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I also have a copy. The book is excellent: well-researched, vastly informative, and eminently readable. I put it up there with Gies & Gies Life in a Medieval Village as a "must-read" popular history. It is published by Penguin, and its ISBN 0-14-019501-7. I once ran a (Chivalry & Sorcery)...

I agree, which is one reason I think a GM is ill-advised to include areas that require this sort of service unless there are no paladins in any PC parties, or unless the focus of the campaign is on thus imposing order and delivering justice. Another reason is that without some sort of social...

I concur. And I would add that where the legitimate local authority is weak, lax, negligent, or otherwise ineffective a paladin is duty-bound to impose order to the same extent. Now, if your paladin were a Christian, he might be bound by the words of the Christ (eg. Matthew 5:38-47). But then...

Then I stand by my assessment that the statement "A Standing Army didn't exist" is only 'mostly true'. No country in the world today except for North Korea has anything like the present North Korean Army. But it would be quite wrong to say that the UK has no standing army. Besides, I think I...

That is only "mostly true". The Byzantine Empire had a standing army throughout the early and High middle ages. The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon were a standing army in Palestine, Syria, Cyprus, and Spain from about 1120 to about 1310. The Order of Knights of the Hospital...

Yes, but "godspell" in this case simply meant 'good news'.

Make sure that even the white bits are black.

There were precious few standing armies. The exceptions are roughly: (1) The Holy Fighting Orders, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Baltic; (2) The households of nobles; and (3) 'Free' mercenary companies. (1) The armies of the holy fighting orders...

In the first place, there was the duty of "guard and ward". A knight who owed military service not only had to show up or provide a substitute in time of war, he [may also have] had to show up for specified service guarding one of his lord's castles in peace-time. In the second place, lords and...

Do we have to wait?

/me beats Hong with a stick.

It was 1981, or maybe late in 1980. I was in Year 11 or Year 12: what I think Americans call a junior or senior at high school. Ian Grojnowski had run a game before, but it degenerated into a bit of a schmozzle. I tried to do it right. I sketched a dungeon that consisted of the ruins of a...

Usually, I make up an adventure about the things that they do. This still leaves me with a problem when the player characters won't do anything at all. This problem comes up most often if I let the characters get into a comfortable and secure position. Keep them hungry, keep them under threat...

I think you'll find that was Raymond Chandler rather than Dashiel Hammett. This will come as no surprise to you if you have read some of the works of each. Hammett's stories are much better put-together.

You are going to have to be careful about this, because a lot of what was called 'coal' in early records was charcoal (made by charring wood), not mineral coal. For example, when you read about a saint being martyred by burning 'over coals', they mean that he was barbecued over the coals of a...

I can understand how that would be. The James Bond subgenre gives a lot of support for that, and West End's James Bond 007 is the best match of rules to genre of any RPG I know of.

How well-detailed is the setting you play in? Do you know what a typical person aspires to? Respects? Does at 4 PM? It is much easier to play a character that you understand well, and that can include understanding the character's culture in considerable detail. Most game settings have cultures...

Well, I guess that depends on how interesting you find it to work around constraints and to sometimes have to change tactics. A character who specialises in archery can easily rip through two or three arrows per turn of combat, so unless you have a mule loaded with the things or a Heward's Handy...

Yes, of course. How hard is it to make tally-marks?

They are, at least in limited circles. My general-purpose RPG of choice, ForeSight uses the 'ease factor' method of adjusting task difficulty, and a (cleaned-up and generalised) version of the JB007 Quality Rating system for adjudicating results. It also incorporates a generalised version of the...