Roleplaying games from historical research
In Ars Magica we have four elemental arts. The one which fits the magic system least well is Aquam, and because it doesn’t fit the system particularly well, there have been very few Aquam specialists designed during the game. The story of the Founders didn’t explain where Aquam came from: the druid Diedne perhaps, so…
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In one of Lord Dunsany’s stories, a merchant caravan pauses in the desert. They ask a man in rags to join them at the fire, and offer him food and drink. He tells them stories of the luxuries of the city to which they travel: ancient Babbulkund. In time they leave him behind, but because…
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In the Kalevala, the people from the village of the heroes are tormented by the curses of a witch. One is that she sends among them a terrible bear, to harass their herds. He is reffered to as Otso, and the people flatter him in the most extraordinary and duplicitous way. Vainomoinen, the chief wizard,…
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During the recent anniversary for Librivox, when we were pushing to create out ten thousandth freely available public domain audiobook, I did some reading for the Kalevala, which is some epic poetry from Finland. Essentially it is about three wizards who have a feud with a witch from Lappland. During the, slightly convoluted, story one…
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This is a transcript of the most recent episode of the podcast. Travel magic doesn’t work very well in Ars Magica, at least in the core rules. As the line has progressed many of the authors, me included, have found ways to sabotage that and allow your party to get whatever they want to go,…
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I was testing Canva for work, and so I’ve put the first ten episode scripts together in a pdf. It lives at http://wp.me/aVOkQ-Xy.
Read MoreThis is a (loose) transcript of a podcast episode. Imagine you are an Ars Magica necromancer. The year is 1220 and you are dissecting a corpse to become more magically powerful. This one has a “sport” which is what you call unexpected extra features like additional teeth or calcified internal twins. This one has an…
Read MoreA bit of a preview of the new podcast. It will take three days to go up on itunes, but the feed archive is http://gamesfromfolktales.libsyn.com/podcast. I’ll eventually integrate it with this blog,. using tags and imbedded audio players and so on, but there’s a sneak peak.
Read MoreAtlas Games have given me permission to go ahead with a podcast. I already record books into the public domain, so I have the gear and software, and I’m working through the hosting details. I hope to go live either this week or next. It looks like I’ll be using Libsyn as my host, and their…
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A quick excerpt from my reading this week. I knew a gentleman, who was so good a manager of his time, that he would not even lose that small portion of it, which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments.…
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