The Secret Basque Fishing Grounds
In the high Middle Ages, the Basques – an insular people of western Europe – quietly experienced an economic miracle. Basque fishermen brought huge quantities of preserved cod and whale meat from secret fishing grounds somewhere in the Atlantic. As Basque communities prospered, the rest of Europe scratched its head. Figuring out where the Basques were getting […]
PCs on the Battlefield: Caesar’s Wars (Part 1)
This is part 1 of an 4-part series about the wars of Julius Caesar. We’ll start with his nine-year conquest of Gaul, then move into the civil war against his former ally Pompey, his involvement in an Egyptian civil war that placed Cleopatra on the throne, and his defeat of Pompeian rump states in Spain […]
The Wreck of the Ma’adin Ijafen
Caravans are the ships of the desert, and they can wreck just as surely as an ocean liner. Not every camel train that went into the Sahara came back out. The discovery of a caravan wreck is a great jumping-off point for an adventure! Let’s piece together some cool bits of history to flesh out […]
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 […]
The Alesia Gauntlet
The Battle of Alesia (52 B.C.) was a pivotal moment in Roman and French history. But the ruins of that battle set the stage for an amazing fantasy adventure! The physical remains of the Roman siegeworks present a wonderful obstacle and puzzle, and the history of what happened there sets up some excellent roleplay and […]
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 […]
A Play During Travel and Blog News
1607 saw the world’s first amateur performance of Shakespeare – and not where you might expect. It occurred aboard the British merchant ship Red Dragon off the coast of West Africa. The cast and crew were all sailors. And it’s a wonderful example of how you can run a play at your table. Let’s take […]
Crowning Claudius
The unexpected murder of the Roman emperor Caligula in 41 A.D. is a great template for a political catastrophe the PCs can turn to their gain. In the chaos after the assassination, a small band armed with a plausible candidate, sweet tongues, and sharp swords could ram through their selection for the next emperor. It […]
The Dancing Plague of 1518
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 Dancing Plague of 1518, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! The Dancing Plague of 1518A Bad Case of Hot Blood […]
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, […]
PCs on the Battlefield: the Caste War
As I’ve written about before, the best way to make a party of PCs stand out in a large war or battlefield is to put them in special situations where they can really shine. Before, we looked at three such situations during the Crusades that you can model an encounter on. Now we’re going to […]
Valladolid in the 1840s
Valladolid is a city on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. In the 1840s, it was a remarkable town: remote, hollow, cruel, and left behind by the passage of time. It was also a town whose days were numbered. A town based on Valladolid at its most extreme, in the years before its reckoning, is an […]
Olga of Kiev
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 Olga of Kiev, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! Olga of KievVengeful Saint The story of Princess Olga of Kiev is […]
The Catiline Conspiracy
When Julius Caesar seized power and overthrew the Roman Republic, he was not the first to make the attempt. Not all the earlier attempts succeeded. One such failure, the Catiline Conspiracy, makes great inspiration for an investigation-style adventure with a strong political component! In 63 B.C., the Roman Republic was in its last years. An […]
PCs on the Battlefield: The Crusades
Many RPG campaigns involve wars. But wars are enormous affairs, with tens or hundreds of thousands of combatants on each side. How do you make a single party of PCs stand out? The received wisdom is not to put them in the center of the battle, where gameplay is repetitive and the PCs can’t contribute […]