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Author: Quin Callahan

Nerdarchy > Articles posted by Quin Callahan

Studs: Fashionably Useless Studded Leather Armor VS Brigadine

We, as a race, tend to have a bad habit of believing what we are told. In the days before the internet this studded leather armor brigadine armor   was especially true since fact checking often involved going down to the local library and pouring over texts. It is no surprise then that Gygax and company made a few errors in their initial attempts at something as extensive as what Dungeons and Dragons would become.

This doubly true when at the time sometimes the scholarly text they were basing their information on was what was incorrect! Which brings us to the biker punk fantasy that is studded leather armor.

Studded leather armor, as you might realize at this point, did not exist. The most commonly accepted reason this misconception came to be is probably misidentified brigandine.  Many pieces of brigandine look a ton like studded leather armor from the outside. The armor is essentially a leather outer layer with studs holding oblong metal plates under the armor. This is all well and good but one thing to bear in mind is that armor, especially organic armor, is almost never found in a state that looks as it did when a medieval person was using it.

DnD torch totch

Torches: Not so Bright an Idea!

Torches were a useful thing to a warrior of the past. They allowed for the easy transport of  relatively DnD torch torchstrong flame, which could be useful for several things including the rather deadly and destructive use it had in burning towns and buildings and such. This was especially useful in the past, where fire fighting was a fairly uphill battle (and still is to some degree) and when a single fire could burn entire cities at times. The point of this article is not to say torches are useless but to say instead we’ve all been using them incorrectly, be they in movies, games, or just about anything else. Essentially, torches were many things but they were not especially good at lighting your way.

Torches do not make good light sources nor, more importantly, did people of the past (for our sake lets say medieval people since this site and myself mostly talk about fantasy games) attempt to use them for light very often at all. They last about thirty minutes, create a massive amount of smoke, and there are better options, namely lanterns, lamps, and candles. Torches created so much smoke you would likely soon die if you took it deep underground since you would fill up the entire cavern/dungeon with smoke. Also note though that night blindness is very real, and torches are an undirected bright light that constantly shines in your eyes.

It would be extremely hard to see anything beyond twenty feet or so. One might argue that in a fantasy setting, like the ones many of us play games set in, the components making up torches are made of better and less smokey (and less smelly) materials than the smelly tar that made up a lot of what made historical torches flammable (modern torches are different). To which I say….fair enough and I have no counterpoint except to say games like DnD seem to at least imply their real world items are supposed to be historical and only their magical/fantasy items are intended to be taken as completely made up.

The (Historical) Problem with Fantasy Coinage in Dungeons and Dragons

fantasy coinageDungeons and Dragons (DnD) and the dozens of other games that draw inspiration from it are obviously fantasy. This fact does not stop at the elves, dragons, and magic either. While DnD picks and chooses elements of history to incorporate into its mechanics and lore, it outright rejects other parts.

For example, many pieces of the armor that various editions of DnD present are accurate enough for a game but others, such as studded armor, both never existed and would not have been beneficial had they existed (that, however, is the subject for a different article).

Another one of these less than historically accurate examples is the various coinage these games have presented over the years. Before I begin, I ask that the reader understand that the phrase  "historically accurate" refers to the historical parallels DnD draws with real earthly history.

Although the game is obviously fantasy, it is set in a world bound by many of the same societal values and ideas we humans have had regarding such topics as the value of goods, services, and most importantly for this article, metals.

Firstly, DnD would have been greatly weakened by a historically accurate monetary system. Historically, money was not built on the modern system Americans use today (10 pennies equals 1 dime, 10 dimes equals 1 dollar etc.) Additionally, while American currency does not always transfer directly to other nations currency, theirs also tend to be based on a metric like system.