Roleplaying games from historical research
As always with philosophy episodes let’s start with defining terms. The Omphalos Hypothesis was defined in the late 19th Century by Phillip Gosse, but the same idea had cropped up for at least 1 500 years. It’s that at creation God placed evidence of false age into the world. We don’t need to plumb the…
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A story from Lord Dunsany, about a collection, of sorts, which the player characters may stumble upon. A redcap, Jerbiton or urban covenant may discover the Club, and find it necessary to defeat its members, or steal their treasures. Given that they are the treasures of distant fallen kingdoms they make excellent Arcane connections. They…
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This episode went live early: so here’s the transcript folks! Thanks to Imreal on the forums for the new tag line. Many early roleplaying games had a strong division between good and evil, so that violence was just. In Ars Magica, many sagas are more interested in the results of the use of power…
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To design a festival for your covenant, a tribunal or the entire order, answer the following questions. Shuffle the order of them if you like. Which community celebrates this holiday? What work ceases or continues? Where does the community gather to celebrate? What actions do they perform as part of their celebration? These can be…
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This is supplemental to Episode 100. which went live early. To quote it: The poem which follows is a prayer, and a mystery initiation script, for the cult of the Infernal Saint of Sorrow. I know that the D&D Planescape people have used it for their setting as well, but I’m not familiar with their work,…
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The gestures used in spellcasting in Ars Magica are not arbitrary, as they are in some other roleplaying games. We know this, because a magus who sees a rival casting a spell can deduce its effects from the gestures, and cast a counterspell for protection. This means the two magi share a semantic framework: the…
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Let’s continue the experiment of treating the works of Lord Dunsany as the reminisences of a redcap. This week we have one of his least coherent stories. My inculcations are in green. There are things that are known only to the long porter of Tong Tong Tarrup as he sits and mumbles memories to himself…
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Saki is one of my favourite humorous authors. His life was cut short by the First World War, so his output wasn’t vast, which has made him slip from consciousness. In this story, I’d like you to focus on something: is the boy using Free Expression to craft his desires onto a faerie, or is…
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The last mile problem was first discussed in communications but it also has applications in logistics. The redcaps in the early versions of the game were basically a postal service, but they are now essentially a logistical service: they spend a lot of time buying stuff for magi. They own merchant ships, for example, and…
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Games From Folktales 