Category: history

A Song of Swords Sit-Down, Part III

Two weeks ago, I spoke with Zachary Irwin and James Lacombe of Opaque Industries about their upcoming tabletop fantasy roleplaying game Song of Swords, which is now being funded on Kickstarter. In Part I of the interview, we discussed the influence of historical martial arts on the game’s combat system. Part II concerned the influence of …

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A Song of Swords Sit-Down, Part II

Two weeks ago, I spoke with Zachary Irwin and James Lacombe of Opaque Industries about their upcoming tabletop fantasy roleplaying game Song of Swords, which is now being funded on Kickstarter. In Part I of the interview, which you may read here, we discussed how historical martial arts influenced Song of Swords’s distinctive combat system. This, …

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An American Accident: How Columbus’s Landing Amounted to Sheer Luck

In the popular culture, we afford Christopher Columbus a peculiar degree of reverence. My childhood books and history lessons portrayed him as a visionary, fighting against the ridicule of ignorant, flat-Earth scholars and kings to sail West to India, and who through grit and perseverance achieved both the discovery of the Americas and that the …

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Telling Time in the Renaissance, Part I: A Change in Calendars

Time is a slippery beast. You may believe otherwise, if you live in today’s West. Here, the moments march lockstep in time with the news ticker, Twitter feeds and the stock market bell—every event branded with a number. The precision of industry disguises the artifice that is our experience of time. In the world of …

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