The Trans Conquistador, Lieutenant Erauso
This week we’re going to look at a series of bloody, hair-raising adventures from the autobiography of a 17th-century nun, conquistador, murderer, and transman. Lieutenant Erauso was a celebrity in his own day, and his tales of mischief and mayhem across South America make terrific templates for RPG adventures! I’ll talk more about identifying Erauso […]
The Glass Delusion
The glass delusion was a weird pathology common in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance where the afflicted believed they were made of glass. It was also popular in literature, with some interesting changes to make it more suitable for fiction. The whole thing – history and fiction both – is super gameable! This post is […]
The Florentine Architecture Feud
The cathedral of Florence, Italy (Santa Maria del Fiore) is an architectural marvel. Yet its construction was marked by a three-decade-long fight between its most famous architect and his bitterest rival. This story’s got politically-motivated arrests, fine Renaissance art, a papal intercession, libel, and even a jewel theft! It makes amazing inspiration for an RPG […]
The Puzzling Genesis of the Piasa Bird
Rocky bluffs line the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois. Painted on one is a terrible dragon with golden scales, red wings, antlers, and the face of a fanged man. It’s just a replica. The original painting wore away centuries ago – if it ever existed it all! This creature, the Piasa Bird, is a contentious piece […]
Duntulm 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 Joel Dalenberg. Thanks for helping keep […]
Zheng He’s Alien Invasion
Zheng He was a diplomat/explorer/admiral for the Ming dynasty of China. In 1410, he felt compelled to invade the far-off island of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) and overthrow the king of Kotte. At the time, few Ceylonese people had even heard of distant China. Nonetheless, a fleet of enormous Chinese warships came from out of […]
Sentenced to Burn in Effigy
We’re all broadly familiar with the Spanish Inquisition, that fanatical office of the Spanish monarchy that used the Church to hunt down anyone who deviated from Catholicism. And we all know how fond the Inquisition was of burning people at the stake. But what did they do when somebody needed burning, but wasn’t around to […]
Carving Up Spain
This is not a post about the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). That would be long and boring and not gameable. This is a post about the political crisis that led to the war – which is long and interesting and very gameable! Stick with me, folks, because this is going to get weird! This […]
Folkloric Villains
Folklore is full of villains and antagonists. By a striking coincidence, so are RPG campaigns! Here are four villains drawn from folklore: a Russian singer-sorcerer, a Roma witch-queen, a Persian hero-villain, and an Irish kidnapper-princess. This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Arthur Brown. Thanks for helping keep the lights on! If […]
Extraordinary Folkloric NPCs
European folklore is full of odd characters that are neither truly hero nor villain. These characters can make wonderful supporting NPCs for an ongoing fantasy campaign. We’ll look at five: a wizard who weighs virtue, an assassin with poisonous skin, a doctor who can rewrite personalities, a magician with a dangerous sense of humor, and […]
A Play During Travel and Blog News
1607 saw the world’s first amateur performance of Shakespeare – and not where you might expect. It occurred aboard the British merchant ship Red Dragon off the coast of West Africa. The cast and crew were all sailors. And it’s a wonderful example of how you can run a play at your table. Let’s take […]
Icelandic Sea Monsters
In 1570, the Belgian mapmaker Abraham Ortelius published Europe’s first atlas of maps: the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. The book is remarkable for its accuracy (relative to the maps that had come before), but it’s also full of monsters, both in the descriptions and in the illustrations. The seas in his map of Iceland are particularly […]
Three False Dmitrys
Once a month on the Molten Sulfur Blog, we have a post taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post, about a remarkable Russian museum, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! Three False DmitrysTime of Troubles In 1584, Tsar Ivan the Terrible died […]
The Death of Alexander VI
I wrote earlier about Pope Alexander VI, by way of the rogue’s gallery arrayed against him and his treacherous bastard son Cesare Borgia. While Alexander was a fascinating (and awful) figure, the most gameable part of his life is probably his death and the immediate fallout from it. It’s a sort of foreseeable anarchy that […]
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 […]