So with The House of the Crescent Sun fully fulfilled (if you backed the print version and haven't received it, then either you haven't paid shipping or you need to tell me because the mail man has eaten your books!)... my next Kickstarter will be Medieval Nights, which is an anthology of medieval adventures based on actual medieval stories (not modern tales or fantasy tropes).
This is about 85% written, and I've plundered authors from William of Malmesbury (because the Witch of Berkeley is a must!) to Walter Map (so many to choose from!) to Marie de France (not your usual clichéd werewolf) to Burchard of Worms (float through walls, dig out human hearts, eat them, and then do what?!).
But "85%" means I've got room for one or two more adventures.
So, this is a good time to ask:
Any requests?
I've already had a request for The Green Children of Woolpit ("two odd kids turn up and everyone is nice to them"... yeah, that was not easy to turn into an adventure, but I did it... and sorry kids but not everyone is nice now - cue evil Merinita mage…). Any more suggestions?
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For reference
I've done a 12 minute video looking at turning The Witch of Berkley into an RPG story/adventure: https://youtu.be/YbDuZVsm7UM
What about the Giant of Mont Saint Michel from Le Morte d’Arthur? A cannibalistic, rapacious, murderous giant that wore a coat woven from the beards of previous kings he had defeated and fought with an iron club.
Hmm. I had been avoiding the romances. But that’s an interesting one. Tributes or cloaks of beards, and monsterous people/ogres wearing them seem a recurrent medieval trope theme (there’s a Welsh legend, there’s a character in Arrow-Odd’s Saga, etc.).
They’re both 18th Century, aren’t they? (I’m not aware of anything earlier than Pills to Purge Melancholy for Grim?) If there’s a medieval text for either then I can work with that.
But Long Lankin is certainly tempting for something really insidiously nasty!
The lack of conflict is often a challenge. One of the House of the Cresent Sun backers suggested the Green Children of Woolpit - which is basically “two weird children turn up, and everyone is fairly nice to them, then they become normal” - and I worked with that
Yes, I saw your write up - you suggested a lost covenant in Saint Martin’s Land? It is really tempting to give the PCs a whole new land to explore (I kept it more focused… but ooooh, the temptation!)
Thought of another possibility. From the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis - the 13th century chronicle. The tale of rebel Saxons who fled England in the wake of the Norman Conquests and travelled to Constantinople, where the Emperor granted them land in the Crimea where they founded Nova Anglia. I’m sure you could build a really good adventure around that.
So I’ve written all 10 stories/adventures now, and:
Giant of Mont Saint Michel is in there (in a much less romantic form - with shades of Long Lankin, as it happens)
The St. Erkenwald poem is something I’ll use as a stretch goal - if we beat the funding target, I’ll start doing additional PDFs, and this will be one.
The Kickstarter should go live late this week, and in the meantime, I’ve done two more videos:
“The Devil at the Cradle”, based on a baby-murdering-and-impersonation incident that absolutely definitely really happened, according to Walter Map https://youtu.be/oi4dGRsSWk8 . And,
Watched the video. Didn't realise Yosano Studios had a You Tube channel. You've got a new subscriber and I'm working through the earlier Medieval Tales videos.
It was interesting to hear how you took what could have been a pretty standard combat encounter, based on the medieval story, and infused it with some depth and subtlety.
