Roleplaying games from historical research
Count Stenbock was a 19th century nobleman of Swedish descent who held a domain in what is now Estonia. His father died when he was a boy, as did his maternal grandfather, so he was incredibly wealthy for much of his life, although his property was administered for him by his paternal grandfather during childhood.…
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A ghost story for your monster of the month. Over to Ben Tucker. Thanks to him and his production team at Librivox. One cool October evening—it was the last day of the month, and unusually cool for the time of year—I made up my mind to go and spend an hour or two with my…
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This week I come to you with a plot hook from a most unlikely source: the book “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. Louisa May Alcott was a 19th century author and in addition to the novel, which has been turned into a movie several times, she also used to write what she called “blood…
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I’ve thought about doing this poem before but I’ve excluded it for two reasons. It’s far later than the medieval period, although it is in the Magonomia period Well it’s Georgian theoretically. The other reason is it’s a very popular poem here in Australia: pretty much every school child learns it. It may have taken…
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This is your Monster of the Month, and this month I’m cheating. The creature is a vampire and the reader is Newgate Novelist, who’s one of my favourites from LibriVox. I’m including it because this is one of the few English sources I can find for the work of Vasile Alecsandri, who was a Romanian…
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When Maurice Lavelle is discussed people oversimplify by saying he’s France’s answer to Edgar Allan Poe. He’s similar to Poe in that he has atmospheric, spooky stories. In the same way that most of Poe’s stories aren’t suitable for Games From Folktales because they eventually come down to a rational explanation, similarly most of Level’s…
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A quick Librivox recording to give us our monster of the month. We have a werewolf, a witch and a Faustian bargain. I wondered why I’d not seen this one before. Eleanor Smith-Dampier was a translator of Danish sagas, so I thought I’d missed it because it’s from the area to the north of the…
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I’ve been loking forward to reading this for you, because it’s a lovely example of an infernal regio for Ars Magica. Clearly its the work of Architectus from Realms of Power : the Infernal. It also works for Magonomia, but as a particular creature, not a thing that a Realm of Power does as a…
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Now that Andrew has mentioned the Laidly Toad, and shared some art from the forthcoming bestiary, I can talk about the folklore used to design it. The Laidly Toad is the villain from “The Laidly Worm of Spindlestone Heugh” which is a story from the English Borders. I’ve also mixed in a little from a…
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I have COVID. The way my podcast plan is set out, however, I have to do some recording today. I’m recording a couple of episodes which will go live in August. By the time you hear this hopefully I’ve been well for a month. Today I bring you one of the earliest werewolf stories, even…
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Games From Folktales 