Recent content by Matthew_

Thanks for the shout out. Anybody interested in reviews of TSR and OSR modules should check out the Dragonsfoot Index of Reviews.

Interesting article. The importance attached to guns as opposed to fortifications especially.

Great films, indeed. I think that my introduction to Kurosawa was about ten years ago via half of Rashomon, partially recorded one night off Channel 4. Shortly after that I borrowed Seven Samurai from the university library, and after that Ran, which I think exhausted the meagre collection...

Have you seen Rashomon? The differing accounts of the duel fought there are great, and draw a very amusing contrast with one another.

Very cool videos. I enjoyed that last one especially, but all three were worth watching.

Not sure I can do much better than wax lyrical about what I remember of my undergraduate courses, and I think that it might well be mixed up in the "grand strategy of the Roman Empire" discourse [i.e. whether they had one or not]. From what I remember, it used to be thought that Hadrian's Wall...

An interesting find, to be sure, but the accompanying article seems a bit misleading to me. As far as I am aware, it is fairly well understood and accepted that frontier marking walls, such as those built by the Chinese and Romans, were primarily methods of controlling trade, rather than...

Good stuff. I liked the dagger work, but long sword sparring is hard to beat visually!

Basically, no. Some of its tests are more valid than others, and there obviously is great enthusiasm for the subject matter, but the primary purpose of the show is to entertain, not to educate, and that frequently shows through. It may well be that the broad conclusions that they reach are...

Nice talk; not sure I would take everything he says at face value, such as the age a 120 lb long bow would be suitable for, or the shooting of knights out of their saddles, but I would guess that he is better positioned than me to guess at these things.

One possibility is that the D&D "drow" is related to "trow".

Yes, indeed, and though I have severe reservations about the work of Terry Jones, it certainly is the case that in the last couple of decades the popular perception of medieval society has begun to shift. I can certainly sympathise with that. Exactly so, perhaps the most difficult aspect to...

Yes, indeed, exactly this. We very often only see what we want to see, and only hear what we want to hear. Despite being reasonably well informed on the subject of medieval and ancient arms and armour, I find myself easily lapsing into inaccuracies and generalisations once I get some...

Basically, it is a series of translated texts for undergraduate (and postgraduate) crusade students. Several of the texts are available via Amazon; I think I found a full list whilst perusing De Re Militari one time... ah Google worth its weight in gold: Crusade Texts in Translation. Hmmn, I...

Yeah, that is a good book; the whole Crusade Texts in Translation series is a great resource, and there are some very interesting, and sometimes unexpected, nuggets to be found.