Sunday, May 16, 2010

your cowboy game needs this

WIKIPEDIA: 1889
If you run a wilden west game or something like Victorian-era Cthulhu, then you totally need to get a copy of Barkham Burroughs' Encyclopedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information 1889. Not only is this baby one of the best oddball reference books I have ever seen, but it provides an interesting perspective on the aspirations of the middle class in late 19th century America. Want to flesh out a dude from back East? Here's a great place to start.

There's so much haphazardly crammed into these 148 pages, it's pretty much the Dungeon Masters Guide for magnificently mustachioed white anglo-saxon protestants. (Speaking of W.A.S.P. and cowboys, 'Blackie Lawless' would be a fabulous name for a bandito.)

Stuff you can easily swipe for your game:


Sample business letters (p26-27) - for capturing the proper tone when providing a lead to the PCs via correspondence

Detecting counterfeit money (p32-36) - usage obvious

How to be handsome (p39-41) - dubious cosmetic advice to inflict on lady-type NPCs

How to make artificial gold (p43) - also how to tell the stuff is fake

Business law (p43-44) - i.e. ways to trick the PCs

Durability of a horse (p46) - practical numbers for hauling cargo

Certain Cure for Drunkeness (p47) - iron sulfate, magnesium, peppermint and nutmeg.  Who knew?

Twenty Choice Dinner Menus (p49-50) - Invite the PCs to a fancy dinner party, roll 1d20

Value of Old American Coins (p51) - Treasure!

And the list goes on and on.  There are lots of home remedies and recipes to puzzle over, some obviously incomplete  (e.g. how long do you bake this cake?).  I've made the pickled eggs several times, much to the chagrin of most of the folks I've foisted them upon.  The "Themes for Debate" section gives a good sense of the concerns and goings-on of the day.  The title of the last section is "Twenty Thousand Things Worth Knowing", which takes up all of 18 and a half pages.

Seriously, this is one of my all-time favorite books.  It just oozes this lovely combination of audacity and quaintness.  You remember how at the end of the 1960 film version of The Time Machine they notice that the protagonist took three books with him when he left to re-educate the Eloi?  Barkham Burroughs' tome simply has to be one of the three.  The universe wouldn't make sense otherwise.

I adore my hardcopy, but you can check out an electronic version on Project Gutenberg.

15 comments:

  1. Great find (I take lashings of "Deadwood" in my D&D, so this is relevant to my gaming interests).

    Ta Jeff.

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  2. Holy shat. He's right. And it's available online for free. What's not to like?

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  3. Fantastic post to point out a very cool resource! I really want to play a Call of Cthulhu game in the old West now - I could see it being very haunting and wonder what kind of Native American tribe could turn cult and worship some wild buffalo-like ancient one.

    You're also making me even more eager for when Red Dead Redemption comes out.

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  4. Awesome! This sounds perfect for our game. :)

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  5. Fantastic resource! Combine this with a reprint of the 1900 Sears Roebuck catalogue and you're good to go for pretty much any Victorian/Old West campaign, it would seem.

    Re: "Blackie Lawless"

    I was reading up on Las Vegas, New Mexico not long ago and came across a short litany of great outlaw names I'd never of before: Mysterious Dave Mather (also called New York Dave), Hoodoo Brown, Durango Kid and Handsome Harry the Dancehall Rustler.

    Hopeless Gamer: If you can find a copy, Worlds of Cthulhu #2 had a big article on running CoC in the Old West, complete with introductory scenario.

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  6. Awesome find Jeff!

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  7. Quality find, ill have to pick it up im getting back into COC

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  8. Very Nice!. I'll add this to my reference stack for with glee.

    Thanks.

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  9. "Dr. Liebig's Beef Tea"

    !!!!!!!

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  10. The secrets of ketchup are mine!

    And I assure you, the chagrin was confined to my intestines.

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  11. Oh, man, this is fabulous stuff. If there only existed a 1926 equivalent for Call of Cthulhu!

    The speed of light is 192,000 miles per second. The speed of electricity is 288,000 miles per second!

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  12. Thanks for this great find...you've got to wonder where he sourced some of this stuff:

    Horses in Norway have a very sensible way of taking their food, which perhaps might be beneficially followed here. They have a bucket of water put down beside their allowance of hay. It is interesting to see with what relish they take a sip of the one and a mouthful of the other alternately, sometimes only moistening their mouths, as a rational being would do while eating a dinner of such dry food. A broken-winded horse is scarcely ever seen in Norway, and the question is if the mode of feeding has not something to do with the preservation of the animal's respiratory organs.

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  13. Spouse: How long will these pickled eggs keep?

    Me: Until we throw them away.

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  14. I'm pretty sure that conversation also happened among my parents.

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  15. What a great find. Thanks!

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