Travel as a REAL Fantasy Adventurer | What would it be like?

tolkien was right adventures are nasty disturbing uncomfortable things that make you late for dinner and you'll have to manage without pocket handkerchiefs and a good many other things before you get to the journey's end so let's go on a little adventure using some famous stories history and my personal experience to find out what it would really be like to be a fantasy medieval adventurer because it's not as easy as some books games or other forms of media may make it seem how did the fellowship literally survive their journey how do the witchers survive traveling on the road while they're on a hunt the answers to these questions will greatly inform those of us who are attempting to go on adventures of our own and will increase the realism and immersion of other forms of media hopefully without being useless or tedious mechanics but that is a completely different discussion but for the sake of this discussion we will be operating in the context of a low fantasy medieval adventure the very concept itself is not historically accurate but there will be no magically spawning tents or bags of holding we will operate only within the confines of what we as human beings on this earth are capable of achieving dawn breaks and the adventure begins and there is this romantic view of an adventurer carrying everything that he has and nothing but a backpack or rucksack which is something that i am hoping to achieve one day but i haven't quite managed yet i am learning bushcraft and there are a number of great resources for this online but i find myself wondering how well this really translates for a medieval adventure building your own shelter from scratch cuts down on carry weight it's true and there are a number of people that can go out into the woods with nothing but a knife and a blanket and be completely fine but building your own shelter takes time and resources time you may not have if you're attempting to get somewhere quickly and resources you may not have depending on where you are it also leaves a trail with all of the wood shavings and the actual shelter you'll have built i'm not saying that bushcraft is invalid i'm just wondering if someone who trained their entire life to become a priest or a rogue who grew up in the streets of a major city would really have the skills necessary to execute this sort of adventure in dungeons and dragons there are various adventuring packs that range in weight from 10 pounds to all the way up to 60. but in real life a rogue would need just the same tools to survive that a paladin would and their bed rolls would weigh the same a dexterous or bookish person might literally not have the strength or constitution to go on an adventure this ambitious without the aid of magic there is a way around this and when i went on my trip there were seven of us and each of us had a pack that was probably between 30 and 50 pounds mine was 40. keep in mind that i was the only person with a semblance of a medieval kit everyone had modern often ultra light camping gear and while we were hiking my mate asked me how would you train for this because in order to do this you would have to be in incredible shape and i immediately responded that you would simply put on a 60 pound pack and then walk in it as much as you can but then i thought about it a little bit more 50 pounds per person and a group of strapping young lads that's seven people that's not even an adventuring party that's a full-on raiding party and we're not the military the simple answer is that we were carrying too much stuff a ridiculous amount of stuff each person had enough in their pack for their own solo journey and that doesn't make any sense instead of each adventurer carrying their own tent it would make much more sense for there to be a tent that could fit multiple people and then just be carried by one person keeping in mind that a canvas tent will be much heavier than a plastic tent of equal size conversely you could have very small personal tents if that's the route you chose to go or you might be in an environment where you might not need shelter at all practically there are things like mosquitoes to consider a lean-to shelter might be very quick very light and very convenient but it's also very open in an adventuring party you'd want to share the load as much as possible to keep down carry weight and space and in a group that can allow it with evenly strong members the heavier packs can be traded back and forth to keep anyone from fatiguing too quickly and then the people that aren't carrying all of the gear can act as the first line of defense because if you're carrying around 50 pounds of weight the second a fight breaks out especially a melee fight you're pretty much a sitting duck i had a roycroft frame pack and it was surprisingly comfortable but it wasn't the easiest thing to get in and out of we make camp for the night early enough that we still have enough daylight to prepare food set up our sleeping arrangements and collect firewood and as always i bring a bowl a plate a cutting board a fork and a spoon and in all of my travels i have literally never used the plate or the fork the bowl and the cutting board easily fill the roll of the plate and you could arguably even make a cutting board upon getting to camp and whatever your spoon can't do your knife can the same utility can be said that a pot is more versatile than a pan because i can make both soup and fry meat in a pot but i can only fry meat in a pan your pack itself might serve multiple rolls a waterproofed bag might act as a ground cloth for you to sit on or a frame pack like i have might actually be able to be dismantled and then the sticks can be used as tent poles obviously re-lashing together the whole pack every time you're ready to break camp would be annoying so i'm going to experiment with what sort of leather thong or toggle system i can create to make that experience quicker let me know in the comments if you think that that is a good or bad idea or how you see that functioning so night falls and the temperature is rapidly dropping and this might conjure to mind images of adventurers holding torches or lanterns perhaps as they trudge through the darkness firstly both of these take up a fair amount of space and weight secondly both require a form of liquid fuel because torches aren't just magic sticks with cloth wrapped around them that will burn forever thirdly carrying this extra liquid fuel will also take up space and weight and fourthly this fuel will freeze historically candles were more expensive than oil lamps it's true but traveling with a pack of candles is much easier than traveling with an oil lamp pottery lamps can easily break and historically many weren't made fully enclosed which means you would have to carry them empty which means you have to carry fuel separately obviously designs could be created that contain the fuel source so that you can carry them all in one i found this lantern at a thrift store and it's going to actually conduct and radiate heat so hopefully that's going to keep me warm it also has a contained fuel cell so for a couple of days i don't need to bring extra fuel i tested and confirmed its heating capabilities before i left and then it worked terribly in practice i now have a completely useless adventuring item i wasted ten dollars but now you know not to do this you're welcome come nightfall when i attempted to light it i realized that the fuel inside had frozen completely solid the wick burned instead of the fuel so i had to place the lantern by the fire not safe in order to heat the oil up enough that the wick could burn itself and then the lantern could thaw itself and i had to do this multiple times keeping the lantern at a far enough distance from the fire that it wouldn't just explode was still too far away to keep the lantern from re-freezing and then as a result of manipulating it so much i inevitably dropped it and then the glass cracked slightly upon taking it into my tent to use it thinking that it would help heat the interior of the tent it ended up producing fumes far more quickly than it produced heat so i had to blow it out or risk poisoning myself i think candles really are the best heat and light source in an adventuring scenario carrying them in a small tin case that can be stood up like an open book to help reflect heat and light is probably the best case scenario there is also a piece of equipment called a miner's spike and this could be used to place a candle on and then it will stand upright on a table or on the back of a chair or you can nail it into a tree or into the side of a cave wall to keep the candle upright this is a very good use for railway spikes and i definitely want one on your journey especially once night falls and especially in the winter you have to make sure that you keep yourself warm if your shoes are leather which they will be in this context they will inevitably no matter how well waxed they are get damp and if winter camping has taught me anything it's that if something gets damp it will be destroyed my boots also froze solid they'll be fine but they are going to require a lot of work in order to get them looking nice again my water skin also had to be kept right here under my arm on my body at all times in order to keep it from freezing and i slept with it in my sleeping bag because i didn't want it to freeze overnight it then leaked which made me damp which means i could have frozen bed rolls are supposed to keep you warm and dry and looking at historical examples from 18th century america many are some sort of waxed or lint seed oil treated canvas that then have wool blankets wrapped inside and this might be enough if you're able to sleep by a fire but i wouldn't do that if my sleeping bag was flammable the size and weight of your bed roll can easily be underestimated in my opinion and they are often also not enough to keep you insulated fully from the ground this roycraft frame pack all of it is my sleeping materials in my tent there's nothing in here that is superfluous it's just the stuff that's going to keep me alive it's all wrapped up in my cloak you could forage and if spruce or fur branches that maybe you could make your own mattress and that would help cut down on carry weight but what if you're on a mountain or you're in a dead forest or you're just freezing in the desert what if you can't light a fire because it will draw too much attention my reindeer pelt did keep me warm and dry off of the ground and i put two fur goat hides inside my sleeping bag along with my cloaks and i'm convinced that my medieval items kept me warmer than my modern ones did but they were also very bulky my reindeer pelt also isn't the length of my body so someone that's taller than a hobbit would need to use two pelts or more or just be comfortable having their lower half be in direct contact with the ground and by be comfortable i mean not be comfortable at all i think a fur lined waterproofed sleeping bag is probably the best bet for an adventurer because in very cold weather that's probably going to be enough especially if you're also putting extra blankets on the inside and in warm weather too warm to use with a fur you can just sleep on top of it and still use it as a way of keeping yourself up off the ground during or at the end of your journey you might encounter combat and that means that you need to make sure that your body has the energy you need in order to survive that fight that means a good night's sleep the night before and then good food consisting of carbs protein and fat if you can manage it on the subject we need to talk about weapons you'd bring in an adventuring loadout my loadout is not solidified yet i'm still collecting data and when i'm certain and confident that what i have works there will be a video i know there are many people that believe that a tool such as an axe or a sax knife can be used to help avoid redundancy that an axe and knife combo is the best thing and that to carry a sword would be almost useless shad has said that for his ranger loadout that he would prefer a machete type weapon something that looks like a falchion because it can also an owl because it can help clear brush and then also be used as a fighting tool now i don't believe that fashions could be used as a machete i don't think they have the right blade for that but in a fantasy universe i can see a weapon like this existing so i don't think that shad meant that falchions literally were the same thing as machetes but rather that a machete with a medieval skin that made it look like a fashion would be his weapon of choice in a world with adventurers which didn't exist in our world i don't know why we would confine them to only using the weapons that existed in our world it makes much more sense that they would have specialized tools and part of my goal is to try to figure out what those would be now combining weapons and tools into one item to use them for multiple functions seems like a good idea and my problem isn't with the historical viability of it but rather with the practicality any tool that also acts as a weapon has this problem if i need the tool to survive and it breaks then i now no longer have a weapon and if it breaks while i'm fighting which is at least as likely if not more so then i now no longer have a tool to survive with when combat and travel are both potentially deadly the risk of encountering an unrepairable and catastrophic failure in the piece of kit that could mean the difference between life and death is too great for me to want to risk having a two in one item a camp axe could be a good weapon or sidearm in a pinch i'm not making any declarative statement about whether or not camp axes make good weapons but i now no longer believe that combining weapons and tools as their primary function to help conserve weight is a good or safe idea and i didn't even address how armor would affect the carry weight of your setup we already talked about how some adventuring packs can weigh up to 60 pounds a chainmail holberg can weigh 40 pounds could you really wear all of that weight and travel with it for days on end and then still fight at the end i'm not in bad shape i'm a dancer i work out i train with swords and yet at the end of this trip where we had ample time to sit around the fire and rest we had good food and we weren't even hiking for that many miles and there wasn't combat at the end by the time i got home my body was so fatigued that it had trouble regulating its own temperature meaning i was experiencing hot and cold flashes and some minor muscle aches and cramps in this way i think that stamina potions would likely be far more important than health potions would be because they might literally be the only thing that would keep you alive and going during the duration of the journey at the end of your journey you return home even if it's your home away from home you'll want some pretty basic creature comforts a hot bath a hot meal a soft bed maybe a massage ins taverns and bath houses would be necessary infrastructure to support an adventuring populace and the competition between all of these groups to see who could provide the best service for adventurers would be quite fierce and as society developed we'd probably start to see inns or taverns crop up every couple of miles just for ease of convenience and then from each of those taverns probably some sort of small town would arise in a world like middle earth where most people live in towns and cities and the heroes are few and far between making journeys like this would be very harsh and very difficult likely only made possible because dwarves are hardy elves aren't magic boromir is an above average human the doonadine have the experience of multiple lifetimes gandalf as a wizard and the hobbits literally almost died it's very realistic lord of the rings always gets a pass once again i think witchers are a very well thought out logical conclusion of what it would take to really be a fantasy adventurer their bodies and equipment are scientifically optimized for fighting monsters and living on the road it is their purpose and they are far above what the average human is capable of achieving i have a full video i want to do on how witcher swords are designed in the books and how they make the most sense within the context of that world and potentially even in any adventuring context but that is a subject for another time i'm getting cold so for now this journey comes to an end man let me tell you filming out here is really hard i can't feel my fingers or my lips enunciating clearly is so difficult and i'm like shivering oh it's cold

Channel: Living Anachronism

Views: 58,866

Keywords: medieval, fantasy medieval, fantasy, fantasy adventure, medieval fantasy, lord of the rings, lotr, the witcher, witcher, tolkien, reenactment, fantasy reenactment, larp, how to, adventurer, fantasy adventurer, fantasy travel, overland travel, dungeons and dragons, dnd, shadiversity, medieval fantasy travel, adventuring

Id: TBUqFp93L1U

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 29 2022