What's the most research you've ever invested into a game?
I've heard of guys reading the Book of Mormon just for Dogs in the Vineyard one-shots.
I usually just read works of fiction that games are inspired by to try and get a better feel for the setting. I've spent a lot of time reading stuff from the Appendix N, but that was fun research.
I've just spent the last hour reading and watching youtube videos about it for game design purposes. That's difficult research.

I do it the other way.  I read everything from Middle English to theology to comic books for fun so what I read goes into the game.  Don't think I've ever done research specifically for a game.

I read everything I can get my hands on. Sometimes I will read something to brush up for a game, sometimes what I read for fun will end up in a game. Often there isn't a clear line. I have gone down some pretty obscure rabbit holes though.

I do research all the time. But mostly very basic, wiki plus youtube kind of stuff.

For my pulp game: I just learned that the Cotton Club was no longer in Harlem by 1937, but had moved to midtown the year prior. Nevertheless, if there can be a spaceport on the dark side of the moon, then the Cotton Club can still be at 142nd and Lenox!

I'm with Gronan: Lots of general research over the years have allowed me to accumulate a large body of knowledge.

In prepping specific scenarios, there'll often be very specific and targeted research. But for this to be more than reading a few articles is rare. The benefit of having a broad base of knowledge is that it makes it a lot easier to narrowly target your research to maximum effect.

I think my real-world interest in most/all subjects went way up as soon as I got into gaming, as it gave a context to use all sorts of information. I do lots of research, but it's often not directly for specific games. History, physics, engineering, spirituality, geography, geology, ocean currents, architecture, literature... etc.

Since someone brought this up, can any of you recommend books (RPG books or history books0 for getting the right feel for the following real world periods:
Europe/Middle Ages (1000-1300)
Europe/30 Years War
Elizabethan England
American Civil War
Some other period that you think is cool that I haven't listed.

Not a lot, but I am old, went to school when it was drill and kill, and so I developed a decent memory. I mainly google translate stuff from various languages that I tweak slightly for names and such, to give the campaign some consistency in that regard. That said, I have recently done some research on ancient medieval construction, to get a better feel for how long it takes to build stuff.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;926420I do it the other way.  I read everything from Middle English to theology to comic books for fun so what I read goes into the game.  Don't think I've ever done research specifically for a game.

Yeah, I'm mostly this, or looking up some quick details on Wikipedia. I'm not doing historical recreations, so why bother researching? Let my adventure design be determined by my casual reading and viewing.


I suppose you could count GURPS books as research, but part of the reason I stopped playing GURPS is I didn't want to run games with that much incidental detail.

The most deliberate research I did was for a game I ran at a con set in the town where I went to high school, but in the '20s. I looked around the web for road maps from that era. Also downloaded a bunch of period music, which I usually never do, because I hate playing music during games.

Now, actually designing a game? That's different. I've done a bit of deliberate research for a '50s sci-fi game I'm still planning to write someday. But that's all background that influences my writing. I'm not going to write the game so that players and GMs need to research the '50s, too.

Quote from: cranebump;926502Not a lot, but I am old, went to school when it was drill and kill, and so I developed a decent memory. I mainly google translate stuff from various languages that I tweak slightly for names and such, to give the campaign some consistency in that regard. That said, I have recently done some research on ancient medieval construction, to get a better feel for how long it takes to build stuff.

That's helpful.  How long does it take to build a castle?  Fort? Boat?  For that matter how long does it take to clear a field?
Have you found a really good source?

As for my own research, I mostly just read a history or mythology.  For fun, but also to inform.  Then the cool parts go in the game.

I haven't been doing much research recently, Although I have been keeping up with the history of German and other European Castles over at The Lost Fort. Ms. Gabrielle Campbell is one of the single best field archaeologists of our time, and she studies ancient and medieval European history as a hobby.

The Lost Fort
http://lostfort.blogspot.com/

I have also been spending some time over at //www.academia.edu today and earlier this week.
http://www.academia.edu

There is a like-minded group of researchers and archaeologists over there, some of which author some of these really awesome papers on ancient history. Whatever papers they bookmark in their research, gets flagged, and a copy gets put into my Inbox so I can read it when I log in.

Just some of the papers flagged just this week alone for me to read and review;

The Archaeology of Mid-Republican Rome: The Emergence of a Mediterranean Capital,  by Penelope Davies

Becoming Greek, and Staying Rome: The Greek Past in early Roman Corinth, by Sam Heijnen

An Economy of Consumption, the Eastern Sigillata A industry in the late Hellenistic period". In Making, Moving, and Managing: The New World of Ancient Economies, by John Lund

Greek Culture in Afghanistan and India: Old Evidence and New Discoveries, by Shane Wallace

Les sanctuaires archaïques des Cyclades. Recherches récentes, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016, by Alexandre Mazarakis Ainian. This is a book in French about the Archaic shrines of the Cyclades which is itself the group of Islands South of the Greek mainland in the Aegean Sea.

Last week I was doing research on the pre-Sabaeans and the Sabaeans, who were a group of traders and spice merchants tribes that originated in the Southern Arabian peninsula around Yemen. The Queen of Sheba was Sabaean, and that's from the biblical old testament stories and psalms of King Solomon and Sheba. Anyway, I was doing some research, as the Sabaean trade empire stretched far and wide, and there quite a bit of really detailed new information from research and digs in Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Greece, India, Egypt, Somalia, and Ethiopia on the Sabaean Empire.

It is very easy for me to spend hours and hours just reading research and papers on what has been learned about stuff like this, and of course, I add in learned details to increase the immersion, and verisimilitude, for my games.

This morning, for example on academia.edu I got a sneak preview of the new English translation of the Libor Divinorum Operum (The Book of Divine Works) by Hildegard Von Bingen. Hildegard Von Bingen was an Abbess, and Nun, born in Bemersheim Germany in the 11th c. She lived through most of the 12th century. She was a prophetic visionary who founded two Monastaries during her lifetime in Germany, invented her own language and alphabet, a latin derivative known as Lingua Ignota. She wrote music, poetry, papers, and some of the first christian morality plays. Although she was ex-communicated by the church while she was alive, she was canonized and declared a Saint by every church, The Lutherans, the Anglican Church, as well as the Catholics, and finally On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the Church, and declared her works and teachings as a Doctor of the Catholic Church (meaning her teachings are recommended as Catholic doctrine).

Of particular interest to me is her post-apocalyptic revelations that she received as "visions" which are detailed in three of her works, and especially in the Libor Divinum Operum. Finally, I really like her music too, which I'm listening to (this morning) and this afternoon, while enjoying my Sunday coffee, and relaxed personal reading time.

Hildegard Von Bingen; 11,000 Virgin Chants for St. Ursula
https://youtu.be/n9uMd1ap51A

Quote from: Headless;926506That's helpful.  How long does it take to build a castle?  Fort? Boat?  For that matter how long does it take to clear a field?
Have you found a really good source?

It really doesn't matter, true. There are a lot of sources for information, including a great weal on wiki on specific structures (ex: Hadrian's Wall). I was looking for a ballpark on walls and structures. The base town is growing up around an old keep that is being restored/reinforced.

Anyhoo, the short answer is it takes years to build anything of substance, depending on the amount of materials and labor you have available. What I've gone with is that the local rulership is going to erect a wooden stockade structure, since wood is readily available and close, then work on the stone within the interior. The game world is not high magic, so there won't be much help there. That said, the aforementioned Hadrian's wall, with is over 70 miles long, took about six years. So, I'm guessing if the locals want to wall the entire town pretty impressively as it now stands, they could do it in a year or two. Now that I think about it, they could get a decent, inner wall around the keep itself in a few months--it's not all that big--then expand outward. I keep fixating on the larger wall because the players, who did the basic design of their town, wanted a large enclosure, using the nearby river as their eastern barrier.

So, as you can see, my "studies," so far, haven't done me much good, as I'm going to just estimate in the end, anyway.:-)

There's a project in France where they're building a castle using the materials and techniques of the period . . .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3sxbCWg73hTNtYCS0xnwPcH/how-do-you-build-a-medieval-castle-from-scratch

http://www.guedelon.fr/en/

There was a BBC documentary on it that was a good watch. i'm sure they said for this small(ish) castle it would take 12 years.

EDIT: Just looked at the site and it's a 25 year project.

Quote from: Cave Bear;926418What's the most research you've ever invested into a game?

From my Flashing Blades campaign, I have over one hundred academic history books on the 17th century weighing down my bookshelves.

Knowing what I know now, I could whittle that list down to about twenty to twenty-five.

Like Gronan I've read widely both before and after I started gaming. The last 2 or 3 decades I find that whatever I am gaming, especially what I GM, tends to influence my current reading list. So when I run Call of Cthulhu I read more horror, period history, and a lot of pulps from the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s. Whereas when I was running Star Wars I read a lot of Scifi, and all the WEG sourcebooks and EU novels. And of course I rewatched the films.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;926521From my Flashing Blades campaign, I have over one hundred academic history books on the 17th century weighing down my bookshelves.

Knowing what I know now, I could whittle that list down to about twenty to twenty-five.

Whereas for my Honor+Intrigue campaign I was able to pillage a lot from your websites and could thus make do with maybe 10 or so history texts, a lot of wikipedia articles, and a few dozen novels and plays set in and around the period.