Theobald Meyrick, Urban Villain
A good RPG villain often epitomizes the worst aspects of the game’s setting. For a campaign set in a big city, those might be crushing poverty or a rigged justice system. A good villain, then, might be a powerful person willing to take advantage of both. For your urban campaigns – Blades in the Dark, Harlem […]
Henry Stanley’s Convenient Deaths
Of all the Western explorers in the ‘scramble for Africa’, Henry Morton Stanley was probably the most well-known and highly-regarded. Yet his expeditions had an odd habit of returning with him as the only witness. Let’s take a closer look at this peculiar figure and the bloody, glory-hunting swaths he cut across Central Africa. This […]
Liberating the Edward A. Horton and Blog News!
As games like Shadowrun and Leverage have taught us, heists are great. But while heisting corporate secrets, priceless antiquities, or bearer bonds might come as no surprise, what about heisting a fishing boat? One impounded by the Canadian government? And working alongside the American fishermen she was seized from in the first place? I present […]
The Scheming Landlord of Magomero
W.J. Livingstone operated a plantation in Malawi in the early 20th century. He was ruthless, capricious, exploitative, and cruel. He worked within the system, leaning on the letter of the law when he could and enforcing the spirit of the law when he couldn’t. His schemes make him a fantastic villain, and he can be […]
Caddo Lake
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 […]
The Turu Lion-Men
The mbojo lion-men of the Turu people of Tanzania are an interesting take on lycanthropes that have some cool baked-in plot hooks! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Justin Moor. Thanks for helping keep the lights on! If you want to help keep this blog going alongside Justin, head over to […]
Legal Dramas and the Black Hills
Legal dramas are an enormously popular genre, but they effectively don’t exist in the RPG space. Who has five friends with enough knowledge of the law to improvise a good episode of The Practice? Who can ad lib a twenty-minute opening argument that doesn’t make the other players claw their eyes out? The key is […]
Justice for Lula Viers
Back in September we talked a bit about murder ballads: those peculiar songs from the American South that recount the events of killings. This time, we’re going to look at the ballad Lulie Vars, based on the 1916 murder of Lula Viers by her lover. In many ways, it’s a tragically ordinary story. Over half […]
Resolving Disputes the Tiwi Way
The Tiwi, an aboriginal group from northern Australia, have/had a unique way to resolve thorny disputes. This method – which involves old men throwing spears badly – is surprisingly gameable. If you introduce it in your campaign world, you can use it to resolve a whole bunch of loose plot threads quickly in a novel and […]
Echoes of the Meeks Murder
The American South has a tradition of murder ballads: narrative songs that recount the events of killings. We’re going to have a look at one mostly-nonfictional ballad in particular, The Meeks Murder, and how you can use it to build an adventure with the song itself as your opponent! The story begins in 1894 in […]
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 […]
The Hinterkaifeck Murders
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 an unsolved German murder, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! The Hinterkaifeck MurdersParanormal Cold Case Located about 70 miles north of Munich, […]
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 […]
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 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 […]