Roleplaying games from historical research
This week, we continue our charge through the Pentamerone. Thanks again to Joy Chan for her recording. I’ll be popping in with bits of folklore, and a surprising amount of culinary lore. XXIII: THE TWO CAKES In the penguin edition, the word “pizza” is used wherever “cake” is used here. It’s not a modern pizza,…
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And here we see Venice’s absolutely stupidest causus beli. Literally ever. It starts six years before the game period, and ends four years before, so a new group of magi might meet at a gathering held to watch the festivities. During his dogado a year of Jubilee was appointed by the Pope—1214—in thankfulness for the…
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This is another one of the episodes I can sit out, while Dunsany pays off his earlier work, but I’ll note a few things. Orion offers a story to the troll, and he accepts it, redefining his statistics. Orion can not stray into Faerie or his faerie half will claim his mortal half, much as…
Read MoreI’m unable to sleep because I’ve been bedridden for days with influenza, so I’m writing this up a week in advance. I apologise if I’m not entirely lucid: my wife has noticed that I’m extremely absent minded on flu medication. The podcast celebrates its fifth birthday on May 25th. It has about 40 people who…
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In Against the Dark I tried to have House Tremere researching ways to overcome the Parma Magica using massed fire. This doesn’t work, because hte Parma is not ablative and cannot be made so by research. In the process, I discovered there’s a a new Greater Limit of magic, one that’s clear not just to…
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There was a virtue Lands of the Nile, called in Wisdom From Ignorance, which allowed practitioners to gain Abilities from documents which they can not understand. I was reminded of this recently by a minor essays from Aldous Huxley. He discusses a similar state of mind, but in his case he’s not meditating on heiroglyphs,…
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We return to the Pentamerone. I’ve not mentioned the scatological humour this time unless it illuminates a particular point. Just assume it’s there. XXVI: THE MONTHS It is a saying worthy to be written in letters as big as those on a monument, that silence never harmed any one: and let it not be imagined…
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A short episode this week, to fill the hole caused when two episodes went live last week. This is a weaker section of Staley, but a necessary one for a few reasons. It covers the game period for Ars Magica. It lists the industries which the magical skills hide behind. It contains a terrible sin…
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A long episode this time, to cover an arc in the novel. We start with a truly excellent description of the “Way of the Woods” virtue. I won’t be inculcating a lot of comments this time. Here we are seeing the plot pay out the bits of folklore Dunsany has collected up in earlier chapters.…
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In this little fragment of The Dogaressas of Venice, Edgecumb Staley gives the origin of Venetian lace weaving. There’s an idea I’ve had in earlier writing for the podcast, although not so much in the formal line, that the representation of a thing grants a weak material bonus related to that thing. So, if a…
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Games From Folktales 