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Thanks for the shout out. Anybody interested in reviews of TSR and OSR modules should check out the Dragonsfoot Index of Reviews.

Interesting article. The importance attached to guns as opposed to fortifications especially.

Great films, indeed. I think that my introduction to Kurosawa was about ten years ago via half of Rashomon, partially recorded one night off Channel 4. Shortly after that I borrowed Seven Samurai from the university library, and after that Ran, which I think exhausted the meagre collection...

Have you seen Rashomon? The differing accounts of the duel fought there are great, and draw a very amusing contrast with one another.

Very cool videos. I enjoyed that last one especially, but all three were worth watching.

Not sure I can do much better than wax lyrical about what I remember of my undergraduate courses, and I think that it might well be mixed up in the "grand strategy of the Roman Empire" discourse [i.e. whether they had one or not]. From what I remember, it used to be thought that Hadrian's Wall...

An interesting find, to be sure, but the accompanying article seems a bit misleading to me. As far as I am aware, it is fairly well understood and accepted that frontier marking walls, such as those built by the Chinese and Romans, were primarily methods of controlling trade, rather than...

Good stuff. I liked the dagger work, but long sword sparring is hard to beat visually!

Basically, no. Some of its tests are more valid than others, and there obviously is great enthusiasm for the subject matter, but the primary purpose of the show is to entertain, not to educate, and that frequently shows through. It may well be that the broad conclusions that they reach are...

Nice talk; not sure I would take everything he says at face value, such as the age a 120 lb long bow would be suitable for, or the shooting of knights out of their saddles, but I would guess that he is better positioned than me to guess at these things.

One possibility is that the D&D "drow" is related to "trow".

Yes, indeed, and though I have severe reservations about the work of Terry Jones, it certainly is the case that in the last couple of decades the popular perception of medieval society has begun to shift. I can certainly sympathise with that. Exactly so, perhaps the most difficult aspect to...

Yes, indeed, exactly this. We very often only see what we want to see, and only hear what we want to hear. Despite being reasonably well informed on the subject of medieval and ancient arms and armour, I find myself easily lapsing into inaccuracies and generalisations once I get some...

Basically, it is a series of translated texts for undergraduate (and postgraduate) crusade students. Several of the texts are available via Amazon; I think I found a full list whilst perusing De Re Militari one time... ah Google worth its weight in gold: Crusade Texts in Translation. Hmmn, I...

Yeah, that is a good book; the whole Crusade Texts in Translation series is a great resource, and there are some very interesting, and sometimes unexpected, nuggets to be found.

This sounds interesting. I am not familiar with a Byzantine warrior-monk precursor, could you elaborate on what you are referring to? [i.e. provide some context in terms of sources and dates]. It sounds like something worth following up.

There was a second edition fighter supplement released a while back for OSRIC, but I am not sure there is a great appetite for such things. The differences between the first and second edition systems are too minor to worry about outside of a particular campaign or convention game.

I am not sure why it is relevant. The problem with the D20/3e perception check is not the idea that sometimes people miss things, but how frequently and under what conditions. In earlier editions the subject was partially addressed in the rules, but mainly left up to the game master, and that is...

There is room for both, there always has been. The only question is where do you lay the emphasis with regard to your playing preferences. Do you want to resolve action A with a die roll or do you want to "play it out"? At what point does one interfere with the other? When a player has a search...

The effect of the 2e initiative rules strongly depend on which options you are using. The default method is to roll 1d10 for each side, lowest goes first, end of story. You can add casting times as an option without adding weapon speeds (they are separate options), and you can use individual...