Recent content by Sepulchrave II

Coin weights in early editions were bonkers. An 18th Century 5 kopeks coin is 1.6oz, and it's copper. So 1cp in AD&D or B/X is this big compared to a modern US quarter:

According to the Paston Letters, the cost of a room in an inn in c.15th was around 8 pence. That's about 9g of pure silver. In D&D, there are 50 coins to a pound, which means a silver coin weighs about 9g. So, 1sp.

My attempt at levity failed miserably. My point was wouldn't it be funny if our heroes' swords routinely broke in combat. I probably shouldn't have included two swords which actually did break.

Stormbringer: Excalibur: Andúril:

The glamour of the 60s/70s era is very well done, with scenes like the astronauts racing their corvettes to the bar. Almost had a kind of Mad Men in Space vibe in places.

I loved S1, and, like you, enjoyed each successive season less than the previous. Still worth watching, though. S5 promises a , so might be pretty cool.

Mary Wollstonecraft was definitely a deist, or a rational theist - she often framed her feminist arguments in religious language. Although she despised the clergy and superstition. Mill called himself a “non-believer” but was not militantly atheist. In Three Essays on Religion, he allows that...

I'd actually go further - at least in Europe. Even in the Renaissance, the idea of a supernatural reality prevailed overwhelmingly. We didn't get whispers of Deism until the 1560s (Pierre Viret). Bruno and Spinoza (although accused of atheism) were pantheists. Deism began to gain traction as a...

It really depends on your divine ontology. Maybe if the war god is killed, people can no longer commit acts of violence. Maybe if the Sun god is killed, the world is plunged into darkness. Maybe if the storm god is killed, it stops raining etc. Maybe another deity will step into the deceased...

Mostly, yes. But a fair number of Greek and Roman philosophers were either atheistic or theomachistic, and it's not hard to envisage a world where their ideas either prevailed or became more widespread - i.e. backed by a sympathetic imperial power. (While it's fair to say that imperial polities...

A few thoughts, FWIW. I don't think that looking to modern expressions of polytheism (e.g. Hellenism, Asatru, Romuva) is particularly useful in trying to illuminate the - rather odd - D&D religious worldview. Nor do I think that looking at certain aspects of contemporary Hinduism has much to...