3287 Knights' Jousting Tournament

[Timotheos]

The set does unfortunately seem to illustrate playmobil's drift away from support figures among the medieval sets when you consider that previous jousting sets also featured spectators or squires or referees.  I wonder if Playmobil in the 1970s-1990s saw an educational role in its medieval sets (including support figures that the average kid wouldn't otherwise have considered)?  Or, was somebody on staff (Hans Beck?) just more excited about the medieval line than today's producers (who pump out knights after knights)?

-Tim

[playmofire]

Maybe it's just that knights sell better than civilians.

[Martin Milner]

I think the split between boys' sets and girls' sets is partly behind the matter. The big fantasy castle has lots of non-combatant figures and almost no be-weaponed figures.

Leaving out all the "background" stuff also cuts the cost to the producer and consumer.

I'm still building my own castle layout, and of course I want some non-combatants in there, so I'm having fun collecting suitable klickies and items on eBay, and putting together a spares order. This would be less fun if it was handed to me on a plate!

[Timotheos]

This would be less fun if it was handed to me on a plate!

I agree that we have some personal responsibility to find / make what we want from the toy line.

But, back to the belly-aching: a lot of those great medieval hats from the glory days are no longer obtainable via DS.  But, maybe PM will sneak some back into production as time goes on.

Maybe there's a cultural aspect, too.  Maybe in the 1970s lots of areas in Germany still looked medieval, so what we call medieval buildings doubled as contemporary buildings to children then.  Maybe there was a lot of nostalgia then for the pre-WWII simpler life.  The director Werner Herzog modeled his movie Heart of Glass off a genre of nostalgic / idyllic German film then popular set in provincial villages.  So maybe "rustic" / "nostalgia" was the popular thing in the 70s, whereas now high-tech modern is what attracts adults/kids.

[Timotheos]

I decided to stop complaining and start modeling.  I have a book detailing medieval clothing by fashion in chronological order (fashions among the rich apparently changed as fast as they do now; so fast that upper class women fancied removable sleeves which could be changed with the trends without having to throw out the entire gown).

My big complaint with Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien were that they raised me to believe in a static, quaint medieval world...

[Donmobil]

I'm working on a simple jousting dice-based game that will give varied results quickly, so a tournament can be staged in a couple of hours. two differently coloured dice (I'm using one red and one white die) give 36 possible outcomes. A skill factor will be built in for knights to gain experience by unhorsing their opponent, and possibly a penalty of some sort for dangerous jousting (i.e. hitting the opponent in the head). I'll post details when I have playtested the system.

There is already a Playmobil Jousting game called The Tourney here is the link:
http://www.teuton.org/~stranger/PLAYMOBIL/misc/tourney/index.html

Donmobil

[Martin Milner]

There is already a Playmobil Jousting game called The Tourney here is the link:
http://www.teuton.org/~stranger/PLAYMOBIL/misc/tourney/index.html

Donmobil

Thanks Don! That's a lot more complex than my idea, which was just a method to get a tournament to a conclusion asap. A nice system, I'll give it a go.

The rules could also be used for Gladiatorial combat with a few tweaks.

[CountBogro]

There are a number of great rules to be found on the internet - from rather silly simplistic to ridiculous complex - and of coarse, you can allways tailor one to your own taste ;-)

Bogro

[Timotheos]

My favorite rule system: driving the two knights against each other and flipping a coin to decide who goes down is pretty reliable.

Seriously, though, to second what Bogro said about some rules being ridiculously complex, I'm a little jaded by these games, even when I enjoy playing them.

War games are all abstractions.  I played a lot of Roman Total War on the computer.  It's a great game.  There's a mod called Roman Total Realism that is supposed to bring the game more in line with history.  I played that for awhile, but it introduced its own abstractions on top of the original (and a few blue screens of death).  I then read Caesar's Gallic War and realized that the situations Caesar experienced are not remotely simulated by the game, no matter how good an effort the game made.  It's hopelessly not real, but fun to play.

I don't know what gave me the right to go on this soapbox.....   

[CountBogro]

I am rather doubtfull to the realsim of computer - wargames. They are produced too much for the masses. If you're looking for realism (on a certain level) you're more or less bound to the different boardgames that are around. And even then ...

I had bought "Guderians Blitzkrieg" but found the rules to be too complex for me, even though I was sure it was a good game. I swapped it with a friend who turns out to love the system ... (he's definitly more bright as I am).
On the other hand, I believe that most games are based around the principle that they should give you some great times,  so even snakes and ladders can provide that (when you've had enough to drink beforehand  )

And as to the climbing on the soapbox; well ... nobody else was using it at the moment 

Bogro