Maps and more Archery (2010)

Submitted by Claudia on Mon, 16/08/2010 – 00:31 

Today was my first workday after spending a year at home to take care of our son. Orlanth sent thunder, lightning and a lot of rain on us this morning – perfect mirror of my mood. However – I survived, Finn (our son) survived and Jeff (who has to take care of Finn until Finn goes to the child care) survived. We will get used to it and of course – this is a situation Jeff put into his planning for the upcoming publications. As I wrote last time Sartar Companion will be delayed a month (the last proofreadings, layout and so on) due to our internet problem last month. But this has also a good side: it gives artists more time for art – in fact there will be additional art. Colin Driver is making an extra map on the basis of ideas of Greg Stafford. Additional maps of locations (cities, temple – even the Jonstown Library) are being worked on. Jeff used a lot of the “internet free time” to make sketches of the different locations (some of the original papers of Jeff’s are a bit crinkled because our cat spilled a bowl of water over them) which are put into nice drawings by proper artists right now. Here is one of Jeff’s four sketches of the library. This is of the ground floor.

A real artist (I think Gill Hellion) will make his crude sketches look good! And here a few more archery bits as an answer to blog comments: I took 5th place at the World Archery Championship. And yes – I love the Robin Hood stories (always did) and – I started archery with 10, role playing with 15 – maybe it was archery that got me interested in roleplaying. And if you want to buy a bow – there are shops for archery like for everything else – even in the internet. But keep in mind – a bow is no toy but a dangerous thing. Join an archery club and don’t shoot ever at your neighbour’s dog! Last and longest topic: What do I not like about the RQ3-archery-rules? Start with the range. I don’t know if somebody forgot to convert feet into meter but an effective range for a long bow of 90 meters is totally unrealistic – a maximum range of 275 meters is something you simply can not do. Nowadays you shoot relatively accurately (think of something of the size of a boar or a deer) up to 45 meters – if you are very good maybe up to 60 meters (but even here you would miss with a fourth of your arrows an unmoving target). There is a fun competition where you try to hit or come as close as possible to a stick at 175 m – with a long bow you are lucky if you even get an arrow this far. And these are modern long bows (different woods laminated together to get higher speed and a softer shot)! Most of the people are not so insane to shoot 80 lbs bows but something between 45 and 60 lbs is very common which in my opinion equals the stronger bows they shot in history. What you call in roleplaying a composite bow I would say is a a rider or horse bow with a bit of a recurve bow. A rider bow usually does not shoots as good on far distances as a good long bow (the use is different anyways – from a horse). With a recurve bow (without any fancy stuff to target on it) you shoot better than with a long bow on longer distances. But in the end your results are better but you do not shoot longer distances. The thing which is described as “self bow” is I think what I built in a course where an historian showed me how to build an English long bow. Hmmm – however – horn tips are the only protection for the bow ends against the bow string and they look cool. Nothing else. And the strength you need for a bow has nothing to do if it is a “self”, “composite” or “long” bow.

It depends on how the bow is made and which wood is used. If you take wood away on the right places the strength you need to pull the bow goes down. Bamboo is much softer to draw and has a not so bad aftershock than yew. However, yew was in Europe the most important bow wood because the core wood and the outside have very different flexibility attributes. This combination is good for bow making. Nowadays you glue different woods with different attributes together to optimize this effect. But keep in mind we are playing a game in a fantasy world and maybe in this world it is possible to shoot so far so please don’t take my ranting too serious and have fun in your games! Hmmm – this got much longer than I expected….Not much about HeroQuest this time. Promise – next time I will jump into the pit of doom of “don’t tell me more about your character…” and discuss the fun of playing eccentric characters in our HeroQuest games and how they slipped into the next publications! 😉

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