Quote from: jux;1016542What is a Scots Man a class? A Scottish man? Like Franks, Saxons and other groups of different origin.

Scots Man is really just a barbarian. It's a holdover from the Dark Albion setting, where the Scots are more primitive than they were historically.
The class is not specifically 'scottish' in any cultural way. It would work just as well for any less-advanced group of people from the fringes of the European World.

Quote from: Kingdaddy;1016544Any discount on the PDF, for those who bought the physical version?

Well, RPGnow has a Pod+PDF package. I don't think DOM was considering offering any other discount, assuming that people who wanted both would get both there.

QuoteI'm in love with the magic system. Homunculi, demons, brazen heads...Very medieval, as is the idea that they require real effort and investment.

It feels as though the system could be expanded along very medieval lines. For example, contemporary folklore is full of creatures that would fill a monster manual. It feels like there's a lot of room to expand on witchery and other forms of magic. And so on.

Thank you! And yes, there's lots of room for expansion. I've already put out a several RPGPundit Presents supplements (The Goetia, Three Medieval-Authentic Grimoires, The Book of the Art of Hours, and Two More Medieval-Authentic Grimoires) which all expand the Magic system, presenting what amounts to new Magical Techniques.

QuoteYou probably have addressed this already (maybe even in the rule book, which I haven't finished reading), but why did you decide on having a Church of Law, instead of the historical Catholic Church?

Well, it basically IS the Catholic Church. I just describe it as a the Church of Law in L&D, or the Church of the Unconquered Sun in Dark Albion, just because I realize some people would not want the Catholic Church explicitly as the religion, even though monotheism is vitally important to Medieval-Authenticity.

Quote from: Ulairi;1016552I'm going to houserule it to just being the Catholic Church instead of Not the Catholic Church but really the Catholic Church.

Well, obviously you can. My choice was really to make it that people who would not want to play with the Catholic Church wouldn't say 'well, I'll just use the Forgotten Realms pantheon instead!'

Quote'
This book would make a great Arthurian OSR book. That's what I was getting while reading it.

I could see that working. It certainly could, since Morte D'Arthur, although set in Arthurian times, is full of War of the Roses era tech and culture (because that's when it was written).

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1016759In terms of the real world, what year range is it modeling?

Late Medieval. So you can use it without modification in Western Europe from 1350-1500. With a bit of modification you could play it several centuries back, and maybe one or two centuries forward.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1014078Perhaps that is the answer, though your version of it sounds made up. I would be quite surprised if the value of a knight's longsword in 1450 was a half or a third that a simple wooden shield of a pair of leather gloves, or worth fewer than a dozen chickens. It just doesn't sound right.

Whenever I've gone looking for numbers, they vary hugely by area, time and source. Which makes sense - we're talking about a period of at least 100 years, and an area of at least Britain and Europe. Consider someone roleplaying on Epsilon B some 500 years from now saying, "what was the price of a car on Earth in the late industrial age?"

This is an interesting link. 15 chickens in Central Europe were 1 pence; a sword in Western Europe was 81.25 pence, in Britain 240 shillings, and a sword and scabbard in Central Europe was 308.5 pence. Many sources I've seen had the scabbard costing more than the sword! By comparison, a landless thane's life (ie weregild) in Britain was worth 600 shillings.

Many shorter blades found by archaeologists were worn down by sharpening so much they looked like filleting knives. That is, they had obviously been kept for so long they'd worn out, and perhaps even been passed from parent to child. And in those dark days before the Red Cross, it was typical than any non-noble who fell on the field of battle would have his throat cut by those who'd taken the ground, and after they passed the local peasants would come out and see what they could scavenge.

To me, this sort of thing tells us that arms and armour were considered valuable from the point of view of the common peasant or soldier. So, putting the prices in the order of magnitude of a year or so's wages makes sense.

But really the numbers are all over the place, and in your own game you choose what you like to get a certain feel. One of the most satisfying games I ran, essentially a labourer would earn a pound (240 pence) a year, and 4lbs of bread was a farthing (1/4 penny), as was an ale, so basically a pound was a subsistence wage; a sword was a pound, a mail shirt was two, and so on. This meant that a common labourer would never have such things unless they looted them from a dead soldier. The thane giving them a mail shirt was a great prize and honour!

The issue with the prices in L+D is not the absolute numbers, but the relative values. Some are plausible and not worth debating; others are wildly at odds with common sense thoughts about the materials and labor required to make them. There are several examples one could point to, but the most extreme I noticed is that a normal shield is worth just over 16 times as much as a normal knight's sword (presumably a longsword). There is no amount of discussion of the complexities of medieval coinage that will convince me this makes any sense.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1016905Late Medieval. So you can use it without modification in Western Europe from 1350-1500. With a bit of modification you could play it several centuries back, and maybe one or two centuries forward.

So plate armour is on the rise, as are cannons and gonnes, shields are mostly falling into disuse outside of lancers and cavalry and two handed weapons are also the main battle weapons.  A burgeoning, distinct middle class, with merchants at the fore, slowly building up around that time period as well.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1016957The issue with the prices in L+D is not the absolute numbers, but the relative values. Some are plausible and not worth debating; others are wildly at odds with common sense thoughts about the materials and labor required to make them. There are several examples one could point to, but the most extreme I noticed is that a normal shield is worth just over 16 times as much as a normal knight's sword (presumably a longsword). There is no amount of discussion of the complexities of medieval coinage that will convince me this makes any sense.

I was under the impression that's a commoner's 'great knife', a rather cheaply, but still functionally made weapon for defending one's home at the fringes of a kingdom, as it takes a while, (if ever) for a king to get his army out there to protect his lands.  I would assume that sword meant for a real noble would be better made with better materials and thus cost more.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1016961I was under the impression that's a commoner's 'great knife', a rather cheaply, but still functionally made weapon for defending one's home at the fringes of a kingdom, as it takes a while, (if ever) for a king to get his army out there to protect his lands.  I would assume that sword meant for a real noble would be better made with better materials and thus cost more.

Not just better materials.  A one edged chopping sword like a falchion, messer, etc, the "great knife" or "sword-knife" you are talking about, is much easier to make than a double-edged sword, and thus take more time and require more skill.  The cheapest arming sword you could get, would still likely be more expensive than some form of falchion.

I don't think any of that about swords vs. messers is true. The messer is defined by the construction of its handle, which encases the tang in a pair of wood slats rather than having a peened pommel. My understanding is that the difference between the two was mostly enforced by guild rules: sword smiths could make swords (peened pommels) and knife makers could make messers (knife-like handles). But otherwise the construction of messers in the period we are discussing varied enormously, occupying every niche in the 'bladed weapon' eco system. Most had over long handles and a 'nagel' or nail that stuck out to one side as a sort of primitive hand protection. Most also had one full sharp edge and a partial sharp back edge. But there were exceptions to all these generalities. Quality varied from things that look like crude kitchen knives to gorgeous dress weapons that were worn as you would a fancy dress sword. Size ranged from something about the size of a K-bar knife up to a massive 2-handed Kriegsmesser that was as long as and significantly heavier than a 2-handed longsword. They were used by people of all social classes, including nobility. Also note a falchion was not a kind of messer; it was a kind of sword (look at the pommel), but had a blade profile of a 1-handed hacking weapon - similar to some of the larger messers.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1016961So plate armour is on the rise, as are cannons and gonnes, shields are mostly falling into disuse outside of lancers and cavalry and two handed weapons are also the main battle weapons.  A burgeoning, distinct middle class, with merchants at the fore, slowly building up around that time period as well.

Pretty much, yes.  There are rules for guns and cannons in L&D.

QuoteI was under the impression that's a commoner's 'great knife', a rather cheaply, but still functionally made weapon for defending one's home at the fringes of a kingdom, as it takes a while, (if ever) for a king to get his army out there to protect his lands.  I would assume that sword meant for a real noble would be better made with better materials and thus cost more.

There are variable costs for fancier swords, yes.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1016978I don't think any of that about swords vs. messers is true. The messer is defined by the construction of its handle, which encases the tang in a pair of wood slats rather than having a peened pommel. My understanding is that the difference between the two was mostly enforced by guild rules: sword smiths could make swords (peened pommels) and knife makers could make messers (knife-like handles). But otherwise the construction of messers in the period we are discussing varied enormously, occupying every niche in the 'bladed weapon' eco system. Most had over long handles and a 'nagel' or nail that stuck out to one side as a sort of primitive hand protection. Most also had one full sharp edge and a partial sharp back edge. But there were exceptions to all these generalities. Quality varied from things that look like crude kitchen knives to gorgeous dress weapons that were worn as you would a fancy dress sword. Size ranged from something about the size of a K-bar knife up to a massive 2-handed Kriegsmesser that was as long as and significantly heavier than a 2-handed longsword. They were used by people of all social classes, including nobility. Also note a falchion was not a kind of messer; it was a kind of sword (look at the pommel), but had a blade profile of a 1-handed hacking weapon - similar to some of the larger messers.

I said... "a one handed chopping weapon like a falchion or messer".  How you got whatever argument you are countering, I have no idea.  Regardless of a Type F or Type M handle construction, the creation of most of Elmslie's Typology blade types would be easier than the double-sided swords due to the variation of the temper, grinding of the fuller, etc.

Were there super-pimped falchions and messers?  Sure.  But if you're talking about a peasant sword, you're probably talking about some form of Elmslie Typology blade of messer construction which could be cranked out and mass produced very easily.