The Dancing Plague of 1518
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, about the Dancing Plague of 1518, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! The Dancing Plague of 1518A Bad Case of Hot Blood […]
Olga of Kiev
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, about Olga of Kiev, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! Olga of KievVengeful Saint The story of Princess Olga of Kiev is […]
Pagan Ghosts Don’t Fear ‘Turn Undead’
An Ottonian chronicler in the 11th century A.D. recorded an odd ghost story in the town of Deventer, in the modern-day Netherlands. In it, a band of ghosts ignore the sacred power of a Catholic priest and do him great harm. The story’s a good one in its own right, but it’s also a great […]
PCs on the Battlefield: The Crusades
Many RPG campaigns involve wars. But wars are enormous affairs, with tens or hundreds of thousands of combatants on each side. How do you make a single party of PCs stand out? The received wisdom is not to put them in the center of the battle, where gameplay is repetitive and the PCs can’t contribute […]
Weird Medieval Monsters
Monsters aren’t just for fighting! They’re also for roleplaying with, puzzling out, and adding color to your campaign. With that in mind, here’s four weird monsters from Medieval Europe: one righteous, one villainous, one puzzling, and one silly. The Good Cephalophores are saints who were martyred (usually beheaded), but nonetheless kept walking and talking. St. […]
The Wall Against Gog and Magog
There’s a long-running tradition in the West and in the Middle East of a wall someplace far to the east that holds back the hideous forces of Gog and Magog. The story originates in the Bible, continues through an ancient history, and winds up in its final version in the Koran and in fictional tales […]
Magic Items From Arthurian Myth
Magic items! No fantasy campaign is complete without them – and medieval stories about King Arthur and his knights are full of them. Here, then, are seven enchanted weapons and pieces of armor from Arthurian myth! Bronllafyn Short-Broad, the sword of Osla Big-Knife, from Culhwch and Olwen (ca. 11th-12th century). When the sheathed sword is placed […]
Impossible Tasks From Arthurian Myth
One of my favorite things to do as a GM is to set my players against a problem I don’t have a solution for. The answers they come up with are always cooler than mine, and the lack of a prescribed solution guarantees they’re engaging in fun, creative problem-solving, rather than playing ‘guess-what-Tristan-is-thinking’. Medieval stories […]
Medieval Mystery Plays
In the Middle Ages, ‘mystery plays’ were a popular genre of public entertainment. The performances told stories from the Bible or from the lives of saints in a spectacular fashion. One of the most popular forms told the history of the world, from Creation to the Last Judgement, across multiple stages erected in the town […]
The Mystery Coins of Marchinbar
In 1944, a soldier on a remote Australian island found a handful of copper coins. He dropped them in a tin and forgot about them. When experts learned of the find 33 years later, they traced some of the coins to medieval Africa – very much out of place and out of time. It’s a great […]
The Grail Castle
A remote castle that appears and disappears at will. A bedridden lord who lives like an emperor. And an unknown inhabitant with possibly supernatural attendants – the grail castle in the 12th-century Arthurian tale Perceval is a great way to inject a bit of adventure on the road in your fantasy campaign. On the way […]
Encounters With the Medieval Dead
This post is exactly what it says on the tin: three encounters suitable for an undead-themed dungeon or any fantasy campaign where undead are present! We’ve got three stories from 1100-1200 A.D. – one from Denmark, one from Britain, and one from Italy. To start with, we have a tale from The Deeds of the Danes, […]
Trial By Combat
Everyone who watches Game of Thrones is familiar with trial by combat: settling legal affairs by judicially-sanctioned duels. But what did these events look like in the real world? Why did people sometimes prefer the dueling field to the courtroom? And how can we use these events at the gaming table? First, some definitions. The […]
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 […]
What Tundale Saw in Hell
The Vision of Tundale is a 12th-century vision of Hell and purgatory reported by the Irish knight Tundale. Unlike in other visions of Hell, Tundale actually experiences many of Hell’s torments rather than simply witnessing them. Because Tundale isn’t just a spectator, his vision is better fodder for RPGs than, say, Dante’s Inferno. Much of […]