts for us to live in full time, year round, for about a decade or more, but she is reticent to live in what she refers to as a "glorified tent", despite the fact that there are actually people doing just this very thing in upstate NY. There is even a campground along the Salmon river that uses Yurts for lodges year round. So I figure a really kick-ass camping Yurt may change her mind. Plus they are ecologically sound, reducing our footprint significantly, and I think it would be cool to have each of my kids get their own Yurt, like having a more private bedroom; they're all teenagers now. Ashli will be twenty in October, while her condition currently precludes her from living on her own, I am pretty sure a Yurt of her own would be OK. So I bought these books to help me with my Yurt quest, I haven't had a chance to read them yet, but I imagine they'll be useful, they had good Amazon reviews.

I already had this one from years ago, back then it was simply referred to as the definitive Yurt book. I learned a lot from this book, but I figured more information is always better.

Otherwise I just would have stuck with this one. It's a do it yourself guide to everything Mongolian, including Yurt building, but also clothing and the Uighur alphabet, among other things. It's real hands on, written for SCA folk.

Now, I also mentioned I had been reading some Mongol history recently, this is the book, it apparently accompanied a BBC series I will most likely never get to see. I have read a lot of Mongol history in the past too, this was just something new for me. I have an entire shelf of books devoted to the Mongols actually, with a couple more books on the way soon, not counting the Yurt books of course. Are there any Mongol RPG books out there? Was there ever a GURPS Mongols? I mean, I have TSR's "The Horde" and "Forgotten Realms Horde Campaign" for 2nd edition AD&D, and I bought the companion novels "The Empires Trilogy- Horselords, Dragonwall and Crusade"; spoiler alert- so they can keep the Forgotten Realms at status quo ante bellum they might just as well have never introduced any of the main characters in "The Horde" boxed set, they're all dead or irrelevant by the end of the 3rd book.

As far as history goes, I also got this in the mail today, it was a seminal read for the formation of our Mongol online gaming guild- The Steppe Warriors

And, because I am a giant Mongol nerd, I also got this, but I haven't had a chance to start it yet. I am still finishing up the last series I was writing about.

This copy of the L5R RPG's Boxed set "City of Lies" came in the mail yesterday, funny story, I was bidding on three boxed sets, two of which I had never seen before. They were all from the same seller, so I figured if I won all three I'd just pass this along to Dalton since he has an interest in running the L5R RPG, but I'd save on shipping and all. I got super sniped at the end of the auction on the other two and only won the one I already had.

Lastly, this came in the mail today, another WotC D20 Star Wars Sourcebook. I really liked the New Jedi Order series of novels, so I wanted to see their take on all of it, and, of course, it was an excellent deal.

I haven't been neglecting this blog

I have been working on my other one, and spending a frustrating day waiting for a tree guy to actually show up at my house today. He called saying he was on his way over, and he's been here before like four times, just as I was about to leave for my Dawn Patrol game, so I did the responsible adult thing and canceled my Dawn Patrol game, so my wife wouldn't have to try and negotiate with this guy by herself.

He, of course, never showed up. I am really beginning to hate this guy. He treats logging my property like it's a tree removal service job, and it's not really. We have some valuable wood here, but he's always trying to treat it like we want some useless dead or damaged trees taken down and figuring out the cost to himself for equipment and crew. The Cherry trees alone are worth more than enough to finance the rest of the operation, a few years ago I'd have made a few thousand dollars on the deal and he'd have been happy to do it. The problem I have is that my lot is too small for big time loggers to waste time on and the small time guys are all the same, tree removal service guys.

I am supposed to run a D20 Star Wars game tomorrow and I was just going to convert the introductory adventure from the WEG D6 system to run. I have to say, I have had two weeks to prepare for this game and reading through the WotC Star Wars D20 revised has been absolute hell. I remember things from D20 D&D that I ultimately grew to hate and I am feeling under prepared, despite my extra week off due to Mona's birthday and Mother's Day.

I have actually found my attention wandering to both my Garnia campaign, hence the slight burst of activity on the other blog, and my Oriental Adventures project which has drawn my attention to both the Asian flavored potion of Garnia and all the fixes I still need to make and playtest for 1st edition AD&D's Oriental Adventures book, which I guess means that I'll have something "inspired by" that book, eventually. I also kind of want to play my B/X Vikings setting, but I am having a hard time coming up with a quorum of players, that whole drop-in, drop-out thing hasn't worked in practice; which is why we decided to go with Star Wars in the first place, more powerful PCs.

I also got this in the mail, two copies-

Lastly, bonus points if you can pick out which of these ancient Celt miniatures most resembles my fighting style in SCA battles. Click to embiggen.

April 18th P Day

I have to tell you all that P day for a Norse oriented blogging month might as well be a break day. Sure I can point out that they were Pagans, but I think I covered that under Heathen, which is a less Latin, more Germanic term meaning the same thing. I could point out that they worshiped a Pantheon of Gods, that they were Polytheistic, like other Pagan peoples, but I think we got that covered too. Probably the most ground breaking news I could mention is that their naming practices were Patronymic, meaning that their names were (usually) derived from adding son or daughter to their father's name to give them a "last name"; but that's a pretty common practice for a lot of European cultures right up into the modern era, and is still pretty common in Iceland.

So I guess I just don't have a lot to give you all for P day, and I have had kind of a suck day anyway. My minivan finally crossed the threshold of more expensive to fix than it was worth. Blown head gasket, 180+ thousand miles on it, it was a 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan and it served me well for many years, but now I have to find a new vehicle that will be big enough for me to be comfortable driving (remember I am 6'6"), fit my entire 5 member family and all of our SCA gear, plus, hopefully be fuel efficient AND not cost an arm and a leg.

Since I live on a dirt road in snow country 4-wheel drive would be a plus too, but I won't hold my breath. I am thinking SUV rather than minivan this time around though.

Curious... but read to the end.

Apparently I shouldn't lead with my dad's birthday and Dawn Patrol, very few hits and a follower left. Yesterday I wrote a pretty lengthy blog post with four distinct topics covering everything I did or thought about and talked with people about over the weekend, but I buried the D&D stories at the end. Now, I don't mean to sound like I am bitching or anything, but where's the attention span? Plus, Dawn Patrol is inarguably old school, as a matter of fact, when I was at Big Darryl's house I answered the phone because I was closest and he asked me to, he was stirring the marinara sauce, it was his other son Keith. Keith was surprised that I was there and asked what we were doing. I said "We're playing some Dawn Patrol.", he said"Wow, that's old school!", and was immediately transported back to about 1985. I don't think I have seen Keith since his wedding, which was maybe 1995? He moved down south for college and never came home, a sad thing that happens to all too many sons and daughters of northern New York when they get to the south and realize that they are away from the bad weather, are better educated than everyone around them and there are greater economic opportunities.

Anyway, I have to start making up the Viking PCs for the new campaign since we are starting on Sunday, so I thought I'd put them out here. I won't be using the, as yet unfinished, new PC/NPC country of origin table, because I have decided that this is a Norwegian colony. I will randomize the physical traits of the characters based on several arcane formulae I have designed over the years for NPCs. Today's lot will be strait B/X Fighters because I haven't had time to redesign the non-human classes into human variant classes or decide whether or not to create new Norse classes in the B/X style, and I haven't yet decided how to handle the traditional Cleric and Magic-User classes. I have also extensively rewritten the equipment table and switched to a silver standard. I am making half of the characters female because over half of my players are female*. I'll start with the males and alternate, giving them random names so I don't use all the cool ones up and buying them equipment off my altered B/X Norse equipment list.

1st Character-
Aran Fighter/1

Str-11+2=13+1=14 AC:9
Int- 14-4=10 HP:6+1=7
Wis- 12-2=10 Alignment: Lawful
Dex- 12
Con- 14
Chr- 9
Starting Coin- 60 SP

Equipment-
Shield, Fighting Spear, Knife, 8 Silver Pieces.

Aran is a tall (6'3"), skinny (172 lbs) blond haired kid (16 years old), from one of the poor families in the new settlement. He desperately wants to prove himself as a warrior and a man so he can be seen as a worthy member of society and change the luck of his family.

Pretty darned good in the raw scores department, but I used the B/X Ability Score Adjustment rule to make his Strength much better, I didn't have to raise it all the way to 14, and it wasn't the best min/max way to do it, but I thought it made for a more attractive Fighter. The low starting money is a downer, it's pretty much guaranteed he's going to not want to fight in the front rank until he scores some loot to buy armor. I assume that all starting characters start with one full set of clothes appropriate to the milieu, including belt and pouch, shoes, etcetera; so he didn't have to buy any of that stuff, lucky for him, eh?

2nd Character-
Snofrid Fighter/1
(the O in this name should have a line through it, but I am not interested in figuring out how to to that on the character map right now)

Str-14+2=16+2=18 AC:4
Int-14-4=10 HP:7
Wis-13-4=9 Alignment:Lawful
Dex-17
Con-9
Cha-12
Starting Coin- 140SP

Equipment-
Leather Armor, Shield, Helmet**, Axe, 10 Silver Pieces.

Snofrid is a rather beefy, blond, 21 year old woman of average height (5'7", 160 lbs) for her people. She comes from a respectable family but is an uncommon only child. She stands to inherit her parent's small farmstead, but she wants more than that out of life and her parents have pretty much always indulged her.

Now we're talking, Strength raised to 18 and a natural 17 Dexterity, plus the coin to start with some armor or good weapons. She's a front line Fighter.

3rd Character-

Yngvar*** Fighter/1

Str-13+1=14 AC:6
Int-12-2=10 HP:3
Wis-6 Alignment: Lawful
Dex-8
Con-12
Cha-10
Starting Coin-120SP

Equipment-
Chainmail, Spear, 15 Silver Pieces

Yngvar is the short (5'6"), chubby (190lbs), blond haired, 20 year old son of a local merchant who grew up on Skald's tales of war and adventure, Dragons, Dwarves and Gods. Now his head is full of these tales and he wants to be a hero of the Sagas too, and he's sure he's got what it takes. The boy's got heart, but is a little lacking in coordination and common sense.

OK, poor Yngvar, these are starting to look more like B/X character stats. I am guessing he will be one of the guys passed over in the initial picks. He only gets to burn Intelligence once and Wisdom not at all and has a crappy Dexterity. I even rolled bad for Hit Points. Decent starting money isn't going to save the day for him. I spent most of his money on the best available armor and he'll hope somebody dies without losing their shield or he survives the first dungeon foray, poor foolish, clumsy bastard.

4th Character-
Sunniva Fighter/1

Str-15 AC:7
Int-10 HP:6
Wis-9 Alignment-Lawful
Dex-7
Con-10
Cha-11
Starting Coin-140SP

Equipment-
Leather Armor, Shield, Helmet, Axe, Spear.

Sunniva is the younger daughter of a wealthy household on the island. She has convinced her parents to let her have a go at adventuring and they have given her a year and a day to make something of her self before they step in and find her a suitable husband. Unlike everyone else so far, she has red hair and is tall and pretty fit (5'10", 160lbs).

OK, she's the only one whose stats I could not adjust according to the B/X rules. Not a bad character, brutally bad Dexterity score though. I can see her getting passed over in the first round of picks too. Good starting money though, I went all out and spent it all on gear, hopefully the first expedition will pay off for her. She's pretty well equipped.

For the characters I made a crude random table for hair color, since they were all of Norwegian extraction I skewed the results towards typical Norwegian hair colors, but almost everyone was blond. I did not differentiate between shades of blond, because I am not a woman, but I suppose it runs from the white-blond to the brownish-blond, and probably includes the reddish-blond, unless that counts as red. I was going to add a random eye color too, but since that's linked to hair color (kind of), I figured it'd be easier to let the players pick what they wanted if it came up, unless they want to break my realism immersion by suggesting something really unlikely or impossible, then I'll just probably say blue.

I also was going to explode 18s on the money roll, so some characters could start out, unlikely as it might be, with some real money. Maybe they are the favored kids of the wealthy or a Jarl's son or they stumbled across a hoard to finance themselves, whatever, but it never came up because I didn't roll an 18 anywhere, much less on the money roll. If it happens tomorrow or the next day we'll see, eh? Roll an 18, get another 3d6, roll another 18, get another 3d6. Theoretically it could keep going. Part of the consequences of my altered equipment cost chart is that I got people more realistically armed for a Viking Age game, but it also means that most people are going to at least start their adventuring careers wearing their normal clothes, even if they are Fighters.

That said, I have been thinking through some house rules for combat, since this is a Fighter heavy game and will probably be a little combat intensive and I have access to, and have read a lot of Saga literature, I am thinking of adding a little bit of Viking flavor through the use of Saga inspired combat maneuvers. I also will definitely be using "Shields Shall Be Splintered" and I am going to print it out and hand it around to the players before the game starts. The D30 will still be there. I am toying with the idea of adding in the old house rule that Steve S. used to use, where you could choose to alter your combat "stance", to Aggressive, Defensive or Balanced. Balanced was your normal stance, and didn't make any changes. Aggressive added to your attack at the cost of AC, Defensive was the opposite of that, you took a penalty to hit, but got a bonus to your AC. The good thing about those were that you could Aggressively attack weak stuff that posed little threat to you, or go all out on really tough opponents and try to kill them quick; conversely, you didn't lose all attacking ability like a parry rule when you went Defensive, it was more like a tank "Buttoning-Up", you could still attack, just not as well, but were better protected. I'll have more on House Rules tomorrow, and I'll have some more characters tomorrow too, unless I get a lot of feedback that says that you all hate seeing my pre-generated character process.

I found my missing Wedding Ring in my D&D dice today. It had been missing for weeks, I have no idea why I would have taken it off and put it in there, but if my regular Sunday game hadn't been canceled three times in a row I would have found it sooner.


*More like 3/4, but since I am making them in groups I figure we'll either get a better rounded party or people will play different from their own gender.

**The Helmet is costly, but worth it, given the 0 Hit Point rule I plan on using, Helmets save lives, if she'd been born wealthier, she'd have gotten a better helmet that offered more protection via nasal, oculars and aventail, but she got the best she could reasonably afford.

***(I almost didn't use this random name because I know a guy named Yngvar in the SCA, but then I thought if I don't use the randomly generated names just because they might also be associated with people I know in the SCA I am going to lose a lot of Viking names, especially the cool ones and the ones that are easy to pronounce.)

Sorry, my bad.

I gave the teaser last night for the Dawn Patrol report and didn't get around to writing it today. I kind of got busy with some other game related stuff and fell into a groove. I wanted to keep working on that while the muse was with me; strike while the iron was hot so to speak. By the time I was done with that it was time for supper and a little TV with the family, then after the kids went to bed I spent some time talking about Crown Tourney plans with my wife.

Still Alive.

I actually considered titling this post "Not Dead Yet.", but figured "Still Alive" was more upbeat and hopeful. I wish I could say that I have been neglecting my blog because I have been doing awesome stuff like gaming all the time, or working out like a mad man to get ready for Crown Tourney, but no, I am still sick. I actually had to go to the doctor and get antibiotics and I spend much of my day sleeping or watching stuff because I can't concentrate long enough or well enough to either read for very long or blog coherently. I have been on the antibiotics for seven days now though and I think the worst is past, I played some D&D today. I didn't DM, Lee Ann took over and I ran her character for a short adventure against some mysterious pirates that raided the Cornish coast. We didn't perform well, but no one died and the pirates left.

I have had about a dozen blog posts that I started on various topics and abandoned over the last week or so, it's just hard to get all that worked up about anything when you don't feel good and you get tired and headachey just sitting up.

This Blog

Pictured- The Arms of the Lady Mattea Di Luna, mundanely known as my lovely wife Mona, my inspiration in all things.

I hope my blog is not getting stale. I noticed that I lost a follower today, it's happened before and it always kind of bums me out, like I let down somebody that was expecting something better of me. My blog was never really supposed to attract readers at all honestly, it was just supposed to be a writing exercise to help me organize my thoughts about the stuff I like to do. I just happened to discover the OSR through blogging and made it a big part of my life and what I blog about. Despite my desire to blog more about a number of things, things happening in my life, good, bad and just time consuming, have left me with less time to devote to blogging as regularly as I'd like to; so maybe that's the reason that I lost a follower, or maybe they just moved on in their interests. I can't tell who it was, as much as I'd like to have a personal relationship with everyone that reads my blog, it's not like it was when there were only a dozen or so of you; I can't keep close track anymore; I'll miss you just the same because it feels like a personal failing on my part.

Anyway, on to less maudlin things, I am actually trying to collect my thoughts for a review/retrospective on the Cook/Marsh Expert Book. I just want it to be good, not simply me saying something like "Cook and Marsh continued on in the vein set forth by Moldvay and it continued to be excellent"; while true, it's somewhat lackluster in comparison to the multi-part review that Moldvay's Basic book got. I am afraid I am going to need to go through it again and actually take notes, section by section, like I did with the Moldvay Basic book and make the comparisons to AD&D, that I keep trying to avoid doing.

I offered up the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion as a supplement to B/X for my players since there was some grumbling initially, at character generation and later with the higher mortality rate, about the lack of AD&D-isms in B/X. To my real surprise, every one of my players that I have spoken to so far has rejected it, even the one that really missed the AD&D death at -10HP rule; he stated that he was "...in this [Basic D&D] mode now.", and would rather just stick with it. My kids, who had originally missed separate races and classes, were all like, "We don't care about that now.". My wife never really cared which rules set we used. Audra is brand new to RPGs at all, so it really doesn't matter to her. Lee Ann I haven't spoken to yet, because she's always working lately, they're short RNs where she works; I suspect will not care either, although she had never played Basic D&D before I introduced her to it. Dalton I haven't spoken to yet either, but I strongly suspect he will prefer to stay with B/X, because he is planning on switching his newbies from AD&D to B/X-LL ASAP.

We play the Anarchy of Stephen and Matilda campaign this weekend, so I will get a chance to talk in person with everyone that I haven't yet. This weekend I plan to run Tim Shorts adventure "Knowledge Illuminates", so I am hoping everyone can make it. I am still reading 1215 Year of the Magna Carta, but I am better than half way through, which I consider pretty good since I am mostly reading it in the morning before breakfast and right before I go to bed at night. I suppose I could cut down on my OSR blog reading and really knuckle down on this whole getting more blogging/reading/campaign preparation done, but I get so many cool ideas from the OSR blogosphere. Even if they aren't things I would ever use, they keep me on my creative toes, you know what I mean?

In non-RPG news, I started my diet for real yesterday and started exercising because I found out that my Barony is hosting the Kingdom of Aethelmearc's Spring Crown Tourney, and it's holding it in Brewerton, NY; a town I practically grew up in, because it is my friend Darryl's hometown. The Tourney is being held the week before my wife's birthday and I found out about it on Valentine's day. This strikes me as too much coincidence to not be fate guiding my hand and forcing me towards this goal, so I am going to bust my ass to shake off the rust as a fighter, lose some fat and gain some muscle over the next three months and, hopefully, make my wife a Princess for her birthday. This is not an impossible goal, I have achieved similar goals in the past, just not won the Crown, although I came close, twice. This time, Deus lo volt!

2012: The Resolutions-

This is going to be short and to the point because my day didn't quite go as planned and I am running short of time to get a blog post up for January 1st.

Assuming the world doesn't end on December 21st this year because of those pesky Mayans* ran out of space on their stone I made some resolutions.

Since this is primarily an OSR gaming blog, I'll start with my gaming resolutions.

I am going to stop buying stuff on EBay that I am probably never going to play. That means 2011 was the year of my L5R collection, my Star Wars and Star Trek RPG collections and pretty much all of the rest of my non-D&D related gaming stuff. Except for Star Fleet Battles Commander's edition volume 2 boxed set, if I find that at a reasonable price and it's complete, I am going to take it just so I have them all, and I will play them; I just haven't yet.

I am going to paint miniatures one day per week. I have a ton of lead here that needs painting and I've just been putting it off because I decided I wasn't as good at it as my wife was. She isn't doing it though, and my closet is full of miniatures now, so I want to paint them. Sure I am way out of practice and I was never much better than OK at it to start with, but that's not the point now is it?

Mostly I am going to game more, with more actual people, not just with my computer like I did for years. I guess that means I'll be seeing more of Lance and Darryl and meeting some new people too, but it will be nice to expand my social circle some.

Next goals, less gaming related.

I will blog more regularly. I am going to try and post something worthwhile on one of my blogs everyday; it may not be long, but I am trying to force myself to write more.

Eat less, but more healthy. I am a pretty big guy but getting way too fat has become a problem for me. I have always tended towards being heavy, when I was a kid the other kids called me the fat kid. I know that's bull shit now, because I've seen the pictures of when I was young and, while I was a pretty big, solid kid, I wasn't really fat; for a while in my mid-teens I was downright lanky. Being bigger and having poorly fitting clothes didn't help I guess, and my parents couldn't afford better because my dad got hurt at work when I was nine and has been on disability ever since**. Anyway, I am starting to have some issues with my health as a result of being too fat now, so it's got to go. Now, I know it's hard to eat healthy in America without a lot of money, but I am working on building up my self sufficiency with regard to food production too, so it's on the list.

Exercise more. This kind of goes with the above, but I am in pretty bad shape now; again mostly because I have gotten too fat, but also because I live a pretty sedentary life. I have gotten into the habit of letting the younger and less achy members of my family do a lot of the manual labor here while I direct and supervise, that's got to stop. I also need to start doing some indoor exercises for the winter months are upon us. I tried some push ups and I can't do one standard push up anymore. I can do them at an incline though, so that's something. Sit ups are pretty much out, partly because I am too fat and partly because I am too weak. I am not sure how to fix that. I gave up walking when I hurt my knee, multiple times, over the last year, I need to get back in that habit too.

Clear the rest of the south side of my property, clear the small hill on the north side. Weather permitting, get a decent sized garden in this year and build a chicken coop. This at least will be aided by all the building experience we picked up from working on my father's enormous garage. With enough chickens we will reach self sufficiency in eggs and lower our need for outside sources of meat. Other farmers in the area, and my brother in New Hampshire, have given me a lot of advice on raising chickens and other fowl, plus I have read a lot on the subject; so, while this will be my first solo attempt at raising livestock, I think I am prepared.


SCA Fighting. I talk about this every year. I do a little bit every year. I am a warranted Marshal and a an authorized Heavy Weapons Fighter in the Kingdom of Aethelmearc. Once I was a pretty serious force to be reckoned with on the field, I am only 42 years old, I think I can do it again; I just need to commit to the same kind of rigorous training (and diet) that I did when I was in my 30s. This kind of falls in line with the eating healthy and exercising more, only with a focus. The downside of this is that I really can't afford to drive all over central NY state for the training like I used to be able to, I don't have a nearby fighting buddy to split the gas costs with anymore either. I'd also like this to be the year I take up fencing, despite it meaning that I need an entirely new and different kit.

Make some armor. I am not a handy guy, but I have enjoyed the minor armoring projects that I have done. They have consisted entirely of modifications to existing armor or repairing existing armor up until now, and fabricating a few shields. I think I'd like to tackle a real project this year.

Build a yurt. This has been on my to do list for a while. I helped work on a friend's yurt once, for one day, I don't think he ever finished it. I would live in one if my wife would make the move, but I am content to just have one for camping events, so a small yurt would be fine by me. I have detailed instructions on how to do it, and it is relatively inexpensive; although not as cheap as buying a cheap tent to camp in.


*Or, we get the start of the Shadowrun world, that's what I'm hoping for apocalypse-wise.


**In case anyone was wondering it wasn't one of those BS disability claims, he was a Longshoreman and got hurt unloading a ship. A line snapped on some cargo being lifted by a crane and he was knocked into the hold from the deck, he suffered various injuries, but the crippling one was three crushed disks in his lower back. He didn't walk for a year. That was November of 1978 he was working a holiday making double time and half because my parents had just built their house and we'd moved in in 1976 so my dad was trying to pay the mortgage ahead and get money for Christmas. My brother was born the following January.

Winter, the Yuletide and Vikings?

When a young, or in my case, middle-aged*, DM's thought's turn to Vikings**. The snow on the ground and the cold in the air make going outside suck. I live in Oswego county in upstate New York, at the east end of Lake Ontario, where we usually measure our snowfall in feet rather than inches, so I am pretty accustomed to a Nordic, if not exactly Norse lifestyle. I wrote a bit on my other blog about my old Norselands campaign I ran back at the dawn of (my group's) 3e experience; and I have written here before about how I basically wrote a Viking Campaign Sourcebook so I could run a Viking campaign back at the dawn of the 2nd edition AD&D era too.

I like Vikings. I like their adventurous spirit. I like their no nonsense attitude. I like their religion. I like the way they treat their women. I like the kind of democratic institutions they had. I like their distinctive artistic style***. Viking style shields were made to be splintered and runes are pretty awesome too, am I right? I like to drink mead too, and have several friends that like to make it. I have made mead too, but not often. I like Vikings so much I have played one in the SCA****.

Plus, it's pretty easy to come up with plot hooks for a Viking campaign, these guys were all about getting rich and famous and their end game was to become a King, Jarl or die a heroic death. That's pretty old school D&D right there. Sure their mythology and sagas don't give a huge number of monsters to fight, but it's quality there rather than quantity. I was looking through my Saga mini-game the other day when my buddy Lance dropped by for some gaming and that map and game rules cry out to be adapted into a D&D game setting. You are essentially playing a middle to high level character when you start that game, and you fight some legendary monsters, pick up some henchmen, conquer some territories and fight against other heroes to see who will die as the most glorious hero of the age. There is some magic and some divine intervention and a few pretty sweet artifact type magic items and a few magic swords that are mostly not all that powerful, all in all, it makes for a pretty sweet little dark ages campaign setting with a fairly low magic level.


*Seriously, when did middle-aged start meaning 50+? Are people so deluded that they really believe their average life expectancy is 100+ years? I am 42 1/2 years old now, I think I can reasonably expect to live to be 85 given today's medical technology and my family history. Human mortality exists, deal with it.

**Weird, right? It's been almost exactly a year since I wrote that. I never ran that proposed campaign, I am now in contact with both Lance and Darryl though.

***OK, styles, but they are related, evolving over time and from place to place.

****And I may do it again, the clothes are comfortable and easy to make (or so I am told, Mona makes them), and they wear well, since they are similar to our own in most respects. My wife and daughters like viking women's clothes too.

Another Day...

...Another visit to the dentist, fortunately this time just for a teeth cleaning, but it was my first one in decades, since my insurance never covered dental before.

I didn't get a lot of gaming related stuff done today, I have been quite busy with my other, other hobby- The Klingon Assault Group, or KAG. As SCA time slows down KAG time picks up somewhat, although there is some overlap and I do have to prioritize one over the other. If the SCA is kind of like a medieval LARP, KAG is kind of like a Klingon LARP, although neither of them is really a LARP at all, I just figure it's easier to explain to a mostly RPG playing group of readers in those terms. Really KAG is more like a Klingon themed costume party, that's also part improv theater, particularly at conventions and also does some charity work on the side, but it's more than the sum of those parts too. In KAG I am known as Commander Jag sutai-MaHcha' Comanding Officer of IKV Fist of Kahless and Dark Vengeance Quadrant Commander, it's part of KAG's Dark Moon Fleet comprising New York, New Jersey, Pennsyvania, West Virginia and Delaware. For more information on the Klingon Assault Group follow this link to their website. If you are familiar with the FASA Star Trek RPG treatment of Klingons or John M. Ford's Book "The Final Reflection", then KAG's version of the Klingon empire will be somewhat familiar to you. Here's a picture of me in my very first Klingon uniform circa 2002.



It was taken at my buddy Scott's apartment in Brewerton, NY right before we left to dominate some costume contests that Halloween. It's kind of dark and grainy and the flash doesn't do the make up work justice, it really did look pretty damned good.

Here's some Legend of the Five Rings RPG stuff I won on EBay and got in the mail today-








I shamelessly got these for like $2.00 each, some of them are still shrink wrapped.

The Wedding- The Full Story

I was going to wait until I had a bunch of pictures to go with this post, but none seem forthcoming anytime soon, so I guess I'll just start with what I have.

The days leading up to the wedding itself were fraught with all kinds of last minute concerns and changes; the caterer was a particular concern because he cut two major menu items, a whole spitted pig and a venison dish, (as well as a bunch of minor ones) from the wedding feast over the course of the two weeks leading up to the wedding simply because he discovered they would be to expensive for him to cover within his budget. Curiously these were the menu items he was most interested in doing when he got hired, he suggested them and he was the one that set the price. He also kept canceling meetings with the bride and groom in the weeks leading up to the wedding, he even blew off conference calls. My wife Mona and I were about 75% certain he wouldn't show up at all and we'd end up having to throw an impromptu medieval feast for fifty guests ourselves, fortunately we have experience with putting on medieval feasts.

Also, a week before the wedding, my lovely wife got stuck making a bridesmaid dress for the bride's sister, which ate into her sewing time. Two days of her sewing time, which had been allotted for sewing MY kilt and ghillie shirt and altering my son John's Kilt to fit. Let's not forget that everyone in my house is in various stages of sick through this week too AND that Ashli just got back from the US army with a medical discharge and we are taking care of her. I also am STILL building my father's new garage, although we are nearing completion on that project it has taken a LOT of my time, and John's and Ember's. Mona got sick enough that she had to take a whole day off. My son John got his outfit completed. My ghillie shirt got started and my kilt is still a complete bolt of Black Watch tartan fabric, the official tartan chosen for the wedding. Fortunately, the rest of my household already had medieval clothing to wear, me included, just not quite fitting the Scottish medieval (renaissance/Victorian) theme of the wedding. Aside from me and the couple of other (former) SCAdians there, my old man-at-arms Matt S. and Kevin M. both of whom are also old school D&D buddies, no one really seemed to notice that I didn't fit the theme. My pants were plaid anyway.

I got a little ahead of myself there. Mona, in her role as Matron of honor, had to leave early to help decorate the hall. I sent her on ahead with the printed copy of the ceremony. As an aside, usually when I do a wedding I ask the bride and groom what they are looking for in a ceremony and then write one up, custom made for each couple, the bride made this one herself; I was not entirely comfortable with being scripted, much in the same way I don't really like to DM modules that have lots of boxed text to read to the players, I like wiggle room for my own creativity and I am more comfortable reading my own words; this will come up again during the ceremony. I stayed back and got ready here and made sure the kids got ready and we had one house guest Michael P. come up from New Jersey for the wedding. At the appointed hour we all left and drove to Camp Hollis, where the wedding and reception were to take place.

My job, as guy who has worn a kilt a lot since he was 16 years old, was to help the men in the wedding party get dressed properly. I found that kind of amusing since I was the only guy involved in the wedding, and one of only a few males AT the wedding, not wearing a kilt, having given mine to my younger brother years ago when I started to get too fat for it and never replaced it. He needed one anyway, although now I am pretty sure he's too fat for it too. It's a vicious cycle. Apparently, the men in my family need to always work jobs of back-breakingly difficult physical labor or we'll get fat; if we retire, move into management, become disabled, or get an "easy" job, we all get fat. Working out is NOT enough. Getting older doesn't help either, slowing of the metabolism and all. Maybe a topic for a different day? Of interest also, most of them had these new fangled bargain kilts with velcro stuff all over the belts and other stuff and their kilts were polyester blends. Part of me says this is sacrilege, the other part says excellent work making kilts more affordable to everyone.

At some point here, Ashli decided she was too sick to be there, so Michael brought her home. They missed the rest of the long and interesting day and watched movies on DVD and ate the kosher food Michael's mom sent up for him to eat while he was here. She always sends enough for everyone, so it's an interesting culinary experience whenever Michael comes to visit.

Anyway, after getting everyone properly kitted up, I went out and talked to the piper. He was a nice young guy, but I don't think he'd ever done a wedding before. So I gave him a brief bit of coaching on what the bride was looking for, a processional to the ceremony- which was to be held out at the woods stage, followed by a recessional out of the woods after the ceremony. I asked him what he was going to play and he said "Probably just a bunch of marches.", good plan. I figured most of the guests wouldn't know the songs anyway, and it's just be "Bagpipe Music". I then grabbed the copy of the ceremony from my lady wife and headed out into the woods to wait for the wedding.

Shortly after I got out there the groom, Scott W. occasional D&D buddy and KAG buddy, as well as just my friend, showed up and his grown daughter, Angela, showed up to film everything; which made me curiously nervous. Other guests started to fill the seats. I reread the ceremony and joked with Scott about burning a wickerman after the vows (we had been tormenting Debbie, the bride, with traditional Celtic things like wickermen and morris dancing for months and claiming that they were traditional Celtic wedding fare, although I think both Scott and I would have liked to have had a real Wickerman to burn before the end of the night). Eventually we heard the pipes start to play and got serious and waited for the bridal party to emerge from the woods.

Now, the Woods Stage is nice, it's a small stage in a small, pretty clearing in the forest that's just big enough for the stage and the seating. The forest is all around you green and the canopy covers the area, so even if it rained we were confident we'd be able to do this in anything other than a downpour. It had, in fact, rained that morning but there was only one mildly muddy spot on the forest trail leading to the stage. Additionally, it's close enough to the lake and was windy enough that day that we had a background sound of the waves crashing onto the beach a few hundred feet away through the woods, which I thought only added to the ambiance of the setting.

The ceremony itself went pretty well- I paraphrased the two pages of history lesson about hand-fasting into about two paragraphs on the fly; if you are interested I am pretty sure she just copy/pasted that part from wikipedia. I read through the obviously Wiccan hand-fasting and the Christian bride didn't seem to notice that she had as better than half of her wedding ceremony lifted a Wiccan ceremony, OK. We did the binding of hands with his "Clan" tartan, clan is in quotes there because his Scottish last name comes from a Lowland house, not a Highland clan. Yes, we Highlanders occasionally get particular about that.

We move on to the (allegedly) medieval Christian portion of the ceremony, fairly standard vows, although we all have to suppress a chuckle when she vows to be "Bonny and buxom at bed and at board". Rumor has it that this was the one part Debbie was willing to cut out, but Scott said "No, leave that part in. I like it.", since he's a pretty quite guy and doesn't ask for much, I guess he got that one. Scott pins his "clan" tartan to Debbie with his "clan" crest badge. I recite a lengthy blessing in Gaelic, during which I stumble on a word in the middle. This embarrasses me somewhat, but no one seems to have noticed. I practiced it at home a bunch of times with no problems. I don't speak Gaelic well, but I can read Gaelic phonetically written out pretty well from my efforts to learn Scots Gaelic in the past.

The ceremony being over, I tell Scott to kiss the bride and then, just loud enough for the wedding party to hear, make a joke about now leaving to the traditional burning of the wickerman and heavy weapons tournament. We are then piped out of the woods and I am pleased to see the caterer is actually there and breathe a sigh of relief . After a couple of pictures most of us guys decide it's time to get rid of the swords, they take a lot of getting used to and being in close quarters is only going to make not whacking people with the scabbards as you walk around harder.

But first the DJ, Gary D., who I used to work with when I did radio in Syracuse in the early 1990's and I worked for his DJ service with Scott on and off over the years since too, catches us and wants to announce us in. Sadly I know this means dancing while wearing my sword. He announces everyone in as Lord and Lady so and so or Sir whoever for the bachelors, for which I jokingly told Kevin that he'd been promoted to a peerage apparently (SCAdian reference). I guess being best man has it's perks. We all got announced in Scott and Debbie had their first dance as husband and wife, then the rest of the wedding party was forced to dance. After the first dance, the menfolk escape to de-sword.

Then things went spectacularly awry. Unbeknownst to all of us problems with the caterer were already started. First, the servers he hired for the wedding blew him off, so it was just him and his wife. Next, as I was talking to Matt S., who now lives downstate and I rarely see, Kevin's new girlfriend comes up to me and tells me that the caterer is having a seizure and that she has been instructed to come inside and tell someone. Kevin is outside on the phone with a 911 operator. I go in and ask Debbie if anyone on the guest list is perhaps a doctor or any other type of medical professional; she tells me that yes Scott's daughter Angela is a nurse and her brother Scott was/is a professional Fireman, he may be retired now I don't know for sure. They both say that his seizure was unusual in nature, the prevailing theory, given how the rest of the evening plays out, is cocaine overdose.

At any rate, the ambulance takes him away, and Matt, Debbie's brother Scott and myself take over in the kitchen. Matt and I used to work together as cooks AND we have done medieval dinners together for college projects at SUNY Oswego. Debbie's brother Scott obviously has a lot of restaurant experience too, but I don't really know him all that well having just met him the day before. We have the raw materials brought by the caterer, soup started on the stove, chickens ,roasters of mixed vegetables and some pork loin roasts were in the oven. Scotch eggs were done. they were working on fruit and cheese platters when he had his seizure. No menu, no recipes. The caterer's wife stuck around, which I thought was a pretty remarkable devotion to duty, but she was essentially useless; her husband ran the show, she was just kitchen help. So we let her help out and gave her some easy jobs while we figured out how to throw together a medieval banquet with the ingredients on hand. We made a red wine garlic glaze for the pork loin and a honey apricot glaze for the chicken. Since we were not sure what soup was supposed to be, all it had in it was potatoes and onions when we took over we doctored it up some with some chicken and leeks and assorted other stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time. My son John and Kevin's son Thomas volunteered to serve.

My critique of the menu items is that there was a startling dearth of commonly used medieval food items and an overabundance of new world foods. The caterer came completely unprepared without nearly enough butter and no cream or milk at all. We had to grab wine from the table to use for cooking. There was also no vinegar or almond milk. That covers the medieval complaint I think.

The menu was also not particularly traditionally Scottish. The faux- cock-a-leekie soup and scotch eggs notwithstanding, the Scots, in my experience, are not all that fond of pork dishes; a beef dish probably should have been the main course. The bride would not have stood for haggis being present at all, fine, I get that, not everybody loves haggis, but this caterer just did not research either Scottish cuisine or medieval food before putting in his bid. He also tried to jack up the price for the catering by $150.00 the day before the wedding, but we'll get back to that later.

So, we get all the food out, fifty people fed in a pretty timely manner and everyone has a good time. Just as we're finishing up in the kitchen the caterer's wife gets a call on her cell phone and needs someone to be given directions from Oswego out to Camp Hollis. Kevin has just walked back in the kitchen to bring us guys a drink, a home brewed scotch ale made by Debbie's former professor, so he grabs the phone and handles the directions. I try the ale, it's fantastic. I later jokingly challenge Debbie's son Paul to single combat for the right to the rest of them, he refuses. I still got to bring a couple home with me. Much to my surprise, as I am drinking my ale and cleaning up in the kitchen, the caterer returns with a couple of other people. He thanks us for taking care of getting the food out and helping out his wife, then he and the couple he arrived with start picking up and taking care of their job. Cool. I go back out to the reception with Matt and the other guys and we eat some food and have a couple of drinks and chat and celebrate the wedding and all. Cool. At least the wedding won't be remembered for me stumbling over a Gaelic blessing right?

I recruited another buddy of mine, John S., for my OA reskinned ToEE campaign. Talked a little more with Matt, we didn't get a lot of time for non-cooking related talk in the kitchen I got to meet his son Finn, who just turned one. I found some scotch eggs and ate them, they weren't very good. I danced with my wife. Talked to Debbie's son Paul about fighting heavy in the SCA and about D&D, he's definite for heavy, iffy for D&D, but I think it's because he was trying to impress the delightful pretty blonde girl that was his date; probably, given my experience with Paul in the past it's more likely the opposite. I can't blame him, I'd be trying to impress her too, honestly I don't know how he got a date with her; looks alone put her WAY out of his league, but she's also smart and personable. I guess he met her at his college manga/anime club before he dropped out, she's trying to talk him into going back to school. I hope she has better luck than the rest of us have.

I knew it was going to be a long day because my wife was in the wedding party and that meant we had to stay and clean up after the rest of the guests left. Scott W., the groom, helped Gary D., his boss and friend, pick up the DJ equipment. Debbie paid the caterer. The rest of us picked up the stuff from the tables so we could put the tables away. The caterer goes ballistic. He starts ranting and raving about how he was being fucked here, how he expected cash and got a personal check and how his servers weren't being paid. He threatened Scott the groom, kind of vaguely, while Scott was loading Gary's equipment, so Scott came to me and asked me to keep an eye on the caterer and not leave until he was gone. I am 6'6" and a former bouncer whose hobbies include martial arts, so this is not an unusual or unreasonable request. Debbie's brother Scott was also on top of this situation and, apparently, the guy's real problem was that he didn't have enough gas money to get home; so he gave him $20.00 cash and thought it was over.

Meanwhile, my wife is talking to the caterer's wife in the kitchen about how they should just probably leave before this situation escalates, and she gives them our home phone number as a contact to work out any problems (I am less than thrilled about this). The caterer wanders back into the kitchen and starts working himself back into a frenzy. All the same stuff comes back up about how he is the one being fucked over here, only now he's screaming at my wife. I enter the kitchen, my wife tries to make me leave, the caterer retreats, I assure my wife that I got this. She's just worried I am going to kick this guy's ass and end up in jail, but I altered my personal philosophy months ago to take violence off the table*, so I figure going into this with my bouncer persona it'll be OK, but she's got to go. She's a liability to me if he does get violent. She leaves.

I walk toward the caterer with my nothing in my hands palms open peaceful posture, he seems confused. He asks me if I am there to kick his ass and kick him out or if I am just the bodyguard. I say I am just here to keep things calm. He starts to tentatively tell me about his deal with Debbie and how much he was supposed to get paid, I know it's all BS because my wife was Matron of Honor and Debbie was at my house every day the caterer changed anything in an email or blew off a meeting, but this guy just doesn't seem right. He goes on about how Debbie was supposed to provide the servers and then he had to at the last minute. I tell him I don't know what the deal was, but this isn't the time or the place to sort it out, everyone is tired and he's been to the emergency room (which he left against medical advice, without being seen by a doctor). He starts working up to a frenzy again, only now he's screaming at me. All the same stuff, he wants the other $150.00 he was promised, he wants $60.00 for his servers (the couple that brought him back from the hospital, who, as it turns out, are his neighbors) and he wants it in cash right now. I tell him I don't have that kind of cash on me and it's not my job to pay him anyway. He whips off his chef's jacket and throws it on the floor in front of me an tells me that I have fucked with the wrong person, that I have fucked with the Aryan Brotherhood and I could tell her that too, referring I am assuming to Debbie. Then I see the swastika tattooed on his bicep. My first impulse here is to just snap his Nazi neck, but I suppressed it and told him to hold that thought. Then I sought out Kevin, who is a manager at a Walmart and has to deal with assholes everyday.

When I told Kevin he had to walk outside for air for a minute to figure out what to do. Then Kevin and I went back to the kitchen, I was ready to back whatever play he made. To my surprise, he tried to bribe the guy to just leave, but the guy refused to budge from his $210.00 cash now demand., which, given that he'd already been bribed $20.00 should have only been $190.00; but I guess psycho-nazi cokehead caterers aren't really renowned for their math skills.

Now, I am not really afraid of the Aryan Brotherhood, since A. I doubt this caterer really can speak for the organization as a whole and B. they're a prison gang, and I am not in prison. I do find it irritating though that his wife keeps calling here and trying to be nice and work things out like her husband isn't a psycho-nazi coke fiend. I am also a little pissed off that I felt any sympathy for either of them at all.

The lesson to be learned from this is when you are planning a major event don't go bargain hunting, if the caterer's deal sounds too good to be true it probably is. Also, get references and check them. It couldn't hurt to make sure that you aren't hiring an ex-con neo-nazi as your caterer too. It also couldn't hurt to have a wickerman ready on standby.


It could have ended like this by the lakeshore...



*Except in self-defense or to defend others, I call it the Superhero/Jedi clause. Handing out ass-beatings just because somebody deserves them only seems like a good idea and who am I to judge? That guy might be having a bad day, or there might be something I am not privy to. Plus, this way I am more likely to avoid jail, I've been successful so far, but men can't just settle their differences through violence the way they used to be able to these days. I know guys that are just 10 years younger than me that have NEVER been in a fight. Me, I've been in way too many to count.

Still Sick...

But otherwise energized. I talked to Lance W. last night and we set up a tentative schedule to start gaming again. My dad's garage is costing me a lot of weekends. I still need to talk to Lee Ann and see if maybe any other players not living in my house are interested, but it looks right now like 1st edition AD&D is a go for beginning in early October, which coincidentally matches almost perfectly the end of SCA heavy fighting season here in Aethelmearc; and it'll probably be the Oriental Adventures variant. We're going to have a vote. I vote for OA and I know Lance does, Mona could go either way and the other choice I am presenting is a classic Greyhawk game starting in Hommlet with the ToEE. Oddly enough, none of my players have ever played through the Temple of Elemental Evil and I've only gotten to DM it part way through once. I will be DMing. I tried to pitch the L5R RPG, but nobody really wants to have to learn a new system, they just want to make characters and get down to playing. I can't say I blame them, but I am itching to try out the L5R RPG.

Alright I'm Back.

I opted for repair rather than outright replacement*, but it still seems a little sketchy as to how well it intends to work. I spent most of yesterday with it insisting that either my system memory had changed, not booting at all, not booting and giving me a beep code I didn't recognize or hanging at the bios screen; so right now I am pretty happy just to have it up and running. I will eventually finish writing the now nearly month old report on the SCA Mêlée event I went to, and that'll probably finish my lengthy series on Shields, Helmets and Mêlée tactics and D&D.

*Not just because it was the cheaper option, but because there are new technologies that have either just entered the market or are about to enter the market that I'd like to take advantage of, and I hate to get hosed on the price while I essentially beta test new hardware. I have been down that road too many times in the past.

Helmets Part II

Or- "Damn, I hate speaking with authority and turning out to be wrong"

This just showed up in my comments overnight, and is most likely right.

"Not that I'm all that much into armour (yet) - but I just read that the earlier type of Bascinet did not have a visor, and was worn UNDER the great helm. Once you got knocked off your horse in a joust, you could throw the great helm away and still wear a helmet with less impaired vision. Could EGG have meant that type of Bascinet? It would explain the AD&D pricing a bit better. I imagine a fitting hinged visor is not easy to make - and is the hardest part of the later bascinet. But if there is none... it might be cheaper and easier to make. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bascinet
By Jaap de Goede on Helmets at 3:10 AM"

For the most part anyway, the hinged visor certainly isn't child's play; but the multitude of curved surfaces of the later Bascinet and it's more fitted form are probably still the reason why they are so darned expensive.

Helmets

Since I covered shields pretty much ad nauseum, I thought I'd move on to helmets. For most of the same reasons that the shield didn't get it's proper respect, the helmet got screwed over by D&D rules too; the designers of the game simply had no real experience of the helmet's importance in keeping combatants alive. I have said in the past that if I had to choose 2 out of 3 armor parts, Shield, any type of body armor and Helmet I would 100% of the time pick Shield and Helmet. You all know why I would pick the Shield from my series of Shield posts, this is for the poor Helmet. Here's a little known fact, most of the time in mêlée combat you get hit in the head. That's just where shot's get through. Here's another little known fact, even the crappiest helmet is still pretty darned good at stopping blows from killing you. Yet for some reason there are either no rules, or at best, very obscure rules, in ANY addition of D&D (that I am familiar with, I guess 4e might have some) regarding Helmets at all.

What's worse is that in 1st edition AD&D there are two types of helmet listed on the equipment list- Helmet, Great and Helmet, Small for 15 and 10 Gold Pieces respectively with absolutely no benefit listed for owning either of them, nor a description of either type of helmet. So why should any player waste his starting money on a Helmet? It takes a pretty sharp-eyed DM to find the rule about characters fighting without wearing helmets in the DM's Guide; I know I have seen it before and I went looking for it and couldn't find it to cite it here. Something about the head being AC10 with no helmet and intelligent monsters taking advantage of that. There was also a rule about a certain percentage of all shots in mêlée being head shots, 1 in 10 I think, but nobody ever used it because it slowed down combat and you had to remember your head's AC too. I think the Great Helm was AC 3 and the Small Helmet AC 5, but I may be mixing editions.

Checking the 2nd edition AD&D Player's Handbook equipment list shows the problem is exactly the same, only worse. There are still only two types of helmet listed, one of them is still the Great Helm which has increased in price to 30 Gold Pieces (inflation, what can you do?); the other though is, inexplicably, the Basinet (which, by the way is not the most common spelling for this helmet type, it is usually spelled Bascinet), and at the bargain price of 8 Gold Pieces, which makes no sense whatsoever to anyone who knows anything about helmets. Great Helms only SOUND more impressive, Bascinets are a vast improvement in the art and science of armoring; it takes way more time and skill to make a Bascinet than it does a Great Helm.

Which leads us to a little history lesson on the timeline of helmet types starting in antiquity and ending in the late middle ages. The earliest helmet types are usually in one of two styles, with a number of various options that can be applied, for simplicity's sake I am going to refer to them by the general term "Spangenhelm" which sounds German to me. I don't know where it comes from, probably archeology, and it probably is called other things when it's not found in a western European context, but I want this kept simple so that's the name I am using. Spangenhelms come in either the round-top or conical varieties. Some of the additions possible were longer backs and sides to protect more of the head than just the top, or a nasal guard, or oculars (circles that come down and protect the eyes, kind of look like glasses), or cheek guards or chainmail "veils" to protect the face, or a chainmail "scarf" to protect the neck*. This type of helmet was in use from the Roman legions to the Saxons that invaded Britain to the well dressed Viking. You can see them in use on the Bayeux tapestry on both sides of the Battle of Hastings.







The main purpose of the helmet is to keep the axe, sword, mace, club or whatever that you let slip past your shield from caving in your skull and making you dead. Trust me on this, most blows that make it past your shield WILL hit you in the head. The Spangenhelm mainly does this by deflecting the blow across it's rounded surface and absorbing the force of the blow across a greater area than just, say, the edge of a sword. Unfortunately for the Spangenhelm, unless this blow comes from above, it will find a relatively flat surface to bite into. This will be a recurring theme in helmet design as weapons get better, helmets (and body armor) begin to match pretty shortly.



The Spangenhelm had a good run as armor types go, but eventually weapons and tactics got better and it was replaced. The mighty Great Helm had arrived. That's just it's coolest name, it's also known as the Pot Helm, Bucket Helm and Barrel Helm; an even cooler looking late variant is known as the Sugarloaf Helm. These are the helmets that Crusader knights were wearing and what most of us think of when we think of a knight's helmet. I don't know what armorer had the neuron fire that made him decide to make a helmet that actually covered the face and mostly protected the eyes, but this was seriously brilliant thinking; and just in time since knights had really just started doing heavy cavalry charges at each other with lances. Sadly, despite it's vast improvement in overall protection, the Great Helm still has relatively few glancing surfaces, and in fact** you lose the rounded/conical top of the Spangenhelm, which was it's greatest feature.




In the SCA, the flat top of the Great Helm is known as the "Landing Strip". Seriously, I own 3 Great Helms, I have a love/hate relationship with them all. I always wind up going back to the ugly one, the one that was home made by a buddy of mine. It was his first helmet, it's heavy gauge steel (14 sides/12 top) and has a bar grill welded to the front for better ventilation and visibility. When he got rid of it I bought it off of him and it was my first helmet, aside from the Delftwood loaner gear. It's the one I am wearing in all of my fighting pictures. The others are prettier but don't fit my giant head as well with any padding at all and their visibility is less, although not as bad as you might think and their ventilation isn't great either, but that isn't so much a breathing thing as it is a cooling down thing. The landing strip isn't a real big deal for me because I am really tall and a Great Helm sits even higher on my head.

Now, the Bascinet, which is what all the cool knights are wearing from the 14th century on until the end of the classic D&D period. Since it comes along at roughly the same time as "Full Plate" and "Field Plate" more or less, maybe it should be excluded from discussion, but the absolute melange of periods in D&D is more or less the same as in the SCA, only the SCA has fewer elves***. Anyway, the Bascinet is, more or less, the epitome of the armorer's art in the making of helmets. It is designed with curves everywhere, meaning that the entire damned thing is one big glancing surface covering your melon. If you know how to move with a blow at all, to roll with it, nothing sticks to your head. Fine helmet. Wish I could afford one. Sadly, Bascinets are really all custom jobs. I do some metal work and have made some simple armor parts, this is WAY beyond my skill level. I know a good helmet guy that can do Spangenhelms and Great Helms, he would never attempt to make a Bascinet. So the Bascinet getting it's only mention in an AD&D book as the cheapest helmet of them all is basically ludicrous.






OK, here comes another caveat about the SCA: in the SCA we cheat on helmets, because of our safety features we can use bar grills instead of covering our faces for protection in sheet steel. As I mentioned above this provides better visibility and ventilation, it also makes the Spangenhelm a more viable choice of helmet, essentially the same as a Great Helm protection-wise because it now has a bar grill welded over the face, something it never had back in the day. We also open up the faces on our Bascinets and our Great Helms, although if you can afford a Bascinet you usually get the historical visor that can switch out, we have some tournaments that are exclusive for very period kits. Some guys that have pre-14th century personae in the SCA (that's like your character, except really it's just you), like say, Vikings, have Bascinet helmets retrofitted to look like a Spangenhelm, but actually perform like a Bascinet.

I was reading recently on one of the OSR blogs saying Gary meant for D&D to be early medieval, they had a link to the armor book he used for his source. It was old and outdated, but at least it's a bit of history telling us where EGG got his information from. I am pretty sure he intended that D&D be pretty early medieval anyway based on the AD&D "Gold Box" miniature line from Grenadier, looking at them sitting on the shelf above my computer as I write this I see pretty much all of the guys are wearing Spangenhelms and the weapons and shields are 11th century at the latest. It was his Swiss fixation on polearms that threw a monkey-wrench into the works. Other than that the aesthetic for AD&D seems to be circa turn of the 1st millennium, certain popular pieces of 1st edition AD&D artwork notwithstanding. I can only assume from the evidence of the official AD&D miniature line that the Small Helmet of the 1st edition AD&D Player's Handbook is actually a Spangenhelm

*There are actual technical terms for all of these things, but I am trying to keep things simple; please don't be insulted by this, I just don't know how much technical jargon will be OK here.

**With the exception of the Sugarloaf Great Helm, which is considered a "transitional" helmet to the Bascinet.

***None actually, not officially anyway, we are an educational organization after all, not a LARP; I have heard tales of people who refuse to play the game by the same rules as everyone else and decide that they are an elf, or a vampire or a member of a Starfleet away team or whatever. I have never seen them, but I have heard the tales. My guess would be that they realize they're at the wrong place and move along eventually.