Can you recommend a good (non-RPG) book on swords?

[Piratecat]

Thanks, Steve!

And Doug? Too cool. India was done in a WotC web supplement for OA, I believe. The name escapes me at the moment.

 

[jasper]

Oakeshott, Ewart books and articles.
A Knight and his Armour, A Knight in Battle, A Knight and his Castle, A Knight and his Castle, A Knight and his Horse , A Knight and his Weapons, Dark Age Warrior*, The Archaeology of Weapons , The Sword in the Age of Chivalry . Journal of the Arms and Armour Society of London, A Royal Sword in Westminster Abbey in The Connoisseur Magazine 1951*. The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England *, Fighting Men (with Henry Treece)*, The Blindfold Game*, Sound of Battle (with Leonard Clark)*, European Weapons and Armour*, Records of the Medieval Sword*, Sword in Hand*, Sword in the Viking Age* (not yet published). http://www.oakeshott.org/


Hans Talfhoffer Fechtbuch* keyword search

note * means I look for it for my horde

the complete bladesmith by jim hrisoulas

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

You would need to take many Exotic Weapon Proficiency feats to use all the punch daggers, tiger claws, triple daggers and other deadly toys they had on display.

Katars are simple, and India probably uses the UA weapons groups variant.

Has anyone done Moghul India for d20?

On the WotC site there's a web enhancement for Oriental Adventures called Mahasarpa. It's an adaptation of OA to be an Indian setting, and is cool. I know that at least one person is campaigning there now, but can't remember who. I believe that Green Ronin's psionics setting (Mindshadows?) is pseudo-Indian.

 

[Krieg]

Talfhoffer Fechtbuch

Mark Rector has done a good job of producing an english tranlation version of Talhoffer's 1467 Fechtbuch, it is being printed by Greenhill Military Paperbacks.

That being said I wouldn't really recomend Tallhoffer's work or any of the other period "fight books" (Codex Wallerstein, Fiore De Liberi, I.33 etc) to someone who is just starting to learn about period sword arts.

As wonderful as the Fechtbuch's are, they can be very frustrating to the beginner (and even the "not so beginner! ).