Pedal powered battery charger and an IKEA refugee shelter (because of course IKEA makes refugee shelters) for your post-apocalyptic RPGs/world building needs

First up, Boing Boing posted a video detailing how to rig a bicycle to recharge batteries. Becky Stern, the woman behind the video explains that in the black out caused by Hurricane Sandy, she was able to use this method to stay online thanks to her friend Hackett setting this rig up. Check it out below.



Interesting. I can see this being useful as part of a quest in a post-apocalyptic RPG like Mutant Future or Gamma World.

Quest ideas:

• Maybe a party has to construct one or several to help out a settlement
• They find a piece of pre-apocalypse technology, but need to charge up its battery in order to activate it.
• If the party has a base, they have to build some of these to power objects.

In terms of fiction/world building, a bicycle-turned-generator could be a fairly common sight in post-apoc settlements since bikes would likely be in abundance.

Second, Web Urbanist has this interesting shelter that the IKEA Foundation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees teamed up to create for use in refugee camps. The shelters normally employed in the camps are only meant for temporary habitation.

Like the bike generator, these have uses in both gaming and world building:

• Possibly a common sight in settlements or at the players base.
• A quest aimed at acquiring a load of these shelters to bring to an existing settlement or to help establish a new one.
• The main character(s) come across a warehouse or derelict truck with some of these inside and decide to appropriate them for their own use.

Are you a DM running a post-apoc RPG or a writer of post-apoc fiction? Do these look like something you'd use?

Race to Monk Mountain

Or, A Mountain of Monks.

Mount Athos.
Credit: Wikipedia.

I can't remember how, exactly, I came across this, but I found this article on Wikipedia a few weeks ago about a place in Greece called Mount Athos, also known as the Holy Mountain. It's on a peninsula and its main distinguishing feature is that it is full of monasteries, about twenty in all. The first ones seem to have been built during the reign of Basil I, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Over time, more and more were built, that eventually, the mountain and the peninsula itself were more or less given over to the monks and it holds a unique political status in Greece.

Xenophontos Monastery.
Credit: Wikipedia.

Any hoot, the idea of a mountain full of monks was more than a little interesting and the potential for worldbuilding, RPGs, and wargaming were apparent. Having such an area in a fictional world would add a nice dash of flavor. For RPGs, such a place could be used as a point of origin for clerics and monks. Maybe earning admittance to one of the many monasteries is a goal that a cleric or monk character strives for. Maybe they sent out by their order with the mission of acquiring outside knowledge and bringing it back. For wargaming, it could be an area and a goal for either side: One player has the objective to raiding or capturing the mountain, while the other player has to defend it.

Zograf Monastery.
Credit: Wikipedia.

One interesting bit that would certainly make things interesting for worldbuilding and RPGers would be the fact that women are forbidden from setting foot on the mountain, unless they have prior written consent from the monks. That would certainly be a challenge for female characters.

Picture inspiration: Destroyed abbeys

Both pictures are by 19th century German artist Casper David Friedrich.

The Abbey in the Oakwood.

Ruins of Eldena near Greifswald.

I like both of these paintings because of ideas and possibilities they invoke. In a fantasy setting, these could be the ruins of abbeys or monasteries long abandoned by their monks or nuns. Or, maybe they were once the headquarters for an order of paladins, their halls echoing with the sounds of holy warriors marching in full armor. Finally, maybe they were a retreat of sorts for priests who needed to recharge themselves after strenuous questing or missionary work.

As for their demise, there's a number of possibilities. Perhaps they were destroyed by an enemy force, demonic or otherwise. Maybe the paladins formed the backbone of their kingdom's military and so they were attacked first in order to take them out of the equation. The enemy was successful and the buildings were left to nature to reclaim. Vikings were rather infamous for attacking these places because of the amount of loot they could plunder, so that's an idea.

A good idea is to look to history for some inspiration. The religious wars that took place in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are a great example. The paladins or other religious orders get caught in the middle of a war between two versions of the same religion, much like the wars between protestants and Catholics. In England, at around the same time, Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys in England, Wales, and Ireland when he established the Church of England.

Regardless, you could certainly use abandoned abbeys and monasteries as either a questing point or a nice little diversion from your campaign's main quest. There's bound to be items left behind in the decaying structures, things that were never looted or scavenged. Maybe the paladin or cleric in your party stumbles upon a holy relic or a new tome of spells or the like. A possible quest point could be to locate and bury the remains of the people who lived there and were killed by whatever disaster befell their home.

I'd imagine if your party were to come across any hostiles, it would probably be bandits or wild animals. They could also be mistaken for grave robbers by a passing patrol of soldiers.

Speaking of guns

Wargaming blog Paul's Bods has several pictures of medieval artillery and I figured maybe it might be relevant to the last post. The miniatures are pretty nice, actually and includes a pot-de-fer, bombards, and veuglaire. Definitely saving that post for future reference.

A big bang: Artillery in fantasy

Wikipedia.

You don't really see it much in fantasy, do you? Artillery. Cannons, with the big booms and the big balls turning some poor bastards into a red stain and a column of brave soldiers into a slaughter house. Wow, that was a bit morbid, wasn't it? Well, in any case, it's a bit of an anachronism that you don't, especially since cannons existed during the middle ages. The Turks famously used them to batter the walls of Constantinople, ending the Byzantine and by extension, the Roman Empire. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, Europe started making use of cannons during the late middle ages, with the earliest one being something called a pot-de-fer, which debuted during the Hundred Years' War.

Granted, I'm still a relative n00b when it comes to fantasy fiction, so I'm probably generalizing. I suppose the reason you don't see them around in fiction is because writers are probably afraid of pushing the tech level to that point because where there are cannons, guns are sure to follow. I don't think that has to be. It would be simple just to BS an excuse for firearms not to exist in a fictional world, especially since the early ones were just godawful - literally just metal tubes mounted on wood.

Paladins and morale

WoWiki.

Back when I got Warcraft III, one of the first things I did was reading the manual. I'm a big fan of game lore and Warcraft has one of the best, IMO. One of the things that caught my attention was this passage about the Death Knights, a hero unit in WCIII (emphasis's mine):

Death Knights were once virtuous defenders of Humanity. However, once the Paladin ranks were disbanded by the failing Alliance, many of these holy warriors traveled to the quarantined lands to ease the suffering of those left within the plague-ridden colonies. Though the Paladins were immune to disease of any kind, they were persecuted by the general populace who believed that they had been infected by the foul plague. A small band of Paladins, embittered by society's cruelty, traveled north to find the plague's source. These renegade Paladins succumbed to bitter hatred over the course of their grueling quest. When they finally reached Ner'zhul's icy fortress in Northrend they had become dark and brooding. The Lich King offered them untold power in exchange for their services and loyalty. The weary, vengeful warriors accepted his dark pact, and although they retained their humanity, their twisted souls were bound to his evil will for all time. Bestowed with black, vampiric Runeblades and shadowy steeds, Death Knights serve as the Scourge's mightiest generals.

Magic and aging

What if using magic caused a character to age? An interesting question, one inspired by Brendan of Untimately Necropraxis, who wrote a post back in June about it. His idea, was a game mechanic that sees a character aging days as a consequence of using healing magic. Another chap, Talysman, responded with the idea of the aging occurring as a chance, in that when a player rolls die to see how much HP they've recovered, there's a chance the character could age years. Brendan did a later post about it and he explains it better than I can:

Whenever a character is healed magically, there is a percentage chance to age one year equal to the number of HP so healed, minus the character's constitution modifier. For example, if a character with 10 (average) constitution is magically healed 6 HP, there is a 6 percent chance of ageing. If a character had a +1 constitution modifier, the same healing would result in a 5 percent chance of aging.

Image inspiration: An old Knight

A Wiki of Ice and Fire.

Obviously, this isn't just any "old" knight, but Ser Barristan Selmy, former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard from A Song of Ice and Fire. Aside from that, this picture serves as an interesting piece of inspiration. I've been mulling over a fictional world I had started to lay the groundwork for many, many years ago and an aged knight would fit right into a potential cast of characters. A couple of possibilities come to mind:

Building a medieval town the old fashioned way

Oh yes, it's a thing that is happening in Germany. A group of archaeologists, historians, architects, and workers are doing something beyond ambitious: Building a monastery town the 9th century way. Yup, no modern equipment or luxuries, just 52 buildings constructed with blood, sweat, and presumably a lot of cursing. The purpose of the project is to get an idea of what it was like to do that kind of large scale construction back in the middle ages.

Apparently the project will take 50 years to complete, which adds a bittersweet touch to it, as its originator, Bert Geurten, is 62 years old, meaning that he'll be long dead before its completion. Hell, I'll probably be knee deep in the grave by that point.

I think this a project that fantasy writers, GMs, wargamers, and others should keep an eye on.