Tag: commentary

[King Henry III of England’s] fate was decided at [the battle of] Lincoln [1217 C.E.]. It was the last and perhaps the greatest military engagement of William Marshal‘s long and distinguished life. Having assembled 400 knights and 250 crossbowmen from all parts of the kingdom in Newark after Whitsun…, Marshal marched his men straight to Lincoln. He arrived on May 20 to find that Louis’s forces had entered the walled city and were besieging the castle. The French prince himself was farther south, besieging Dover, and the count of Perche was in command at Lincoln, surrounded by the bulk of the rebellious English earls. The French knew that Marshal was arriving, but they dithered and could not agree on a strategy. As they procrastinated, Marshal addressed his knights with a speech to rival that written by Shakespeare for Henry V. “These men have seized and taken by force our lands and our possessions,” he said. “Shame on the man who does not strive, this very day, to put up a challenge. If we beat them, it is no lie to say that we will have won eternal glory for the rest of our lives.“

The rhetoric must have had some effect. Marshal took charge of his loyal knights, telling them to be ready to slit their own horses’ throats if they needed to take shelter behind the carcasses in the open plain that lay before the northern entrance to the city. Bishop des Roches commanded the crossbowmen, and Ranulf earl of Chester one group of knights, but they could only watch with awe as Marshal led a direct frontal cavalry attack on the city. The old man was so desperate to join battle that he almost forgot to put on his helmet before he charged the enemy. When he adjusted his armor and led the first charge, he plowed into the French defenders with such force that he punched a hole three lances deep in their lines. If this was the last chance to save the dynasty he had served all his life, then he was determined to give it his all.

Six bloody and brutal hours of fighting ensued. It was a grisly, awful scene: the air filled with the deafening clang of weapons upon helmets, lances shattering and flying in splinters into the air, limbs crushed and severed by blows from swords and maces, and sharp daggers plunging into the sides of men and horses alike. They fought through the city until the streets heaved with blood and human entrails. “The noise,” recalled Marshal, “was so great that you would not have heard God thunder.“

At the end of the fighting, the French were roundly defeated. Almost every major rebel baron was captured, and the count of Perche died when a spear was thrust through his eye and into his brain. When the news of the loss reached Prince Louis in Dover, he immediately raised his siege, made for London, and began to think of terms for withdrawal.

— The Plantagenets, Securing the Inheritance

Emphasis mine.

William Marshall was 70 years old, here.

This first civilization came to be known as Sumer. By about the year 3000 [B.C.E.], a city called Uruk near the mouth of the Euphrates River, just inland of the head of the Persian Gulf, had eighty thousand residents. A thousand years later Iraq, the land along the Euphrates and its sister stream, the Tigris, would be named for this early metropolis of Uruk. Sharing the land of Sumer, about the size of [modern] Belgium, with a dozen other city-states, Uruk was not always the foremost among its rivals in the land. But for most of its existence, spanning the two millennia of the Sumerian world, Uruk was the greatest city on earth.

— Land Between The Rivers, Prologue

A dozen (small) cities in such a small area. Every square meter of arable land was claimed and constantly fought over. I do not see much of this in fantasy roleplaying campaigns.

Seven-Part Pact is played using a framework….

At the start of each in-game month, every player decides how they plan to Spend Time that month. You have 4 tokens, one for each week (roughly). You can place these tokens on various people, places, and tasks. Place one on your Sanctum to spend time there, maybe change something about it. Place one on a Companion to spend time hanging out with them. Place one on the Grimoire to spend a week casting a spell slowly, patiently, carefully. Place one on your Domain to attend to your Wizardly duties (e.g. managing the wilds or advising the king or looking into the Dreaming or whatever it is you do). Etc. etc., many ways a Wizard can spend their time.

These represent the major stuff. The primary task you plan to focus on that week, the activity that’ll receive most of your attention and effort. It’s simply assumed that your character is still otherwise, y’know, living their normal day-to-day life and attending to mundane affairs….

Once everyone’s placed their tokens, we begin resolving the next month of activities. Going around the table, one at a time, each player retrieves one of their tokens and resolves that action….

You can resolve your…tokens in any order. Additionally, once per month, you may move one of your tokens before resolving it, at any time and for no cost. So you have a little bit of leeway to reschedule things on the fly. In this way, players plan ahead but can still be fairly flexible.

So far, this might sound less like an RPG and more like a board game. “Alright, this week my Wizard visits the island of Ishana to recruit a Bard to join the king’s Royal Court.” Done. Next player. Turns go by pretty fast, which I consider to be an advantage. But when does it feel like a roleplaying game?

Well, let me tell you about…Scenes.

In addition to your four Spend Time tokens, you also get one star-shaped token. Wherever you place your star token is where you get to have a Scene. A Scene is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the part of the game where we zoom in and start roleplaying as our characters moment by moment, speaking in dialogue, moving around rooms, casting spells, etc.

For most players, Scenes are the highlight of the game. But to me, it’s important that they merely punctuate the game. They’re an exception to the baseline mode of play. Instead of asking, “when is it time to zoom out and switch to a downtime timescale?” like in D&D, we ask “when is it time to zoom in and switch to a real-time timescale?” If we’re resolving an event as a proper Scene, then that means it’s important….

— Seven-Part Pact: Time – A Knight at the Opera

Author’s emphases both bold and italic.

I read that blogpost and immediately saw this game mechanic as a sufficiently light structure to use with our leisurely Xenoverse free-form roleplay. My friends and I do not play there much at all these days, but we do continually discuss what we want to play. These are broad strokes that easily fit into week- or month-long “game turns”—with the Scene being a spur to actually have regular in-character (chat) session, however short.

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• Blogroll July 2025 – VDonnut Valley

Thought Admiral Kethas epetai-Khemara had deep wrinkles in his knobbed forehead, hair very white at his temples. He was fifty-two years old, an age at which Klingons of the Imperial Race should be dead by one means or another, yet his eyes were clear and sharp as naked stars.

…

“Shortly you will be ten years old,” Kethas said, a figure of gold and darkness—but no dream, [Krenn] knew. “It will be time for you to choose what you will be. Have you thought on this?”

“The Navy,” [Krenn] said instantly.

Kethas did not smile. “You know that I do not require this of you? That you may, as you wish, be a scientist, or an administrator—or even a Marine?”

“I know, father. And I would not be anything else.”

Then the Thought Admiral smiled. “And so you should not….”

…

[Human] Dr. Tagore said, “I believe I once told you I had a theory, about the Klingon observance of death.”

“You did not say what it was.”

“Well, it isn’t popular among my colleagues…. At any rate, when one of our race dies, we hold a ceremony, sometimes simple, sometimes very elaborate.”

“You celebrate a death?”

“Commemorate, rather.”

“And the one dead appreciates this.”

Dr. Tagore smiled thinly, said, “That depends on the culture. But the practical function is to allow the survivors a vent for their grief, a time when emotion may be released, shared.”

“Sharing diminishes the…grief?”

“Such is our experience.”

Krenn said, “We do not do this.”

“I know. And I wonder what happens to the energy, the stress…. I think it helps to drive your culture. To expand…to conquer, if you like.”

“Nal komerex, khesterex [That which does not grow, dies],” Krenn said….

“I know that, too. And your environment is hostile, and your life-cycle is short and rapid. As I say, my hypothesis is not popular.”

…

Dr. Tagore sighed [to Krenn]. “I still have not lived among Klingons long enough. I still think of you as aging as we do…you must be, what, twenty-five?”

“Nearly so.”

“And I will be seventy-nine on my next birthday. And still we aren’t so far apart…we both have twenty or thirty years left, if we avoid violence.” Krenn was not insulted by that. “Maybe even longer….”

…

Meth was correct: information was power, secrets weapons. Krenn thought how strange it was that this secret, that he was not the son of Rustazh, had made him even more the son of Khemara; given him exactly the weapon with which Kethas had tried to arm him. The weapon of patience, against which Klingons had no defense.

— The Final Reflection, Chapters 1, 2, 6, 7, & 9

This novel was written in 1984, and the Star Trek novels have never been considered canon lore. In 1994, A Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode set the canon that Klingons live longer than Humans. Personally, I find that Dr. Tagore’s theory better explains the Klingon psyche.

“Why all the secrecy, Bishop? And the white smoke?”

“The Church is more often good theater these days than good religion. The secrecy originated in this century. Before the collapse of the papal states, the cardinals used to vote in St. John Lateran and live in the Lateran Palace. Each day they would walk down the street to the basilica of St. John Lateran for their day’s work and chat with the populace…. Even when the conclave was moved up to the Sistine Chapel, there was little attempt to keep the events secret. Everyone knew at the end of the day what the count was and who had voted for whom. The secrecy was imposed to protect the cardinals from the Roman emperor, that is to say, the Austrian emperor, whose ambassador had vetoed an election in 1903.”

“There isn’t an Austrian emperor anymore,” I said.

“You’ve noticed?”

— White Smoke, p. 71

The book is historical fiction but the historical fact is true.

In southern Holland there appears to have been a taboo against placing weapons in graves, which occurs but very rarely, perhaps indicating that weapons were less a personal possession than held on behalf of the group…. This changes in the Early Iron Age, after about 800 BCE, when male graves with weapons do occur more frequently…. Swords in graves have often been altered, in ways that require considerable skill, such as fashioning them into a circle or folded, concertina-like, which has the side-effect of putting them out of use as swords; bending swords in this way without breaking them requires at least as much skill as making them in the first place….

— Magic: A History, p. 225

Good luck using that (magical?) sword you looted! 😀

…[The first Texas Rangers only] had three shots: they had a Kentucky long rifle…and two single-shot pistols.

Lo and behold, this inventor named Samuel Colt had come up with a prototype…it was a five-shot pistol. They had five shots here, one interchangable cylinder: now ten. Ten shots in each pistol….

— How the Texas Rangers Changed the Course of Modern Warfare – YouTube

The speaker describes an interchangeable revolving cylinder. With that first revolver, changing cylinders requires partially disassembling the pistol. So the reloading time is a couple of minutes.

The Remington Company manufactured revolvers with truly removable cylinders in the 1850s. The 1985 film Pale Rider shows this reloading process done leisurely for dramatic effect in the final scene. (Warning: spoiler video.)

— The Day the Universe Changed, Episode 4

Even in an RPG campaign world with magic, this is how most news would and should spread. This provides the perfect reason/excuse for bard (classed) PCs and NPCs to travel far and wide. This is their trade and purpose, after all.

By around 1585 [C.E.], the growing power of [Japan’s] militaristic monks, the Ikko Ikki and the Shingon sect’s warrior priests of the Negoro-ji Temple in Kii Province…was becoming a concern for the Toyotomi [clan]. The Negoro-ji had been established around 1087, and at its peak during the Muromachi period (approximately 1335-1573), some 2,700 temples graced the spacious complex. They had been throwing their weight around in the political arena for some time now. and in particular their support of Tokugawa leyasu against [Toyotomi Hideyoshi] in the Battle of Komaki Nagakute the previous year had earned them his great displeasure. That the Toyotomi clan had recently taken their gates and various structures for use in Hidenaga’s castle gave them cause for greater offence.

Having watched Nobunaga before him struggle with the protracted sieges against the militant monks of the Hongan-ji Temple, and not wanting to have the same experiences himself. Hideyoshi launched a preemptive attack of Negoro-ji Temple, Having first attacked other local warrior-monk temples. Hideyoshi’s forces approached the Negoro-ji Temple from two directions. Many of the monks quickly fled to nearby Ota Castle and Hideyoshi ordered the temples razed. Any remaining Buddhist monks fleeing the flames were cut down. Hideyoshi then turned his attentions to Ota Castle, and built dams on three sides of the castle to divert the rivers and allow heavy rains to flood the castle. Those trapped on the hill by the rising waters soon succumbed to hunger, and the samurai, monks and peasants inside finally surrendered. In a last-ditch effort, some fifty warrior monks made a final suicidal charge against Hideyoshi’s forces. All were destroyed….

— The Samurai Castle Master, Chapter 3

2,700 temples! Spacious, indeed—even if most of them were merely (small) shrines.

…A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.

The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shone for ever fair and bright.

There hammer on the anvil smote,
There chisel clove, and graver wrote;
There forged was blade, and bound was hilt;
The delver mined, the mason built.

There beryl, pearl, and opal pale,
And metal wrought like fishes’ mail,
Buckler and corslet, axe and sword,
And shining spears were laid in hoard….

— from “The Song of Durin” – The Lord of the Rings, Book Two, Chapter 4

My favorite part of the poem: describing the dwarf king’s throne room and hoard of forged arms.

Doctor Strange:

Oh, Hell. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s incanting in Latin.

— “Doctor Strange: The Oath” #1 (2006)

Used without permission.

This limited series has several humorous lines like this.

“As I feed these synchrotron pulsors through the system,” Spock was saying, “confirm connectivity with the graphics on the scanner above.”

“Aye, sir. Go ahead.” One by one, we fed and confirmed each patch in, trying to cram a week’s repairs into a few minutes. The end result would be power for just a few photon shots, but those were better than nothing. Small talk kept trying to squeeze out of me, and I kept mashing it down. All I needed now was to be asking Spock a gaggle of stupid questions. My nerves were whining like the Keeler‘s rigging. My hands were cold, and I had to use the head—oh no! Not now. Please, not now. Heroes never go to the bathroom! Horatio Hornblower didn’t, Superman didn’t, Cyrus Centauri didn’t—but I did. Which proved who was a hero and who wasn’t. As Spock worked under the console, I finally asked, “Uh, sir? Permission to step updeck?”

He paused, then resumed working. “Certainly.”

I dashed into the bridge head, and by the time I dashed out again, the Romulans had arrived.

Yep, there they were. I knew I should never have gone to the head.

— Battlestations!, Chapter 11

There is a head on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. 😄

During the Neo-Assyrian Empire (934-609 [B.C.E.]), allied cities that revolted had their gods confiscated and transferred to the capital, on the grounds that the rebels’ defeat proved that their gods had abandoned them.

— Al Nofi’s CIC #408 – Strategy Page

This is something that would be very interesting to portray in a roleplaying game campaign.

Training as a Jedi is often a series of brief bouts of working apprenticeship. Everything your master can tell you, she can tell you in a few days. What she can show you, she can show you in weeks. It’s only when you have to put the lessons into context in a real situation that you truly start to learn. A new apprentice Jedi often spends the longest with the first teacher, learning and adventuring until he or she can feel the call of the Force without aid. The mentor then suggests some other Jedi that the student might seek out that can impart different lessons, and new understanding of the Force. On the way to the next master, the student suffers through a series of interesting events, better putting training to practice. And new teachers demand their own quests before imparting their wisdom. Life as a Jedi is the life of a questing knight, forever in motion. A Jedi does not crave adventure, knowing that adventure will find her, regardless.

— Alternate Clone Wars, Part 3 – System sans Setting

This comes from a series of posts where the blogger reimagines the Star Wars universe based upon the premise “nothing is canon except the original three movies.” I like this premise, and the entire series it inspired.

This bit of realism is likely unwanted in most roleplaying games. 🙂

— Connections, Episode 9 (1978)

Obviously, my favorite superhero is Doctor Strange. With that also comes my favorite female comic book character: Clea. She has grown from a mere damsel in distress into a complex hero in her own right. Like Doctor Who’s companions, she brings out the best in Stephen Strange.

That artists have always drawn her with beauty equal to any other Marvel heroine has nothing to do with my stanning interest in Clea. 😉

Here are some of my favorites:

From Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts #73 (1985)

From Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #2 & #12 (1988-89)

From The Death of Doctor Strange #4 & #5 (2022)

From Strange #1, #5, #8, & #9 (2022)

The twenty-first century artists have omitted the Flames of Regency. The most-recent limited series, Strange, gave her a temper and the visual effect having the Flames manifest when she is furious. It encompasses her entire head, giving her a Dormammu-like appearance.

ADDENDUM: I said earlier that Clea has become a complex character. The most recent issue featuring her gave us this last-cell teaser:

From Doctor Strange (Volume 7) #10 (2024)

Used without permission.

Egg Shen:

Time for the medicine!

[pours smoking potion into cups]

Cheers!

Jack Burton:

This does what again, exactly?

Egg Shen:

Huge buzz!

[drinks smoking potion from his cup]

Oooh, good! Can see things no one else can see! Do things no one else can do!

Jack Burton:

Real things?

Egg Shen:

As real as Lo Pan!

Jack Burton:

Hey, what more can a guy ask for?

Egg Shen:

Oh, a six-demon bag!

[shakes the bag slung around his shoulder]

Jack Burton:

Terrific, a six-demon bag. Sensational. What’s in it, Egg?

Egg Shen:

Wind, fire, all that kind of thing!

— “Big Trouble in Little China” (1986)

Party buff!

Jack Burton:

That is not water.

Egg Shen:

Black Blood of the Earth.

Jack Burton:

You mean oil?

Egg Shen:

I mean Black Blood of the Earth!

— “Big Trouble in Little China” (1986)

Something a mega-dungeon should have. 😀

Going to war with [medieval knights] was a costly affair, in many cases bringing belligerent princes to bankruptcy. A knight would rarely embark for battle without the six horses which he was permitted, or his page apprentice to help him on with his armour. Providing enough food, shelter and material for a large number of these knights and their attendant foot soldiers was…a far more complex and sophisticated job of administration than is generally imagined. The logistics were considerable, involving smiths, armourers, painters, tent-makers, fletchers (arrow-makers), cordeners (leather-workers), bowyers, turners, carpenters, masons, wheelwrights, saddlers, purveyors (of food), quartermasters and farriers. There were also surgeons, chaplains, legal and clerical staff, trumpeters and pipers, and, most important, cooks.

— Connections, p. 57

While not exclusively, the bulk of this logistical challenge is people. Squires, retainers, and hirelings, oh my!

Toda Hiro-matsu, overlord of the provinces of Sagami and Kozuké, Toranaga’s most trusted general and adviser, commander-in-chief of all his armies, strode down the gangplank onto the wharf alone. He was tall for a Japanese, just under six feet, a bull-like man with heavy jowls, who carried his sixty-seven years with strength. His military kimono was brown silk, stark but for the five small Toranaga crests—three interlocked bamboo sprays. He wore a burnished breastplate and steel arm protectors. Only the short sword was in his belt. The other, the killing sword, he carried loose in his hand. He was ready to unsheathe it instantly and to kill instantly to protect his liege lord. This had been his custom ever since he was fifteen.

No one, not even the Taikō, had been able to change him.

A year ago, when the Taikō died, Hiro-matsu had become Toranaga’s vassal. Toranaga had given him Sagami and Kozuké, two of his eight provinces, to overlord, five hundred thousand koku yearly, and had also left him to his custom. Hiro-matsu was very good at killing.

— Shōgun, Chapter 7

This character was my inspiration for Grimblade.