>There was an early Different Worlds article that once posited that
>children's books are ideal for gamers as a model over more heavy-
>weight historical books because They are long on colour and focus on
>day-to-day life, fighting and legends and shorter on complexity,
>dates, and long lists of names.
I quite agree about the readability of many historical books. Fortunately we have readable, relevant and accurate sources such as the Viking Answer Lady web pages - http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ There's an enormous amount of stuff which can be found by following links from SCA pages and most of it is very readable even if you have to skip obscure details of how to make the tools you need to make your outfit correctly.
>So I link to it because it has exactly the kind of blended and
>anachronistic approach that can be useful for gamers.
I wasn't criticising your linking to it, just qualifying the mention by pointing out the flaws in the source.
>While we might want to be inspired by history, I'm not sure that most
>gamers want to be drowned in it. Some will, but they will bring that
>knowledge with them to the table. Others want colour, and Orlanthi can
>as easily take colour from the kind of notions of the 'barbarian' in
>this kind of work as we can draw on influences as diverse as Persia
>and Rome for the Lunar Empire.
>
>As always YMMV and YGWV.
Well MGDV to the extent that I want Heortlings to be culturally different from Char-Un and both different from Praxian nomads - not just a single barbarian culture. To do that I need the analogues to be different.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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