Horse Thread

I struggle to understand myself. I like horses too, but these days they're largely seen as a feminine interest. If you look at any horse-related products on the market, they're all exclusively marketed towards women. "Unisex" clothing is all sized with the average woman in mind.

I won't pretend I'm an expert. I just grew up with them. My mother's been nuts for horses since she was 4. My sister's been nuts for them since before then.

>"Just harb your flargle with a half-speng and don't forget to tup."
Sure, if you're cross-rigging an Arabian trungal, but if you do that, your cantle blevins are prone to tangle your fender billet unless you diligently wax your concho all the way to the gooch.

This.
Horses a shit. Ostriches are by far the superior steed.

Okay, I've just found my new fashion style.

Kazakh-style saddle. Currently, the oldest known evidence for the domestication of horses is found in modern-day Kazakhstan.

The common ancestor(s) of the modern horse originated in North America, and crossed over to Europe around the same time that humans crossed the opposite way. They would finally die out in NA around the same time as the mammoth did.

Western riding """fashion""" has always been gaudy. Especially when it comes to women's fashion.

>I just grew up with them.
Seems to be the way of things, possibly because horses are so expensive to keep. Might explain the intensity with which some people regard them. It's like owning a yacht, you're either pouring your money into the firepit that is your passion project or you probably don't own one.

Gotta say, women's horse riding fashion does get me going.

>Gotta say, women's horse riding fashion does get me going.
That too.

i can't tell what's true and what's fucking with me here

Probably the most influential style of saddle (before the British basically codified what all saddles should look like in the mid 19th century, anyway) is the Hungarian type. Everyone copied Hungarian hussars as a military unit, and with that they also copied their saddle and tack.

>possibly because horses are so expensive to keep

Hoooo boy. I think last month's feed bill tallied up to like $600.

Some cushion for her cushion, I see.

i think it has more to do with the romantic ideal of a dude rich enough to afford horses sweeping you off your feet and taking you away.

now that I think about it, horses have alqays been kind of a bourgieous thing, haven't they?

Question: how much on average can be covered on horseback in a day? 30 miles? More?

What kind of speed do horses move at when travelling long distance?

Cossacks did things quite a bit different than the rest of the world, at least in terms of riding technique.

They took what's basically a hungarian/turkish saddle hybrid and strapped a big cushion on top.

On the one hand, it's comfier. Less sore butt. On the other, you've basically got no way to control the horse with your legs because you sit so high.

Depends on the horse. I'm not too terribly familiar with ancient breeds of horses and what they were actually capable of.

English riding attire is the superior fashion

I'll give you the pants, sure, but that jacket looks like it's got a name only pronounceable if your overbite can reach across the Channel.

That's pretty great, sure, but have you seen how good napoleonic era cavalry fashion can look on a woman?

It's called a Shadbelly, it is based on Regency and early Victorian fashion.
Then there is the American saddleseat suit

Even accounting for the long skirts, they look pretty great.

... now I'm wondering if there's any women in the Household Cavalry or any other regiment who have a ceremonial uniform like this, like the RHA or something, seeing as they'd get to have trousers now

You'd be riding side saddle with long skirts like that. From what I've heard it actually gives you a better seat than riding astride. Has to do with being more centered on the horse and you have you leg wrapped around the pommel of the saddle.
There are women in the RHA nowadays and they wear the same uniform as the men.

pic related

So I've found. Hell, they had a female CO at one point.

The household cavalry, from a quick google, seems to be less so, but that's understandable given the units' non-ceremonial requirements.
Their band does have a few though, and of course they ride as well.

Somewhat incomplete, but it is what I could gather right now.

>Sources of cavarly warfare
pastebin.com/MVqh7Yi9

>pastebin.com/MVqh7Yi9
Cool! Thanks!

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>set a game in the wild west
>want to let players have some degree of customization about their horses, since they'll be riding them everywhere
>maybe varying speeds, HP values, other ability scores or feats?
>but don't know anything about horses

okay :(

Just replace the horses with camels but keep everything else the same. Either that or huge riding ostriches.

One player has a donkey he uses instead, another has a team of mules to pull his doctorin' cart.

I was originally going to make a whole set of rules for customizing animals by giving them special animal classes, but it went nowhere.

You've come to the right place.

Veeky Forums has astounding tales about horses.

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But then again, Veeky Forums has astounding tales about anything. I don't even know what the other boards are for.

I have always liked this article for horses (though I do use gurps)
sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=4776

This pic reminds me. Joe Average Horsey isn't going to be fine with you firing off a gun or riding towards a guy with a sword or, really, much of anything. Joe Average Horsey will panic and bolt. What you want to do is get Joe Average Horsey used to being around that kind of thing, turn him into G.I. Joe Horsey. Then he'll ride into hell with you.

kissmanga.com/Manga/Choudouryoku-Mouko-Daishuurai

Here, have 1d100 horses:

goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/02/d100-horses-with-chris-mcdowell.html

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I wonder if there's some game out there with detailed stats for different breeds of horses. Even if they got some shit wrong, it's unlikely anybody would ever know.

I'm facing the same kind of hurdle with a dinosaur game I want to run. I think I might just invent unique dinosaurs that inspired by known species but which can deviate from the freely. Plus, it's going to be a "Lost World" sort of thing, so shit could reasonably be different, though I do want them to feel like dinosaurs and not monsters with some dinosaur traits.

You could look to Jurassic Park for inspiration and rely on the fact that nobody, not even dinosaur fans, really know what dinosaurs were like, and those that do will just sound crazy as they try to explain to the other players that, for example, dilophosaurus neither spat venom nor had frills.

My plan was to have a few breeds of horse, each with its own racial ability modifiers, then have players roll stats for them and give them classes from a list that had, for example, Work Animal, Race Animal, War Animal, etc. I got about three quarters of the way through the animal classes before realizing I was in way over my head and just basically gave up.

It's for a totally seperate system, but for mount customisation you might want to look at the Mount Burner supplement for Burning Wheel.

Basic information on medieval horses and the ability to generate all the quirky mounts you desire.

I'll have to look into this.

>Native American Indians made horseshoes out of rawhide. The "shoe" was roughly shaped and then soaked in water. It was then slipped over the hoof while wet and, as it dried, it shrunk slightly, creating a snug fit. These were just as effective as iron horseshoes but needed to be replaced more frequently.

This is very useful information for me.

I really think it's perfect for The stocks are the breeds/roles (destrier, palfrey and so on) while the lifepaths act as the class. Sprinkle with traits ranging from "only eats apples" to "blind, murderous frenzy" and you are good to go. Anything from surly packhorses to Shadowfax is doable.

These resources are excellent.

On a related note, medieval horses sometimes only had shoes on the front feet. Medieval horseshoes also had little hooks at the end of each arm for improved grip.

Horse tack was lavishly decorated with pendants or crucifixes, often gilded copper. A huge swathe of the jewellry found by metal detector was meant for horses and not people.

horse brasses were still a going concern in my grandfather's day, lot of english pubs use them for decoration.
also re the women in cav uniforms, back when the queen was young enough to attend the trooping of the colour etc on horseback she wore standard but blinged uniform.

My grandmother fucking loves (the aforementioned two words in that order only) horses, even now that she's lost so much of her memory and prior personality to dementia.

She grew up riding horses on the farm, herding other animals, moving about on the property during harvest time, riding to school and back again, etc.

So there's another whole demographic of people that have a reason to love them, or grew up with them, aside from the rich or the bourgy.

It's both sad and convenient that she can never remember that she's already watched Black Beauty dozens of times, it's a new experience for her every time, so we always have something for her to watch when she's visiting and there isn't any hockey on the tv for her.

>It's both sad and convenient that she can never remember that she's already watched Black Beauty dozens of times, it's a new experience for her every time, so we always have something for her to watch when she's visiting and there isn't any hockey on the tv for her.
I wonder what my equivalent of that would be. Star Wars? A good classic Trek or Doctor Who episode?

Horses are sluts user. Mares will display mating behavior towards male handlers.

The horse vagina can retract to the size of a dime, the first few inches are the sensitive part, and stallions are two pump chumps

I find ostriches even more untrustworthy.

This photo was actually when she was standing in for the King, rather than attending as Queen.

She actually only stopped attending the Trooping of the Colour on horseback when her favourite horse retired (after some 18 years), and she still rides a fair bit today

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>Horse tack was lavishly decorated with pendants or crucifixes
Now I can't get it out of my head that medieval horses looked like Bretonnian Knights.

HORSE STATS
>Strength
a measurement of your horse's pull / drag / carry weight and a modifier to be added to their kick damage. Strength is also added to their jump checks, with a penalty for weight
>Speed
under normal circumstances, this is how fast the horse runs. Can also be used for turning around and as a modifier to damage trampling people)
>Stamina
Horses can use Stamina to gain extra speed in a gallop, it's a finite resource and takes a "rest" or period of reduced activity to recover. Stamina also measures how long a horse can go on before taking damage from work related stress.
>Stubbornness
The horse's defensive stat. A stubborn horse won't die even when injured, they also can use stubbornness to resist temptations and opposing actions.

Mine will be old episodes of MST3K. I sodding guarantee that.

Well I'm a lot more favourable to horse-riders now, damn

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MTG's Knight of Obligation. That's just a really rich dude showing off his richness.
Yeah yeah, I know. But some people might want the actual source.

Medieval horses were not really categorized by breed as we know it but more for the role they were bred for. Rounceys were all-around horses, coursers were fast, palfreys had a smooth gait that made it really comfy to ride on them, draft horses were big fuckers, and destriers were bigger fuckers. But the more specialized breeds, especially destriers, were rare and expensive as shit, and horses tend to die in battle even more than people do, and so most knights rode rounceys even into battle because you could lose one without ruining your family.

>Oblivion.jpg

is an horse an PC

Depends on the system.

But horseshoes aren't as important anyway if your horse isn't running on stone or paved roads. Their purpose is to stop the hoof from wearing down too fast.

Reminder that one horse per PC is dumb, not just because you might need a replacement, and not just because you want at least one pack horse for all the dumb shit PCs carry around, but because it's much faster (and healthier for the horses) to keep spare horses with you and regularly swap them out. The fastest way to deliver a message before trains wasn't a guy on a horse; it was a guy on TWO horses.

That's some low-tier riding outfit right there

>horse thread
>nobody posts failhorse

>medieval horses sometimes only had shoes on the front feet

Also true of modern horses, unless they're expected to be walking on paved ground 24/7.

Keeping shoes on a horse 24/7 for years at a time will just end up making their hooves softer.

How tough should horses be compared to people? What about adventurers and heroes?

>Just pike my shit up!

Not very. They're really quite fragile animals in many ways despite their size and strength. Not just pikes but environmental conditions and little errors in the way they're kept will do them in.

>draft horses were big fuckers, and destriers were bigger fuckers
It's the other way round, the draught horses are bigger - historians aren't quite sure if some of the larger knights might have used draught-sized horses, but it seems unlikely, or at least something that would be very rare (though there's thought that there may be some warhorses in draught bloodlines)

As you say though, a lot of the time knights wouldn't want to risk their big expensive warhorse (which could be 60 times the price of a courser) so just rode coursers or palfreys (the 3 together being called generically "chargers") unless shit was really serious or they were jousting

How do your players tend to treat their mounts?

bump

They still have a lot of mass though. Should they have different resistances vs. different kinds of damage? Like, I'd really hate to try to brawl a big horse, and not just for fear of getting my face hoofed in. With a sword, however, they seem like they'd be a lot more vulnerable.

>The fastest way to deliver a message before trains wasn't a guy on a horse; it was a guy on TWO horses.
To be fair, the fastest way to deliver a message before trains was a game of pass-the-baton, with riders stationed at regular intervals along the route with fresh horses.

So do regular combat rules tend to work okay for horse charges (with just maybe "double damage" or something like that thrown in), or would there ideally be some sort of unique mechanic to cover it?

>You could look to Jurassic Park for inspiration and rely on the fact that nobody, not even dinosaur fans, really know what dinosaurs were like, and those that do will just sound crazy as they try to explain to the other players that, for example, dilophosaurus neither spat venom nor had frills.
Yeah, but it would bother me to be doing something wrong. I'd rather put some space between the beasties in my game and the ones that actually existed. Also, I haven't seen the original Jurassic Park in a really long time, so that leaves Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic World to represent the franchise, and I'd just as soon stay far away from that crap.

>How do your players tend to treat their mounts?
Like any other piece of ultimately disposable, if rather expensive, equipment.

I'm disappointed it's humorous. Would be cool to have a more serious list of a bunch of horses (without, you know, the effort of having to make one, myself).

What's the average distance that a packhorse could travel per day?

I was just horsin' around.

Bitey the Unicorn is no joke.

>nobody posts failhorse
I was not aware of failhorse. Is there some history or meme that goes along with it, or is it just a failed attempt to make a cool horse figurine?

Have you ever met a woman? Women like HORSES, not rich dudes who would theoretically give them a horse. Almost every prominent girl/horse story that I can think of barely even involves any male characters, its all about the girl's relationship with the horse. Girl and Horse stories are analogous to Boy and Dog stories.

After pushing a horse really hard all day you have to wipe the sweat off of them before night or they could get extremely cold. A cold winter night could easily kill a sweat covered horse.

I need to know EVERYTHING about chariots. Help me Veeky Forums.

Stirrups are shortened to keep them from flopping about, injuring the horse. After that, you loosen the belly strap or cincha (called a lot of different names) to take pressure off the lungs.

Tighten or cinch the belt then pull the stirrup down.

As for the greatest mounted warriors in history, I'll go with the Mongols due to having good records of that time. Some other candidates would be steppes nomad nations like Scythians and Avars, but I have a fondness for the Georgians. The Mongols were a regular army with signals and such, but equipment-wise, all were basically the same as all the others.

Some had 2 wheels, others had 4. Some were used as shock units, while others were more mobile missile platforms that eschewed contact with the enemy. They needed smooth, level ground to operate well, and sometimes battlefields were prepared for them before a fight. They declined as mounted cavalry ascended, something aided by the breeding of stronger horses more capable of supporting riders on their back (apparently earlier riders often rode further back, over the haunches, which couldn't have been a comfortable ride). Beyond that, I know sadly little. Hopefully somebody who knows their shit will speak up.

Do you... do you have to wipe the penis?

No, but occasionally you need to dig the smegma bean out of the urethra.

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