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[Krash]

I think it's safe to say a bunch of pedantic scholars who like to see themselves as elite don't weigh a whole lot when it comes to language itself. It's been called chain mail for more than two hundred years, better get used to it

no

[Footkerchief]

I don't really have an issue with "chain mail" but "plate mail" has been bothering me for a while.  Thanks to the power of modding, though, my horse in this race is maybe a Shetland pony at most.

[G-Flex]

Yes. "Chain mail" isn't wrong so much as redundant. "Plate mail", on the other hand, doesn't make sense from any sort of real academic standpoint. See, I'm just trusting what people who AREN'T fantasy writers call the stuff. Seriously, now, if you want to actually get into any sort of real discussion about armor, once you start calling everything "mail" you will get a lot of confused looks. Unless you're talking about Diablo or whatever.

[Neonivek]

BEEF AND PORK DOESN'T EXIST!!! It is a french term that entered the english vocabulary!

These arguements are really starting to get annoying to me...

The fact of the matter is that Modern Day terminology changes the previous terminology of many weapons and armor.

I hate it when a game calls Magic "Magik" or something like that... Why the heck would I want a game calling Platemail something like Plate armor? Especially since that also presents a problem compared that there were many armors that existed that use a plate somewhere such as the Post-Colonial Super Heavy plate which wasn't a 360 cover.

Plate being chained together doesn't mean anything... it doesn't make "Platemail" make any less sense... Really... Do we really need to dig up corpses?

If you REALLY want to be historically accurate to the times Dwarf Fortress is in... You will be surprised how much you have to change...
1) Languages have no set spelling or pronounciation. Thus two people at two different sides of the country would likely be unable to understand eachother.
2) Cook Books had NO recipes period! Cook books were more accurately a showcase of ingrediants (Carrots are Sweet and Aromatic)
3) Children worked HARD!!! If they weren't basically sold to an apprentise they were working hard... None of this namby pamby stuff either... Hard work and beatings was character building.
4) Babies has a LOW chance to live... Add in Baby Swaddling, Salting, and playing sports with them... Yeah
5) Weapons and armor had NO set definition. Ask for a long sword and you get 50 other kinds of swords.
-This is true and false... but yeah... there were no standards... How many blacksmiths could read?
6) Jail? HA!!! Jails were such a horrible place to be in Dwarves should tantrum at sight, their goal WAS to drive you insane... Not to mention that many laws carried the death penelty.

Don't get me wrong... the Medieval ages weren't the WORST places to be ever... They did some things back that put us to shame.

But of course when I say Medieval Ages... I am being very vague (especially since Dwarf Fortress is vague about it too)

[Footkerchief]

^^^ Those all sound like they'd go great in DF.  I'm serious.
1. Regional accents, at the very least, are a no-brainer for language revisions
2. We don't have cookbooks at all, but the dev items mention something that sounds a lot like an ingredient list
3. Of COURSE we need more child labor
4. Infant mortality -- carrying babies into combat kind of covers this already, but why not?  Diseases are coming up
5. Weapons obviously do need more precise and varied definitions

[KaelGotDwarves]

While you guys are getting antsy about "plate mail" and various other naming conventions - take a look at the "greaves" code in the raws.

Even Toady admits that shit doesn't make any sense in the slightest.

Just chill out, you can always change the name in your own game so that it makes sense to you. Suggestions are great, but don't insist it has to be done now a certain way. Toady will get to it.

[Pilsu]

There's no ham in hamburgers. Gas stations don't sell gas. Plate mail has no mail in it

Claiming plate mail to be a video game term, well guess what. 

[G-Flex]

BEEF AND PORK DOESN'T EXIST!!! It is a french term that entered the english vocabulary!

These arguements are really starting to get annoying to me...

The fact of the matter is that Modern Day terminology changes the previous terminology of many weapons and armor.

Are you even listening? Seriously.

"Plate mail" IS NOT THE MODERN TERM AND NEVER WAS. Nobody who actually studies this shit calls it that.

Oh, and as far as there not being recipes? My girlfriend actually baked some stuff relatively recently derived from medieval cookbooks written in Middle English. They sure as hell had recipes.

But really, that isn't the point. I'm not saying that the game has to completely adhere to the actual medieval world. It was just an admittedly-nitpicky point about using correct terminology. And no, "plate mail" is never accurate. It isn't today, won't be tomorrow, and wasn't fifty years ago. Nobody thinks it is. It's a term used in fantasy games. How many times am I going to have to say this before you drop the "it's what it's called NOW" routine?


Pilsu: I know it's a video game term. Do you not read the posts you're responding to as well? I admitted that it's common in games, but that DF generally seems to attempt to go beyond what's "normal" in a game and opt for more realism and detail.

Also: "Hamburgers" don't have the word "ham" in them. They come from the word "Hamburg". It's a place. Look it up. And gas stations do sell gas; it's short for "gasoline". Evolution of terms is not the same as widespread misapplication of them by fantasy writers.

[Mikademus]

G-Flex, I have derived much amusement from your posts. One particular point of entertainment is your insistence of the wrongness of "plate mail" on the grounds of divergence from the historical correct, saying that the modern usage has never been, isn't and never will be correct, whereupon proceeding to defending your equally wrong spelling of "armour" as a regional dialect derived from the evolution of language. That, Sir, is called ad-hoc, extemporisation, and even perhaps an oxymoron.

Dixi.

[Footkerchief]

divergence from the historical correct

This kind of ruins the effect, you know.

[Krash]

Armour = Armor.  None of them is wrong.  Unlike plate mail vs plate armo(u)r.  But then, I don't think that this is a huge deal.  If toady thinks it's important, he'll change it.

[Neonivek]

"Plate mail" IS NOT THE MODERN TERM AND NEVER WAS. Nobody who actually studies this shit calls it that

Who cares about them? That makes people who study it, though not everyone who studies it because I have heard them say Chainmail before, have Jargon. So Fiction and videogames have changed the terminology, it isn't the first time and it won't be the last. Heck everytime you call someone an Ignoramus your quoting a play (Ignoramus the ignorant lawyer). Languages shift, evolve, and change... To refuse "Chainmail" because of its source or because professors don't is just kinda being elitist (for lack of a better word).

Heck in Dwarf Fortress they don't even speak english... apperantly not even humans (though I could be mistaken). if your about to say "But I saw them speak in english earlier!" I remind you that what you saw is the translation.

Also Id like to retract most of my "You know what we would have to change" statements... mostly because I can't tell the difference between medieval and Renaisance (however you spell it) time periods. For example I cannot remember what time period the whole "Food is like a miracle drug" craze started in. Ill keep it up if anyone finds it interesting. As well as some being hard to prove thanks to the existance of exceptions.

[G-Flex]

Again, "chain mail" isn't (for the most part) what I was talking about. That term is just sort of redundant. I was referring more to calling all types of metallic armor (including plate) "mail".

And seriously, if you can't tell the difference between a simple and completely inconsequential spelling change (dropping the "u" in a word) and a change in terminology (one which, as I've said countless times, people don't even accept except in fantasy (the dictionaries I've checked don't even have it), which tends to be pretty damn flawed in terms of terminology and arms/armor realism), then I'm not sure what to say anymore. Seriously, it isn't the "modern term". Get your head out of fantasy book terminology for five seconds and you'll see that.

[Neonivek]

Not all armor is Mail...

A Chain Shirt (which is what most people oddly picture when someone say "Chainmail" leading to the popular belief that Chainmail is a thin layer of metal...) Leather armor, Breastplate, Curias, Bracers.

I rarely hear people consider many things "Mail" outside of Chain, Scale, Ring, and Plate... So Mail is hardly a term for armor but rather a strict grouping of those four

Seriously, it isn't the "modern term". Get your head out of fantasy book terminology for five seconds and you'll see that.

Fantasy books can forge modern terminology. Mithril didn't exist before Lord of the Rings (In fact its source isn't even from metal but an armor).

I really don't see what you mean by it... If almost everyone outside of these "people who study it" call it that... in what way is it not the modern term?

Get your head out of the books and into people's faces

In fact even if the term isn't that wide spread it simply makes it a modern niche term

Seriously man... Study Etymology!

[Footkerchief]

I really don't see what you mean by it... If almost everyone outside of these "people who study it" call it that... in what way is it not the modern term?

Get your head out of the books and into people's faces

This is ironic because there is no "almost everyone," just a handful of clueless D&D nerds who got it from reading rulebooks written by other clueless nerds.  Anyone who's actually gotten their heads out of the fantasy novels and worn armor or seriously studied its use won't be saying "plate mail."  They'd be laughed out of their LARP clubs or Anglo-Saxon historians' conferences or whatever.