Apostolic Succession, Donatism, and the Hidden Pope
We got a weird one this week, folks! This time, we’re going to look at the principle of apostolic succession in the Catholic Church, how...
About
I present cool stuff from real history and folklore – things worth learning about in their own right! – and show how to file the serial numbers off and add them to your ongoing RPG campaign tonight. I do adventures, NPCs, puzzles, political machinations, combat encounters, adventure sites, and more! Material grounded in reality, however fantastical, is richer and more vibrant. Your players will appreciate the difference.
Updates Tuesdays.
Get Email Notifications of Updates
Tristan Zimmerman
- Mar 15
Lord Thomas of Marle, the Wickedest Man of His Generation
Thomas of Marle (1073-1130 A.D.), the Lord of Coucy, was a Medieval French nobleman so evil that the King of France, the Catholic Church,...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Jan 4
Scholarly NPCs from Aubrey’s Lives
Last month we looked at nine bizarre occult NPCs from 1600s Britain, taken from a wonderful historical source: Aubrey’s Brief Lives. This...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Nov 16, 2021
The Heretic Vendetta
Hey! You should check out the Kickstarter campaign for Shanty Hunters, my RPG about collecting magical sea shanties in the year 1880!...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Nov 9, 2021
Montaillou: The Spy-Infested Anthill Village
A lot of RPG adventures are set in villages. Today, I’ve got a real-world Medieval village that’s just screaming to be fictionalized and...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Aug 24, 2021
The Florentine Architecture Feud
The cathedral of Florence, Italy (Santa Maria del Fiore) is an architectural marvel. Yet its construction was marked by a...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Jun 15, 2021
Emissary to the Mongols
The Catholic powers of Medieval Europe didn’t understand the sudden intrusion of the Mongol Empire into their sphere of influence....
Tristan Zimmerman
- Mar 9, 2021
The Heretic and the Pilgrimage of the Dead
This week, we have a remarkable tale from rural France in 1320 about the souls of the dead going on pilgrimage. The source of the story...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Feb 16, 2021
The Ethiopian Sepulcher Letters
When Saumel Gobat, the Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem, died in 1879, an odd stack of papers was discovered among his effects. These were...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Jan 5, 2021
The Bishop-Rumors of Notker the Stammerer
Around 884 A.D., an anonymous monk (tentatively identified as Notker the Stammerer) in what is today Switzerland penned a compilation of...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Dec 1, 2020
Sentenced to Burn in Effigy
We’re all broadly familiar with the Spanish Inquisition, that fanatical office of the Spanish monarchy that used the Church to hunt down...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Oct 13, 2020
The Time-Dungeon of Rock-Cut Churches
The rock-cut churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, are a marvel. They also have a unique, hard-to-study history that make them well-suited to...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Jul 21, 2020
The Mos Teutonicus and the Excarnate
If a Medieval European aristocrat died far from home, what was to be done with the body? His family usually wanted it returned to be...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Jan 21, 2020
The Wonders of Sir John Mandeville: the Mediterranean
Sir John Mandeville was an English knight who claimed to have traveled broadly in the mid-14th century. Among other things, he reports...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Oct 22, 2019
Egyptian Iconoclasm and Stone Golems
Let’s be real for a second: in most fantasy RPGs, stone golems make no sense. It’s a giant hunk of animate stone, and you fight it with…...
Haley Lunde
- Jun 25, 2019
Olga of Kiev
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
- Jun 11, 2019
Pagan Ghosts Don't Fear 'Turn Undead'
An Ottonian chronicler in the 11th century A.D. recorded an odd ghost story in the town of Deventer, in the modern-day Netherlands. In...
Tristan Zimmerman
- May 14, 2019
Weird Medieval Monsters
Monsters aren’t just for fighting! They’re also for roleplaying with, puzzling out, and adding color to your campaign. With that in mind,...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Apr 2, 2019
The Wall Against Gog and Magog
There’s a long-running tradition in the West and in the Middle East of a wall someplace far to the east that holds back the hideous...
Tristan Zimmerman
- Feb 12, 2019
Medieval Mystery Plays
In the Middle Ages, ‘mystery plays’ were a popular genre of public entertainment. The performances told stories from the Bible or from...