Medieval Inspiration Dump zone

Thinking this would be a good format for a minimal rules text. Tapestry. I suppose it COULD be virtual, but I would prefer to roll this thing out at the table.

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I did not know about this tapestry, it is very cool, and long.


oh it’s even got low detail marginalia dragons

I love the cross section between low pixel count art and tapestries. its kinda… the same thing.

I can’t even imagine the cost to produce something like this, but I love the idea of a game tapestry! Or an adventure/module presented on one.

it would certainly be a labor of love to make one for real. printing on cloth isn’t that expensive, but wouldn’t be quite as satisfying.

now suddenly I am thinking it would be great to print a campaign map on a blanket and hang it on a wall. 50"x60" only costs 60 bucks on Vistaprint.

I think even a printed tapestry could be pretty striking. Not as awesome as an embroidered one, but still pretty cool.

A custom map blanket sounds sick.

oh, hold the phone. print on demand jacquard loom blankets? I feel like I gotta try this.

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History is cool.

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technically early modern. but as per dungeons and dragons, early modern stuff counts.

EMBLEMATA. an interesting, and pretty much forgotten genre. its a picture book for the “masses”; of course, in that period, its for the relatively elite middle classes that were literate. so merchants, urban artisans, etc. some crossover to the illiterate/semi literate due to picture book-ness.

but the basic reason why they made great inspiration is that the pictures themselves are supposed to be symbolic and curious. they are supposed to cause you to reflect upon them and ponder their meaning. this all means that they are WEIRD. sometimes really fucking weird. very surreal. very appropriate for fantasy.

An article explaining what they are in more detail

my absolute favorite illustrations, high quality, public domain

a cool one in English that is… readable… if you are cool with the long s’s and weird spellings and grammar.

A “late” example. they are out of fashion at this time, but its actually fairly readable for a modern English speaker. and the book layout is really cool (but the illustrations too tame)

Weird if the right word!! Within about twenty seconds I found this Mr. Potatohead Guy. :joy:

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More early modern stuff, this book is incredible. just check out the title page. the book shows where those super boring “modrons” from MMII came from?

https://opendigi.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/opendigi/El54_qt#p=25