| Horses |
[Sep. 3rd, 2008|02:25 pm] |
Horses
When it comes to horses, I'm as much a fan as I am an expert, which is to say not very much at all. In my experience, they're big, very expensive, and they smell bad. Compared to just about any other method of transportation that you care to name, it's hard to see any relative competitive advantage whatsoever. The speed is low, the maneuverability isn't great, the fuel is expensive, and don't get me started on the user interface - not only is it difficult to switch gears, for some reason the installed user base tends to snicker at you behind their hands when you ask the question.
There is one area in which I am an expert on horses, though, and that's the area in which I intend to focus: horses in fantasy role-playing games.
In such a milieu, horses possess two distinct and considerable strengths. First, they can be used to justify almost any unreasonable travel. Want to get somewhere a thousand miles away? Well, everyone knows horses can go about as fast as a slow car when they run, so that's 30 miles an hour. A thousand miles at 30 mph? Under two days, no problem! Since, usually, nobody involved actually knows anything about horses, everyone feels free to ignore any trifling concerns such as whether your average horse can indeed proceed at a sprint for forty-eight hours without food or drink. Therefore, you can quickly elide the bothersome and tedious procedure of getting from point A to point B, and proceed directly to invading point B, slaughtering its inhabitants, and taking all their worldly possessions.
The two other positive characters of the fantasy role-playing horse go hand in hand: their infinite reliability and their equally infinite fungability. When our bold heroes are fully engaged in the soon-to-be-renowned-in-song Sack Of Point B, they are certainly unable to take with them their passel of horses. Naturally, then, the horses are tied up outside the aforenamed location, with a bit of string, a pat on the head, and fond good wishes. Of course, in such a perilous and no doubt monster-infested locale as Point B, the adventurers may as well have coated their steeds in barbecue sauce and painted "ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET" on their sides.
Thus, when the heroes come staggering up the dungeon steps, laden down with the renowned Point B crown jewels, it is critically important that they be able to replace the horses, and this is where the fungible fantasy horse steps up valiantly to the plate. Invariably, some handy innkeeper, stableman, or, at a pinch, farmhand is willing to sell the heroes a new brace of mounts, perfectly indistinguishable from the previous and at the universally agreed upon market price.
Due to this, any fantasy adventurer worth his or her salt goes through horses like you or I might go through kleenex when afflicted with a particularly nasty head cold. They think nothing of leaving their horses behind for the hobgoblins, zombies, evil wizards, or what have you, viewing the matter as one of those unavoidable costs of doing business to which the budding entrepreneur must become inured.
So, despite the common or real-world horse coming in on the "loss" side of the tally of assets and deficits, the reliability and capacity for noble self-sacrifice of the fantasy role-playing horse brings their score up to a solid
B
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