Markdoc

Re: Turakian: Indusharan and women - typo / errata?

Re: Turakian: Indusharan and women - typo / errata? Read up on the background to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. It wasn't until then (1974!) that the practice of requiring a woman to have a male co-signer on a loan or contract was outlawed. This practice was repeatedly challenged in court - and allowed to persist. It wasn't until the postwar period that it started to ease. In the 19th and early 20th century many women-run businesses only survived because they had a friendly male who could co-sign for them.

Re: Nudity for your benefit I agree with Sean here. NPAs are a very useful tool, but they require very careful watching by the GM. However, rather than Sean's suggestion, I'd look at what it can be applied to and allow slightly broader grouping. After all, charging +1/4 for an NPA that applies to only one power seems a bit unfair: an advantage applied to only one power costs ... +0 over the advantage cost. It only becomes an NPA if applied to more than one power, no? With that in mind, I'd suggest: Applies to a tight group of powers: +1/4 Applies to closely related powers: +1/2 Applies to a loose related powers: +3/4 Applies to any power: + 1 Very tight would (for example) be something like "Fire blasts" allowing the NPA to be applied to EB or RKA with fire as a special effect. Closely related and loosely related could be things like "Fire attacks" (add Flash into the mix, for example or HKA) and "Fire powers" respectively. For a numeric approach 2-3 potential applications equals "tight", 4-6 "close" and more than that "loose, when restricted to a specific power set (like for example "any attack") or special effect. cheers, Mark

Re: Turakian: Indusharan and women - typo / errata? It's not true that women were considered property in the US of the 1920's, - or any period apart from the unfortunates condemned to slavery - but it's also not true that they otherwise had the same legal rights as men up until that point. It was not until 1900 that married women were allowed to own property, not until 1947 that they received the right to sit on juries or represent at law, not until the 1950's that they received the right to sign contracts and take bank loans and not until the late '60's that legal restrictions on employment were removed. There were thousands of laws reducing women's legal rights including some bizarre ones - until 1968, any women convicted of a felony in Pennsylvania automatically received the maximum possible penalty, in many states women were not allowed to work at night, or to take a job if their husband had one - all kinds of stuff like that. Growing up in more enlightened times, it's hard to recall that much of this stuff was only recently repealed. cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet You lose. He was in fact, Thomas Walsingham, courtier and gentleman (that's why no occupation is listed for him in the link you gave), and wealthy landowner. His family also had a largish import/export business. If you'd described him as a glazier to his face, you'd have been lucky to get away with a thorough beating from his flunkies. You'd also be incorrect, as he was a master of the Worshipful Companie of Vintners Technically, if you want his profession (which he himself would almost certainly have given as "Gentleman" or "Courtier") he was a Vintner, but as he was of a higher social class than a guildmaster, he apparently did not deign to use the title much, if at all ... exactly as I would expect. All he did to get out of his duties as Alderman (note: he kept the title and presumably the income) was hire some people to do the glazing for him: if he was too busy and to exalted to attend council meetings, he was certainly too much of both to do manual labor. Indeed, his excuse was that he was much in attendance on the king ... not exactly something that manual labourers did a great deal, and both Walsingham and the King are listed together as supporters of a charity at the Worshipful Companie of Vintners. So no, not a glazier. cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet Yep. You get the point I'm making. Lawnmower Boy seems to be under the impression I think that a cheesemonger couldn't become wealthy and influential, though I've already said that's definitely not the point. (Though if he did, he'd cease to be Cheesemonger - he'd become a Mercer, or an Alderman or something supporting his new dignity). And the case of the law court rolls, I specifically chose occupations for which there were no guilds, so that the argument that the person could have been a guildsman is insupportable - even given the fact that if he had been a guildsman he would have noted it, as the hundreds of other guildsmen on the rolls did. The point is that having become wealthy and acquired social status, someone would not voluntarily degrade themselves by describing themselves as of a lower social status. Indeed, we have some legal statute books from the medieval period and describing someone of a higher social status by a name denoting lower social status was a specific crime in some areas. In Fabbriano, saying "You've eaten Fabbo soup" to a townsman was punishable by fine (Fabbo soup was a peasant dish) - so even implying a lower social status was a crime there. That's not to say peasants could not become wealthy and influential - occasionally they did. Of course when they did ... they usually stopped being peasants, and accusing them of having eaten fabbo soup would then become an offense to their dignity! Given all that, we can safely assume that those people who indicated a relatively modest status as their official profession, were in fact of a relatively modest status. To the medieval mind, status was important and a description of your occupation meant far more than simply describing your job. cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet That'd carry more weight if Medival London had had a guild of cheese mongers. (it didn't). Guess what? It didn't have a guild of bricklayers either. If you look in the records of students who entered the inns of court, you'll find many who listed their father's ocupation as apprentice, guildsman, or guildmaster, and gave the name of their guild. A guildman, by definition, was socially a cut above a merchant (be he never so wealthy) and would not have pretended - in an official document yet - to be of alower social class than he actually was. It's pretty much impossible to understand the word, in this case in any other way. For those uncommon individuals listed as "bricklayer" or "Cheeesemonger" the word actually means exactly what it looks like it means. Indeed your own links confirm it: it's doubtful how much he ever referred to himself as a Mercer, given his birth - his father was Sir William Whittington, Lord Pauntley - it's much more likely that he would have written "Gentleman" as his occupation: that's how he is referred to in the Mercer's Guild list. In the letter book of Gloucester, his occupation is given as "Esquire", in the London Letterbook his occupation is given as Alderman and Master. The first mention of him as a mercer that I know of comes after his death. Whittington himself, however in his last will and testament, calls himself "citizen and alderman". cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet

Re: Medieval Diet

Re: Medieval Diet Well, yes, but both of those authors agree with what I posted. To take one of the examples from the links you gave, Gottfried von Hohenburg, a wealthy guildmaster left us his records. Although his family got wealthy selling wine, he doesn't *ever* describe himself as "wineseller", but as "Guildmaster". He owned vineyards, but never once described himself as a "winemaker" - but as "Graf" (Count). I wasnt saying that Townsmen never became wealthy or influential (or even noble): that happened all the time. I was saying that having become wealthy or influential they didn't pretend to be humbler and less-legally entitled that they were. Call Gottfried von Hohenburg a wineseller to his face and you'd likely end up with half a meter of steel through your belly. I'm not joking - more than one fatal assault was occasioned by reminding a member of the gentry of his family's plebian past. And by and large, the courts would look kindly on the attacker - such a crude insult demands redress! So yes, really, cheesemonger means someone who sells cheese, in their own person and bricklayer someone with rough, red hands who lays actual bricks. That the sons of both of these entered the courts - well they would have been charity cases, most likely. Someone who owned a shop or shops where other people sold cheese on their behalf, would describe themself as something else. A simple analogy: I work most days in my office and do a lot of typing. If asked my job, however, I say "Doctor", "Professor" or "scientist", depending on context. I don't say "typist". cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet Yep. That's exactly the sort of prejudice that I'm taking about. It applies to virtually every aspect of "scholarship" on the medieval era when we look back at historians from a century/century and a half ago - including aspects you'd think would have little political freight, such as diet. The whole concept was of a "dark age" in which knowledge and skill of every kind was lost.

Re: Spartan Soldier (300) Cartledge is a big Spartan fan and takes exception to the idea that Spartan women were chattel. I've only read one of his books (the warrior heroes one) but in that he argues that Spartan women actually ran the country. cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet Heh. The SCA is the place to go for a cool evenings' drinking, craft and fighting. It is not, by and large, the place to go for history (after all they coined the phrase "history nazi" for people who were concerned about getting details right). As for the illiteracy thing, in academic circles, it's been acknowledged for about 2 generations now, that it was overdone: but that hasn't filtered through into popular culture. Look at books like "A World Lit Only By Fire". Big popular success a few years back, and a rollicking read. Then google up what historians have to say about it: "popular lit, wrong in virtually every detail" would be a charitable summary. The victorian viewpoint was that "the dark ages" represented a fall in virtually every category from the glory of Rome and the inevitable climb back up towards the glory of Victorian England. That makes anice story, and had a major influence on the public viewpoint, but even at the time, it was questioned by serious historians. However, if you look at the work published on medieval literacy (just google it) and compare it with historical works on (say) armor, you'll notice an odd thing. There's virtually nothing published on literacy studies prior to about 30-40 years ago - when suddenly the field exploded. Do the same search for armor (or castles, or economics, or politics) you'll find a treasure trove of study going back over the last century and a half. Today, the net is filling up with medieval records from ordinary people - from will, from assizes, from lists of arms, from letters. Those things always existed - but they simply weren't studied much until recently and until very recently they were only accessible to a few historians. A good example is if you look at medieval militaries: a field that has been studied thoroughly over the last century. The popular view in the early 20th century was that it consisted of mostly illiterate, barbarous knights who turned up and charged at each other without much preparation or any tactics. The foot were mostly a rabble who contributed little of importance. Victory went to the side that bashed the most heads. Then historians started actually looking at primary sources and found knights recommending Tacitus to each other in letters. They started asking questions like "If these guys operated without a strong commissariat, who were they able to maintain a siege of Bari for 2 years? or "If these guys were so unsophisticated, why were they able to consistently defeat well organised, numerically superior byzantine armies?" or "How were they able to operate in hostile territory for months at a time, without an apparent economic support?" Over time, we came to understand that, in fact, many medieval armies were quite well organized, that training involved more than just weapon handling and that some of the more effective knightly forces not only drilled together, but also had effective commmissariats - quite capable of procuring supplies in Spain, shipping them to Greece and paying for it with notes of credit arranged thorough Italian international banking chains. We know, because not only do we have the evidence that they did operate in those areas - but we still have some of the letters and accounts describing the whole action. The knight who organised the mighty bank loan simply didn't get as much press from the troubadours as the knight who led the mighty charge. Groups like ARMA that split off from the SCA or sprung up specifically to study these aspects at a more stringent level have contributed to our knowledge. You'll find relatively few people today who still hold the view that knights were armoured buffoons ignorant of military strategy who kept winning wars mostly by luck or the grace of god - but that was the public viewpoint not so long ago. Essentially over the last century, we have gotten a much more accurate view of how the upper class lived in the medieval period. Over the last 30 years, we have started to get a much more accurate picture of how everyone else lived: that's all this is. cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet

Re: Medieval Diet No, it didn't really work like that over most of western/northern Europe - until relatively recently, your job was your identity. In many cases, it defined your legal rights as well. If you owned a cheesemonger's but lived in a manor and trained to fight - you wouldn't write "Cheesemonger" as your living. You'd write factotum, or gentleman, or alderman or something similar, depending on your position. If you write "cheesemonger", it's because you actually, physically sell cheese for a living. As an aside, I took that reference from the records of entry to the inns of the court in London, because they are online and searchable. And we know that Londoners were extremely class conscious in that era. So cheesemonger, in this context, means exactly what it seems to mean. cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet Actually the idea that the vast majority of people could not read or write appears to be another one of those fables, like "ordinary people mostly ate gruel" or "Most people never travelled more than few mies from where they grew up" foisted on us by the Victorians and still recycled by the worse sort of popular historian. Smaller, rural communities left very few records - because the people of the time didn't consider them important - but examining court records from the 13th-15th centuries, we find over and over again references to accounts, to letters and to written messages, even when we are dealing with ordinary townsmen or small holders who might not own more than a cottage and a patch of garden. There are also common references to the salaries for school teachers - along with complaints about the standard of teaching - some things don't change! But there were, clearly all too many teachers and small schools for them to be only for the children of the wealthy and influential. If we look at extant university records from the 1400's, we find among admissions the sons of cheesemongers, fishermen, alewives, bricklayers, carpenters and house servants (admittedly, not very many, but still...). All of these must have been literate to a reasonable standard to be able to take the examination for entry. The picture we have now of that era actually also resembles that in much of Africa today. Only a privileged few were literate in the sense that we are - reading and writing without effort. A minority - generally the most deprived - were fully illiterate. Most people were in between: reading for pleasure was not something most people did (books were expensive and leisure time limited). But many - perhaps most - small business men and craftsmen, freeholders and even some affluent peasants could apparently read and write simple letters, read signs and contracts, do their accounts and file claims at court. That explains why when the bible was translated into local languages, starting in the mid 1300's, there was an almost insatiable demand. When printing became widespread, many printers' factories were set up simply to churn out as many copies as they could make. If the vast majority of the population was illiterate, who were purchasing the tens of thousands of volumes that were churned out? Paper was expensive, so was often reused if possible (and medieval paper was not of high quality anyway: it doesn't keep well - hence the use of parchment for important documents), and merchants used to mark up sales on wood or slate with charcoal or chalk - then scrub it off. Neither lends itself to preservation. I think rather than saying that most people were illiterate in medieval Europe, it's fair to say that almost nothing in the way of daily records have survived, so that aspect has been ignored until recently. Also these kinds of records even where they still exist were ignored by historians because they "weren't sexy". Most people would rather read records associated with important personages or events than a lawsuit over Farmer Giles wandering pigs cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet Grain was also an important animal feed during winter (still is, actually) as well as an important human food through the same period. If the harvest failed not only were people in trouble, but you would have to slaughter much of your herd, meaning that even if you got a good harvest the next year, your farm might be crippled in terms of production for several years - and if you had to slaughter all your animals, you might be looking at starvation come spring. In East Africa, where I work, you can still see this cycle in action - if the rains fail, not only are farmers short on grains, but their animals die or have to be slaughtered. Ironically, since everyone is faced with the same problem, it means the value of the animals fall (since there's a glut and no way of preserving all that meat), so farmers can't even make any money off their animals. I've seen farmers leave their animals to die in the fields because there's no point in using up energy to walk them to market. I've also seen a farmer trying to barter a cow - normally a prized possession - for a bag of flour. Often even if the rains come again the next year, people starve - because it takes some months to grow enough crops to live on and in the meantime, people have used up what little reserves they had. It's why foods that can be kept a long time - like salted fish, for example or that godawful Lutefisk - are so important culturally and were such a big deal economically. In East Africa, the equivalent is enset - a paste made by boiling the root of the false banana or other plants into a paste and then drying it. It looks and feels like brown plastic and tastes ... well, it tastes like boiled tree root, to be honest. But it lasts for years: people often wrap it in false banana leaves and bury it in dry soil, to be dug up when famine hits, the same way medieval northern Europeans would store a jar or a barrel of dried, salted fish against need. cheers, Mark

Re: Total Amnesia I actually ran a game where all of the PCs were amnesiacs. I asked them to outline - in a general way - what the focus of their character would be (actually, I got them to choose a Tarot card to represent their character). I made up the characters and held the sheets, giving the players only the obvious facts (physical appearance, etc) and a few teaser hints (You feel like you have been here before ... etc) Then I started all of the PCs seperately with a few solo sessions, allowing them to meet up, one by one as the plot advanced. Since they all had unusual powers and all had complete amnesia, and somebody seemed to be trying to capture or harm all of them, they had a strong incentive to band together to try and work out what was going on. It was a pretty cool game, if I do say so myself cheers, Mark

Re: Total Amnesia Hey, if he'd paid his bill, he'd be fine.... cheers, Mark

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be? Using the handy calculators Nyrath provided and going with the idea of multiple rotating cylinders, a short stubby cylinder 30 kilometers in radius and 60 kilometers long would give you about 170,000 square kilometers. Plenty of space for an earthlike environment, and plenty of space for a functioning environment, even for top predators with a little fudging on the weather and a rotational speed which isn't too outrageous. But even that would take just 2 days hard slog to walk across and less than a couple of weeks to walk right around ... cheers, Mark

Re: Clyde Barrow's Sawn-Off BAR

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Oh, forgot to mention. Recently we saw "Mongol" - a big budget extravaganza about Ghenghis Khan's early years. It's a mixture of fact and fable - I really don't think Ghenghis Khan was such a sensitive, caring guy, and the Director clearly knows diddly-squat about Mongol warfare, or indeed warfare in general. But it's got lots of guys riding around and stabbing each other and the cinematography is verra pretty. Oh - and lots of Mongolian Throat singing . I'd give it one thumb more or less kinda up. cheers, Mark

Re: 13 Stone Circles More seriously, they missed out some good ones le Menec in Brittany Carnac (also in Brittany) and Ales Stenar - not far from here, in Sweden. cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Yeah. We saw that at your place, IIRC. I haven't actually gotten a copy of that yet, but it's on my list. Still, I like to see the originals as well when the opportunity comes up. Dunno. Haven't seen The Protector. But Ong Bak2 has a really simple storyline - set in the 14th century as the Ayutthaya dynasty is establishing itself, our Hero's family is killed by his cousin, who becomes king. He flees into the jungle carried by a loyal soldier, is captured by slavers, rescued by bandits and trains in a variety of martial arts from everywhere (including Elephant-beating-up and use-of-explosives). He is adopted by the old bandit king and then sets out for Revenge! I liked it: it's lushly filmed and is basically a series of fights using different styles loosely linked by the plot above. It's an ideal vehicle for Tony Jaa. He has almost no dialog, and spends his time either beating people up, glaring at the camera through long hair or cutting himself (his character's a little emo). It was set up for a sequel - if they make it, I'll go see it. Cheers, Mark

Re: 13 Stone Circles There's also ... Fridgehenge! cheers, Mark