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Yeah I agree, it is a very interesting zone. Unfortunately, it’s not that well covered in English, and probably even German. There aren’t any Osprey books which really cover it. You will get a little more from the German and Polish language Wikis and maybe the Swedish ones on the various towns and individual Griffin Dukes.
I did not find that much about Pomerania myself, I largely relied on some general histories of medieval Germany like this one
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7572618-germany-in-the-later-middle-ages
… and histories of the Hanse especially Philippe Dollinger’s The German Hanse / Die Hanse
which is very unfortunately out of print and hard to find. Jan Dlugosz also mentions the Griffon Dukes periodically.
But I did find one really good source, for a bit later period (16th Century) by a guy who was the mayor of Stralsund and later, (after getting in political trouble there) Griefswald. He wrote a two part memoir which I used in part as the basis of a paper. Has a lot of crazy stuff in it, including a detailed scene of a fight between his brother and some robber knights, a Landsknecht getting attacked by a pet monkey, and other wild anecdotes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholom%C3%A4us_Sastrow
Unfortunately, the second part of his memoir about his time in Griefswald, which he provocatively subtitled “des Teuffels Battstube” (“the Devil’s bathhouse”) seems to be lost.
An English translation of his memoir is available here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33891
I think there is also some stuff about the Griffin Dukes and about a controversial 15th Century mayor of Griefswald named Henry or Heinrich Rubenow. This wiki mentions the incident I cover in the Baltic book where Eric II of Pomerania got into a fight with Sastrow’s militia over an incursion into the municipal forests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_II,_Duke_of_Pomerania
Here is the auto-translate on the German language Wiki on Rubenow
I would look for German language websites and maybe books about whatever specific towns you are interested in, and also another good strategy I find is to look for castles / castle ruins on Google Maps and read the local language wiki on them, they will often mention skirmishes and other incidents which took place there, quite often between the nobles and the towns.
This site seems to have detailed histories of all the lords and ladies of the house of Griffin, but in German
http://www.ruegenwalde.com/greifen/
Hope that helps!
That’s a wonderful anecdote. I don’t remember that one. I wonder if it’s the “pre-industrial steel” or maybe Usamah had a wootz blade, or it’s just physics. I’ve seen modern steel blades snap more than once at HEMA tournaments. I’ve broken a few just at regular sparring practice.
I had transcribed several anecdotes from that amazing book and I thought I had them on my old website but this one up above was the only one I could find on there. I need to pull the book down and go through and transcribe a bunch more.
This other cluster of anecdotes about the ‘strangeness of the Franks’ that you linked is also quite good
First, certainly sounds like an interesting world build, with several elements that a lot of people would find compelling. Give it a good name, and find or create some art, and I would think you could find an audience for this should you want to expand beyond solo play.
As for the spear only world, there are a lot of neolithic weapons which fill the niche of the sword – war hammers, hand axes, ‘proto swords’ edged with obsidian or shark’s teeth, daggers, throwing sticks, shortened spears, and various other weapons.
We cover a lot of these in our weapon book and some of them are in the core rules.
For a deeper dive into this stuff, I’d recommend Sir Richard Burton’s “Book of the Sword”. It’s a little bit fantastical but he gets into the pre-historical origins of swords, ‘proto-swords’ and many other related weapons.
One interesting theory he had, which I learned subsequently may have some legs, was that swords seem to have “evolved” from a range of ‘throwing sticks’ and ‘throwing woods’, some of which end up with a use and a shape similar to hunting boomerangs. There were two important types in Europe called ‘Cataea’ and ‘Teutona’. They were made smooth and streamlined to fly better, but this had the knock-on effect of making them cut through the air much better, which was exploited to make a new class of striking weapons and so on.
These go back to the neolithic in Europe, I think I remember they found one in a cave in Poland which was 30,000 years old.
Apparently there was a version of the Cataea known to the Greeks
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0063:id=cateia-cn
Actually I think you are right, Artful Strike is for multi-dice attacks, at least in the rules as written. GM has say over how this is implemented though, so if you want to allow it in single-die attacks you can (and this will make it bloodier).
Interested to hear more about your Neolithic / Bronze Age setting. I was actually thinking about doing a “Quest for Fire” based module though I’ll probably have to wait a while to get around to it.
Well I don’t think you are completely wrong, but wounds from weapons like axes and swords do seem to lead to a range of effects. Quite often they can cause horrific damage, but almost equally as often relatively minor wounds seem to result. A lot depends on the wielder of the weapon, (a more experienced person is more likely to cause more serious wounds) and the quality of the weapon. But it seems like small wounds do routinely result.
(Before clicking this link please be aware, IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO IMAGES OF WOUNDS, DON’T CLICK)
this guy was wounded about 15 times in an attack with an axe. He lost a finger and suffered numerous serious lacerations, but nothing fatal. As you can see most of the wounds aren’t that deep.
Now of course, this was probably an axe used for chopping wood, not a purpose made weapon. We assume ‘real’ weapons do more damage. I relied on published FBI statistics to get a sense of this.
Another issue is that doing test cutting in the HEMA world, we noticed that both poor cutting technique and sometimes just a little bit of clothing can drastically reduce the effectiveness of a cut. I have a fairly formidable 4′ (sharp) longsword replica. If you cut right, it will slice right through a wet tatami mat with a wooden dowell inside. We have also tested it on a pork shoulder prior to a barbque. It can cut right through it. But it can also barely make a dent in a soft plastic water bottle if you don’t cut properly.
In Codex, we try to handle the variability a couple of ways:
HIT POINT CEILING – In the Codex rules, we suggest that you cap hit points at 3 x CON score. So for more people, it means no more than 30-40 hit points.
WEAPON REACH or SPEED BONUS – A high reach or speed bonus means you are not only more likely to hit, you are also more likely to land an “Artful Strike” (see below)
ARTFUL STRIKE – In the Codex Rules, if your MODIFIED die roll is 20 or better, it’s considered an “Artful Strike” meaning you do an extra die of damage, by attack type. In Codex Rules for a Chopping attack that is a D10, for a Slice it’s D12. So in the case of a big axe, it adds up to 2-22 base damage, per strike. That will kill most opponents in 2-4 hits. If you have a high To Hit bonus, which is a combination of your weapon stats, your personal ‘Prowess’ (a reflection of your skill) and your physical attribute bonus (Str or Dex), you are more likely to get an Artful Strike. If you use multiple dice attacks, meaning you are putting more effort into trying to kill your opponent, you are also much more likely to land an Artful Strike. So this means that the damage will tend to skew upward.
CRITICAL HIT – In the Codex Rules we also have a Dynamic Criticals rule. That means if you roll a ‘natural’ (unmodified) 20 on a D20, you do extra damage equal to the number of dice you put in. So if you rolled a four dice chopping attack with your big axe and rolled a 20 on one of them, you would do your base damage of D12, plus 4 x D10, so between 5 – 52 hit points of damage. That is enough to kill almost anyone with one cut, not counting the possible effects of armor.
Even with a multi-dice Critical Hit there is still always a chance you’ll do relatively low damage, but another effect of rolling multiple dice is that it creates a statistical bell curve, so that your numbers are more often going to be in the middle. A typical Artful Strike with a big Axe will land somewhere around 8-12 damage, a two die Critical Hit will be in the 15-20 hp range, a four die Critical Hit will be in the 20-30 hp damage range.
finally we also have a “Severe and Grave Wounds” system you can use to make it all even more bloody:
SEVERE and GRAVE WOUNDS – Any time you cause at least 20 HP damage, you can roll on the Severe Wounds table, and any time you cause at least 30 HP damage you can roll on the Grave Wounds table. Severe wounds mean a serious degradation in abilities, represented by a loss of 1 or 2 MP, and possible permanent maiming or disfiguring injuries. Grave Wounds mean basically death or maiming.
Despite having all this, I will say that the 3 x CON HP ceiling is probably a little bit high, and it’s set that high so that PCs and major NPCs won’t die from a single wound. If you lose say 20 HP as a PC, you may be in big trouble but you perhaps still have time to surrender or scramble away to safety.
If you want the game more bloody though, the easiest thing is to just reduce the Hit Point Celing to 2 x CON instead, or even 1 x CON. If you only have 10-20 hit points, a D12 damage suddenly becomes a lot scarier.
The real problem with the damage numbers in DnD is really just that the players and tougher monsters just had too many hit points at higher levels.
If you are wondering how this actually works out in play, I recommend reading through a couple of the sample combats we recently posted. You’ll see that even experienced warriors perish pretty quickly after 2-3 blows. That is pretty much how it works with the default rules, and for more or less ‘bloody’ combat I think the easiest thing is just adjust the hit points as I just laid out.
Hope that helps and let me know if you have any other questions! And welcome to the board!
(sorry I didn’t answer sooner I was AFK for a few days)
