WBH Digest 2025-02-14: Saint Valentine's Day

I have an essay on how to win at D&D, Kickstarters for your consideration, the Based Book Sale, along with some literary thoughts.

Captain_Hook's Brolog: Wargames are not 'Playing Toy Soldiers'

An excellent reflection on how good games make a tradeoff between simulation and gameplay.

Doctor Universalis by Gaston Nerval

A novella about Albertus Magnus, known as the Universal Doctor for the depth and breadth of his contributions to philosophy and natural science. Sacramental and spooky.

Nick Enlowe's Substack: Frieren Took Me By Surprise 5: Preservation

Nick Enlowe offers us a series on the surprising depth of Frieren. The surface level story of Frieren is very simple, but the amount of commentary it will bear is considerable. Here, Enlowe is talking about motifs, repeated elements that give a work thematic unity. In this case, jewelry and statues are used as tangible reminders of the value of preserving the past.

Elven Maid Inn: The Timeless Promise of Old Man Voll

Frieren also presents to us the dignity of the aged.

Complete Mongoose and Meerkat Kickstarter

I previously supported a Kickstarter for three volumes of Mongoose and Meerkat. This is more of the same, but with fancier editions and lots of extras.

J. Manfred Weichsel Jungle Scandals Kickstarter

Weichsel writes the spiciest satire that I can handle, this volume is an anthology edited by Weichsel.

Spring 2025 Based Book Sale

There are always more books on sale than I can easily process, but here's a few on sale I think are awesome. The Based Book Sale is like the Steam sale, I usually buy more than I can read.

Pulp Rock Book Review — With Both Hands

When I got a request from Alexander Hellene to review this volume of musically inspired short stories, I had to laugh, because I am one of the least musical people I know. I can lose the beat of a song I am listening to. I’m sure I missed a couple of dozen really awesome musical references. Howeve

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

Pulp Rock: Musically-inspired short stories.

Stellar Stories Volume 1: Contains "The Fourth Gift", a vision of a future both uplifting and terrifying, as well as one of the most beautiful portrayals of the Virgin Mary I've ever seen.

Conan: The Thief, The Conqueror, The King: Self-recommending

Dungeon Samurai Book Review — With Both Hands

Dungeon Samurai Volume 1: Kamikaze by Cheah Kit Sun Published May 28, 2019 Dungeon Samurai is an isekai dungeon-crawler built on the principle that “amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics”. Depending on where you are coming from, that might be a lot to unpack, so let’s go through

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

Dungeon Samurai Volume 1: built on the principle that “amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics”.

Fade by Daniel Humphreys book review — With Both Hands

This book scratched an itch I didn’t know I had. It struck me as similar to a Tim Powers book, if Tim wrote adventures with a hint of satire instead of secret histories. Apparently I had been looking for a tale of good and evil in an occult setting. This book is it.

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

Fade Paxton Locke Book 1: similar to a Tim Powers book, if Tim wrote adventures with a hint of satire instead of secret histories.

One of the reasons I hate the term AI is that it prevents people from thinking about what algorithms like O3-mini actually do. It is a very complicated autocomplete text function, but it has no ability to generalize anything. If it did, it could flawlessly perform any multiplication desired.