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Too Many Ideas - Archive for the ‘Other Peoples Stuff’ Category

Resources for TTRPG – Currency

Friday, March 29th, 2019

Want to get an idea of what your £££ would buy you in a year from 1270 to 2017?  The National Archive Currency Converter will work out how much your money would be worth at other times in history. The Bank of England Inflation calculator will calculate inflation between two years for you. There are […]

Resources for TTRPG – 800 medieval manuscripts of France and England

Friday, March 22nd, 2019

The Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700-1200 website has 800 manuscripts from the two libraries collections accessible by theme, location, place, author and century along with a search

Resources for TTRPG – British Library Flickr

Friday, March 15th, 2019

The British Library Flickr account is a vast collection of over a million out of copyright images from books.

Resources for TTRPG – Headshots and other Pictures for NPCs

Friday, March 8th, 2019

Theses collections at the the New York Library Digital Collection are useful if you need to find a head shot for an NPC.  Many of them are still in copyright but still a good resource for personal use. The Friedman-Abeles Photograph Collection head shots of actors from productions mostly from Broadway and off-Broadway shows between 1954-1970. The Vandamm […]

Resources for TTRPG – More FWP Guides – Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota

Friday, March 1st, 2019

Four more, now out of copyright, guides from the FWP to late 1930s US states… Minnesota; a state guide Montana, a state guide book North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State A South Dakota guide

Resources for TTRPG – The Buttolph Collection of Menus

Friday, February 22nd, 2019

  The New York Public Library Digital Collection’s The Buttolph Collection of Menus is an extensive collection of 19,000 menus from the 1850s to now .  I use these as a bit of period colour and to get player characters interacting over something other than how to do the next part of the adventure.  Just keep […]

Resources for TTRPG – Federal Writers Project – Boston and Massachusetts

Friday, February 15th, 2019

  Massachusetts; a guide to its places and people An almanack for Bostonians, 1939 is very similar to the New York almanacs by the FWP – this one includes local holidays, flag days and phases of the moon, Boston looks seaward; the story of the port, 1630-1940

Resources for TTRPG – Federal Writers Project – Almanac for New Yorkers 1938 and 1939

Friday, February 8th, 2019

The published in 1937 and written by Federal Writers Project authors the Almanac for New Yorkers 1938 has a guide to warnings for small craft, a day by day guide to things that were going to happen in New York along with a fact of the day, a pictorial map of the city, a list of […]

Resources for TTRPG – Federal Writers’ Project Guides to New York

Friday, February 1st, 2019

I’m a big fan of reading guide books and other period books as source books for RPGs.  Yesterday I stumbled across the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) – a project to provide jobs for unemployed writers established by the US federal  during the Great Depression.   Amongst their output were guides to various parts of the US.    Now […]

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Tuesday, December 4th, 2018

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald – lovely costume and set design, some really good special effects, can’t fault the cast. So its a shame the story was so laden with exposition, foreshadowing the existing films and random happenings. Also once you’ve we’ve been told its in Paris you don’t have to be quite so […]

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