Mount and Blade

[Thaeris]

Jean,

Kind of the wrong place to ask this in, but do you have any details about the hard-copy version of the Guide to the Medieval Baltic? I've really enjoyed reading the old/current version, and having a print edition would be outstanding. How much would a set run cost - could something like Kickstarter help get such a project launched?

[Galloglaich]

hey hi, I forgot who your avatar is for, are you one of my HEMA friends? I have a lot of friends on here but I've lost track of who is who over the years.

Answer is yes, I have or had it on Lulu, it's really expensive to print in full color (which, in my opinion is really how it needs to be done) but not too bad in black and white. I printed 5 or 6 copies for myself back around 2009. i think the black and white copies of the Baltic book were around $30 or $40 whereas color was more like $100. Probably more now since it's almost 30% longer.

I also put the various Codex books on there (they look much better in black and white) and they were more reasonable, like $20 in black and white.

I think if you search on Lulu you can find them, i think they are set to public avalability I just never advertised them because I was too paranoid about getting in some kind of copyright trouble with the images.

Lulu isn't super reliable though, or wasn't back then, sometimes when I ordered books they sent me the wrong ones. Somewhere on my book shelf I have two books on Swedish carpentry (kind of interesting actually) and 1 on somebodies family geneology that I was sent instead of Codex books I was planning to bring to some HEMA event or something. Needless to say I was pissed but there is apparently no recourse. you can't contact anybody at Lulu and I went on their user group people laughed at me for having the nerve to complain!


Anyway, i do plan to put the new version of Codex Baltic on Lulu again, once it's been through a few more copy edits, and like I said, black and white version might be just barely affordable, whereas I suspect I'm the only one who will be buying color versions and that at a very slow rate, to give away to my close friends and keep for posterity. The old one looked really wonderful in color and I can't even imagine how nice the new one will look with all the new artwork in it.



I have to finish a video presentation for the IGX tournament in October, and once I'm done with that I'm going to be working on this exact thing, so I'll definitely put out notices here on the forum about it. Thanks for asking!

[Galloglaich]

Jean,

Kind of the wrong place to ask this in, but do you have any details about the hard-copy version of the Guide to the Medieval Baltic? I've really enjoyed reading the old/current version, and having a print edition would be outstanding. How much would a set run cost - could something like Kickstarter help get such a project launched?

Oh and FYI, the new revised version of Codex Baltic is out by the way, if you set DriveThruRpg to give you notifications you should already have gotten a couple (I've done 3 revisions so far since the big one) but if not go on there to your Library and download it. it's 30% longer and 5,000 times better than the old version, and if you already bought the old version the new one is free!

[Thaeris]

hey hi, I forgot who your avatar is for, are you one of my HEMA friends? I have a lot of friends on here but I've lost track of who is who over the years.

Sorry, we've never met - my name is Michael, by the way. There's quite a distance between Northwestern Indiana and Louisiana, to say the least!

Also, thank you for the update on the print version - with how expensive specialty books are, $100 is steep but nothing too disturbing. It's actually quite affordable in comparison to the textbooks I needed to buy when I was in school.

[Galloglaich]

Hi, I printed a full-color proof copy for myself, it cost about $70. It looks really nice - I'm really amazed at the quality of the images, the paintings and so on, as they appear on the page, Lulu really has their shit together.

The only problem really, other than a few typos, is it's quite big. I guess not too ridiculous for a coffee table book but it's a bit heavy to hold in your hands. It's around 400 pages.

I am thinking now of splitting it into two volumes. The part I've been revising the most is in the first 250 pages or so. As a separate volume it would drop the printing cost to around $45, which is more manageable, and the book itself physically will be easier to handle. I have to think it over though since it's kind of a big thing, if I split it I'll have to do that for the PDF too but I can still make both volumes available on the download.


I also, in a way I guess is typical in the nature of things, stumbled across 5 or 6 really interesting sources on history from this era: a bunch of details and art about 2 late medieval cavalry societies, a first-hand account of a Teutonic Knights raid or 'reysa' into Lithuania, and transcription / English translation of a bunch of records from the Hanseatic League including documentation that Paul Benecke, the Danzig city councilor and privateer, captured the mayor of London on a ship in 1461. Love that stuff. I really need to transcribe these excerpts and add them to the book, this kind of primary source stuff is so much more valuable than anything I can write, I feel like I owe it to the reader to put it in there.


I just finished a lecture for IGX, the video of it should be online pretty soon. I think it went well. Anyway this frees me up to work on the Baltic book again, hopefully one more push the next few days and I can put out another cool revision update and maybe also split it into two volumes. If I manage that I'll put it on Lulu and put the link on there in case you or anyone else wants to order it.

http://www.irongateexhibition.com/speak ... -chandler/

This was the intro to my lecture:

https://irongateexhibition2016.sched.org/event/8QLM/hunting-warlike-festivals-and-martial-sports-how-the-people-of-medieval-central-europe-prepared-for-war-and-why-its-so-different-from-training-in-the-late-classical-and-early-modern-eras?iframe=yes&w=&sidebar=yes&bg=no#?iframe=yes&w=i:100;&sidebar=yes&bg=no

Histories of the art of war often have a big gap right where the middle ages should be. When we try to understand how people trained for war and personal conflict in the armies of the 30 Years War or the wars of Justinian, we can recognize certain commonalities with today: Drill, marching, strict discipline, techniques of repetition and rote memorization, these are familiar in the boot camp of a modern army or an MMA school. But medieval society was very different, and therefore a lot harder for us to understand. All too often, this means that like the fight-books themselves, the very context of training in the medieval period has been simply ignored.

In the fight books of the Liechtenauer and related traditions, we notice certain stylistic differences between the medieval period and the Early Modern. Before we can really crack the persistent mysteries surrounding just where these manuals and the people who wrote them fit into the societies they came from, we need to understand what war and personal conflict meant in those societies, and how they approached training more generally. Though there is a great deal of continuity, there are also sharp differences between the social structures of the late medieval and Early Modern eras. From 1420 to 1620, more than just fashions had changed in Central Europe - it's about more than poofy pants!

This presentation will attempt to scratch the surface of what precisely made the medieval period so different in it's pedagogy, style, and inherent assumptions related to training. We will explore how the people of late medieval Central Europe prepared themselves collectively for war, and individually for personal conflict. We will show how this preparation differed in many ways from what we think of as military and martial arts training today, and from the Late Classical and Early Modern eras which bookended the medieval period. Finally, we will touch upon how the differences in style in medieval vs. Early Modern fencing manuals reflect deeper pedagogical and philosophical shifts between these time periods and the social fabric that defined them.

[Galloglaich]

I tried to message my friend Jack about the online DnD game, but I lost my old Skype account and I haven't heard back from him, I might have one of his old accounts that he doesn't check. I'm going to have my wife message him on facebook, I don't have a facebook account but she does and she's connected to a lot of my HEMA friends. I'll let you know when I hear back from him, sorry it's taking so long day job etc. leave me so little time for anything related to fun.

[Thaeris]

I know what you mean exactly - most of my week is so tied up in work that when I finally do get home I seldom find the energy to make time for things I'd like to do. That said, many thanks to you for making time for me!