IntenseDebate - CedricBallbusch

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - [Dredging the Grimdark... · 2 replies · +1 points

Real men go into battle in chain-mail briefs and yellow codpieces. This has been proven.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 0 replies · +2 points

Maybe there were trolls, I've seen some crazy stuff.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 2 replies · +1 points

It is an interesting game to play. The presents of 11th century Muslin states means you can piggy back east as far as Japan. Africa is limited once you hit the Eastern Sudan. There were certainly reasonably sophisticated cultures operating in the interior, but we don't know much about them beyond the fact that they existed. Abyssinia and the Kingdom of Adal were very much on the edge of the map.

Of course, if you adopt the theory that Skaelings were Eastern Forest peoples from New England you could go all the was to the Pacific Seaboard and much of South America.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - [Dredging the Grimdark... · 4 replies · +2 points

I'll bet I still have boxes of those old Rogue Trader Eldar Pirates in my mother's basement.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 4 replies · +2 points

That's what makes it fun.

Of course, if you wanted to there really isn't any reason not to add Abyssinia as a faction to SAGA. While culturally and geographically isolated they certainly had enough intermittent contact with both Europe and the Middle East to justify brawling with Vikings and Syrians.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 11 replies · +2 points

Should also be noted that different people put different things in different buckets. I classify Skaelings as 'plausible'; others would toss them into 'highly unlikely'.

On the whole, GB miniatures are very historically correct. Though, you know, zombies.

History gives you a lot of wiggle room. Even if you've got surviving documents that are spot on, you have to assume the author knows what he's talking about and isn't actively lying. By the Roman Empire (and likely before) people have enough sense of history to realize that their actions are going to be judged and reported by future generations. It is clear that Julius Caesar, for example, is writing, in part, to you.

Imagination is what allows us to reach for the plausible and create 'historical' fiction. Just to take one of your examples; it is very unlikely, that the Norse ever incorporated non-Scandinavian into their forces. However, the Norse traded at least as far a field as Persia, and perhaps further. A Viking adventurer could have brought a wife back from almost anywhere. So, while by-and-large mono-ethnic, a Viking raider could potential be half anything (and yes I am aware that one of the Oseberg Boat was, potentially, Iranian).

Really, it all depends on what you want, and how far we're willing to go to justify something.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - The SAGA saga: models,... · 13 replies · +3 points

Wow, I got a shout out. And, I've moved up to enigma, not bad.

Actually, I balked at black or asian viking raiders and/or a female warrior; none of which really strike me as any less fanciful than a warlord who abuses HGH--but, I can be very hard about these things. Though, I grant there is some limited evidence for the presence of Ethiopian refugees fighting in Frankish service. But, such men would likely be militantly hostile to the pagan Norse.

But, if you look at the game as a Saga simulator. That is a game set in the idealized, heroic past then a great deal of fantasy becomes possible. Matter of individual taste really. I tend to belong to the 'you have to know the rules before you can break them school'. Then you can divide things into accurate; plausible, but unconfirmed; highly unlikely; and flights of fancy.

If you want to have Arthur rolling with a Pictish(?) warrior princess in a leather bikini top, you can. However, it's good to preface ti with 'this is wrong on so many levels.' I start to worry when people mistake elements of the fantastic, or wishful thinking, for historical truth.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Throwback Thursday [To... · 2 replies · +1 points

One fears for the future.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 0 replies · +2 points

Oh, it makes sense. But the fact that we see agency in the world around us. Assume cause and effect. Is an interesting part of our psychology.

8 years ago @ http://www.houseofpain... - Fair Enough · 1 reply · +2 points

Knightley's work on the concepts of time and space in the Late Shang offers fascinating insight into the shift from ritual, cyclical time to lineal time in the Bronze Age.

Other societies likely developed the concept along different lines, but interesting nonetheless.

IntenseDebate Comment System

Connect with CedricBallbusch

People I'm following

CedricBallbusch