Glorious REAL tournaments!

[Amagic]

Where are the REAL tournaments. I mean real knights and lords, in bright shining armor covered in colorful heraldic signs, carrying fancy tournament lances and riding the best warhorses. The real tournaments with crowd of thousands from all over the land to see the nobles fight eachother in glory. Squires running around after their masters to bring them a new shield or a lance to replace the one they just broke in a mighty clash with their opponents. All the glory of flags of the representatives of every nobleman house in Calradia. Knights fight for the honor of their king and country, and of course their beautiful ladies. Only one shall remain as the winner. His name will be known across the land and he'll be praised with silver and fame.

That's just a dream for Calradia. The arenas are poor and colorless. Melee fights are more like a training field and the tournaments are a joke. What glory is there in a fight where a bunch of common folk and mercenaries are thrown in a pit with random wooden weapons and half naked, only few given a horse. People from nearby villages to see the tournament are few, the arena is dull and colorless pit of mud, disgrace to the name of Tournaments and heraldry. The best you can see is a Lord, striped from his distinctive clothes, given him a shabby weapon and told to fight.

All i want to say with this fancy story is that this game is yet to see a proper tournament. Right now it's just a knockout fight on bets and prize money. This sort of thing is more like a brawl between common folk than jousting. I'm not saying that the current system should be removed from M&B. I even like it. It's just that it's nothing like a real medieval tournament that should be definitely implemented in this game.

Sometimes when you take a quest from a Lady of a faction, you have to challenge an another lord. That was sort of like a tournament round i had in mind. It was just less glorious.

*I wonder if anyone is actualy going to read a post this long*

 

[Tinan]

You remind me of the 'Tournament of Tottenham', a late Middle English parody of romantic tournaments (if you're into this sort of thing I highly recommend reading the whole thing online or in any of several printed editions: try http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/sirthop/totten.html for starters):

I wot it is no children's game when they together met!
When each a freke in the field on his fellow beat.
And laid on stiffly; for nothing would they let --
And fought ferly fast till their horses sweat,
And few words spoken.
There were flails all to-slattered,
There were shields all to-clattered,
Bowls and dishes all to-battered,
And many heads broken.

In a way the present tourneys in M&B are just that, a parody. Especially the free for all practice sessions which are pretty much exactly what the cited poem was getting at. It is a bit of a shame, I tend to agree.

To add to your comments, I'd like to see the "beat so and so at combat because he's a scurrilous liar" quest from ladies combined with tournaments. Certainly in Arthurian legend tournaments were the public arena for settling feuds between knights. It seems strange at the moment to beat up Maleagant but have nobody there to see it  Sort of defeats the supposed purpose of trial by combat.

[EDIT - Adding a couple points]

The present system's not like jousting because there are apparently no rules involved. Jousting, and all tournament combat, was highly codified and breaking those rules was, well, I don't know what the penalties might have been because I know of no instance when the rules were broken - seems shame and honour still counted for something. For example, after the initial joust, if one knight was dismounted the other knight had to dismount and fight in melee - no taking advantage while still on horseback allowed. I wonder if the game could be modded to the extent of implementing such restrictions on combat for the arena?

It'd be nice to be able to change colours for tourneys only - I'm thinking about lady relationships here. If a player has good relations with a given lady then she could award him a garter to wear with her colours, and if the player is victorious then there might be an *ahem* award. Well, probably just further improved relations but who knows...

Visual guidance: the Tournament of the Cloth of Gold, arguably the pinnacle of medieval tourneys, reportedly looked something like this:

Personally I'm not sure about the dragon but the rest seems reasonable. Note - image is not actually medieval but a copy of an early modern oil painting.

Sorry for going on at such length. 

 

[Amagic]

Breaking rules was the worst case scenario. You could have ended up in the gallows in some regions. I remember that there was a knight who was up against a french king ( can't remeber name ) and he broke a ironclad rule: No aiming in the face. Knight broke it, king died a day later and knight got hanged xD.

I'm thinking about lady relationships here. If a player has good relations with a given lady then she could award him.

if the player is victorious then there might be an *ahem* award

I like that.

 

[laheja]

King got killed :O
I thought that they used mostly still not sharp lances , well but maybe the king was not wearing a good helmet.

I know that important rule which was not honorable to break was killing a horse.
For if  other knights killed your horse you lose  a horse a with high risk may broke a leg as well.

But i definitely support that idea that tournaments should be lords only and tournament winner should crown a Queen of beauty.
But in Mount & Blade there just isn't enough Lords for every tournaments many factions are always warring as well.
If only lords take parts in tournaments and your companions you may end up fighting against one Lord and 10 your companions and that,s all.

By the way some mods offer chance to fight in your one armor and weapons in tournaments but changing still the your armor colors or something like that.
Another bad thing is that in Mount & Blade u just don,t have enough fancy armor.
And would that be cool if every Lord wears same fancy golden armor?

There should be option then to make your own custom armor whit your own custom heraldry. (Custom heraldry was offered in mod : Fire arrow turn into inferno , but don't know a single mod which offers custom armor...)