More NPC Foibles from Suetonius
Let’s pick right back up where we left off last week! The ancient Roman historian Suetonius provides an amazing source for the foibles and eccentricities that can bring NPCs to life. His book The Twelve Caesars contains biographies of the first eleven Roman emperors and the proto-emperor Julius Caesar. Because the work is biography, not […]
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 […]
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 […]
Teddy Roosevelt’s Crime-Fighting Guinea Pigs
The family of America’s 26th president, Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, had a lot of pets: four dogs, two birds, a snake, a lizard, a badger, a rat, a pig, and more besides. The most delightful were those named for real people: the guinea pigs Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Admiral Dewey, Father O’Grady, and Fighting Bob Evans […]
The Hoard of Sigurd Fafnir’s-Bane
The Völsunga saga from late 13th-century Iceland is an amazing story of love, heartbreak, adventure, violence, and betrayal. It tells the story of a Germanic warrior named Sigurd, the treasure he wins, the politics he gets caught up in, and the bloody aftermath of it all. It’s incredibly gameable! Let’s look at the relevant parts […]
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 […]
Bob Bartlett
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 Justin Moor. 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 […]
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 […]
Minik Wallace
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 Minik Wallace, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! Minik WallaceNew York Inuit In September of 1897, American explorer Robert Peary docked […]
The Missouri Leviathan
In 1840, a self-described scholar named Albert Koch excavated a great many fossilized bones from the banks of the Pomme de Terre River in eastern Missouri. The bones were from mastodons: prehistoric elephants once found in the region. But Koch assembled them into a creature the world had never seen before! His story is bizarre, […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
Making the Enslaved Come Alive
Slavery is common to a lot of RPGs, especially fantasy ones. From drow slavers to mul slave-gladiators, there’s a real chance your PCs might meet, be, or become slaves. How do you make that feel real? We’re all familiar with the forced labor, the whippings, the families torn apart. Americans learn about it in school, […]