Four months of Chaos

I am starting to think that serving as Chair of my Department during a pandemic is highly suboptimal with respect to my ongoing happiness and wellbeing. 

Since my university closed all of its physical buildings and switched everything online in mid-March, my life has been consumed by work (learning how to use new online tools; managing the transition online for my own teaching as well as helping my colleagues; frequent meetings with other Chairs, Deans, and so forth to address the endless problems caused by the shut down; more meetings since the end of term to figure out what to do in the autumn; and—unrelated to the pandemic—trying to finish my obscenely overdue book).

Consequently, blogging here has been quite minimal. I also haven’t done any gaming at all.

It’s been a grind. The only thing that has kept me sane was hiding from the world with my wife in my parents’ cabin on Lake Huron. Alas, that’s over now.

I’m in the midst of moving right now, but hopefully things will settle down in July and I can return to at least a bit of gaming and somewhat more frequent blogging.

Sorry for the whine.

Review of Crypts and Things Remastered

There is a quite informative review of Crypts and Things Remastered at Ynas Midgard's RPG Blog. (It was posted over a year ago, but I only just recently came across it.) 

Since I’m a great fan of C&T (and contributed some rules to it) I thought that I would mention it here, in case anyone was curious about the game.

Do you have that “Orcish” look? The splendid brow of a Uruk-hai?

"Lord of the Rings TV series issues New Zealand casting call for 'funky-looking' people"

"Talent agency job ad lists long skinny limbs, acne scars, facial lines, missing bones and large eyes as desirable features.”

Some of my friends would be perfect for these roles ("skinny limbs," "large eyes," etc.). (Not me, of course...)

Ian Holm sails to Valinor

The actor Ian Holm has passed away.

Most readers of this blog no doubt will be familiar with Holm’s role as the android “Ash” in the original (and best) Alien film, as well as his portrayal of “Bilbo Baggins” in Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth films (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit). He was perfect in both roles. He also superbly played “Napoleon” in Time Bandits. I’ve long been a fan of his work in general, including his portrayal of “Fluellen” in Kenneth Branagh’s version of Henry V.

RIP

Living a life of real value

I've mentioned it before here, but I'm a great fan of Existential Comics. And I quite liked today's strip (reproduced below).

Just replace "playing video games" with "playing role-playing games" and I'm pretty much this guy...