Games From Folktales

Time travel stories are scarce in Mythic Europe. They are a mainstay of our genre fiction now, but they were revolutionary when, in the Nineteenth Century, they became popular. Folklore does allow a limited form a time travel, in that the faerie-led can be held far from home for centuries, effectively moving forward in time…

Do you know where you are right now? A better question is: do you know how you know where you are right now? What’s happening is that your body is providing haptic feedback to your brain. That is, you have a sensation of touch from your skin, and your joints are also sending signals to your…

Let’s talk dowries, and bargaining, and let’s use the Bard. The following passages are modernisation of Shakespeare, from “The Taming of the Shrew”. To set the scene: Baptista is a medieval merchant, who has no sons and two daughters, Kate and Bianca. Bianca has four suitors. Kate has none, because she’s a shrew. Bianca cannot…

A Robinsonade is a type of story that takes its name from Robinson Crusoe. In the structure of the story a person from a technologically superior area is stranded in an area where they have limited societal support. Robinsonades are interesting as ways of starting Ars Magica sagas, because they force characters to use the…

In the dying days of her reign, Cleopatra VII Philopator made preparations to survive the Roman invasion. In our world, these came to nothing: Cleopatra entombed herself alive, and took poison in wine, by smuggling an asp in a basket of figs, or by biting her arm and smearing a fatal unguent over the wound. This…

Environmental determinism is an idea with classical roots, but was most popular during the colonial period. It suggests that the social development of a country is determined in whole, or in large part, by the resources that are available to that society. Listeners familiar with 4X computer games are aware of this style of thinking.…

In the weeks leading up to the recording of this episode a plague of scary clowns has appeared in many Western countries. The obvious question for Ars Magica players is : if the same thing happened in Mythic Europe what would people do. Strangely enough we know the answer to this question because in 1221,…