Must Academics Be Joyless In Relation To Pop Culture?

Hello, friends! What a week it’s been. I have a lot of Thoughts to get through in this week’s newsletter, so let’s dive first into one of the two non-daily games I’ve been able to enjoy lately.

Having gotten through the starter adventure for Pendragon, my Virginia roleplaying group was super excited to continue with the system through the rest of the pre-written adventures. We knew that any combat would be deadly and would require strategic thinking, but when our five knights were surrounded by two Pict ambushers each (while minding our own business in a supposedly safe area!) the game quickly went into “guess I’ll die!” meme mode. Our Game Master called a halt before a Total Party Kill, and one of our most experienced players wondered aloud what the game expected us to do besides either be lucky or be dead. Part of the issue is that attempting to fight two opponents at once puts you at a -5 to your attack rolls, which is a huge 25% probability swing to the negative in a game where you’re expected to roll at or under your skill. At our level, just out of the starter adventure, our combat skills were 15 at best, leaving each player a 50% chance of success. If our opponent also succeeded on their roll and came closer to their skill level than we did, then the opponent won the attack, tho at least we could add our shield scores to our defenses in that instance. Defend is an essentially useless action unless you know someone is going to come rescue you, and you can’t move out of combat without opening your flank to serious damage. It really felt like the game just wanted us to die, to the bewilderment of players and GM.

We decided to try the combat again by using a -1 modifier for each additional attacker. This helped immensely. Instead of a slaughter, it felt like a fair fight. And I get it, you don’t want your players to turn a game of chivalric romance into a battle sim, but when the adventure literally has us being ambushed in a safe area, it’s not giving us a choice not to fight. It didn’t help that our opponents had surprisingly high stats given the scenario. Idk, maybe our rolls were just shockingly poor, or we weren’t doing the rules right. It felt like a very unnecessarily frustrating experience tho.

Lol, I got so annoyed all over again while writing this that I paused to take a very deep dive into other people’s experiences with the scenario. I think I may have figured out where we went wrong, having to do with Major Wounds and the Picts’ stats: they should have been way squishier than what we battled. Unfortunately, the way the official material is written is not helpful for people new to the system — and yes, I had to trawl through several hobbyist sections of Reddit to finally find the answers I needed, bless. I’ll bring my findings up to the group the next time we get together, and hopefully we can learn and improve on the experience together!

Anyway, I got a lot more satisfaction this week out of playing The Archives Of Trevosa, a very fun puzzle game from Jamwitch, the creators of The Daily Spell, that you can play in your browser for free. Essentially, you have to sort through the archives of a kingdom to figure out who the true heir is. The fact that titles and family relations all have unfamiliar names complicates the puzzle, as you sift through generations of history and lore (and drama!) to figure out who the rightful ruler should be. It took me about eighty minutes to solve, and was a very satisfying game to complete. Don’t read the comments though, as they are full of praise but also spoilers.

Reading-wise, the DC Armoury Book Club is enjoying our read and discussion of Clive Chijioke Nwonka & Matthew Harle’s Black Arsenal, in the run-up to the start of the English Premier League 26/27 season! To supplement the ongoing online conversation with the greater group, several of us discussed the first seven chapters in person this past weekend, and oohed and aahed over how gorgeous the physical copy is (and Josh gave me my very first Funko Pop, of my kids’ future stepdad Declan Rice!) We plan to hold more in-person sessions after each of the next few matchdays, to finish talking about the rest of the chapters too.

As an Arsenal fan, I really enjoyed the subject of the book even as I was occasionally frustrated by the overly academic approach to large parts of its crafting. You can read my full review at the link above. My thoughts admittedly get a bit ranty, but hopefully I don’t embarrass myself the way Emily Wilson did in her appalling take on the latest movie adaptation of The Odyssey. Honestly, her review over at London Review Of Books (I’m not gonna link it, but you can look it up) is a terrific example of how not to criticize something professionally. It’s the most neckbeardy thing I’ve read since the first X-Men movie came out in 2000, just deliberately missing the point of a film adaptation because the director’s vision wasn’t in lockstep with hers, on par with the whining of Comic Book Guys mad that Storm had bangs. That said, part of the reason I’m not doing a full take-down of her review in this newsletter is because I haven’t seen the movie yet nor read her translation, things I will hopefully remedy in the next week and thereby gain a fuller perspective on. What I can safely say is that both her tone and her inability to see how she contradicts herself in that review are shocking as any sort of professional critique. It genuinely feels like an affront to my entire overworked and underpaid profession (but apparently, I Have It In for academics this week. If the slipper fits, y’all.)

Anyway, hurray, I’ve finished this newsletter on Thursday itself, as scheduled, and I have much still to do so see you in seven, friends!

Currently Playing (Music): Haydn’s 99th Symphony; my Declan Rice and 2026 Energy playlists; The Magnus Archives; BTS’ Arirang; Charli xcx’s Music, Fashion, Film; Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.

Currently Playing (Games): Metazooa by Trainwreck Labs; Learned League trivia; NYT Connections & Wordle; Gremco Industries’ Parseword; Irox Games’ Bongo Cat; Greg Stafford’s Pendragon; Larian Studio’s Baldur’s Gate 3; Michael Szerencsy’s Outliers; Jamwitch’s The Archives Of Trevosa.

Currently Reading/Writing (Games): Ghosts Of Saltmarsh.

Currently Reading or Just Read (Books): A Cyclist’s Guide To Poppies & Predicaments by Ann Claire; Black Arsenal edited by Clive Chijioke Nwonka & Matthew Harle; The Silver Fish by Connor Martin; Absolute Wonder Woman, Vol. 1: The Last Amazon by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, Mattia de Iulis & Jordie Bellaire; Murder On Vacation by Rosie A Point & Charles Timmerman.