Chainmail Combat with OD&D

[thegreyelf]

Okay, folks, the Forbidden Lore PDF is updated. I added bookmarks to this revision.

[chgowiz]

I just got done reading this - this is a fascinating piece of work. A couple of questions -

How has this playtested?

When have you typically made the switch from Troop to Man-to-Man? Was there a particular number of combatants?

How did this work for different party sizes - small vs. large (4 vs. 8 or 10 players) - did they find one system quicker/easier than the other?

Which do you prefer and why?

[coffee]

Aug 3, 2009 5:53:03 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

But if you take this away, what is the point of a hero fighting like "4 men"? Do you use this on the regular man-vs-man table and give 4 attacks?

Yes, I would give him 4 attacks. And give a Superhero 8. To me, that's the whole point -- these guys can fight on the man-to-man table OR the Fantasy Combat table. (And, at much higher levels, so can Clerics and Magic-Users.)

I am not in any way saying that my interpretation is the only correct one. I just said that I, personally, as an individual, disagree with something someone else got from the exact same rules I read -- it's happened before and it's happened again.

I'll go through and read the new version -- maybe I missed something, or misunderstood something. But the important thing is this: If you guys are happy playing the way you do, that's great! The important thing is that you play[/i]. Play the way that works for you -- if it isn't the way I'd do it, who cares?

[kesher]

Aug 3, 2009 7:07:27 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

Okay, folks, the Forbidden Lore PDF is updated. I added bookmarks to this revision.

Jason, you are a one-elf ODD-publishing machine! I simply cannot keep up with all the good stuff you produce.

I'll be reading this tonight with eager eyes...

[thegreyelf]

Coffee is correct--we don't all have to agree, so long as we play

chgowiz, it was playtested the way I do much of my stuff, largely through simulation, combined with my 10 years of experience doing game design professionally . I don't have an OD&D group right now, but generally when I throw stuff like this together, I run simulations myself, then grab a few friends and we run through some scenarios quickly to see what works and what doesn't.

The number of combatants really doesn't make a difference, though the Troop Type combat generally runs a lot faster. Generally if there are a lot of thugs to mow through I recommend the Troop Type combat. It works as an excellent set of mook rules. Your 4th level fighter in Chain and Bastard Sword (DM declares him Heavy Foot) kicks down the door to find a room full of 12 orcs (also Hvy Foot)...Troop Type is perfect for this. He rolls his 4 dice, looking for 6's, and the group of orcs rolls 12 dice, also looking for 6's. Each 6, on either side, represents 1 die of damage. Much quicker than rolling 4 attacks for the fighter, then 12 attacks total for the orcs and adjudicating each attack individually.

You can REALLY speed things up in this system just by having all your players throw their dice simultaneously. So if your 4th level fighter is accompanied by a 3rd level cleric (2 Men), armed with a heavy mace and chain (also scored as Hvy Foot), and a 5th level Wizard (2 men, lt. foot) who chooses not to cast a spell this round, have them all throw their dice simultaneously and count total hits.

But back to our example: When the fighter finishes, the door opposite him gets blown in, and Grog, the Orc leader strides in. Grog is a special case: an orc to whom the DM has assigned 4 hit dice. To run this combat with a more cinematic flair, the DM switches to Man-to-Man, giving the class abilities, arms and armor more importance (though if he really wants to, he can stick with Troop Type).

That's all done, now, and the fighter moves on to the next room. Figures--there WOULD be an ogre waiting for him. Time to move onto the Fantasy table.

Hope that helps.

Anyone who reads the pdf please don't hesitate to point out things that need clarified, or are contradictory. I did this latest update quickly, so it's possible it's not as clear as it should be.

[chgowiz]

Aug 3, 2009 10:54:17 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

Your 4th level fighter in Chain and Bastard Sword (DM declares him Heavy Foot) kicks down the door to find a room full of 12 orcs (also Hvy Foot)...Troop Type is perfect for this. He rolls his 4 dice, looking for 6's, and the group of orcs rolls 12 dice, also looking for 6's. Each 6, on either side, represents 1 die of damage. Much quicker than rolling 4 attacks for the fighter, then 12 attacks total for the orcs and adjudicating each attack individually.

If the Fighter rolls multiple 6s, do you count all hits against 1 orc? Or allow multiple targets? (I don't recall how Chainmail adjudicated this...)

BTW, please have an Exalt for giving me something to mentally fiddle with.

[kesher]

I would think you just apply it total: If he rolls to hits, he does 2d6 of damage which is applied to the enemy until you run out of points, which may kill several orcs. Which then reduces the total amount of dice they roll next time, etc.

The idea of having all the players roll at once is a great one, too---it starts to approach a T&T style of combat, which while not for everyone, is always something I've really liked...

[coffee]

In the example of combat in The Strategic Review #2, the Hero (who gets 4 attacks, by the way), rolls randomly to see which orcs he hits.

Oddly enough, Gygax specifically states that the hit dice for the orcs are then rolled (after they were hit!) which is a nifty insight into how things worked in his game.

The more I look at this, the more I believe I was hasty in my earlier disagreement. I'm still not 100% sold, but I'm at the point where I'm willing to give this a try and not just dismiss it out of hand.

[thegreyelf]

I would let the player decide which orcs to apply the hits to, but kesher's method is quite valid as well.

[chgowiz]

Aug 3, 2009 15:53:45 GMT -6 coffee said:

In the example of combat in The Strategic Review #2, the Hero (who gets 4 attacks, by the way), rolls randomly to see which orcs he hits.

Oddly enough, Gygax specifically states that the hit dice for the orcs are then rolled (after they were hit!) which is a nifty insight into how things worked in his game.

The more I look at this, the more I believe I was hasty in my earlier disagreement. I'm still not 100% sold, but I'm at the point where I'm willing to give this a try and not just dismiss it out of hand.

I've started doing that mentally with my <1HD and 1HD monsters (my games are still 1st to 3rd level chars) - I don't preroll HD - I just mentally figure some are weak, some are strong and see what the players roll. I tend towards the average 3 to 4 hp per HD and have a couple stronger and a couple weaker. Nobody has really complained.

[thegreyelf]

Nothing wrong with shortcuts in OD&D.

Incidentally, this combat system is working out very well for my Hyborian Age OD&D hack, though some of the racial abilities have been tricky to write up as I have to account for all three systems.

[snorri]

Back to the non-alternative combat system...

I read again Chainmail, Od&d and our favorite Grey Elf thinking about using Chainmail as Od&d combat system. So here are a few more thoughts to make things more confuse than ever:

- The use of Chainmail makes sense in a 'small army raiding the dungeon' base. It's a not a problem to have "1 die per three men, 6 kills" when you send an Hero and a warband of 50 flunkies, or to have "every two Hobbits firing count three on the Missile Fire table" when you got a full party of hobs rushing into the orc's caves. But with a smaller gang, this is less easy to use - for an individual character.

- I don’t think qualifications like ‘light foot’ , ‘heavy foot’ and so on, are just a matter of armor worn – even if the M&T could suggest it for brigands. The list of troop qualifications (Chainmail, p. 14-15) suggests another reading : they are qualifications for the fighting capabilities as a whole, not just a matter of armor.

Give an untrained peasant a horse and a plate mail, he won’t become a knight because he lacks the training. So he will keep as Light Foot. The sergeant don’t needs t be really better armored than the men-at-arm, but he’s probably more trained and experienced.

So I would advocates that troop qualification (and thus the full use of combat tables) is linked to the character style and background [that’s a reason under my ‘chainmail-style od&d character table’.]

- This view is enforced by the qualification of hobbits, dwarves and elves in the fantasy table: Dwarves attack as Heavy Foot and defend as light foot, regardless of their actual armor. Hobbits are Light foot / Light Foot. And elves, Heavy Foot / Heavy foot (I suppose the assumption is that they use magical weapons and armors, but that’s another point).

So :
- I suggest to use troop qualification as a part of the character type, regardless of armors and weapons.

- This means cultural / historical background is important (and should be random!) in this regard.

- "1 die per three men, 6 kills" style of phrase could be read as “1 die every three rounds, 1d6 hit” .

[Deleted]

It is my understanding that Heavy and Light refer to fighting formation, not arms and armor. Heavy troops fight in close formation, for instance.

Of course, I'll be the first to tell you this is certainly not my area of expertise.

[thegreyelf]

Sept 14, 2009 14:40:59 GMT -6 snorri said:

- The use of Chainmail makes sense in a 'small army raiding the dungeon' base. It's a not a problem to have "1 die per three men, 6 kills" when you send an Hero and a warband of 50 flunkies, or to have "every two Hobbits firing count three on the Missile Fire table" when you got a full party of hobs rushing into the orc's caves. But with a smaller gang, this is less easy to use - for an individual character.

Not at all. A second level hobbit fighter attacks with thrown missiles as a third level hobbit fighter. When he reaches 4th level, he attacks as a sixth level fighter. When he reaches sixth, he attacks as an ninth level fighter, etc.

Every character class has its "Man" rating listed under "Fighting capability." It's pretty straight forward, actually.

- I don’t think qualifications like ‘light foot’ , ‘heavy foot’ and so on, are just a matter of armor worn – even if the M&T could suggest it for brigands. The list of troop qualifications (Chainmail, p. 14-15) suggests another reading : they are qualifications for the fighting capabilities as a whole, not just a matter of armor.

Chainmail p. 43 (Hero footnote): "Heavy Foot, Armored Foot, Light Horse, etc., depending on arms and situations and can fire missiles equal to the same number of men..."

And Chainmail p. 14-15, which you've cited, reads as follows:

Light Foot: Missile troops, Swiss/Landsknechte, Peasants, Crews.
Heavy Foot: Normans, Saxons, Turks, Vikings, Men-at-Arms
Armored Foot: Dismounted Knights, Sergeants, Italian City Levies and Condottiere

These qualifications seem to be based upon the typical arms and armaments of the groups more than anything else, save the Swiss entry, which is noted as a "special case." Ignoring them, we see that Peasants, Missile troops, and crews generally had no armor and improvised, small, or poor quality melee weapons at best. Normons, Saxons, Turks, Vikings, and Men-at-Arms (a catch-all for "soliders") generally wore hard or studded leather to (if they were lucky) chain, and probably carried your basic sword or axe. Dismounted knights, Sergeants, etc. would wear breast plates up to field plate and carried higher quality weapons, broad or bastard swords, spiked maces, lances, etc.

I maintain my stance that it's based every bit as much on "arms and situations" as it is any kind of general training capability. I've been clear, however, that a lot of this resides in the realm of DM ruling.

Give an untrained peasant a horse and a plate mail, he won’t become a knight because he lacks the training. So he will keep as Light Foot. The sergeant don’t needs t be really better armored than the men-at-arm, but he’s probably more trained and experienced.

Absolutely untrue. A peasant with better weapons and plate mail will defend substantially better, as plate mail in general protects substantially better than no armor, and giving him a broad sword instead of his knife or pitchfork does, in fact, make him inherently better at attacking. Does it boost him all the way to armored foot? Probably not, but that's in the DM's field to judge. In D&D terms, the better trained man-at-arms would be higher level than the peasant and attack as more men.

So I would advocates that troop qualification (and thus the full use of combat tables) is linked to the character style and background [that’s a reason under my ‘chainmail-style od&d character table’.]

- This view is enforced by the qualification of hobbits, dwarves and elves in the fantasy table: Dwarves attack as Heavy Foot and defend as light foot, regardless of their actual armor. Hobbits are Light foot / Light Foot. And elves, Heavy Foot / Heavy foot (I suppose the assumption is that they use magical weapons and armors, but that’s another point).

You're being hyperbolic. NPC monster dwarves attack as Heavy Foot and defend as Light Foot. PC dwarves attack based on their character class. That's the same as saying if you allowed a PC to play a goblin, he'd always have AC 6/7, even if you put him in plate mail. NPC "monster" goblins are assumed to have a certain type of weapon and armor. Same with NPC dwarves. To claim otherwise is to deliberately ignore the major abstractions that are part and parcel of OD&D.

So :
- I suggest to use troop qualification as a part of the character type, regardless of armors and weapons.

- This means cultural / historical background is important (and should be random!) in this regard.

- "1 die per three men, 6 kills" style of phrase could be read as “1 die every three rounds, 1d6 hit” .

You're way overcomplicating things. OD&D should not be that minutely detailed. But that's my opinion on it.

[Deleted]

If you have a 4th level Heavy Foot fighter going up against 12 Orcs (also Heavy Foot) as in your earlier example your fighter will never make it to the next room. For attack 4 dice vs. 12 dice looking for 6's. For defense again 4 dice vs. 12 dice.

Chainmail gave the Hero a extra defense.
4 simultaneous Hits = killed.

Since you are using the Chainmail system the Hero should also have an extra defense.
How about 4 cumulative Hits = 1 die of damage.

[snorri]

Sept 15, 2009 6:41:36 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

A second level hobbit fighter attacks with thrown missiles as a third level hobbit fighter. When he reaches 4th level, he attacks as a sixth level fighter. When he reaches sixth, he attacks as an ninth level fighter, etc.

I like this reading, which perfectly makes sense.

Sept 15, 2009 6:41:36 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

Chainmail p. 43 (Hero footnote): "Heavy Foot, Armored Foot, Light Horse, etc., depending on arms and situations and can fire missiles equal to the same number of men..."

And Chainmail p. 14-15, which you've cited, reads as follows:

Light Foot: Missile troops, Swiss/Landsknechte, Peasants, Crews.
Heavy Foot: Normans, Saxons, Turks, Vikings, Men-at-Arms
Armored Foot: Dismounted Knights, Sergeants, Italian City Levies and Condottiere

These qualifications seem to be based upon the typical arms and armaments of the groups more than anything else, save the Swiss entry, which is noted as a "special case." Ignoring them, we see that Peasants, Missile troops, and crews generally had no armor and improvised, small, or poor quality melee weapons at best. Normons, Saxons, Turks, Vikings, and Men-at-Arms (a catch-all for "soliders") generally wore hard or studded leather to (if they were lucky) chain, and probably carried your basic sword or axe. Dismounted knights, Sergeants, etc. would wear breast plates up to field plate and carried higher quality weapons, broad or bastard swords, spiked maces, lances, etc.

I maintain my stance that it's based every bit as much on "arms and situations" as it is any kind of general training capability. I've been clear, however, that a lot of this resides in the realm of DM ruling.

Could be discused in detail, for historical reasons, but the hero quote is, efectively, a problem.

Sept 15, 2009 6:41:36 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

A peasant with better weapons and plate mail will defend substantially better, as plate mail in general protects substantially better than no armor, and giving him a broad sword instead of his knife or pitchfork does, in fact, make him inherently better at attacking. Does it boost him all the way to armored foot? Probably not, but that's in the DM's field to judge. In D&D terms, the better trained man-at-arms would be higher level than the peasant and attack as more men.

Here, I do'nt agreee. For sur, the plate-mail peasant will be a little more protected, but will feel really clumsy in his brand new armor, and having a sword do'nt help so much when you don't know how to use it. I agree for sure, that this is the dm task to judge

Sept 15, 2009 6:41:36 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

You're being hyperbolic. NPC monster dwarves attack as Heavy Foot and defend as Light Foot. PC dwarves attack based on their character class. That's the same as saying if you allowed a PC to play a goblin, he'd always have AC 6/7, even if you put him in plate mail. NPC "monster" goblins are assumed to have a certain type of weapon and armor. Same with NPC dwarves. To claim otherwise is to deliberately ignore the major abstractions that are part and parcel of OD&D.

I saw this kind of interpretation many time on various D&D forums, AC being a part of the creature standard rather than really linked to his / her armor. I admit this could be discussed too, but the reverse is also true : ac involves also the capability to dodge, move & parry.

So :
- I suggest to use troop qualification as a part of the character type, regardless of armors and weapons.

- This means cultural / historical background is important (and should be random!) in this regard.

- "1 die per three men, 6 kills" style of phrase could be read as “1 die every three rounds, 1d6 hit” .

You're way overcomplicating things. OD&D should not be that minutely detailed. But that's my opinion on it. [/quote]

That's not really complicated, but this is probably a major part of the 'alternative system' : it fits better the situation of 'one-character-per-player' than Chainmail does. But this involve a major change in the game : the Hero still had a chance to challenge the twelve orcs in chainmail, it becomes harder in Od&d.

[thegreyelf]

I'd argue it SHOULD be hard for a fourth level character to stand against twelve orcs, and even in Chainmail there's a really good chance that the group of orcs is going to waste the fighter--12d6? You're likely to score 4 simultaneous hits pretty easily.

[kesher]

Well, except that no more than three or four are going to be able to get at him at any one time. Seems to make it much closer to equal...

[thegreyelf]

Technically 8, unless his back was against a wall, but good point.

[aldarron]

So Jason, I'm wondering how all your work on this might relate to your combat system in Spellcraft and Swordplay, given that it is supposed to be inspired by Chainmail. Are you satisfied with how it reflects the chainmail systems? Do you think it would work to replace the S&S system with the Chainmail combat you've worked out in the Forbidden Lore document? I'm curious how this fits together and relates with your RPG and how you now feel about your earlier S&S work.
One small comment I have as an aside: you mention the intentions of "Gygax and Arneson" several times in Fobidden Lore, and although its clear the authorship of the LBB's is attributed to both of them, I think its also pretty clear that the Chainmail combat references were all Gygax. Arneson and Svenson (see the Dave "Sham" Bowman interview) have both mentioned that they only used Chainmail rules for combat for the first couple sessions after which Arneson invented his own mechanic. The jury seems to still be out on just how much of the "Alternate" combat system as published in the LBBs derives from Arneson, but whatever he was doing, he wasn't using the combat methods in Chainmail at all. I suspect Gygax, having written Chainmail preferred to stick with his systems and wrote D&D accordingly.

EDIT: I have since come to learn that Arneson was indeed using Chainmail in various ways whereas Gygax stuck to his alternate system from very early on.

[thegreyelf]

S&S is inspired specifically by the Man-to-Man system and did arise out of early attempts to reconcile Chainmail with OD&D. In essence, I looked at what Troll Lord did with C&C, then looked at Chainmail's Man to Man, and turned those two concepts into a core system.

As for the "Troop Type" rules, I did, in fact, incorporate a version of the Troop Type system into S&S in the revised Monstrous Mayhem (and made that part available as a free "mook rules" download from the store). Between the core S&S system and the Mook Rules download you've got a cleaned-up and streamlined version of Forbidden Lore integrated into S&S.

You have to keep in mind that during the writing of OD&D, Gygax was working from notes and ideas sent to him by Arneson. Presumably, these notes and ideas included Dave's thoughts on Chainmail for a dungeon-crawl type fantasy game. However, since we can never know for absolutely certain, it's only correct to give Dave the co-authorial credit he rightly deserves.

[aldarron]

Sept 16, 2009 20:51:47 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

As for the "Troop Type" rules, I did, in fact, incorporate a version of the Troop Type system into S&S in the revised Monstrous Mayhem (and made that part available as a free "mook rules" download from the store). Between the core S&S system and the Mook Rules download you've got a cleaned-up and streamlined version of Forbidden Lore integrated into S&S.

Coolness. I haven't downloaded Monstrous Mayhem so I wasn't aware of the connection. Will have to do that today. Thanks for the explanation.

[thegreyelf]

Make sure you get the version whose trade dress/cover design matches your core book. Otherwise you'll have redundant (in the case of the latest version) or not all (in the case of the original version) information.

So if you have the red-covered S&S, grab the black-covered MM. If you have the Brown-covered S&S, grab the green-covered MM.

[snorri]

The "maximum number of opponents" question coudl be solved in another way. If we keep the fact that od&d rounds are 1-minute long, an experimented fighter could move a lot among his foes, and even better if they fall dead one after another. So, in that way, he could fight against 12 foes in a single round without too much problem (it will look wuxia, but no more than a Dave's monk).

That's true the '4 hits to kill an hero' could be obtained easily in that way, and that's probably one of the reason which makes chainmail-style combat difficult to run with a character-centered style of game.

[Matthew]

Yeah, I am still with Snorri here on the question of "light" and "heavy" troop formations. The expectation is that a heavy unit will be heavily armoured, and a light unit lightly armoured, but it is not necessary for that to be the case. A unit of heavy foot that is arrayed in open order should not attack and defend as heavy foot, which is essentially what the rules for Swiss troops tell us.

The missile fire tables on page 11 are most instructive in this regard, having three categories:

Unarmoured
Half Armoured or Shield
Fully Armoured

If we choose to see that as corresponding to:

Light
Heavy
Armoured

...then we must conclude that light troops do not carry shields. At the very least it means that light troops (including light horse) go unarmoured and unshielded, meaning AC 9. In short, I do not think there is much to recommend armour worn as an indicator of troop classification.

Notably "levies" are to be treated as heavy foot except when otherwise noted, but cost less than light foot to field. Earlier in the booklet it is stated that Italian Levies are classified as Armoured Foot!

Type	Points	Move As*	Attack As	Defend As	Armour	Shield	Morale As
Levie	¾	Heavy Foot	Heavy Foot	Heavy Foot	?	?	Light Foot
Light Foot	1	Light Foot	Light Foot	Light Foot	?	?	Light Foot
Heavy Foot	2	Heavy Foot	Heavy Foot	Heavy Foot	?	?	Heavy Foot

* Note Light and Heavy Foot have the same movement rates.

It seems a lot more cost effective to equip a Levie with ranged weapons than light foot! And there is quite a good argument for choosing a levie over heavy foot in many cases, as the morale difference is very slight indeed. The difference must surely lie in the degree of armour, which does not affect melee capability at all, only resistance to missile attacks.

[coffee]

Sept 20, 2009 11:55:26 GMT -6 Matthew said:

It seems a lot more cost effective to equip a Levie with ranged weapons than light foot! And there is quite a good argument for choosing a levie over heavy foot in many cases, as the morale difference is very slight indeed. The difference must surely lie in the degree of armour, which does not affect melee capability at all, only resistance to missile attacks.

You're right. That was exactly what made the crossbow such a deadly weapon. You could issue them to levies and they could go out and kill with them, as opposed to a longbow which requires years of training.

[Matthew]

Sept 20, 2009 13:46:24 GMT -6 coffee said:

You're right. That was exactly what made the crossbow such a deadly weapon. You could issue them to levies and they could go out and kill with them, as opposed to a longbow which requires years of training.

A lot of folks think that, but they are not quite right. It actually takes rather a lot of skill and strength to use a crossbow and to reload it quickly and consistently. Bows with very heavy draw weights do require considerable training to use because the strength is all in the user, so sufficient strength must be developed over time, but the crossbow was not simply a weapon that could be effectively issued to a rabble. The number of professional retained and mercenary crossbowmen companies attest to that.

That said, in Chain Mail a long bow armed levie is still a better investment of points than long bow armed light or heavy foot, unless there is some unknown distinction, such as degree of armour, as suggested above.

[coffee]

Sept 20, 2009 15:05:15 GMT -6 Matthew said:

That said, in Chain Mail a long bow armed levie is still a better investment of points than long bow armed light or heavy foot, unless there is some unknown distinction, such as degree of armour, as suggested above.

If you're going strictly for point effectiveness, sure.

If you're playing the game as a proper wargame, which is to say taking into account the historical composition of force, you'd do no such thing. It would be historically inaccurate, and wargamers tend to get picky about such things. (Remember that Chainmail was a historical wargame first and only a fantasy game second.)

But your point about crossbows (much of which was also said about guns, when they were introduced) is a very good one. Have an exalt for the history lesson!

I am frequently amazed when I find out how much I "know" about things is just plain wrong. Some of it is from my education, but the rest is because I just haven't dug for the facts properly. (Although I've been enjoying Terry Jones' Medieval Lives series quite a lot -- there's a lot more to the middle ages than most of us realize.)

[Matthew]

Sept 20, 2009 17:32:09 GMT -6 coffee said:

If you're going strictly for point effectiveness, sure.

If you're playing the game as a proper wargame, which is to say taking into account the historical composition of force, you'd do no such thing. It would be historically inaccurate, and wargamers tend to get picky about such things. (Remember that Chainmail was a historical wargame first and only a fantasy game second.)

Right, but the underlying concern is why are levies rated at ¾, points given their abilities relative to light and heavy foot? There seems no suitable answer until we note their description on page 19, which implies that much like peasants they probably do not have access to armour, which might simultaneously suggest that light and heavy foot, being regulars, probably do.

If we do try and get these troop types to match up to historical types we will certainly end up with half armoured and/or shielded light foot, which again suggests that linking armour class directly to troop class is ill advised.

Sept 20, 2009 17:32:09 GMT -6 coffee said:

But your point about crossbows (much of which was also said about guns, when they were introduced) is a very good one. Have an exalt for the history lesson!

I am frequently amazed when I find out how much I "know" about things is just plain wrong. Some of it is from my education, but the rest is because I just haven't dug for the facts properly. (Although I've been enjoying Terry Jones' Medieval Lives series quite a lot -- there's a lot more to the middle ages than most of us realize.)

Do not trust Terry Jones! ;D

[coffee]

Sept 20, 2009 18:11:25 GMT -6 Matthew said:

Do not trust Terry Jones! ;D

Okay, I'll bite: Why not?