Ports of the Erythraean Sea
The Indian Ocean has been a hub of trade as far back as we have records. Merchants have long traveled its coastlines and—in ancient eras where leaving sight of land was often a death sentence—taken advantage of its predictable annual monsoon winds to cross the ocean itself in long, daring journeys. While we know ancient […]
Retaking the Ship from Confederate Pirates
In July, 1861, the U.S. merchant sailing vessel S.J. Waring was seized by Confederate pirates. William Tillman, a black man and the ship’s cook and steward, learned the pirates intended to seize him too and sell him into slavery in the Confederacy. Tillman was not going to let that happen. He spent nine days quietly […]
Cotton Mather’s American Ghosts
The Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather (1663-1728) is one of the boogeymen of early American history. Among his many sins, he helped fuel the Salem witch trials that executed 20 people for witchcraft. In the trials he successfully argued that the contents of magical visions should be considered legally admissible evidence. Mather was a prolific writer. […]
Fantastical Islands from a Roman Novel
Lucian of Samosata was a second-century author writing in Roman Turkey. His best-known work is A True History, a satire of ancient historians who breathlessly repeated whatever half-baked tall tales they’d been told about foreign lands. Much as it pains me to see my beloved Herodotus so ill-treated, A True History is both funny and […]
The Wreck of the Convict Ship ‘George III’
In 1835, the British convict ship George III struck an unmapped rock off Tasmania and sank. 134 people died, most of them prisoners being transported to Tasmania to serve their sentences at hard labor. The story has some interesting wrinkles that make this a very gameable template for a sea voyage at your table, and […]
Patrocles’ Caspian Exploration Fraud
The Hellenistic Greek geographer, government official, and military officer Patrocles conducted two voyages of exploration in the Caspian Sea. His account of what he saw had a major influence on European geographers into the Middle Ages. The only problem is that most of the important stuff he reported was flat-out wrong. How he got to […]
The Pirate Mutiny that Made the ‘Fancy’
In 1694, a mutiny occurred aboard a British ship moored in a Spanish harbor. A group of sailors, led by the first mate, overpowered the captain and those loyal to him. The mutineers set their enemies adrift and, with the rest of the crew apparently behind them, set off to become pirates! Their ship, rechristened […]
Shanty Hunters: Sailors
Shanty Hunters, my upcoming RPG about collecting magical sea shanties in 1880, goes live on Kickstarter on November 2nd. This week on the blog, I’d like to offer a sneak peek: an excerpt about who sailors are as people and another historical shanty from the shanty songbook. Last month, we peeked at an excerpt about […]
Shanty Hunters: The Sea
Shanty Hunters, my upcoming RPG about collecting magical sea shanties in 1880, goes live on Kickstarter in November. This week on the blog, I’d like to offer a sneak peek: an excerpt about the nature of the sea and another historical shanty from the shanty songbook. Last month, we looked at the book’s first five […]
Introduction to Shanty Hunters
Shanty Hunters, my upcoming RPG about collecting magical sea shanties in 1880, goes live on Kickstarter in November. This week on the blog, I’d like to offer a sneak peek of the book’s first five pages and one of the historical sea shanties in the shanty songbook. To learn more about Shanty Hunters and be […]
The South Sea Scam Colony
From 1879 to 1881, a French nobleman found several hundred willing dupes, took their money, and packed them off to a nation he’d made up. Dazzled with promises of land and ease, these peasants found only pestilence and death beneath the hot Pacific sun. The audacity of the scam, the ambiguous motives of the scammer, […]
The Bizarre Court-Martial of Francesco Caracciolo
In 1799, a Neapolitan admiral-turned-rebel named Francesco Caracciolo was tried for treason. The trial took place aboard a British flagship and was influenced by the bizarre King Ferdinand IV of Naples, the motivated social climber Lady Emma Hamilton of England, and Admiral Horatio Nelson, the greatest naval commander in human history. The weird social and […]
Ching Shih
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 […]
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 Alecton Encounter
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 […]