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Well, the city on the site known as Troy has been destroyed at lest seven or eight times: earthquakes might have been responsible a few times, but it was probably sacked a number of times. I have a vague recollection that I came across some mention of diplomatic correspondence preserved at...

Homer's version no doubt took liberties with earlier epics, and I expect that when he wrote it there were people saying "Homer's Iliad is very good, but you have to check your love of the actual story at the door". Troy is [a version of] the story of the Trojan War. It is not the story of the...

That is both in keeping with the sources and probably historical, (depending what date you take for the Trojan War. Though I have read one de-mythologising version that speculated tht the Trojan Horse is a confused account of a .

Interesting observation. Lord of the Rings had a script that I would uses as toilet-paper.

Well, I wasn't thinking of saving the Templars from Philip le Bel, Guillaume de Nogaret, and Esquiu de Florian, so much as rescuing them from the wickness that made them vulnerable to worldly machinations. It was set up to be a big turn the other cheek, bring the stray lamb back to the fold...

The best thing I ever ran was a miniseries campaign that had to fit in before the study vacation (swot vac) at the end of 2nd semester 1987. I had exactly seven weeks and did a collect-the-set quest for seven items in which the PCs were under a strict time limit. The real-world deadline very...

Or skill choices.

Who says these games are bad for your education?! Seriously, all my formal studies were in Ancient History and Modern History. Mediaeval was the period left out, and what I know of it is all from researching background for RPGs. As for that campaign, it might have been a little weirder than you...

I think it makes sense to publish D&D in at least two books, so that people who intend to play characters but not to GM do not have to shell out for material that only a GM is going to use. I would think that a Players' Handbook, a GM's Handbook, and a series of optional world books would be...

If you are talking about Carnarvon, Conway, Beaumaris, Rhuddlan, Flint, Hope, Ruthin, Bluith, Llanbadarn and Harlech, it was Edward I who ordered them built (although some were not finished or abandoned until the end of the next reign). And the economics is very like the Star Wars Strategic...

My 13th-level elvish monk Otanes (elves were sort of Persian in that GM's game) died without a penny to his name. But he took the BBEG with him, so that was all right. My 4th-level paladin Edmund Edwinson seems according to his character sheet to have 208 and a half silver pennies in his hoard...

Fair enough. That being the case I will indulge in one last reply. No. I think that the prices ought to make sense in comparison to one another, given that the people in a D&D world always have mediaeval production methods to fall back on. I don't demand a realistic mediaeval economy: just...

How are they at dropping a million here or there to build a castle? Or should I not stir that up?

I'm sure that what you say was an important design criterion. But perhaps a world-building consideration drove the design in the same direction (ie. towards having more high-level NPCs). Given the gross differences in power between D&D characters a few levels apart, a D&D society with no NPCs...

Okay. 25,000 inhabitants. With various curative and healing magics (available from the lower-level clerics and the low-level slots of the high-level clerics) they aren't going to be quite as susceptible to accident and disease as mediaeval people were. For a rough ballpack, let's say that half...

One source I used was a list compiled by Glenys Armstrong, The Company of Ordinance +44 (0)1793 524524, which cited as its sources: New Towns of the Middle Ages - Maurice Beresford 1988 A Baronial Household of the 13th Century - Margaret Wade La Barge 1980 Standards...

A living, breathing example of a the proposition that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions, this character is one whom I would unhesitatingly classify as Evil. I am never very strong on the Lawful-Chaotic axis, because it seem to me to muddle together things that don't go together...

The price of copper in D&D is pretty bad, I'll agree: about nine times higher than historical values. That puts copper pans in doubt. But the price of gold (although rather low by mediaeval standards) is within the range of values for the ancient Mediterranean. Neither of these discrepancies...

If you want camaraderie, patronise me in normal-sized type.

That has been suggested before. I don't think that it accounts for the fact that some of the prices are way too cheap.