American Indian or Native American

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About

Everyone needs content for their RPG campaigns: adventure hooks, puzzles, NPCs, political machinations, combat encounters, and adventure sites. That’s what this site provides! I draw RPG content from real-life fact and folklore, then give advice on how to adapt it to your fictional campaign. I believe content that is grounded in reality (however fantastical) is richer and more vibrant, and your players will appreciate the difference.

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Molten Sulfur Books

Tristan Zimmerman

Oct 5

The Jicarilla Escape and Blog News!

In 1883, the Jicarilla Apache nation was forcibly moved from land they’d been promised as their reservation to the reservation of a...

Tristan Zimmerman

May 4

Hoskinini's Fugitives

This story does not begin happily. In 1863, U.S. troops under Kit Carson rounded up the Navajo people by force. The federals burned...

Tristan Zimmerman

Nov 3, 2020

Taboos as Plot: Navajo Taboos

Today is election day in the United States. If you're reading a history blog, you don't need me to tell you how important today is. Go....

The Contemptible NPC You Can't Say 'No' To

Tristan Zimmerman

Jul 14, 2020

The Contemptible NPC You Can't Say 'No' To

At first glance, the U.S. government’s war against the Modoc nation was a fairly typical Indian war. White settlers in California and...

Tristan Zimmerman

Mar 10, 2020

The Agate House

In the remote desert of Arizona, in Petrified Forest National Park, there sits an odd structure. It looks like a Native American pueblo....

Tristan Zimmerman

Jan 14, 2020

Legal Dramas and the Black Hills

Legal dramas are an enormously popular genre, but they effectively don’t exist in the RPG space. Who has five friends with enough...

Shipwrecked Sailors: Armed and Desperate

Tristan Zimmerman

Dec 17, 2019

Shipwrecked Sailors: Armed and Desperate

This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Justin Moor. Thanks for helping keep the lights on! If you want to help keep this...

Haley Lunde

Aug 27, 2019

Minik Wallace

Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs....

Tristan Zimmerman

Jul 9, 2019

PCs on the Battlefield: The Caste War

As I’ve written about before, the best way to make a party of PCs stand out in a large war or battlefield is to put them in special...

Tristan Zimmerman

Jul 2, 2019

Valladolid in the 1840s

Valladolid is a city on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. In the 1840s, it was a remarkable town: remote, hollow, cruel, and left behind...

Haley Lunde

Mar 26, 2019

The State of Muskogee

Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs....

Tristan Zimmerman

Mar 12, 2019

Iktomi: The Selfish Sioux Trickster

Iktomi is a trickster spirit and culture hero in Sioux legend. He’s no villain, but he’s a terrific antagonist for RPGs. He’s easy to...

Tristan Zimmerman

Aug 21, 2018

Hunting the PCs Like Buffalo

The Native American nations of the Great Plains have many remarkable cultural practices. One historical practice, the collective hunt, is...

Tristan Zimmerman

Apr 3, 2018

Hidden Places from Native American Myth

Every good quest needs a destination. The best destinations are often hidden or secret. Here, then, are four secret places from four...