The Tuesday Sundries - Top 10 Medieval Ruins in England

Over on the Medievalist.net website, there is a new article titled "Top 10 Medieval Ruins in England."  See more here.

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RPG Media Monday - John Gower Tales

Over on the Medievalist.net website, a recent article features a short film of several tales adapted from the works of John Gower an English poet who was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer.  See more here.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Ancient Sites in France

etc.ancient.eu has put together a pictorial list of ten sites to see from the Ancient world located in modern day France.  See more here.

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Saturday in Space - Earth’s Impending Magnetic Flip

There is an interesting article on Scientific American titled "Earth’s Impending Magnetic Flip" giving us the skinny on geomagnetic reversal.  Read more here.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Spinosaurus & Pyrosomes

From bizarre to more bizarre this posting as recent news as once again raised awareness of two particularly odd features of the world of nature.  First up, articles this month were spreading the word about "The largest predatory dinosaur ever" which is sometimes described as "'half-duck, half-crocodile.'"  This was apparently the largest ever predatory dinosaur, larger than the T-Rex.  Read more on TheVerge.com here and then enjoy a National Geographic video below.

Meanwhile, over on the Nerdist.com website, they ran a recent article titled "Pyrosomes are the Borgs of the Oceans."  See more here.

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Historical Thursday - Heraldry of the World Website

If you want to add some quasi-historical touches to your campaign world, there are few websites with more inspiration than the Heraldry of the World pages.  Just take a look at the page for München, Germany to get a taste of this wonderful website here.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Discovered Cistern Speeds Excavation of Castle

Hoşap Castle in Turkey has been a point of excavation for years but the recent discovery of the castle's cistern has sped up the process.  Now the cistern is being used to store water by the excavation teams extending their ability to work on-site.  Read more here.

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The Tuesday Sundries - English Word Origins Quiz

Over on the Medievalists.net website, they recently shared a quiz on the origins of some English words that I bet many gamer friends will pass quite handily.  See more here.

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RPG Media Monday - Chiller TV

If you're in the mood to run a chilling RPG game, then spend a bit of time on the ChillerTV.com website.  You'll find tons of great images and information on new and old television, movies, and chilling events, especially in the run up to Halloween.  See more here.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Camel Shearing, Hurling History, & Medieval Scandals

Over on the Simply Creative blog, there was a recent posting featuring "Beautiful Camel Shearing at Bikaner Camel Festival."  See more here.

Over on IrishArchaeology.ie earlier this month, they posted on "Hurling, its ancient history."  Read more here.

Finally, on the Medievalists.net website, check out their "Top 10 Scandals of the Middle Ages" here.

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Saturday in Space - Mars One Colony

I've been reading a bit about the Mars One privately-funded colony project lately from its own marketing and from various detractors.  What I've come to realize is, from my perspective it doesn't matter whether it is a sham, a reality show, a true scientific effort, or portions of each and more.  I just like the idea.  To me, this is going to be a fantastical unfolding story for many years and will bring me as much joy to follow if it fails to launch not nearly as much as if it becomes a rousing success story, but still fantastic at either extreme.

There is the distinct possibility, if it actually gets off the ground, that a tragedy awaits anyone making the attempt to first colonize Mars.  But these are adults, making choices and knowing the risks.  I've never been from the school of thought that we need to overly protect people from themselves and label every sewing pin as pointy.  Who could or would read the warnings anyway?

So, I say, buckle up and enjoy the ride, or at least the show, as the Mars One is unveiled over the years to a waiting public, or just me.  Read more here.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Chimp Wars, Prehistoric Predators, & Childhood Renderings

A research report refutes the theory that warlike behavior in chimpanzees has anything to do with the influence of human beings.  Read more here on Science Daily.

The National Geographic YouTube channel has a new video uploaded featuring the Dinosaur Detective, National Geographic 2014 Emerging Explorer Nizar Ibrahim.

Finally, since they are mostly animals, take a look how artist Telmo Pieper has used a graphics program to add some photo-realism to her childhood drawings here.

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Historical Thursday - Medieval Famine

Over on the Medievalists.net website, they feature a paper about the Great European Famine of 1314-22 from the Yale Economic History Workshop by Philip Slavin presented in 2009 titled "How Great Was the Great Famine of 1314-22: Between Ecology and Institutions."  If you're someone who likes some detail and realism in the major disasters you add to your table RPG settings, this will be a fascinating reading for you.  Not a huge read, just a dozen pages or so, a second cup of coffee kind of read.  See more here.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Creighton Broadhurst on Unfair Encounters

Locations built into a world that adventurers simply should avoid until utterly sure they are equipped to handle them are a feature of Worldbuilding tabletop RPG settings since the earliest days.  Some of the first advice from the three little booklets suggest creating a town where PCs can be safe and a dungeon location where they can adventure, with the conceit that the deeper you go, the tougher it gets.  That's the early design fair warning system: stairs, a trapdoor, a slide.  If you blundered down a sloping passage and didn't have some way to detect that to be the case, then maybe you'd be rolling up new characters later that evening.  While this might sound to some like a story about walking both ways up a hill in the snow to get to school, understand that I am simply explaining how things were then.  Doesn't make it good or bad, just how it was and what we enjoyed when it was the way it was.  No judgement.

Many approaches to adventure or scenario design in various systems these days suggest something geared more closely to the talents and readiness of the PCs on hand.  Some even suggest that a certain percentage of PC resources (gold, spells, equipment, etc.) should be utilized to handle an encounter within a scenario, thus allowing the GM to tailor several such encounters for said scenario and have a good chance of the PCs surviving the adventure if they expend those resources judiciously.

Worldbuilding is a different animal than the latter but there is no reason some things cannot be learned from the micro-managing approach, something to keep in the back of ones mind while Worldbuilding that can help with the flow of the various locations and assist with choosing a good time to introduce hooks into a sandbox campaign that will challenge the players without setting them up for a fall.

Over on his blog, Creighton Broadhurst of Raging Swam discusses "The 4 Types of Unfair Encounters."  See more here.

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The Tuesday Sundries - Medieval Women Scientists

Over on the Medievalists.net website, they recently featured an article on "Women Scientists of the Middle Ages and 1600s."  Read more here and check this wiki-list here of women scientists of the Middle Ages.

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RPG Media Monday - Tolkien on Writing for Children

There is an interesting article on Brain Pickings titled "J.R.R. Tolkien on Fairy Tales, Language, the Psychology of Fantasy, and Why There’s No Such Thing as Writing 'For Children'" which you can read here.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Humorous Hamlet Names & Phonetic Alphabet Charts

Back in July on Jeff's Gameblog, he shared a table to use for generating random Hamlet names, and quite funny ones at that.  Read more here.

Deep on the OSRIC.com website, you can fine conversion charts for Phonetic Alphabet charts for bot the NATO and Western Union variety, and of you scroll down a little javascript that will dot he converting for you.  See more here.

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Saturday in Space - How Big is the Universe?

Over on the Minute Physics YouTube channel there is a wonderful video from about a year and a half ago titled "How Big is the Universe?"  Enjoy.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - 17th Century Creatures, Pearlfish, & Dreadnoughtus

Over on the Mental Floss website, there's a recent article featuring "12 Fantastic Drawings of Fictional Creatures from a 17th Century Book."  See more here.

On australiangeographic.com.au, there is an interesting article about the pearlfish, "The fish that lives in a sea cucumber anus."  Read more here.

Finally, on Scientific American, there is an article on "New "Dreadnought" Dinosaur[, the] Most Complete Specimen of a Giant."  See more here.

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Historical Thursday - Treasure and Artifacts

About a year ago, a climber on Mont Blanc discovered a chest of gems (rubies, saphires, etc.) and turned them in, as they were part of one of two plane crashes of India-originating flights in either 1966 or 1950.  Still digging to se if more information has surfaced on this find.  Read the original story here or here.

A replica of the famous Hanney brooch has been touring the UK this summer.  Read more about this magnificent artifact here.

Finally, it's been reported recently that a suit of bone armor discovered in Siberia is likely more then three and a half thousand years old.  Read more here and here.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Göbekli Tepe, World's First Temple

Göbekli Tepe may well be the "World's First Temple," dating to about 11,000 years ago.  Read more about it on the Smithsonian website here and its Wiki page here.

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The Tuesday Sundries - English Surnames, Ancient Look-alikes, & Mysterious Sounds

According to Ancestry.com, there are primarily seven types of English surnames, and they ought to know, no?  Read more here.

Silly as it is, IrishArchaeology.ie has collected a bunch of matched-up photos showing "Ancient Look a Likes."  Check them all out here.

Finally, on TopTenz.net, they have a collection of "10 Mysterious Noises That Science Can’t Explain."  Give a listen to most of them here.

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RPG Media Monday - One-Stroke Dragons, UK Medieval Studies, & Identifying Hesiod

Although the title suggests a single stroke produces a dragon drawing, and that's not actually the case, it's pretty damned amazing what is done in this video of a five-minute artistic expression.  Enjoy.

If you're in the UK and have a interest in Medieval Studies, check out this post from last year on the Medievalists.net website which gathers a list of many programs available there.  Read more here.

Over on ClassicalWisdom.com, there is an interesting article from the end of last month discussing the identity of Ancient Greek author Boeotian Hesiod.  Read more here.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Jack the Ripper's DNA & Professional 1800s Mourners

It's been a long time coming but apparently, according to recent news, Jack the Ripper has now been definitively identified ending the 126-year-old mystery.  Read more here on dailymail.co.uk.

And while we're on the subject of death in the 1800s, here's a look at some professional mourners from that era here.

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Saturday in Space - Ringworlds, Mars Jarts, and Saturn's Geysers

A couple of days ago, PopularMechanics.com ran a story titled "Could We Build a Ringworld?"  It's part of their cosmic megastructures series which includes, among other articles, Artificial Worlds and Dyson Spheres.  See more on their Ringworld theories here.

Last month on PopSci.com, they explained "Why Scientists Want To Throw Lawn Darts At Mars" here.

Finally, earlier this summer, Time magazine's online component ran an article titled "NASA Discovers 101 Active Geysers On Saturn Moon."  Read more here.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Oldest Plant, Edible Bugs, & Vampire Parrot

Over on the National Geographic website, an article from a couple years back heralded a 32,000-year-old plant species that was brought back to life from prehistoric seeds.  Read more here.

Also, from the National Geographic YouTube channel, a video from last month asks "Should We Eat More Bugs?"  Bon appétit!

Finally, from a couple years back, an article on the Telegraph website mentioned that "Scientists discover [a] new species of dinosaur: the fanged vampire parrot."  See more here.

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Historical Thursday - Roman Empire Explained with Maps

A mid-August article on VOX by Timothy B. Lee was titled "40 maps that explain the Roman Empire" but it is more than just maps.  See more here.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Ancient Churches, Abbeys, and Graves

Over on IrishArchaeology.ie, there is a new pictorial article titled "Photos of Ancient Churches, Abbeys and Graves."  See more here.

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The Tuesday Sundries - Medieval Tech Tuesday

Over on the Medievalists.net website they feature "Ten Medieval Inventions that Changed the World."  See more here.

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RPG Media Monday - Cyberpunk Films & Medievalist Books

Over on Movie Pilot, they claim to know of "5 Mindblowing Cyberpunk Short Films You HAVE to See."  Scroll down the page to see if they are even close here.

The good folks at the Medievalist.net website have "Five Medieval Books recommended by the Five-Minute Medievalist" here.

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