Roleplaying games from historical research
In the earlier Cornwall posts, I’ve been looking at folklore, but to make a gazetteer I need to grapple with mundane matters like geography, politics and commerce. For this I’m using the History of Cornwall by Polwhele which is ancient, but it’ll do while I’m waiting for something more modern to be delivered. Geographical extent…
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Hunt just gives up and pours it all into a miscellaneous chapter here at the end. Let’s fossick for plot hooks: The Bells of Forraburry Church There are no bells at Forrburry Church. They were made to rival the local church at Tintagel, and had a speedy voyage to Cornwall. The pilot gave thanks to…
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There are a couple of theories as to what the witches of Thessaly were getting up to. One, that they were a school of ancient astronomers, run by a woman, called Aglaonike , I prefer. It ties into the Astonomical mysteries of the Order. That’s not what we explore this week. Instead, this is from The Golden Ass by Apuleius. I’ve published it on this blog before, but that was five years ago, so I hope you’ll pardon the repetition. When I was a young man I…fortuned in an evil hour to come to the City Larissa, where while I went up and down to view the streets to seeke some reliefe…
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This is a short chapter, but it contains something terribly valuable to me as a writer: it explains what’s going on with the Jews. This matters a more deeply than may be superficially apparent. When we were writing Ars Magica, we kept looking for places where we could squeeze in black people, gay people, woman…
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Hunt notes that he has never heard a person called a “wizard”. This note seems incongruous because he uses it himself for Merlin, but what he seems to be saying is that folk witchcraft is practiced by men and women, and that there is no separate title for the male and female types. He does…
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Hunt, whose work we are following in this series of episodes, gathered his folklore in in the 19th Century. At this point, Cornish memories of Arthur were at low ebb. He found a few, which I’ll pass on in this post, but for stories set in 1220, a lot of supplementary material will need to…
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During this concentration of Cornish material, I’m trying to focus on folklore that can be easily turned into story hooks. The problem with Hunt’s chapter on saints is that there’s not a lot of useful material, so for the first time, this podcast will boil down two chapters in a week. Saints Cornish saints are…
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A longer chapter this week. As part of this project, the material extracted from Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England will eventually become a gazetter. This means this material has a rawer feel than some other episodes. It also doesn’t have statistics, although those should eventually be forthcoming. The Hooting Cairn Cairn Kenidzhek…
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Today we cover two of the traditional sports of Cornwall. We know the faeries play at least one of them, for they use monolithic stones as their goalposts for hurling. Again, this episode is wall to wall quotations Hurling THE game of ” Hurling” was, until a recent period, played in the parishes to the…
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In the real world, anosognosia is a symptom of illness, particularly certain degenerative memory conditions. In Mythic Europe, it’s a useful effect of Mentem magic. A person who has anosognosia does not know that they have lost a skill, and avoid the use of that skill. So, for example, a person who had lost the…
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Games From Folktales 