While I'm at it, here's your weekend reminder for my upcoming kickstarter...
Violent Delights: a chess-based ttrpg about Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
07.03.2026 05:05
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While I'm at it, here's your weekend reminder for my upcoming kickstarter...
Violent Delights: a chess-based ttrpg about Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
Super relatable. One response I admire: Wittgenstein's remedy for feelings of exhaustion, disgust, and self-hate over his own lectures was to rush to the movie theater, sit on the front row, and lose himself in like a Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire musical. metatalk.metafilter.com/25240/Do-Re-...
Over on Metafilter, I've posted some links on the history of mail (e.g. a review of work by @rmidura.bsky.social) and the history of games of mail, including kissing games like Post Office: www.metafilter.com/212274/It-ma... ...
Meteorological (mists, clouds, wind, rain, storm, tempest, smoke, darkness, shadows, gloom). Topographical (impenetrable forests, inaccessible mountains, chasms, gorges, deserts, blasted heaths, icefields, the boundless ocean). Architectural (towers, prisons, castles covered in gargoyles and crenellations, abbeys and priories, tombs, crypts, dungeons, ruins, graveyards, mazes, secret passages, locked doors). Material (masks, veils, disguises, billowing curtains, suits of armour, tapestries). Textual (riddles, rumours, folklore, unreadable manuscripts and inscriptions, ellipses, broken texts, fragments, clotted language, polysyllabism, obscure dialect, inserted narratives, stories-within-stories). Spiritual (religious mystery, allegory and symbolism, Roman Catholic ritual, mysticism, freemasonry, magic and the occult, Satanism, witchcraft, summonings, damnation). Psychological (dreams, visions, hallucinations, drugs, sleep-walking, madness, split personalities, mistaken identities, doubles, derangement, ghostly presences, forgetfulness, death, hauntings).
thinking about Nick Groom's suggested "seven types of obscurity" in Gothic novels, forming a handy "is it goth" checklist lmao
A shot of the enormous statue of Gargantua under construction. He is mostly complete, enormous friendly face with red hat, blue tunic and white stocking legs. Scaffolding is going up his right leg and a hole in the ankle shows presumably where you or your ride vehicle would enter. Gargantua's hands are left on the ground, incomplete, and are easily the size of a three-story house each.
A shot of Gargantua at the top of Mirapolis park, overlooking a lake with pedal-operated swan boats. Gargantua sits on the ground with the biggest case of manspreading you could ever see. A restaurant tent fortunately blocks view of his crotch. He holds a goblet in one hand and looks happily at the fork he is holding in the other. The swan boats pay him no heed.
A close-up of Gargantua's head and torso and we can see that the food on his fork is in fact an entire roast cow TO SCALE. Gargantua's collar is in fact the highest point of the dark ride and features windows through which guests could briefly look out over the park. You can barely see some kind of ride vehicle or something inside that collar. Good goddamn.
absolutely fascinated to the point of entropy at Mirapolis, the french theme park which was open only from 1987-1991 and featured as its centerpiece a 35m tall hollow statue of Rabelais' friendly giant Gargantua
basically they put a dark ride inside the statue of liberty and it freaks me out
Over on Metafilter, some links on Mad Libs, pop culture, horror movies, contemporary poetry, 18th-19th C Mad Libs-like parlor games, Friday the 13th, and Valentine's Day--e.g. two essays by @abigailoswald.bsky.social and several poems by Duy ΔoΓ n: www.metafilter.com/212195/An-ex...
Medieval mini games. NEED WE SAY MORE??
@pidj.bsky.social
Leia: Mandelore
Obi-Wan: Ferrix
Chewie: RAUGHAGH
C3PO: Oh, a very good move if I may say
Leia: Did he play Kashyyyk again?
Han: He always plays Kashyyyk. I'll go Kamino
Luke: Bespin
Leia: Crait
Obi-Wan: Mornington Coruscant!
Chewie: RAARUGARGH!
C3P0: Oh dear, I did warn you about winning
NEW at 31 in OFFICIAL UK Album Downloads Chart. The Medieval Drone Society by Laura Cannell. Thanks for listening/streaming/buying! Medieval Drone is having a moment - well my version of it & cheered me up on this very grey day. brawlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-me...
White-tiled wall with a London Underground sign, a blue centre bar in a red circle. The centre bar reads 'MORNINGTON CRESCENT'. Source: https://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/2014/12/30/mornington-crescent-still-peculiar
Mornington Crescent: a rant.
Or: how a goofy word game about train stations is the key to how devout causes can ruin people's ability to have a conversation.
Stand clear of the closing doors, let's begin.
1/18
On Metafilter: letters, love, & games ("I love my love with an 'A' because she is Angelic, because her name is Araminta and because she lives in Atlanta. I will give her an Amethyst, feed her Almonds and make her a bouquet of Anemones") plus the game Love Letter: www.metafilter.com/212096/Valua...
A new edition of Good Society is set to grace the ton!
With revised rules and additional sumptuous art, this new edition will be useful, usable and scandalously good looking.
Check it out and help support this unique game of regency romance, scandal and drama!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/sto...
Week 5 -- 1/3 of the way through a weird semester.
This week, we had a last-minute pivot, which is why I keep @lackingceremony.bsky.social THE QUIET YEAR in my back pocket. Our discussion touched on people, pacing, & what we even CALL this game.
"Close playing" via @edmondchang.bsky.social
It's Lichun, the first of 24 seasons in the traditional Chinese calendar, the beginnings of Spring. This is when we hear the twitter of sparrows...π₯π₯π₯
It's a great pleasure to reveal the covers of this new book, all about #Mahjong, co-written with the excellent @macula.bsky.social #books #game
Celebrity gamers in Neysa McMein's manual include Charlie Chaplin (who gamed with H.G. Wells too), Amelia Earhart, Harpo Marx, Irving Berlin, Helen Hayes, Mary Pickford, NoΓ«l Coward, Claudette Colbert, & more. Dishes on her party menus include pea timbales, maple mousse, poached peaches, & waffles
Her games of Titles and Murder in some ways resemble Charades variants, and in 1937, Life Magazine credited Neysa McMein with inventing the modern fast version of Charades, then called "The Game" -- the culmination of an amazing informal career in game design: wobbupalooza.neocities.org/charades
Neysa McMein distinguishes 4 variant 'Murder' games: her own invented in 1927, District Attorney, Murder in the Dark, and Corpus Delicti. District Attorney was probably first in print in 1928, attributed to Herbert Bayard Swope but mentioning both McMein and Woollcott: archive.org/details/what...
Neysa McMein's booklet details her Murder Game and Woollcott's too with info not covered in this series of blog posts, but she confirms the story of Lady Ribblesdale's party that eventually led to the French phrase for murder LARPs, 'murder party': boardgamegeek.com/blog/13034/b...
Incidentally, Frank Sullivan's preface to the second "Ask Me Another!" trivia book seems to invent giving answers and responding in the form of a question: archive.org/details/askm... ... The series was influential, leading to sequels, imitators, parodies, etc.
In 1927, the trivia book "Ask Me Another!" set off a pop culture phenomenon, inviting readers to play against scores set by dozens of celebrities including many Algonquin Round Table figures and Neysa McMein herself: archive.org/details/askm...
Neysa McMein's magazine covers are iconic: www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/03/cele... ... You've probably seen them somewhere before: archive.org/search?query...
Neysa McMein's "Games I Like to Play" (1934) documents her own games, e.g. her murder game, and games of the Algonquin Round Table, e.g. Alexander Woollcott's murder game variant. A pretty uncommon text, this might be its first complete digitization 𧡠1/
archive.org/details/mcme...
I've written up a few notes on literary games, 17th C poetry, secret codes, dialogue / fortune / poetry generators in the 19th C, and Raymond Queneau / Oulipo --plus yet another game with role-playing elements and an example of play ca. 1822 ("The Court of France"): wobbupalooza.neocities.org/oulipo
Class continues. The work this week: revising canons.
Over on Metafilter, I've linked some examples of medieval games of wit: questions of love (demandes d'amour) sometimes debated in songs with two singers (jeux-partis) and sometimes collected along with riddles www.metafilter.com/211843/The-d...
On the hunt for TTRPGs with annotated ludographies/bibliographies in their text. (In other words, not *just* a list of inspirations)
(Bonus points for in-line citations or marginal notes that credit other texts/games/people)
Maybe relevant: Sorel (1642), v. 2 bk. III, has a novella-length storytelling game / Jeu du Roman example of play, but bk. II is a brief synopsis of 50 games by Ringhieri (1551; prob. those translated in 1555). Sorel often compares and contrasts other games in the text gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b...
Wherein your professor takes seriously the idea that reading is playful (and gets sentimental about Uncle Toby)
Free as usual (and also now up on YT if you donβt need a wee bibliography)
Black bordered title page with red text and drawing of floral elements and a shell. Text says Raccolta di Vario Sonetti, collection of various sonnets.
Detail of the first sonnet, with an outstanding set of tabs on the right for organizing them.
Shall I Compare Thee to an ABC?
I've never seen poetry indexed and tabbed quite so thoroughly as in this 18th c. Italian collection of various sonnets at #NewberryLibrary! (Case MS 3A 22)
So, did the owner(s) complete the set?
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Neat! I can imagine this being useful to prepare for a game like Bargagli's 1572 "Giuoco del A.B.C." archive.org/details/dial... or Bordelon's similar but unnamed game from 1716: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b...