My interest in art history and culture leads me to some awesome stuff which no doubt could be used in Multiverser for some cool worlds. Now, I thought this might be a good time to post an 'inspiration' topic so that I (or we! Come one come all and share ... on topic!) can gather links and stuff to places that can inspire us so. Costumes are doubly cool (to me), because the natives you encounter will wear them.
Today I stumbled on pictures from the people of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. I think the costumes are great and it's something not often seen on the boards. Usually people those days wore roughly the same kind of clothing, dictated by tradition. You also as a bonus see these people in cultural activities.
And another one while I'm at it. I've not yet seen Prussians here. And the blog that the previous post links to has many wonderful and inspiring images. This time the image is that of an German Army, Prussian General costume.
(I linked to a smaller version, but there are bigger versions of the picture available at a mouse's click away.)
And the next one, probably used more frequently, is Classical Egypt. I remember reading about Graeme's adventures in an Egyptian-like tomb. This could come in handy. There are some nice objects here too, which would make original 'treasure' for the verser to find.
Just stumbled on another one, which might prove handy now for Kyler and Eli, as it talks about the Ainu Komonjo. Who are they? This is what it says:
"The Ainu are generally considered to be the indigenous population of Japan. But, like all cultures on earth, the history of the Ainu is much more complex than any one label. The 20,000 to 60,000 people who presently identify themselves as Ainu are concentrated on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, but the Ainu culture once stretched up to the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Islands (now part of Russia)."
Indeed, a greater depth of culture would be nice. In America, we don't really know much about the Prussians or deal with them much. Some people suspect that Kaiser Wilhelm in WW1 was really not that bad, and most Americans could not explain why we went to the War to End All Wars.
Then again, I do enjoy the world you are Running John in, as it is based on a culture alien to me. I was boggled what you guys meat by Wampum until I wikipedia-ed it. Cool stuff there.
And I've just found another one, though it wouldn't help you with Jasmine's Burqa. These Turkish Costumes might still help to make those Mideastern characters more real to your players.
I don't know really much about the Iriquois. I started this world on a question someone had asked a long time ago. What if the Iriquois Federation had been stronger? I think one of the factors that arose was that it would have helped if it was nearer the coast so that the settlers would have met it very quickly.
I then have the IF leaders be smart enough to realize they can't stop the horde, and instead they offer a respected place in their society for the newcomers, while reserving some of the top spots for themselves.
The Fairy creatures are almost all N. European, and the religion is Protestant, but the buildings do have protective Iriquois magic on them.
Its a collision of cultures.
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What's the Belgian take on WW1?
There are some people over here who have always kinda wondered about WW1. We almost all accepted the necessity of WW2, and beating Hitler (and a number of us thought we should have finished the job and taken out Stalin as well).
The sinking of the Lusitania, as I understand the Laws of War, was a legitamate act, even though at the time it was portrayed as a horror. One is allowed to bomb a hospital if the enemy has set up an anti-aircraft gun on the hospital roof (Americans don't do that nowadays, but we legally could.) And the Lusitania had passengers, but it also had ammunition.
Course, I've only got a little understanding of what actually happenned.
One factor over here is that a couple of pundits in positions of serious influence, Jonah Goldberg who wrote the book 'Liberal Fascism' and Glenn Beck of Fox News both have come out bashing Woodrow Wilson in the strongest terms. I forget whiich one who claimed Wilson was the world's first fascist leader.
Now at the same time, Bismarck had short circuited democracy and created a socialism or something....and socialism tends to lead toward war and horror. One point I'd heard was that Bismarck had created a system that only a genius like Bismarck could run, and without him, it failed.
Of course, another factor was that everyone in Europe at the time thought that machine guns were weapons of offense instead of realizing their true nature when both sides had them. After a century of civilizing natives, or enslaving them, depending on which nation held the gun, Europe thought they were magic attack machines.
And despite the propaganda later as idiots covered their idiocy, all the young were really keenly enthused to go off to war despite the misgivings of their wiser elders. And then after teh massacres, teh young then went on to blame the elders who had given them good advice for giving the opposite advice. Sometimes there really is little justice in the world. I wonder if this is where Liberals got the habit of blaming others for their own sins.
I suppose you could make some sort of alternate WW1. Or some world in which sanity burst forth...it probably requires the older men to tell the younger men to 'shut up and sit down you twit!'
There is a world which MJ was running for Shawn...started out as the Prisoner of Zenda like....and then Shawn moved on past that to building up the army of his small country with forts and stuff so that when the Germans invaded in 1914 he'd be ready.
Heh, well, art history was my main interest in history and world war two was cover more then one anyways. Let me check Wikipedia to refresh my mind, but off of the top of my mind, I think Belgium was neutral but got involved as it did not want to let the Germans pass to France. Or was that in the second war? War never really interested me. Ah, I was right! And Belgium won the very last cavalry charge in Europe. (The battle of the silver helmets, apparently) Belgium was young, it was our third monarch who fought with the soldiers in the trenches. King Albert the First. He was very famous for that and has since always been depicted with one of the Belgian helmets on coins, stamps etc. Statues of him in a trench coat with a shovel or gun and that typical helmet are all over Belgium.
Lol, awesome little detail. October 3, 1914: A plane drops notes over Antwerp, demanding surrender. The population laughs about this while the airplane gets shot at!
It was the first war with deployment of tanks and airplanes.
Lots of damage by bombardments, mainly by Zeppelin.
The Germans were brutal and destructive. The invasion of Neutral Belgium triggered Briton to declare war on the Germans. The neutrality of Belgium was provided by the Britons. But all this info is provided by wikipedia.
It weren't so much Germans to start with, but Austrian-Romanian people who where in a league opposed by a league from France and some others. Colonies also played big roles in the war. As for the rest, there is a lot to research.
A century before that, the fashion was like this, at least in France.
A 19th century world. Has that already been made? Probably. Also probably the place to learn Savate, or did they use that earlier?
Another one: Castes of South India.
"This illustrated manuscript made in southern India in 1837 consists of 72 full-color hand-painted images of men and women of the various castes and religious and ethnic groups found in Madura, India at that time."
Two, no ... three more have been found which might come in handy.
Miyako Festivals:
"[The albums depict] the annual festivals and customs of Kyoto at the beginning of the Showa* period. These paintings are accompanied by explanatory texts written by the folklorist and Kyoto scholar Ema Tsutomu."
*The Showa period corresponds to the reign of Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989)
And then something completely different, the Bavarians, with a Bavarian book on martial arts from the mid-1500's. Puffy pants and various weapons in full color. Links to other related pictures available there as well.
Eric might find it handy to see that all of Ptolemy's maps are online for free. (You have to click through a few times in the beginning to get through the empty pages) For a short sample you can click here.
You're waaaaaaay far from Earth. Granted, you could eventually find it with a telescope (if you don't starve first.).
Shawn was in Ruritania. Ruritania is a fictional country created by Arthur Conan-Doyle at a time when there wasn't a "Germany" so much as a collection of Germanic states, and Anthony Hope set Prisoner of Zenda in that country because it would sound familiar to people. It was a few years before the end of the nineteenth century, and as I understand it Bismark was trying to unite all of the German petty monarchies into one nation.
Shawn's position was that Ruritania was not going to become a province of Germany; it was well-positioned on the boundary (I think of Austria, I had a spot on the map at the time). He fortified the border and trained the world's first special forces teams (combining the martial arts he'd learned in Dark Honor Empire alpha with several aspects of the world at that time, including the Indian assassins courtesy of Great Britain) along with training in modern cannon. He also, in a wonderful quirk, made a deal with Baretta to let them make copies of his late twentieth century Baretta semiautomatic pistol in exchange for a deal to let a few designated countries buy them and forbid sales to Germany. Oh, yes, and he was working with Czar Nikolaj to build up the economic situation in Russia, prevent the Bolshevik Revolution, and provide a contingency plan to block Rasputin's power and protect the royal children.
It was looking really interesting, and I think it was going to be a war of sorts in around 1905 in which the fate of Ruritania would be determined. It might have crushed German aspirations, although it probably would not have prevented World War I, which arose due to the assassination of a member of an Austrian royal family by a Serbian freedom fighter, if memory serves, and expanded because of the sort of interlocking treaty network they called Balance of Power, which was supposed to mean that no one would go to war because no one would want to have to fight all the countries that would be allied against them even with all the countries that would be allied with them. It obviously failed--twice.
But then, World War II is much more interesting in its development. I've often thought that had Americans adopted German as our national language in 1776, we probably would have come into the war on the side of Germany, England would have been defeated, and we would have had a British fascist state demanding that France return rightful ownership of Normandy, Brittany, and D'Anjou to the possession of the British Crown, followed by similar claims elsewhere. A war-torn Europe capitulates as Germany does not wish to fight again and is willing to have France and other countries give up territory to keep the peace, and we ultimately come to the same war from the other end.
--M. J. Young
And Bavaria does it again, this time with the Hofkleiderbuch or Book of Royal Dress-code or something like that.
Does anyone know what happened with all my tags? Only three remain! I'd put them all back, but if they were purposely removed I don't want to unwillingly do something wrong again.
I've stumbled on a very spectacular beauty right now.
This was an 18th century remake of a 12th century scroll depicting the daily life during a festival in 12th century china!
I found out that there was a poem written on the scroll later on that explains it a bit more.
A wall of gold has been mounted on Shu brocade.
Craftsmen from Wu collect spare change,
In order to pay tribute to the abundance of ten thousand families.
The watch towers of the city rise to great heights.
The bustling scene is truly impressive.
It is an opportunity to explore the remnants of days gone by.
At that time, people marveled at the size of Yu,
And now, we lament the fates of Hui and Qin.
Two more:
Ornamental silverware in the Mannerist style during the 16th century. I'd like to imagine this coming in handy when you need to describe a silverware object in a campaign.
But also, more interesting in my opinion, Arabic art from the 7th until the 18th century A.D. Patterns, calligraphy, geometric, stylized and flowery stuff. They were very good in this, being forbidden to depict humans or even animals (I think), they resorted to calligraphy and geometry, with stunning effects. again, for uses of descriptions in games, this might be an inspiration. Maybe the dwarves have a culture of not depicting anything alive but revel in geometric art and word-art. Or something else completely.
I just saw some prints/paintings from the Kiowa Indians (native Americans) and their festivals and clothing there. Interesting and cool. Now, back to preparing my lessons!
Lunch time and an awesome find. Filipino costumes! Which brings me totally back on topic. Architecture was not included in the title, but I've been deviating to that, seeing as it's part of culture. Maybe I should make a separate topic for that? What do you guys think? Maybe you are just not interested.
And now, at the end of lunch, another awesome post. Warsaw Street Types, picturing the ordinary street men and women on the streets of Warsaw in the 1920's.
A last find before I leave for work and afterwards will only be home late is this:
Campus life in 1600, which depicts, you guessed it, campus life in the 1600's, more specifically in Germany.
The blog-poster dryly comments: "The trouble with the modern education system is that there is far too little attention paid to jousting and quarterstaff combat."
I agree that the architecture can also go here.
It's Tuesday here, Niko. You know what that means. FFFFOOOOUUUURRRR days remain.
heheh, I'm thinking about it, but not really having a clue about the rules will make it hard for me. But I've got some cool ideas should I be doing it.
And another one: Portugal in the 1830's. Awesome little pictures.
Does anyone know what happened with all my tags?
Hmmmm--within the past week I came upon a thread that had a bunch of tags that were all three-digit numbers. There were a lot of them. Since tags are supposed to be search terms people would seek which tells them something about thread content, I didn't see how three-digit numbers could be subject-relevant tags, and I deleted them.
Now, maybe I misunderstood what they were? I don't see a lot of three-digit numbers in the text here, so I'm thinking that they weren't subject-related. Or maybe there was a glitch in the software and it was displaying some alternate data from the database instead of the tags.
If you've got tags that are related to content, feel free to add them.
Let me again emphasize that I don't know whether those numbers were in this thread or not.
--M. J. Young
Hmm, I didn't post three digit numbers as tags. Okay, I'll re-post my tags since there is no problem with it.
I also found some other cool stuff.
1850-'70 Mexico and environs. Some cool pictures of people at events, buildings, the city and the environment.
The Dictionary of French Furniture from the Carolingian era to the Renaissance, here showing armor. Logical, isn't it? More is available on the web:
The illustrations are more along the lines of technical drawings rather than artistic pieces, per se; but it's definitely worth skimming through them all. There is some interesting and quirky material depicted. I imagine this series would be a useful authority for clothing and decor accuracy in period illustration work, re-enactments, craft or dressmaking and the like.
Volume 1 - Volume 2 - Volume 3 - Volume 4 - Volume 5 - Volume 6
They are download-able for free if I understand it well. The site is in German and the books itself are in French, but it's pictures, so that's okay, right? This seems an awesome treasure for 'late medieval' games.
And now, for something completely different: Japanese Toy Designs, which are awesome, but I'm biased because at the moment I'm into puppetry and there are a lot of awesome puppets and masks there. I'd imagine this would only be for the rich kids. again, there is a lot more if you click through, but I don't manage to get through to the actual pictures. Not being able to read Japanese (I know a few words), does not help there. The toys are mostly late 19th century, early to mid 20th century or something.
What? I just see that almost all my tags somehow got converted in 3-digit numbers! What's happening here? Do I post too many? And I don't seem to be able to remove them. They refuse, popping back.
Anyway, I've got some mighty fine playing card game here. It has five suits and 1-10+4 'character-cards' per suit. Which is awesome. Down-point is that it might be a tarot set in disguise.
Tarot cards were not originally used to read fortunes; they were used to play a game called Tarotchi, which was very popular among the upper classes of the middle ages. Since they were commonly on-hand, fortune tellers made use of them to tell fortunes.
I confess, I'm deleting all your tags and replacing them with three digit numbers. (kidding, I don't know what's happening)
Cool to know. I did not know that.
Alright, some new finds.
A Tribes of Burma article which depicts the differing tribes, but also features a quite lengthy text about the human rights violations there. All good RP fodder. And it's good to know what's going wrong, but that's a post from 2008, so things might have changed.
And another, completely different thing that could make an NPC more interesting might be a curiosity cabinet as they existed in 17th and 18th century Europe.
If not that, it might send the characters on a quest to catch the extremely rare blue tipped East Asian Tropical Night-Eye, "... to finally make my butterfly collection complete. I would go myself, but the hostile tribesmen, wild tigers, quicksand and dog-sized mosquito's lead me to recruit capable individuals. Are you one of them? Oh yes, the reward is three million pounds. I will also provide you with all equipment. This butterfly is simply priceless."
Is that Pounds Sterling? I'm not sure I could take it with me, but I'll have to see whether I can find suitable assets such as gems and jewelry whose trade value is high for their weight.
Of course, just living comfortably while I'm here is worth some effort, too.
--M. J. Young
Or bank notes from the Bank of the Reunited Kingdom.
Can I cash them in for precious metal or similar "real" value? Paper money is just tinder in most worlds; coins at least have metal value, and gems can be traded almost anywhere, whether they're seen as rare jewels, beautiful trinkets, or industrial tools.
(Sorry to derail your thread. I enjoy the concept of how to bribe a verser into a quest.)
--M. J. Young
What if you had 'will exchange for gold coin' bank notes that you really intended to exchange, but you got killed on the way to do so....
The College of Manly Arts was my attempt at a world based on the Jousting 1600's thing, btw.
I'm wanting to make one or two more, at least, we'll see.
What if you had 'will exchange for gold coin' bank notes that you really intended to exchange
That's what I was going for. And it's not terribly derailed. It's also a part of culture, only of the invented sort. I'll once more state that everyone who comes across some cool cultural or costume bit of information can post here.
Now some time for MAD SIENCE!(TM), with the flying automobile.
My mac translated the Russian to this:
"1940. Flying automobile of Jesse Dixon. Air-cooled engine in 40 hp the velocity to 160 km/h
It could fly upward, forward and back"
I saw that in English a few years back.
Marilyn Vos Savant is of the opinion that we have so much trouble with traffic and accidents on the ground, it's a good thing we don't have sky cars.
A few movies in which they do suggest that this might be right, given how closely they fly to each other at high velocity.
--M. J. Young