The Compendium of Weapons, Armour & Castles: with scans

Posts: 1440 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:06 pm

A book review.

The Compendium of Weapons, Armour & Castles.
(Front cover scan below)
Palladium Books.
By Mathew Balent.

Over 700 weapons, 40 types of Armour, 40 Castles with floor plans
Siege weapons, laying siege tactics and plan layout.

Soft cover, 224 pages.
Original Price $19.95

The book has hundreds and Hundreds of sketches and even more descriptions of every type of ancient weapon one might think of.
Five pages are dedicated to the simple knife alone.

Many types of amour are listed with sketches, including several for horses and one type for elephants.
For Japanese Samurai Armour (c. 1500-1700 A.D.) the book shows step by step donning instructions, with Japanese names for each piece of Armour.
(Pg. 138, see scan below)

Castles and fortifications, with plan view pencil sketches and overhead ground floor plans, some also include every floor and dungeon level plans.
Many examples of actual European Castles, both ancient and still standing.

At the end of the book, there are a few pages dedicated to gunpowder weapons, Cannon and handguns (Powder).

My inexpert review;
Where else can you find combat instructions for a Halberd?
(“Meyer’s School of Halberd Combat” Page 23, see scan below)
The book is very well laid out.
The format is very good.
The information is very detailed and with the sketches well understood.
The details are amazing to me (Of course I am no expert in the field of weapons, castle, and Armour)
IMO: This book would be a great boon to the games master for any RPG system dealing with the ancient subject matter in this book.
This book would be an excellent supplement to ANY fantasy or history re-inactment game.

For the price I paid in a Lot of books on E-Bay; I would not even consider letting this one go.

I will place my copy right next to my AD&D and C&C Rules books, so I can show the kids what a Bagh Nakh looks like and what it can do.

Posts: 1348 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:13 pm

One of my favorite books, in fact.

I recently picked up a spare copy, as the one I had was beginning to fall apart from over-use (it had 6 people flipping through it for 8+ years...)

I also find the "durability" section and the conversion methods at the front useful for adapting to other games - I've used this book in practically every game I've ran.

Posts: 2339 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:47 pm

Normally I think of Palladium books as a cheap source of toilet paper if you don't mind the ink stains. But this one I have kept in my collection.

Posts: 1440 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:59 pm

I feel much the same way about Palladium books in general.

In fact, I feel that I got an excellent deal when I got this one and I didn't even know it at the time.
I was actually bidding to obtain a different book in that lot, and guess what?
I cannot even recall what freaking book it was either. Rolling Eyes

I am glad that I finally read this one (many Months after getting it in the mail) and I am quite happy to include it in my collection of Fantasy Supplements.

Posts: 3191 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:46 pm

Great book. Also not all Palladium books are bad as I rather enjoyed the High Seas one (and of course TMNT RPG).

ShaneG.

Posts: 604 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:44 pm

To go along with my copy, I have copies of Weapons & Assassins, and the Book of Contemporary Weapons (both are saddle stitched). Obviously, the big attraction for the first book was the assassin material. It even goes into detail about how to actually prepare the silk cord for use in an assassination (take coin, and wrap coin in one end of silk cord so coin doesn't fall out).

The other book if I'm not mistaken was incorporated into a revised larger work on contemporary weapons, but I didn't feel the bigger book was needed. I just needed various handguns for Traveller.

Posts: 1117 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 8:29 pm

Traveller wrote:

The other book if I'm not mistaken was incorporated into a revised larger work on contemporary weapons

It was. I had a copy for a while but either gave it away or sold it off. I don't recall anymore.

It was really, erm, dry and of marginal usefulness... Page upon page of 'systemless' stats for weapons with no real details provided about them.

Posts: 604 · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:09 pm

So as I thought, the bigger book sucked. Besides, I got Weapons & Assassins and the Book of Contemporary Weapons for a dollar each, used. Better than spending another $20 that would be better spent on things like The Compendium of Weapons, Armour and Castles.

Posts: 19 · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 8:05 pm

The section on putting on Japanese armor comes directly from"Secrets of the Samurai: The Martial Arts of Feudal Japan" By Oscar Ratti, Adele Westbrook. Were they given credit for it? Question

Stuart