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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Von Ether" data-source="post: 9376860" data-attributes="member: 15582">As a GM who grew up more on Tolkien than history books, I'm not surprised when a war of five armies is brief compared to the rest of the book. So to have the 1e version of Ekbir go into a run on sentence about the country's army seems overly detailed -- especially when it sounds like a word math problem. If you are not a history aficionado who gets the subtext of the time period being referred to, how does one ascertain if a 5k army is serious threat or a joke? And if you have a kitchen sink setting, how do those number mean anyway when faux Ancient Egypt goes up against faux Middle Ages Europe? This reminds me of how much early day TSR writers assumed of their audience already knew and the resources they had access to. (I grew up in the sticks and the closest higher education library to me was almost an hour away back then.)For me,  I would have had to comb the whole book to compare army numbers to get a handle army sizes. While I am sure some of us have fond memories of doing that, I didn't even know Greyhawk - or Forgotten Realms -- existed until I got to college. By then, I was deep into making my own settings and campaign in GURPS.</blockquote>