Roleplaying games from historical research
We spend a lot of time with the King of Elfland in these chapters. Here we discover he’s like the faeries in Ars Magica. The king is, in a very real sense, his land. CHAPTER VIThe Rune of the Elf King On the high balcony of his gleaming tower the King of Elfland stood. Below…
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When we were going through Lord Dunsay’s short stories we missed one, because it was connected with a couple of others we could not use in a single larger frame story. I’ve chopped that top bit off, because I love how the end of it is a completely confused Realm Interaction Table. Stats aren’t necessary,…
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This section doesn’t have a lot of folklore, because it doesn’t need it. This is the point where real history and Mythic European history diverge. The Doge, one of the richest and best connected men in the world, offers anything to save his wife, who is rotting to death. In the real world she dies.…
Read MoreI didn’t use the frame narrative for the Petamerone, because its racist, and not just “Well, in their time..” racist, but full on speaking-in-pidgin caricature racist. In the story the main character, our heroine, is a princess who cannot laugh of smile. In the list of things that cannot make her grin it includes the…
Read MoreThe 300th episode just went live. It’s not numbered 300, because I’ve mucked up the releases at various stages, but that’s where we are. It’s not a big celebratory episode, because this is a sombre year filled with exhaustion. This has been a tricky year, and in terms of Games From Folktales, it still hasn’t…
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The Pentamerone is an early collection of Italian fairy tales, that was used as source material by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. It interests us, for Ars Magica, because its fifty stories are tied to a particular place where we’ve not done a lot of work: southern Italy. Also, because it was written earlier,…
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The next couple of chapters have a lot less action, but have useful little bundles of folklore in them. Jason from the Forums has a great set of statistics for the witch, that I hope he’ll include in the comments. Back to Earth After Many Years Back through the guarding wood went Alveric and Lirazel,…
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A magical practitioner or a faerie? Treasure and tests await…. The creature here is reminiscent of the choughs who turn into knights in Cornwall. Stats eventually. Thanks to Daniel Davison for the recording, via Librivox. *** Outside Andvær lies an island, the haunt of wild birds, which no man can land upon, be the sea…
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It’s useful for us when a monster reskins itself. This is basically the origin story for a banshee-like creature, but found in Venice. We can just shift the stats across and change the appearance. It also describes an instance of Venetian love magic, which is useful to us. *** It was in the dogado of…
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We finish our little season of poems by De La Mare with this episode, Six brief pieces, with a mixture of monsters and locations. A couple of minor notes in explanation. The first peopm is called “The Gage”, and it seems to have been read as “The Cage”. presumably because it was thought a spelling…
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