Weekly Geekly Rundown for March 15, 2023

So much content. From Pi Day to Spy Day.

Publisher’s Choice Quality Stock Art © Rick Hershey/Fat Goblin Games

𝛑 with Pizzas

Just how do we, and how did we used to, calculate 𝜋? This video by Veritasium has an interesting discussion of that very process, but they also have a great sequence transforming a circle to a rectangle using pizza to demonstrate the area of a circle. The video gets a little in the weeds later on, those who don’t want long details of Newton’s process can avoid the later part, but the early material is accessible and creative.

One of my favorite Veritasium episodes and since yesterday was 𝜋 day, I thought it was a natural share for this week’s Weekly Geekly.

Weekly Film Article Cavalcade

The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson

Luke has two reviews I’m going to highlight this week and the subject matter of each couldn’t be further apart if I planned it.

Because Luke has long been an advocate for small budget genre fare, it is no surprise that he was selected to review Hundreds of Beavers for A.V. Club. Luke is a reviewer who is read and willing to suspend his disbelief, so long as the director is willing to make an enjoyable experience. From the review, it’s clear that Luke had high hopes going in to watching Hundreds, but that the film did not deliver in the ways he hoped. It’s an interesting enough premise, that I’ll check it out even with a mid-review, but I’ll go in wary.

On the opposite end of the absurdity spectrum, Luke is reviewing season 4 of The Chosen for A.V. Club. It never ceases to amaze me that Luke, an atheist, somehow got the faith related film beat. Given his general taste in films, he’s a huge horror fan, and how faith based critics attack his favored genre on a regular basis, it would be understandable if Luke approached these productions with a chip on his shoulder. He doesn’t. He approaches every one of his faith based film reviews with the same rigor and fairness that he does any other film.

I recently wrote about Scott Mendelson’s podcast discussion of whether faith based properties needed to be “meaner” in the modern market, highlighting my own preference for films like Going My Way to films like God is Dead. Luke’s review of The Chosen shows that contra to Scott’s fears, there is room for kinder religious fare. In the case of The Chosen, it’s entertaining enough for the atheist at the same time that it has a large religious following and sparks discussion of Scripture amongst its fans.

As a person of faith, who currently has the “man I really need some protein but will have to wait for fish at dinner” Lenten Friday headache going at the moment, I’ve always viewed faith based films as articulations of theological arguments/discussions. In my mind a religious biopic, unlike a traditional biopic, isn’t just about “showing the history.” It’s also about advancing an interpretation of scripture. For the faithful any presentation of a Scripture based event is discussing the moral content as much, if not more, than the historical events. If it’s a completely fictional new story, like God is Dead or Going My Way for example, than the entire purpose is the underlying theology being presented. By necessity, this means that any tale of The Christ is going to be a discussion of the teachings and it looks like The Chosen does a good job here. It does create new characters, like Ramah, but they are still grounded in Scripture.

While the Ramah of the show isn’t discussed in the Bible, there were a number of women who followed Jesus and helped support him financially. They are mentioned, though not explored in detail in the text. Given Thomas’ importance to Christianity in general, and the conflict between Gnostic and non-Gnostic traditions, bringing in new characters that allow the creators to highlight aspects of Thomas beyond his moment of doubt, The Chosen chooses to explore theological questions that inspire inquiry among the faithful. That’s not something that Luke would be concerned with, but it is something that I appreciate.

Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat

Where Luke’s contributions this week are widely divergent from one another thematically, Courtney’s tie together nicely. In her review of Arthur the King for Variety, she once again shows that she is a film critic who can judge a film by what it is rather than against some strange standard of high art. If you’ve watched the trailer for the film, then you’ve probably searched the internet for the real life story and watched more than a couple of videos about the dog featured in this Mark Wahlberg vehicle. The real life tale is touching and weep worthy and Courtney’s review of the film tells me that I had better be ready to cry and cry again. I’m up for it.

Staying in the canine corner this week, Courtney has an article about Messi the dog from Anatomy of a Fall over at Variety. I love articles that give brief insights into the film industry and how the sausage is made. In this case, it’s a discussion of a trained animal actor and the challenges that presents. One of my favorite things to do at Universal Studios was to watch the presentation on animal actors and when my daughters were young I got to go with them for a visit to Moorpark college.

Even though my kids were only in 5th grade at the time, the school was already pitching participation in their animal related programs. The school has an Animal Training and Care program that includes skills needed to work in conservation oriented zoos…and that are useful for working with animal actors in films. We’ve come a long way since The Perils of Priscilla. That film was beautiful, but I’m worried for what might have happened to the actual cats used in it. Today’s films either incorporate digital or have a lot more protections for the animals.

Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings

Scott Mendelson

discusses the success of Oppenheimer in a recent entry at

The Outside Scoop

and argues that it is one of those rare gems, an Oscar movie that was very successful financially.

Chris Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' Is The Oscar Champion We Needed (But Didn't Deserve)

It’s interesting. If you look at Oscar films before the 1960s, this isn’t a rare phenomenon at all. The Oscars are filled with films that were adored by the public. But the 70s and 90s are filled with honored films that while very good weren’t widely popular films. It speaks to the ever changing nature of the Academy and the tastes of its membership. One must remember that the Academy is made up of film MAKERS and that their tastes are not necessarily the same as those of film GOERS. One hopes there is some alignment between those tastes, or else the industry would fail, but there will be differences.

This brings me to thoughts about what the purpose of The Academy is, which isn’t to give out Awards. Yes, giving out the Awards brings attention to the purpose of the Academy, but it is not the purpose. The Academy’s full name is The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and according to its website it has the following mission:

• Recognizes and celebrates all aspects of the film industry and the diverse, talented people who make movies.

• Inspires young artists and creates opportunities for underrepresented communities to engage with the film world.

• Preserves our film history and curates vital and thoughtful programs and initiatives about cinema’s past, present, and future.

• Connects global audiences through their shared love of cinema.

While some of these are newer, reflecting the changing mission and needs of the industry, others are long standing. The goal of the Academy is to preserve film history, curate vital and thoughtful programs, and celebrate all aspects of film. ALL ASPECTS.

I love the Academy. I remember dropping my wife off when she was at USC’s film school so that she could go in and read the production notes for a film she was writing an analytical essay about. That’s right, she got to read the original production notes. They were preserved in the Academy’s library collection for any academic to study. Yes, there were strict rules about how one could engage with the material. No cameras, cellphones, pens, or any means of reproduction could be brought in. You had to rely on notes that you took. But you had access to amazing information about the industry.

I wish the Academy Awards were more a celebration of the art than they currently are. It’s a wonderful venue to educate the audience to the history and science of the medium. Instead, it seems to focus on making sure the attendees are entertained. I’d rather have a better and more meaningful in memoriam than a dance number, even when I like the dance number. This year’s Ryan Gosling number was good because it not only featured a song from a current film, and was entertaining, it referenced the history of film. I’d like more of that and less popular kid stuff.

For me, the history and beauty of film is more important than “who” someone is wearing and as an educator, I’m always up for sneaking in meaningful learning.

Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse

You may have noticed the illustration at the top of the page. That comes from a hard working role playing game illustrator Rick Hershey’s Publisher's Choice Stock Art project over at Patreon. Rick has been one of my favorite indie rpg illustrators for some time, he’s done work for his own Fat Goblin Games, Alan Bahr’s Gallant Knight Games, and a number of other companies. He’s very creative and he’s offered Stock Art on DriveThruRPG for quite some time. A couple of years back, he started up a Patreon that offers backers access to tons of fantastic stock art that covers a variety of themes.

Since I’m on the lookout for ways to upgrade this Newsletter and for art for a series of upcoming gaming offerings, such as my upcoming one-page “Barbarian Gamebook System” role playing game inspired and adapted from the Sagard the Barbarian system, his Patreon is a Godsend. You’ll be seeing a lot more of his art around here, but if you like it I recommend that you back him as well.

Last year, on his own Substack,

Rick Hershey

discussed his career as a full time illustrator and the ups and downs that entails, especially the need to find time to express yourself. I know that a part of the reason he created his Patreon was so that he could get paid to illustrate things that interested him beyond Dwarves and Elves, but I also know that his art work is inspiring me to come up with game/adventure ideas to match the art he created.

So I’ll be perusing some of the many files I have access to in order to create new content. Yes, that means I’ll be doing a nursery rhyme adventure/microrpg soon, but Rick’s art is inspiring me to create content and it’s doing so because he is illustrating the things he wants to illustrate. Art is a wonderful conversation and I hope that he enjoys the things I will be coming up with based on his inspiration.

Sometimes change is forced.

Speaking of inspiration, I’ve long been fascinated by the “gods” of the Pagan Celts. My formal introduction to them was in Kenneth C. Flint’s Sidhe series, a series that taught me how to pronounce Sidhe and which made me resent the way that the English attempted to force the phonemes of other languages into “English Spelling.” Unless your first thought when seeing a “w” is “ah yes, a lower case Omega” then the name Pwll (a Welsh name that is related to “pool” and is sort of pronounced like push but with a cool fricative at the end). I mean, c’mon. Double L for sh? I thought Lef-tenent for Lieutenant was bad.

None of that is the point though. What is the point is that Flint’s Sidhe series presented the Irish “gods” in a very interesting manner. The book series was a kind of science fantasy with the magic of the setting often being “scientific” in nature. I very much enjoyed them and they inspired me to read Flint’s adaptation of the Cattle Raid, which was far more grounded in traditional fantasy tropes.

I know that Michael Moorcock, in his essay and book Wizardry and Wild Romance, exhibited a kind of disdain for the staid overuse of Welsh and Irish lore in fantasy, but to an American who had only read some Arthurian (unaware of the Welsh connection at the time), Greek, and Norse Mythology prior to Moorcock and Flint’s fiction, the various Celtic myths seemed truly inspired.

There were some similarities to Greek myths in the Irish stories, as I mentioned last time I shared

Ethan Sabatella

’s

Senchas Claideb

Substack and it’s discussion of Hound. This week, Ethan examines the Old Gods of Éirinn in what is a very insightful reading. He makes an interesting connection between the Gods of Éirinn and the Lovecraft Mythos, where both represent forces completely removed from humanity in any way. His discussion got me thinking of the connection between Irish Myths and Greek Myths, which led me to think about Epicureanism. This, naturally, started me pondering De Rerum Natura by Lucretius and how the “gods” of Epicureanism live intermundia, in the spaces between. Lovecraft, in part V of The Dunwich Horror, describes the Old Ones in the following manner: “The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.” Ethan’s discussion of Manannán mac Lir and the Otherworld in Irish Legend fits nicely with this connection.

There’s a lot of rich stuff there that is a far cry from the staid and mundane that Moorcock bemoaned, even as my favorite Moorcock tales (the Chronicles of Corum) are rooted in Celtic lore.

The Old Gods of Éirinn

Stan!

continues his cartoon homages to historic covers with a look at Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. No adventure better exhibits how creative and unrestrained earlier Dungeons & Dragons adventures were before D&D became its own genre than Barrier Peaks. It’s an adventure in a crashed space ship. Early D&D had no separation between Science Fiction and Fantasy, just as Poul Anderson’s High Crusade, L. Sprague DeCamp’s Solomon’s Stone and Enchanter tales, Burrough’s Barsoom, or Lin Carter’s Thongor stories had no such separation.

Homage: 1980

Stan's homage is fun and I recommend reading his take and I HIGHLY recommend watching his interviews with gaming luminaries of the past. This week’s interview is with Diesel LaForce. If you like old school D&D, you’ve seen a ton of his work and I was happy to see Stan! interview him for his own show. Why watch the latest “Dagger Heart Suxxors” or “Hasborg is teh Devil” video that is seeking to leverage outrage for views, when you can instead watch an insightful video by creators about the creative process?

Last, but not least, the most recent

The Twenty Sided Newsletter

discusses the challenge DMs face when trying to create “big moments” for players. The tensions of doing this for an Actual Play, or for outside entertainment, are different from those of the every day table top, but those tensions exist. This essay doesn’t have a lot of answers, but it does provoke a lot of thought. It makes me think about how different styles of play (see Robin’s Laws of Good Gamemastering) require different kinds of “big moments.”

For the modern Actual Play show, and audience, it might be a moment where a character/player gets to steal the show. The rules of Powered by the Apocalypse games, and the new Daggerheart game currently in playtest, are aimed at giving players “as actors in a collaborative play” their moment to shine. It’s an attempt to give the Emmy/Oscar moment.

For a more tactical game the answer might be different. The big moment might be purely mechanical and it might be a good or bad roll. For a puzzle solving game, it might be something else.

The kinds of big moments vary from “stagyle” (Yes, I’m trying to make fetch happen with my neologism from my prior essay on Stages/Styles of gaming), but big moments always matter and make for memorable experiences. I may wonder what the hell was up with early rpg sessions and “Four Balrogs” showing up, but I can sure as shit tell you that reading about that phenomenon twice blew my mind.

How to Ensure Your Rolls Have Impact

Game Recommendation

I love Dungeons and/or Dragons. I love the hobby of role playing. I love games in general, but I would not have the love that I had if it weren’t for the work of one group of gamers, the English War Gaming scene of the early/mid-20th Century. Without Tony Bath and Donald Featherstone, I would not be playing D&D today. I would argue that as much as the Twin Cities crowd likes to praise the Braunstein as the launch of gaming, there would have been no Braunsteins without Bath.

That doesn’t take away from the important transformation of gaming into something new that Braunsteins entailed, rather it emphasizes that their creation was part of a beautiful artistic dialog that includes the old war gamers. I’ve argued that we too often overlook the British seen in the past (see the link below), so I wanted to take a moment to recommend Donald Featherstone’s War Games. Thanks to John Curry, and a strong desire by the British gaming scene to preserve wargaming’s history, those original rules are available for a very affordable price. In Featherstone’s book, you’ll find an edited version of Tony Bath’s rules and you’ll find a very familiar phrase…”Saving Throw.” That’s right. The concept of “saves” comes from English war games.

When Discussing Early RPGs and Wargames, Let's Not Forget the British Scene

As an aside, I thought I’d share this news story from the 1980s about the English war gaming phenomenon. English/British Television has a history of attempting to present war games in a way that appeals to a wider audience and you can see that enthusiasm here. I’m currently working on a post, with tons of video embeds, that shows the many attempts to incorporate war games into narrative shows and to create shows where audiences watch war games. That’s right, before there were Actual Play role playing games, there were British “Actual Play” shows featuring Napoleonic warfare in miniature. It was a glory to see and this is just a taste.

Television Recommendation

Okay, I don’t know if I can actually recommend this show yet, but I know that I’m excited about the potential of the show. My friend Bill Rude worked on this trailer for the upcoming (March 29th) show Renegade Nell on Disney+. The show has been in development for some time and is an “original” to streaming setting, but it’s one that combines genre elements I love. I’ve been on a “Blackpowder” fantasy kick since I first read The Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan and my own “Empire of Dorn” setting is a Blackpowder Fantasy setting.

In the case of Nell, it shares a lot of features with my own setting as it fuses traditional fairy tales with politics of the era of Queen Anne and the War of Spanish Succession. I’m not saying that the show takes place in that timeline, just that it has similar thematic elements. Unlike Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, which is a Napoleonic Blackpower Fantasy story, the tale of Nell is more action oriented and looks to be a lot of fun.

Film Recommendation

While we are in the Blackpowder mood, or at least while I am, I’d like to take a moment to recommend the 1955 classic film The Scarlet Coat. It has a stellar cast and tells the story of Major John André. The American Revolution was a time filled with espionage and subterfuge, and it’s one that is rich for mining for gaming ideas. The Scarlet Coat is one of the best films about the American Revolution and it’s one that explores the conflict from the point of view of a British officer. Like the book Empire on the Edge, The Scarlet Coat was one of the many works that helped me to understand the British side of the Revolution. I’m still grateful we won, but I’m even more grateful that our nations now live in peace and I pray for peace in our modern conflicts daily.