PCs as Soldiers – Irregular Officers
Sometimes, you want to play a soldier, even when no one else does. Ming warriors looked snappy on parade, Green Berets have access to cool weapons, and Gurkhas are just plain badass. But soldier PCs can’t go where they want or behave as they will. This problem can be mitigated when the whole party’s a […]
Female Soldiers in Disguise
Women were not permitted to be soldiers in the American Civil War. Nonetheless, women on both sides adopted male disguises and signed up. In their exhaustively researched book They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War, historians DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook claim to have uncovered evidence of about 250 such soldiers. […]
Stealing Tea From China
The British theft of tea from China in 1848-1851 ranks as one of the greatest acts of industrial espionage in history. It also makes a fresh, original RPG adventure. It’s not likely your players will have ever before stolen live plants from a foreign land! In the mid-19th century, England made enormous sums of money […]
Dispersing an Angry Mob
Mobs are a force of nature. Individual thought is dissolved within the broad and shallow consciousness of the mob. They can be fun obstacles in RPGs, but short of hiding from them, how can you defeat one? The 1846 attempted lynching of Ned Buntline offers a case where a mob in the act of murdering […]
The Poisoner Mollie Greer
The alleged 1884-1885 poisoning spree of Mollie Greer in Nashville, Tennessee presents some excellent complications you can use in a murder mystery at your table! Our story begins with Mollie’s common-law husband, Prince Greer. Prince was born enslaved in 1840. When his master rode to war in the Confederate army, Greer accompanied him. After his […]
Deception Island
The high black walls of Deception island rise above the storm-tossed waters off the Antarctic peninsula. It’s a volcano, its rim broken in a single spot, permitting ships to sail into the flooded caldera. Its history, remote location, and strange features make Deception Island a great adventure site for RPGs! The horseshoe-shaped island is 9 […]
The Bloody Vendetta
From 1868 to 1876, Williamson County, Illinois played host to a feud called ‘The Bloody Vendetta’. It started as a pretty standard blood feud between two families, but it quickly drew in multiple families on each side, and its impacts spilled over into the broader community. It’s a great plot hook and setting feature that […]
Frontier Dueling
The ‘gentlemen’ of antebellum America practiced many perverse social customs. One of the more appalling ones was dueling. Let’s have a look at how to use dueling as a plot hook at the table by examining a particularly nasty spate of bloodshed featuring America’s most infamous duelist: future president Andrew Jackson! In 1805, Nashville, Tennessee […]
The Legend of Tam Lin
Tam Lin is a faerie knight from an old Scottish border ballad. You can see full text of several variants collected by Francis James Child here. He was once human, but was captured by the Queen of Faeries. While a faerie, he impregnates his human lover, Janet, and she rescues him from his fey condition. […]
Encounters with Ghost Ships
A ‘ghost ship’ is a ship at sea with no living crew aboard. Some are found adrift. Others are still under sail or steaming along under power, but with no sailors to tend to the sails or engine. Many different kinds of incidents can kill off a crew but leave the ship intact or force […]
A River Crossing With a Tiger
This encounter can be dropped into any overland travel through the wilderness. It features a colorful one-off villain who can easily become a recurring miniboss if you so desire. A lot of people know the villainous tiger Shere Khan from the 1967 animated Disney adaptation of the Jungle Book or from the 2016 live-action Disney […]