WodenKrait wrote:
Just read this and found it fascinating:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-deo1.htmI'll be saving that in my mediaeval tidbits folder. I love this kind of thing; I think it kind of permits us to penetrate the centuries and slowly develop a grasp of the everyday life of those times. Does anybody else here collect these kinds of morsels about the middle ages?
Oh yes. I collect a lot of stuff like this and use it in my games when I get the opportunity.
Last year, I read a wonderful book called
A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England that I thoroughly recommend to anybody who, like me, likes to treat Albion as an alternate world England.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Travellers ... 1845950992While I'm at it, I'd also recommend Liza Picard's
Elizabeth's London and
Restoration London - though they are of later periods than is strictly accurate for a medieval society, they had a big influence on the work I did developing Ongus for my campaign, and in many ways, I think they have the advantage in role playing terms of bridging a gap for modern players - the ideas you get from those books are 'medieval' enough to work in a
Dragon Warriors game, but also 'modern' enough to be accessible for modern players. The recent British TV series
The Great Fire was one I specifically recommended to my players before beginning my Ongus campaign for the same reason - though it is later (1666), it was still good in some ways for flavour of what the city might be like.
http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeths-London ... 0312325665and
http://www.amazon.com/Restoration-Londo ... 00H6EOM52/I also make a lot of use of the Quennel's
A History of Everyday Things in England: 1066 - 1499 ever since I first saw one of the volumes recommended in the back of the 1980s
Maelstrom RPG - though out of print, it's not that hard to find that one at cheap prices second hand.