All Entries in the "History" Category
Review: The Last of the Independents from Numbskull Games
The Last of the Independents is a recent Euro-style board game from Numbskull Games. The idea behind this game is to out engineer, out manufacture, and out advertise your competition as an Automobile company circa 1950′s. Aside from the unique setting, this game is also noteworthy that it is a strategy board game that does [...]
The Civil War Today iPad App
The History Channel released an iPad app called “The Civil War Today” and it is amazing! Admittedly I am a raging Civil War geek, but this app truly leverages the iPad’s potential to create an informative and interesting reading experience. Here is a screenshot. The app is a newspaper that covers every day of the [...]
Book Report: The Führer’s Headquarters – Hitler’s command bunkers 1939–45
At LivingDice, we often trumpet our love of using history as inspiration for RPG adventuring. One of my favorite quotes, when I think of history and RPGs, comes from an American author named Joseph Heller (of Catch-22 fame). In his book ‘Good as Gold’ he said: History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open [...]
Book Report: The Fortifications of Ancient Egypt 3000-1780 BC from Osprey Publishing
As regular readers know, I am a huge fan of using history as a foundation for game campaigns. Nothing beats a little reality to spice up your next RPG campaign. To further my goal of injecting history into game campaigns, I occasionally do a “book report” on a history book that I find interesting and [...]
History: The Ogham Script
I ran across a reference the other day to a very old type of Celtic writing called “Ogham.” It is a very unusual script and I thought it is a great way to make some game supplements with a very obscure character set. Best part is there is already a font set for it, so [...]
Jousting as an Extreme Sport
The New York Times has an interesting article about a full-contact jousting league. It might get some traction as it is hard to out-macho someone at a bar that "jousts on the weekends." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/magazine/11Jousting-t.html
History: Curse Like a Roman
Cursing someone in modern time is a fairly harmless exercise. Telling someone to “go to hell” is merely wishful thinking on your part and not a guaranteed itinerary. Ancient Romans though, they took their cursing very seriously. Rather than slinging angry rhetoric at their target, an angry Roman reached out to the gods themselves for [...]
Bite-Sized History Lesson: The Indenture
Whether you mine the ancient world for new RPG adventures or re-fight famous clashes of arms with miniatures, history is a great resource. Sadly, I have this horrible feeling that many younger gamers overlook history as a source of inspiration. Rather than force all gamers under the age of twenty to pass a basic “how [...]
Ia Drang Valley After Action Report
The Ia Drang valley hosted one of the most famous and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam war. It is most popularly known from the book We Were Soldiers Once…and Young: Ia Drang – the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam and the film We Were Soldiers . Wargames Illustrated is posting some interesting material [...]