Negative Space: historical gaming
- Building on History
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You can use real-world historical bits as building blocks to create your medieval-style gaming world.
- Currency and economic policy in the middle ages
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Prices, credit, and currencies. If you know the system, you could make a mint!
- The First Language
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Scholars once believed that, or seriously discussed whether, Hebrew was the first language of mankind. In a fantasy game, there really can have been a first, holy language of the gods.
- The Gentleman’s House
- This 1865 book covers “How to plan english residences, from the parsonage to the palace; with tables of accommodation and cost, and a series of selected plans.”
- House of Gold, House of Passages
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The emperor Nero’s House of Gold sounds like the backstory of a great megadungeon right under the adventurers’ sandaled feet.
- Living the Past
- Val Horsler’s account of historical re-enactments, full of pictures, is a very useful resource for game masters looking to describe every-day life in a fantasy world.
- Populating England
- Use the history of England as an example of how to steal ideas from real history for your game world.
- Splendors of the Past: Lost Cities of the Ancient World
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A fantastic book of ruins and lost cultures, with just a hint of the kind of adventurous archaeologist that fuels fantasy literature. One archaeologist is rebuilding the pyramids of the Hittites piece by piece; another fled jungle ruins to escape the Khmer Rouge.
- The Thirty Year War
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War does not always occur between two well-defined sides. Often, war that results on the edge of great ideas will involve a complex interplay of ideals, fears, and political expediencies.
- Tournaments
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Organized combat-like tournaments are a great excuse for a celebration in fantasy-medieval worlds.
- Twisting (recent) history
- What to do with real historical figures when fictionalizing history is a tough question. I ran into it several times with Helter Skelter.
- The Yuma Territorial Dungeon
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The Yuma Territorial Prison looks like a great dungeon setting. It’s history provides inspirational ideas for more fantastic dungeons.
