Historical Thursday - Murder, Alchemy and the Wars of the Roses

Over on the Medievalists.net website, they are featuring an article written in 2004 by Peter Fleming titled "Murder, Alchemy and the Wars of the Roses" that has some neat aspects easily transferred to a tabletop RPG setting.  Read more here!

The introduction reads as follows:

What follows is a kind of murder mystery, but not a whodunit. The identity of the man who carried out the crime, while indeed a mystery, is probably unknowable and actually unimportant. There is little room for doubt as to the identity of the man who gave him the order. The real mystery lies with the identity of the victim. In attempting to solve the mystery, we shall enter the kaleidoscope of faction and violence that was high politics during the Wars of the Roses, and make the acquaintance of one of fifteenth-century England’s foremost alchemists.

The NPCs along that can be snagged from this account are excellent!

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Irish Archaeology in Photos

Over on the irisharchaeology.ie website, there is a recent pictorial article on "Through the millennia: Irish Archaeology in photos."  There are many cool pics of sites you can sprinkle around your own tabletop RPG setting whether you cleave close to the original reason for them to have come into being or something of your own design.  See more here.

"Starry Night at Tara," a photo by Kevin Murphy, was taken at the Mound of the Hostages.  It's the site of an ancient passage tomb.  Check out the entry on Atlas Obscura for even more photos of this particular location.  Oh, and since you're probably wondering even if you visited the wiki page and the atlas already, according to NewGrangeTours.com, "The name Mound of the Hostages derives from the custom of over- kings like those at Tara retaining important personages from subject kingdoms to ensure their submission."  That's a worldbuilding detail worth its weight in hostage mounds.

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The Tuesday Sundries - Siberian Hole

Just recently, a huge hole has appeared in the Siberian region of Asia that some believe is the result of a natural underground explosion.  It has resulted in a lot of speculation as to why it has formed and to what it might portend.  Read more, and see lots of pics, here and here.

For us gamers, this opens up a world of possibilities in regard to how it can be exploited as a setting location or disaster.  There have been plenty of stories over the years involving sinkholes and craters from meteor bombardment but the idea of a huge enough underground gas explosion to form such a hole is something I hadn't known until now.  Of course, magic-gone-wrong or wars of the gods scenarios are a couple of options for jumping off points.  Also, over-mining by Dwarves or some other underground species could be just as provocative and be used in a lower level adventure hook.  Just a few ideas there for potential game fodder.

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RPG Media Monday - Harryhausen Creatures

On his YouTube channel, Mat Bergman has a video of every Ray Harryhausen creature, presented in chronological order.  Enjoy!

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Setting & Society Sunday - Jeff Rients's Setting Questions

A few years ago, Jeff Rients put a list of twenty questions on his blog meant to help a GM head off some potential problems at the table.  It's a very good list with questions every GM will likely have heard, at least in part, if they have GMed for any length of time.  These are questions that players often bring up during game play and that can potentially stall a game if the GM doesn't have a ready answer or can't think on their feet!  See how swiftly you can answer each of these questions, even if you have to make something up then flesh it out later.  It'll be a good exercise to perform on this Gary Gygax Day.  The first question is, "What is the deal with my cleric's religion?"  Check out the rest of the twenty here.

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Saturday in Space - The 9 Coolest Mock Space Missions

A recent pictorial article on Space.com recounts "The 9 Coolest Mock Space Missions."  You can read more here but he most interesting thing to me is that a year and a half long test, a simulation of a mission to Mars, could cost as little as $15M.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Baobab Tree Pub & the Tree of 40 Fruit

Are you aware there is a Baobab Tree Pub in South Africa?  A recent article on RoadTrippers.com tells us more here.

Of course the first thing to spring to mind for this one is using it as an Elf location.  But what if we twist it just a bit and suggest some ancient order of Rangers use the location as a meeting place and shelter?  Yeah, that sounds more like it to me.

Meanwhile, thanks to an industrious farmer-turned-artist, there exists a tree that will bear 40 different stone fruits from a single plant.  See more here on ScienceAlert.com.

I'm not sure I have ever heard of such a thing but now I am wondering why more fantasy worlds don't have plants capable of something similar.  Is it possible this concept, which actually has happened, seems too alien for alien game worlds?

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Historical Thursday - Riddle Me This, Medieval-style

Over on the Medievalist.net website, a recent article featured 10  Anglo-Saxon riddles from Aldhelm’s Enigmata.  Try to solve them here.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Ancient Roman Multicultural Cemetery

According to ArtDaily.com, archaeologists have discovered a multicultural cemetery near the Roman port of Ostia that is around 2,700 years old.  Read more here.

So often, in our tabletop game settings, cemeteries and tombs tend to be a bit one-note, catering to one family or the main religion of a culture, often one deity.  This can happen because we take a specific idea dn run with it in a single direction.  But this recent find near Ostia shows that in a vast empire, near the major centers of trade in particular, it is not impossible to fathom that since many folks with varied background lived in the area, and since space was a limited factor for burials, the inhabitants might well be open-minded enough to share their cemeteries among many faiths.  One of my favorite lines from the article is, "Around a dozen tombs have been found so far at the site, some of them including lead tablets with inscriptions containing curses to ward off potential looters."  Sounds like they had us gamers in mind when they wrote it up!

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The Tuesday Sundries - Sandbox Wandering Monster Tables from Ed Kann

Over on his Dungeon Mastering by Candlelight blog, Ed Kann is sharing some of his wandering monster tables from his sandbox campaign.  See more here.

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RPG Media Monday - The Quintessential Robot

Some would say that Robby the Robot is the quintessential example of his kind.  Of all the many robots in science fiction or even those that actually exist in our real world, what would you say truly epitomizes the robot?  Here's a wiki list of SciFi robots and androids if one doesn't spring to mind, though that might be the point.  How many on that list are even ones you know?

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Setting & Society Sunday - Sculpture for Culture

Nothing adds to a setting quite the same way as a well-placed sculpture.  There is a recent pictorial article on demilked.com that features "20 Of The Most Creative Sculptures From Around The World."  Take a look at them for a bit of inspiration here.

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Saturday in Space - Ideas for Europa Wanted

NASA wants your ideas regarding Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and a future mission's goals.  To whit:

NASA is asking for designs of scientific instruments that will help in the search for life on Europa. The winning instrument designs will be chosen next year and will be built for a future mission to explore Europa. The deadline for submitting proposals is Oct. 17.

You can read more here.

But isn't it fascinating not only that this sort of interactive marketing of a program, in order to gain public awareness and support, might also glean some ideas that might exist outside the box.  In a tabletop RPG setting, how might this go horribly wrong?  We've all seen the movies where some civilian or scientist with ulterior motives manages to worm their way onto the ship of an off-planet mission.  Or maybe some corporate espionage is in the offing?  What of quasi-environmentalist who thinks out species destroying one planet is quite enough, thank-you-very-much?  A lot of folks love Sci-Fi settings and RPGs but I wonder if a better gateway Sci-Fi RPG might take place in a near-future setting, where most things are not much different from our real world.  Something to think about while off gaming this weekend.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Brine Pools and Methane Seeps

Over on nautiluslive.org, there is a video they posted just last week which shows "Life at Extremes: Biology of Brine Pools and Methane Seeps."  In their words, "One of our objectives in exploring the "New America" is to characterize the biology in some of the most extreme environments in the Gulf of Mexico, and that means visiting two of our favorite geological features - a brine pool and a methane seep. Neither site disappointed, and the mussels and tube worms we saw were stunning."  See more here.

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Historical Thursday - Cave Paintings

This one might need to be called a PRE-historical Thursday entry, but whatever.  Over on the HeritageDaily.com website, there is a pictorial article showing "10 Must See Cave Paintings."

Any prehistoric location or extremely ancient cave or cavern complex in your tabletop RPG setting could benefit from having some artist efforts like this.  The danger, of course, is that such remnants are thought to be pertinent to the setting in the here and now.  That is to say that while some touches like this deepen the seeming history of a setting, they might lead players to believe that they have an immediate significance.  Red herrings can mislead players and throw them off the scent.  Perhaps this is a good thing but only a GM knows his own group well enough to realize if this is problematic.

However, they can also be tied into the present day of a setting.  Why not have the local population revere such paintings as prophesy from the past?  Can the ancient art tell of some recurring calamity like a volcano or seismic activity?  Can it include a map that, while potentially flawed due to poor knowledge or shifting landscapes, still has worthwhile details?  There are many possibilities.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - The Height of Fear, Taking your Game to the Top with Found Photos

Recently, I stumbled over a photo of a location in Thula, Yemen showing some steps I had seen from other angles in the past.  But this angle was the one that finally took my breath away.  I did a bit of digging to discover the photo was of a fort restoration project.  I'll credit it as it was on the place I eventually located it, ArchitectureWeek.com.  Bookmark this website in your inspiration folder, if you have one.  If you don't have one, start one today with this pic and location.  A quick search online will help you find other angles, as I knew from before, and soon you'll have a full location that can be fictionalized for your game world with a center piece that will be very memorable for your players.  Give it a new name, place it on your map, and populate it with the people or creatures you imagine reside there.

Thula Fort Restoration, in Thula, Yemenby Abdullah Al-Hadrami, Sana'a, Yemen Photo: AKAA/ Cemal Emden

As you can see from the photo, these steps wind and switchback multiple times leading up the side of a cliff face.  Climbing these steps would be largely under the scrutiny of anyone looking down from above.  You can just imagine someone explaining how he wanted a fort upon the heights and the engineer's first reaction being pleased that he'd be gainfully employed for the rest of his life, and his descendants as well.  His second reaction being, "We're going to need a way up there, some steps maybe."

But your version of the location need not be like that.  Notice that the photo above is practically cut in thirds, the upper right corner showing the sky and valley below with the town.  It would not be all that tough to take a photo manipulation program, snag the lower left two-thirds portion of this photo and place it over the top of another photo of a more desolate valley.  Cliffs and tors jut out of the ground most anywhere.  You could have a dense forest below or place this by a seaside.  Whatever suits your world.

Any location can be described as having a fort.  It's easy to simply say that there is a cliff with a fort on top of it.  But taking the time to find a few pictures online, if your descriptive skills are scant or too heavily taxed from a long week of work, is a fine shortcut to bringing a location to life for your players.  Whatever it takes to get you to the top.

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The Tuesday Sundries - Monty Python and Humor References in your Game

A recent article on the RadioTimes.com website, titled "Giant dead parrot unveiled in London to pay tribute to Monty Python," got me thinking about how often Monty Python , particularly those from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), gets referenced around the game table over the years during tabletop roleplaying games.  From Holy Hand Grenades and Killer Rabbits, to shouting "Run Away" when retreat is required, and when fighting a foe who seems to shrug off damage like the Black Knight, there are simply too many to list in a single blog post.  You'd almost have to post the full script.

Since there is a new edition of D&D coming out, maybe it would be useful to prep some of the new players joining the fold on ways to bring "teh funny" to your games.  With that in mind, I thought it might be nice to build a flowchart of possible quotes to trot out during various tabletop RPG situations.  What are the favorites around your tables?

(Keep it clean for the younger gamers among us, please.)

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RPG Media Monday - A Game as Literary Tutorial

In the New York Times Books section yesterday, there was an article titled "A Game as Literary Tutorial."  Read more here then feel free to add below to the a list of writers to read, and entertainers to follow, to gain inspiration for your future tabletop RPG creations.

They mention many in various writing and entertainment fields including: Junot Díaz, China Miéville, David Lindsay-Abaire, Brent Hartinger, Cory Doctorow, Sherman Alexie, Stephen Colbert, George R. R. Martin, Sharyn McCrumb, Robin Williams, Matt Groening, Dan Harmon, and Chris Weitz.  Many I know and only a few have material not in my extended wheelhouse.

Of course, they don't mention everyone they could including several recently mentioned on this blog who still game regularly and produce fine gamer-adjacent literature like Matt Forbeck, Ted Fauster, and Hans Cummings.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Adapting Humans Plus 25 Hidden Entrance Bars

Per Archaeology Magazine -

Scientists say that Sherpas and other Tibetans inherited a gene variant that helps them breathe at high altitudes from Denisovans, an extinct human species.

And a recent article on their website expounds a bit more here.

What can we take from this when developing cultures for our tabletop RPG games?  Well, it does allow us to do some adjustments based on heritage and location to tweak standard humans and make them somewhat different than others without developing a different species, like dwarfs or elves.  This clears a path, not that it was necessarily very overgrown, for us to have not simply humanocentric settings but such with greater diversity.

Also, Distractify.com ran a pictorial article a few months backed titled "25 Of The World's Exclusive Bars With Hidden Entrances. Here's How To Get In!"  See more here.

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Saturday in Space - Name an Alien Planet Plus Super-Sized Moon

Talk about a world-creator dream come true!  As explained on Space.com:

"The International Astronomical Union (IAU) in charge of naming heavenly bodies will open its exoplanet naming process to the world in 2015 in the form of a public vote."

So, if you ever wanted the chance to name a planet that wasn't just part of your homebrew tabletop universe, start thinking up some that can win votes.

Also, and I am adding this after the fact, there is an article on Space.com heralding "Supermoon Saturday: Supersized Full Moon Rises This Weekend."  Read more here!

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Flora & Fauna Friday - World's Largest-Ever Flying Bird, Driving Fish, & Black Bear Rescue

It seems that fossils found in Charleston, SC, from 1983 have finally led to the "World's largest-ever flying bird" being identified.  Read more here!

Birds gotta fly and fish gotta swim, unless they can drive.  The good folks at Designing Intelligent Imaging Products have put a goldfish in the driver's seat for a recent project and it has gone swimmingly.  Check out this video on their YouTube channel to prove it.

Meanwhile in modern times, a "lumberjack" has rescued a black bear with a milk can stuck on its head.  On Wimp.com they captioned this video as -

Garrett Smith, a lumberjack from Rice Lake, Wisconsin, saves a black bear with a milk can stuck on his head using a forestry "forwarder" vehicle. The claw, which is normally used for moving heavy logs, makes a great mechanical hand to help the bear out.

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Historical Thursday - Roman and Iron Age Coins

BBC News reports that Roman and Iron Age coins have been found at Reynard's Cave in Dovedale, Derbyshire.  It is unusual for the two types of coins to be found together.  Speculation abounds over the small collection, their location and the composition of the modest hoard.

Personally, I'd like to think that some up-and-coming Iron Age warlord had gathered these coins over the course of his lifetime but before his death decided to stash them all in the cave, only to be eaten by a grue.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Live Exoplanet Science Discussion Today

There is a LIVE 30-minute webcast happening today, July 9th, at 2 pm CST called "Spotlight Live: The Hunt for Other Worlds Heats Up" which focuses on Exoplanetology  You can watch it on Space.com here.  It's hosted by a nonprofit, The Kavli Foundation.

The participants will be:

ZACHORY BERTA-THOMPSON – Dr. Berta-Thompson is the Torres Fellow for Exoplanetary Research at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. He hunts for exoplanets as a member of the MEarth Project, a survey to find small planets orbiting the closest, smallest stars. 

BRUCE MACINTOSH – Dr. Macintosh is the principal investigator for the Gemini Planet Imager, which searches for planets from the Gemini South telescope. GPI recently snapped its first image, thereby producing the best-ever direct photo of a planet outside our solar system. Dr. Macintosh is also a Professor of Physics at Stanford University and a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. 

MARIE-EVE NAUD – Ms. Naud is the University of Montreal PhD student who led analysis that recently uncovered a previously unknown giant planet using infrared light. The planet, known as GU Pisces b, is one of the most unusual exoplanets found to-date, with a mass 10 times greater than Jupiter's and orbiting its star at 2,000 times the distance between Earth and our sun. 

KELEN TUTTLE (moderator) – Ms. Tuttle is a freelance journalist with more than a decade of experience in science communications. Most recently, she served as Editor-in-Chief of Symmetry, a magazine dedicated to the science and culture of particle physics. Her fields of expertise also include astrophysics, biology and chemistry.

If you are a tabletop gamer that creates more than just a single world, this should be a good way to spend a half hour of your time.

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The Tuesday Sundries - Abandoned Scotland

There is a wonderful site to check out for setting locations called AbandonedScotland.com.  There are a ton of photos and videos to check out though not as many of Medieval sites as I would have hoped.  See more here!

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RPG Media Monday - The 2014 National Geographic Geography Bee & New Muppet-esque Movie

Part of what makes our tabletop RPG cartographic efforts interesting goes beyond drawing hills and trees, more trees, and yet more trees.  The places that often intrigue players the most are the largest, longest, smallest, hottest, coldest, and other extreme examples of their respective types, as well as the unusual names of locations of which we were previously unaware.  Discovering these places in the real world can be fun and provide inspiration for our gaming efforts.  To that end, here is the 2014 National Geographic Geography Bee from the Nat Geo YouTube channel.  Enjoy!


Also something to watch as news develops is the broader release of Lessons Learned, a short film by Toby Froud, the guy who was cast as the baby in the movie Labyrinth.  He's been assisted by his folks, Brian and Wendy Froud who are Henson Company stalwarts, and Jim Henson's daughter, Heather.  If you found tabletop RPG inspiration in that movie or in The Dark Crystal, I'm guessing this new film will be a real treat.  I know I am looking forward to seeing it!

Furthermore, if you have never heard Shoggoth's Old Peculiar as read by the author, Neil Gaiman, then you should listen, via YouTube, to the three parts of it (about 27 minutes in total).  Enjoy!

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Setting & Society Sunday - Language Trees

I've seen a number of good "language trees" over the years but the one on Wikipedia accompanying their Indo-European Languages entry is particularly good.  Check it out full-sized here.

The image above was humorously touched up a bit by someone on Facebook.

While you don't necessarily need to make anything so elaborate for a tabletop RPG setting, would it be so wrong if you wanted to do so?  I think not.  In fact, if you have a world with many cultures and a rich history, it would be very useful to build one to aid in other creation projects.  If a PC discovers a book, you have a ready way to place it in time and space based on the language being used in the text.  Someone in-game might identify a weapon with particular runes as being from an ancient empire that was the progenitor of another, giving a clue as to where one might find out more or discover other related artifacts.  An obscure link between two nations might be a way for the characters to prevent a war.  The possibilities are endless, so have at it.

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Saturday in Space - Fireworks in Space, Independence, and a Robotic Doctor

It impresses me to no end how much we, as a species, are still doing in space, day in and day out while most of us are down here on the surface of our spinning rock often unaware of the efforts above.  A lot of the news items referenced below come from Space.com or I found on sites to which I navigated from there.  I can't recommend that website enough to anyone wishing to keep in touch with what is happening overhead.

With it being Independence Day weekend, it seems appropriate to point out some of the "Best Space Fireworks Photos Ever" from Space.com here.

Over on CollectSpace.com, You can view a pictorial "walkthrough of the newly-upgraded, high-fidelity space shuttle [Independence] replica" here.

Back over on Space.com, there is an interesting video highlighting how NASA's Robot Astronaut can be used as a telemedicine robot.  Check it out here.

Well, that's it for this week.  I guess I could add a lot more but I'll try to keep it to the links that interested me most.  In future weeks, I'll also be adding some ideas on how to utilize this material in tabletop games.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - The Oldest Danish Book about Gardening

Over on Medievalist.net, a recent article titled "The Oldest Danish Book about Gardening" featured some Medieval illustrations and a compiled list of the Latin names of plants from the tome, among other details.  See more here!

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Historical Thursday - The Centaurs, a Fragment (1921)

Someone on Facebook recently pointed out a website called The Public Domain Review and a video they had shared titled The Centaurs, a Fragment (1921).  Even in its short length, it is evocative of their movement and culture.  Enjoy it here!

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Starting with a Solid Map

One of the ways often suggested for how to begin any worldbuilding project is to start with a solid map.  Even the simplest of cartography efforts can help a creator to organize thoughts and develop relationships between the various ideas competing for space in what will become a game world.  It's also not unreasonable for beginning GMs (or more experienced GMs pressed for time) to snag a map from some other source and repurpose it for their own homebrew.  One such map, meant to get the creative juices of 5E D&D Starter Set GMs flowing, might be the Map of Phandalin (detail below), as shared on the Wizards of the Coast website here!

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The Tuesday Sundries - Abandoned Mall Fish Pond

Here's one both animal and setting related that I think warrants it's own mention because it is also a bit on the creepy side.  I realize space reclamation is important in places where there has been urban abandonment and building decay, but there is something about having a fishery in the depths of a hollowed-out mall that strikes me as eerie.  See more here on DangerousMinds.net!

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