Hired into an Albanian Blood Feud
Before the arrival of state control in the 1920s, highland Albania had a highly-developed culture surrounding blood feuds. There was a particular way these feuds were supposed to be conducted, but all rigid customs turn out to be enormously variable when you dig into individual cases. One gray area surrounding Albanian blood feuds was hiring […]
Drumming the Scandal
In the first half of the 20th century, the Tiv people of east-central Nigeria developed a way to air their disputes called “drumming the scandal.” The quarrelers each wrote catchy songs about what a scumbag their rival was, then performed them so loud they could be heard from other villages. This technique tended to escalate […]
Human Cave Features
The U.S. state of Missouri is full of caves. In the 1800s and early 1900s, Missourians put their caves to all kinds of uses. This human activity in caves is really useful when designing your own natural dungeons. Stick the interesting, gameable things Missourians did in their caves into your dungeons as hazards, obstacles, scenery, […]
Language Windows Into the Vagrant Underworld
Since I was first exposed to D&D, I’ve thought it was neat that one of the languages you could be proficient in was “thieves’ cant,” a language for rogues. Real life and real languages are more complicated, but secret languages do exist, and they have been used in criminal activity. One such is Rotwelsch, a […]
Lop Nor, the Wandering Lake
Lop Nor was a salt lake in the Taklamakan Desert in remote western China. The lake no longer exists; damming the Tarim River to create an agricultural reservoir doomed it. But while Lop Nor existed, it was a terrible puzzle, because every time outsiders visited the lake it seemed to be in a different place. […]
Old Essex County Jail
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Justin Moor. Thanks for helping keep […]
Pygmy Forest
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks for helping keep […]
Moving Lost Packages with the 6888th Postal Directory
The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (its soldiers just called it the ‘six-triple-eight’) was a groundbreaking U.S. Army unit in WWII: the first unit of black, female soldiers America ever sent overseas. The 6888th was deployed to Birmingham, England, sorting mail bound for U.S. troops on the front lines in Europe. The unit’s commanding officer, […]
The Murder Castle
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Arthur Brown. Thanks for helping keep […]
Mount Roraima
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! I’m running a Kickstarter campaign right now for an early-access zine edition of Ballad Hunters, my RPG about magical […]
The Shaman/Detective Team-Up
Uluksuk Mayuk was an Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) shaman active in the early 1900s. In 1914, he heard about a double murder and went to investigate it. Two years later, a Canadian detective arrived unexpectedly from a world away. Uluksuk and the detective pooled their information and their resources, then Uluksuk led the detective to the […]
Mendenhall Ice Caves
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks for helping keep […]
Five Old Ibibio Women
The homeland of the Ibibio people is the delta of the Niger River in southeast Nigeria. In the mid-1960s, anthropologist Iris Andreski visited Ibibio villages in the rainforest and swamps between Calabar and Port Harcourt to interview the oldest women she could find. Her book, Old Wives’ Tales, is a collection of biographies of these […]
Rudivoravan: Fallen Princess Turned Cold War Broadcaster
Mrs. Rudi Voravan of Washington, D.C. was originally Her Serene Majesty Princess Rudivoravan of Siam (later Thailand). She was the granddaughter of one of Thailand’s most famous kings, was courted by two others, and spent her first twenty-four years living in palaces. Yet she renounced her royal status to marry a commoner. During the Cold […]
Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Justin Moor. Thanks for helping keep […]