THE TAKEOUT MENU: Flyaway Missives from T Bone's Games Diner
#002, December 29 2006

Hello again, kind readers and collaborators. This issue, slipping in just before the new year: site news, and the previously-promised oddball request. (It's a request for melee weapon data; and if you say "what's so oddball about that?", then you must be a gamer.)

===SITE NEWS===

The new site appearance looks best on Firefox. If you're on IE (bless your patient soul), and you see a tan horizontal line running between the black and green areas at the top of the page, and you'd like to take a crack at the CSS to eliminate that line, please let me know.

Exciting new content is pretty much limited to my dry three-parter "It's About Time", which discusses a pet interest of mine: how games handle action time and pacing (especially in combat), and whether there are more interesting ways to do so.  

http://www.gamesdiner.com/about_time_part1
http://www.gamesdiner.com/about_time_part2
http://www.gamesdiner.com/about_time_part3

It's an odd – and for most normal people, intensely dull – topic. That's okay. It fits the (not-yet-clearly-stated) theme of the site: R&D and other development efforts, by and for the armchair game designer. More on that theme in a future blog post, I'm sure.

Then there's a new entry in the slow-growing field of old GURPS Diner content updated for the real world:

Star Frontiers to GURPS 4e Conversion Notes
http://www.gamesdiner.com/star_frontiers_to_gurps
 
That article has spurred a little action in comments: building the Star Frontiers races with 4e traits brings up several interesting questions. Further polish is a work in progress, so please lend your ideas if you like.

As for the rest of the GURPS Diner candidates sitting in the green room:

GULLIVER has its small thread going at http://www.gamesdiner.com/node/80 . As outlined earlier, the idea is to put out a quick and short 4e update, focusing only on the basics of building size into a critter. My next step, per good advice received, is to check what BioTech for 4e already has to say on the subject, and then whip up a draft for your comments.

The other stars of the GURPS Diner – GLAIVE, COSH, FEND, Gird Yer Loins!, and ESCARGO – all focus on or touch upon combat issues, and are best tackled after the upcoming Martial Arts revision lays down the 4e tournament law for detailed combat workings. Updates to all those works, and much of GULLIVER, are on hold until then.  
 

===THE PROMISED ODDBALL REQUEST===

It's odd but maybe kind of fun.

I've (barely) mentioned a non-GURPS "Project T" here and there: a home-brew RPG skeleton. Details are still down the pike. For now, here's one feature of interest to some:

The game's combat mechanics allow for detailed melee weapon performance stemming from mass, length, balance, and so on, all in realistic fashion (to the best of my simulation skills). The relevant stats for typical weapons will come ready-made on a chart for easy play, just like any game. But as with GLAIVE, the rules initially generate those stats from basic weapon data. That's good for the simulation and consistency hounds, and also lets GMs build any real or imagined melee weapon.

I've got the number-crunching formulae; now I need the numbers! For any object that can bash, hack, or poke holes in foes, I'm searching for:

1) Mass in kilograms
2) Overall length in meters
3) Point of grip if defined (see below)
4) Point of balance (see below)
5) Appropriate notes

(I'm passing up the statistic known as center of percussion (CoP). The online discussion over where CoP is, and what it means for performance, is too messy for me to make sense of!)

Statistics for real weapons are great. Replica or training weapon data is fine too. And even improvised weapon data – shovels, carpentry hammers, lumber – is fun to have.
 

On that list above, 1) and 2) are simple: mass and length data is easy to find for some historical weapons, and for on-hand objects, is easy to measure.
 

Item 3) is the measurement in meters from the butt end of the weapon to roughly the top of the hand (curled forefinger and thumb). For a sword, that's pretty easy: the distance from end (tip of pommel) to the cross-guard. (Relevant image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sword_parts.jpg )

Many weapons won't have a hilt or cross-guard, though; an axe or spear can generally be held in many places. If there's a point where the weapon would *normally* be held, I'll take that. Otherwise, ignore it; I can easily make up something appropriate. (That'll be no less than 0.1m for a normal-sized wielder, I think; that's about the span of a fist, allowing for a little wiggle room. Point of grip wouldn't be lower than that.)

Under the rules, one- or two-handed use is up to the wielder; the system will generate appropriate numbers either way. But that'll generally leave big "two-handed" weapons unusable one-handed, so if the weapon's likely meant to be used two-handed, treat it that way.

Point of grip for a two-hander refers to the forward hand. If you have an idea of where both forward and rear hands would typically go, note the "spread" distance between the two. Assume each hand on the weapon, as above, takes 0.1m, as does each hand-width of spread. Adding things up, the space of the two hands, plus the spread between, plus any significant length sticking out below the rear hand should add up to point of grip. (Example: a sword gripped with rear hand pretty much on the end, and a hand-width between the two hands, would have point of grip 0.3m; if there were also a hand-width of pommel sticking out at bottom, point of grip would be 0.4.)
 

The most elusive info is 4): point of balance (PoB), measured in meters from the butt of the weapon (i.e., tip of pommel for a sword) to the PoB. Info sources with reams of good weapon data, such as http://www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html , typically make little or no mention of PoB data. If you do find data online, take care how it's being measured. For example, if PoB is measured from the cross-guard, not the butt, then adding hilt length to the PoB data should yield the total butt-to-PoB length I'm looking for.

Without data, there's nothing to do but guess. Easy enough for a straight staff (PoB is right smack in center!), not so hard for a sword (take a guess based on known sword data)... but for a polearm, I don't know; my guess is really a guess.

(If you're measuring on your own, PoB is easy: it's the point where the weapon will balance on an outstretched finger. Careful with those edges!)

Finally, I don't think we can measure PoB for flexible or jointed weapons. I haven't yet pinned down performance for these, or for oddities like nets. If you have any data for these, I'll take what you have, and figure out how to use it later.
 

That brings me to 5): mainly, I'll want to know what the item is and where the numbers come from. Is the weapon real, or a replica, or improvised? "14th century English warsword" is more helpful than "sword"; "Fred's Armoury replica of 10th century Saxon battleaxe" is more helpful than "replica axe".    

If historical data, what's the source? What items are you taking a guess at? Or all the stats entirely your own invention? (Nothing wrong with that, as long as it's labeled as such!)
 

I've started a forum for general comments/questions, and have an open Google Spreadsheet as well (links below). If you report data in the forum, I'll input it from there; if you'd like to input directly into the Spreadsheet (thanks!), Google apparently requires that I first send you an invite by email. So let me know in the forum, or at tbone@gamesdiner.com .

I've started the Spreadsheet with a few entries of my own. I've got data for some swords and baseball bats which I've found online (though I need to relocate my sources : /  ), and I measured a sledgehammer and a couple of umbrellas(!) on my own. The rest is educated guesswork.

What've you got? In addition to swords, I'd love to see some axes, clubs, polearms (got one handy?), practice/sport weapons (beaters, bokken, shinai, etc.), "farmer" weapons (shovels, pitchforks), oddball weapons (man-catchers, light sabers, heavy canes), just about anything with potential for mayhem.

If you have data for a weapon, Project T will let you arm yourself with it. Please contribute, and let's look forward to glorious battles with sword, spear, and halberd. (And garden rake, if that's all that's handy.)

Google Spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pMVyy57brqG5a1vBUVxveXQ

Forum:
http://www.gamesdiner.com/node/121
 

===FINAL NOTES===

This newsletter itself appears online: http://www.gamesdiner.com/takeout_menu_002 . Comments left on that page are appreciated.
 

Next missive: Early 2007! Until then, a happy end o' the year to all.

T Bone
tbone@gamesdiner.com
Visit the once-again NEW T Bone's Games Diner!
http://www.gamesdiner.com