Denny,

Here's a little idea for you: I know that you've done a lot of research for some of your sets, such as The Maiden and Castleworks. Maybe you can provide a sort of bibliography of your sources. If I ever get a chance to use The Maiden in a game, I might like to read up on ships and other nautical matters so that I know what I'm doing, and I'm probably not alone in this.

If you put these bibliographies on your site, and mention them in the PDFs or printed products ("For more information on castles, visit WorldWorks at..."), it might encourage a little more traffic to the site. I know a lot of us are rabid fans and visit all the time anyway, but for the casual or first-time customer, it might provide an extra incentive to come to the site, where they can see all the other sets that are available.

Finally, you could provide a link to any books that you used on Amazon, and receive a small kickback for any of them that are sold through your site. It would be a very modest amount of money, I'm sure, but I suppose it couldn't hurt.

That would be a very nice addition

I'd really like to see such a bibliography or resource compilation.

Geez, I have been kicking this idea around for my usual credits page. I usually use 20-30 books to make each set, thank you public library!

Here's some good books on the days of sail and shot:

Nelson's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1793-1815
by Brian Lavery

This is a companion book to the PBS miniseries, I believe.

Heart of Oak: A Sailor's Life in Nelson's Navy
by James P. McGuane

And of course there is nothing like the real thing. The Portsmouth Historic Dockyards is open year round. Go in the winter and they will let you wander more or less freely around the greatest ship of them all, HMS Victory! In the summer they offer 45 min tours which are still wonderful, and a real highlight of my visit last September. I trod decks laid down in 1769 while the ghosts of generations of tars brushed past me... At that time HMS Ark Royal was in port and was visible from the Victory's deck. Not as monstrous as the US carriers but still a pleasing sight.

I used quite a few books for ArenaWorks, ones on Roman gladiators, and Roman architecture. While in the UK last September I visited the Roman Ampitheatre at Caerleon, very well preserved and excavated. It was just outside the square Roman fort of the 2nd Augustan Legion. There is lots of walls and foundations around the area, I also stopped at the nearby civilian town of Caerwent.

Skull Cove was a bit harder, because in the 19th Century someone decided that pirates were cracking good literature for children, therefore there is a dearth of non-juvenile or sensational material. The bits and pieces were based on that trip to the Porstmouth museum, which I just will not shut up about.

I will start a list of current books, and try to reconstruct the older sets.