19th Level

I am currently working my way through Mary Beard's SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. She covers Rome from its legendary founding to the point where all free people of the Empire were granted citizenship. She closely examines the legends of very early Rome such as the founding by Romulus and Remus, the Regal period, and the early Republic. For all of these periods we have no contemporary written history, being forced to rely on archaeological evidence - any written histories of those periods were written centuries later. What I found striking was her description of warfare in the period around the end of the monarchy. She wrote: Military activity is another good case in point. Here geography alone should give us pause. We need simply look at the location of these heroic battles: they were all fought within a radius of about 12 miles of the city of Rome. Despite the style in which they are recounted, as if they were mini-versions of Rome against Hannibal, they were probably ...

HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos have had an influence on various forms of entertainment. Many episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek have had a Lovecraftian feel to them. The early Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who with stories like Pyramids of Mars , Horror of Fang Rock, and Talons of Weng-Chiang have many elements to be found in the Cthulhu Mythos, like ancient aliens, god-like beings visiting the Earth, etc. Star Trek had references to the Old Ones placed by Robert Bloch in What Are Little Girls Made Of and many episodes dealt with the remnants of previous interstellar empires - the Iconians, known as "Demons of Air and Darkness" come especially to mind. And looking at the Mind Flayers of Dungeons and Dragons one cannot help but find influences from Lovecraft. What I've found rather interesting is those settings which go beyond mere influence from the Cthulhu Mythos but embrace their cosmos in its entirety yet put their own unique perspective on them. One of the...

I talked a bit about religion in various fantasy worlds last week which got me thinking about religion in our world. It's a touchy subject, whether in office conversations or your gaming group. I've gamed with  followers of Christianity, Judaism, Paganism. I'm not certain but I think I may have gamed with a Hindu and a Buddhist. I've gamed with believers, atheists, and agnostics. And truth to tell I'm comfortable with all of them. But I've also learned to respect people have different comfort levels with the way their beliefs (or things they don't believe in) are treated in fictional works. When I had a group playing D&D 3.0 several years ago I was strongly tempted to run a game using Green Ronin's Testament  setting, based on the lands of the Old Testament of the Bible. One of my players was, quite honestly, horrified of the idea of using that for a game. I had thought it made for a fascinating setting with lands being conquered, betrayals, noma...

This isn't so much of a full review as it is some quick thoughts on some of the  inspirational pieces I've perused in preparation for my current campaign. Many RPGs are set in different historical eras and D&D tends to be in a setting that has some resemblance to the Middle Ages. This was probably more true in older incarnations of D&D - later generations of D&D tend to crank the fantasy dial up quite a bit. While I'd indicated that D&D tends to be rooted in the Middle Ages I'm tweaking that assumption for my Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign. This campaign, while not set on Earth, is taking a page from Adventurer Conqueror King and is using the period of Late Antiquity as its primary inspiration. What is Late Antiquity? Its exact timing is a matter of debate, usually including some or all of the period between the 2nd and 8th centuries. It is the period where the western half of the Roman Empire fell and its eastern half found itself fighting for su...