NPC Foibles from Suetonius
Foibles and eccentricities make good NPCs. Quirky characters are memorable, and they give the players something to riff on when interacting with them. The ancient Roman historian Suetonius provides an amazing source for these quirks. His book The Twelve Caesars contains biographies of the first eleven Roman emperors and the proto-emperor Julius Caesar. The book […]
Baiae
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 […]
PCs on the Battlefield: Caesar’s Wars (Part 4)
This is the final installment in a 4-part series about the wars of Julius Caesar. We ended the last post with Caesar’s political rival Pompey dead, and Caesar gearing up to pursue the last of Pompey’s loyalists across the Mediterranean. This week, we conclude the story! As before, my focus is on moments when individual […]
PCs on the Battlefield- Caesar’s Wars (Part 3)
This is part 3 of a 4-part series about the wars of Julius Caesar. Previously, we wrapped up his nine-year conquest of Gaul and began his civil war against his former ally Pompey! This week, we’ll wrap up the civil war. As before, my focus is on moments when individual people impacted the outcomes of […]
PCs on the Battlefield- Caesar’s Wars (Part 2)
This is part 2 of a 4-part series about the wars of Julius Caesar. We started with his nine-year conquest of Gaul. This week, we’ll finish up the Gallic War, then move move into the civil war against his former ally Pompey! Future entries will cover his involvement in an Egyptian civil war that placed […]
Egyptian Iconoclasm and Stone Golems
Let’s be real for a second: in most fantasy RPGs, stone golems make no sense. It’s a giant hunk of animate stone, and you fight it with… swords? And fire spells? What exactly is your battleaxe supposed to do to this rock? Maybe in your rules set golems take half damage from piercing or double […]
PCs on the Battlefield: Caesar’s Wars (Part 1)
This is part 1 of an 4-part series about the wars of Julius Caesar. We’ll start with his nine-year conquest of Gaul, then move into the civil war against his former ally Pompey, his involvement in an Egyptian civil war that placed Cleopatra on the throne, and his defeat of Pompeian rump states in Spain […]
The Alesia Gauntlet
The Battle of Alesia (52 B.C.) was a pivotal moment in Roman and French history. But the ruins of that battle set the stage for an amazing fantasy adventure! The physical remains of the Roman siegeworks present a wonderful obstacle and puzzle, and the history of what happened there sets up some excellent roleplay and […]
Crowning Claudius
The unexpected murder of the Roman emperor Caligula in 41 A.D. is a great template for a political catastrophe the PCs can turn to their gain. In the chaos after the assassination, a small band armed with a plausible candidate, sweet tongues, and sharp swords could ram through their selection for the next emperor. It […]
The Catiline Conspiracy
When Julius Caesar seized power and overthrew the Roman Republic, he was not the first to make the attempt. Not all the earlier attempts succeeded. One such failure, the Catiline Conspiracy, makes great inspiration for an investigation-style adventure with a strong political component! In 63 B.C., the Roman Republic was in its last years. An […]
Wrangling Reform in the Roman Republic
In 133 B.C., a Roman tribune named Tiberius Gracchus attempted to ram through a law redistributing land for the benefit of poor at the expense of the rich. The process was… contested. There were some exceptionally clever political maneuvers, several murders, and a wide array of skulduggery on both sides. It’s amazing inspiration for an […]
Germanic Barbarians As Orcs
There’s been kind of a thing in the RPG blogosphere of recasting standard fantasy monster races. Two that have stuck with me are Hayami Rasenjin’s hobgoblin and Monsters and Manuals’ Lamarckian orc. This is my version. The Roman historian Tacitus gives us another version of the orc in his portrayal of Germanic barbarians: a bunch […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]