These Wretched Games We Play

"Is there anything as torturous as the life of a noble? Better to have been born a street beggar, to have a short life but one full of stories! Now let's make something of ourselves!" - Kwitty Odighizuwa, Esq. The old age of adventuring draws to an end. There are still treasures to be found, adventure to embark upon. But hitherto, adventurers have been little more than itinerant mercenaries, scorned by all classes. They are labeled murderers, thieves and hellions. How could they not behave in this way? The common folk cast aspersions on them, and the elite exploit their labour and talents. Proud as these adventurers might appear, they are their master's fodder. But that shall change! Eons of turmoil have molded the us into a civilized people. We will create a world where titles and lineage matter not, whereupon it will be one's abilities and merit that will determine their fate. The forces of capital and industry will propel us into the future! Call yourself not a...

    The Grammy's never disappoint when it comes to big surprises! And who could have guessed this year that the Jonas Brothers  (pictured above) would upset the long-raining Grammy favorites Radiohead ? The music world is abuzz with this shocking result and what it means for the future of popular music. With the dethroning of Radiohead, will more experimental sounds be allowed to compete in the musicplace of ideas? I can't think of a better time to start a series where I list the Top 5 Songs I've discovered each month. Usually, these songs won't be released that month, since most of my listening time is devoted to catching up on all the great music I've missed, which is approximately 8.9 million songs. I hear a few hundred new songs every month so even the fifth and fourth entries on these types of lists are songs I hold nearest and dearest. 5. SIHEYMN'S Lament - Liturgy (2020) Trap Hip-Hop / Symphonic Black Metal / Djent Metal     One of the most interesting an...

       The 'Hood   by James Mullen of Groundhoggoth Games  is a TTRPG about regular ass people surviving, thriving, and conniving in the streets. Far flung from the traditional Heroic Fantasy structure of the medium, the characters in this game are confined mostly to a singular locality. That's not a bad thing, since they're  enmired in so much petty minutiae that the half-dozen blocks that constitute their life are as robust and treacherous as any fantasy kingdom.     I've run two campaigns of this game. The first was Kingdom of Neon , centered around a discordant Jewish family living in Jersey City. The second, Goddamn Adventurers! , recontecxtuilzed the game into a High Fantasy world where the player characters took on the roles of background NPCs in a typical DnD game: the quest-giving bartender, the city gang leader, the local peacekeepers, and so on. Both of these wildly different campaigns were among the most rewarding and valuable I'v...

This is gonna my last multi-album review mix for a while! It's been a lot of fun and I might come back to it, but it's hard to cover this many albums to my satisfaction. I think single or double album reviews would be more efficient and fun. I also want to focus on reviewing singles rather than albums for a while and going in depth with that. Still, this was a fun project and I learned a lot about writing and music critique in just a short while! Music will still be a big part of this blog moving forward. So let's finish with the biggest mix yet! (The formatting is really weird on this one. I don't know what happened. Sorry x_x) No Dream - Jeff Rosenstock (2020) Punk Rock 8/10 Jeff Rosenstock is here punkier than ever. He returns with the angst, but now feels even angrier and more indignant both sonically and narratively. Rosenstock interjects classic punk chords and distortions into his battles against his friends and enemies (usually one in the...

                             Pony - Orville Peck (2019) Country  8/10 This boi got a voice that could lullaby a bison come noon-up(?) The instrumentation is... nice , but sometimes it feels like the softer production is betraying Orville's vocal range. The Masked Ranger can hit booming power notes (going full Whitney Houston on "Hope to Die") as easily as sweeping melodies ("Dead of Night", "Roses Are Falling"). There's a lot of classic country hits infused with modern sensibilities: "Buffalo Run", "Kansas (Remembers Me Now)" and "Take You Back (The Iron Hoof Cattle Call)". It's enough to make a young man... Another flaw is a small stretch of weaker songs in the middle, but the beginning of this album yanks you into the starlit prairie night and ends with some legitimate tearjerkers, especially the bittersweet "Nothing Fades Like the Light". Hopefully Mr...