Resources for Historical Campaigns

[Klibbix!]

One of my dreams is to run a Historical campaign of some kind. There's so many interesting periods of history I'd love to create a campaign in but I'm finding it an almost overwhelming task. I don't want to run a completely historically accurate game (nor would my players particularly care), I want to add in magic, monsters and myth, but I want it to be at least believable in the sense that the borders of countries are correct, the level of technology is appropriate and historical events are represented.

In my searches for resources I've been constantly thwarted in finding a setting book 'just right' for me. I was looking at the Ars Magica Mythic Europe line, as well as the Vampire: The Dark Ages sourcebooks but I'm always on the hunt for more.

What books, RPG and otherwise, have you found indispensable for running historical games? What's your favourite era to run games in? Doesn't matter what time period it is.

Regale me with your historical campaigns and resources, if you will.

 

[Séadna]

The Mythras and GURPS books are excellent here with the exception of GURPS China which I found a bit lacking on table ready information. For Japan the very recent "Land of the Rising Sun" for Chivalry and Sorcery 5E has pretty much everything you would need.

Paladin for Pendragon is very detailed as a pseudo-historical game.

My only general advice is to read a book about the life of the average person at the time. So for instance if you wanted to set a game in Elizabethan England the best books to get would be "The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England" or "Elizabeth's London" rather than a conventional history book of the period. That with some decent maps are the best start.

 

[Klibbix!]

The Mythras and GURPS books are excellent here with the exception of GURPS China which I found a bit lacking on table ready information. For Japan the very recent "Land of the Rising Sun" for Chivalry and Sorcery 5E has pretty much everything you would need.

Paladin for Pendragon is very detailed as a pseudo-historical game.

My only general advice is to read a book about the life of the average person at the time. So for instance if you wanted to set a game in Elizabethan England the best books to get would be "The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England" or "Elizabeth's London" rather than a conventional history book of the period. That with some decent maps are the best start.

I was indeed looking at The Time Traveller’s Guide Series, they seem very useful.

GURPS is also a great suggestion, any ones in particular you have used to good effect?

 

[Séadna]

Swashbucklers, Egypt, Greece*, Celtic Myth, Japan, Arabian Nights, Camelot, Aztecs.

Swashbucklers is a particularly good supplement as you'd have to read quite a lot from other sources to gather the information. That said most of what makes it very good is an excellent implementation in GURPS of swashbuckling and ship combat so its value is reduced somewhat as a generic sourcebook.

GURPS: Aztec is so good it's practically the best historical book on the Aztecs to read even if you weren't a gamer.

I'll also just add GURPS: Mars despite not being a historical game as it's sort of the definitive treatment of the Red Planet in gaming. I used it for a game for my son based off the Surviving Mars computer game.

*Unfortunately the best Greek setting book is in Greek.

 

[Klibbix!]

Swashbucklers, Egypt, Greece*, Celtic Myth, Japan, Arabian Nights, Camelot, Aztecs.

Swashbucklers is a particularly good supplement as you'd have to read quite a lot from other sources to gather the information. That said most of what makes it very good is an excellent implementation in GURPS of swashbuckling and ship combat so its value is reduced somewhat as a generic sourcebook.

GURPS: Aztec is so good it's practically the best historical book on the Aztecs to read even if you weren't a gamer.

I'll also just add GURPS: Mars despite not being a historical game as it's sort of the definitive treatment of the Red Planet in gaming. I used it for a game for my son based off the Surviving Mars computer game.

*Unfortunately the best Greek setting book is in Greek.

Thank you, I'll check these ones out!

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

Really looking forward to doing this myself and adapting a Cryptworld campaign to the Middle Ages, where players are monks dedicated to monster hunting. Then I can unleash gorgons and minotaurs and feel less guilty about it. One pop culture source that I'm drawing inspiration from is the film The Name of the Rose. I love the whole medieval "who dun it" vibe of it (I haven't read the Umberto Eco book), only instead of debunking mysteries players will be coming face to face with various terrors.

A history book about 15 years ago that drew a lot of inspiration from Umberto Eco is Demon Lovers by Walter Stephens. It focuses on the incubus/succubus tradition and how it was connected to various late medieval witchcraft beliefs. A really valuable read for anyone who wants to get into that kind of mindset regarding the supernatural, although I think Stephens goes too far in arguing that monks didn't actually believe the things he discusses.

 

[Klibbix!]

Really looking forward to doing this myself and adapting a Cryptworld campaign to the Middle Ages, where players are monks dedicated to monster hunting. Then I can unleash gorgons and minotaurs and feel less guilty about it. One pop culture source that I'm drawing inspiration from is the film The Name of the Rose. I love the whole medieval "who dun it" vibe of it (I haven't read the Umberto Eco book), only instead of debunking mysteries players will be coming face to face with various terrors.

A history book about 15 years ago that drew a lot of inspiration from Umberto Eco is Demon Lovers by Walter Stephens. It focuses on the incubus/succubus tradition and how it was connected to various late medieval witchcraft beliefs. A really valuable read for anyone who wants to get into that kind of mindset regarding the supernatural, although I think Stephens goes too far in arguing that monks didn't actually believe the things he discusses.

Demon Lovers is right up my alley, consider it ordered! I have yet to see or read The Name of the Rose, but I really should.

 

[Ravenswing]

Having written a GURPS historical campaign book -- and pre-Internet, a FAR more difficult time to do it than now -- I quite understand. And something I can't do is give you specific recommendations, because we don't have the faintest idea where or when you'd want to go.

But if you do have an idea, your first stop is Wikipedia. Not only do those articles give summaries and maps, but they link to other related articles, AND they often present bibliographies. I would have killed for Wikipedia when writing Scarlet Pimpernel, which has detail to its hands about the French Revolutionary period I could only have dreamed of finding, and without the hassle of obtaining dozens of books, reading through them, and finding out that a number were of no use to me. (And even there, that number of books was only as large as it was because I wrote the thing in the Bicentennial of the Revolutionary period, so there were an unusual number of titles on the subject freshly out.)

Local libraries are a lot more useful now, too. I don't know if it's the case in your area, but in my state, they're all linked up in grand networks of dozens upon dozens of local libraries, with various college libraries popped in as well. It's no longer the case that I'm restricted to the offerings of the local library: I get online (which incidentally I can do at 3 AM if I want), go through the offerings of every library in western and central Massachusetts, order what I want, and get it sent to my hometown library. I can also obtain books from the massive holdings of the Boston Public Library, with the largest collection in the hemisphere.

Then you have the sheer mass of public domain stuff online. For instance, Scarlet Pimpernel was based on the books written by an author over a century ago. Only ONE was still in print in 1990. The librarian at the high school in which my mother-in-law taught got his hands on an omnibus of four of the novels. It took a full fifth of the money we earned for the book obtaining the others, from book search services, haunting flea markets, that sort of thing. One we knew of only by finding out that Yale University had a copy ... and one of our players, an undergrad at UMass who could enter their closed library, drove a hundred miles down to read it right there and summarize it for us -- he wasn't allowed to take that book out. One we never could find, and admitted so in the gamebook. And one we didn't know EXISTED -- it wasn't even listed in the author's biography -- until I stumbled across a copy on one of the first print-on-demand services in 2000.

And each and every one of those books is up on multiple sites, free to read, and has been for years. Google and Project Gutenberg is your friend here.

Anyway, if you have a notion as to the specific milieu and time you might want, let us know. Easy to help you out there!

 

[Klibbix!]

Having written a GURPS historical campaign book -- and pre-Internet, a FAR more difficult time to do it than now -- I quite understand. And something I can't do is give you specific recommendations, because we don't have the faintest idea where or when you'd want to go.

But if you do have an idea, your first stop is Wikipedia. Not only do those articles give summaries and maps, but they link to other related articles, AND they often present bibliographies. I would have killed for Wikipedia when writing Scarlet Pimpernel, which has detail to its hands about the French Revolutionary period I could only have dreamed of finding, and without the hassle of obtaining dozens of books, reading through them, and finding out that a number were of no use to me. (And even there, that number of books was only as large as it was because I wrote the thing in the Bicentennial of the Revolutionary period, so there were an unusual number of titles on the subject freshly out.)

Local libraries are a lot more useful now, too. I don't know if it's the case in your area, but in my state, they're all linked up in grand networks of dozens upon dozens of local libraries, with various college libraries popped in as well. It's no longer the case that I'm restricted to the offerings of the local library: I get online (which incidentally I can do at 3 AM if I want), go through the offerings of every library in western and central Massachusetts, order what I want, and get it sent to my hometown library. I can also obtain books from the massive holdings of the Boston Public Library, with the largest collection in the hemisphere.

Then you have the sheer mass of public domain stuff online. For instance, Scarlet Pimpernel was based on the books written by an author over a century ago. Only ONE was still in print in 1990. The librarian at the high school in which my mother-in-law taught got his hands on an omnibus of four of the novels. It took a full fifth of the money we earned for the book obtaining the others, from book search services, haunting flea markets, that sort of thing. One we knew of only by finding out that Yale University had a copy ... and one of our players, an undergrad at UMass who could enter their closed library, drove a hundred miles down to read it right there and summarize it for us -- he wasn't allowed to take that book out. One we never could find, and admitted so in the gamebook. And one we didn't know EXISTED -- it wasn't even listed in the author's biography -- until I stumbled across a copy on one of the first print-on-demand services in 2000.

And each and every one of those books is up on multiple sites, free to read, and has been for years. Google and Project Gutenberg is your friend here.

Anyway, if you have a notion as to the specific milieu and time you might want, let us know. Easy to help you out there!

We certainly are spoiled now with access to information! Thank you for your post, it is very interesting to see how things like GURPS books were written pre-internet. While I remember those days, I have spent more time as an adult with access to wikipedia than not.

I agree that I was a little vague in my first post. I am interested mainly in Medieval to Renaissance Europe and the Middle East, as well as colonial-era North America (specifically the Caribbean).

I am also interested in specifically RPG setting books that people have found helpful for any historical era, like Mythic Europe for Ars Magica or the GURPS books mentioned above (and in your post). If there's a book that contains both historical information as well as how to use it for the basis of a campaign, I feel much of my heavy lifting would be alleviated.

Thank you again!

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Clockwork & Chivalry is an excellent sourcebook for the English Civil War with factions, background information etc. It's also very easy to strip the alt history parts if you want to run it straight.

 

[Klibbix!]

Clockwork & Chivalry is an excellent sourcebook for the English Civil War with factions, background information etc. It's also very easy to strip the alt history parts if you want to run it straight.

Just looked it up and it does indeed seem useful. Thank you!

 

[Séadna]

We certainly are spoiled now with access to information! Thank you for your post, it is very interesting to see how things like GURPS books were written pre-internet. While I remember those days, I have spent more time as an adult with access to wikipedia than not.

I agree that I was a little vague in my first post. I am interested mainly in Medieval to Renaissance Europe and the Middle East, as well as colonial-era North America (specifically the Caribbean).

I am also interested in specifically RPG setting books that people have found helpful for any historical era, like Mythic Europe for Ars Magica or the GURPS books mentioned above (and in your post). If there's a book that contains both historical information as well as how to use it for the basis of a campaign, I feel much of my heavy lifting would be alleviated.

Thank you again!

Pendragon 5.2 and its supplements offer a good bit of streamlined detailed. Obviously Britain wasn't ruled by Uther or Arthur, but ignoring that how the different ranks of nobility worked, different ranks of knights, the costs of estates and how the legal system worked is explained in a straight forward way that's streamlined for play. Book of the Estate is particularly useful here as it gives a manor system one could use in any medieval campaign.

 

[Nobby-W]

Black Vulmea has a blog here, and discusses historical gaming, particularly sword-and-cape era stuff (he's a big fan of Flashing Blades). He also got hold of an atlas of 17th century France and various other items he's used in doing stuff in this genre. There's a load of fan-out on his blog as well, and it would be well worth your while to peruse.

 

[Klibbix!]

Pendragon 5.2 and its supplements offer a good bit of streamlined detailed. Obviously Britain wasn't ruled by Uther or Arthur, but ignoring that how the different ranks of nobility worked, different ranks of knights, the costs of estates and how the legal system worked is explained in a straight forward way that's streamlined for play. Book of the Estate is particularly useful here as it gives a manor system one could use in any medieval campaign.

Book of the Estate seems very useful for what I have in mind, thank you

 

[Klibbix!]

Black Vulmea has a blog here, and discusses historical gaming, particularly sword-and-cape era stuff (he's a big fan of Flashing Blades). He also got hold of an atlas of 17th century France and various other items he's used in doing stuff in this genre. There's a load of fan-out on his blog as well, and it would be well worth your while to peruse.

Oh I’ll definitely check this out, looks fantastic.

 

[arjunstc]

I would say go with the period you love, and don't wait for the one right book to come along.

The historical period I love and use is the late Anglo-Saxon period, pre-Conquest. Over the years I have collected a dozen of books on the period, including "scholarly" books (which cost a bit) and an Ordnance Survey atlas of pre-Norman Britain. There are also websites created by re-enactors that give a lot of information about the period, including the prices of things.

So if you pick a "popular" period, like say a particular Crusade, or follow the career of a particular person (e.g. Henry V, El Cid, Raffles), you should have quite a number of sources.

The more specific a period you go for, the easier it will be for you in terms of "accuracy", even though your pool of information will be smaller. If you define a period that is too broad, then you may end up with information which are correct for one point of the period, but not that which you are basing your game during.

I like the Anglo-Saxon period because I think this is the period where your "magic, monsters, and myth" are still believable. This was a time when the Saxons, though Christians, have not yet abandoned their old ways. Large parts of the country was still "wild" and considered dangerous, where outlaws and monsters dwelled (I understand that on the continent, and in post-Conquest Britain, forests were a managed resource). Go a little further back in history, and you come to the time where 50 armed men was all it took to overthrow a king - classic D&D stuff.

One quick way to "RPG-ise" history is to look at "historical drama". OK, maybe not "Vikings", but "The Last Kingdom" is a good example of how to curate a host of important events and "NPCs" down to a few memorable ones that demonstrate the social and political structure of the period, and provide the players with potential patrons, allies, and enemies.

I plan to run a campaign based on the period next year, where the players play King Alfred's monster-hunters. The idea is that the Viking invasion has roused the pagan gods of the land, and monsters and undead are now beginning to come back to terrorise the people. Alfred needs these threats put down to demonstrate the legitimacy as God's anointed king, so he sends the PCs out to get rid of them.

 

[under_score]

I would say go with the period you love, and don't wait for the one right book to come along.

The historical period I love and use is the late Anglo-Saxon period, pre-Conquest. Over the years I have collected a dozen of books on the period, including "scholarly" books (which cost a bit) and an Ordnance Survey atlas of pre-Norman Britain. There are also websites created by re-enactors that give a lot of information about the period, including the prices of things.

So if you pick a "popular" period, like say a particular Crusade, or follow the career of a particular person (e.g. Henry V, El Cid, Raffles), you should have quite a number of sources.

The more specific a period you go for, the easier it will be for you in terms of "accuracy", even though your pool of information will be smaller. If you define a period that is too broad, then you may end up with information which are correct for one point of the period, but not that which you are basing your game during.

I like the Anglo-Saxon period because I think this is the period where your "magic, monsters, and myth" are still believable. This was a time when the Saxons, though Christians, have not yet abandoned their old ways. Large parts of the country was still "wild" and considered dangerous, where outlaws and monsters dwelled (I understand that on the continent, and in post-Conquest Britain, forests were a managed resource). Go a little further back in history, and you come to the time where 50 armed men was all it took to overthrow a king - classic D&D stuff.

One quick way to "RPG-ise" history is to look at "historical drama". OK, maybe not "Vikings", but "The Last Kingdom" is a good example of how to curate a host of important events and "NPCs" down to a few memorable ones that demonstrate the social and political structure of the period, and provide the players with potential patrons, allies, and enemies.

I plan to run a campaign based on the period next year, where the players play King Alfred's monster-hunters. The idea is that the Viking invasion has roused the pagan gods of the land, and monsters and undead are now beginning to come back to terrorise the people. Alfred needs these threats put down to demonstrate the legitimacy as God's anointed king, so he sends the PCs out to get rid of them.

Have you checked out Crawford's Wolves of God? It's pretty much made for that campaign.

 

[arjunstc]

Have you checked out Crawford's Wolves of God? It's pretty much made for that campaign.

Yes, the idea is stolen from Wolves of God, but set later in the period. I think where "The Last Kingdom" did well is in how it reimagined major events in the period like battles to be affected by the actions of a small party of... well, PCs.

 

[under_score]

Yes, the idea is stolen from Wolves of God, but set later in the period. I think where "The Last Kingdom" did well is in how it reimagined major events in the period like battles to be affected by the actions of a small party of... well, PCs.

I've been watching the Sharpe series (also by Cornwell) and it's a similar idea, focusing on a small handful of soldiers doing special jobs during the Peninsular war. It's a good setup for an RPG in a setting that would initially seem really hard to manage.

 

[Klibbix!]

I would say go with the period you love, and don't wait for the one right book to come along.

The historical period I love and use is the late Anglo-Saxon period, pre-Conquest. Over the years I have collected a dozen of books on the period, including "scholarly" books (which cost a bit) and an Ordnance Survey atlas of pre-Norman Britain. There are also websites created by re-enactors that give a lot of information about the period, including the prices of things.

So if you pick a "popular" period, like say a particular Crusade, or follow the career of a particular person (e.g. Henry V, El Cid, Raffles), you should have quite a number of sources.

The more specific a period you go for, the easier it will be for you in terms of "accuracy", even though your pool of information will be smaller. If you define a period that is too broad, then you may end up with information which are correct for one point of the period, but not that which you are basing your game during.

I like the Anglo-Saxon period because I think this is the period where your "magic, monsters, and myth" are still believable. This was a time when the Saxons, though Christians, have not yet abandoned their old ways. Large parts of the country was still "wild" and considered dangerous, where outlaws and monsters dwelled (I understand that on the continent, and in post-Conquest Britain, forests were a managed resource). Go a little further back in history, and you come to the time where 50 armed men was all it took to overthrow a king - classic D&D stuff.

One quick way to "RPG-ise" history is to look at "historical drama". OK, maybe not "Vikings", but "The Last Kingdom" is a good example of how to curate a host of important events and "NPCs" down to a few memorable ones that demonstrate the social and political structure of the period, and provide the players with potential patrons, allies, and enemies.

I plan to run a campaign based on the period next year, where the players play King Alfred's monster-hunters. The idea is that the Viking invasion has roused the pagan gods of the land, and monsters and undead are now beginning to come back to terrorise the people. Alfred needs these threats put down to demonstrate the legitimacy as God's anointed king, so he sends the PCs out to get rid of them.

I agree with the specificity of time and place. I'm torn between Renaissance Italy (particularly Venice) and Colonial Era America and I want to jam as much alchemy, occultism and secret history in as I can.

That being said, your idea for Anglo-Saxon era gaming does sound really cool. I also have Wolves of God and maybe I haven't given it as much as thorough read-through as I should have.

 

[Lofgeornost]

I agree with the specificity of time and place. I'm torn between Renaissance Italy (particularly Venice) and Colonial Era America and I want to jam as much alchemy, occultism and secret history in as I can.

The Renaissance isn't as well served by games and supplements as it might be. Mythic Constantinople for Mythras might be worth a look, if you are considering that system. It's the wrong place but the right period (1450s) and IIRC has alchemy rules in it.

As far as historical works that might be useful for a Renaissance Italy game, especially set in Venice, you might want to look at some of the following:

• David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds. Venice: A Documentary History, 1450-1630. As the title implies, this is a collection of contemporary documents, translated into English, covering Venetian society, government, law, religion, etc. I find that sort of thing is absolute gold for planning a campaign or adventure; one can riff on some particular text or aspect of it.
• Elizabeth S. and Thomas V. Cohen, Daily Life in Renaissance Italy. A second edition of this appeared in 2019 (which I've not seen) but the first edition is good. As Séadna mentioned above, this kind of work can be really useful for capturing the texture of life 'on the ground.'
• Eugenio Garin ed., Renaissance Characters. This is a translation of an Italian work with chapters on different types of people; for instance, there is a chapter on "The Condottiere," another on "The Philosopher and the Magus," and so on. It's aging a bit--the translation is from 1991 and the original was a bit before that--but still easily worth reading. As you can imagine, it provides fodder for N.P.C.s.
• Robert C. Davis and Beth Lindsmith, Renaissance People: Lives that Shaped the Modern Age. This is a collection of short biographies of movers-and-shakers from 1400-1600. It includes plenty of artists, authors, muscianas, scientists, etc. along with political and religious leaders, as well as a few representative people from other groups, like the Roman bandit known as Catena, or acrobat Tucarro. It's not limited to Italians, but weighted towards them, and it's lavishly illustrated--it was published by the Getty Museum. It could be useful if you wanted to include real historical figures.
• Rudolph Bell, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians. An intriguing work that summarizes the advice given on everyday-life topics in Italian self-help books of the 1500s. It focuses mainly on conception, pregnancy, and childrearing.

That's a few things off the top of my head--or really, my shelves. I'll try to post some more suggestions on Renaissance occulta, on Venice's history, and some micro-historical studies. But I probably won't have a chance until Monday.

 

[Klibbix!]

The Renaissance isn't as well served by games and supplements as it might be. Mythic Constantinople for Mythras might be worth a look, if you are considering that system. It's the wrong place but the right period (1450s) and IIRC has alchemy rules in it.

As far as historical works that might be useful for a Renaissance Italy game, especially set in Venice, you might want to look at some of the following:

• David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds. Venice: A Documentary History, 1450-1630. As the title implies, this is a collection of contemporary documents, translated into English, covering Venetian society, government, law, religion, etc. I find that sort of thing is absolute gold for planning a campaign or adventure; one can riff on some particular text or aspect of it.
• Elizabeth S. and Thomas V. Cohen, Daily Life in Renaissance Italy. A second edition of this appeared in 2019 (which I've not seen) but the first edition is good. As Séadna mentioned above, this kind of work can be really useful for capturing the texture of life 'on the ground.'
• Eugenio Garin ed., Renaissance Characters. This is a translation of an Italian work with chapters on different types of people; for instance, there is a chapter on "The Condottiere," another on "The Philosopher and the Magus," and so on. It's aging a bit--the translation is from 1991 and the original was a bit before that--but still easily worth reading. As you can imagine, it provides fodder for N.P.C.s.
• Robert C. Davis and Beth Lindsmith, Renaissance People: Lives that Shaped the Modern Age. This is a collection of short biographies of movers-and-shakers from 1400-1600. It includes plenty of artists, authors, muscianas, scientists, etc. along with political and religious leaders, as well as a few representative people from other groups, like the Roman bandit known as Catena, or acrobat Tucarro. It's not limited to Italians, but weighted towards them, and it's lavishly illustrated--it was published by the Getty Museum. It could be useful if you wanted to include real historical figures.
• Rudolph Bell, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians. An intriguing work that summarizes the advice given on everyday-life topics in Italian self-help books of the 1500s. It focuses mainly on conception, pregnancy, and childrearing.

That's a few things off the top of my head--or really, my shelves. I'll try to post some more suggestions on Renaissance occulta, on Venice's history, and some micro-historical studies. But I probably won't have a chance until Monday.

Much appreciated, I would love to hear what you can find on Renaissance Occultism and Venice's history.

As to your suggestions, they all seem very helpful indeed. Daily Life in Renaissance Italy looks like it might be something I can use (so do the others, just this one in particular).

I am not going to be using Mythras but Mythic Constantinople is very appealing. A while back I was planning a campaign set in medieval Bulgaria and a book focused on Constantinople would fit right into that. Thank you!

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

For colonial America and the occult, read anything by Richard Godbeer on witchcraft and Salem. Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft at Salem is older but a classic anthropological study.

For the southern colonies, I recall a chapter or two in Christine Heyrman's Southern Cross being useful, but there's probably more up-to-date stuff on specific colonies that would have value.

 

[Lofgeornost]

Much appreciated, I would love to hear what you can find on Renaissance Occultism and Venice's history.

As to your suggestions, they all seem very helpful indeed. Daily Life in Renaissance Italy looks like it might be something I can use (so do the others, just this one in particular).

I am not going to be using Mythras but Mythic Constantinople is very appealing. A while back I was planning a campaign set in medieval Bulgaria and a book focused on Constantinople would fit right into that. Thank you!

Happy to help! I should mention that Mythras has a setting book for a not-Italian-Renaissance city, Fioracitta. I don't have it so I'm not sure whether to recommend it or not. I might pick it up soon, since it is currently part of the 'Christmas in July' sale on Drivethru.

I was able to pick up a used copy of the Cohen's Daily Life in Renaissance Italy quite cheaply used, but it's also the sort of thing libraries often own.

 

[Klibbix!]

Happy to help! I should mention that Mythras has a setting book for a not-Italian-Renaissance city, Fioracitta. I don't have it so I'm not sure whether to recommend it or not. I might pick it up soon, since it is currently part of the 'Christmas in July' sale on Drivethru.

I was able to pick up a used copy of the Cohen's Daily Life in Renaissance Italy quite cheaply used, but it's also the sort of thing libraries often own.

Oh dang, Fioracitta actually looks like a real good fit. I wouldn't hesitate adding fictional locations to the real world, often real history is as exciting as alternate history.

For colonial America and the occult, read anything by Richard Godbeer on witchcraft and Salem. Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft at Salem is older but a classic anthropological study.

For the southern colonies, I recall a chapter or two in Christine Heyrman's Southern Cross being useful, but there's probably more up-to-date stuff on specific colonies that would have value.

You've been making some good book suggestions in this thread. Very dangerous to my wallet....but I've never been one to resist the temptation of bibliophilia

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

Oh dang, Fioracitta actually looks like a real good fit. I wouldn't hesitate adding fictional locations to the real world, often real history is as exciting as alternate history.



You've been making some good book suggestions in this thread. Very dangerous to my wallet....but I've never been one to resist the temptation of bibliophilia

Godbeer's The Salem Witch Hunt is a brief little textbook I use all the time and it's cheap.

 

[Lofgeornost]

Godbeer's The Salem Witch Hunt is a brief little textbook I use all the time and it's cheap.

I should read that someday. Godbeer wrote the chapter on "Folk Magic in British North America" in the Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West, which I've been working through, albeit glacially.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

If you like Daily Life type books do an advanced search at Amazon with title "Daily Life" and publisher "Greenwood" and you should be set.

 

[Fenris-77]

I have many historical sources for many periods. Someone may need to be more specific...

 

[Klibbix!]

I have many historical sources for many periods. Someone may need to be more specific...

I definitely should have been. I narrowed it down in my post above to Renaissance Europe (specifically Venice) and Colonial-era America but I am also genuinely interested in ANY gaming supplements and books you've found particularly useful in running historical campaigns.

 

[Fenris-77]

I have no need for renaissance European sources, I'll play WHFRP. Those are quality sources, just not historical.

 

[TJS]

I can recommend this Medieval Baltic book, although I haven't used it for a game.

And I see there is now a second volume.

If anyone knows of a good book about hanseatic cities, especially with a focus on daily life I'd love to know.

 

[Teotwawki]

One such regaling of a historical campaign:

We play a lot of T2k, enamored by its attention to details--have a long running campaign currently on hiatus--and even in our fantasy rpgs, our play group strives for a feeling of historical authenticity (which is not always the same as accuracy). Spawned from one of our out-of-game debates about time travel and history and the proverbial Would you kill Hitler? (in this instance, after watching Ідзі і глядзі / Come & See), I decided to put to use my conflicting ethnic heritage(s), personal experience, research, & contacts, and academic work history to run a mini-campaign that strove to be as historically accurate and authentic in feel as is possible when a story is told collectively at a game-table.

Using our house-distilled ruleset for our T2k campaign (1st edition + some moving parts from the Misery Engine of Delta Green), we had the characters come unmoored in time (method of time travel irrelevant for our mini-campaign) and end up back in early spring of 1914 in the countryside outside Sarajevo (my hometown), which was then, of course, part of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. In a nice blend of meta-reality, the players as well as their characters knew only vagaries about the lead-up to what took place that summer while I, as gm, am a bit of an expert on it (provided a lifetime of personal history & some embossed academic pieces of paper can certify "expertise"). The goal, as the characters came to determine, would be to stop the assassination that sparked World War I. Their difficulties included not only the overall ticking clock, who to tell and how to tell them, but also the daily details of geopolitics, language barriers, and getting by being strangers in a strange land. Again, the players and their characters knew only of the ultimate event, not any details of the months and weeks beforehand. There was even wondrous in-character debate of what the actual date was of the assassination. And the dictator tyrant of gm wouldn't allow any of the players to access media that might help them!

Resources specific to this were long-term studies of the Balkans; notes from a trip made with some friends one summer retracing the path of the assassin from Belgrade to Sarajevo; reaching out to some folk I know who operate the 1878-1919 Museum & the Gallery 11/07/95 in Sarajevo; a friend who teaches Orientalism (what is called literature & cultural studies in the US) in Belgrade; and a handful of biographies (most notably Apis, the Congenial Conspirator: The Life of Colonel Dragutin T. Dimitrijević), and--what may sound quite odd: the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination.

This last formed the basis of not only how I've re-constructed the Archduke's assassin in my own head, but also how I've described it in classrooms back in my teaching days, and in gaming the penultimate scene of our campaign. Instead of a staid "Archduke Ferdinand was shot by Gavillo Princip in 1914 which lead to the outbreak of... blah blah zzzzz...", the event can be told visually--detailed, but still confusing--as if from the perspective of several someones filming with handheld 8mm cameras at different points along Franz and Sofia's route that fateful Sunday--after the wrong turn, the auto-carriage stalls in front of a corner café and backfires as the driver attempts to crank the engine. The shots from Gavilo's Browning sound little different from the engine misfiring...

~•~

Outside of specifics to our own historical campaign, general sources for running one that haven't been mentioned (or reiterating some that have) would be the Daily Life in... series of books; most that I've seen are 85-90% spot-on, a few are less so. Research into not only histories of a given time and biographies, but also the literature and artwork created contemporaneously to a given era (campaign in the second decade of the 1800s? Turner's paintings from the Year Without Summer tell us about the worldwide effect of a volcano eruption that would factor into daily life of the time). Museums and their curators are invaluable resources for certain topics. Find one that is relevant and ask questions. Perhaps it's the Luddite in me, but I still trust information gained from a library reference section over almost anything found on the internet: use your local library and involve the librarians... you never know when you might find a research ally for your subject. Not a student but want access to a University library? Talk to someone at the library and tell 'em you're doing independent research for your own project. Might not be able to check out books, but you might be granted access to materials there that you won't find in a public library (nor online). Likewise, if you're the sort who wants to dive that deep or have a knack for such things, call or email a professor in the field you're interested in. Some might ignore your request or be condescending with a negative reply, but some might love to talk shop--or even be fascinated by the idea of providing historical context for an rpg.

There are some geographic areas and time periods that don't have accurate rpg material available (the Balkans are one--few books have more than basic information, and fewer have very accurate information; most I've personally seen don't really try--a trait certainly not exclusive to misinformation about the Balkans). Rpg books that usually do have quite good info are (preaching to the choir, I'm sure) the GURPS books. I could name some rpg lines that I think are really poor with their information, but I don't want to turn this into a negativity dump nor a detailed debate about how ____ title is good. Some rpg books from the '80s and early '90s got things amazingly correct for their time and subject (T2k is a good example--we can look now and say Chadwick, Wiseman & co missed on details about Soviet Poland, but their accuracy was quite amazing for information publicly available when their were writing, circa early '80s). Early Chaosium books are another that I think hit their marks true more often than they missed.

Anyway, this turned into quite a bit more than intended. It's a vivisection of topics near and dear to me--history, authenticity, and rpgs. Take what's useful and leave the rest.

 

[Klibbix!]

One such regaling of a historical campaign:

We play a lot of T2k, enamored by its attention to details--have a long running campaign currently on hiatus--and even in our fantasy rpgs, our play group strives for a feeling of historical authenticity (which is not always the same as accuracy). Spawned from one of our out-of-game debates about time travel and history and the proverbial Would you kill Hitler? (in this instance, after watching Ідзі і глядзі / Come & See), I decided to put to use my conflicting ethnic heritage(s), personal experience, research, & contacts, and academic work history to run a mini-campaign that strove to be as historically accurate and authentic in feel as is possible when a story is told collectively at a game-table.

Using our house-distilled ruleset for our T2k campaign (1st edition + some moving parts from the Misery Engine of Delta Green), we had the characters come unmoored in time (method of time travel irrelevant for our mini-campaign) and end up back in early spring of 1914 in the countryside outside Sarajevo (my hometown), which was then, of course, part of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. In a nice blend of meta-reality, the players as well as their characters knew only vagaries about the lead-up to what took place that summer while I, as gm, am a bit of an expert on it (provided a lifetime of personal history & some embossed academic pieces of paper can certify "expertise"). The goal, as the characters came to determine, would be to stop the assassination that sparked World War I. Their difficulties included not only the overall ticking clock, who to tell and how to tell them, but also the daily details of geopolitics, language barriers, and getting by being strangers in a strange land. Again, the players and their characters knew only of the ultimate event, not any details of the months and weeks beforehand. There was even wondrous in-character debate of what the actual date was of the assassination. And the dictator tyrant of gm wouldn't allow any of the players to access media that might help them!

Resources specific to this were long-term studies of the Balkans; notes from a trip made with some friends one summer retracing the path of the assassin from Belgrade to Sarajevo; reaching out to some folk I know who operate the 1878-1919 Museum & the Gallery 11/07/95 in Sarajevo; a friend who teaches Orientalism (what is called literature & cultural studies in the US) in Belgrade; and a handful of biographies (most notably Apis, the Congenial Conspirator: The Life of Colonel Dragutin T. Dimitrijević), and--what may sound quite odd: the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination.

This last formed the basis of not only how I've re-constructed the Archduke's assassin in my own head, but also how I've described it in classrooms back in my teaching days, and in gaming the penultimate scene of our campaign. Instead of a staid "Archduke Ferdinand was shot by Gavillo Princip in 1914 which lead to the outbreak of... blah blah zzzzz...", the event can be told visually--detailed, but still confusing--as if from the perspective of several someones filming with handheld 8mm cameras at different points along Franz and Sofia's route that fateful Sunday--after the wrong turn, the auto-carriage stalls in front of a corner café and backfires as the driver attempts to crank the engine. The shots from Gavilo's Browning sound little different from the engine misfiring...

~•~

Outside of specifics to our own historical campaign, general sources for running one that haven't been mentioned (or reiterating some that have) would be the Daily Life in... series of books; most that I've seen are 85-90% spot-on, a few are less so. Research into not only histories of a given time and biographies, but also the literature and artwork created contemporaneously to a given era (campaign in the second decade of the 1800s? Turner's paintings from the Year Without Summer tell us about the worldwide effect of a volcano eruption that would factor into daily life of the time). Museums and their curators are invaluable resources for certain topics. Find one that is relevant and ask questions. Perhaps it's the Luddite in me, but I still trust information gained from a library reference section over almost anything found on the internet: use your local library and involve the librarians... you never know when you might find a research ally for your subject. Not a student but want access to a University library? Talk to someone at the library and tell 'em you're doing independent research for your own project. Might not be able to check out books, but you might be granted access to materials there that you won't find in a public library (nor online). Likewise, if you're the sort who wants to dive that deep or have a knack for such things, call or email a professor in the field you're interested in. Some might ignore your request or be condescending with a negative reply, but some might love to talk shop--or even be fascinated by the idea of providing historical context for an rpg.

There are some geographic areas and time periods that don't have accurate rpg material available (the Balkans are one--few books have more than basic information, and fewer have very accurate information; most I've personally seen don't really try--a trait certainly not exclusive to misinformation about the Balkans). Rpg books that usually do have quite good info are (preaching to the choir, I'm sure) the GURPS books. I could name some rpg lines that I think are really poor with their information, but I don't want to turn this into a negativity dump nor a detailed debate about how ____ title is good. Some rpg books from the '80s and early '90s got things amazingly correct for their time and subject (T2k is a good example--we can look now and say Chadwick, Wiseman & co missed on details about Soviet Poland, but their accuracy was quite amazing for information publicly available when their were writing, circa early '80s). Early Chaosium books are another that I think hit their marks true more often than they missed.

Anyway, this turned into quite a bit more than intended. It's a vivisection of topics near and dear to me--history, authenticity, and rpgs. Take what's useful and leave the rest.

Now that sounds like quite the campaign! I also like the distinction you’ve made between authenticity and accuracy.

 

[Ravenswing]

Heck, if you want a very interesting twist on (just barely post-)colonial America, take a peek at Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker novels. Set in the early 19th century, there are several points of historical divergence: basically, the Restoration never happened in England, and so North America's divided into a heap of polities: New England's in the hands of the Commonwealth, the Stuart royalists are in power in the southernmost colonies, the United States is in the mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and the much more powerful Native Americans not only hold sway west of the Mississippi, but "Irrakwa" (much of the old Iroquois Confederacy) is a constituent Indian-run state of the US.

A factor is that most people have "knacks," or a supernatural power of some sort. For the most part they're petty; the protagonist's (the seventh son of a seventh son) knack, by contrast, is comprehensive in scope and extraordinary in power.

 

[Lofgeornost]

One such regaling of a historical campaign:

Using our house-distilled ruleset for our T2k campaign (1st edition + some moving parts from the Misery Engine of Delta Green), we had the characters come unmoored in time (method of time travel irrelevant for our mini-campaign) and end up back in early spring of 1914 in the countryside outside Sarajevo (my hometown), which was then, of course, part of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. In a nice blend of meta-reality, the players as well as their characters knew only vagaries about the lead-up to what took place that summer while I, as gm, am a bit of an expert on it (provided a lifetime of personal history & some embossed academic pieces of paper can certify "expertise"). The goal, as the characters came to determine, would be to stop the assassination that sparked World War I. Their difficulties included not only the overall ticking clock, who to tell and how to tell them, but also the daily details of geopolitics, language barriers, and getting by being strangers in a strange land. Again, the players and their characters knew only of the ultimate event, not any details of the months and weeks beforehand..

This sounds fascinating.

Not a student but want access to a University library? Talk to someone at the library and tell 'em you're doing independent research for your own project. Might not be able to check out books, but you might be granted access to materials there that you won't find in a public library (nor online).

I'd add that, in the U.S. anyway, academic libraries often have 'friends' organizations which one can join for a small membership fee. These typically give you some borrowing privileges and, perhaps more important nowadays, access to databases.

 

[Lofgeornost]

As far as resources on Renaissance Venice go, it occurs to me that I'm not sure what period precisely Klibbix! is interested in. It used to be common in English-language writing on Renaissance Italy to see the French invasion of 1494 as marking the end of the era, with maybe a generation or so after that included, but lately more books on the Italian Renaissance extend the label until 1559, or even 1599. So I'll assume anything from the later 1300s through the 1500s is fair game.

There is a huge volume of stuff written about the occult in this period, though not as much as one might expect specifically about Italy and in English. Here are a few titles that occur to me:

• Wayne Schumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (University of California Press, 1972). This is an older book, and in some ways quite dated. Schumaker felt that he had to provide arguments against at least some of the ideas or practices he described, like astrology, and the chapter on witchcraft is far behind current scholarship. But the provides a decent introduction to basic elements of astrology, alchemy, and Hermeticism. The chapter on 'White Magic' is basically a summary of the texts of Giambattista Della Porta on natural Magic, Marsilio Ficino on astral magic, and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa on ceremonial magic. These are less valuable now than they were back in the 1970s, because translations of those works are easily available in English, but I remember leaning pretty heavily on Schumaker when I first ran a game based in the Renaissance.
• Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008). Most of Clarke's scholarship dealt with 19th and 20th-century occulta, but this is a nice overview of the whole field with chapters on "Italian Renaissance Magic and Cabala," and "Planetary and Angel Magic in the Renaissance." It also provides an introduction to Paracelsus, if you want to include his ideas, and to Rosicrucianism. The latter is a 17th-century development, of course, but if the Rosicrucian origin myth were true, the group would have existed in the 1400s and 1500s as well.
• D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (Warburg Institute, 1958). Quite old, but one of the classics for 'high' magic in the Renaissance and much of it focuses on Italian thinkers. It's fairly tough reading, IIRC. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1964) is another classic, though Yates' overall thesis on the relationship between Hermeticism and the scientific revolution hasn't held up that well. Ingrid Rowland published a very readable biography, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic (University of Chicago Press, 2008), though it doesn't spend all that much time on his ideas about magic. A recent book that deals with Ficino and Hermeticism at length is Brian Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Despite its sweeping title, most of the book is dedicated to Ficino's magical ideas, their sources, and their reception. Copenhaver is one of the top scholars of this material, and of Renaissance philosophy in general, and the book assumes you know a good deal; it's also quite discursive.
• For astrology in this society, there is Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life (Routledge, 1983), though I think (particularly for gaming purposes) you'd be better served by Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Harvard University Press, 1999). Grafton gives a fair introduction to the underlying ideas behind astrology, but also depicts the various things a practicing astrologer might do.
• Witchcraft has an enormous, and constantly growing, bibliography, but there is less than one might think about witchcraft in Italy written in English, maybe because witch-trials were actually fairly rare in the peninsula. One reasonable place to start might be Rainer Decker, Witchcraft and the Papacy (University of Virginia Press, 2008). Not all of this deals with Italy, to be sure, but a fair number of the chapters do, including one on "The Struggle of the Inquisition with Venice" that might be particularly helpful. Matteo Duni, Under the Devil's Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Syracuse University at Florence, 2007) deals with popular magical traditions as well as witchcraft, and concludes with some primary sources. Another source which is well worth a read is Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Penguin, 1983), which deals with the odd type of popular magician known as the benandanti. In practical terms, they were magical healers, but they had an elaborate myth to justify their powers, which involved them going in spirit form four times yearly to fight battles against witches; if the benandanti won, then good weather and fertility were ensured for that quarter of the year. They were found in the Udine, not far from Venice, and so might be good fodder for your game. Ginzburg likened them to shamans found elsewhere and argued that they were a survival of ancient fertility cults, but I don't think his argument has won over that many people. Guy Gavriel Kay used the benandanti in Tigana, with the serial numbers filed off, of course.

 

[Klibbix!]

As far as resources on Renaissance Venice go, it occurs to me that I'm not sure what period precisely Klibbix! is interested in. It used to be common in English-language writing on Renaissance Italy to see the French invasion of 1494 as marking the end of the era, with maybe a generation or so after that included, but lately more books on the Italian Renaissance extend the label until 1559, or even 1599. So I'll assume anything from the later 1300s through the 1500s is fair game.

There is a huge volume of stuff written about the occult in this period, though not as much as one might expect specifically about Italy and in English. Here are a few titles that occur to me:

• Wayne Schumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (University of California Press, 1972). This is an older book, and in some ways quite dated. Schumaker felt that he had to provide arguments against at least some of the ideas or practices he described, like astrology, and the chapter on witchcraft is far behind current scholarship. But the provides a decent introduction to basic elements of astrology, alchemy, and Hermeticism. The chapter on 'White Magic' is basically a summary of the texts of Giambattista Della Porta on natural Magic, Marsilio Ficino on astral magic, and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa on ceremonial magic. These are less valuable now than they were back in the 1970s, because translations of those works are easily available in English, but I remember leaning pretty heavily on Schumaker when I first ran a game based in the Renaissance.
• Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008). Most of Clarke's scholarship dealt with 19th and 20th-century occulta, but this is a nice overview of the whole field with chapters on "Italian Renaissance Magic and Cabala," and "Planetary and Angel Magic in the Renaissance." It also provides an introduction to Paracelsus, if you want to include his ideas, and to Rosicrucianism. The latter is a 17th-century development, of course, but if the Rosicrucian origin myth were true, the group would have existed in the 1400s and 1500s as well.
• D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (Warburg Institute, 1958). Quite old, but one of the classics for 'high' magic in the Renaissance and much of it focuses on Italian thinkers. It's fairly tough reading, IIRC. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 1964) is another classic, though Yates' overall thesis on the relationship between Hermeticism and the scientific revolution hasn't held up that well. Ingrid Rowland published a very readable biography, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic (University of Chicago Press, 2008), though it doesn't spend all that much time on his ideas about magic. A recent book that deals with Ficino and Hermeticism at length is Brian Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Despite its sweeping title, most of the book is dedicated to Ficino's magical ideas, their sources, and their reception. Copenhaver is one of the top scholars of this material, and of Renaissance philosophy in general, and the book assumes you know a good deal; it's also quite discursive.
• For astrology in this society, there is Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life (Routledge, 1983), though I think (particularly for gaming purposes) you'd be better served by Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Harvard University Press, 1999). Grafton gives a fair introduction to the underlying ideas behind astrology, but also depicts the various things a practicing astrologer might do.
• Witchcraft has an enormous, and constantly growing, bibliography, but there is less than one might think about witchcraft in Italy written in English, maybe because witch-trials were actually fairly rare in the peninsula. One reasonable place to start might be Rainer Decker, Witchcraft and the Papacy (University of Virginia Press, 2008). Not all of this deals with Italy, to be sure, but a fair number of the chapters do, including one on "The Struggle of the Inquisition with Venice" that might be particularly helpful. Matteo Duni, Under the Devil's Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Syracuse University at Florence, 2007) deals with popular magical traditions as well as witchcraft, and concludes with some primary sources. Another source which is well worth a read is Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Penguin, 1983), which deals with the odd type of popular magician known as the benandanti. In practical terms, they were magical healers, but they had an elaborate myth to justify their powers, which involved them going in spirit form four times yearly to fight battles against witches; if the benandanti won, then good weather and fertility were ensured for that quarter of the year. They were found in the Udine, not far from Venice, and so might be good fodder for your game. Ginzburg likened them to shamans found elsewhere and argued that they were a survival of ancient fertility cults, but I don't think his argument has won over that many people. Guy Gavriel Kay used the benandanti in Tigana, with the serial numbers filed off, of course.

This is a fantastic post, thank you very much. I think I'll pick up The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction first as it doubles as something I'm into regardless of game-running and looks like a great read. The other texts I will most likely try to find in the library, though I think I might already have Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition somewhere under a pile of books. I read Yate's The Art of Memory a long time ago and I think I may have bought the two at the same time.

Ginzburg's work is very interesting. I've not heard about the Benandanti before and they sound very gameable indeed.

As for period, I think the years you mentioned are perfect. I picked up GURPS Hot Spots: Renaissance Venice and Renaissance Florence and they cover around the same period. I've been making my way through them and enjoying it, not sure if they're 100% accurate but it doesn't really matter for my purposes.

Thank you again! I have some reading to do.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

I'd add that, in the U.S. anyway, academic libraries often have 'friends' organizations which one can join for a small membership fee. These typically give you some borrowing privileges and, perhaps more important nowadays, access to databases.

Yeah I use my alma mater for that fairly often. Beats shelling out $150 for a book.

 

[carpocratian]

I'd add that, in the U.S. anyway, academic libraries often have 'friends' organizations which one can join for a small membership fee. These typically give you some borrowing privileges and, perhaps more important nowadays, access to databases.

Many public libraries in the U.S. can also get books from academic libraries via interlibrary loan, and may offer access to some useful databases, as well.

Some universities will also give limited borrowing privileges to residents, even if they never attended the university.

Also, people in Texas can check with their local libraries about getting a TexShare card, which lets you get free cards at hundreds of different libraries (public and academic) in Texas. I don't know if other states have similar programs or not.