the true measure of whether someone's old enough to have played AD&D is not their take on the word "race" and whether those player character options include newer groups like tieflings or dragonborn. It's whether they can rattle off different types of polearm.
@Leucrotta Just old enough to know that the glaive, the guisarme, and the glaive guisarme are separate lines in a table, just young enough to be very, very glad I didn't actually wind up having to memorize that table.
@Canageek @Nentuaby and there's *not* that much difference for a lot of these. Like a fauchard looks like a glaive with an opposite cutting edge. Like... if I broke down "dagger" into "baselard, rondel, cinquidea, katar" it'd actually be an easier to see difference, and it'd be a completely needless rules distinction, just Gygax didn't have a thing for daggers and he did for polearms.
@Leucrotta @Nentuaby Oh I remember his diagrams.
The reason was swords didn't actually determine nearly as many battles in the periods of military history Gygax liked. Whereas the Swiss and German units he was a big fan of were polearm troops.