Slavers of the West African Coast
The 17th through early 19th centuries saw a huge demand for forced labor on the plantations of the New World. Enslaved people were dragged from West Africa by the millions, and many men grew rich trading in lives and suffering. These men are natural villains, perfect for the gaming table. Let’s look at three. The […]
Shake Up Your Campaign with Persian Perfidy!
Shaking up a campaign setting that’s grown stale can be a tricky task. You can’t change too much or you’ll lose what your players love about the game, and they’ll lose the detailed setting knowledge they’ve gained. But if you don’t make things different enough, the exercise is pointless. For a great example of how […]
Standoff in the Mud
This stretch of terrain between two branches of a river in Mongolia offers an excellent site for a standoff. Whether you want a social encounter, a combat encounter, or one that can shift between the two, this site’s combination of difficult terrain and exceptionally long sight lines promises to create a tense situation. Mongolia’s Gorkhi-Terelj […]
White Squalls
Now it’s a thing that us old-timers know, in the sultry summer calmThere comes a blow from nowhere, and it goes off like a bombAnd a fifteen-thousand-tonner can be be thrown upon her beamWhile the gale takes all before it with a scream. – Stan Rogers, White Squall It’s been a hot minute since we […]
The Cruel, Prophetic Witch of Northern Greece
Ancient Greece was full of legends about witches in Thessaly, a wild region in the north. The Roman poet Lucan (39-65 A.D.) channeled the most horrid of these in his Pharsalia. This epic poem about the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey includes an aside where Pompey’s son consults a monstrous fortune-teller: the cannibal […]
Hunting the PCs Like Buffalo
The Native American nations of the Great Plains have many remarkable cultural practices. One historical practice, the collective hunt, is relevant to the gaming table. The same tactics Native hunters used against herds of bison can be used in combat encounters to hunt your PCs. Let’s look at four. When we think about hunting large […]
The Marquis de St. Jacques and 1-Year Anniversary
An obscure figure from Indian colonial history, the Marquis de St. Jacques (pronounced ’Sa Jack’) was a French renegade, a mercenary, a scoundrel, and a great inspiration for a similar NPC at your table. The Marquis de St. Jacques (all the sources I can find refer to him only by that name) was a soldier […]
The Murder of Monsieur Dorbain
This 1579 murder of a minor lord in rural France is great inspiration for a murder mystery. The case looks cut-and-dried at first, but the deeper the you look, the more complicated it becomes. An adventure based on the case may culminate in an ethical quandary and a readymade hook leading to your next adventure! April was […]
A Logic Puzzle on the Ebro Delta
This week, we have a cool logic puzzle that can be easily inserted into any ocean journey! Failing to solve it has memorable (but not catastrophic) consequences. And at the end, we have a way to turn the logic puzzle into the start of an easy-to-improvise adventure! Noted sailor, writer, and delightful liar Tristan Jones […]
The Tomb of Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, was one of the most historically-significant humans to ever live. Yet we have no idea where he was buried. His lost resting place – and the possibility it contains the finest loot from a lifetime of conquest – makes a great adventure hook. The West remembers Genghis Khan […]
The Counter-Borgia Rogue’s Gallery
In 1502, almost a dozen Italian nobles agreed to work together against the ambitions of the Borgia family. This uneasy alliance is a remarkable rogue’s gallery. Some are the worst of the worst: murderers, traitors, and simoniacs. Others are uncompromising politicians, or even decent men spurred to vengeance. It’s the perfect place to draw inspiration […]
Zany PC Schemes from Xenophon
Normally I write material for GMs, but players, this one’s for you. Any player worth her salt is always coming up with clever schemes to bypass the GM’s obstacles. That’s part of the fun of the game! It often happens, though, that these schemes are a little… unconventional. “You’re crazy!” the GM cries. “That would […]
Traveling Through a Central American Rainforest
Rainforests are breathtaking, beautiful, wondrous – and actively hostile to human life. The conquistadors called it the ‘green hell’. Here, then, is a table to roll on to better evoke the experience of traveling through one. This was designed with a Central American lowland rainforest in mind, but it’s not too much work to adapt it […]
The Zeigler Strike
The 1904-1909 worker’s strike at a coal mine outside Zeigler, Illinois was the closest thing to open warfare you’re likely to see in a country at peace. American strikes around the turn of the century were notoriously violent, but Zeigler was noteworthy for the military-style tactics both sides used. On one side, you had a […]
New Crop, New Jealousies: A Mystery
Back in February of 2018, I wrote about Tarang, a remote village of farmers and traders in the Nepalese Himalayas that serves as a ‘hinge’ between its Nepali Hindu neighbors to the south and its Tibetan Buddhist neighbors to the north. Back in 1968, Tarang was undergoing many changes, one of which was the introduction […]