Roleplaying games from historical research
This being the week that the podcast celebrates its sixth anniversary I am allowing myself the luxury of two, long, perhaps pointless, episodes. I started playing Ars Magica decades ago and the second thing I tried to rework as source material was Lucian’s “True Story”. It doesn’t work because its fantasy level is far too…
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The last time we visited Mythic Venice we found a representative of the Infernal, so perhaps its fitting that this time we add a saint. He’s not one of the great saints, like Mark, or a locally potent but slightly pagan-seeming saint like Giustiana. He seems to be a folk saint, supported by a bishop.…
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Time for our monster of the month. Hume Nisbet was an English writer who lived for a while in Australia, and it affected much of his fiction. This story, though, when I think of it, seems better suited to England, with its gloomier light and shingle roofs. The recording was released by TypicalJax through Librivox.…
Read MoreHello, the scripts for the first quarter of 2022 are out!
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A couple of quick comments, beyond the usual reminder to look at how many times Cellini tells you that he is better than other people, including you, We have some characters who, for context, need a little bit more description. The angel of death he meets is not the Jewish angel of death covered in…
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A quick bonus episode to give you a little regio, from the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith. The recording was released through Librivox by Rosslyn Carlyle. Thanks to her and her production team. Above its domes the gulfs accumulate.Far up, the sea-gales blare their bitter screed:But here the buried waters take no heed—Deaf, and with…
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I’m disappointed. I thought I’d found a fantasy author who used the areas around Devon as his canvas, and I had. This would have let me push the free material for Ars Magica further east, to join up with the Cornwall and Bristol channel material already available. The problem is that now I’ve discovered that…
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This is the monster for the month. Greene was a an independently wealthy heiress and later a journalist. I believe Greene wrote this before her marriage to HP Lovecraft, although I’ve read he may have helped edit this in some way. Stats eventually. *** I have never heard an even approximately adequate explanation of the…
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In the section which follows, note that everyone is embarrassed to have captured a murderer. They live in an honour culture, rather than a legal culture, and so it seems to them that they are acting unjustly, at least according to the biased narrator. LI I WENT on applying myself with the utmost diligence upon…
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Let’s lead out with Burton’s summary:Belluccia, daughter of Ambruoso de Ia Varra, being obedient to her father, and acting prudently in his commands, becometh the wife of a rich youth. Narduccio hight, the first-born of Biasillo Guallecchia. Her sisters, being poor, are dowered by Biasillo, and given in marriage to his other sons. There was…
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Games From Folktales 