Roleplaying games from historical research
I was listening to a lecture on Romaticism by Alain de Botton the other day, and it struck me how significant it was for the design of Mythic European characters. The video is at https://youtu.be/sPOuIyEJnbE is you’d like to check it out yourself. De Botton suggests that certain features become connected to the concept of love…
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Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio: Volume One was the ten thousandth free audiobook recorded by Librivox. One of the reasons I’m fascinated with Chinese folktales is that towards the end of the Ars Magica setting. we started to run out of things that people hadn’t seen before and so to cheat we would harvest…
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I was recently listening to a radio interview about the Paralympics, where the interviewee noted that you should expect, at some close date, the prosthetics of the athletes to push their performances beyond those of non-disabled athletes. He noted that there were already concerns about Olympic marksmen having their eyes improved with LASIK, or power…
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In Ars Magica we have four elemental arts. The one which fits the magic system least well is Aquam, and because it doesn’t fit the system particularly well, there have been very few Aquam specialists designed during the game. The story of the Founders didn’t explain where Aquam came from: the druid Diedne perhaps, so…
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In one of Lord Dunsany’s stories, a merchant caravan pauses in the desert. They ask a man in rags to join them at the fire, and offer him food and drink. He tells them stories of the luxuries of the city to which they travel: ancient Babbulkund. In time they leave him behind, but because…
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In the Kalevala, the people from the village of the heroes are tormented by the curses of a witch. One is that she sends among them a terrible bear, to harass their herds. He is reffered to as Otso, and the people flatter him in the most extraordinary and duplicitous way. Vainomoinen, the chief wizard,…
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During the recent anniversary for Librivox, when we were pushing to create out ten thousandth freely available public domain audiobook, I did some reading for the Kalevala, which is some epic poetry from Finland. Essentially it is about three wizards who have a feud with a witch from Lappland. During the, slightly convoluted, story one…
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This is a transcript of the most recent episode of the podcast. Travel magic doesn’t work very well in Ars Magica, at least in the core rules. As the line has progressed many of the authors, me included, have found ways to sabotage that and allow your party to get whatever they want to go,…
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A quick note to congratulate Librivox on its eleventh anniversary, and reaching a milestone. Librivox is a community of volunteers with no budget, offices, or paid staff. In the last eleven years we have recorded 10 000 books into audio format and released them into the public domain. You won’t find modern best-sellers on Librivox,…
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I’ve seen a lot of social media about the game’s mechanics, but very little about how to run events, so here are some practical tips based on a quick capacity test I did today. The tips assume you know the basics of the game. Curriculum material is already available There’s no need to reinvent the…
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Games From Folktales 