Forgot to say on this, we've extended the deadline to the 31 May!

Hello #MedievalSky and #Antiquity from the #PresentDead! Here's my #cfp for a hybrid conference on "interacting with the Dead in Antiquity & the Middle Ages", to be held in Graz, Austria on 2-4 Sept., 2026 presentdead.uni-graz.at/en/news/blog... Please do circulate it to interested parties :)

This is a post about a roleplaying game — a solo journaling game — but I’m addressing my fellow book historians & bookish sickos. I hope this post by Asa (including photos players shared of their personally-bound copies) convinces SOMEONE to adopt SPINE in their class engaging textual materiality.

On thursday my #TTRPG group made squires for #pendragon. Most importantly, their riding horsies (rouncies): 🐎 Eliza has a brave dun 🐎 Laura, a clumsy grey 🐎 Michelle, a steady bay, and 🐎 Viktoria a chestnut with a proclivity for biting The rest of the character sheet doesn't seem so important 😉

Hi @friede.bsky.social, did i remember correctly you've assembled a list of actual plays - Is it publicly accessible? Is there a link I can cite? (I was about to compile a list of *Pendragon* APs for a doctoral project idea I've realised would mesh nicely with the funding proposal I'm assembling 😊)

Might anyone be at the British Library over the next week, who could call up and take pictures of a 10-page article for me?

Occasionally people ask me if i have a favourite Lombard or Salic law, I don't - but think I've just found a favourite *Roman* Law: Codex Theodosianus §8.5.57, fining Remistheus, Duke of Armenia, 10 lb (~4kg) gold if he uses the post without warrant or issues warrants to do so... #TeamRemistheus 🐎📯

Hi #Medievalsky #Antiquity people! I've already had a few lovely abstracts come in - more than a month ahead of the 31 May deadline! - and am eagerly hoping for more people to 'dig in'💀 and please do circulate it widely to interested and likely colleagues, onhere and in the wider world :)

Just ran a work-in-progress play test of the "Hawking & Lawplay" one shot scenario I've been working on for my early #medievalsky set #TTRPG (the #LangobardRPG) with work friends Seems like everyone enjoyed themselves, and got invested in the legal content and intrigue, as well as the story 🎲🦅📖

This is the longest joke I've ever worked on. ⚔️🏰 scottmanning.com/content/10-y... #medievalsky 🗃️

A 3,200 year-old painted scene of a lion and a gazelle playing a board game, probably senet. From an ancient Egyptian illustrated papyrus showing animals taking on human roles in comic situations where they act against their natural instincts. 📷 British Museum #Archaeology

hi #Medievalsky Does anybody happen to have a pdf/scan they could send me, of: Peter Sawyer, "The Bloodfeud in Fact and Fiction" Acta Jutlandica 63.2 (1987), 27-38 ? Many thanks in advance! 📖😀

Put a nice proposal together, and even dipping my toes back into early English law! So, hopefully I'll be looking at the Ordeal in the tenth century, at the intersections of I Æthelræd (~997) #MedievalSky and the Cthulhu: Dark Ages (2020) #TTRPG 📖🎲✨

I’m now also: - Liles Prof of English - 26-27 @folger.edu Public Humanities Fellow - under contract with @mitpress.bsky.social for my next book on the history & making of Actual Play (performance of TTRPGs) - work ahead on why/how we play, tied to ideas about community, story, fame, & friendship

And yes, I'm quickly writing my own #TTRPG themed abstract now!! 📖🎲✨

I dropped the ball on this, but had promised - a couple of weeks ago, ahhh! - to share this #CFP for a workshop in #HistoricalGamesStudies in Durham on the 01 May 2026. The deadline for submissions is tomorrow (31 March 2026)!

Hello #MedievalSky and #Antiquity from the #PresentDead! Here's my #cfp for a hybrid conference on "interacting with the Dead in Antiquity & the Middle Ages", to be held in Graz, Austria on 2-4 Sept., 2026 presentdead.uni-graz.at/en/news/blog... Please do circulate it to interested parties :)

I saw a question on Discord about non-Actual Play TTRPG podcasts, and my response got a little out of hand so I’ve posted it. (As always, free to read) I’m hoping that folks will see this list & recommend podcasts I might not already know.

Suddenly remembered that I once wrote a blog post about a time a superpower attacked a smaller enemy and it turned into a miserable stalemate in which everyone suffered until peace was made. Can’t think why it’s now on my mind. #medievalsky salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2023/05/04/p...

"Libro de axedrez, an illustrated 13th-century treatise on chess produced for King Alfonso X of Castile, features dozens of depictions of players from Africa, the Middle East and Asia that defy preconceptions of medieval social attitudes." #MedievalSky www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Listening to a talk about codicology / material aspects of reading by Irene van Renswoude, in which she extols the virtues of looking at a book upside-down. The moment you cannot read the letters, you start noticing everything else.

BTW -- TIL that @heartofthedeernicorn.com has a TTRPG guide for libraries and schools, including: - What is a story game? - FAQs - Tips for hosting game events - "Top picks" of TTRPGs for library programming (naturally skewed but with useful descriptions of prep, player count, quick pitch)

Another exciting #CFP! “Playing Camelots,” is a special issue interested in pieces that examine #Arthuriana in various game genres thru the lens of play, illuminating how Camelot continues to evolve—not only as text & myth, but as system, strategy, & shared experience! #arthuriansky #medievalsky

Please share: due to withdrawal I have a space on my castles panel for #LeedsIMC. If you’ve an idea needs airing on time and temporalities in castles, give me a shout/submit via link! imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/2026/pre... @imc-leeds.bsky.social @castlestudies.bsky.social Original CfP below ⬇️

Kate. Kate! @katexe.bsky.social !! I've broken my horrific themes of poisoning and arson and grave robbing steak! I'm doing corrections at the moment on a piece on *checks notes* ... ummmm... secret killing/murder... Swing & a miss, huh 🤣

Want to know the date of the Tremulous Hand of Worcester, or why medieval documentary ‘forgery’ is, more properly, imaginative fiction? My book is now available in paperback! 🥳 www.arc-humanities.org/978180270086...

Hey #BookSky look at this AMAZING video narrated by @itsdanicarr.bsky.social !

3x Lecturers and 1x Associate Lecturer in History features.york.ac.uk/history-jobs...

Did you know you don’t have to wait until every Monday to dive into material texts? 📚✨ Catch up on past talks (2020–present) anytime on our YouTube channel - revisit old favorites or catch up on what you missed! Scholarship on demand, whenever curiosity strikes. ▶️ www.youtube.com/@pennsworksh...

There will come a day when I can read about the Asturian king Fruela the Cruel without ‘Cruella De Vil‘ playing around and around in my head. Until that day however: 🎶Fruela the Cruel, Fruela the Cruel, if he doesn’t scare you no evil king will…🎶 #medievalsky

Look what arrived today, or at least the ebook did. This is the first encyclopedia devoted exclusively to medieval women’s writing globally,focusing on the thousand-year period between 500-1500. Entries on about 250 women writers plus longer thematic essays. You’re welcome.

The lovely Michelle Pfeffer has invited me to speak at the Divination, Oracles and Omens seminar at Magdalen College, Oxford. 4pm on Wednesday 25 February. All welcome, free to attend! My paper is called 'Doing onomancy in the later Middle Ages' and I will share more info as I have it! #MedievalSky

Always exciting to get the latest delivery off @dgb-history.bsky.social’s ‘Video Games and the Humanities’ conveyor belt!

Dare the Realm of the Sauvage King! In the heart of Logres, an enchanted wood festers and grows. It is the realm of Madog, King of the Forest Sauvage, and it holds many great perils… and strange wonders. How will you fare? www.chaosium.com/pendragon-th...

Hawks offered women both real and symbolic means to express gender, power and status within a male-dominated world.

SO SO GLAD to see a PROPER rebuttal against Silvia Federici's very wrong scholarship in the latest Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft! Thank you, Rita Voltmer! muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Delighted that peer-review on my "Tabletop Gmaing the Middle Ages" just came back - and we rolled a Crit! (*must* be published, with minor corrections) Hopefully these eleven chapters on the Medieval and Medievalism in Board- and Miniature War- Games, LARP and TTRPGs will be in print 2026/27! 🎲✨📖

A couple of new open-access titles of possible interest to scholars of medieval Europe -- this one on merchants, legal pluralism, and predictability in commerce: www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/themen-entde... #MedievalSky

In 2025 we raised ~$300 to fund a new website which remains unspent. As our final act upon this material plane, we will be using that money to award 6x $50 USD micro grants to ttrpg designers or content creators that could use a small boost. APPLY HERE before Jan 31: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Just discovered that "Werkzeuge der Historiker:innen", which is intended to be a new introduction to the #historicalauxiliarysciences, also includes a chapter on genetic history by Jörg Feuchter. #medievalsky elibrary.kohlhammer.de/book/10.1743...

this seems like an interesting conference cfp #medievalsky calenda.org/1345004?lang...

I am really looking forward to the release of this - Not least because the Pendragon TTRPG is looking like it will be the first game I run for the medievalists group I'm setting up here in Graz, and hopefully also in February/March too 😁 www.chaosium.com/blogreleasin...

Acquired - new muscle-memory typo (that I think I actually want to keep...) 🐒 'hegemonkey' for 'hegemony'

The Lombards are travelling through Time (not via TARDIS) to @imc-leeds.bsky.social for 2026! Especial thanks to @samdrowe.bsky.social and Kaiyue Zhang for their significant efforts in bringing this together. We can't wait to see you all!

While I agree with this sentiment, I can't help being facetious and emending in a sub-category: TTRPGs are *also* manuals for *making research even more* fun. Relax

After all: In TTRPGs you play as (imagined) bodies in (imagined) space. The game / adventure text should begin there, at character eye-level, instead of burdening players / GMs with the adding cognitive load of translation. 4/

The "traditional" structure of TTRPGs puts an enormous amount of pressure on the GM to learn/refine & very little on the players. Which is somehow seen as more reasonable than spreading the load of learning/contribution across the whole table. Broader implications about community in there, y'all.