Category: cultural analysis

Like many on my side of the political chasm, I’ve enjoyed my share of schadenfreude while watching meltdowns by emotionally unstable losers. Sometimes my conscience twinges at the thought that many of these poor, lost souls could benefit from a strong and healthy dose of compassion. Many of those...

I think I get it now. Shamelessly stolen from the Arkhaven Blog. This is solid advice for creatives of all stripes. These people are not your audience. They are children and mentally ill terrorists who only have the power you give them. They are death cultists who live only...

Does anyone else find it significant that solo miniature wargames have become so popular in recent years? Games like that shown here (which you can get a hard copy of through Lulu), Rangers of Shadowdeep, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, and so on.  To say nothing of Mike Lambo’s long-running series...

Looking back on 2021, it occurred to me that the most important event in tabletop gaming in decades might have been the PvP death of Bob Dobs (run by Kestutis Kalvitis), who was eaten by cave bears on the command of Chief Fudd of Fug.  Cirsova, the man behind...

As this post goes live, the IP holders for D&D are doing their darndest to rip conventional play away from the hobby approach of “anything is possible at the table (as long as you adhere to story-arc driven narrative games)” and into a consumerist approach of “gatcha driven subscription...

Thanks in large part to the bros actively re-inventing and reshaping RPGs through experimentation, session reports, analysis, and (sometimes heated) discussion, the hobby has cycled back to the age old question of, “Who invented role playing games?” Other lesser factors contribute, of course. The upper midwest Boomer Crew is...

The RLM guys are experts at one particular species of cultural tree, but have spent so much time looking at the one tree that they can’t see how the health of the forest is killing that tree. Naturally, that tree is cinema and the forest is the wider culture....

Ashe Barker, over at the YouTube Channel Guerilla Miniatures Games, has been running down a long series of thoughts on GrimDark Media.  It’s a fun series – one of those hangout and gab sessions with a couple of ersatz friends who share many of the same interests as you. ...

The one thing we can all agree on in the aftermath of the Lahaina Fire is that the events prove that my pre-conceived political and economic notions are one-hundred percent correct: Vegans suck.  They cause the fire by pressuring big corporations and legislatures (but I repeat myself) to enact...

This map has been making the rounds on social media. The white dots represent the locations of battles fought during the last 4,500 years of recorded history. Before we get into a deeper analysis, look at this: The map doesn’t really show the locations of all the earth’s battles....