Trogdor!!: The Board Game

Today's review is of the 2019 release, Trogdor!!: The Board Game. For 1-6 players, it takes 30-60 minutes.

Overview

In this cooperative game, you take turns controlling Trogdor. The goal? Help him 'burninate' the countryside, cottages, and peasants! But look out: the land will fight back. Peasants help heal burninated land, knights damage Trogdor when he enters their space (or vice-versa) and can repair cottages, and the archer can shoot him from afar. Can you and your team decimate the land before the people take you down?

game in progress; image from here

To set up, place a 5x5 grid of tiles, non-burninated side up, and place peasants, villages, knights, and the archer according to game instructions. Give each player a 'keeper' (role) card, item card, and action card. These give you special abilities that will aid you. Put Trogdor on the center tile, and you're ready to begin!

On your turn, you draw an action card and choose one (the one you drew or the one in your initial hand) to use. This dictates your special ability and action points for that turn. Then use your action points to move, burninate land/village/peasants, chomp peasants (gain health), or hide (to avoid taking damage). Then the game has a turn; using randomized movement cards, peasants are placed [taken from Trogdor's health] and move one square, potentially healing burninated land. Then knights move based on the random pattern showed on that same movement card, wrapping around the board when required. 

Turn proceeds in clockwise order. You all win if at any point every tile and village are burninated, and peasants are gone. The game wins if the knights and archer can kill Trogdor before that happens. 

Trogdor's health meter is peasants; when he 'chomps' them, he gains a health. When peasants die in any other way (like by being burninated), they are placed in the void- off the board, in other words. When Trogdor takes damage, remove a peasant from his health and place him into the void. So there are many ways to remove peasants from the game, and only one way to add them to Trogdor's health- by chomping them.

Review

I recently reminisced about Homestar Runner and mentioned this board game, based on a character created in a Strongbad Email. If you like the humor of that web series and are familiar with Trogdor, you will probably enjoy this game, which is chock-full of references to that email specifically and the Homestar universe in general. The rules and wording on the cards assumes it so be so; I'm not sure this would make sense to those unfamiliar. I recently introduced my kids to Trogdor, and they were quite amused. (And now running around the home screaming "Trogdor!!" in a heavy metal voice, just like the web short. My wife is thrilled.) Bottom line: you should know Trodgor before you play this game.

Assuming you know Trogdor, how is the game? It's pretty good. I didn't have high expectations, but this one has some nice elements. The modular tile board is nice, the game moves quickly, and it is fun. I found myself talking in Strongbad's voice throughout for the full experience, which (oddly) does enhance things. There is a heavy luck component- the randomized movements of knights means you cannot strategically place Trogdor, so this is very much a press-your-luck social game more intended for the enjoyment of the theme than the execution of deep strategy. 

Rating: B+

The Making of Middle-Earth (Christopher Snyder)

In The Making of Middle-Earth, Christopher Snyder takes us through the three 'worlds' of Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien:

- "the physical world in which he was born and educated, and in which he taught, wrote, made friendships, worshipped, and raised a family."

- "the intellectual realm where Tolkien spent much of his time, beginning with his first fascination with fairy stories through his adult obsessions with Northern languages and legends."

- "the world most familiar to Tolkien fans: Middle-earth, a land of elves and dark powers and Tom Bombadil."

In sum, Snyder summarizes the first two worlds (providing a brief Tolkien biography and summary of the history/literature/languages he loved) and shows how they influenced the third world. He walks us through the best-known works (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), but also The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, and other Tolkien tales. He then discusses the movies (both the animated versions, from the '70s/'80s, and the Peter Jackson films) and 'Tolkieniana' in general. 

I enjoyed this book- particularly the insights into Tolkien's influences. There are historical and literary inspirations behind the characters, places, and stories in the Tolkien books that I never noticed before.

I also liked that the book covered these topics briefly, without delving too deeply into any of them. (There are a ton of footnotes for those who wish to do so.) Overall, this is a nice book for the Tolkien fan who wants to learn more but does not want to dedicate their life to studying the man.

Rating: A-

Andor: Season 1

Cassian Andor, the Rebel operative who died retrieving the Death Star plans in Rogue One, gets his own prequel television series in Andor. This 12-episode tale follows him through the years immediately preceding the movie- his troubled past, his difficult present trying to sell stolen Imperial technology, his run-in with Luthen Rael (who tries to get him to join the Rebels), his involvement in a Rebel heist, his subsequent flight to avoid such a life, a later unrelated arrest/escape, and the forebodings of his future. But it's not just about him. We also get a look into Luthen's and Mon Mothma's work for the Rebels- one in the shadows, the other as a senator on Coruscant. And we even get some insights into the Imperial perspective through Syril Karn, obsessed with finding Andor, and Dedra Meero, an Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) supervisor. Can a rag-tag band group of Rebels coaelesce to overcome Imperial might- or is it too little, too late?

This show has its share of fans and critics. My kids called it "good but boring." It was certainly grittier and less action-packed than your typical Star Wars fare, focusing instead on the suspense, sacrifice, and machinations required of those planning a Rebellion. I liked it overall, though I thought there were some plot points that seemed forced or poorly explained. And I could get confused with keeping all the characters and storylines straight. 

Ultimately, I see the show's primary value in its portrayal of sacrifice. Multiple characters give of themselves in varied ways for the Rebel cause. Perhaps the most poignant moment of the whole series is this exchange (copied from here):

Lonni Jung: And what do you sacrifice? 

Luthen Rael: Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I've given up all chance at inner peace. I've made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there's only one conclusion, I'm damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they've set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!

Powerful.

Rating: B+

Meaning & Futility

As mentioned in the previous post, I gave a devotional message this past January. The below is a transcript. I apologize for any formatting oddities.
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I mentioned in my previous talk that being amongst castle and abbey ruins gave me a great sense of peace and heightened awareness of the tension in our lives between meaning and futility. I’d like to explore those concepts more now for the devotional. This will not be one text but a survey throughout the Scriptures, and we’ll start at the beginning, looking at this topic through the lens of the four-chapter gospel.

CREATION

In Genesis, God creates the earth and everything in it. He gives man a unique station and charge: 

Genesis 1:26-28: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 

This is what we call the ‘cultural mandate.’ God’s command to fill the earth, subdue, and have dominion imply the need for organization, delineation of responsibility, and collaboration- in other words, culture. This is the general mandate, true for all. It’s not bounded by age or role. And it shows that our creation had purpose- meaning. We weren’t here just to be here- we have an important role to play as stewards of the earth, responsible for its growth and thriving.

For Adam and Eve specifically, we see what that means in Genesis 2: 

Genesis 2:15: The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

There’s no tension at this point because there’s no sin. We have purpose and aren’t constrained by curse. But things didn’t go well for long.

FALL

We know the story- Adam and Eve sinned, breaking the relationship with God. The penalty is spelled out in Genesis 3: 

Genesis 3:17-19: And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

In the fall, the cultural mandate doesn’t change- we are still to be fruitful and multiply and subdue and have dominion- but there are two new realities introduced due to the curse:

1. The ground (creation) is cursed. It will fight back! There will be pain and failure and futility.
2. Man is cursed and will die. We will return to dust. And sinfulness now pervades our being.

So now we see the tension. The command to build and do meaningful work, but also the reality of pain, futility, and death. And sin- we want to be owner, not steward, of God’s creation.

Humanity has wrestled with this tension throughout our history, and Solomon offers a helpful exploration of this topic in Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-3, 12-14: The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? . . . I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 2:16-20: For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, Solomon here is grappling with the tension between desiring to do something meaningful and the reality of death, dissatisfaction, and uncertainty. Our work can be vexing and seem pointless. Even if our work is successful in our lifetime, what follows? He recognizes that we have the eternal in us, saying 

Ecclesiastes 3:11: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 

Solomon is struggling with this tension. That we know there is more but see decay all around. He ‘gripes’ about this for a while, until concluding 

Ecclesiastes 12:13: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

We don’t know if Solomon delights in, or is resigned to, this statement. It’s a statement of faith either way- obey the Lord, even when it appears pointless or painful.

How does Jesus change things?

REDEMPTION

Jesus’s life and work revealed God’s plan. Jesus was the promised Messiah, delivering us from our sins by dying in our stead. He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13), and Jesus cried out on the cross that “it is finished” (John 19:30). How does the finished work of Jesus- His death and resurrection- affect the tension we experience between the eternal and temporary?

2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Colossians 3:1-3: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

1 Peter 22b-25a: . . . love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

We see here the tension still existing, but in a different sort of way. We- still in perishable bodies on a cursed earth- have died and been raised with Christ. We see this concept of perishable ‘putting on’ imperishable more in 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-49, 50, 53:
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body . . . 42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. 50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. . . 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

What does this mean? How should we then live in this ‘already but not yet’ mindset? Jesus shows the way.

RESTORATION

Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross is finished. But He came to do more. “The purpose of redemption is not to escape the world but to renew it.” – Tim Keller

This makes sense of Jesus’s work before He died and rose again. We see in Matthew 6:33 and 20-21, respectively, that Jesus says to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and to lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. But this is not a call to ignore the world.

We know that Jesus did all things well (Mark 7:37), and we’re commanded to do the same. We read in 1 Corinthians 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. And in Colossians 3:23-24 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

Look at how Jesus Himself lived that out in the Gospels: he healed the sick, fed the hungry, restored the infirm, brought the dead to life. Jesus shows through His work and His commands that He is tying the temporal to the eternal. He is showing that His ultimate purpose is not only redemption- but also restoration. And it is there that the tension is resolved.

The call to participate in the work of restoration is what gives our perishable work eternal significance. When Jesus healed and fed,

“Jesus was showing that he has the ability to deliver on his promise of new heavens and a new earth. As his disciples, we are to go out into the world and work to bring about flourishing in everything we do, giving those around us the hope of the way things could be. As Christians, we are called to live lives so transformed by this four-chapter gospel that others will see in it the possibility of their own transformation and the world’s.” – Hugh Whelchel (ATN)

And Jesus says in John 14:12, Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.

This claim- shocking at first glance- is talking about is his restorative work, not redemptive. Since His departure and sending of the Spirit, He has worked through His church- millions of His people- do to works greater in quantity than what He did as one person. And we see the end state in Revelation:

Revelations 21:1-6: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

Conclusion

What we do matters. And is a vanity. It fades, it is temporary, it may fail or seem futile. But it is significant. We live in the ‘already-not yet’ tension of the last days.

An eternal perspective gives value to our earthly work- what we do matters, so we give ourselves to the things that matter. We work, we bring out the potential, we heal, we build things of beauty. These efforts and achievements are not to be objects that we worship, but offerings of our worship. Bringing them to God as stewards. Pointing everyone to the final restoration; preparing the way. Not knowing what God will do with them but working as faithful servants and remembering 1 Corinthians 15: 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

So as I stroll through the ruins, I’m reminded of these things. Glory, work, beauty, futility, eternity. I see echoes of the past ringing down through the present. The same God was with these people. The same God guided them through good and bad, through building and failing, through health and pandemic, through peace and war. Their work of those who have come before did not last in a physical sense, but yet has eternal ramifications. We can therefore entrust our souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

Post-talk thought: Ruins are echoes/reminders of the past. Our perishable works are echoes/reminders of the future.

References

-         R.C. Sproul (general editor), The Reformation Study Bible (RSB), English Standard Version.  Ligonier Ministries, 2005, ISBN 978-1-59638-136-0

-          Hugh Whelchel, All Things New (ATN). Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, 2016, ISBN 9780096425797

-          John Frame, Systematic Theology (ST). P&R Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-1-59638-217-6.

Ruins

Having recently posted my talk for a recent church event, called Ignite, I realized that I had never done so for the same event we held in January. Here it is. The pictures were the powerpoint presentation.

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Good morning everyone. Most of you know that I spent 10 of the last 15 years living in Europe- in Germany and England. I miss many things about our time there, and I’d like to share with you today one aspect in particular: ruins of castles and abbeys. We’ll start with castles.

Castles became increasingly prevalent in Europe from ~1000AD. Castles were popular for obvious reasons. They protected borders, trade routes, strategic spots, people, and goods. They could house armies and be a base for nearby raiding. And they were numerous- at one point, there were ~20,000 castles in Germany- the most in Europe.

Castles reigned supreme for centuries, but it would not last. With gunpowder and advances in technology, artillery could break through stone walls by the 1400s, and the structures gradually became obsolete (though still effective even in Napoleon’s time- some castles were used against him and destroyed by his army as they swept through Europe in the 1800s). Today, what remains are four types of castles: real (never destroyed or seriously altered), restored (rebuilt, often in more modern styles), romantic (built after the age of fortification, in the 1800s), and . . . ruined.

Today 80% of German castles are in a state of ruin (and half of those have only ground-level foundations (if that!)). Some have disappeared entirely; we know about them only through literature. Castles were expensive to upkeep; when they became obsolete, they were abandoned or auctioned off. They decayed naturally, or were used as a quarry- it was a valuable source of dressed stone for local residents.

Abbeys
Hundreds of monastic communities developed in Great Britain starting in the 1100s. Over the centuries, some of these had become impressive estates, with beautiful buildings and ample land for crops or livestock. In fact, monasteries owned over 25% of all cultivated land in England.

In the 1530s, the Reformation swept through England. In 1534, the English parliament broke from the Papacy and established King Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Two years later, Henry started disbanding religious houses in what would be called the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He ultimately shut down about 800. He took their money and removed the roofs of their buildings, stripping the valuable lead and rendering them uninhabitable. Much was lost- libraries, artwork, and livelihoods for ~7,000 people. Historians disagree on the motive- money was one obvious factor (Henry made £500M in today’s money through this act), but reform may have also been on Henry’s mind. Regardless, it created many abandoned religious sites that fell to ruin and can be seen to this day. 

So What? 

Be it castles or abbeys, I love ruins. I like them more than intact structures of antiquity. I am at peace amidst the decay. Why? I think it’s because ruins show us an important truth about our reality- they are powerful examples of the tension between God’s commands to build and flourish, and our finite and seemingly vain existence. The grass withers, the flower fades. Yet our work has meaning and purpose well beyond our own lifespans. We’ll explore this more in the devotional I’ll give shortly [which may be my next post].

Homestar Runner

the regulars featured in Homestar Runner animations

I recently saw an ad were everything was 50% off at the Homestar Runner store. That name took me down memory lane . . . care to walk with me?

Launched in 2000, Homestar Runner is an online animated web comedy series featuring a zany cast of characters. Per its Wikipedia entry, "it uses a blend of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to popular culture, in particular video games, classic television, and popular music." The 'main' toons featured Homestar Runner and his friends as they did random things, but the site soon branched out and had several 'side' series.  You can view the entire toons catalog or go directly to selected sections (number produced in parentheses following):

- Main Toons (21)

- Shorts (~100) 

- Holiday features (74)

- Strong Bad Emails (209), where the show's snarky bully answered fan email

- Teen Girl Squad (15), a poorly-animated show about four teen girls drawn and voiced-over by Strong Bad

As indicated by quantities, the most popular section was the Emails. 

Some toons were great; some were meh. (Ultimately, this is one of those series you need to be in the mood for, like Monty Pyton.) I generally enjoyed it for its randomness and parody of pop culture. But the very best thing about this was who I was watching it with.

I shared a townhome with two friends from 2003-2005, and watching Homestar was a recurring group activity. I think Strong Bad emails came out every Tuesday, and we would huddle around the computer in delightful anticipation as it loaded. We'd then explore the other sections for new videos. It was a great time. Here were some of our favorites:

- Marshie the Marshmallow, a talking marshmallow trying to sell you the product in normal times or on special occasions like Malloween commercial

- Cheat Commandos, a GI Joe parody

- Trogdor, the one-armed dragon who would eventually get his own board game (in real life)

- Limozeen, the heavy metal band who would eventually get their own TV show . . . in space

I moved out in 2005 when I got married; Homestar isn't my wife's brand of humor, and so I fell away from it. So did the creators- they took a long break (with no warning or news) for years, only coming back recently (and then, only occasionally). Though its glory days are in the past, I remember it fondly for what it was and the fellowship it enabled.

Railroad Rivals

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Railroad Rivals. For 1-5 players, it takes 30-60 minutes.

Overview

In the golden age of railroads, twelve main companies spread their networks across America. Railroad Rivals is a tile-drafting and tile-laying game where you work to expand your city connections while investing wisely in company stocks. Order matters- at the start of each round, you will have a chance to bid to be first player. But bid too much and you may find yourself behind the competition. Do you have what it takes to succeed?

game in progress; image from here

For the sake of example, let's say you are playing a four-player game. Each player is dealt three city tiles. Each city has a railroad company named on each side and a load value (the number of load randomly drawn from a bag and placed on the city when that tile is laid). Four more city tiles and four stock tiles are laid out in public view. 

Select Tiles

In player order, select a city OR stock tile. Once all four players have chosen, then you select again, choosing the opposite category of what you selected the first time (so select a stock OR city tile).

Place City Tiles

In player order, place a city tile onto the common map. It must be placed adjacent to an existing tile, and the touching sides must have matching railroad companies. Lay your train across these tiles to indicate that you own the route. Randomly draw the number of load cubes listed on the city tile and place it there.

Deliver Goods

In player order, deliver one load between connecting cities and remove it from the game. Whoever owns the connection you deliver the load through gets 3 points (if the load cube's color is the first to be delivered this round), or 2 (if the color was delivered for the second time) or 1 (if three or more times). Then advance the stock of that railroad company by one on the scoring board.

To set up for the next round, lay out four more city tiles and four more stock tiles. Then players bid for the right to go first using the points they have accumulated. The winner pays the points and shifts their position to first (pushing the others down one but maintaining their order). The next round begins. Play continues until all cities are gone. Then stock values are added to the final score (if I have 3 stocks in the PRR and it is worth 5, I get 15 more points). Highest score wins!

Review

This is a neat little game. It is simple enough to understand but has enough choices to make it hard to master. Sometimes you are stuck without being able to place a city (if your city sides don't match any exposed on the common map), and when that happens you cannot place a train or deliver goods, leaving you at a marked disadvantage. That knocks it down a peg in my book, but it is a solid choice overall and is a nice dose of nostalgia for train enthusiasts to boot.

Rating: B+

Books, Blogs, and Bicycles

Every year, my church puts on a speaking event called "Ignite." Similar to TEDD talks (but limited to 5 minutes instead of 20), it is a great time. This year, I presented on books, blogs, and bicycles. A transcript is below.

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Good morning everyone. I’d like to share three of my hobbies with you today, the odd way they came to be, and what I learned from it. First up, books.

BOOKS: In 2011, we moved to England. Small children and consistently poor weather limited my options to quiet, indoor activities. I decided to begin reading in earnest. A few months in hooked me . . . ever since I’ve read 40-80 books a year. I’ve created reading lists to learn about topics and read books I would otherwise avoid. I’ve grown so much from the wisdom, knowledge, experience, and skill of others. But even as I enjoyed this new hobby, it exposed a weakness . . . I have a terrible memory. Wanting to have lasting benefit, I thought on ways to retain what I had read, so I started a blog.

BLOGS: In 2012, I started blogging about the books I read to help me remember them. I quickly came to love this, too, and it soon expanded- I started doing summaries of important Christians works. I posted about movies, travels, board games, and reflections- posts where I wrestled with various topics, to include my own fallenness (hence the blog name). I came to enjoy it so much that I started a second blog in 2020, to explain, explore, and enjoy my favorite card game. Ten years later, I’ve posted about 1500 times- 700 of which are book reviews.

Blogging has helped me in several ways. Einstein said “if you cannot explain something simply, you do not understand it well enough.” And Scott Berkun said “good public speaking is the result of good private thinking.” I try to make my blog posts concise, correct, complete, and compelling. That is hard to do- I am not a natural writer. It forces me to think, process, and engage the subject in ways I wouldn’t otherwise. This helps me understand, explain it simply, and speak. So blogging has turned out to improve my writing, thinking, and speaking ability. 

BICYCLES: In 2020, the pandemic descended on Germany. I didn’t mind being locked down and indoors- I had my books and blog- but I needed physical activity, too. Gyms were closed and running was out due to injury. I was exasperated and had nowhere else to turn . . . and then I remembered my bicycle. Basically unused for nearly 10 years, I pulled it out of the shed and picked a direction. As I cycled up my first big hill . . . I had to get off and walk, as I was in no shape for the sport. But I persisted, and a few weeks in, I had a new love.

Bicycling gave me the exercise I needed, but opened other doors, too. It helped me learn the local community- we are called to serve in a time and place, and we so should know that time and place- but most importantly, it justified trips to the bakery. (Ich möchte ein Strudel!) I got to take in 2,000 years of history on routes that took me by Medieval castles, renaissance towns, and the ancient border of the Roman Empire, quieting my pandemic-weary soul as I reflected upon a sovereign and everlasting God. 

Reflecting on it all: As I look back on the past ten years, I see that three of my favorite hobbies were born out of environmental limitation, personal weakness, and psychological exasperation. And the Lord has used these things to grow me in ways I never expected. Stepping back, these experiences have helped me see that the uncertainty in our present age- in both our church and culture at large- can be approached with confidence. Not that things will turn out the way we want or expect: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” . . . “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good.” (2 Cor. 12:10 and Rom. 8:28a)

Destinies

Today's review is of the 2021 release, Destinies. For 1-3 people, it takes 90-150 minutes.

Overview

In a Medieval fantasy world, you assume a role (like huntsman, nun, or noble) and find yourselves in a town plagued by various horrors. Your ultimate goal is to fulfill your destiny (the secret and unique win condition on the back of your role card) before the others, even as you all seek to rid the town of this mysterious menace. Will you prevail?

Destinies is an app-assisted game. The free app is best displayed on a smartphone, as you will need to scan the cards (role and item cards have QR codes) whenever the app dictates, and you will need to pass the device from player to player so the knowledge they gain from the actions they take remain known only to them. 

The turn structure is simple: refresh one die (add a purple die to your dice pool if you can), move up to two squares, and take an action (generally talking to someone or exploring a site of interest). If you move on to an unexplored tile, turn it face up and follow the app's instructions on placing people/items/sites on it. If taking an action, choose one of the options the app gives you and do what it requires. This could be rolling some/all of your dice to decide the outcome of a test, scanning an item you have, or something other. When your turn is done, pass the phone to the next person. Play continues until someone has completed their destiny.

an example of a map used in one scenario; image from here

The test mechanic merits explanation. You have three skills and a track for each (see example below). Your role dictates where the wooden discs are placed in each track to start, and your adventures/decisions throughout the game can move the discs left or right. When required to make a test, look at which type of test. Roll the dice in your pool (to the right of the role card)- you must roll the white dice, but can opt to roll the purple too. Add up the total number rolled, and then look at the corresponding test track (let's say it is green for this example). If you rolled total of 9, you look at the 9 on the green track and count all discs on or to the left of it (two in this example). This is your number of successes for the test. Enter that number in the app to see how it resolves. The white dice go back in your pool, but any purple dice rolled stay out until an instruction (or item you use) tells you to 'refresh' them, which means putting them back in the pool to be eligible for use.

the character board; image from here

Review

This is my second app-assisted game, and it plays very similarly to Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth (JIME). And both are solid. Here's what I liked about Destinies:

- the map tiles are drawn beautifully

- the test mechanic is cool

- the rules/turns are simple and move quickly

- the items and QR codes are integrated well

- the secret win conditions and knowledge are an interesting twist

- the box is designed very well- all components have a place and plastic lids keep things in order

Here's what I didn't care for:

- the miniatures are very small

- the app's instructions (about your options) aren't always intuitive, and if you hit a button by accident, there is no correcting it

- it seems less replayable (than JIME). Once you know the roles, you will know their win conditions, so the hidden knowledge aspect erodes over time (and gives advantage to those who have played before)

- it is limited to 3 players

- it takes a long time. Each session will probably run more than two hours. Though the turns move fast, you need to go through a lot of them to get through an episode.

I played the introductory scenario (a stand-alone situation) with my two boys, and we all enjoyed it, though it did drag on. Ultimately, I think you JIME and Destinies are similar enough that you needn't play both; choose one and stick with it through a multi-session campaign. Both have their pros and cons, but both are good.

Rating: A

How to Inhabit Time (James K.A. Smith)

We cannot escape the reality of living in time. "We, both individually and collectively, are products of a contingent history. Our identities are bound up with roads taken and not . . . our character and capacities reflect histories that amount to our own story. A faithful Christian life is a matter of keeping time with the Spirit. But what the Spirit asks of us always reflects history- our own, but also the history of the church and the societies in which we find ourselves. 'What do we do now?' is one of the fundamental questions of discipleship." 

"This book is intended as a wake-up call to the significance of your temporality, our temporality- awakening to the way history lives in you, the way we inhabit history and history inhabits us, and the way futurity pulls us and shapes us." It's about "discerning the spiritual repurcussions of a history that precedes you, lives in you, and shapes the future to which you are called." Smith calls us to contemplate and recognize these realities. Ultimately "the point is to transform our attention to reality by reframing our focus." "Knowing when we are can change everything."

"Consider this book an invitation to the discipline of what we might call memento tempori. Remember you are temporal." "Each chapter of this book is an exercise in cultivating temporal awareness, a new angle on the ways the Spirit courses through time." Smith does this by looking at a number of areas, in bold below and followed by select thoughts:

The spiritual significance of timekeeping

We normally think of disorientation as a purely physical concept, but it can be temporal, too. 

"A lot of contemporary Christianity suffers from spiritual dyschronometria- an inability to keep time, a lack of awareness of what time it is." "We don't recognize how much we are the products of a past, leading to naïveté about our present. But we also don't know how to keep time with a promised future, leading to fixations on the 'end times' rather than cultivating a posture of hope." 

Though God does not change, what faithfulness looks like can be a product of time and place. Ignoring this is a problem that "actually generates unfaithful responses to the present." There are seasons (in our personal life stages, communities, and cultures as a whole), and recognizing this "attunes us to receive God's grace in different ways in different eras of life." This should not demoralize us; "Our being subject to the conditions of temporality is not a prison but a focus."

"Spiritual timekeeping is fundamentally a matter of awakening to our embeddedness in history and attending to our temporality- both individually and collectively." It is "discerning how time shapes us, as both history and future."

"We need to remember that at the heart of Christianity is not a teaching or a message or even a doctrine but an event. God's self-revelation unfolds in time, and redemption is accomplished by what happens." "Because Christianity is fundamentally a 'happening,' we rightly understand it only in terms of story." One result is that "Faith is a how and, more specifically, a way of living in light of an event." "Being a Christian, then, is not so much a matter of believing something about God as much as living in light of this event's cascading effects on history. Christian faith is ongoing participation in the Christ-event which continues to rumble through human history. Christianity is less a what and more a how, a question of how to live given what has happened in Christ."

Smith argues that "spiritual timekeeping [ST]- living out the faith with a disciplined temporal awareness- is informed by four fundamental convictions." 

1. ST "is the working out of our creaturely finitude as creatures embedded in time." This includes "how to forget, how to remember; how to mourn, how to enjoy what's fleeting; how to wait, how to hope."

2. ST "reflects a sense of time shaped by covenant." Jesus's promise to never leave nor forsake us "is a promise of a presence through history- not above it or in spite of it."

3. ST "is nourished by Jesus's promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time."

4. ST "is animated by the future."

How to face our forgetting

When and where we live impacts and shapes us in ways we don't always realize. "[T]o be temporal is to be indebted to a past and oriented toward a future." It is "to be the sort of creature who absorbs time and its effects." "We move through time not just ticking along from moment to moment but with a temporal halo of retention and anticipation."

This past/inheritances shapes us; it can "constrain and channel the way we live." Recognizing this "doesn't lift us above the vicissitudes of history. It only makes us newly attentive to our conditioning, perhaps less confident in the purity of our good intentions and more conscious of our limited purview, our mixed motives, the ways even our best plans can unravel in unintended consequences in a future we can never control."

"When we recognize that we are embedded in a when, a pressing question dawns from this recognition: When are we? And where is God in this when? Where is the Spirit afoot in our now?"

We are also contigent. "Contingency means that of every history we can say 'It didn't have to be this way' and 'This is the way it is.' The question at the intersection is, Now what? How to live forward?"

How to learn from ghosts

"Our past is not past; it oozes into the present." "Sometimes this fuels possibility and opportunity  . . . [sometimes] anxiety and rage. A buried past is not dormant. Ignoring the past is not a way to escape it. Indeed, the buried past probably takes more than it gives." So we must face it.

Our pasts, both individually and culturally, mean that "we are bundles of potentiality, but the possibilities are not infinite. We are thrown into a time and place, thrown into a story that is our history, and these form the horizons of possibility for us . . . that is not a limitation as much as a focusing, a gifted specificity. This corner of earth I've been given to till. Thes neighbors I am called to love. These talents I'm exhorted to fan into flame."

The bad things in our past (done by us or to us) can be of surprising value. "God's sanctifying presence in my life doesn't erase what's gone before. Indeed, what God has prepared for me depends on what has gone before. My personal history isn't something to regret; it is something God can deploy in ways I never could have imagined." 

The good things in our past are blessings to be celebrated, but nostalgia is dangerous. "To walk back a life is to lose it; to get what nostalgia craves is loss. To have your life back would be to lose everything that unfolded and what God wants to use." We must remember that "because of my past, God's renewing Spirit can birth in me insights, empathy, attention that are exactly what someone needs in the world."

How (not) to be contemporary

"Too many forms of Christianity merely endure the present as the price to be paid for reaching an atemporal eternity." That is not what God calls us to. "The Christian inhabits time as cyclical and linear." Our annual church calendar- a liturgy of sorts- invites us to participate in these events as all the saints who have been (and will be). "The present matters, but now is not only the present. Our now is pregnant: it bears possibilities from a past that will be borne into a future." "Past and present permeate each other; the now is porous."

How to love what you'll lose

"Learning to live with, even celebrate, the transitory is a mark of Christian timekeeping, a way of settling into our creature hood and resting in our mortality."

Moments can be lost by the desire to seize them. "Bent on capturing the moment, [we] are no longer present to it." Thus, "to live mortally, we might say, is to receive gifts by letting go, finding joy in the fleeting present. This is temporal contentment: to inhabit time with eyes wide open, hands outstretched, not to grasp but to receive, enjoy, and let go. Sometimes knowing this won't last forever compels us to hold hands in the present."

The Fall corrupts, yes, "but to dwell mortally is to achieve a way of being in the world for which not all change is loss and not all loss is tragic- while at the same time naming and lamenting those losses that ought not to be." 

How to inhabit your now

We all experience seasons in life. "Seasonality means that, rather than being governed by the unceasing ticks of a minute hand, our lives unfold in eras." And these can be "episodes of duration rather than punctiliar events." It is important "to grasp our seasonal location."

Each season has good and difficult aspects, with different blessings, trials, and expectations. "Seasons are transitory yet focal. Seasons are temporary yet bequeath to us something we carry forward. Seasons ask something of us. They both take time and give something back." "Giving ourselves over to the season is a way to receive what we need to take from it into the next." "If there are seasons in which we should expect certain kinds of experiences to befall us, there are also times when certain actions are expected of us."

"God's nearness looks and feels different depending on the season you're in. You will also find that Scripture sounds different, depending on your season. Or rather . . . you fill find yourself differently attuned to the same Word you've heard a thousand times before." "God and God's Word remains the same, but the place and season in which I (and we) hear it creates new resonances, new epiphanies."

How to sing Maranatha [come, O Lord!]

"Christians are a futural people. Every day we pray for God's kingdom to come. But as long as we are praying it, it hasn't yet arrived, which means we are also a waiting people."

Yet we wait for what's to come. "We are never called to turn back the clock. Appeasl to God's actions in history are not invoked in a spirit of 'Golden-age-ism'; Eden is never celebrated as our destination. Our pilgrimage is not an Odyssean return. We are pulled toward a home we've never visited. We are oriented to what is coming, not what has been."

But this waiting is not done inactively. "If you believe Christ is coming, the key question isn't When? but How? The question is not How long have we got? but rather How should we live now, in light of that expectation? How will the future shape your present?"

---------

This book is outstanding. Smith has a way with a sentence- this work is peppered with prose that is simple and succinct yet profound and powerful. So many phrases were like gut punches of insight, and their frequency left me reeling- but thankful.

Rating: A+

Tales of the Jedi: Season 1

Tales of the Jedi is a six-episode series of shorts (each running 12-18 minutes). It focuses on formative moments in the lives of two Jedi in particular: Ahsoka Tano and Master Dooku.

It is hard to get any real depth in such short episodes. The first three were boring; the last three were excellent. You should be familiar with Episodes I-III and the Clone Wars series for these to make any sense, though. These are more connective tissue between established tales than independent stories.

Rating: B