A nice little video on shield sizes

[Quartz]

I can't seem to embed a YouTube short, so here's the URL: What’s the point of a tiny shield?

The presenter briefly explains why shields are different sizes. And moots dual-wielding shields.

 

[Dioltach]

Dual shielding, hehehe...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Blumineck ("Blooming Heck" - a phrase of surprise from "up North" - basically equivalent to "Bloody hell!") has a pretty great channel in general, I very much recommend it.

blumineck

AKA David the Arrow Bard. Archer, Pole Dancer, and Nerd, all rolled into one deeply strange human! Learn Archery with me 😁

www.youtube.com

He's not only incredibly fit and proficient with a wide variety of medieval weapons, but he's also a funny guy with a genuinely good attitude (and also a skilled pole dancer lol). He's one of the few people on YouTube who makes Shorts worth watching (but also has some longer videos, including some D&D-related ones).

 

[jian]

Blumineck ("Blooming Heck" - a phrase of surprise from "up North" - basically equivalent to "Bloody hell!") has a pretty great channel in general, I very much recommend it.

blumineck

AKA David the Arrow Bard. Archer, Pole Dancer, and Nerd, all rolled into one deeply strange human! Learn Archery with me 😁

www.youtube.com

He's not only incredibly fit and proficient with a wide variety of medieval weapons, but he's also a funny guy with a genuinely good attitude (and also a skilled pole dancer lol). He's one of the few people on YouTube who makes Shorts worth watching (but also has some longer videos, including some D&D-related ones).

Oh yeah, the guy who films himself shooting upside down in his garden.

Sellsword Arts is pretty good at shorts and they did this one on dual shielding:


They do a lot of cool funny videos, including ones about various anime weapons. I also quite like the one about why dwarves and goblins might actually be quite hard to fight.

 

[Mannahnin]

The amount of video content available nowadays on medieval and fantasy weapons and armor is so great.

I remember when the 2nd ed AD&D Arms & Equipment Guide's relatively detailed pictures were the most conveniently available reference material for getting any real sense of the size, encumbrance, and wieldiness of this stuff.

People's "invisible rulebooks" for these things used to be all over the place and often loosely connected to reality unless they had recreationist or SCA experience.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

People's "invisible rulebooks" for these things used to be all over the place and often loosely connected to reality unless they had recreationist or SCA experience.

Yeah I remember in the late '90s it was a real revelation when one of my friends got a full-size wooden 2H sword which weighed about 60% as much as a real greatsword (it was a bit thicker and possibly weighted, I forget), and we saw how terrifyingly fast he could move it and how far and how quickly he could reach with it, and it dispelled a lot of illusions from TTRPGs and videogames just right then and there. This was not a slow-ass lumbering weapon like it felt like most people (including D&D) had been trying to tell us.

 

[Mannahnin]

Yeah I remember in the late '90s it was a real revelation when one of my friends got a full-size wooden 2H sword which weighed about 60% as much as a real greatsword (it was a bit thicker and possibly weighted, I forget),

Many wooden swords are around the same weight as actual swords, due to being substantially thicker, and designed to withstand large numbers of impacts in training.

and we saw how terrifyingly fast he could move it and how far and how quickly he could reach with it, and it dispelled a lot of illusions from TTRPGs and videogames just right then and there. This was not a slow-ass lumbering weapon like it felt like most people (including D&D) had been trying to tell us.

Yuuuup. The improved leverage of two hands makes a huge difference, and weapons in general are made to be wielded with speed. AD&D had weapon speed largely backwards, especially once it dropped the rule that the longer weapon automatically strikes first when closing to melee.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yuuuup. The improved leverage of two hands makes a huge difference, and weapons in general are made to be wielded with speed. AD&D had weapon speed largely backwards, especially once it dropped the rule that the longer weapon automatically strikes first when closing to melee.

Yeah the amount of extra power and precision the second hand on the hilt gave was fascinating and unexpected (I'd done a lot of fencing but that's very, very one-handed!).

 

[Mannahnin]

Yeah the amount of extra power and precision the second hand on the hilt gave was fascinating and unexpected (I'd done a lot of fencing but that's very, very one-handed!).

100%.

I fenced first too, before I did LARP, and the difference was dramatic. Being a skinny kid without a lot of arm strength, my first custom LARP weapon was a two-handed spear with a long head for better slashing. And the whole time I was playing weight was a huge factor in quality of weapons and preferred makers. Speed, speed, speed.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Blumineck ("Blooming Heck" - a phrase of surprise from "up North" - basically equivalent to "Bloody hell!") has a pretty great channel in general, I very much recommend it.

blumineck

AKA David the Arrow Bard. Archer, Pole Dancer, and Nerd, all rolled into one deeply strange human! Learn Archery with me 😁

www.youtube.com

He's not only incredibly fit and proficient with a wide variety of medieval weapons, but he's also a funny guy with a genuinely good attitude (and also a skilled pole dancer lol). He's one of the few people on YouTube who makes Shorts worth watching (but also has some longer videos, including some D&D-related ones).

Good to see. My viewing list has shrunk to just Matt Easton and Todd's workshop (both of whom have fewer videos than in years past). Nice to see some new talent in the content pool.

I remember when the 2nd ed AD&D Arms & Equipment Guide's relatively detailed pictures were the most conveniently available reference material for getting any real sense of the size, encumbrance, and wieldiness of this stuff.

I remember that book. It certainly was an upgrade if you otherwise only had the brief PHB descriptions. And that's even though it had some pretty serious AD&D-isms imbedded in it like non-brigandine studded leather, an interesting take on bronze plate mail*, 'longswords' being dedicated 1-handers, and so on
*"More than a few low-level adventurers with perhaps a little too much gold to spend and not enough experience or training in such matters often are cheated into buying bronze plate mail that has been painted silver."