First some appropriate music.
One of the things I wanted with MYFAROG was to have authentic weapons in the game; no anachronisms (like e. g. a warhammer from the 14th century would have been in a setting aiming to be similar to Classical Antiquity, and with no weapons more modern than those from the Viking Age). This left me with fewer options, but I still managed to include quite a lot of mêlée weapons:
Angon (a heavy Scandinavian javelin, similar to the Roman pilum).
Battle axe, heavy (like a Dane axe).
Battle axe, light (the same axe, but lighter and for use in one hand).
Battle glove (similar to the Roman cestus).
Club (a heavy wooden stick).
Curved short sword (similar to a one-handed Dacian falx).
Dagger (a large double-edged knife, similar to a Roman pugio).
Flail (a peasant’s tool).
Hammer (a craftsman’s tool).
Hatchet (a craftsman’s tool).
Javelin (a short and light throwing spear).
Knife (similar to a short seax).
Light Javelin (a light throwing spear, with fletching, normally used in combination with a spear sling).
Long sword (similar to the Gallic antenna sword).
Mace (a club with metal knobs or a metal head).
Pick axe (a miner’s tool).
Sax (similar to a long seax).
Short sword (similar to a Roman sword [alias “gladius”]).
Sickle (a curved knife)
Sickle-shaped sword (similar to the Iberian falcata/Greek kopis).
Spear (6 to 8 feet long)
Spear sling (a 2 feet long stick, used mainly to throw light javelins harder and further).
Staff (6 to 8 feet long).
Staff sling (3 feet long stick with a sling attached).
Sword-scythe (similar to a two-handed Dacian falx).
Throwing axe (similar to a Scandinavian Francisca).
Trident (three-pronged spear).
Unarmed (those good old fists…).
Wand (a sacred bough).
War flail (a transformed flail, with metal knobs or spikes attached).
War scythe (a transformed scythe).
All the weapons have different characteristics, and are more or less likely (when inflicting the same amount of damage) to cause a bleeding wound or to stun or knock you down or knock you out, and some have very special qualities – like throwing axes bouncing off the ground when they miss their intended target, angons getting stuck in the enemy’s shields rendering it useless and shield-crushing battle axes. Everything is well researched and made to be as close to reality as possible, without slowing down play too much.
Some of the weapons in the list above are designed as throwing weapons, but they can naturally also be used in mêlée, so they are included in the list of mêlée weapons too. (A character using his bow or some other missile weapon not at all appropriate for use as a mêlée weapon will be defined as “unarmed” in a mêlée).
I can also add that the the weapons all have realistic weights listed, meaning that you will not find any “40 lbs swords“ or anything like that in MYFAROG. The heaviest mêlée weapon in MYFAROG, the heavy battle axe, weighs around 5 lbs (2.5 kg). Most mêlée weapons weigh around 1.5 lbs. (A knife weighs around 8 ounces.)
Be ready to arm your characters with weapons that make sense, that were actually used in the past and that will make it easier for you to feel as if you are really there, in Þulê…
