House of Cards GM Log

The Mighty Morgenstern

posted by Ginger at 09:41 PM, July 28, 2003 | Filed under : NPCs | Comments and Followups

We’re adopting these calculations about Morgenstern’s size and speed as canon for House of Cards.

8 Comments

Leslie
Jul 28, 2003 11:32 PM

Ho, *baby!* 108 mph!?! Go Morgie!

I'm going to have to re-do his gif though. Went for a Clydesdale model myself, not being a horsey person. :) Oh, well. I didn't like it anyway. ;)

Arref
Jul 29, 2003 8:41 AM

'Tis a thing of beauty.

Steve
Jul 30, 2003 3:29 AM

I'm sorry to be a wet blanket but, as a biologist, these calculations look to be off considerably in certain particulars.
The height estimates are spot-on AFAIK but weight is a cubic function of height and by my calcs Morgernstern should weigh 5208 lbs (27 hands) or 3658 lbs (24 hands). Putting a top limit of 2500 lbs would make Morgernstern look skeletal and I'm sure Corwin would have mentioned this. These weights do create problems with ground pressure; Morgernstern must have dustbin lid hooves to avoid sinking into the ground with every step.
Stride length should be a linear function of height, as with humans so, based on Man O'War (because Morgernstern is presumably closer to a racehorse than any 'average' equine - though I'd have thought a hunter would be closest of all, we don't have stats for that), 46.7 or 41.5 ft seem indicated (no idea why an exponential curve should be used for this).
Unfortunately, stride speed is almost certainly inversely related to height, it is in most animals if I recall my Comp Phys from Uni. You'll notice that Man O'War, a large horse, has a much lower stride speed than the average. Morgernstern, based entirely on his height, should have an even lower stride speed, though as a one-off fantastic beast this is entirely conjectural.
In fact, every body form has an optimum size for speed, which is why RL racehorses all tend to be of near equal size, ditto human sprinters. If it wasn't, 8ft giants would dominate the olympic records. IMO, the rulebook's guideline of 'locomotive speed' is probably as close as anyone needs - remembering that modern locos can reach in excess of 125mph.

Rich
Jul 30, 2003 7:17 AM

Forwarded that link to a gamer and horse trainer friend of mine. You can find a rebuttal of the link on the SoA board but her analysis landed Morgie at about 1800 pounds with hooves the size of dinner plates.

Ginger
Jul 30, 2003 7:24 AM

I posted the link to the board. I've read the comments on the board and in the comments to the original entry and I agree that the weight's probably lower than Steve's estimate.

I need to pop the original poster and get her in all these debates.

Paul
Jul 30, 2003 10:07 AM

(Thanks to Ginger for pointing out there was a discussion here on the subject)

Steve's analysis is something of a wet blanket on the original calculations, it seems like.

My "ballpark" figures, when I got to thinking this a long time ago ran along the lines of 2000 lbs and 8' tall. Even with that lower weight (bad me, forgetting the laws of physics and biology), Morgie has some pretty large hooves to avoid going into the ground.

And mud would be a bane for Julian's steed.

Sarah
Jul 30, 2003 5:32 PM

You mean me, Ginger? :)

Steve - Well, I keep saying that I'm not 100% happy with my weight estimates. That aside, I have a hard time entertaining the idea of Morgenstern being 5200 pounds, although I can see how you got there - when I hear that number, all I can think is "elephant" (a small, emaciated one, but still...). My revised, very broad estimate on his weight at the moment is somewhere between 1800 pounds (which I find I prefer, probably because it's closer to a normal horse weight) and 3800 pounds, although I have issues still with anything over 3000 pounds. I think my vague, pressed-for-an-answer response today would be in the 1800 to 3000 pound range.

I didn't know (and didn't think to look up) that stride length is a linear function of height - I used both an exponential curve and a linear line because I wasn't sure which fit the points better. I'm not sure where your line diverged from mine, though; at a 41.5 to 46.7 foot stride, Morgenstern would have to have a stride rate of 2.36 to 2.66 strides per second simply to *reach* 75 miles an hour, and a rate of 3.93 to 4.42 strides/second to reach 125 mph. For an animal to even reach 75 mph at Man O'War's 1.94 stride rate requires a stride length of 56.71 feet, and a stride of 94.55 feet is needed to reach 125 mph at the same rate. (The calculation I'm using to get these numbers is (stride length in feet * stride rate [strides/second] * 3600 seconds) / 5280 feet.) The linear forecast I did suggests a 24 hand animal should have a stride length of around 73 feet; that requires a 1.51 stride/second rate to reach 75 mph and a 2.52 rate to reach 125 mph. I used the 71 foot estimate in my blog as a kind of conservative number - after all, 73 feet is only an average, and we don't really have a 24-hand horse to compare him to anyway. I do agree that generally the stride rate will be smaller for taller animals, but I don't see that Morgenstern could reach the speeds we're talking about without a higher stride rate or a much longer stride. (Reducing the stride rate to 1 stride per second means the stride has to be 110 to 183.34 feet for 75 to 125 mph; a rate of 1.25 strides/sec means strides of 88 to 146.67 feet to reach those speeds.)

You're right; we don't have stats for a hunter-class horse. The reason I used the horses I used is because I had the stride rate, height, and verifiable time and distance statistics to use for calculations - I've got one more Thoroughbred racehorse I could use, but I can't find a record of his height. Non-racehorses - "normal" horses, if you must, although I dislike the terminology - generally don't have such things recorded, much less published handily. If I had access to the same set of stats on any type of horse out there, I'd choose a warmblood breed like a Trakhener, Oldenberg, or Hanoverian; those are the types of horses most commonly used for international riding competitions (including the Olympics) and should be more along the lines of what Julian would need in Arden. However, unless I want to go out and find warmblooded horses to measure myself (which is a little bit *too* much effort, I think), racehorse statistics will have to serve.

Steve
Aug 2, 2003 9:49 AM

Oops! I certainly didn't mean to start such an intensive debate on the subject or cause anyone needless concern. In the end, since he's a fantasy beast in a fantasy world, Morgernstern doesn't have to obey RL physical laws.
I can find no fault with your estimates for Morgernstern's height, which IIRC is to the shoulder, right? If Morgernstern is 8ft tall at the shoulder, then the weight estimates can be found by simple scaling laws. 8ft, after all, is bigger than the largest rhinocerous. I grew up on a farm and in my youth went to many agricultural shows; trust me, a 7ft draft horses feels *huge*. Corwin basically says Morgernstern is *big* and we have to presume his weight matches his height. Morgernstern can be significantly lighter through 2 means; either he's physically *extremely* skinny [which I think we're all agreed is aesthetically undesirable] or else his body is far less dense than for Earth norm horses.
One advantage of making Morgernstern less dense would be to up the power to weight ratio, making him fleeter and more nimble, as well as less prone to sinking into leaf mold. :-)
When it comes to speed, I wonder if the stats for Man o War are entirely accurate at it looks as if we're having trouble getting that horse up to speed?
It is a pity we don't have stats for hunters but frankly I'm amazed you've found as much as you have. Well done! :-)
Your new speed calcs are entirely correct AFAICT, which probably explains why no RL horse can beat a car on the flat. But that does leave us with a problem over how M does it.
Perhaps the best thing to do is remember that Morgernstern is *special*; his muscles are more powerful, can output more energy, etc, etc, than animals we're accustomed to, enabling him to achieve whatever speed the GM considers appealing. Stride length would then leave the curve for RL horses and the stride rate can simply be adjusted to match.
What do you think?

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