Category: David’s Posts

Wolf in White Van follow up

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The essay prompt on Wolf in White Van is up.

Hyborian_War_Setup_Rules
Also, I mentioned in class a week or so ago, that when I was young (pretty sure I was in middle school), I briefly participated in a play-by-mail game set in the Hyborian Age, the fictional period created by Robert E. Howard in his Conan the Barbarian books. I had forgotten all about this game until I read Wolf in White Van for the first time. I searched around online a bit, just hoping to remember what the game was called, and I found that it evidently still exists and is still running as a game: Hyborian War!

I link to this game mostly to show that the fundamental conceit of White Van is valid — these games did exist and they still do.

Also, if you’re interested in watching the bad, old fantasy film Sean watches in the first part of the novel, Krull is available on YouTube in full:

 

Fiasco Scheduling

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You’re going to play Fiasco next week. For starters, I’ve created a Doodle poll that includes an entire week in 3-hour overlapping blocks from 10a until midnight. Please respond to the poll and just denote each three hour block that you’re free. Count our class period on Th as free for the purposes of the poll, because I am cancelling the class period to facilitate gameplay scheduling. (I’ve made the times overlapping because if I put on the poll noon to 3 and then 3 to 6, maybe lots of you would be available from 1 – 4 but would mark no to each of those two. Does that make sense?)

So just indicate any 3-hour windows you’re available and I will see how difficult it is to create groups of 3-5 of you that include the entire class. I understand that it’s possible this process won’t work, and if it doesn’t we’ll go to a plan B but let’s see how it goes.

 

Gamecast: Assassin’s Creed and Empathy

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Assassin’s Creed is more than a game. If used correctly, it can be a tool to teach various historical events. In our podcast we play Assassin’s Creed Unity, which takes place during the French Revolution. We look at the pros and cons of using Assassin’s Creed as a teaching medium and whether or not Ubisoft created the game to teach history.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen

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John Darnielle has a column at Slate today about his 1995 song “Cubs in 5” and what it means now, with the Cubs in the World Series. It’s characteristically Darnielle, taking an unassuming detail like a baseball team breaking a 70-year-long drought, connecting it to a failed romantic relationship, and then building from there to a meditation on faith despite observable evidence.

Gamecast: Skyrim and Transit

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How is transit relevant to Skyrim?
Does a fictional world send a better message than a digital real world?
What does transit open you up to?

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