Sad to say that I missed your appearance on HBR yesterday. It sounds like we have similar backgrounds, as I've also been through a postgraduate degree in medieval history, literature (mostly English, French and Latin) and philology, and encountered my fair share of postmodernist critical theory and its various cliques. Thankfully, I'd read Camille Paglia's rant essay on this academic fad, 'Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders', before I began my MA, and acquired some inoculation against the usual academic political posturing, though even I fell victim to its spell for a short while.
I'm even Canadian, too, albeit from Vancouver (don't get me started on how costly this city is).
I also share your passion for old-school RPGs. Your game Lion and Dragon frankly sounds amazing, as I adore medieval realism. But for me what I love the older editions D&D, though, less a North American renaissance-faire understanding of European history, but an attempted ecumenical or scholastic synthesis of classic fantasy literature (i.e. Tolkien, Vance) including pulp, mythology and traditional fairy tales, and a modicum of historical realism. Just as theologians like St Thomas Aquinas and Pico della Mirandola attempted to synthesise Christian theology with one or more traditions of Classical thought, so too does (for me) this older D&D take a similar syncretic approach. To be sure, sometimes these strains are complementary, sometimes contradictory, or simply otherwise resist synthesis, but what's important in that the system attempts at least to create something tailorable as well as archetypal.
Anyhow, I'll be following you. I know some other people who seem to share your opinions and tastes, so I'll plug your site.
Hey Kasimir,
ReplyDeleteSad to say that I missed your appearance on HBR yesterday. It sounds like we have similar backgrounds, as I've also been through a postgraduate degree in medieval history, literature (mostly English, French and Latin) and philology, and encountered my fair share of postmodernist critical theory and its various cliques. Thankfully, I'd read Camille Paglia's rant essay on this academic fad, 'Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders', before I began my MA, and acquired some inoculation against the usual academic political posturing, though even I fell victim to its spell for a short while.
I'm even Canadian, too, albeit from Vancouver (don't get me started on how costly this city is).
I also share your passion for old-school RPGs. Your game Lion and Dragon frankly sounds amazing, as I adore medieval realism. But for me what I love the older editions D&D, though, less a North American renaissance-faire understanding of European history, but an attempted ecumenical or scholastic synthesis of classic fantasy literature (i.e. Tolkien, Vance) including pulp, mythology and traditional fairy tales, and a modicum of historical realism. Just as theologians like St Thomas Aquinas and Pico della Mirandola attempted to synthesise Christian theology with one or more traditions of Classical thought, so too does (for me) this older D&D take a similar syncretic approach. To be sure, sometimes these strains are complementary, sometimes contradictory, or simply otherwise resist synthesis, but what's important in that the system attempts at least to create something tailorable as well as archetypal.
Anyhow, I'll be following you. I know some other people who seem to share your opinions and tastes, so I'll plug your site.
Percy
Thank you! I lived a good while in Vancouver too, before it was as expensive as it is now.
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