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View Full Version : Medieval authenticity: all the little things



kamikasei
2008-12-28, 08:48 PM
So I'm curious, and it's been bugging me for a few characters now. You're making an adventurer for a standard pseudo-medievalish setting, high or low magic, doesn't matter. The point is, that character is going to be operating in an environment (different technology and infrastructure, as well as social norms) and lifestyle (out crawling through dungeons half the time, no proper settled abode or support systems) far removed both from our own time and the norms of their society. So how do their day-to-day, mundane lives work?

What substitutes for toothbrushes and toilet paper? How clean could an adventurer practically keep themselves? What's the medieval equivalent of a good sports bra? How much work is it to get in and out of various armors, and how practical is it to keep them on while you sleep? What do you need to maintain your gear, sharpen your sword, patch up your clothes after all those heroic near-misses, scratches and scrapes, etc.? To what extent are you dependent on your surroundings to provide the needful (firewood, straight branches for pitching tents, stones for building fireplaces) as versus what you can carry around yourself? What do you eat and where do you get it?

I'm looking both for answers (from knowledgeable forumites) and the useful discussion that builds up specific applications of these ideas, and pointers to good references on the subjects. Discussions of both how these things did work and how they would/could work in a cleaned-up or benefiting-from-hindsight, but still entirely consistent, world, are welcome. Similarly, mixing various real-world cultures (medieval western Europe and medieval China, for example) works, but have an eye on how introducing some innovation from one society would have knock-on effects on the other.

I hope this will be a topic of general interest, but even just a good answer to "right, so just how bad does my 18-charisma ladies' man beguiler smell right now?" would be welcome.

Flickerdart
2008-12-28, 08:58 PM
Prestidigitation means your 18 Charisma ladies' man Beguiler smells as good as you want him to.

Lert, A.
2008-12-28, 09:15 PM
What substitutes for toothbrushes and toilet paper?

What are these strange words you speak? Art thou a witch?


What's the medieval equivalent of a good sports bra?

Chainmail bikini? :smalltongue:

Otogi
2008-12-28, 09:18 PM
Toothbrushes may be little more than pieces of weed or twine around a stick, or nothing at all. Toilet paper is the hand that you don't eat with (usually your left, but God help you if it was your right).

Asbestos
2008-12-28, 09:19 PM
Left out "How big and ornate is your codpiece?"

Well... for toilet paper... it might matter what your people have access to. If maize exists in your setting (unlike medieval Europe) then they could be using the used ears... but um, leaves and stuff if not? I think somewhere people actually used seashells, but not like in Demolition Man.

arguskos
2008-12-28, 09:25 PM
So how do their day-to-day, mundane lives work?

What substitutes for toothbrushes and toilet paper? How clean could an adventurer practically keep themselves? What's the medieval equivalent of a good sports bra? How much work is it to get in and out of various armors, and how practical is it to keep them on while you sleep? What do you need to maintain your gear, sharpen your sword, patch up your clothes after all those heroic near-misses, scratches and scrapes, etc.? To what extent are you dependent on your surroundings to provide the needful (firewood, straight branches for pitching tents, stones for building fireplaces) as versus what you can carry around yourself? What do you eat and where do you get it?
Toothbrushes/Toilet Paper=None/Leaves? I have no honest clue.

Presdigitation makes cleanliness a non-issue.

Sports bra? I am certain that female adventurers have solved this issue with a similar cloth construction. I am unsure of details, but I bet it works fine.

Armor questions: Probably a ton of effort for anything above a chain shirt (though even leathers and padded would be a pain I bet). I'd also think that no adventurer wants to sleep in their armor, unless they are very paranoid/in desperate need (read: in a dungeon), since that can not be comfy.

Gear maintenance: whatever you and I would use. They have whetstones, polishing gear, needles and thread, same as us. I bet none of that is different.

Surroundings: I'd think that not much would be left to chance by most adventurers (tents, bedrolls, rations, torches, all things most wise adventurers bring with, just to be sure).

Food: If it moves, and I can hit it, I can eat it. That's the adventurer motto. :smallwink:

I think that most adventurers would be much like you and I in their habits in non-adventure moments, just enhanced by magic where applicable.

TheCountAlucard
2008-12-28, 09:29 PM
Food: If it moves, and I can hit it, I can eat it. That's the adventurer motto.

Up until the first time you eat a kobold. We NetHack players know better. :smalltongue:

Raum
2008-12-28, 09:30 PM
So I'm curious, and it's been bugging me for a few characters now. You're making an adventurer for a standard pseudo-medievalish setting, high or low magic, doesn't matter. The point is, that character is going to be operating in an environment (different technology and infrastructure, as well as social norms) and lifestyle (out crawling through dungeons half the time, no proper settled abode or support systems) far removed both from our own time and the norms of their society. So how do their day-to-day, mundane lives work?Few settings have anything close to a medieval society. Ars Magica is the only one I've read which I'd consider close. Also, few gamers want to role play the mundane details or darker aspects of historical societies. If you do, I recommend the Ars Magica setting books and A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester. The second isn't a game book - it's an easily readable history.


What substitutes for toothbrushes and toilet paper? How clean could an adventurer practically keep themselves? What's the medieval equivalent of a good sports bra? Bad teeth (at some point baking soda was used, not sure if that went back to medieval times) and rampant disease. Not very. A corset - just drop the 'sports'.


How much work is it to get in and out of various armors, and how practical is it to keep them on while you sleep? What do you need to maintain your gear, sharpen your sword, patch up your clothes after all those heroic near-misses, scratches and scrapes, etc.? There are reasons those wealthy enough to afford extensive armor had squires. You've listed a few. :)


To what extent are you dependent on your surroundings to provide the needful (firewood, straight branches for pitching tents, stones for building fireplaces) as versus what you can carry around yourself? What do you eat and where do you get it?Depends on time frame, how fast you're moving (carts are slow), and weather or not you can rely on waterways (roads are rare).

Prometheus
2008-12-28, 09:32 PM
1)What substitutes for toothbrushes?
2)and toilet paper?
3)How clean could an adventurer practically keep themselves?
4)What's the medieval equivalent of a good sports bra?
5)How much work is it to get in and out of various armors, and how practical is it to keep them on while you sleep?
6)What do you need to maintain your gear, sharpen your sword, patch up your clothes after all those heroic near-misses, scratches and scrapes, etc.?
7)To what extent are you dependent on your surroundings to provide the needful (firewood, straight branches for pitching tents, stones for building fireplaces) as versus what you can carry around yourself?
8)What do you eat and where do you get it?

1)There are definitely aren't any, except maybe magic and toothpicks.
2)Dunno.
3)Well, if this is medieval europe, from what I understand they really didn't bath (except the feet, if they walked barefoot), so probably not very.
4)A corset or similar stringed garment, a ridiculous number of clothing layers, and/or women staying in the kitchen
5)There is another thread for the RL answer, but the D&D answer is here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/armor.htm#sleepinginArmor) and here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/armor.htm#tableDonningArmor).
6)Whetstone, thread&needles, a full blacksmith's workshop. I considered a variant in which misses due to armor would automatically attack the armor and that the hardness and hp would be much higher, but it just penalizes the melee-folk. Generally it is assumed to be one of those things that never gets bad enough before going to a nearby friendly town where it is done for free. Of course, that approximation is a lousy one.
7)How big is your wagon? If you are traveling through the wilderness proper, than you probably don't have one. Since that is the case, you are very dependent on the wilderness. Unless, of course, you have a bag of holding.

Magnvo
2008-12-28, 09:33 PM
In regards to undergarments, underwear wasn't really worn in Medieval times. Bras were known to exist in Roman times but seemed to have fallen out of use later and didn't come back until the 1800s or 1900s and boxers and briefs weren't around until the 1920s/1930s, respectively. I haven't checked my facts on these in awhile so my ballparks might be off, though, so check up on them before you take my word for it.

Cleaning your teeth either wasn't done or was achieved through a twig stripped of the bark or using your fingers. Toilet paper was either leaves or your hand. Water never touched anyone in Medieval times unless they were fishermen or got caught in a storm. Sharpening bladed weapons required a whet stone or a sharpening wheel or what have you. Patching up clothes just required spare cloth, fixing armor required anything from a forge or spare rings/spare leather, largely depending on what your armor was made of.

Dependency on the environment around you differed depending on what you carried with you, obviously. Carrying firewood with you isn't very practical unless you're going to be in an area without flammable material and you don't have any pack animals, and food was gathered depending on one's tastes and availability of food around them.

Note that my area of expertise in this matter is that of medieval Europe and while my answers are vague and mostly common sense, more specialized questions will receive more specialized answers.

Bonecrusher Doc
2008-12-28, 09:40 PM
Just doing a quick Google search there seems to be a variety in standards of hygiene and other aspects of daily life among different cultures (Roman Empire, Chinese, Persian, different parts of Europe) and in different centuries (pre-Crusades, post-Crusades, Renaissance). I would say pick and choose whatever you like for your campaign world. Here are a few suggestions with a couple of links at the bottom:

Rich people had the luxury of better hygiene than poor people.

Soap existed and was used by just about everybody (and it's in the PHB!). An aversion to bathing was not as common during much of the Middle Ages as is commonly believed. Flowers and herbs could be used for fragrance.

Teeth were cleaned with a cloth or a willow twig. Some people used various pastes/powders to clean their teeth but truthfully, without the refined carbs and sugars of the modern diet, it wasn't as important.

Plant leaves were commonly used for wiping after defecation.

In an urban area, probably all the water is contaminated by fecal material. Alcoholic beverages, milk, juices, and boiled broths are safe to drink, but you'd better go up into the hills if you want to find clean water to fill your waterskin.

Food is going to depend on where your campaign is located, but remember medieval Europe didn't have the potato, and spices were expensive. You could do a Google search for medieval recipes to see how many ways there are to cook a turnip. In the PHB (v3.5 page 131) it describes inns and meals. I also recommend looking in the index of the DMG for the section on "Upkeep."

Sharpening weapons - there's a whetstone in the PHB.

Frequently oils would be made from tallow (animal fat), so that's going to be your main ingredient in candles, lamp oil, soap, oil for maintaining metal equipment, and leather conditioner.

In heavily forested areas, wood would be used for construction material and for fuel. In other areas, you might see peat or dung used for fuel, and you might see more use of stone in construction (such as all the stone walls you see in Ireland).

Unless you're rich (as most adventurers are, compared to the common people), you won't have very many clothes - too much effort to make them, and you're not going to wash them every day either. Clothes will be patched again and again until they just won't hold together any longer, then that worn-out garment will be used for patching material.

According to PHB 3.5, "A character who sleeps in medium or heavy armor is automatically fatigued the next day." (page 122). Then see Table 7.7 of page 123 for information on Donning Armor.

I'd better wrap it up before I get ninja'd too much.

http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/middle-ages-hygiene.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2960146.stm

ericgrau
2008-12-28, 09:43 PM
1. toothbrushes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_brush
There are crude methods in India and Muslim areas, some with simple cleaning agents too. Europe, however didn't get such things until later. Feathers, quills, bones and sticks were the more common way of doing it. Plus modern oral hygiene isn't as much of a problem until you introduce modern food. You really could hardly do anything and still have decent teeth. People could also whiten teeth & sterilize the mouth by using urine as mouth wash. And commonly did, especially if aristocratic. Though over several years/decades this'll erode the teeth (so will bleach whitening, btw). Then they'd get wooden ones made.

2. toilet paper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper
People washed their rears after, and thought it seemed a bit unsanitary when they heard about the Chinese using paper. A river or other water plus your bare hand was common, or cloth instead of hand if you're rich. If you're away from a river, wilderness guides recommend pine cones, sticks, etc. Indoors people had chamber pots.

3. sports bra: unsupported or cloth binder

4. getting in and out of armor, sleeping in it: covered in PHB in armor section

5. gear maintenance: whetstones to sharpen (in PHB), oil applied with a rag to prevent rust (any oil like lantern oil will work). EDIT: FWIW animal tallow is solid, oil is not, plus I don't think tallow keeps. Lantern oil could be olive oil or whale oil or w/e is available. More people knew how to sew and patch their own clothes or their family's (often with cloth patches), or you could go to a tailor.

6. surroundings: Yes, you'd get wood for fires, but I think a tent includes posts and bedrolls are awfully heavy and probably warm too. I'd think the must important thing to find outdoors is water, since you need 4-8lbs. or more per day. EDIT: For towns there are only so many rivers; usually they used wells, and the same goes today. For food the PHB has trail rations (dry food bought in towns) and the survival skill rules has rules for foraging. Trail rations might include jerky, hard bread, dry fruit and nuts. You could conceivably prep your own to last where you can't forage.

IMO 1-3 can be ignored as being automatic and not worth paying attention to, except maybe the presence of chamber pots (but not the improvised TP). As for 4-6 OTOH, I think they're left out way too much, they're interesting, they are in the rules and you really should use them.

For your beguilar you'll need some things from the aristocracy to avoid a common appearance. Urine for teeth, a source of running water or cloth or wool for TP, a brassier for females, soap & regular washings, and a good tailor to mend your clothes properly (not w/ crude patches) and to make new ones for you according to your specific measurements.

EDIT: Wow, ninja'd times nine.

Bonecrusher Doc
2008-12-28, 09:51 PM
Don't ask me why this was in my church bulletin today. Not sure how accurate it is.

(regarding dental hygiene)

The ancient Romans used toothpicks and rinsed their mouth with urine instead of brushing three times a day. Many Asian peoples chew betel nuts.

And here's an example of what the hard-working peasants might be doing as your adventuring party passes through the fields:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_manufacturing

As far as sports bras go, I have a feeling that most female adventurers as depicted in WOTC illustrations would have needed magical undergarments to provide the necessary support for combat activities.

kamikasei
2008-12-29, 06:21 AM
Thanks for all the responses so far. To clarify, an answer like "prestidigitation" doesn't work as I'm looking for mundane options available to non-magical characters and/or the majority of people in the setting.

It seems like a lot can be done by either a) borrowing from other cultures (for things like hygiene) and/or b) leaving certain technological and infrastructural niceties in place that in the real world we had around the time of the Romans, but lost for centuries. I believe it points out in some source like Cityscape that we automatically, though anachronistically, assume that cities in the game world have sewers and sanitation and by extension potable water on tap.

Essentially I'm looking to get a picture of how these things really did work in "medieval Europe" (to the extent that that's a single entity) and then work forward from that, and backwards from the "Hollywood history" most campaigns use, to something that gives the players relatively unsqualid answers to these questions without breaking verisimilitude. Therefore if you can see an issue, please note it: for example, "Europeans didn't bathe", "this was cultural and you could graft on the approach to hygiene used in ancient Rome / parts of Asia without needing to introduce new technology", "this would have knock-on effects x, y and z on the public health". The second and third parts are as useful as the first.

So far it seems that there are, in fact, various fairly straightforward ways to patch up things like personal hygiene and public health, if we just assume the Generic Fallen Ancient Advanced Empire had good habits that weren't entirely lost, and cities kept their plumbing in repair. Issues around gear and maintenance have rules, but they don't seem to be very good (hence my question about armor, knowing full well that there are rules for it but not trusting them); still, it seems it should be possible to handwave them away in the course of a quest and just ensure that characters take downtime for repair and resupply when they hit civilization.


As far as sports bras go, I have a feeling that most female adventurers as depicted in WOTC illustrations would have needed magical undergarments to provide the necessary support for combat activities.

This is basically my concern here, yes. I'm not so much interested in actual medieval underwear but in how well an adventuring female (practically dressed, not appearing in a WotC illustration of the sort you mention) could approximate modern standards of undergirding for active ladies.

BobVosh
2008-12-29, 07:04 AM
1)What substitutes for toothbrushes?
2)and toilet paper?
3)How clean could an adventurer practically keep themselves?
4)What's the medieval equivalent of a good sports bra?
5)How much work is it to get in and out of various armors, and how practical is it to keep them on while you sleep?
6)What do you need to maintain your gear, sharpen your sword, patch up your clothes after all those heroic near-misses, scratches and scrapes, etc.?
7)To what extent are you dependent on your surroundings to provide the needful (firewood, straight branches for pitching tents, stones for building fireplaces) as versus what you can carry around yourself?
8)What do you eat and where do you get it?

Pfft.
1. Magic (prestidigitation, cures if really needed)
2. Magic (prestidigitation, cleans anything)
3. Magically Delicious (prestidigitation)
4. Bigby's cupping hands? Er, cloth wrappings if it really comes up. (your DM addresses this?)
5. Addressed in PHB, but just buy the augement crystal that lets you sleep in it. (magic)
6. Magic. Its a cantrip. Mend.
7. Magic. Depends on the level, but mainly rope trick.
8. Magic. Clerics are full of tasties. Also rations.

Seffbasilisk
2008-12-29, 07:17 AM
For a good mundane item default, just use what you'd use if you were camping and forgot/lost/were robbed of your equipment.

A toothbrush can be made of a carved handle of willow, set to three to four ridges. Place a mint-leaf over the ridges, brush teeth. Use a toothpick to make sure you've got everything.

Instead of shampoo, just brush your hair scores of times.

I believe Dock leaves are best for toliet paper, but in a pinch, I've even used skunk cabbage. Just avoid things like poison ivy, and things you know are allergens. Try for big leaves.

Women warriors went with corsets, or bound thier breasts, or even had specially crafted breastplates and underpadding.

Ideally for long treks, you carry enough food for three days, water for the entire journey (or a week), and firewood for at least one night. Firewood is easiest to gather/cut, and many things in nature are edible. Clean water is the hardest thing to come across.

Your characters are going to be pretty grimy without prestigitation, even if they wash with soap weekly, they'll still have dried sweat, blood, mud, and urine.

kamikasei
2008-12-29, 07:31 AM
Seffbasilisk, that was very helpful, thanks.

I'm curious how these things worked in other societies now, and what might be plundered either for inclusion in the standard setting or for weird customs of non-humans?

bosssmiley
2008-12-29, 07:36 AM
I remember once reading an extensive series call "Everyday Life in * Times" when I was at school. The series covered everything from ancient Egypt and Babylonia through to the Victorian era and served to explain to a 20th century kid how people lived their lives without all the fruits of the material sciences which we enjoy. It was a real eye-opener.

Tony Robinson's "Worst Jobs in History" is another fantastic and really approachable introduction to the questions posed by life in a pre-industrial economy.


1)What substitutes for toothbrushes?
2)and toilet paper?
3)How clean could an adventurer practically keep themselves?
4)What's the medieval equivalent of a good sports bra?
5)How much work is it to get in and out of various armors, and how practical is it to keep them on while you sleep?
6)What do you need to maintain your gear, sharpen your sword, patch up your clothes after all those heroic near-misses, scratches and scrapes, etc.?
7)To what extent are you dependent on your surroundings to provide the needful (firewood, straight branches for pitching tents, stones for building fireplaces) as versus what you can carry around yourself?
8)What do you eat and where do you get it?

1) Green twigs (see the movie "Shakespeare in Love"). Funnily enough people with a low sugar diet (like the typical medieval one) usually had rather good dental hygiene. You got wear-and-tear on teeth, but few instances of dental caries.

2) Anything from sponges on a stick (the Romans), through discarded shells, soft leaves, thorough washing, or a slave's hand (*ick!*).

3) Not very. There are stories of medieval knights using their armour as a mobile toilet during the heat and panic of battle. Squire: rotten job. :smalleek:

4) I think the Greeks and Romans had brassieres and quasi-bikinis. Some cultures just bind down the bosom to keep it out of the way, while others used tailoring tricks (corsetry, lacing, empire line cuts, etc.) to keep the girls corralled. The mythic Amazon response to one's boobs being in the way is probably a little extreme for most tastes. :smallfrown:

5) What sort of armour? As a general rule help is always nice to have when putting on stones of armour (hence squires), but IIRC there are stories of vikings shrugging off mail shirts in a few seconds when they fell overboard.

6) Squires again. The "Pendragon" RPG has a whole section on this. It turns out that classic Arthurian armoured knights in the field are just the head of an extensive Formula 1-style support team of squires, grooms, smiths, riggers, muleskinners, etc. Adventurers will probably have a shorter support 'tail' then this, but suddenly those old school dungeon crawls of 20+ people make a lot of sense...

7) Totally. Watch Ray Mears sometime. He's a British survival expert who lectures the SAS on survival techniques. His starting point is that if you have good knowledge of bushcraft then you can survive anywhere. It all depends on your ability to leverage easily accessible materials to get access to other things you require. Fascinating stuff. Teaches you a new respect for the sheer ingenuity of people in pre-industrial cultures.

8) People will try to eat anything. Look at the variety of food people eat in the real world. Ideally you'd like to secure your own food supply (farming or herding), but if you've got the knowledge you can live on shellfish found in tidal pools, or on berries and fruit plucked off the branch, or on animals you or your dogs bring down.

(great topic kamikasei, I could rabbit on about this stuff all day... :smallamused:)