Recent content by Demetrio

Which fits well with the Byzantine weights for silver. That dragonsfoot article is great but it does fall into the trap of assuming gold coins will be heavier than silver and copper/bronze ones, which tended not to be the case. Not that it's a big deal really.

The Roman denarius (a coin containing some silver, usually about 3g) weighed about 3.5g on average. The sestertius (a bronze coin of lesser value) tended to be much heavier, often weighing in excess of ten grams. Byzantine coins of about 500 A.D. (perhaps a better fit for the Hyborian Age) had...

Yes, they said they'd release material they had in development through S&P now the line is dead. Which is nice.

Carrying a bow ready-strung would ruin the bow within a fairly short time as it would be under constant tension. In fantasy art (I'm not so sure about the writing, Tolkien for instance had Legolas stringing his bow before firing) it is common, as you say. Magic, I suppose. Shields were quite...

Another advantage is that as you already know what your character will be like at level 12, it removes any feeling of 'wishing I was there already', which some people may like but can sometimes lead to levels being advanced rather quickly in order that players see some progression in their...

I can't abide low level (1-3) play myself. As I've said before, what we did was to generate characters from levels 6-12 and pick the level most appropriate to the adventure (generally we only have 2-3 players so characters that can hold their own are pretty much essential). this, I find, works...

And I'm saying that the principle you quoted isn't relevant (at least not in the way you meant). It's the aggregate of extremes that's the problem. (I didn't say I was referring to a principle by the way)

It doesn't. The simple fact is that although you tend to get a more predictable spread of numbers the more dice rolls you make, it is also true that you get a higher aggregate of extreme results. And it is the extreme results that cause problems for the players because their characters will...

In fairness it can hardly be worse than the previous efforts.

I'm surprised anyone who's read O'Brian's novels grumbles about the film to be honest. It was as close to capturing the essence of the books as one could hope to manage in 2 hours. Aubrey's character was changed slightly but not beyond recognition. Lots more stuff could have gone in of course...

yeah, I'd like to see someone do Conan in the way Master and Commander was done, a mish-mash of storylines from various O'Brian books, but staying true enough to the flavour of the writing and only changing the essence of the characters a little (Aubrey was just a bit too 'matey' with his...

I didn't like 300 not so much because of the messing with history (because almost all films mess with their source material to varying degrees), but because it was so cartoonish (which I guess it would be, being based on a cartoon). So I couldn't even enjoy it as an action film, it was too over...

It might be fun, to be fair, if fun is your bag of fish. But I think it's safe to say it won't have much authentic Conan flavour. Which is a shame. You can see what they're trying to do though, appeal to a wide audience. I'm slightly surprised they didn't decide to use Valeria as suitable love...

This isn't strictly true. For instance, the Arabs knew how TB could be transmitted. Granted, they are not strictly speaking an ancient culture, but they're relevant to the Hyborian Age. And hygiene was recognised as being important in the prevention of the spread of infection by many ancient...

Sure, in certain cases intervention did make things worse. But I don't think it was always entirely fruitless or detrimental. And there was continuous progress in the field of medicine. And there was some decent knowledge. I mean it was known that deadly nightshade was a sometimes useful...