Skip to main content

The Platypus and the Eldritch Horror (Cont.)


I did some thinking after my original analysis of Fantasy Flight's cooperative board game Eldritch Horror. One of the draws of the game seems to be its way of mirroring life. The investigators are presented with a set of unknown challenges that may or may not be solvable in the time allowed. These challenges are revealed one at a time as the game progresses and are of differing complexities and difficulties. Each round, the investigators create a plan for solving the current challenge and attempt to put it into effect. This would be hard enough except that at the end of every round a card is drawn that vastly complicates the situation. These are the Mythos Cards. Mythos cards come in three varieties and three level of difficulty. Each mythos card creates a variety of helps or challenges according to its type as well as adding a new element to the plot. The investigators may be down on their luck and suddenly find themselves presented with a host of clues plus a little aid from the Silver Twilight Lodge. Alternatively, the investigators may have finished a grueling round of battle only to find that the Ancient Ones have revived their defeated foes. And that's how life works. In the end, there is very little that we can actually control. Most of what we can control is in the way we react to outside events. What do we do when our plans are laid asunder? How do we deal with sudden windfalls? These are the choices that make or break us as we set out in an uncertain world.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.
9 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more