Roleplaying games from historical research
A short Dunsany piece in which we see either an angel, or an accuser at its work. Accusers are demons who claim to punish humans on behalf of God. Statistics are provided at the end of this post. I like that this angel, or demon, has installed neon lights in the extension he is building…
Read More
This is a variant of the glanconer, which is written up in Realms of Power: Faerie (page 74 and 75). Thanks to Clarica for the recording. A ghost, that loved a lady fair, Ever in the starry air Of midnight at her pillow stood; And, with a sweetness skies above The luring words of human…
Read More
A description of a conscious space: in Ars Magica terms, a faerie embodied as a copse of woodland. Statistics in November. Thanks to Dennis Smith for reading this into the public domain through Librivox. *** From Southwater, where he left the train, the road led due west. That he knew; for the rest he trusted to…
Read More
In the Republic, there’s a thought experiment that a faerie or demon might make real in Mythic Europe. A shepherd named Gyges finds the grave of a king, after an earth tremor, and removes a ring from it. When he places the ring upon his finger and twists it, he becomes invisible. He uses this…
Read MoreThank you to everyone who has supported Games From Folktales for 150 episodes! Here’s a little gift: the first edition of the Cornwall gazetteer I’ve been promising. Click to access cornwall-edition-1.pdf I call it the first edition, because at some point I hope to extend the section on saga seeds, and have a map professionally…
Read More
This folktale by Lafcardio Hearn was used to create the minions of an enemy published in “Antagonists”. Mujina, by Lafcardio Hearn. On the Akasaka Road, in Tokyo, there is a slope called Kii-no-kuni-zaka,—which means the Slope of the Province of Kii. I do not know why it is called the Slope of the Province of…
Read More
Bottrell was one of the researchers that Robert Hunt used to flesh out his book, so his material has been already fossicked over, at one remove. Bottrell uses a lot more of the local dialect, and his colour text is better than Hunt’s. For example, all the descendants of Jack the Giant are shaggy because…
Read More
This week I’ve been thinking about Hermetic applications of Wittgenstein’s ladder, but to get there, I need to take three steps back. I hit upon the idea in Terry Pratchett’s books, where it’s called lie-to-children, which is taken from Cohen and Stuart. An example I can think of is when Neil Gaiman wrote a Doctor…
Read More
A few weeks ago the blog discussed the weeping philosopher, Heralcitus. His parallel, the laughing philosopher Democritus, doesn’t have a lot of surviving work, but one of his followers was Epicurus, and he seems to have been a Hermetic magus before his time. Epicurius gets a bad rap in history. His name is used for…
Read More
I thought this story was folklore, but it turns out it’s fiction by Washington Irving. Statistics for the creature at the end. *** On a stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French Revolution, a young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old part of Paris. The lightning…
Read More
Games From Folktales 