Roleplaying games from historical research
Roger Bacon was a writer in the late 13th Century, slightly after the Ars Magica period, and well known in the Magonomia period. It’s important not to confuse him with Sir Francis Bacon, who was an early scientist in Elizabeth I’s reign. Each had useful ideas about alchemy. Roger Bacon explains, in his great book…
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For this episode we return to the City of Dreadful Night. Rather than popping in so regularly after each section, I’ll give brief comments here. Much of the section is centred on a cathedral where a group of parishioners enter after they give a password, in which they discard their mortal circumstances. The preacher is…
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I’d prepped most of this for my “Stories I’ve tried to write week” and then a plot idea emerged. I was discussing things with Andrew, over on a Shewstone planning list, and while we were discussing something else entirely he gave me the key to moving this post to a workable series of scenarios for…
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In this excerpt from Chaucer the main characters area simple priest and a skilled con artist, who is a canon. I’ve cut out a lot of the setup. The two men have met, the conman has engaged his mark in conversation, and they have travelled to the priest’s home. “Sir,” quoth he to the priest,…
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One of the most popular books in Elizabethan England is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It’s essentially a 14th Century anthology with a frame narrative, where a group of pilgrims amuse each other by telling stories. Late in the series we get the tale we will examine today, where a priest’s servant (a canon’s…
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There’s no real reason for this episode other than my love of cats. In Ars Magica, these are likely a tradition as per Realms of Power : Magic. In Magonomia they are likely malkins, as per the Bestiary. *** I have sometimes been puzzled in Venice to know why churches should keep cats, church-mice being…
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The first of two short episodes for the week. This is a statue found in Venice that I’ll be redesigning as a demon. Stats eventually. The description comes from William Dean Howell’s “Venetian Life”. *** There would be nothing to say, after Mr. Ruskin, in praise or blame of the great monuments in San Giovanni…
Read MoreLast week was the sixth anniversary of the podcast, so it’s time for the annual report. If you are new to the podcast, start anywhere else. The Patreons are covering the hosting fees of the podcast, so it is financially stable. There has been a permanant price change in my podcast host, so now instead…
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This is the second episode of Lucian’s “True Story”. My comments on it are at the beginning of yesterday’s episode. One trigger warning: it being an ancient Greek text there’s a brief mention of child sexual abuse. Thanks again to Terry Kroenung and his Librivox production team. *** Upon this we began to be weary…
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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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Games From Folktales 