Subject:
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Re: what makes us different?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.pirates
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Date:
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Wed, 9 Jul 2003 02:23:34 GMT
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Viewed:
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2815 times
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In lugnet.pirates, Stephen Rowe wrote:
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as i have been surfing around other newsgroups, and searching brickshelf, i
have come to the conclusion that there are very few good examples of sailing
vessels from the era that we build for. DUH, you might say, which is true, but
why is that so? i surf over to the space forum and in the course of a few
days, one may read many new posts about new MOC’s. in space, the main model to
build is a spaceship, be it fighter, carrier, destroyer, etc, and there are
dozens of examples of these on brickshelf. why are pirate fans not posting as
many creations? (besides that the spacers have more people) are we not as
creative? i think not. so, what makes us different from them? are ships just
more difficult to build good examples of? are they more time consuming? what
is it, and why do we not have as many creations floating around?
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I reckon there are a few reasons:
1. Building decent ships is a challenge, and tends to involve some difficult to
find parts.
2. There is less popular culture inspiration for piratic stuff than
for space (or even castle or town).
3. There is a generally high standard for
MOCs on .pirates.
4. Space and Castle are so much easier to build for.
5. There aren’t that many .pirate fans.
To elaborate:
1. Building decent ships is a challenge, and tends to involve some difficult to
find parts.
Building a decent looking sailed vessel is a challenge. There are curves, there
is rigging, there are sails. Couple this with a limited supply of parts (<10
lego sets involving decently large sailed vessels), and that those sets are (or
at least have been) discontinued. It’s difficult to get parts to build with -
but not impossible (I have acquired all the ship parts used in the Port Brique
vessels since the official demise of the pirate line, and I haven’t even had to
pay a fortune for them).
What ship specific parts are there?
5 mast pieces, three hull pieces (in two widths), three rigging pieces, an
anchor and some sails.
2. There is less popular culture inspiration for piratic stuff than for space
(or even castle or town).
Even once the parts problems are overcome, where does the inspiration come from.
How many great space movies are there? How many great pirate-type movies are
there?
While we might see a ripple of interest in pirates as a result of Pirates of
the Carribean and Master and Commander, we can’t seriously expect much
compared to the SW saga and LOTR.
There’s the recent Hornblower series, of course, fairly popular, but didn’t do
much for the building of sailing ships (although my Intracty leant very
heavily on the Hotspur).
Everyone seems to know what a battlement is - but who knows where the mizzen
mast goes? Most people can tell you what a lightsabre is - but who’s heard of a
boarding axe? People know about chainmail, but what about chain shot? In fact,
Star Wars gave us the ion cannon, but who knows much about iron cannon?
3. There is a generally high standard for MOCs on .pirates.
It may be an elitist argument, but the standard for MOCs on .pirates is high.
Look at the recent vessels - Stephen Rowe’s
British and French ships
and Mike Swansons Mort de
la Mare for instance. They are, IMHO anway, very nice work.
It might be a bit daunting posting something not quite up to that standard...
I know I wasn’t sure about posting about
Hornriker’s cutter (but not
just for reasons of standard) or even the
Digne for that matter.
4. Space and Castle are so much easier to build for.
This point carries over from 1 and 2 above. It’s relatively easy to build a
half-way decent spaceship, or castle for that matter. With space you can lean
into space-opera, with castle into fantasy, but with sailing ships you’re stuck
with certain matters of physics, scale and history (although, as the French
Squadron of Port Brique will tell you, you can bend history a bit).
How do you build a castle that’s bigger and better than the last one? Much the
same as the last one, you just put more bricks on more baseboards (it’s actually
a bit trickier than this, but by-and-large, castles do scale up well).
How do you build a spaceship that’s bigger and better than the last one? Well,
it’s trickier than a castle, but basically, you can just build things a bit
bigger, a few more modules and so on. More difficult than a castle... but not
too much more.
How do you build a tall ship that’s bigger and better than the last one? Here,
you run into problems. Is there a hull size wider than a wide hull?, Do ships
with too many centre sections look like canoes? How tall can you get those masts
anyway? Why don’t the ratlines reach the fighting tops anymore? How is that tiny
anchor going to hold the light frigate in anything more than a gentle breeze?
Where can you get a decently large gaff sail (or any gaff tops’l, or how about a
mains’l of a decent size)? A ship’s boat larger than a rowboat?
These can all be overcome, but it’s just not as straightforward as other themes.
5. There just aren’t that many .pirate fans.
It’s an outworking of 2 particularly, and 1 as well, but there just aren’t
that many .pirate fans around. (But let’s not have a rollcall to find out! :-) )
Cheers
Richie Dulin
| | Port Brique
Somewhere in the South Pacifique
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| | Misérable
Building a safer South Pacifique
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: what makes us different?
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| (...) Hear Hear! great coverage of all the issues. you make some very powerful points. just to add my own to your thoughts: building ships is a challenge, the parts are relatively scarce, and when they do come up, they can be expensive. what puzzles (...) (21 years ago, 9-Jul-03, to lugnet.pirates, FTX)
| | | Re: what makes us different?
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| (...) Hi all, Just a few thoughts from outside .pirates. There are some good points here, especially the first one. Right now, if I wanted to get into Pirate building there is only one set available from TLC, and that's at $90. While they're not (...) (21 years ago, 9-Jul-03, to lugnet.pirates, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | what makes us different?
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| as i have been surfing around other newsgroups, and searching brickshelf, i have come to the conclusion that there are very few good examples of sailing vessels from the era that we build for. DUH, you might say, which is true, but why is that so? i (...) (21 years ago, 8-Jul-03, to lugnet.pirates)
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