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I'm reasonably sure that "drow" is a Shetland islands variant of "trow", i.e. a malevolent & supernatural creature. It's etymologically related to "troll". Of course if your "drow" have black skin, white hair, and a spider-worshipping religion, they're clearly WotC's drow; but the name itself...

It must be pointed out that there are two or more sides to every story. The above account is certainly less than true, and Matt knows that perfectly well. Maybe we should just leave it at that. Although if he does want to go into the whole "sorry tale" I'm sure he would find it far more...

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No author listed -- that was one of mine, and one I'm very proud of.

Well, the Scots did continue to favour swords sometime after that point. At the Battle of Killiecrankie (1689), for example, there were still a few of the original claymores (i.e. two-handed swords) fielded, and several of the Scottish nobility still wore full plate armour. Eye-witness accounts...

Apparently the British troops made some use of bayonets in the Falklands war. I read in a memoir that there were a few occasions when a soldier would empty a clip just as he made close contact with the enemy, and rather than reload would find it quicker to just keep going with the bayonet. Of...

Yeah, that's the way I always do it. It can still be done really quickly -- there are hotkeys (F and R, IIRC) that let you hit one key to skip down to the next instance of the word, and another key to replace if you want to. So it shouldn't take more than a second or so per instance to decide if...

Almost forgot -- the Muppet Treasure Island soundtrack has two of the most piratically cool tracks ever, 'Shiver My Timbers' and 'Professional Pirate.' The others are pretty good too.

I really rate The Golden Apple, a duo of Discordian fantasy folk rock musicians: http://www.fotthewuk.co.uk/goldenapple/ Unfortunately none of their most piratical numbers (Dogs and Freaks, The Captain Slept, and Elf Locks) are available as free downloads, but you should buy all their CDs...

Too complex for me. I think 3E handles it far better -- if you have a dagger against a greatsword, you need to be closing to grappling range to get any real advantage out of the difference between weapons. Bear in mind that a greatsword is all weapon -- if someone's past the point, you use it...

Hmm, on checking the book -- which was this one: http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/title_detail.php/title=P6035 -- it ain't there. You're right, they do vary in quality and I found a couple of errors in the above one, though it does have some extraordinarily cool anecdotes. I picked it up and...

I've not come across a figure as low as 800g (which is in any case very close to the 2 lb = 900g figure I quoted) but I admit I don't know a great deal about Viking-era sword weights. Most later medieval swords seem around the 2 lb mark or a little more though. Bastard sword at 1.2 kg is of...

Hmm, I find anything that weighs much over 2 pounds to 2 1/2 pounds is quite slow to use one-handed, especially in armour. Bastard swords are usually 3+ pounds (real ones, not D&D ones). There's a mention of bastard swords in (IIRC) the Osprey book about the Siege of Malta. Apparently they were...

Right now, there's a lot more traffic on rpg.net about Conan d20 than there is here, though I'm sure that will change once the game is in the shops: http://rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=97322&perpage=10&pagenumber=1 http://rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=97330&perpage=10&pagenumber=1...

That makes two of us!

There's a fairly lenghthy account of how I introduced my three-and-a-half-year-old son Kyle to tabletop roleplaying, in the form of Skull & Bones, on my livejournal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/serpentstar It's the second post down at that URL, posted December 2nd 2003.

I believe it's true that European live-roleplay weapons are somewhat harder than US-style ones, although the idea is that you barely touch your opponent at all -- there is no encouragement to hit hard, and I find that the reverse is true. I've never known a serious injury (in my 20 years of...

Hmm. Well, I wrote most of the book, and IRL I'm broadly pro-European, anarchist, anti-war, and an eco-activist. But I'm not here to talk about politics. Just to point out that a game designer's personal politics may apear to have little or nothing to do with the game he produces. :) We...

I'll second those who recommended Elf - mostly for the weapon proficiencies. On the specialisation front, I think Divination is often overlooked. Admittedly it doesn't seem especially powerful, but you can drop Necromancy to take it -- which to my mind, makes it the next best thing to free...