FASA Games, Inc.

On mounted combat: I'm not sure fighting from horseback is much of an advantage, really. Your reach is shorter (which can be fixed with longer weapons of course) and you have less mobility. Is there any historic sources verifying that fighting from horseback is a boon? I imagine (but could be very wrong) that the primary advantage of mounted combat is in battlefield visability (you're high up and can see what's going on) and psychology (horses are scary).

As for horses being scared by combat - absolutelly! Horses are shitty mounts actually (I'm sure my love for donkeys and camels comes through in the Mounts section ). But I don't think detailing this is appropriate in the rules - as with other things, this depends on the style of play. In a gritty/"realistic" game, frightened mounts matter, while in a heroic one it won't matter.

And finally, one's Ride should affect one's ability to fight from horseback. As a quick rule, I would say that any figthing skills used on horseback are caped by the riders Ride skill (i.e. if Ride is lower, then the effective rank of fighting skills are set to the level of Ride).

On your other comments: Very good points all around. I agree with them all (and good point about the Incarnates ).

I completely agree on the crossbow thing. It makes sense RPG-history-wise to group bows and crossbows into one skill, but the two couldn't be farther appart. I would not object to house ruling crossbows as operated by the common gun skill. Still, many will prefere conventional RPG groupings where "Archery" is really a "primitive missile weapons" skill. As allways, the GM decides how things work in his/her campaign.

On the Renaissance/peasants reading thing: Yes, labels like "Renaissance" or indeed "TL2", or what have you, are big and unwieldy, and not very practical when you begin analyzing them. My point in the above post was to problematize the "no peasants can read" statement by demonstrating examples where this was not true in even pre-modern environments.

As for mass production of books, that started already in the late 15th century (approximately 40 years after Gutenberg made the first really viable printing press), with hundreds of thousands of copies being sold of various books and booklets (not just the Bible). By 1500 there were apparently around a thousand printing presses in Europe, producing in the range of 20 million printed products (the majority was probably not books though), which increased to 200 million printed products later in teh 16th century. Books weren't rare at all. I have no idea what they cost, however.

The good thing, is since the system is actually so open ended, uou dont run the risk to break up the system doing such changes... And anyway, vorox apart, still i have to see someone asking for a bow or a crossbow. Oh, well, maybe after seeing Hawkeye and the girl from Hunger Games (very FS btw), someone will think about it..

Yeah I'd like to see a group of players really embrace some of the archaic tech and really run with it. My players went straight for blasters and grenade.

Ouch! Yes. Fights with no armor or shields can go bad very quickly. I kind of like that though as it makes me think if my character feels strongly enough about something to put his life on the line for it.