The Campaign Builder's Guild

Currently I study some Chinese history, especially the last 250 years with the Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750 by Odd Arne Westad. It's a historico-political book and covers alot of ground; religion, chinese migrants, their relation with foreigners and vice-versa, as well as power plays such as the one between the Guomindang and the CCP, or between the last Imperial power (Qing Dynasty) and those who wanted a quicker modernization of the country and a prime place for their people in this new international world.

Winner Take All: China's Race For Resources And What It Means For The Rest Of The World by Dambisa Mayo is also pretty good, and it's all about the current rise of China as a world superpower, why it's happening and why it's bound to continue, but she also explains their way of doing things right now may prove to be a double edged blade that will cut them deeper than they cut others!

However while I am more focused on modern China at this time, I must admit a preference for Ancient China, which is really exciting.

Other examples I would really like to share are two books about Rome or things/people that were very close to Rome. Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff is, in my opinion, very good. As well as The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire by Anthony Everitt. (By the way those two were suggested to me by Polycarp)

Historico-Politico books like these give very interesting perspective into the why's of the actions of the time. So many questions are answered in so many different ways, it definitely gives inspiration and helps you transform your creations into something which will be more immersive and intriguing. Plus, on the side you learn a bunch of mundane things that also help you put further detail into your work.

I've been doing a lot of research on the political scenes (both good and bad) of the roaring 20's, to try to better paint how having entire sentient species inhabiting America would effect Dynama Earth. Needless to say, I've been reading about some really ugly stuff.....

Also I've been reading a lot about cars from that era.

Quote from: LordVreegGnostic stuff is batshit, I seem to remember when reading just keeping up with what was being said.  I love having different sects, cults and belief systems within a religion, some legal, some hidden.  I look forward to your next setting thoughts.

Gnosticism (and what I've more recently been reading about: Catharism) is great because it's a lovely example of pulling back the facade of the establishment and unveiling a whole new depth of tripped-out complexity that forces you to see established ideas in a completely flipped context. (This is excellent fuel for games, in my opinion.)

[spoiler=boring(??) stuff about Cathars]The interesting thing to me is that the Cathars won, in the end. They were a heretical sect of Christians that peaked in power in the 13th century, and their specific heresy was dualism: the idea that God and Satan are good and evil opposites, beings on mostly equal footing, locked in eternal war. (The centuries-prevailing theology was from St. Augustine, who pegged God as the supreme wielder of power and the only one who could suspend the laws of nature. In that view, Satan can't do shit without God's permission. Consequently, we don't have to worry about things like witchcraft, even though they're in the Bible, because God's got all that paranormal chicanery on lockdown.)

Long story short, there's some Albegensian Crusades and shit, and the Cathars are wiped out, but not before their dualist ideas caught on in the wider medieval population to some degree (for example, to the point of popularizing the belief that there really are people who wield demonic powers, and that perhaps to defend society we should seek out witches and burn them, etc.)

So the interesting thing to me is that even though it's been several hundred years since we've had Cathars, their heresy is still thriving in modern Christian theology, to the point where Satan's typical characterization has shifted from "God's prosecuting attorney" to "God's nemesis" and concepts like spiritual warfare are a thing. [/spoiler]

Quote from: Luminous CrayonGnosticism (and what I've more recently been reading about: Catharism)

Do you have any good sources on early Cathar history, particularly in the 12th century?  It's a peripheral interest of mine (in part because of my forum game), but the sources seem to be few.  Power & Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy by Carol Lansing is an interesting read, focused primarily on one community (Orvieto), but it's mostly 13th century and doesn't tell me much about how the doctrine spread.

It's possible that this is simply a lacuna in the historical record and that there's not much to be done about it, but I find it interesting that there's mention of the Cathars (sometimes under other names) as early as the first half of the 12th century, but they don't really make much of a further appearance until the end of that century.

I don't have any really good sources, honestly! Especially not about the early period. Catharism just crossed my radar a few days ago; I'm still in the "read around on the internet" stage of things, and not the "go to an actual library" stage.

Reading fun frost person accounts of private schools way back....kind of fun

It's totally setting-dependent, but I do a ton of research.  When I'm writing notes for my Sixguns & Cyclopean Horrors game I read a lot of Mythos stories and comb through Delta Green stuff and Call of Cthulhu material, play horror games, etc.  When I was running Fimbulvinter I was looking at sites on the furniture and floorplans of Norse farmhouses, sacred spaces, barrows, shrines, and mythology.  For my Planescape game I read and reread the old AD&D books and draw/borrow/steal ideas and imagery from games like Planescape: Torment, Zeno Clash, Realms of the Haunting, and Myst.   Various aspects of my CE game were  inspired from sources as diverse as the Bas-Lag novels, Hellblazer comics, Fallout, Clark Ashton Smith stories, Half-Life 2, Thief, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.  Recently for a one-shot I'm running with some friends who've never played D&D before I put together a classic dungeon crawl that was heavily inspired by Stephen Biesty's Castle cross-section book, a book I stared at obsessively as a kid (here's one layer for anyone who's never seen the book).

For more general research, I read a lot of old Dungeon magazines and AD&D modules and try to structure my games around things like mood, atmosphere, imagery, and tone rather than plot/story.  Details, soundtracks, precise descriptions, language, and making the world seem real and verisimilar are where my focus lies, so research can be quite important to establishing a sense of place and space.  Even with my more episodic games I strive to create a non-linear and open-feeling space to explore (with varying degress of success).

Right now I'm trying to find accurate and usable numbers for the population density of preagricultural people.

Quote from: Xeviat
Right now I'm trying to find accurate and usable numbers for the population density of preagricultural people.

Ooh, yeah, on that note, does anyone know what kind of figures would exist for Iron age celtic societies?  They were agricultral, but there were only a few locations that came anywhere close to our idea of cities, and I've never been able to find good information about numbers.

Just from wikipedia but "Population estimates vary but the number of people in Iron Age Great Britain could have been three or four million by the first century BC" and "In the 2011 census the total population of the United Kingdom was 63,181,775." give an idea of how much smaller and more isolated Iron Age communities probably were than modern ones. Also it gives Greater London a population of 9,787,426 in 2011, while Roman London, vastly bigger, one can presume, than any settlements in Britain of the pre-Roman era, they say had roughly 60,000 people living in it. I'm sure you knew all that anyway though :)

researching the history of toxins

Most recently: relativity, directed energy weapons, and old Hebrew words.

I started reading Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz because I've always intended the elves of Terra to be vaguely Egyptian, but I never really knew enough about the real world culture to do it justice in the translation.

I am currently immersing myself in a combination of wikipedia articles on the various planets and internet articles on orbital mechanics.  I am attempting to update and polish my solar system spreadsheet, while learning about what the various planets have to offer as potential colonies.

This website is still the only real research I need. I am a pathological plagiarist.