Frontier Poltergeist: The Bell Witch
The Bell Witch is an old piece of creepy Tennessee folklore that presents a gameable variation on the standard haunting: a dangerous, powerful, profoundly malicious spirit with whom you can nonetheless hold a normal conversation. The story was codified in the 1894 book An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch. Much of the book […]
Magic Items from the Jack Tales
Appalachia was fertile ground for the Jack tales from England (Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant-Killer). In the mountains of the eastern United States, these folktales developed into their own genre. Jack, an even-tempered teenager from the far backwoods, is confronted by supernatural adversaries, but triumphs thanks to his own cleverness or (for Jack […]
Hunting the Wilderness Fop
In 1773, failed architect William Mylne fled his creditors in Scotland by absconding to the backwoods of the American colonies: a little shack outside Augusta, Georgia. He had a vision of setting himself up as a farmer, but a lack of funds and his own incompetence foiled his plans. He abandoned Georgia and traveled overland […]
Pygmy Forest
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 Colin Wixted. Thanks for helping keep […]
The Abandoned God of Wat Kon Laeng & 13th Age Review
Sukhothai, in what is today central Thailand, was the capital of a Medieval Thai kingdom in the 1200s and 1300s. The city was later abandoned, and by the mid-20th century, the ruins were totally overgrown by jungle. When archaeologists began to study the site, they were initially perplexed by an odd pyramid south of the […]
The Pettiest County Seat War in Frontier Indiana
Between 1811 and 1873, Wayne County, Indiana had three different capitals and six different courthouses. Each time the county seat moved, it was incredibly contentious, involved lots of guns, and one time a cannon. The stakes were high – these events led to one town’s irrelevance and another’s outright dissolution. Yet the stakes were also trivial. […]
Hoh Rainforest
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 […]
Hiroo Onoda
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 […]
The Ruins of Ungwana
On the coast of Kenya, shrouded in dense bush, the ruins of Ungwana wait for archaeologists. The ruins of nearby Gedi and Kilwa – major trading centers whose coins have been found as far afield as Australia – get most of the attention, while Ungwana decays under vine and root and equatorial rain. Nonetheless, the site […]
The Secret History of the Mountain Folk
This post starts out slow, but it goes to some awfully interesting places. I hope you enjoy it! In the late 19th century, Japan underwent a period of rapid change. Emperor Meiji seized control of the country from the military dictators who’d ruled it for centuries. He dragged the whole of Japan from feudalism into […]
Infiltrating the She-Wolf’s Bandits
The existence of police is something most developed societies take for granted. Police are as natural a part of our political order as laws, juries, and elections, right? Yet unlike those three, police (as we would recognize them) are a fairly recent development. In the next two weeks on the blog, we’re going to look […]
Weird Japanese Monsters
Monsters aren’t just for fighting! They’re also for roleplaying with, puzzling out, and adding color to your campaign. Back in 2019, I wrote a post about four weird historical monsters from medieval Europe. This is a long-delayed sequel, with four monsters (yokai) from four different periods of Japanese history: one beneficial, one villainous, one morally […]
Dartmoor
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 […]
The Rose-Realm of Laurin, King of Dwarves and Giants
The Laurin poem is a Medieval German saga of adventure and conquest. While the story is pretty boilerplate, it has a truly remarkable setting and antagonist: the sylvan realm of gardens, glades, and underground castles ruled by Laurin, the pagan king of dwarves and giants. Let’s ignore the boring stuff and jump straight to the […]
Spells of Ecological Succession
Nature is never static. Land that was one ecosystem this century may be another next century – or even next year. Every acre is, ecologically speaking, always coming from somewhere and going to somewhere. So let’s use this principle of ecological succession to devise some cool spells! Flesh to Stone and Earth to Mud are […]