tkdguy

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song

I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him, to listen for a while
And there he was, this young boy
A stranger to my eyes
 
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song
 
I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on
 
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song
 
He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair
And then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there
And he just kept on singing
Singing clear and strong
 
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song
 
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me
 
He was strumming my pain
Yeah, he was singing my life
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

The Robin Hood book is one of my main resources. Low fantasy makes for a great change of pace.
 
Edit: If you need coats of arms for the different houses, look here.

The Robin Hood Campaign Classics book is by far the best of the series, if not the best sourcebook ever printed for FH.  There's an incredible amount of detailed lore about life in England in the Middle Ages, including folklore and mythology.  There's FH stats that were actually developed by someone who knew FH (as opposed to just converting the RM stats).  There's even--gasp--adventures, in defiance of the ban on published modules for FH.  Even the art and layout are top notch.
 
It really stands out because it's the one book that shows what Hero is capable of at the lower end of the spectrum.  (Robin Hood himself comes out to 80 points IIRC.)  And it actually makes you want to play low fantasy.  Ultimately, though, that is the book's one fatal flaw--it's low fantasy when the rest of the world is playing D&D video game fantasy.  But if you can get hold of a copy, do so; it's worth it even if all you do is read it.

TEQBALL
 

 
Maybe it’s the post-surgery meds, but it made me think of the Mesoamerican Ballgames.
 
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mball/hd_mball.htm
 
 
I slipped a ballgame into a 17th C pirate campaign using Fantasy Hero, Justice Inc, and some homemade ship combat inspired by Wooden Ships and Iron Men. 
It was amazing to see how pirates handled scenarios of ball games, murder mysteries, and political intrigue. 

Best wishes for your uncle and the rest of your family.

My uncle in Toronto is in the hospital for pneumonia. It's pretty bad.

My uncle in Toronto is in the hospital for pneumonia. It's pretty bad.

Not discussing wich is the best, I'm here just to tell I played a campaign in 6th century Europe, from Byzantium to the Vandal Kingdom to the Persian frontier in Armenia, with the Blue and Green hippodrome factions fighting in the streets, Huns still menacing, conspiracies, spies, and a gold mine. Years 519-535, a long run.

Something I may try in my solo games is running a silly campaign. I've tried to run a few humorous games with other folks in the past, and they were never received well. But if I'm playing on my own, I can go to town with the silliness, and no one would be the wiser.

Unless they are far afield from their stomping grounds and know literally no one or nothing, it will be odd to see a Player Character as a thoroughly disconnected entity. This approach - while simple - runs the risk of a creating an ever-increasing background "revealed" through play that may come across as tenuously/dubiously connected from event to event*. I can understand why certain players crank out at least a checklist if not a paragraph or two: for the sake of some preestablished consistency (e.g., "Is on good terms with Joden the baker./Has run afoul of the clergy./Born into a fisherman's family but trained as a mercenary./et cetera").
 
* Angus MacGyver comes to mind.

My uncle in Toronto is in the hospital for pneumonia. It's pretty bad.

My uncle in Toronto is in the hospital for pneumonia. It's pretty bad.

But I want to know where the fast cop hides.

My uncle in Toronto is in the hospital for pneumonia. It's pretty bad.

A famous encounter from 25-30 years ago with our gaming group was a female player who had the equivalent of a giant tape worm inside of her. The party decided to cut her open to remove it and as soon as the player made the first incision the GM said, “Initiative!” 😅

My uncle in Toronto is in the hospital for pneumonia. It's pretty bad.

Hi-five!

That falchion is a machete with a superiority complex.

---
 
 
One of my favorite scenes involves Duncan being tailed by a Watcher (or was it a Hunter?) in public...and then he suddenly turns the tables on his stalker by openly following him while loudly asking the now obviously perturbed man all sorts of questions in every (European?) language he knows (i.e., French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, et cetera). During the reversal, he beams that trademark Duncan McLeod confident smile.

Something I'm playing with in historical and other low-magic settings is keep clerical magic but get rid of wizards.  At least one TSR campaign book, Charlemagne's Paladins, offers this as an option. I tried this option in my solo Middle-earth campaign. I renamed the clerics "healers" and treated their turn undead and spells as skills rather than than actual magic. It's still a work in progress.