Medieval Nights Anthology of Stories/Adventures - on Kickstarter

As of about 23 hours ago, Medieval Nights went live on Kickstarter (click here).

It is an anthology of ten adventures based on real medieval stories - poems, legends, and "true stories"... lots of true stories. Like the true story about the demon slitting new-born babies' throats, and the true story about the green children, and the true story of the disease-spreading walking dead... so stuff that medieval people thought was "true", not what actually was.

The main book is the adventures, and there is a separate booklet with Ars Magics rules, stats, and notes on running the adventures (Open License, of course.) All full colour, premium printing (for the print version), hand-drawn art (in the same medieval style that Marija developed for House of the Crescent Sun), and ready to ship in time for groups to use these as Halloween one-shots.

Most are written as stand-alone adventures, but several have sequels, prequels and other hooks to drop them into an ongoing Saga.

The full list of stories in the anthology is:

  • Famine and Pestilence - the dead are walking, and spreading pestilence with them (from an incident recounted in the Annals of Burton Abbey).
  • The Witch of Berkley - a woman has made a deal with the forces of hell, but does not want to pay the price (from the Gesta Regum Anglorum of William of Malmesbury).
  • Cold Christmas - creatures crawl from the darkness to plunder a snowbound farm (based on the Icelandinc legends of Gryla).
  • Wolfpit Gate - after a fire at a church, two strange children wander through the fields of a sleepy village (based on the "true story" of The Green Children of Woolpit).
  • The Devil at the Cradle - the couple's two previous children were murdered on the night of their birth, and now a third has been born and must be protected (another "true story", this one from the 12th Century writer Walter Map).
  • The Faithful Wolf - a story of loyalty, betrayal, and a man trapped in the body of a wolf (based on a tale by the 12th Century author, Marie de France).
  • Stolen Hearts - robberies from a cluster of remote farms lead to a story of dark magics and subjugation (based on a passage from the 10th Century bishop Burchard of Worms).
  • The Cloak of Beards - chasing down a kidnapper sounds simple, but when the brigand has the strength of 20 men victory may require heroic efforts (based on an episode in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain).
  • A Night At Rose Hall - a roleplaying-only (no combat) pair of incidents based on love and romance (weaving together several medieval stories - Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, the Arthurian Dame Ragnelle story, and Der Rosendorn.)
  • A Maiden's Honour - a maiden and a local knight vanished decades ago, but ever since the ghost of an angry knight has been seen in the woods (based on a story from Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th Century collection, The Decamaron).

If we beat the funding goal then we'll do even more stories as PDFs, starting with:

  • Morfynsland - Campaign Notes providing a setting and story seeds that lets players explore a mysterious wild region called Saint Martin's Land, following on from the Wolfpit Gate (Green Children) story.
  • Predators and Prey - a sandbox story of a family of werewolves, based on the old Irish CĂłir Anmann.

... but if the campaigns a massive success I'll happily do PDFs for another 10 or 20 stories - we've got a bunch in note form that didn't make it into the main anthology. So the better the campaign does, the more adventures will be included.

So, if that sounds intriguing, back it, or tell your friends (or both!) :slight_smile: The more backing we get the more I can write - so, thank you for your support!

Fully funded in under 48 hours - so now we see how many stretch goals we can tick off / how many bonus adventures will be included :slight_smile:

I now have four videos on Youtube showing how I turned medieval “true stories” into Ars adventures - here.

Should give a sense of what we’re doing here, and maybe inspire others…?

I’ve now added a fifth YouTube video, this one talking about building an adventure from a crazy “superstition” recounted by Burchard of Worms about women astrally projecting to eat the hearts of still-living victims.

Of course no adventure survives contact with the players. "This creates an interesting analogue for the feudal system which challenges the players to consider how they view power and rulership in the setting" is only one option. "Bludgeon the old woman to death with a shovel before she can justify her crimes" also works - as my Wednesday evening group demonstrated!

And looking at fictiom, rather than “true stories”, yesterday I posted a free adventure location showing an unlikely literary source (Der Rosendorn) can be reworked into a faerie roleplaying encounter (Patreon link, but no sign-in required): https://www.patreon.com/posts/rose-hall-160016565