Akodessewa Fetish Market
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! Akodessewa Fetish MarketVodoun Pharmacy In Togo’s capital city of Lomé, a large open-air market attracts locals […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Kaguru Ghostland
The anthropologist T.O. Beidelman recounts meeting a woman in Tanzania in 1957-1958 who had a ongoing dispute with her dead father. Her people, the Kaguru, believe that there exists a parallel world of ghosts, and that all souls cycle between our two worlds in an endless circle of rebirth. This belief, and the way it […]
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 […]
Cargo Cult Rebellion
In 1944, villagers in Bagasin, Madang district, New Guinea (then under Australian occupation) revolted against their colonial masters. They were driven by a charismatic leader and a new variation on a popular religion. The rebellion was brief and deeply weird. It’s great material for the gaming table! New Guinea, like much of Melanesia, has seen […]
The Three Fates
In Greek mythology, the Three Fates are a triad of goddesses who dictate human destiny. Weirdly, they make great recurring villains in RPGs! Classically, the three fates are depicted as three women of three different ages: maiden, mother, and crone (a common motif). Together, they weave the thread of each mortal’s destiny. The first, Clotho, […]