Antelope Canyon
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 Antelope Canyon, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! Antelope CanyonCorridors of Flowing Stone Water and time have carved deep into the […]
Echoes of the Meeks Murder
The American South has a tradition of murder ballads: narrative songs that recount the events of killings. We’re going to have a look at one mostly-nonfictional ballad in particular, The Meeks Murder, and how you can use it to build an adventure with the song itself as your opponent! The story begins in 1894 in […]
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, […]
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, […]
The State of Muskogee
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 the State of Muskogee, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! The State of MuskogeeThe Little Nation That Tried The State of […]
Iktomi: The Selfish Sioux Trickster
Iktomi is a trickster spirit and culture hero in Sioux legend. He’s no villain, but he’s a terrific antagonist for RPGs. He’s easy to insert where you need some complications for your adventure. His natural selfishness is sure to disrupt your PCs’ plans! This is specifically the version of Iktomi presented in the 1901 collection […]
PCs as Soldiers – Irregular Officers
Sometimes, you want to play a soldier, even when no one else does. Ming warriors looked snappy on parade, Green Berets have access to cool weapons, and Gurkhas are just plain badass. But soldier PCs can’t go where they want or behave as they will. This problem can be mitigated when the whole party’s a […]
Female Soldiers in Disguise
Women were not permitted to be soldiers in the American Civil War. Nonetheless, women on both sides adopted male disguises and signed up. In their exhaustively researched book They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War, historians DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook claim to have uncovered evidence of about 250 such soldiers. […]
Dispersing an Angry Mob
Mobs are a force of nature. Individual thought is dissolved within the broad and shallow consciousness of the mob. They can be fun obstacles in RPGs, but short of hiding from them, how can you defeat one? The 1846 attempted lynching of Ned Buntline offers a case where a mob in the act of murdering […]
The Poisoner Mollie Greer
The alleged 1884-1885 poisoning spree of Mollie Greer in Nashville, Tennessee presents some excellent complications you can use in a murder mystery at your table! Our story begins with Mollie’s common-law husband, Prince Greer. Prince was born enslaved in 1840. When his master rode to war in the Confederate army, Greer accompanied him. After his […]
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 Zeigler Strike
The 1904-1909 worker’s strike at a coal mine outside Zeigler, Illinois was the closest thing to open warfare you’re likely to see in a country at peace. American strikes around the turn of the century were notoriously violent, but Zeigler was noteworthy for the military-style tactics both sides used. On one side, you had a […]
Frontier Dueling
The ‘gentlemen’ of antebellum America practiced many perverse social customs. One of the more appalling ones was dueling. Let’s have a look at how to use dueling as a plot hook at the table by examining a particularly nasty spate of bloodshed featuring America’s most infamous duelist: future president Andrew Jackson! In 1805, Nashville, Tennessee […]
Hidden Places From Native American Legends
Every good quest needs a destination. The best destinations are often hidden or secret. Here, then, are four secret places from four Native American myths. (Taken from American Indian Myths and Legends, collected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz.) Our first secret place comes from a Slavey story about a terrible winter. Once, […]