Quote from: Willie the Duck;1024547That brings up the very good point that most TTRPGs aren't modeling the same situation for which most medieval weapons and armors were developed. Pikes (or guns or slings or longbows) not the best items for use in dungeons? Of course not, how many of those exist in the real world?

In my games, I tend to think of guns of that era just like that--things that undoubtedly would work on massed troops, but ones not made for 1-on-1 or dungeon-style combat.



I don't know that I know what most historical war gamers think (never got into them, personally), but the trend I've noticed seems to be that there is a consensus that there is an elaborate 4+-way rock-paper-scissors like thing going on between archery/artillery, cavalry, polearms, and infantry, where the worst position to be in is to have the wrong troops going up against the wrong troops in the wrong situation (so don't send cavalry against pikes, but do send them against infantry).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1023837Also, can you imagine a hand gonne down in a dungeon crawl?  Between keeping the powder dry and trying to keep the touch wire hot... whee!

Every once in a while we (my groups) spend a diversive 10 minutes and think about just how hard every part of adventuring would really would be/have been at that technology base. How hard travelling without a wagon train/supply lines would be. How hard fording a river would be when next to nothing was waterproof (and you would probably be wet in who-knows-what-weather for the rest of the day until you might get to sit in front of a fire the coming evening). How easily rations would be spoiled.

Compared to the nearly sight-seeing-like travel of Peter Jackson LotR, where peoples' packs magically disappear for important scenes, etc.--if adventuring in that era were really a thing, it'd be so unbearable that it would again barely be a thing very quickly. (OTOH, 100s of people really did get on 80-90' boats and sail for months, so I guess the risk/rewards of the era were heavily skewed towards the 'put up with hell' model).