What non-fiction books have helped you realise a more believable game world or complete gaming experience?
Here are some that helped me:
"Power & Imagination" by Lauro Martines
I love the city-state concept in gaming and this book on the Italian city-states helped me give structure to my own in the fantasy milieu.
"Empire of Blue Water" by Stephan Talty
Covering the era of piracy in the age of sail and spanish colonialism, this book gave rich texture to many a maritime or island-hopping game I've run.
"The Prince" by Machiavelli
Basic stuff, great foundation for intrigue-driven games and power politics.
"Money in the Medieval English Economy" by J. L. Bolton
Helped me grasp cashflow in a medieval society
"The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England" by Ian Mortimer
This book is written from the perspective of somebody time travelling to medieval England and is therefore very descriptive. It's literally as if a Game Master is describing you the surroundings.
Do you have any recommendations?
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend is very handy for researching real-world monsters and myths. I find it incredibly handy for scraping for ideas and inspiration.
The old Penguin atlases of world history were great.
Empire of the summer moon. The history of the Comanche Empire.
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century covers the Hundred Years War in France. Good inspiration for any feudal or medieval campaign; also gives me the impression D&D murderhobos is not as far off the mark as people think. Among other points of interest, AD&D's "bandits: 30-300" matches discharged soldiers or out of work mercenaries surprisingly well.
Life on a Mediaeval Barony: A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century does what it says on the tin, and is also worth a read if you need a first introduction.
The Little House on the Prairie series when I was a kid gave me more of an idea of what life was like on a working farm (which was 90% of the population in pre-modern societies) than anything I got from more formal sources. Also the source of my dissatisfaction with proficiency systems as I first saw them implemented; lighting a fire, tying a knot, driving a wagon or doing rough-and-ready carpentry, while technically skills in the dictionary meaning of the word, are somewhere between basic literacy and just using a smart phone in terms of how widespread they were.
Seems like I should have more, but nothing else leaps out. I did read a fair number of books on castles and medieval weapons in grade school, before I ever heard about D&D. I'm certain that primed me towards a fig leaf of "realism" over "everything works like it does in modern society," but I couldn't now pick out sources.
Quote from: Headless;1033928Empire of the summer moon. The history of the Comanche Empire.
Something new for me to read, Thank You!
Cheap Shots, Ambushes and Other Lessons by Marc "Animal" Macyoung.
Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller.
Treaties on the Art of War by Sun Tzu and Wu Tzu, with commentaries.
On War, by Carl Philipp Gottfried (Gottlieb?) von Clausewitz.
Better to Die Than to Live A Coward: My Life With The Gurkhas, by Colour Sergeant Kailash Limbo. Incredibly useful for running Tekumel.
Flying the Black Flag: A Brief History of Piracy by Alfred S. Bradford...OK, I might be totally wrong on this one - I don't remember the author's name, and since titles are changed in translation, I must check the book to be sure. Except it is in my country house.
Various books on the myths, legends, practice and masters of the different Asian and European Martial Arts. Including the biography of Ronda Rousey, whatever it was titled (an incredibly amusing text)!
Some manuals of psychological profiling of murderers, criminology and interrogation (in Bulgarian, so the titles are vastly irrelevant). Profiling is very useful for creating the kind of NPCs players tend to get entangled with!
Architecture and city design books.