Roleplaying games from historical research
Genius loci are an idea which turned up in Ars Magica with several of us finding them all of a sudden. I used one in a fiction competition, and I believe the authors of The Mysteries First Edition had already written others up. In my case I saw an odd bit of Latin in a…
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People say Herrick was the last Elizabethan poet, but in this poem he goes the full Byron by suggesting his mistresses form a mystery cult to worship him. In Ars Magica if you pulled this off you’d complete apotheosis and become a daimon of some variety, but if you missed no-one would know because this…
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Sometimes the Cheshire Cat, Alan Moore, and Hank Green smash together. Could a magical fumble create a new apocalypse, that’s at the fringes of modern science? Life on Earth is made of proteins and these could theoretically be either the type we have, or a second type which is a mirror image of the ones…
Read MoreHappy new year! A few interesting things in the community. Darkwing has a thread on the Atlas Forum where people are discussing his ideas on materials they’d like authors in the community to work on. May I ask you to seriously consider participating in this? https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/30-days-of-product-ideas/176549 Mythic Europe MagazineSubmissions are open and I’ve accepted and…
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Here are a few pieces of useful material from Further Legends and Traditions of Cheshire by Frederick Woods, that suit Ars Magica games. Birkenhead Hall The lady of the hall became convinced her husband was having an affair with the maid. After seething for a while, she pushed the maid over the bannisters and fled…
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Robert Herrick’s elegy for willow trees seems to suit a dryad that feeds on, and perhaps relieves, sorrow. I’m interested in her grove as a vis source for a covenant, but for it to work, the magi need the local people to have passionate, tragic affairs. I could see the dryad making wicker crowns that…
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There’s a cryptid found in Longdendale, a mountain pass in the Peak District of England. It’s a slug the size of a horse, with a head that looks like that of a whale. It has at least one eye, which swivels madly in its socket. Boneless makes a grating noise as it travels. It doesn’t…
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One of the annoying things in my Cheshire folklore review is that I keep finding excellent spots for covenants, but little folklore around them to support campaigns. I discovered there’s a mineral found only in a couple of places, called “blue john” and though that it was likely useful as a vis source. Blue John…
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Robert Herrick was sometimes called the last Elizabethan poet. He was hundreds of years later, but his style echoes the Tudor belief in a Merry England filled with bucolic peasants. These two poems follow the idea that faeries are tiny and use pieces of insects to make machinery. Note also that faeries are Christians in…
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The folklore for the Cheshire book is feeling a bit sparse. Leigh Egerton’s Ballads & Legends of Cheshire from 1867 claims that Cheshire lacks folklore because it has no mountains. Cornwall had enough folklore for a book, so I thought this was silliness. That being said, the richest folklore I’ve found has been in Longdendale,…
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Games From Folktales 