Happy new year to my fellow fans of all things epic! I certainly hope we all have a better year in 2021. It's been a quiet holiday for me, as can be expected with COVID lockdowns and whatnot. But I've managed to keep things epic with a rewatch of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. (I've always felt those movies are particularly Xmas holiday-themed.) I've also been running an online Burning Wheel campaign for the past couple months. One of the players, my good friend Tom, recently came up with a great idea which inspired me to write this blog post. I'll just go ahead and quote him below: "I want to make an epic continent-spanning campaign where the players are from a society that doesn't have the tech for maps and they have to navigate via peripli and itinerania — I guess these are basically just real world node maps." -- Tom  OK, so chances are you're having the same initial reaction as I did to this and are wondering what peripli and itineraria ...

OK, this song The Replacements rocked out in 1984 is so punk, and it’s not even fast. It just drips with discontent and social discord. It’s making a big old piss puddle of dissatisfaction on the floor, that’s how angsty it is. Go ahead, listen to it again: you might drown in cynicism, but it’d be well worth it. Because this song strikes a chord — oh man, does it strike a chord. Who can honestly say they are completely satisfied with their lot in life? The mechanics of  this game  are totally broken, man. Paul Westerberg knew this, and you can hear it in the raw emotion in his voice. Damn. So good. And hey, you know who else knew this fact of life? Courtney Love. No kidding, and I mean seriously: she got to the top by marrying a rich rock star and putting out a decade-defining album of her own, and what did she find? Harrowing addiction problems, her husband blows his head off, everybody hates her for it, and she goes on to be literally despised for  decades ...