The Murder of Monsieur Dorbain
This 1579 murder of a minor lord in rural France is great inspiration for a murder mystery. The case looks cut-and-dried at first, but the deeper the you look, the more complicated it becomes. An adventure based on the case may culminate in an ethical quandary and a readymade hook leading to your next adventure! April was […]
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 […]
The Counter-Borgia Rogue’s Gallery
In 1502, almost a dozen Italian nobles agreed to work together against the ambitions of the Borgia family. This uneasy alliance is a remarkable rogue’s gallery. Some are the worst of the worst: murderers, traitors, and simoniacs. Others are uncompromising politicians, or even decent men spurred to vengeance. It’s the perfect place to draw inspiration […]
Zany PC Schemes from Xenophon
Normally I write material for GMs, but players, this one’s for you. Any player worth her salt is always coming up with clever schemes to bypass the GM’s obstacles. That’s part of the fun of the game! It often happens, though, that these schemes are a little… unconventional. “You’re crazy!” the GM cries. “That would […]
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 […]
The Bloody Vendetta
From 1868 to 1876, Williamson County, Illinois played host to a feud called ‘The Bloody Vendetta’. It started as a pretty standard blood feud between two families, but it quickly drew in multiple families on each side, and its impacts spilled over into the broader community. It’s a great plot hook and setting feature that […]
The Dunhuang Manuscripts and the Mogao Caves
In the early 20th century, an itinerant Daoist priest in the deserts of western China discovered a treasure trove of medieval documents, hidden for a thousand years behind a false door in an abandoned Buddhist temple. The discovery would give historians a corpus of documents they still use to this day – and the discovery and […]
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 […]
Local Elections as Adventures
Back in February of 2018, I wrote about Tarang, a remote village of farmers and traders in the Nepalese Himalayas that serves as a ‘hinge’ between its Nepali Hindu neighbors to the south and its Tibetan Buddhist neighbors to the north. Back in 1968, Tarang was undergoing many changes, one of which was the recent […]
The Cannibal Conspiracy to Destroy Sparta
Around 399 B.C., the Spartan government discovered a conspiracy to overthrow the state and – according to one source – eat the ruling class. The plot is very colorful, and can easily be dropped into any setting with an unjust government. First, some background. Sparta, a warrior city-state in ancient Greece, had a deeply bizarre social […]
Holmes’ Bonfire
Holmes’ Bonfire was a 1666 British naval raid on a Dutch merchant fleet and small town. The British burned the town and sank 150 Dutch merchant ships, but lost only a half-dozen men and killed about as many. Thus, using a sack based on Holmes’ Bonfire at the gaming table lets you play for high […]
Punishing PCs: the Pillory!
What do you do when your PCs break the law? In-world actions must have in-world consequences if player choice is to be meaningful, but most in-world punishments make poor gaming. For example, prison is usually resolved with a flash forward, so it doesn’t feel ‘real’. Fines (and confiscation of property) strip the player of toys […]
Crime & Corruption: The 1927 Price Murders
In 1927, the murders of highway cop Lory ‘Slim’ Price and his pregnant schoolteacher wife Ethel shocked the people of southern Illinois. The same features that put the Price murders on the front page of newspapers across the Midwest still make the crime compelling today. It’s gruesome. It’s complicated. It features an intersecting network of […]
Abandoning Saint-Octave-de-l’Avenir
The abandoned village of Saint-Octave-de-l’Avenir in Quebec, Canada, makes great inspiration for the site of a haunting in your campaign. A rural village near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, its declining, aging population led the government to forcibly resettle the village in the 1970s. Later, the area was opened to tourism. At your […]
The Maps of the Pilot Rodriguez
In 1512, a ship’s pilot in service to the King of Portugal penned a real-life treasure map. The story of the map’s production is a bizarre tale, and the map itself makes excellent inspiration for your own adventures. In the Middle Ages, the spices nutmeg, clove, and mace were grown only in a handful of […]