nasturtium buds peeking from gorgeous nasturtium leaves
blooming cosmos, pink and gold
one hummingbird drinking at the cute clay feeder we have hanging in the backyard
many little quail scurrying across the road, grown-up quail pairs on either side to keep everyone in line
someone trimming public landscaping bushes into nice clean shapes
a tawny mutt balanced in a little wooden box strapped to the back of somebody's bicycle
I spent a little more than 48 hours in Flagstaff the other weekend. gorgeous weather. wonderful wool and fiber festival (even if my very favorite vendor couldn't be there this year). also, as always, the most excellent traveling companions. so grateful to those lovely humans.
on Sunday, the last day of the festival, I spent 3 hours teaching a little lacemaking workshop and it was wonderful! just 6 enthusiastic students, plenty of time, plus friend Shannon helping out as unofficial assistant, and it all went so well. I'm so glad everyone came ready to learn and practice and struggle with the weirdness that is tatting and tatted lace. I hope they all keep going with it. and maybe some of them will join The Lace Coven too.
the days since then have felt like a dragging two-dimensional swamp, somehow. I think I need more rest.
since summer 2024 I've been prioritizing the whole weekend of Flag Wool, every June, for a getaway with fiber friends. (this year the festival dates conflicted with my favorite academic conference and I confess it was not quite a difficult choice even though I do miss Computers & Writing and all its fun community a good bit.) a different house rental each time. some shuffling of who attends. so much gratitude that I get to be included in the fun.
at some point along the way I was handed a copy of this book, The Lost Flock, by Jane Cooper. a meandering autobiographical style, very well researched, and fascinating to read. will I ever find myself tending sheep on a remote Scottish island? highly unlikely. more than happy to read about it though. storms and mud and diseases and all, it sounds pretty romantic.
.jpeg "cover image of The Lost Flock: close-up collage-esque sheep face against a green and blue island")
sheep and shepherds. cheese and fleece. community and stories. the books are not that similar at all but you can see the echoes across the two covers I'm sure. blue sky or sea. green hills. close-up on a fleecy sheep with beady ovine eyes. more fleecy sheep wandering the hills in the background.
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I don't reread books that often, but maybe I'll revisit these two again sometime soon. the whole Tiffany Aching series is splendid and poignant and worthy of deep attention. maybe I should acquire a boxed set of them. hmmm.
has anyone in the world of the wee free men considered teaching them how to perfectly shear a sheep? I can't remember.
sheep shearing is a dying art, they say. a strange little niche profession, so delicate and demanding. too bad we don't have any magical little dudes to help out with it. sometimes I wonder if I would or could ever learn. such a prospect feels almost as far-fetched though, most days.
sheep need shearing. I'm glad that at least a few other humans out there still know how to shear them. the shearer who typically demonstrates at Flag Wool is Mick Hofmann. my guild friends who have fleecy animals hire him every spring to come shear for them too.
there weren't many nice fleeces for sale at this year's festival. even if there had been though, I remain uninterested in acquiring any raw fleece to process myself. carding 6 batts of Finn two summers back was tedious enough, I promise.
if the apocalypse arrives and all the industrial fiber mills become defunct and I need to process wool by hand, I'll get over the tedium and hopefully also make friends with someone who can teach me shepherding and shearing too.
I spent a week in California (mostly San Diego) earlier this month. we did lots of beautiful and silly and fun things.
twenty years later, Disneyland remains impressively thorough and dedicated to the task of using plastic fakery (and other material/media) to evoke entire worlds of stories. I will confess that walking through the Galaxy's Edge sections was pretty amazing. the novelty of it. the heat and dust and droids and alien-ness, not to mention the actual model of the Millennium Falcon. I'm not even that much of a Star Wars nerd, am I?
remember this gollum jade? he is expanded into a family of 5 separate plants now. the main one is doing so well, and hopefully the others will survive one way or another.
at the end of last summer, the family gathered on the edge of Idaho and Utah to see my paternal grandmother off on her journey from this world into wherever we find ourselves after.
from among grandma's things, I was bequeathed an old 70s-style woven and leather bag (I have vague memories of grandma toting her students' papers and homework sheets and such around in it, once). most weeks now, at my house, it is a perfect home to my choir music and a bit of spare lip balm.
but before I brought it home, more or less just as my dad handed it to me, I found a highlighter pen and a few scraps of notepaper in the bag's many pockets. one little note was a list of medications. the other was a list, in soft, properly-formed cursive pencil, of authors and a few titles:
G.G Vandagriff
Lynn Austin
Thomas Perry
Linda Nichols - Not a Sparrow Falls
Chris Stewart - The God of War
Ted Bell - Nick of Time
James Kunstler - World Made By Hand, The Long Emergency
Angie Sage
Jessica Richard Draper
Beverly Lewis
and then, in pen at the end, written slightly larger,
Diana Crawford
when I got home and had a minute, I looked them all up in my local library catalog. of the available options they had for me to put on hold, only one author seemed interesting enough-- James Howard Kunstler. I've read three of his books from the World Made By Hand series now.
they're pretty neat. not all that earth-shattering, as far as post-apocalypses go, but well enough written and engaging. against the premise of oil-shortages and societal collapse, we have a tapestry of colorful characters surviving together. every horse that is mentioned gets described specifically by breed. every antique piece of furniture is given all the fancy labels an auction catalog could ever ask for.
did grandma ever read these too? I'm not sure.
I do know we both liked making things by hand from time to time.
maybe I'll get my hands on some others from her list, eventually.
more recently, I've been poking around at the short list for this year's Tournament of Books. I got my hands on Bunny so that We Love You, Bunny would have more context. not sure I liked the first-- its ending was pretty interesting though-- and we'll see how much patience I can muster up for the self-absorbed and anxiety-ridden MFA student collective that seems to be narrating the next one. at this rate I won't have time to read anything else at all in advance of the tournament, but so it goes.
at dear friend Angela's house last month I perused her library for just a few moments and was tempted by a pair of slightly chubby fantasy novels by Naomi Novik: Uprooted and Spinning Silver. they were just the thing to offset the stress and chaos of a new spring semester. good, deep historical fantasy with rich cultural flavor and complexity of character-- I loved them both so much. the second especially so. it would look gorgeous in a video adaptation, I bet.
so of course now I am in a serious obsession with Naomi Novik novels. the other day I finished, too soon, the audiobook of A Deadly Education-- the first in the author's Scholomance trilogy. I loved it so much I think I'm having withdrawals from the world and the voices and the magic of it. it was all so vivid and gritty and perfect. please let the second and third audiobook copies arrive quickly via Libby, please.
on paper, the series didn't sound that interesting. it is more than easy enough to think we've had enough wizard highschool stories, yeah?
I'm glad I borrowed it anyway. it is a darker take on the international wizard school trope, but not at all trite or twee or annoying. I found it thoroughly enchanting, with superb world building and expertly balanced first-person narration. we inhabit for 13 well-paced chapters a snippy, mixed-race protagonist named Galadriel (El for short) who somehow, despite being perfectly stubborn and rude to all her classmates, is eloquently self-aware enough with her narrational monologues to come across as relatable and even likeable. I kept thinking of this as Kuang's Babel meets Harry Potter meets Wheel of Time. maybe. not the most apt comparison, I'm sure. ah well.
books are awesome.
what have you been reading lately?
I missed the chance to commemorate the true birthday of this little blog, last Monday. but
today, January 19, 2025, marks exactly 20 years since the first actual, fully-fledged post: a response to our first key reading assignment about webdesign and such.
what a different world. such a different place it was. or maybe twenty years ago wasn't so very different, and it only seems so because I and my perspective have changed so much since then.
what happens if I stitch together a few snippets from all the blogged Januaries of each year since 2005? what new montage will spill into this digital page in between them all?
I tried my best to pull from sections nearest to the 13th and 19th of the month (a thing much easier to do from the posts before 2014ish, when the apex of graduate school + its aftermath slowed down my writing here so much).
what I notice amongst these snippets and what you notice will be different, I imagine. I notice the unending pulse of learning and academia. books and thoughts chasing each other in circles. comments about the weather seem to sit neatly in the background with questions of identity and all its tangly unspooling. these words always have been for me more than anything. does all this pontificating from past amelia still sound like useful advice? mostly yes, I think. but I would say that, wouldn't I?
the fact that energy is behind it all is somehow unifying. simple
linguistic structures will be a low-key class. it is full of people i don't see in my other classes. the other english majors. non tech writing people: the lit majors, the teaching majors. it's weird.
get used to the fear and the doubt. get used
to being faced with new facets of your own ignorance. get used to the
pain. embrace humility. you can't always feel in control.
but really, how comforting is that?
I don't know. I'd take humility over false confidence anyday. but then the humble rarely get much respect.
2008-2009 (a pause.)
the world is big.
there's a lot going on in it. even in this mostly empty house, there's
me sitting at the table, typing, stretching a bit of CSS out over a
half-built website skeleton, scribbling a few what-ifs, listening to
Radiohead. and I made banana nut muffins this morning.
in the beginning, this blog was just a place for all my first impressions--all my doubts and worries about the usefulness or meaningfulness of all the stuff I was learning. after that semester, I decided to keep blogging--mainly about writing (Starcustard and random short stories), school (rhetoric, more webdesign, and Isotope), and life (philosophical thoughts about my job, vague complaints about boys, and so forth). and so it continued. I'm still here. I still blog.
what do those stories say about me?
I'm thinking about all the texture of my life. all the patterned and
patternless history I've collected so far. telling stories is one way to
remember it. and on the other hand... telling and retelling and
re-remembering these stories is one way to completely revise the past.
after a few months or years, it becomes easy to bend the details. to
emphasize the funny parts. to leave out the things that make you look
like a bit of an idiot.
how I envision myself is pretty complicated, I guess. perspective is weirdly limited like that.
which we am I talking about, anyway? and when? and where?
it may not make any huge difference in the long run, but even so, the
ultimate pointlessness of things should not be dragged up as an excuse
for us to stay in bed all day. at least not more than once or twice a
year, anyway, right?
this seemingly misnamed semester will inch along to spring in due course. and when that happens, finals and stress will no doubt prevent me from enjoying it as thoroughly as I could, but for now... well for now, the semester is glowing with warm, cozy pillows full of insight and excitement. this might be the best January ever.
I have spent much (but not enough) of this long, mostly-pleasant weekend sitting by the window, trying to focus on readings for classes.
.... 2015 is here, still all new-feeling. gradually we'll get to see both how it changes my life and how it doesn't.
today it is raining in spurts, like a chilly and unkempt spring. Tuesday's snow is long since melted. it'll be back this weekend. the universe is giving us yo-yo-ing seasons, somewhat drab all the way through, with occasional bright sunset smudges.
the trees are bare. my apartment windows open onto more distant views than they did in summer and fall. at night, more and more streetlights perpetually leak into my bedroom under the edges of the blinds. I notice the faces of buildings I have never seen from such an angle before.
it's empowering to reflect on the background structure
of your whole life. to actively participate and acknowledge your role
in either accepting/reinforcing or resisting/revising the culture you
swim in. and that seems important. that's what it takes to make all of that
power and structure more open-book, more readable, more transparent and
less like a vice.
if I had the brainpower on this Friday evening to make some additional
academicalish comments on how these beautifully-commentated marble
races and our fascination with them could link up interestingly with
some of the tenets of object-oriented ontology, I would. but I don't
know all that much about object-oriented ontology myself, and should
probably not let it distract me much more than the Marblelympics
already have from writing up nicely finished dissertation chapters
about digital ethnography and distributed commons-based peer-production
and what that all may mean for technical communication and human
culture and such.
and then the speaker said something about facebook hopefully having a
major role in someday establishing some kind of global online
government. after that, according to my notes, I typed out this:
"eeeeek."
does the world want and need to be connected by a central online
platform, really? is the capitalist interest that facebook has in being
the medium by which everyone is connected anything we can trust?
all this potent potential meaning curled up in to hold. and then there are all these phrasal verbs, too: hold back, hold up, hold out, hold off, hold against, beholden to...
to be held as a parent holds a young baby is to be safe. comfortable. cared for. right?
to be held is also to be restrained. controlled. and to be restrained isn't usually considered comfortable, though... right?
or is it?
and when I listened to this recent episode of So Many Damn Books with George Saunders
I felt more affinity for Saunders's love of teaching writing than
perhaps I might once have felt. his advice is to remember that you're
never just teaching 20-somethings who barely know what to do with their
adulthood when you meet them-- you're also teaching the
40-something-year-olds that they'll become. I like that. (not all
college students are 20-somethings, but the concept holds. we are all
humans-in-progress.)
why does this small saga of knitting woe and triumph deserve
documentation in this little blog of mine? I don't know if there's an
answer, other than my typical interest in capturing bits of experience
and emotion in as vivid and accurate description as I can. I like to
write these vignettes of where and when and how, with all the metaphor
and adjectives they need to vibrate satisfyingly from my imagination to
yours.
I trust that learning is happening, little by little, in all of our spongey-curious brains.
January, perhaps fittingly, seems so very long. all the transitions it spans-- all the shifting, deepening of the dark season, the post-holiday recoveries, the shiny new beginnings of a calendar year and of an academic semester-- all of that is a lot for 31 average winter days.
I don't know if it really did feel longer for me this year, or if I'm only saying that because it seems like an appropriate thing to sigh into this semi-bleak and impermanent world.
- - -
and now what? do I still blog?
time will tell. if you'll indulge me, I have one more excerpt, this time from May of 2014, when so much of me was so unsettled and rearranging itself and I clung to my love of writing as if nothing else mattered:
from time to time I wonder what it is I'm trying to do here. does it matter what I'm trying to do here? I write. our reasons for enjoying things are seemingly inarticulable. is there irony in that? I claim that words can make everything better. is that true even when the words crumble into meaninglessness as they fail at encompassing feelings? do I mean that even crumbled words are worth something?
yes. crumbled and halfhearted attempts at capturing it all still beats blank silence. I know only so much stuff fits into one life. there are only so many live possibilities. this is the way it needs to be, I guess. but the way everything is carved up now isn't how it'll always need to be carved. our crumbled communications don't stand still; they change.
.... and even if I can't really say I know exactly what writing means, I can try to explain what I like about my practice of it.
I like the pausing and sifting through potential descriptions and the shuffling of parts of speech. I like the dancing of clauses and punctuation and space. I like the starts and stops and backtracking, the meandering fragments that stretch so subtly for their finish. I like the way these little symbols can twist and mold intangible thoughts into a dozen differently shaded shapes. I like unknotting a tangly draft, picking out the pieces that don't belong and pulling away each piece that does, tidying it all into a hopefully-clean curl of interesting prose. sometimes I save the scraps for later. sometimes I can't. .... I write for the writing's sake. I sketch and wonder and experience plenty of other things for the same reason. they don't have to be means to some other end, these creative processes. maybe all the best things are their own ends, or at least neatly wrapped around something like one.
after twenty years, does this blog count as art? as an end in itself?
doesn't matter. it's here. I'm here. for now.
at a certain time of day, the shadows that fall from the southeasterly sunrise across the somewhat-elevated sidewalk behind our house line up just exactly right with the angles of wide concrete pavement and granite-pebble landscaping and the gully on one side. and for however long the sun and earth match up that way, we get to watch a shadowy parade of me with the pugs, walking with perfect balance on the top of the shadow of the earth against itself.
I suppose the conditions for this must happen at least twice in a day, whatever times those may be depending on the time of year and the slant of the earth's axis. in the mornings, lately somewhere near 8:00 a.m. or so, the shadows slant northwest. we don't often walk that path during the other half of the day, but I imagine in the early evenings the shadows must slant more to the northeast.
so what?
it is a thing to notice. a small event-thing among many other variously-shaped event-things.
I haven't bothered photographing our shadows. it's nice enough to just notice it when we happen to be out walking at the right set of moments.
the morning pug walks require more layers this month. hats, gloves, fluffier scarves. I crocheted a new puppy pug coat in red and beige for the skinny little Faramir. his old grey pug coat still barely-kindof fits, but it didn't look as warm all stretched out of his lanky body.
the many instantiations of various spinning and weaving arts and crafts consume me. there remains no time for blogging.
thinking about my grandmother lately, off and on, I sometimes puzzle over how close and also how distant she seems. her birthday is coming up in a few days.
this painting (well, this print of a painting) hung over grandma's nice upright piano for as long as I could remember. and now it hangs in my office/craft room/guest room.
I feel so grateful to have inherited this art, and I do not care one bit that it is a relatively commonplace mass reproduction. the light and shadow and movement of it say something-- something too immediate for words. I don't think my sense of this is just nostalgia, though there are indeed decades of memories sprinkled on whenever I look at it.
today I looked up the name and artist engraved on the little plaque, for the first time. Moonlight Sea. Peter Ellenshaw. he did a lot of these beautifully peaceful ocean horizon paintings, apparently. prints like mine seem to have been pretty popular in the '50s and '60s.
before then, Ellenshaw also worked as a matte artist for plenty of old films, inncluding 1959's Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Mary Poppins too. did grandma know that, I wonder? I only know it because the internet and Wikipedia exist at my fingertips.
but I'm sure my grandma had so many other ways of knowing things.
it's funny what our brains remember or don't. or think we remember.
this grandmother was the first person to wink at me, as far as I recall. the full conspiratorial meaning of it was likely lost on me as a child, but it felt fun and silly and made the moment into a story.
my other memories of grandma are a montage of bright and faded. so many quilts for the chilly basement bedrooms. green grass and a clothesline. frozen whole wheat waffles. cereal on the top shelf of a gaping deep dark pantry. sitting on the cement steps for photographs. plastic toys on a thick, round, stripey rug. and her voice piping up if anyone looked at any corner of that piano--a little raspy but bright and cheerfully insisting-- 'play us a tune, won't you?'
and usually someone would.
perhaps the strongest, deepest memory I have of that house, just a stride or two left from the piano and its painting, is the narrow closet full of toys and games and books (among them, this old woven fairytale).
maybe the closet still has books and toys in it. newer ones, if any. the whole house looks hugely different now from how it did when I was young. there are no photos of the closets in the listing... but a closet of games and books for visiting tourists could make sense, couldn't it?
I find myself wishing that I knew more about what my grandmother thought of this painting. where did she get it? was it bought, or a gift? did she see the same things in it I think I see? would she have better words for its movement and shadow and light?
she would have been 96 this autumn.
if I live that long, I'll get at least 56 more autumns (hopefully, anyway. I hope I always live somewhere with a proper autumn.)
.
in other news, there are twenty standard weeks until this little blog turns 20 years old.
and then what?
since the eve of 2024 one month ago, it feels like so much has happened. some of it too fast, too soon, too painfully.
the
grief of losing the first little doggo that I ever really shared my
longterm day-to-day life with... I cannot describe
it. as much as I'd like to keep trying to, the feeling altogether and gargantuanly
transcends words. the whole experience is impossible to talk about in
any satisfying, accurate, indubitable way. "losing"? "letting go"? that
we "had to" say goodbye? what kind of stupid, broken euphemism circus is this?
everything about our language-cloaked expressions of such pain just
feels utterly inadequate.
it is probably irrational to think no one else could ever know what I mean, even if the words and metaphors feel so flimsy. it's not like I'm the only person to ever experience this sort of sadness. nor is this the first unexpected loss in my life. but it has been the closest and the sharpest. so far.
on new year's day I wrote something about how the world (a world so embroiled in hate and genocides and ugly senseless conflict!) is an absolutely crushingly horrific mess, how my heart hurts and hurts and hurts, and how this loss seems to prefigure and to threaten-- or, even more, to promise-- every other inevitable loss I will ever have to face for as long as I live.
it's one thing to philosophically observe, in general, that nothing can last forever. okay. of course. to confront and deeply feel it-- specifically-- as one solitary ending to the life of a inimitably cuddly goofy fuzzy little domesticated animal... that is different.
other aspects of this January were plenty normal, whatever
that means. most of my activities seem to come with rather suitable words with which to sketch them into
sharable imagery: going to bed early and sleeping in. checking out
library books. reading and ignoring and sorting and replying to emails.
seeing friends. enduring snow and rain and cold. demonstrating crafts at the
museum. putting birdseed in the feeder in the backyard. talking with
family on the phone. eating quiche. drinking tea. making soup. needing a
haircut but not yet ever managing to go out and get my hair cut. sweeping the
floor. running errands. craving hot chocolate. writing lists and syllabi
and assignment sheets. spending money. making things. existing.
sure, nothing lasts forever. change is nature. this too shall pass: all of these phrasings alternatingly as full of solace as they are of tragedy, representative of a fact more solid than perhaps any other so-called fact. death and endings are, from one point of view, more normal, more mundane, more irrefutable than any of the other relatively comfortable, unassuming, smoothly proceeding lifestuff I might casually document and remember about this particular month of the year. that's what feels so difficult and impossible about it.
the vortex of this heartache felt immeasurable, indescribably vast and infinite, from the inside.
even so, from a day or two or ten beyond, it begins to shrink and fade. all future moments frame it into something more manageable.
January, perhaps fittingly, seems so very long. all the transitions it spans-- all the shifting, deepening of the dark season, the post-holiday recoveries, the shiny new beginnings of a calendar year and of an academic semester-- all of that is a lot for 31 average winter days.
I don't know if it really did feel longer for me this year, or if I'm only saying that because it seems like an appropriate thing to sigh into this semi-bleak and impermanent world.
one month ago, as the cold moon began to wane and the spinning earth began to tilt just barely back towards the sun, our little old dog ate his last breakfast and went on his last stumbling walk and took one final car ride, sitting on my lap. I only knew him for half his life. I wasn't sure if I'd get along with such a beast at first. but we did get along, so well. I loved that pug and I'm glad he was here to share so much of the too-short day-to-day of my life for a while.
the final round:
Dungeons & Dragons (5e) vs The One Ring (2e)
in the beginning, along with a lot of scribbly scattered notes and spreadsheets of metadata on each RPG book, I mapped out my relative prior experience with each of the 16 systems, like so:
None-- The One Ring (2e), Cyberpunk RED, and A Song of Ice and Fire
Barely any-- Wrath & Glory, Scion: Hero, and Exalted
Some-- Pathfinder (2e), Shadowrun (5e), Mage: the Awakening, and Changeling: the Lost
More than some-- World of Darkness, Star Wars: Force and Destiny, and 7th Sea (2e)
Lots-- Vampire: the Masquerade (5e) and Dungeons & Dragons (5e)
there were some idle thoughts about coming up with a color code to go along with this, even. maybe it would've started with grey, then blue, yellow, green, up to a nice purple for the ones I've played most, or something like that? not important, I suppose. arbitrary distinctions to signify those slightly less arbitrary.
in any case, The One Ring has already vanquished one of my most-played RPGs. does it have what it takes to beat the other?
either way, it will feel like Tolkien wins.
we recently finished listening to The Fellowship of the Ring narrated by Andy Serkis. so excellently done-- all the voices and the singing. I loved it. at least 20 years have gone by since I last read the book myself. I still mean to reread them all at some point, but who knows when. there is such a richness in that story. it is beautiful, touching, deep, and timeless. I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been said a hundred times.
last week, we gathered friends at our table to begin another D&D campaign. I'm still working on putting the finishing touches on my first-ever bard: Ennagold Lindenrill, a wood-elf from Waterdeep. the rest of the party shall include a couple of wizards, a couple of clerics, and a paladin. it's exciting to be gearing up to play once again after about a year and a half spent in other game systems.
judging these two against each other is as expectedly challenging as most of the last few matches have been. which do I value more? the focus, simplicity, and artistry of the newer book, or the flexibility, openness, and mainstream appeal of the older? which deserves this more? the world-changing system that paved the way for pretty much all the others, or the beautiful latecomer based on a world-changing fantasy that paved the way for it in the first place?
| SYSTEM | Dungeons & Dragons (5e) | The One Ring (2e) |
| cover tagline = | "Arm yourself for adventure." |
"Enter the world of Middle-earth..." |
| publisher = |
Wizards of the Coast |
Free League Publishing |
| pub. date = |
2014 | 2020 |
| original cost = |
$49.95 | $49.85 |
| length = |
11 chapters / 320 pages |
10 chapters / 240 pages |
| my exp. level = | very much lots | none prior |
the easy part is judging these two on aesthetics. The One Ring will probably never lose on that count. I bet the designers of this book put as much attention and effort into its appearance as Tolkien himself put into the elvish language. it seems to me almost as perfect as any functional book could ever be (semi-garish cover notwithstanding). beyond the surface of the pages, too, the aesthetics of this epic storyworld come with all the depth and richness of their source material. it's lovely.
and while The One Ring is soaked in the vibes of deep green-grey forests and cozy, semi-lit hobbit holes, D&D injects all that with a little more brightness. the saturation is turned up, the gleam of adventure a little more polished against a grab-bag stage-set of fantasy. they aren't opposites, but we might say they are different shades of the same hue: The One Ring a deep piney dark-olive, like those magical woven elf-cloaks in shadow; D&D more like new grass, or spring-time oak leaves in the sun, or a green leather satchel freshly polished. you can tell serious, weighty stories in either game, but D&D will always feel lighter to me.
judging on mechanics, I have a harder time choosing which I like more. The One Ring is simple and unique. it's character creation options are very focused, its gameplay processes similarly so. destiny and heritage and lore combine to draw strong lines around the possible story arcs. player characters rotate through adventuring phases and fellowship phases. journeying, counseling, and resting are given just as much attention (if not more) than combat.
D&D divides its gameplay slightly differently into exploration, social interaction, and combat. it's close enough to the same ingredients, but used in a significantly new recipe. and much like an easy, endlessly-adapatible recipe (like this one-- so easy and so fun to mix and match with), D&D feels infinitely flexible. dial down the combat and add more exploration or skill challenges or socializing if you're feeling like it-- it'll still taste awesome. it will still be exciting.
in terms of approachability, do these games come out equal? as I've said before, D&D has the advantage of being very well known, with an established fan base and a widespread community to help ease new players into it. practically, playing D&D can be as basic or as convoluted as you choose.
without the same relatively longstanding advantages, The One Ring does just fine. I like its organization and approach a bit better, and that beautiful simplicity earns it plenty of points here.
if we wanted to get quantitative about it, we could tally
things on a rough scale like so, dividing a pool of 10 points per category between the two systems...
| SYSTEM | Dungeons & Dragons (5e) |
The One Ring (2e) |
| points for aesthetics = | 2 |
8 |
| points for mechanics = | 6 |
4 |
| points for approachability = | 6 |
4 |
| total = | 14 | 16 |
a close match if there ever was one, eh? and honestly, I keep wanting to fudge the points further. (full transparency: I have fudged them up and down and back already a few times. this is my tournament, so it's allowed, right?) I mean, are the aesthetics of D&D so very lackluster in my eye? and maybe shouldn't the mechanics be weighted more heavily, given that's what the game is essentially built out of?
but beyond my trusty old three-pronged rubric... I wrote last time that I value vividness, simplicity, and consistency in these forms of interactive art. I seem to have the most imaginative fun with a clear framework in which to invent freely, wildly, with all the power of the game's limitations to help me build something cool.
so which of these truly offers me more of that feeling?
in another prior match-up, I also wrote that compared to D&D, The One Ring's
character creation process seemed so limited, so relatively constrained.
this remains pretty much my only grasped-at disappointment with The One Ring, I think. a barely-there complaint. and yet I concede that there is a nice structure to it and to everything else in the game,
though. it's fitting, given the game's setting and all that. it's a great framework for narrative gameplay, narrow and vivid
in its scope.
on the other hand, D&D has a bigger, wider frame. just as sturdy and serviceable, if far less technically beautiful.
I think what really makes the most sense, to me today, is to add a fourth category and do a little bit more math. so here we go-- along with aesthetics and mechanics and user-friendliness, I'm going to look quantitatively at flexibility.
and there, using this arbitrary system I've suddenly applied across this match, I'd give D&D a whole 7 and The One Ring the remaining 3. it's still awfully close, but D&D ekes out the higher score. 21 to 19.
imagine approximately three seconds of a low and subtle drumroll for us, please?
the 2023 champion of the Tournament of RPG books: Dungeons & Dragons (5e)
the semifinals:
The One Ring vs Vampire: the Masquerade (5e)
and
Star Wars: Force and Destiny vs Dungeons & Dragons (5e)
initially, I imagined this could be a short post, even with the two matches put together. I'll do my best to be concise. it may not be easy.
for most of the prior match-ups, I had decently strong feelings about the winners. all that changes now. these are the four best RPGs I've ever played. to decide between them is going to be an arbitrary, subjective, and pointless endeavor. that is what it means to model a summer-autumn-almost-winter writing project on the Tournament of Books. (sidenote: the 20th annual ToB itself is very nearly underway! the shortlist of 16 was just recently posted.)
as I pondered this next step in the tournament (inbetween grading final projects and exams and such earlier this week), I thought back on my approach during the opening round, to my not-really-a-rubric, and I tied my brain into knots figuring how to quantify my sense of these games' mechanics, aesthetics, and user-friendliness. while I'd sketched out the rubric categories, I never gave them a metric. am I measuring out of 5 stars? percentage points? some other nice round number of cute somethings?
I re-read my past reviews, hoping to distill the elements I most value in an RPG and build some useful yardstick out of it. obviously, design is important to me, both aesthetically and in terms of user-friendliness. overall style and world-vibes are important, too-- I clearly go more for fantasy than for sci-fi, more for glowing heroism than for grim dystopias. (Vampire seems a glaring exception on this though. hmm...)
additionally, I value vividness, simplicity, and consistency (not just in games but in most art, now that I think about it). I have the most fun in games that gives me nicely-defined frameworks, clear rules, and then practically infinite freedom to invent within that space. is there a more apt way to describe that? not just the logistics of it all, but the feeling? a feeling of sinking all your imagination into a marvelous, immersive vision but also having the power to make it new and yours? I hope that makes sense to at least somebody.
RPGs are especially tricky to judge because they are more than the sum of their published material. they are not static boxes; so much depends on the storyteller, the game master, not to mention the other players. if I were to judge these four in terms of how much I loved my past gameplay in each system, that might be somewhat easier. but that's not exactly what I'm trying to do here.
nor am I comparing them merely on which story or world I might like best. it is interesting that three of these four are games live solidly within circumscribed gameworlds based on pre-existing lore. D&D is the exception, and even it has more than half its roots in the fantasy of Tolkien, so. that these four have come so far mean that such specific worldbuilding feeds into the sense of vividness and definition I value so much.
alright, alright-- I'll quit stalling. here we go.
The One Ring vs Vampire: the Masquerade 5e
for months I have worried that Vampire would end up against The One Ring in the final round; both were strong contenders all along, but now here they are, one fated to force the other out of the running.
Vampire has years ago earned my steadfast affection, for whatever reasons (see its prior match-up reviews for more on that), and contrarily The One Ring
is a newcomer in my life.
they
are so different, aesthetically and mechanically. for approachability
I'll rank them as equals. both have plenty of depth and complexity, all
made passably navigable with lovely book design. isn't it interesting their covers match so well? black and white and red, with barely-there serifs on those elegantly bold all-caps titles. not many RPG books come with fancy bookmark ribbons, but these both do.
The One Ring sells itself as "rules-light," which is a point in its favor given my preference for simplicity. skimming the book the other day, I did question this label a bit though. there are plenty of rules and guidelines for an epic, detailed, highly-managed roleplaying campaign, even if those rules are designed to sit in the background and let narrative take the stage.
the striking style of Vampire feels incomparable to me, which is a point or two in its favor. but you all heard me gush about The One Ring's
design. that's what makes this so difficult a match. which artfully
drawn style is the best one, for me, today? the glossy, bloody, immortal
danger of the urban fantasy plot? or the warm, antiqued, semi-rustic
valor of the high fantasy adventure?
I still can't decide.
-
now I've written the rest of this post and proofread it twice, still struggling to make up my mind. The One Ring is gorgeous, and simple, and it ticks so many boxes for the kinds of stories and worlds I love to consume. I really hope I get to play it again in the near future, to explore it more as a full game.
and Vampire is so evocative and unique. as I've explained before,
how often do we get a framework to fight against ourselves, to struggle
for a lost humanity? it's so interesting and novel to me, despite (and because of?) the potential discomfort and challenge of its dark, gritty, violent settings.
in a truly infuriating Tournament-of-Books-esque manner, I think I'm going to give up on reaching a judgement via all these relevant, fundamental aspects of the two, and grasp desperately at something-- anything-- for which I can easily pinpoint an obvious preference. if I had to choose just based on the two books' covers, for example, Vampire would win. that faux marble look and the shiny embossed title-- it's perfect.
but doesn't that seem so cheap and superficial? I don't hate The One Ring's cover, even if its use of red strikes me as garish. almost to make up for that stark and somewhat depressing first impression, The One Ring has buckets of marvelously good art in the rest of its pages-- all those chapter spreads, the little ink-scraped edging around the call-out boxes, the sepia sketches here and there. it's so neat and fitting and cohesive.
so.
I think that's it-- the deciding factor. after helplessly trying to compare blood-red apples to elf-grown oranges all day long, I'll choose The One Ring for its artistic and stylistic consistency. that, and the timeless allure of high fantasy.
Star Wars: Force and Destiny vs Dungeons & Dragons (5e)
where to begin? I love both of these games. I've played the one more than the other in terms of hours at the table, but I'm tempted to say my Star Wars roleplaying took on a quality that could easily outpace the more casual kind I have often tended toward in my quantity of D&D gameplay.
how much does that matter?
it matters as much as I decide that it does, I suppose.
in terms of aesthetics, neither of these games knocks my socks off entirely. the on-paper designs of each feel equally solid, good but nothing exquisite.
D&D has the simpler mechanics, I think: simpler character creation, fewer charts to reference, and more straightforward dice. altogether it's not more than a few fractions of a point simpler, but it's something.
on the other hand, Star Wars has the more defined world. playing as a Star Wars character has been some of the most vivid, immersive roleplaying I've ever done. perhaps the existence of all the films helps with that, providing my brain with so much visuality to remix. perhaps it's "limits are possibilities" at work once again. Star Wars is a certain kind of story with preset rules and rhymes. that framework and direction help my style of creativity a heck of a lot.
so how do we weigh the merits of a whole multiverse of magical realms and adventure against those of a vast galaxy full of pseudo-magical, destiny-rich alien interactions? which one, for me, today, should win?
relative simplicity and fantasy win again, it seems. if I must-- and in this case I must-- I pick dragons and
treasure and potions and spells over any number of futuristic laser swords and spaceships. it isn't fair, but it is my verdict.
next up, the final finals:
The One Ring vs Dungeons & Dragons
quarterfinals match 4:
The One Ring vs A Song of Ice and Fire
as much as the authors behind these two worlds may match each other for ambition, scope, and nuanced historical detail, the two worlds themselves feel vastly different. both may be vast, rich, strikingly realistic fantasy lands, with some very cool linguistical inventiveness threaded through, but Tolkien and Martin do not tell the same kinds of stories with anything like the same kind of tone, do they?
I did find the two RPG versions of these literary works equally immersive games, at least. in terms of their layered, evocative gameplay and vibes, the two are very well matched.
in response to my opening round review of The One Ring, friend Chris commented that in no other match thus far had my preference been quite so blatantly obvious from so early on. at the time, I didn't realize how thoroughly, one-sidedly gushing I'd become, even if I did acknowledge that The One Ring had swept me off my feet.
likewise, the opening round performance of A Song of Ice and Fire may have been just as imbalanced. it certainly didn't have to do very much to beat out Shadowrun (though my one-sided-ness that time ran in the opposite direction).
and now, how does the adventurous-but-still-somehow-cozy epic of Middle-Earth fare against the cut-throat political dances of Westeros?
I can't say it's quite as simple as it might seem. both games were delightful to play, uniquely engaging, and satisfyingly substantive. the story moments of both felt meaningful, plot lines perfectly in tension among our characters' colorful backstories, current circumstances, and murky reached-for futures.
| SYSTEM | The One Ring |
A Song of Ice and Fire |
| back cover tagline = | "Enter the world of Middle-earth..." |
"Adventure, war, and intrigue in George R.R. Martin's World of Westeros" |
| publisher = |
Free League Publishing |
Green Ronin Publishing |
| pub. date = |
2020 | 2014 |
| original cost = |
$49.85 | $49.95 |
| length = |
10 chapters / 240 pages |
13 chapters / 320 pages |
| my exp. level = | none prior | none prior |
and so the cozy version of adventure is going to win. me being me (aspirationally part hobbit, after all), how could I not choose the gameworld where extra meals, singing, and warm baths can be part of your character advancement?
the only thing I found to mope about with The One Ring is that its character creation options feel so relatively minimal. I mused aloud to Jeremiah the other day that if we could mix just a few more of the classic Dungeons & Dragons classes and races and stats into the simplicity of The One Ring, that might be a perfect combination for me. but upon further thought, I don't think it would actually work that well. it would muddy the beauty and integrity of the game's design just a bit too much.
likely the only reason I imagine myself wanting such a combination is because I feel so familiar with D&D character creation processes. my brain is latching onto it for comfort more than out of any true preference. and that means the real answer here is to do more character creation using The One Ring, to get familiar with it, and to trust that I'll fall further in love.
semifinals match-ups (coming soon...):
The One Ring vs Vampire: the Masquerade
Star Wars vs Dungeons & Dragons
quarterfinals match 3:
World of Darkness vs Vampire: the Masquerade 5e
sadly, I have not played any more Vampire this year. but I do think about the world and the system fairly often. driving past a self storage compound on the highway, I wonder how Anarch vampires could use such a space for hiding their renegade plans and secrets. hearing news snippets about a rapper on trial for drug trafficking, I wonder what kind of vampire story that might be, if the drug dealers were in thrall to vampires, or if the rapper himself were undead, using a late-night partying lifestyle to disguise his sun allergy. it would definitely be depressing to be a vampire in real life-- but isn't it interesting to ponder the logistics of living in darkness for decades on end? I can't be the only one who thinks so.
mechanically, these two games are almost identical. the one system encompasses the other entirely, pretty much, and the other is a sharply focused specialization of the first. on that point of my rubric, I cannot really distinguish them.
in terms of relative approachability, there are perhaps some differences but not substantive ones, for me. World of Darkness can stand alone, just as this version of Vampire can. the possibilities for branching out or remixing other subsets of the world don't take away from that.
so does that mean my only meaningful axis of comparison, other than past gameplay experience, is aesthetics?
I initially summed up the vibes of World of Darkness as "film noir–artsy" and "alternatingly grunge/emo/punk," with a heavy tinge of romance and mystery. then, in Vampire's opening match 6, I wrote, "let's take everything I said about World of Darkness in opening round #1, but add a few gallons of flawlessly immortal elegance and deep red, viscous blood."
so... which is more worthy of this arbitrary prize? the artsy black-and-white film noir? or the highly polished, classic gloss of black-and-white-and-blood? which one looks best posed against the backdrop of a perfectly staged alleyway at night?
| SYSTEM | World of Darkness |
Vampire: the Masquerade 5e |
| back cover tagline = | "Your greatest fears aren't make believe; they're real." |
"Death is not the end." |
| publisher = |
White Wolf |
White Wolf |
| pub. date = |
2004 |
2018 |
| original cost = |
$24.99 | $55.00 |
| length = |
8 chapters / 223 pages | 13 chapters / 400 pages |
| my exp. level = | more than some | lots |
it is a difficult choice. both of these styles please me. both games and gameworlds have helped me experience visceral, intense struggles and tell sweeping, tragically beautiful stories.
my decision comes down to a fairly small nuance, I guess. for all that these two systems share, the one is by design very broad and open-ended, accomodating of plenty fairly typical man-vs-monsters adventures. World of Darkness will most likely have you roleplay a communal struggle against encroaching supernatural evils from who-knows-what great beyond. and while that is is awfully heroic and awesome, it is a bit less unique.
to instead struggle against a persistent, internal, irreversable corruption inside your own blood... that is different. it feels... more, somehow. less trite, less bounded by the rules of a proper hero's journey and all that. the focus of it, the individuality of it-- it makes the struggle a lonely, desperate, mostly hopeless one. how much more romantic can we get than that? and with the focus of Vampire, we get to fight-- for whatever idealistic or misguided or prideful reasons-- against something our own fallen selves have become. that dark conflict gives this game a more unique and interesting trajectory for stories than any other game I've ever played. so far.
next match-up review (the last before the semifinals!): The One Ring vs A Song of Ice and Fire
here we are, at a midpoint in this somewhat random tournament of roleplaying games. in this post, I'll summarize the opening round matches and finally, unequivocatingly, declare winners for each.
this all started almost six months ago with a tournament introduction. since then, I've played half a dozen new RPGs and tried to articulate my opinions about them all. it's been fun.
Jeremiah asked me which of the new one-shots we played were most enjoyable, and at the time my answer was Cyberpunk RED. looking back now, I'd want that one to share a three-way tie with The One Ring and A Song of Ice and Fire. Cyberpunk was certainly the most fun in a wild hijinksy way. The One Ring was fun in a simply beautiful and heroic way, and A Song of Ice and Fire was fun in a sweeping, majestic way.
the others were fun too, in their ways-- just a little bit less for me: Exalted in an almost frighteningly epic way, Werewolf, in a mystical have-we-bit-off-more-than-we-can-chew sort of way, and Scion, in a extremely bombastic and colorful way.
making final decisions about all these pairs has not always been so
fun or easy. a few were really very hard to choose, but I had to. for
the tournament. so without further ado, here are the winners--
match #1 "Dark vs. Grimdark"
(World of Darkness vs. Wrath & Glory)
I haven't changed my mind about this one-- World of Darkness still wins for its artsy storytelling approach and flexibility. but I will say, we've played a bit more Wrath & Glory since May, and it has grown on me a little.
match #2 "Power Fantasies"
(Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs. Werewolf: the Forsaken)
I thought this might be a close one, and while Werewolf was a great experience and I'd love to play more of it, the thrills of Dungeons & Dragons pulled ahead for me in the end. is it still unfair? yeah, it kinda is.
match #3 "So Much Potential"
(Pathfinder 2e vs. Mage: the Awakening)
given than neither of these systems left me with the greatest first impressions, it was hard to choose between them, but Pathfinder wins out for thus far having provided more enjoyable gameplay overall.
match #4 "Fatefully"
(Changeling: the Lost vs. Star Wars: Force and Destiny)
this one was absolutely the most difficult. the enchanting style of Changeling still holds plenty of sway over me, but ultimately I couldn't let it win just on vibes and potential; thus, Star Wars takes it.
match #5 "Two Flavors of Epic" (Scion vs. The One Ring)
at least we can't say this one is so very unfair-- as limiting as first impressions may be, The One Ring wins for simply being so thoroughly cozy and inspiring and marvelous.
match #6 "Masked and Unmasked"
(Vampire: the Masquerade 5e vs. Exalted 2e)
not many RPGs, in my view, could stand up against V5 and expect to do all that well. both it and Exalted are intense games with some complex elements, but I find Vampire more engaging.
match #7 "Once and Future Risks" (7th Sea 2e vs. Cyberpunk RED)
this one was so, so close as well-- I had the hardest time weiging the epic historical adventure against the flashy futuristic excitement, and 7th Sea does kind of win for mere stylistic preference, all else being way too even.
and a few honorable mentions:
Changeling and Cyberpunk RED earn my top tier honorable mentions. I love them both quite a lot despite the less-than-perfect-fit I feel with their mechanics. one tier down, Exalted and Werewolf earn some brownie points for just feeling really cool to roleplay in. it is not their fault that they got matched up against the two games I've played the most and have the fondest memories of.
and so we continue on into a new round. here are the new match-ups--
Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs Pathfinder
The One Ring vs A Song of Ice and Fire
I almost do want to play them all again for the quarterfinals. wouldn't that be fun?
for the sake of time, however, I'm afraid we'll have to imagine all the gameplay we can and work with the experience I've been able to glean so far from these 8 potential champions. only one pair of the lot includes systems that were brand new to me when I started this thing. those two being matched together seems fair enough.
how will I approach this second round? I think I'll revisit each book directly and reconsider aesthetics, mechanics, and approachability in context of the new contrasts of each match. I'll likely draw on my prior reviews a bit as I do so, but I'll avoid as much repetition as I can possibly avoid.