Spotted Tail and the First Lakota Teamsters

The Lakota Sioux leader Spotted Tail was a remarkable – and controversial – figure in the 19th-century Great Plains. Among his many accomplishments, Spotted Tail got his band into the freight business, getting paid to haul wagons across the plains. The man himself makes a compelling NPC, and his efforts to get some of his […]

Five Dead Bodies in an Old Chaco Farmstead

In or around 1030 AD, two women, three babies, and two dogs asphyxiated to death in a farmhouse in a thriving community at the bottom of a canyon in New Mexico. Was this event a tragic accident or was it murder? Modern archaeologists have investigated the site thoroughly and lean towards accident – but it’s still […]

A Disastrous Game of Buzkashi

Buzkashi is a Central Asian sport analogous to polo, if polo were played in a wild scrum of thousands of mounted players, all shoving one another aside to grab hold of a decapitated calf carcass. It’s an intense game! Our source, G. Whitney Azoy, studied buzkashi in northern Afghanistan before the communists seized power in […]

The Court of the Khan

This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks for helping keep the lights on! If you want to help keep this blog going alongside Colin, head over to the Patreon page – and thank you! The emperor, Möngke Khan, lived in an orda (tent city) larger and more splendid than […]

Emissary to the Mongols

The Catholic powers of Medieval Europe didn’t understand the sudden intrusion of the Mongol Empire into their sphere of influence. Nonetheless, nations must communicate with one another, even those they don’t understand. So it came to pass that in 1253 King Louis IX of France dispatched an envoy to the Mongol Empire. Ostensibly, this was […]

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 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 […]

Standoff in the Mud

This stretch of terrain between two branches of a river in Mongolia offers an excellent site for a standoff. Whether you want a social encounter, a combat encounter, or one that can shift between the two, this site’s combination of difficult terrain and exceptionally long sight lines promises to create a tense situation. Mongolia’s Gorkhi-Terelj […]

Hunting the PCs Like Buffalo

The Native American nations of the Great Plains have many remarkable cultural practices. One historical practice, the collective hunt, is relevant to the gaming table. The same tactics Native hunters used against herds of bison can be used in combat encounters to hunt your PCs. Let’s look at four. When we think about hunting large […]

The Tomb of Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, was one of the most historically-significant humans to ever live. Yet we have no idea where he was buried. His lost resting place – and the possibility it contains the finest loot from a lifetime of conquest – makes a great adventure hook. The West remembers Genghis Khan […]