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For the purpose of writing my response to the "how many monster books do you own?" poll I went to my RPG shelf and counted the RPGs. Eighteen! Not counting different edition os Vampire, ForeSight. and Hero System as different games. And I am by no means a collector.

Back when I was GMing a lot and therefore in good practice, I used to back myself to prep an adventure for an arbitrary campaign in seventeen minutes, and to prep a new campaign in the time it took players to generate new characters (typically about an hour). The trick was (and is) to design...

I own eighteen different RPGs: D&D 3.0, The Fantasy Trip, DragonQuest, GURPS, Vampire, BESM, Hero System, In Nomine, Passion Play, Star Wars (d20), Chivalry & Sorcery (3rd edition), James Bond 007, Fuzion, CyberPunk 2020, Bushido, Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium version), Hero Wars, and ForeSight...

The Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyra gives the story from the end of the Iliad to the state of play at the beginning of the Odyssey. Arrival of the amazons, Achilles killing Penthesilea. Death of Achilles at the hands of Paris. Odysseus winning Achilles' armour at Achilles' funereal games...

Well, to be quite blunt the movie only coincides with the legends and previous fiction based on the legends (a) in broadest outline, (b) in a few superficial details, and (c) in using some of the same names for characters. The legends and previous fictions are by no means consistent with one...

Decimating a vampire? Selecting one tenth of a vampire by lot and then killling it? Reducing a vampire drastically in number? Destroying a large part of the vampire? There is nothing in the rules to prevent a thirteenth-level cleric from rescuing someone from vampirism like this. Nor is there...

It is also the story of a GM (and a group of players) who, even though it is clear that Eric does not know the word 'gazebo', cannot think of any way to explain it to him other than to say over and over "Eric! Duh! Boy are you stupid! It's a gazebo!!!!!!!". Not 'summerhouse', not even...

I got to go to the film with three attractive young women, which is not a treat I get very often. They had never heard of the Trojan War*: they were going along for a chance to see "Brad with no knickers". So I can't complain. * One of them wants to borrow my (translated) copy of the Iliad as...

I got to go to the film with three attractive young women, which is not a treat I get very often. They had never heard of the Trojan War*: they were going along for a chance to see "Brad with no knickers". So I can't complain. * One of them wants to borrow my (translated) copy of the Iliad as...

Her name is Rose Byrne. Check out her IMDB filmography.

It doesn't start at the beginning, either. The movie is plainly informed by a wide range of sources on the Trojan War, and I think they made a silly mistake to suggest that the Iliad was the only one, or even more important than any of the others. It doesn't even make a lot of sense as a...

I have just re-read it. This guy needed some work if he was going to be admired or even tolerated by modern audience. And that's without even thinking about the way he . Homer's Achilles is a monster: faithless, lawless, murderous, sacrilegious, and self-destructive. It is a real eye-opener...

I had a RuneQuest character who eventually got to be a Suncarl of Elmal and war-chief of our tribe (the only Rune level character I have ever built up: re-usable Divine Magic rocks the house!). It was generally agreed that his theme music was Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sunshine In. But...

Does it? I am just re-reading the Iliad (haven't touched it in about twenty years, except to pack and unpack it each time I have moved house), and came to a part in Book IX in which Achilles twice says that there are no two Achaeans that he loves more than Odysseus and Aias Telamonides (Big...

Just so. And besides, the "face that launched a thousand ships" line is from a 16th-century English play (Marlowe's Tragickal History of Doctor Faustus). Given that every writer since Homer (and probably before: I have just read a learned opinion that the character of Hector was created by Homer...

Besides which, the GM has forbidden this player to play a fighter because she is female, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the sex of her character. Forbidding female characters from being fighters might be a realism issue. Forbidding female players from playing fighter characters cannot...

Interesting that you should say that. I have been re-reading the Iliad, and was just struck by the bit where Hector says "Paris, you pretty boy, you woman-struck seducer; why were you ever born?... the Trojans are too soft. Otherwise you would have been stoned to death long ago for the evil you...

Even so, the rule would apply to female characters, not to female players.

Pool tables have six legs hereabouts.

It was Hittite records. You have to be able to admit the following correspondences: 1. The place being attacked was Wilusa. (Homer calls the city that was the capital of the Trojan state "Ilios", and there is no "w" in Greek. 2. The people doing the attacking were the Ahhiyawa. (Homer uses the...