Showing posts with label Locations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Locations. Show all posts

Friday 28 November 2014

How to Build a Medieval Castle

My favourite living history team are back on TV again and this time they're belping to build a 13th Century Castle from scratch.

Secrets of the Castle is a new 5 part show in which Historian Ruth Goodman, and Archaeologists Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold, learn the skills needed to build a castle and get a taste of life in the 13th Century.

(L to R) Peter Ginn, Tom Pinfold and Ruth Goodman
Not sure if this series is available to international viewers but it's on BBC iPlayer right now.

You can learn more about this ambitious 25 year long, Guedelon Castle project from wikipedia or at its own website.

Friday 1 August 2014

Ennie Award for Best Cavern Map goes to... Fire Ants.

One of the staple RPG tropes is the "Bug Hunt", we've all done them.  There are some pretty cool bug hunt tunnel maps out there, but even the best human cartographers can't come close in complexity to these real world Fire Ant Colonies.  These stunning aluminium casts are the work of anthillart.com

Fire Ant Colony #45 - 18.5"x12.5"x13" (HxWxL)
Carpenter Ant Colony #31 - 16.5"x4.5"x8" (HxWxL)
The artists YouTube channel has some interesting videos showing the whole casting process which inevitably causes the destruction of the colony.  I'm rooting for Hicks and Hudson on this one and prefer to immortalize the work of these pests rather than go down the "nuke it from orbit" route.

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Legendary Locations: San Francisco's Cisterns

Sometimes the most remarkable things are hidden in plain sight, none more so than the network of 177 cisterns which mark the intersections of the streets of San Francisco.  The site of each cistern is marked by a red brick circle with an outside diameter of 33 feet, the center of which contains a manhole cover marked simply with the letters "SFFD CISTERN". 

3107 Van Ness Avenue - Googlemaps
Largely built in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire which devastated the city, the cisterns are brick or concrete tanks capable of holding between 75,000 and 200,000 gallons of water.  The 23 cisterns which were used during the fire were very effective, and in the decades after, another 100 cisterns were added to the system. 

The San Francisco fire of 1906 which ravaged the city

Broadway and Van Ness - Googlemaps
Alma St. and Cole - Googlemaps
When I first saw them they reminded me of the scene from War of The Worlds, where the tripod lifts a section of the street out like a plug as it emerges.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures of the insides of the cisterns, and I'm sure that they're not as impressive as the Basillica Cistern in Istanbul, Turkey. 
Basillica Cistern, Istanbul, Turkey
But I'll leave the rest up to your imagination, after all, it might not just be water down there...

Thanks go to +VM Brasseur for the the link to Daniel M Russel's article Search Answer: What, Why, and Where are These Stone Circles?

Saturday 21 January 2012

Fantastic Locations: Mega City One

This month's RPG Blog Carnival, kindly hosted by Keith J Davies, is entitled Fantastic Locations, and whilst it is tempting to write up one of my own Fantasy campaign locations (like the home plane of the Djinn Caliph), I decided to look again at the origin of the word fantastic. 

According to merriam-webster the definition of fantastic  is:
  • a : based on fantasy : not real  
  • b : conceived or seemingly conceived by unrestrained fancy 
  • c : so extreme as to challenge belief : unbelievable; broadly : exceedingly large or great
    When balancing all three definitions it occurred to me that the only location which truly met the criteria was...

    Mega City One

    Mega City One Map
    First appearing in Prog 2 of 2000AD (on 5th March 1977), Mega City One it is arguably the real star of the long running Judge Dredd comic book series.

    Originally stretching across the entire Eastern seaboard of the once proud nation of the United States it was largely destroyed during the Apocalypse War and now is home to some 400 million citizens.  It's western edge is bordered by a gigantic wall which protects it from the mutant inhabitants of the irradiated wasteland known as the Cursed Earth.

    Architecture of Mega City One

    The majority of Mega City One's citizens live in gigantic 1000 storey high Post Atomic Tower Blocks dominating the skyline.  Nestled amongst these are smaller 500 storey blocks and puny 100 storey Pre-Atomic Blocks.  The proximity of the blocks means that daylight cannot reach the lowest (and consequently) poorest levels of some blocks leaving them in permanent darkness and giving rise to the nickname "City Bottom".  Much of what were once the shining corporate edifices of cities like New York has long ago been concreted over to form the foundations of these mega blocks and has created a subterranean "undercity" inhabited by a degenerate subhuman species of troglodytes. 

    Winding around and through all of these structures are a spaghetti like network of megways (roads), slidewalks (moving walkways) and pedways (pedestrian only) which allow citizens to move between blocks and other locations.  Some of the citizens live in computer controlled mobile homes known as mo-pads which perpetually drive around cities megways.

    Comparative Scales of
    Contemporary Buildings
    and a Mega City Block
    The larger blocks house upto 60,000 citizens and contain everything that a person may need from schools, shops and recreation facilities to hospitals, offices and greenhouses.  Each block is a self contained town and it has been known for some citizens to live out their entire lives in the same block until they die and are carted off to Resyk for disposal.

    Life in Mega City One

    Robot labour has largely replaced that of humans and unemployment runs at a staggering 87%.  Most citizens try to find ways of aleviating boredom inevitably leading them to commit some sort of criminal activity which is dealt with swiftly by the city's law enforcers the judges.

    This constant search for new ways to entertain oneself creates a steady stream of new crazes which sweep through Mega City like a plague (and are often just as deadly) and disappear just as rapidly leaving a swathe of destruction in their wake.  The crazes which have graced the pages of Judge Dredd strips over the years are often influenced by contemporary fashions or pastimes, but taken to an extreme level  For example body modification becomes crazes like fatties or uglies, extreme sports becomes crazes like boinging and skysurfing, even something as simple as being a pigeon fancier can be taken to the extreme when a "pigeon" is a giant prehistoric pterodactyl.

    Living cheek by jowl can be stressful and there is always the chance that local rivalries will errupt into a full scale Block War between neighbouring blocks.  Each block is equipped with its own militia (aka Citi Defence) in order to prevent large scale conflict from ensuing but they are sometimes as much of a problem as a solution.  However, there are those citizens who just can't take living in such a crazy city are diagnosed as suffering from Future Shock Syndrome and end up taking their own lives and as many bystanders as they can.

    Locations, Locations, Locations

    The beauty of Mega City One is that it operates on a scale so vast that anything you can imagine might exist on an entire planet can exist within the walls of the city.  Want a zoo stocked with terrifying alien creatures? have one.  Want a 10 mile long ski slope with death defying jumps over a 10 lane motorway? have one.  What ever your imagination can conjure up, Mega City One can accomodate it.

    Mega City One as envisioned by artist Dave Taylor
    Judge Dredd © 2012 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
    Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

    Want to Know More?



    Thanks of course go to Of Dice and Dragons for continuing to promote the RPG Blog Carnival.  This is my 2nd entry and you can read the rest by clicking the RPG Blog Carnival tag below. 

      Wednesday 7 December 2011

      Legendary Locations: Cave of Crystals, Mexico

      Nature has this unnerving way of making humanities greatest achievements sometimes seem seem really insignificant...

      Crystal Caverns, Mexico - National Geographic
      You can learn more about the expedition to the Cave of Crystals over at National Geographic.

      Wednesday 29 June 2011

      Legendary Locations: Mud Maid of The Lost Gardens of Helligan

      A very evocative image of a sleeping giantess which inhabits a glade at The Lost Gardens of Helligan in St Austell, Cornwall, England.  This beautiful image was taken by flickr photographer Colin Boylett.

      The Mud Maid

      Friday 1 April 2011

      Legendary Locations: Strahov Library Philosophical Hall

      360Cities have put together this amazing 40 gigapixel image of the Philosophical Hall inside the 18th Century Strahov Library in Prague.

      Strahov Library, Prague
      The image is so detailed that you can zoom in and read the titles on the spines of each book.  What a wonderful location for a Cthulhu Modern game.  The library is an old monastery which has many other interesting architectural features.