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Useful Resources


Kit the Human
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I thought it might be cool to share (if you wish) any useful resources you turn to help you run your historical RP, or that you turn to for research. They can be books, shows, movies, websites....whatever you have found useful!

 

I'm making a masterlist in this post because there are so many incredible resources here.

 

What other resources do you guys recommend?

 

Books

Maritime

The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques by Bennerson Little

Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly

A History of Sailing in 100 Objects

A History of Food in 100 Recipes by William Stiwell

Merchant Kings Stephen R Brown

Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean- The Adventurous Life of Captain Woodes Rogers by David Cordingly

Cochrane the Dauntless- The Life and Adventures of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 1775-1860 by David Cordingly

Women Sailors & Sailors' Women- An Untold Maritime History by David Cordingly

General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (free!)

 

Spies, Secret service and all that good stuff.

The Secret of Codes: Understand the World of Hidden Messages by Paul Lunde

Secret Societies: Illuminati, Freemasons, and the French Revolution by Una Birch

 

Trade & Craft

The East India Company and the Natural World

Financial Vipers of Venice: Alchemical Money, Magical Physics, and Banking in the Middle Ages and Renaissance by Joseph P. Farrell

 

Crime

Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women: Crime, Transportation, and the Servitude of Female Convicts, 1718-1783

Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 by Clive Emsley

 

Other

A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich 

Ask the Past

 

Websites

General Resource

JSTOR - full of all kinds of articles!

Archive.org - "Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more."

Stack Exchange - got a question? These guys answer.

 

Food

Historic Foodways

 

Medicine

The Pirate Surgeon

Medical Antiques

Culpepper's Complete Herbal

 

Piracy & Warfare

Pirates and Privateers

FIBIS Database (Source of scanned officer's records and manifests from the 16th to 19th centuries.)

Colonial Williamsburg (Trade and craft)

Positions and Duties onboard a pirate ship

The Female Shipwright

Acadian-Cajun naval history

How to Fight Write - Tumblr (swords tag and guns tag).

Life at Sea in the Royal Navy of the 18th Century

 

Fashion & Art

Metropolitan Museum - can refine by country and era.

Kyoto Costume Institute - photos of clothes, sort by year.

18th Century Notebook - clothes, clothes and soap?

Marquise - clothing, by era.

American Revolution - American Revolution, 1770-1800 clothes

Oregan Shakespeare Festival - Image references for pretty much any kind of clothing. It's all filtered.

 

Other

Chemistry History

How much things cost in America from the 1700s to now

Money in the 18th Century

References for Writers

Nickels and Dimes - "Dime novels were a format of inexpensive popular fiction produced in the United States between 1860 and 1930. Available for as little as a nickel or as much as a dime, they opened up leisure reading for the masses in a way previously not possible." This site lets you search for what was published.

 

Occupations (Other)

FIBIS (Occupations)

World through the Lens (Occupations)

Names

 

Play bys/Image resources

Period Film Stills

Period Playby Provider

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This is a great topic!!

 

 

Another great Age of Sail books is Merchant Kings, link by Stephen R. Bown . I have really enjoyed that one, and for my recent venture both my admin and I (Alan and Lily for life!) Have A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich.  lt is full of anything and everything I've needed to research and run the board.

 

Though recently we've been working hard and playing hard into a few heavier plots that deal with treasure hunts of a not-so-gold-and-pirate-sort and these books have really been a great help.

 

The Secret of Codes: Understand the World of Hidden Messages by Paul Lunde

Financial Vipers of Venice: Alchemical Money, Magical Physics, and Banking in the Middle Ages and Renaissance by Joseph P. Farrell  

Secret Societies: Illuminati, Freemasons, and the French Revolution by Una Birch

 

All of these have been a great guide to have right away when we're in the middle of a plot session or I'm writing a post. I have built in bookshelves downstairs on either side of both fireplaces, but I keep my history books close to my desk in my home office.

 

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One thing that I have learned on picking up history books is that you should always go when libraries are having their sales. You can really get a lot of great things for not a lot!

 

 

 

 

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The pirate surgeon is also good for medicine. Any of Cindy Vallar's articles are good when needed. I will edit this post later, to give you more links to websites after I check that all the links are still alive.

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Oh man. Okay, so, anywhere between 16th to 19th century, if you need something merchant-y or army-ish in regards to the British empire, I highly recommend FIBIS.org. They have scanned copies of books of officer's records and manifests. :) It's amazing. I picked out a name from one of those records for a master surgeon character.

 

Medical:

I like looking up antiques. People keep pictures and records of them. Here's one: Medical amputation set c.1780

Medical history isn't limited to England, either. I research other countries and people who famously contributed from that country. Siddha and Yunani medicines are a few examples.

The East India Company and the Natural World -- this doesn't just engage in medical knowledge, but also botany, geography, and Malay-Indonesian Medicine and European Plant Science. ;) Pretty freaking badass.

Culpeper's Complete Herbal -- Botany and medicine.

 

Professions and Trade:

I will now always go to Colonial Williamsburg for all things trade and craft. Here's a transcript from a podcast on coopering!

A quick chart on chemistry through history.

FIBIS to the rescue again: Occupations. It has nautical, landlubs, and native occupations.

I've seen a variety of old occupation lists, and this is one of those that is HUGE -> List of Old English Occupations and descriptions.

 

Crime, Piracy, Smuggling, and Other Shady Shit:

Wow, bookmarked this a long time ago: Positions and Duties on Board a Pirate Ship. I haven't cross-referenced these but it was a good starting point. 

I apparently don't have any other bookmarks under this one. Hrm... but I have books!

Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women: Crime, Transportation, and the Servitude of Female Convicts, 1718-1783

Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 by Clive Emsley

David Cordingly - Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean- The Adventurous Life of Captain Woodes Rogers 

David Cordingly - Cochrane the Dauntless- The Life and Adventures of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 1775-1860

David Cordingly - Under the Black Flag- The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates 

David Cordingly - Women Sailors & Sailors' Women- An Untold Maritime History

 

Some Additional Nautical Shit:

I accidentally stumbled on The Female Shipwright once. Loved it.

If you have any interest in Arcadian-Cajun history, there's a great sea travel page on them. 1600s.

 

Also, on general "advice from history" subject, I have a copy of this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23197300-ask-the-past It is hilarious and well worth your time to read.

 

As for inspiration!! My group and I go on a Bollywood binge spree. Good flavour of India history thurr. I'm also inspired by what little I've seen from Frontier, Outlander (read all the books, though!), and... some other hundreds of suggestions from a few RP friends of mine who obsess over watching shit on Netflix and Hulu. I also read tons of historical romances.

Edited by Kaycakes
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Holy hell that's incredible list, thank you @Kaycakes!  Thank you @Bishop and @Elena too! I look forward to seeing your other resources Elena! 

 

As an aside Bishop, I can truly see why you wanted to make a RP in Venice, it's such a diverse and interesting area and time with huge potential for so many things. (I also love seeing your Venice inspired home decor. It's inspired me to do the same thing.)

 

I've edited my original post so that we can have a masterlist for quick reference. I would love for more to be added! Particularly for subjects that....isn't Age of Sails :D

Edited by Kit the Human
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PSI: an Occult Investigations RP

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh man! Posting here to remind myself to edit. I have a few war stuffs, fighty things, and historical weapons to add here. On that note, Art of War is great for historicals, if you wanted to go that deep. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Discussed earlier today, I guess this would go under "Other". These are resources we used for religion, setting, and more.

 

http://www.jstor.org/ -- perfect for finding any articles, essays, and digital copies of old books on any topic you need. It's a bit limited, but it's beautiful what you can get out of it.

 

https://archive.org/ -- a library worth exploring online.

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So pretty. 

 

Sometime I'll get my sources of information out and take a photo of my library. Books are a biiiiiiiiiit of an addiction for me. 

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Gotta admit, I love photos of people's libraries. My books are just kind of scattered across the house. 

 

A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates is a damn fine book, full of the kind of detail that I enjoy from The Sea Rovers' Practice. Reading behind the ultra polite lines is also a lot of fun.

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PSI: an Occult Investigations RP

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Hey fellas! I've created an album for us to upload some play bys for historical RPs. Just tag with the century, gender and anything else you think might be useful. :D

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PSI: an Occult Investigations RP

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You can also find me at:

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  • 1 month later...

One more resource for the list since I recently used it: https://history.stackexchange.com/ >.> i guess that's more for like students, academics, scholars, and whatever, but I totally went there and was like, hey, gimme some info on military things. They edited my shit and asked me more questions, but I think I'll get interesting answers anyway. There are other (answered) questions on there that are pretty cool.

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-gets lost in stackexchange-

 

Edited to add: A bunch of fashion orientated links have been added.

 

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PSI: an Occult Investigations RP

Roleplay Architects: Grab a friend (or many friends!) and just write.

You can also find me at:

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Found this really handy breakdown on fashion(French, English, etc.) through various periods. Really helps simplify it for people who want to be more accurate, but don't want to dig deep on clothing/hair/make-up related information. Or get confused by much of it.

 

http://www.americanrevolution.org/clothing/clothing4.php

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  • 4 weeks later...

The one resource I think I use the most out of any, across my years on Historical sites is S-Gabriel.

 

I am a real stickler for historically accurate names and THIS resource has saved me so many times <3 

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I have added the links above and added another clothing related resource!

 

Thanks for that link @Sara it turns out I had an anachronistic name in play x_x easy fix!

 

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PSI: an Occult Investigations RP

Roleplay Architects: Grab a friend (or many friends!) and just write.

You can also find me at:

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