I only began checking back when war band is supposed to be released because I'm supposed to present a game for class. Particularly how Tale-worlds entrepreneured, making this wonderful game from out of No-where.
If you haven't heard of Mount&blade it is a history war nuts dream game. Take away all the "martial-arts" dressing inspired by fantasy and dungeon-delving and get on that Horse.
Horses don't really fit well in the a lot of Combat RPGs. Systems tend to disregard it in lieu of foot combat, but every serious warrior class (I mean the social class) was a horseman. The Horse Nomads, Knights, Samurai, Kataphrakts, Savarans, Equitess...
It is in this game I got to understand why the Horse was so central in the psychology, doctrine, and lifestyle of a warrior.
I don't care for much of the graphics, but the mechanics are awesome. Especially the no-nonesense horse archery. Its really quite an experience. Ever since M&B I've been biased to horse combat and investing in horsmanship skills for my characters (even if my GMs don't understand how valuable it was).
Now that warband is going to provide Multi-player capability. Its like going to be Counterstrike but medieval. My wife might like this better than counterstrike (despite that she doesnt like horses), since its less dizzying because of how much harder it is to kill or be killed.
You can download it for free BTW. at Taleworlds and if you are the game designing sort. Read up on the company's starting history, what they did was amazing starting from so little. Its quite inspiring in the game designer entrepreneur point of view.
Warband Release Date
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5 comments:
Mount & Blade is a great game. I spent two weeks hopelessly addicted to it. Well worth the download.
There have been plenty of non-horseman warrior classes in history. Viking carles, Zulus, Celtic noblemen, Roman republic citizen-soldiers. And Equites was a social class, not a military one, and it rarely translated to riding a horse on the battlefield.
So while I disagree with that part, I definitely agree that Mount and Blade is an excellent game - makes you understand what a bad thing an armored warrior on a horse with a lance is for footsoldiers, unless they keep discipline and have spears.
Wicked reread what I wrote, I said Every Warrior Class. To better illustrate to you replace the Class word with Caste. Vikings and Celts were a people and were mostly composed of freeman Class. Zulus and Cletic Noble men were warriors by profession, but were of their own class and these classes had other roles. Romans republic Citizens were professional Soldiers but not a Warrior Class. The Equitess was a Social Class, read it up based on horse ownership. Thus the Name Equites which means Horseman, Equines means horses.
although I'm incorrect by saying "every", I should have said practically all. Spartan Hoplite were mostly foot fighters, pre-Alexander.
If you want to know more about Warrior Classes, check out Fief by Lisa J. Steele, Osprey books pertaining to these mentioned warriors and armies (particularly the any of their series books).
strange getting into a discussion about trivial semantics in both your posts. friendly trolling?
Possibly friendly trolling, maybe reflexive English-Majorosity - hard to say. I didn't notice both comments were on your stuff until after, truth be told.
I'm not sure that either of my quibbles was semantic one, though. I'll address the ebook post on that page. As to this one, I haven't read the book you're referring to, so I can't say what criteria the writer is using to define "warrior class". It sounds like an awful narrow one, though.
Throughout history in most pre-modern cultures, the "noble" class has been primarily a warrior caste. Some more expressly warriors than others, like the ones you list, but the primary occupation of noble classes has pretty much been war.
And since nobles tend to have money, and buy the best military equipment they can, and the horse, after the development of stirrups, was the best military item you could get - Mount & Blade certainly teaches you that in a hurry. You therefore see horses in most noble/warrior classes after the introduction of the horse.
But Celtic nobles were warriors, and Zulus were a warrior-nation. There were non-horsing warrior classes in India, the Americas, SE Asia, the Pacific Islands.
Also, Republican Legionniares were in no way professional soldiers. Professional legions were instituted after the Marian reforms - previous to that you had to be a land-holding citizen of a certain class, able to provide your own arms and armor. Pretty much the description of a warrior class, IMO.
Equites is a funny one, though. Although horse ownership was the defining characteristic, it was probably less warrior-based than any other class we've talked about. It was actually purely financially-based.
You qualified for the Ordo Equites if you could afford to buy and feed a horse. Since it was the only "noble" rank up for sale in the Roman empire, you had a helluva lot more merchants than "warriors" in the Equites. Most probly wouldn't have known a horse or a sword, despite being "Equites".
Finally, since when is disagreeing with someone "trolling", friendly or not? Do you not desire comments, feedback and discussion? A slightly patronizing attitude and allegations of trolling are not conducive to any of those things.
In this case, I disagree with your assertion, and cited several examples of what I thing are counter-points. How is that minor semantic points?
Well i consider it friendly trolling because i wasn't inclined in talking about absolutes.
Also, when I talked about warrior classes I didn't talk about Noble Caste, which is different and a matter of semantics.
Nobles were varied per culture and had various roles including administration and land ownership for taxation and political purposes.
Your citation of Roman Soldiers is petty argument of unnecessary details because it went to a level of detail that was both tedius, un-needed and still debatable. Your Marian reforms citation, doesn't necessarily mean that they were a regular profession or particularly a warrior class, just a freeman class.
Then the same trivial details about equites.
The Zule warrior nation and is again outside the topic of debate it they are considered a freeman class with warrior tradition because of their seperate duties as hearders.
You disagreement is noted. My only point is I wasnt absolutist about my opinion, and they were my opinion. You are are certainly free to disagree with me and make it heard all over the net, but Is it really worth it to argue trivial semantics on a small unknown blog when the points of debate are so trivial and debatable that the discussion can go on indefinitely?
I didn't not mean any offense by the friendly trolling comment. I chose to describe at trolling, despite friendly, was the triviality and forever debatable argument you chose. I'm ok with that, and I enjoy discussions into the details, thats why i call it friendly. Although a 2 person argument about warrior class history can be tedius and especially that right now I don't have my notes with me and I actually taking a sick day.
But if you are really serious about studying this and want to further go to all the details and classifications about the warrior class and develop a cooperative study of who are horsemen, their tactics, doctrine, their unique cultural circumstance they came to be, I would really love that. Not being sarcastic here. if you read my other post by the pattern of my topics you would know that i'm a big fan of getting down and dirty with the details and coming out with a new, simplified, user friendly understanding of a larger breadth of knowledge. if you like to do that (and it will help me make a warrior class template list for GURPS) I'm for it dude!.
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