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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1130163" data-attributes="member: 151">Well, speaking for myself, I loved the book.  It fleshed out the medieval period in a way that no previous source had.  Some of the information was known to me, but a lot of it was not.  I didn't know about the peasant legal and political systems that existed outside of the main feudal caste system, for example, or many of the roles of an individual noble's retinue.  Maybe it was common knowledge that bee-keeping was a valuable and important skill around the manor, or that a dovecote was a valued food resource...but I didn't know that, and was certainly never taught any such things. I certainly didn't have any idea how to translate the granite quarries for one of my PCs lands into in-game income, or how his estate actually worked.  MME is wonderful for this.  Undertanding (and I mean really understanding) the guild system, the differences between different types of guilds and their places in society, the system of land distrbution and investment....discussion of these factors in terms of a gameworld was invaluable information for me. One thing that always bothered me about a typical D&D game is how two-dimensional the world appears to actually be.  Players enter a village, go to a tavern, travel to a dungeon, return to a village or town and magically sell the wealth of a small nation in treasure, and so on.  The motivations of the villagers, the social, econonmic and political structure behind the village and a host of other factors were missing for my verisimilitude.   WS: MME isn't the only way to run a game...but it is a wonderful way to integrate such elements if you desire.  It's game elements are low-key, to be sure, and if you're looking for a high 'crunch' factor, you won't find it here.  The economic simulator is worth the price of entry alone, however, and the focus on gaming is priceless.  Sure, I could get the same information from reading some dry 800-page tome on peasant life in the Rhein River Valley...but not as readable, not focused on gaming and not with actual open-content gaming material included.</blockquote>

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