Indispensable and Valuable Non-Fiction Sources

[TGryph]

As a Gurps GM, there are several items I keep on my bookshelf that have aidied me so much over the years in my campaign design that I would be lost without them, such as

A Good Thesaurus - a must for good descriptive writing

Various English to ? Dictionaries - very helpful for place and people names. If you have a country that speaks a Spanish sounding language, just converta good English sounding name to Spanish!

A Good Atlas - useful for design of land masses


TGryph

[Jack7]

Today, I just picked up these "travel guides" to the ancient world. I bought three; each one is a comprehensive travel guide to a certain location during a particular time period. There's one for Egypt, one for Greece, and one for Rome during 300 C.E. (the only exact date I remember).

They all go into things like the religious beliefs of the time, the political situations, and the exact map of the time. And it's all "in character". Really, I can't think of any other non-fiction source more suited for gaming. And I bought all three for around twenty bucks.

Wik, can you give titles, authors, etc?
They sound like they would be useful for both gaming and non-gaming purposes.

[Ydars]

I also have been heavily influenced by non fiction in my gaming, though not all is in books because some comes from my own experiences.

Sword-fighting; Talhoffer, Lichtenauer, Fiore de Battatia or "the flower of battle" by Fiore de Liberi (all of these are fight-books on how to sword fight written in the 12-14th century). Le Jue de Hache (the play of the axe"), I33 (Tower of London manuscript). Some of these are now available as modern commentaries. The Lichtenauer translation, by Christian Tobler is particularly good.

I have also done some test cutting with real swords and a fair bit of sword and buckler based marshal arts trying to reconstruct the old fight-book techniques. I once spent a week in Norway with a guy learning original 14th century longsword techniques. We lived in a reconstructed bronze age longhouse; fantastic!

I have a series of books on the various ages of history that refer to the Venerable Bede for Anglo-Saxon times and the Chronicles of Matthew Paris.

For riding knowledge, I draw on a trip I did to Mongolia where I lived on the plains with mongol families for about a month in Sept 07. I must have ridden many hundreds of miles and slept out of doors or in a Ger (mongol tent).

For bushcraft, l like the books by Ray Mears including "bushcraft", "wild-food" and "extreme survival"

[Dannyalcatraz]

Stating the obvious, probably, but access to a good encyclopedia is always a plus, and the books major museums put out about their collections can be invaluable.

Those from the Smithsonian, British Museum of Natural History, MOMA, Leeds, Louvre, Vatican, Hermitage and others would contain info about world art, archaic arms and armor, flora and fauna, the modern and primitive worlds that simply can't be beat. With photos.

[pawsplay]

Thanks to Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade, I encountered A World Lit Only by Fire, a very interesting look at the High Medieval period and what distinguished it from what we would call the modern age.

Emperors and Gladiators covers not only the arena but some interesting facets of Roman virtu.

Burton's The Book of the Sword not only covers some early weapons, but dissects some of the vocabulary many people (especially gamers) take for granted. A look at the function of a sword, more than the taxonomy.

Aristotle's Poetics is good for anyone who wants think about thematics in art. I think RPGs are more like drama or poetry than they are novels, as their essence is in performance.

Hamilton's Mythology is good, and I prefer it to Bullfinch, which is also handy.

The Book of Five Rings should be read at least once by everyone interested in warfare in any time and any place, along with the Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War. There's a great cartoon book version of that I have.

Plato's The Republic is not only a powerful religious parable, but an interesting treatise on government and social virtue.

[Obryn]

I mostly use real-world sources for my modern-day Call of Cthulhu game, so keep in mind this is somewhat modern-slanted.

(1) Google Earth. Technically neither a website or book, it is nonetheless an indispensible source of both ideas and pictures. The Panoramio layer gives abundant photographic views that can liven up any location.

(2) Do I even need to mention Wikipedia? Combined with Google Earth, my Call of Cthulhu games almost write themselves. Having wiki links directly on Google Earth is a godsend.

(3) I've managed to use information from After the Ice in pretty much every game I've run. It's a comprehensive, exhaustive overview of prehistoric cultures around the globe. (For my upcoming game, the intensely-creepy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Ain_Ghazal will feature prominently.

(4) Survivorman is an outstanding show that really lets me liven up outdoor situations.

-O

[Mallus]

Hmmm... this thread brought to my attention the fact I really don't use non-fictional sources in my D&D campaigns. I wonder if they would be better if I did?

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Ydars

I also have been heavily influenced by non fiction in my gaming, though not all is in books because some comes from my own experiences.

Sword-fighting; Talhoffer, Lichtenauer, Fiore de Battatia or "the flower of battle" by Fiore de Liberi (all of these are fight-books on how to sword fight written in the 12-14th century). Le Jue de Hache (the play of the axe"), I33 (Tower of London manuscript). Some of these are now available as modern commentaries. The Lichtenauer translation, by Christian Tobler is particularly good.

I have also done some test cutting with real swords and a fair bit of sword and buckler based marshal arts trying to reconstruct the old fight-book techniques. I once spent a week in Norway with a guy learning original 14th century longsword techniques. We lived in a reconstructed bronze age longhouse; fantastic!

I have a series of books on the various ages of history that refer to the Venerable Bede for Anglo-Saxon times and the Chronicles of Matthew Paris.

For riding knowledge, I draw on a trip I did to Mongolia where I lived on the plains with mongol families for about a month in Sept 07. I must have ridden many hundreds of miles and slept out of doors or in a Ger (mongol tent).

For bushcraft, l like the books by Ray Mears including "bushcraft", "wild-food" and "extreme survival"

Seems like this thread and the history / mythology one I started should be merged, many seem very much on the same wavelength....

[Ydars]

Mallus; the trick with using real-world stuff is to do what Tolkien did. Use just enough that the players unconscious accepts the fantasy stuff that you mix in with it. Then somehow, the whole thing feels much more real, at some deep emotional/visceral level.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Ydars

Mallus; the trick with using real-world stuff is to do what Tolkien did. Use just enough that the players unconscious accepts the fantasy stuff that you mix in with it. Then somehow, the whole thing feels much more real, at some deep emotional/visceral level.

I think my problem using a lot of real-world historical sources is that I never found a way to reconcile the kind of fascinating details of the sort on display in this thread with the D&D rules --pick and edition-- which turns everything into a fantasy-themed comic book (which, arguably is the the 'form' of the world generated by the rules). The D&D rules have a way of... paving over real historical detail.

Thus I went the other way, looking to a wider variety of fictional sources in order to make my games into increasingly more baroque and textured comic books.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Mallus

I think my problem using a lot of real-world historical sources is that I never found a way to reconcile the kind of fascinating details of the sort on display in this thread with the D&D rules --pick and edition-- which turns everything into a fantasy-themed comic book (which, arguably is the the 'form' of the world generated by the rules). The D&D rules have a way of... paving over real historical detail.

Thus I went the other way, looking to a wider variety of fictional sources in order to make my games into increasingly more baroque and textured comic books.

This is indeed a problem with DnD, I think less so in the early days because nobody played by the rules 100% (since they didn't work 100%) I think most people played by the rules maybe 20-50% just to pick an arbitrary figure, probably evenly split between those who just didn't bother with the various dead-ends and fudged through them, with those who made up house rules. This was loads of fun but also kind of isolated gamers into thousands of little cliques because everybody played the game differently, so it didn't travel all that well from one group to another.

I think one of the best early games to merge historical AND literary sources very successfully was Call of Cthulhu. They essentially just made a simplified and abstracted rule set which was to a large extent in the background (secondary to the story) and used the historical material especially to reinforce the story by putting the emphasis for the realistic environment the players were playing in, which really helped with the verisimilitude (and made the fantasy / horror elements stand out all the more starkly). The only limit of Call of Cthulhu was that it was for that specific sub-genre.

One of the things we've really lost with DnD which used to be THE generalist RPG is the broad base of different ways you could play the game, as the various loose ends in the rules were tied up with an effort to balance the game, much of the flexibility went away. You used to be able to play high or low-fantasy, a lot or a little detail, very cartoonish / comic book esque or fairly realistic, with or without house rules etc.. Eventually a very specific high-fantasy / high-magic / level climb wealth power accumulation type of play has become enforced. Leading some would say toward WoW the boardgame...

I think the key to making an RPG dovetail well with historical / folklore , IMO, is to have a fairly common sense basis for the underlying rules system. It must be internally consistent yes, but at a level of abstraction suffiiciently simple to allow for fast paced play, yet sufficiently realistic for players preconceptions of reality, physics etc. to fit naturally with the game, so that the rules themselves are not a distraction. Unfortunately we don't have many games around which achieve this.

A friend of mine called me after reading the post on Elves in the History / Mythology thread, and he was telling me how much fun he had 20 years ago when he played his first ever Ranger character. The new class had just come out in Dragon magazine, and he picked Freyja as his patron diety from Dieties and Demigods and did a lot of research to create this great backstory for his character that became part of the game he was playing. He had so much fun he still remembers it fondly two decades since he played an RPG. Now days of course all a ranger means is specailist two-wepaon tank or expert missile fighter for picking off "mobs" of nearly identical monster automatons... and who is him or herself almost identical to every other ranger in the game. I really don't understand how we got to that point.

I'd personally like to see DnD open up again and return to it's roots as the 'general' FRPG which was sort of the gateway to all different kinds of ways to play the game...

G.

[Gentlegamer]

Originally Posted by Jack7

The Aeneid

Non-fiction?!?!

[Gentlegamer]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

Plato's The Republic is not only a powerful religious parable, but an interesting treatise on government and social virtue.

The late Dr. Lence at the University of Houston believed that a sniper should be set up near every university graduation stage and any student who has not studied REPUBLIC should be shot just as he reaches for his diploma.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Gentlegamer

The late Dr. Lence at the University of Houston believed that a sniper should be set up near every university graduation stage and any student who has not studied REPUBLIC should be shot just as he reaches for his diploma.

Sounds very in sync with the elitist / fascist mentality of the REPUBLIC and of Plato himself.


G.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Gentlegamer

Non-fiction?!?!

I think what he meant was it was primary mythology / folklore and in that sense 'real' as opposed to modern derivitive fiction.


G.