Roleplaying games from historical research
This is the first of a series of episodes based on ballads from Goethe. The poem given here is based on two ancient Greek stories. The story’s core is that of Machates and Philinnion from Phlegon’s “Book of Marvels”, but in that story the bride is not obviously a vampire. She’s a member of the…
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This time a story of (arguably not) dwarves from The Transylvanian Tribunal. The reading you’re about to hear is from LibriVox by J GO. Thank you for the recording. It was written by Edouard Laboulaye whose work isn’t seen a lot in English. On the off chance that some of the American listeners are going…
Read MoreThe Draft Zero version of Mythic Venice has been updated. Structurally the core parts are in place. Now what I’ll be doing is going through and making sure every bit of lore has a clear plot use. Currently it is 53 000 words long, which is about two-thirds the length of one of the standard…
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A welcome to Games From Folktales’s first guest author, Angela Black. *** In the default conception of Mythic Europe, miracles of Faith are rare. Whether this is for game balance or simply due to our modern sensibilities, it doesn’t exactly fit the medieval mindset on divine intervention. Miracles – while still wondrous – were relatively…
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A bugaboo, or bugbear, is a variant of the faeries that scare parents into seeing to their children. In Realms of Power : Faerie this would be a variant of the ogre Gello. Thanks to Ann and her production team for the recording. *** THERE was an awful Bugaboo Whose Eyes were Red and Hair was…
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Dear listener, this was the least pleasant of the many things I’ve worked through to find you historical material. This book is a summary of witch trials written by an early English antifeminist author. It’s a long litany of people killing aged and neurodivergent women. That being noted there’s material for three episodes here. This…
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You’re getting your annual report early this year. There are some changes coming because of the Anno Magica. For those not up to speed, Ars Magica is going to enter a new season later in the year, when Atlas Games crowdfunds the Definitive Edition. As part of that project, parts of the Ars Magica system…
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For the Venice material I’ve hit a couple of additional plot hooks, based on the two most popular masks at Carnivale. The most popular male mask isn’t a character: it’s just a plain white mask, without a mouth. The chin bows forward sufficiently for the person to eat and drink in the mask. The mask’s…
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Padraic Colum was an Irish author who translated the Thousand and One Nights, although his translation is not much used anymore. In his book “The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter” he spends some time remixing material from other stories, and making it more palatable for readers of his time. For this episode I’ve extracted three…
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A brief one this time. This poem demonstrates what, in Ars Magica, we’d call oppression. That’s when a demon attaches itself to a victim and removes their sources of joy. It’s a paradigmatic version of clinical depression. Thanks to Anne and the Librivox production team for the recording. *** I see the broken bodies of…
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