Editing Recommended Web Video Channels (section)

==History Channels (The Kind That Don't Show Ancient Aliens 24/7)==

Because "realism" is something of a debate, actual [[Wargaming]] is a thing, and the general assuming a setting should be "[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LikeRealityUnlessNoted Like Reality Unless Noted]", we'll list some good "realism argument" and "actual military history" channels.

===[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mftUX7apmV1vsVXZh7RTw Drachinifel]===
Drachinifel is a British amateur historian Youtuber with a keen interest in naval history focussing on Age of Sail to the end of WW2. Known for his Five Minute Guides on ships (which are almost always over 5 minutes), Wednesday Rum Ration specials on naval topics, and Sunday Drydocks answering Youtube and Patreon questions which range from one hour to 4 hours. Also has an extremely good memory. His most popular videos as of 21 April 2021 are on Operation Rheinubung, USS Texas and the A6M Zero.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/ForgottenWeapons Forgotten Weapons]===
'''The''' historical gun guy. He covers the history and specifications of guns, and oh boy, he covers all sorts of guns, from tiny watch sized guns to massive coastal defense cannons, prototypes to production weapons, and oddities like belt buckle guns and homemade poacher muskets. The man is largely an academic and historian <ref>Like having written a book on French gun development from the late 1800s to now.</ref>, which sets him apart from most gun channels<ref>A large part of his popularity is that he avoids the politics of guns, unless it affects the weapon in question (and then usually sticks only to the laws in question or military procurement arguments). If this sounds unimportant, realize that [[:Category:Argument bait|the arguments around gun control]] are frequently so polarized that [[Skub|it's fairly easy to get massively annoyed at people who you (theoretically) agree with]] because they're too preachy or using bad debating tactics.</ref>, but he's still got his fair share of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofp812mY6R4 goofy moments and memes]. Besides looking at the history of each gun and shooting them, he also disassembles them on camera which is a boon for any gun wiz who wants to understand how each piece’s physical contraptions work. When his fans started calling him "Gun Jesus," he [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI3x30iamHc fully adopted the meme]. If you want to have obscure and weird weapons in your campaign, he's a good place to start looking for such.

===[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggHoXaj8BQHIiPmOxezeWA History Buffs]===
This channel focuses on blockbuster films based on history; not only are you given a detailed summary for the historical context of the film, but also notes where the film may deviate from historical accounts; very useful if you were ever shown such a film in history class and developed an inaccurate understanding of the events shown. Film selection includes such classics such as ''Lawrence of Arabia'', ''Waterloo'', ''Tombstone'', etc... as well as some genuine stinkers like ''Kingdom of Heaven'' and ''Timeline''. He’s not afraid to say when a movie is garbage as a film even though it’s historically accurate (''Alexander''), good despite being totally inaccurate (''The Untouchables''), or has a good reason to be less than accurate (''300''’s framing device of propagandized oral history). Most will be war films or other genres of action-based historical dramas, like Westerns and Gangster films.

===[https://www.youtube.com/@HistoricalArchery Historical Archery]===
This channel focuses on bows and crossbows extensively. Compared to other archery or crossbow channels (like Todd's Workshop on historical pieces or JoergSprave focusing on modernized tactical gizmos), he's focused on firing and reconstructing all elastic missile weapons from the past. European or Asian, mounted or infantry, longbow or crossbow, he has it all. 

===[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A Historia Civilis]===
Mainly Roman history, told from a top down perspective with coloured squares.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/THFEProductions Invicta]===
Like History Civilis above, but with better art and more of a Roman focus.

===[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMmaBzfCCwZ2KqaBJjkj0fw Kings and Generals]===
An excellent channel dedicated to showing in depth military campaigns and battles using the Total War games and custom art and maps. Includes excellent videos on The Romans, Early Muslim Expansion, The Ottomans and The Thirty Years War. Main narrator OfficiallyDevin has [https://www.youtube.com/c/OfficiallyDevin two] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC79s7EdN9uXX77-Ly2HmEjQ separate] channels dedicated to high quality gaming content.

===[https://www.youtube.com/c/LazerPig LazerPig]===
Covering mainly military matters, especially tank history, and mainly focused on common misconceptions and "weird but true" history, such as the various lost US nukes, or that time two converted luxury cruise ships fought a naval battle. Very sarcastic, very drunk, very Scottish.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/lindybeige Lindybeige]===
Very much a nerd's nerd, and easily mistaken for a crazy homeless man living under a bridge, but he's covered a lot of stuff that's of interest to /tg/. Some topics include discussions on medieval arms and armor, tanks, castles, historical battles, etc. If you want the /tg/ stuff, the "Weapons and Armor" "History" and "Warfare" playlists are of interest. Though take his info with a grain of salt as a lot of his videos contain bad history and he is very biased towards England when it pops up (like saying the Bren Gun is better than the MG-34/42 using a lot of inaccurate information, claiming Napoleon was as bad as Hitler and unironically saying pre-decimal British currency was better) the playlists mentioned above are mostly fine though. He even covers some tabletop-specific gaming material in his various discussions, ranging from scenery creation to fantasy weapon design, to complaints about 4th edition, and even a contest for the creation of a "[[Wat|Surprise Elemental]]."

===[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK09g6gYGMvU-0x1VCF1hgA Military History Visualized]===
Austrian historian who makes videos covering various topics about military conflicts, mostly around ww2, but has content from the Roman Empire to the modern day. Unlike some other channels, links to and quotes the sources that he uses for his video, so you know he isn't just talking out of his ass. His videos focus on many different things, military campaigns like Kursk, debunking of common myths or stereotypes, like Soviet mine dogs or the Versailles Treaty, comparisons of military equipment, and just overall interesting stuff like German tactics in ww2. Collaborates with other history channels like Military Aviation History, Drachinifel, and Chieftain, and has a few interviews with German historians. Has a second channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChImwmytehS5SmlqMkXwoEw Military History not Visualized] which lacks the graphics and has him talking directly to the camera. Good place to start if you want a "historically accurate" campaign, or just to say "Well, actually" in discussions. He also appears on gaming videos and is a frequent guest [https://www.youtube.com/user/botimegaming on his friend Bohica Ice's channel].

===[https://www.youtube.com/@PerunAU/videos Perun]===

Possibly too contemporary for this list, but incredibly useful for thinking about warfare from an industrial and political perspective, Perun mainly covers the Ukrainian/Russian conflict, from a defense economics perspective using PowerPoint presentations. The thing is, his PowerPoint presentations are insightful, interesting, and funny; and he covers military matters from a perspective that most people avoid: Economics. Particularly recommended for worldbuilding purposes is his video on [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9w17Ne1S0M why war economies don't collapse until they do] for how to convincingly end a war, his video on [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXKUNc9yI2A the Wagner group] for worldbuilders who are thinking about including mercenaries, and a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4 trilogy] of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz59GWeTIik videos] that [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx5mTslkUBs cover] three major internal flaws of the Russian army that should give you some good ideas on how to make an interesting bad-guy army (just don't do it to the extent the Russians do, since, as the titles imply, doing too much of these things destroys armies).

===[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCodbH5mUeF-m_BsNueRDjcw Overly Sarcastic Productions]===
As the name implies, the duo in charge of this channel summarise history, historical figures, and myths both well-known and obscure in gloriously sarcastic (and cartoonish) fashion. Blue usually handles the more historical aspects, while Red covers the literary and mythological. Excellent for getting an overview of parts of history without going into absurd levels of detail, and for learning about commonly-expy'd mythical figures. They also talk about tropes and give writing advice.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/scholagladiatoria Scholagladiatoria]===
A HEMA instructor and antique sword seller who discusses the details how weapons were actually used and the distinctions between types of swords. Prone to rambling about context.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/shadmbrooks Shadiversity]===
A historian and fantasy writer who discuses things about the middle ages you probably didn't know, common misconceptions about the middle ages seen in fiction, how to make fantasy more realistic (for example designing a back scabbard that actually works), reviews of fantasy movies and tv shows, and more. He tends to ramble a lot though, so be ready to do a lot of time-skipping or go look somewhere else if you want a straightforward answer.

===[https://www.youtube.com/@Skallagrim Skallagrim]===
The other historical weapon and fantasy Youtube Channel, he's just as likely as Shadiversity to look at pop culture dispays of melee weaponry and lampoon how film, tv, or game directors screw things up for the sake of visual appeals to modern audiences.

===[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLfMmOriSyPbd5JhHpnj4Ng TimeGhost]===
The guys best known for running a "World War II: Week by week", a channel that covers World War II, week by week, in real time, and, with a different presenter, The Great War, which is more or less the same thing for WWI. Indiana Neidell, the primary presenter did the week by week coverage on the Great War channel and has moved on with some of the crew to the World War 2 and Time Ghost channels. The Great War channel continues with the post war events<ref>For example, America officially signed the treaty officially ending the war 3 years after the war ended--and the debate involved is significant to understanding why isolationism was such a big thing in America in the lead up to WWII.</ref>.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/todsstuff1 Tod's Workshop]===
Propmaker and engineer Tod Todeschini covering various replicas of antique arms he has made. While many channels talk about the history of the weapons, Tod's Workshop uniquely focuses on their construction and the physics reasons they are the way they are. Of particular note is his [[crossbow]] series, where he covers the history, power and mechanical design of many, many types of crossbows, and his ongoing "Lockdown Longbow" series where he uses a crossbow capable of firing arrows at the same speed as a longbow to test how different types of armour fare against a variety of arrows. He also built many of the weapons used in the Netflix version of The Witcher.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson Townsends]===
A series focused on the day to day life of 18th and early 19th Century America. This means it covers a wide variety of topics including construction, clothing, music, laundry, writing, brewing, and (especially) cooking instead of the military campaigns typical of history lessons. Despite the late focus, most of what it covers is applicable to pre-industrial society in general and it often talks of how things were done before this, giving you an idea of the day-to-day life of a pre-modern commoner. Be sure to be well-stocked on nutmeg.

===[https://www.youtube.com/user/TheChieftainWoT The Chieftain's Hatch]===
A tank commander and tank historian does examinations and explanations of old tanks (The guy happens to be [[Vidya gaems|World of Tanks]]' in-house historian, and has done multiple talks at the Tank Museum at Bovington). Also some model tanks. He's also a contributor to the channel World War Two week by week.

===[https://www.youtube.com/c/VoicesofthePast Voices of the Past]===
Dramatic readings of primary sources from history, with some annotations on things like conversions for historical units and present day locations. The words of sources like Marco Polo on anything, Aztecs on Conquistadors, Europeans on Japan, Japan on America/Europe, Rome on China and China on Rome provide excellent fuel for describing alien cultures and strange lands. The [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAp30mf1pYY accounts of conquistadors slaughtering and looting Aztecs in response to learning of their widespread practice of human sacrifice] reads much like the chronicles of a group of [[Adventurer]]s.