Link to the Games From Folktales: Episode 50 Special transcript Goblin Market
Three plot hooks inspired by Norse Mythology
I’ve just finished the audiobook of Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. It’s excellent. I know the stories already, but his method of telling is a joy. There are three tiny elements of his telling which struck me as novel plot hooks for Ars Magica. The Chains of Fenrir When Fenrir, the great wolf who will consume…
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Dunsany fragments: ghosts
I continue to believe Lord Dunsany’s work contains the reminiscences of a retired redcap. Let’s test the theory again. Thanks to Steve Vito and Librivox for the sampled recording. The argument that I had with my brother in his great lonely house will scarcely interest my readers. Not those, at least, whom I hope may be…
Read MoreApologies to any new Patreons, my internet has been down for a week, so I’m just copying the list from last month’s pdf.
Brewing in the Thirteenth Century
I’ve been listening to The London and Country Brewer, which was an anonymous book completed in the late 19th Century. It’s fascinating, in that it describes an industrial process which is still followed today by craft brewers, but to which I’d had no real exposure. Given that brewing, at least to the level of creating…
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The Australian war experience as a model for Tremere reaction to the Schism War
One of the advantages that Australian authors have writing for American audiences is that we get to see many of the more popular products of their culture, but the converse is not true. This means that things which are, to us, commonplace, are, to them, surprising. I first noticed this when I wrote a brief…
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The Great Chinese Gold Sponge
One of the great puzzles of medieval economics is why it works at all. Essentially the European economy, if you are standing at the border of China and looking westward, is an elaborate method of shipping gold and silver to China in exchange for spices. Medieval European understood this. What they did not understand was…
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Dunsany fragments : Bureau d’Exchange de Maux
I continue to be struck by the idea that Lord Dunsany’s work seems like the stories of a redcap, long weary of the road. Let’s try another. Be warned, there is a little antisemitism in this one. The Bureau d’Echange de Maux by Lord Dunsany I often think of the Bureau d’Echange de Maux and the wondrously…
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Does literary criticism exist in Mythic Europe?
How do magi know what to read? Your magus helps out another covenant and, in thanks, they let your character study from their library for a season. In the real world, the Storyguide hands you a sheet of titles, each marked with level and quality, and you pick the one you’d like your magus to…
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Games From Folktales 