Thanks - and do remember to call your doctor 
Thanks Tellus. The news was medium bad, but I can work with it.
The new quarterly transcript is at https://timothyferguson.wordpress.com/2021/10/09/collated-transcripts-for-july-september-2021/
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There's been a hiccup in the production this week, so that Thursday's episode and an episode originally planned for next March both went live on the weekend. I'll add a bonus on Thursday to get the pattern running again. It'll just be a short poem. Probably Hardy's "When I set out For Lyonesse".
The following episodes are in the can
N11 "Eyes" from Strange Tales.
D2 Pentamerone - Sapia Liccardia
2022
J6 Pentamerone - The Garlic Patch and Rosella
J13 An apology for the bottle volcanic
F3 Pentamerone - Three Faeries : Four Brothers (last Pentamerone episode)
F10 False But Beautiful
My plans for November, thus far, are "Eyes", a review of "The Lavender Dragon" by Eden Phillpots as a covenant setting, and a Magonomia article about Elizabethan clothing.
I need to work out which direction to go next for a steady column, now that Pentamerone is ending. So far my main options are
- Galateo, which is an Elizabethan courtesy book.
- Stories from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (Spanish folklorist, short stories)
- Infernaliana by Charles Nodier (French folklorist, short stories).
- Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mireless (English novel, a bit like "Stardust")
- Short poetry from Alfred Noyes (You know his work. He did "The Highwayman")
Preferences gladly received.
The Venetian stuff will make a comeback eventually. 8)
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I really like the sound of Lud-in-the-mist.
Infernaliana should get some attention when fitting for your selection.
But I just made this account just now to thank and send my appreciation to you and the podcast. It has introduced me to some amazing material and I have fallen in love with Lord Dunsany.
I am running a troupe saga AM5 game series now in Egypt and it’s been so fun adapting material to introduce to the group.
Thank you again, new supporter and huge fan of Timothy’s work.
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Well it absolutely made my day to read this. Thank you so much.
Infernaliana is wonderful, but I can't see a copyright clear translation, so I need to work on it a bit. The one I read is from the 1960s. There must be an earlier one, but I've not looked for it properly
I think the book for next year will be Lud-in-the-Mist, which clears copyright on January 1. If you liked Dunsany, I think you'll like this.
I'm also really enjoying the Autobiography of Benevenuto Cellini at the moment. He's a -perfect- Verditus magus. I was reading his book on goldsmithing and I've found two plot hooks already. In his own book he freely admits to necromancy and murder, but it's the other, pointless little boasts that are wonderful. If the person who wrote the pride flaw into the Verditus didn't know about him it's just the most fascinating of coincidences.
So, I expect I'll be doing a lot of his stuff next year, too
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Hi all,
As a little change of pace, during Christmas Week I'll be putting out a series of short episodes. They are much in the vein of the "Stories I have Tried To Write" episode from a few years ago, where I use up poems and single plot hooks which have been jangling about in my note books for a while, I I hope setting them on the page will send them out into the community, so they return as something aged and strange. So, that changes the run sheet like this:
Items in bold have been already loaded to the server on timers. Note that dates are Australian time.
D20 "An Apology For The Bottle Volcanic"
D21 "Ines De Las Sierras"
D22 Cellini and the hailstorm
D23 Pentamerone - Three Faeries (this is a full length episode)
D24 "False but Beautiful"
D25 "Two Old Bachelors" by Edward Lear
D26 Cellini and the unicorn horn from Dunsany
D30 Magonomia - Elizabethan clothing (full length)
J6 Pentamerone - Garlic Patch (full length) This concludes our Pentamerone episodes.
J20 Cellini - the murder, the familiar and the flood (full length)
After that things get a little less focused, but the titles for the episodes already partially written are are:
The Covenant of the Lavender Dragon
Magonomia - The Anglo-Moroccan Alliance
Magonomia - The Laidly Worm of Spidleston Heugh
Cellini - The mistress, the necromancer and the assassin. (This is still rather too long, but I think its manageable now that two hooks have been pulled out of it and turned into Christmas shorts.)
Cellini meets the Angel of Death
Cellini shoots the Prince of Orange in the face
Cellini goes to jail, is poisoned and meets his guardian angel
Cellini kills random bandits
Cellini claims he has women trouble (This is perhaps too long and may be split in two.)
Cellini and the explosive birth of Perseus
Cellini and the oddities of Renaissance medicine (This will end our Cellini series. At one a month I presume it will end in August unless "...women trouble" splits.)
In Magonomia news, I'm pulling the episode about solving the Tudor inheritance problem. Basically it's gone from a single idea ("What if Queen Elizabeth ate the sea dragon heart in the Pentamerone?") to being more than an hour long. I want to work on it properly. It will be replaced by the Laidly Worm, which reuses stats from the core book (Lambton Worm), but in a novel way.
The backlog of monsters continues to grow, for which I can only apologise.
At this point the text for the episodes to the end of the year is complete, so I can start laying out the quarterly and yearly pdfs.
Thank you all for another fascinating year. On the mechanics side, the Patreons continue to provide enough money to do 50 minutes a month, with occasional spurts up into the next level up (which is technically 250 minutes a month, but things get smoothed out using publication timers.) Facebook has started streaming podcasts directly through their app, so I may need to work up a FB page for Games From Folktales. I've avoided it in the past because I prefer to keep the community in one place (here) but it seems to be part and parcel of their model.
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The collated transcripts for the last quarter of 2021 are at Games From Folktales
(well, you need to click through one page so I can see download stats, to see if people are finding them useful.)
In terms of it being bigger and better next year, no art again. The monster backlog is still growing. December 30 (Elizabethan clothing) isn't in it. The 2021 annual will be out sometime soon. It'll be very barebone - just the four quarters clicked together.
I'm sorry it's not as polished as I'd like. I'm trying to find ways to do my work more efficiently so some of these things can be added back in.
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Thanks! Was there a transcript for April to August?
Yes indeed!
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If you follow the podcast, you might just have accidentally received episode 402 which was meant to go live in October. Hence the big jump in episode numbers. Sorry about that. Libsyn has the publishing date and expiry date next to each other, and I filled in the wrong field.
Basically I'm trying, this month while the libraries (my day job) are quiet (because of the...well...situation) to get ahead a bit so I have more time and energy to do things like monster of the month writeups. I've done that by already completing a series of extracts from the biography of a guy who is clearly a Verditus magus analogue, the Florentine goldsmith Benevenuto Cellini. The extract that went up, which has him take over a castle in the middle of Paris, shows a look at his workshop, and then has him beat up some muggers, isn't the best example of why I think he's fantastic as a Verditus or Jerbiton model.
The titles of the episodes I've recorded and uploaded, but not yet done the transcriptions for, are:
J20 Cellini - murder, familiar and flood.
F3 The Invisible Monster (this isn't Cellini - It's by Green, who went on to marry Lovecraft. It's the monster of the month.)
F17 Cellini - The mistress, necromancer and assasin
M24 Cellini meets the Angel of Death
A21 Cellini shoots the Prince of Orange in the face
M19 Cellini breaks out of the papal jail
J16 Cellini swears he didn't shoot at the Cardinal.
J21 Cellini's wounds are tended by the angelic host
A18 Cellini gets poisoned like a prince
S22 Cellini accidentally murders a guy on the way to Paris
After that the rest are just planned ones
O20 This is the one which went live early. The replacement is probably a short one called "Cellini swears his colossal statue of Mars is not haunted".
The remaining ones, which I've not worked up are
Cellini angers the king's official mistress. This is so short I may pair it with Mars, above.
Cellini and his model Caterina*
Cellini and the Birth of Perseus
Cellini faces Renaissance medicine.
The one with Caterina may need to be pulled. Their relationship is mutually destructive and extremely violent. I need a better way of explaining it before I put it up, otherwise it just seems gratuitous.
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Hi gang!
Transcripts collated for the year: 2021 Annual available – Games From Folktales and click the word "Link". (I know clickthroughs are bad, but its the only way I can tell if people are using this, so its worth the time to do.)
The layout sucks this year - there's no art , it's just flat transcripts for the four quarters glued together. Sorry, that's the way the year has been. 8)
See the previous post for future plans.
Quick note - I'm able to look at my stats this month* and in 2021, GFF had 12 990 downloads. So, that's basically 249 downloads a week. Imagine getting 249 of us together each week! This is brilliant. I mean, technically a couple of those Apple and Google's bots and one of them is me but...that's awesome. Thanks gang!
- I can only check stats on months when I upgrade my plan for the month. I went big this month to put all of those extra Cellini episodes in, so I can see my stats.
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Odd note. I've sent this to the Patreons, but I'll post it here because this is where most of us get our Ars news.
There's something odd in my podcast host files. Generally I pay $5 a month for about 50 minutes of storage, and when I step up I pay $15 a month for about 250 minutes. I'd used 240 minutes for January and went in tonight to put in a couple of little files to use up the final 10. Libsyn has rolled over to their new version (Libsyn Five) and tonight it tells me that I've used 75% of 324 MB, and that the basic plan when I roll back is $5 for 150 minutes. I'm not sure if that's a "sorry we've mucked you about" rate to launch Libsyn 5, or if they really have shifted their price permanently downward. I thought I should mention it though, because my oversimplified, basic pitch on Patreon has always been "You are paying USD7 a month so I can do 50 minutes a month". and at least this month that doesn't seem to be true.
Off to find another 75 minutes to put in before February 1...
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Hi,
There was an odd problem with my hosting, so I needed to push more material.
The posts which are recorded and uploaded, but not necessarily transcribed are as follows. Stars mark creatures eventually to have statistics.
M1: Secret Society Ramble
M3 The vendor of tears*
M10: Venice - The Confined Canoness
M17: Monster Ramble (Bonus episode "Atlantis" by Clark Ashton Smith")
M24: Cellini meets the angel of death
A1: Bonus (Excerpt from "The Sorcerer" by Gilbert and Sullivan)
A7: Vampire maid*
A21: Cellini shoots the Prince of Orange in the face
A28: (The bonus for this week is up, but not the episode. It's a poem by Clark Ashton Smith)
M5: The troubadour*
M19 Cellini breaks out of the papal jail
J16 Cellini swears he didn't shoot at the Cardinal.
J7 Beth Gelert - Folk saint*
J21 Cellini's wounds are tended by the angelic host
A4 Fata Morgana*
A18 Cellini gets poisoned like a prince
S1 Grim, King of the Ghosts (likely to move up into May)
S15: The Witch of Atlas
S22 Cellini accidentally murders a guy on the way to Paris
N17 Cellini and the Birth of Perseus
D1: The White Witch^
D22: Cellini faces Renaissance medicine.
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Quick update
Magonomia's Bestiary is going to KS in May, so there will be a cluster of seven added episodes during that. I'm not sure if they'll all be in one week or stretched, but basically they are the source materials for six of the monsters I've written about, plus a little one from Shakespeare that gives a monster variant for something from the core rules. That's taking some time, so news about what's happening after that will be a bit slow. The episodes will still be interesting to Ars Magica players because they are folkloristic monsters, but I won't add them to the pile of Eventually to Be Written monsters.
398 - The Laidly Worm of Spidlestone Heugh
399 - Grim, King of the Ghosts
402 - Malkins
403 - The Two Sisters
404 - Kenidjack
405 - Satyrs, Beer, and Lions.
409 - Herne's Oak from Shakespeare.
Also there's a new episode uploaded. The title will need to be tweaked, but it's
A14: Venice: The patron saint of unexpected phallic objects. (I'm not kidding.)
Well that's unexpected.
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OK, so, sorry to update twice in a day, but, it looks like me having a heap of extra space might be a regular thing. I've decided to use up some of my surplus ideas, much like the "Things I've tried to write" episodes I do occasionally, except this time I'm giving each its own episode, because it makes finding them again easier if I ever want to pick them up. Bold items are already loaded on timers in my podcast host. The transcripts may not be together yet.
M24: Cellini meets the angel of death
M31: Magonomia - the carriage is a terrible getaway vehicle
A7: The Vampire Maid
A14: Venice - The Patron Saint of Roistery
A21: Cellini shoots the Prince of Orange in the face
A25-M1: Fragment week
(I'm calling it "fragment week " but two of these are long episodes, just with little work from me.)
The Venus Trap by E E Smith
Stewed Eels
A excerpt from "The Sorcerer" by Clark Ashton Smith
(There should be something here, but I've not written it yet)
"Averted Maleifica" by Clark Ashton Smith
Vanished Castles
The Perfectionists by Arnold Chase
M5: The troubadour*
M19 Cellini breaks out of the papal jail
Somewhere in here are the Magonomia Bestiary KS episodes
The Laidly Worm of Spidlestone Heugh
Grim, King of the Ghosts
Malkins
The Two Sisters
Kenidjack
Satyrs, Beer, and Lions
Herne's Oak from Shakespeare
J16 Cellini swears he didn't shoot at the Cardinal.
J7 Beth Gelert - Folk saint*
J21 Cellini's wounds are tended by the angelic host
A4 Fata Morgana
A18 Cellini gets poisoned like a prince
S15: The Witch of Atlas
S22 Cellini accidentally murders a guy on the way to Paris
N17 Cellini and the Birth of Perseus
D1: The White Witch
D22: Cellini faces Renaissance medicine
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So, quick question.
Now that my basic podcast plan gives me about 160 minutes rather than 50 minutes a month, is it a really bad idea to make a two hour episode where I go through a poem pulling out plot hooks? For those into poetry, it's "The City of Dreadful Night" and my take is its an Infernal regio / limbo you decide to break up, Hounds of God style.
In the past long things like this have been broken up into half hour chunks and presented one piece a month, but I worry that four months of Thomson going on about how nothing means anything and we are all going to die and there's no joy to be found anywhere might be a bit of a downer, even if I occassionally pop in with "..and I'd steal his stuff." "...and he deserves a fireball in the face." "...I'd pinch that and fill it so that those demons are out of jobs." "...can I steal the gate here and make useful things out of it?"
The poem itself has 23 internal divisions, so I could do a sort of joyless October where I do a Thomson a day and work out how to break all of his stuff in detail.