Negative Space: historical gaming
- Building on History
- You can use real-world historical bits as building blocks to create your medieval-style gaming world.
- 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.”
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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.
