Sources Say: Compendium of Weapons, Armor, and Castles

Name: The Compendium of Weapons, Armor, and Castles

Produced By: Palladium Books

System: Palladium system

Genre(s): Historical, Fantasy

This book is the reason why I started this series. Because this is a very interesting source book, but I didn't know what series I had that could accommodate a review of it. So, here we are.

This book has what it contains what it says on the cover. It details weapons, armor, and castles. So, review done!

Just kidding!

The book starts with weapons. It breaks them up into hafted weapons and clubs, maces, knives, miscellaneous and exotic weapons, polearms, spears, swords, and then a bit about rapier hilts. Each of these sections gives a brief description of what they define as belonging to each group, some history, and then some information about each weapon. Or most of the weapons. Explaining how they were used and by whom. While these are short, they're really interesting. The next part is a “spotlight on the Middle East” which is mostly a list of that was used by the Egyptian empire, as well as a map of the empire circa 1450 B.C. After that, they talk about bows and crossbows.

This chapter starts with a definition of the stats they give each weapons. These stats contain not only damage, but how many hands it takes to use them, length of the weapon, mass, and then things like durability, throwing distance, parry bonus or penalty, and all that good stuff. It's not bad, and clearly designed for the Palladium system, but might be converted to fit other games (probably D&D). These entries do contain a hand drawn picture of each weapon, but they're very small and not exact.

Next up, we have the stuff on armor. It goes into the history of European and Asian armor, talking about how they're made, and how well they protect. Now, the best thing about this section is the art. Several different types of armor are drawn, with the period and region of origin, and they are done very well. They might not be one hundred percent accurate (especially since this book was published many years ago), but they do enough of a job to get the point across. Even if they aren't perfect, I really do like them, and I can point to them and say “armor like this.” The book as a whole is very much centered on Europe, but I do have to give them credit for including some pictures of armor and warriors from Asia, the Americas, and Africa. There's not a lot of them, but it's nice to get some sense of the differences between the various nations of the world and how they armed and protected their fighters. There doesn't seem to be much of an explanation about why some nations had different things, given the resources, cultures, and other factors, but since I do my own research, I can live with it.

The final section is dedicated to castles. And siege weapons. But, first, castles! Quite a few castles. Of course, they're almost exclusively from Europe (noticing a trend?) but they cover tons of history. There's a map of a Roman Legion encampment and they go all the way to the last castles to be built. You know, after the cannon was built in mass.

Each castle has a picture of the exterior, a map of the interior, and a brief history. Since they cover the whole of most castle building, you can see the various ideas and concepts that were included and expanded upon as things went on. It is interesting to see how much things would change in a short amount of time. There's a lexicon of terms used, which is useful for all sorts of things. Sadly, the maps of the castles don't have a grid on them with a scale. So, they're not perfect.

All in all, this is one of those “maybe” books. I picked it up because it was cheap and I'd been curious about it since seeing it years ago. I do like the art and the history, but I'm not sure how useful it's going to be for me. I don't have any of the fantasy RPGs for Palladium, so that does eliminate some of the usefulness. And I don't really play fantasy games in general anymore. However, I know I will get some use out of it. They didn't just tear down all of the castles, you know? I could use it as a guide for something in a futuristic setting, like having to steal something from some rich jerk that has moved into (and modified) a castle.

The weapons, while not perfect, are cool and some of the pictures are really nice. The hilts for rapiers is a full page. It shows how they changed over time.

If you're curious, check it out before you buy it. If you play a lot of fantasy, you can use this to add some new things in and throw people off. Even if you don't want to use the stats, you can use the different designs to show how different countries do things. Just a thought.