The Magnus Archives - my choice of horror for housework

The Magnus Archives is a horror podcast that I have been listening to off and on for the last few months. I only listen to podcasts when I'm doing something else. A quote that has stuck with me from My Brother, My Brother and Me is that podcasts are the mustard of life. They add some spice but you don't eat them by themselves.

So, the Magnus Archives are for cooking and cleaning. I add cosmic horror to folding the laundry.

The framework is that we are listening to recorded statements from the archives of the Magnus Institute, a paranormal research center in London. The primary voice actor and creator of the series is a guy called Jonathan Sims, who has a voice like Vincent Price after one too many cups of coffee. He named his character after himself, which had to be creepy at times.

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Initially, the Magnus Archives seems like a monster-of-the-week job. Urban fantasy and modern horror. However, as the podcast goes on, there is a broader story revealed. Not only is there a bigger picture, there aren't any actual monster-of-the-week stories. Everything ties together. Every story is a mythology story, to use a term I'm pretty sure the X-Files coined.

More than that, the Magnus Institute isn't an impregnable fortress. The first season has the institute almost destroyed by a literal supernatural infestation, as the statements start coming from inside the institute itself. There are ongoing characters who are being pulled into the nightmare hellscape that is the true reality of the setting. Oh, that was fun to write.

Okay, full disclosure, I haven't come close to listening to all of the Magnus Archives. However, I have read up on it so I am familiar with the overall setting and story arc. And it's an almost Lovecraftian cosmic horror. The supernatural horror all comes from the Powers, the manifestation or the origin of human fears. (Which is why I feel it isn't full Lovecraftian since it does directly connect to humanity. Cthulhu doesn't care about us. The Powers do) And their influences and actions are disturbing, often visceral and ultimately inescapable. Good stuff.

Jonathan eventually learns that he is becoming the avatar of one of the powers, the Eye, the fear of being watched. An incredibly amusing aspect of this is that people who give him testaments are compelled to be truthful and coherent. Thus, there is an in-story justification to why all the statements are structured to be good stories.

I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, let alone horror ones. So I don't know how the Magnus Archives measures up. However, I am enjoying myself

Very, very early thoughts on 52 Kingdoms

It is human nature to give added weight to something for arbitrary reasons. For example, I try to make the first game I learn in a year one I think will be a good one. For 2025, I taught myself 52 Kingdoms: Adventures.

It is from Postmark Games, a game publisher that I fell in love with last year. And it fits most of the basic parameters of their other games. It only exists as a Print and Play game and doesn't require any construction. Print out a couple of play sheets and you are good. However, instead of using dice as the random element, 52 Kingdoms uses a standard deck of cards.

It is also a dungeon crawl, a genre I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I cut my teeth on Dungeons and Dragons back when dungeons crawls were its basic format. I have played more dungeon crawls than I can remember. On the other hand, I have seen just so many. It's hard for me to get excited by one now.

Each game consists of two sheets of paper. One is of the dungeon map, which honestly bring back memories of old Dungeon magazine, which isn't a bad thing. The other is a choice of two characters to play. You slide the character sheet under the map so you only see one character. The reason I phrase it that way is because there are two maps and two sets of characters... so far. More are yet to come.

I'm not going to go through the rules. Honestly, after I've played a lot more of 52 Kingdoms, I plan on coming back to it and giving a more nuanced review. What I will say is that cards serve as special items, equipment, loot, wounds, monsters, and a randomizer. While far from the most complex dungeon crawl I've ever seen, I do feel like 52 Kingdoms packs a lot into its small space. 

I feel two dangers micro dungeons crawls can fall into are being too simple or too finicky. 52 Kingdoms avoids the latter through graphic design. The play sheets have clear areas for you to place each type of card. There are clear tables for monsters and curses. Good graphic design makes a huge difference between confusion and good game play.

One weakness that 52 Kingdoms has is that, sometimes, the bookkeeping overcomes the theme. I stop feeling like it's about magic and monsters and dungeons and I feel like I'm doing some accounting with a deck of cards rather than a calculator. That said, I think abstraction is inevitable when you're scaling down a concept.

So far, I've found 52 Kingdoms interesting but I haven't really been drawn into it. But here's the thing. I haven't explored even half of the content has been released and I know there will be more maps and characters released. And I am interested to keep on going and see the whole scope of the system.

The potential is there and I feel positive about that.

I also want to note that, when I first saw the name of the game, I was hoping that 52 Kingdoms would have a greater scale than a dungeon. However, its called 52 Kingdoms: Adventures, which gives me hope that this is just the first game in a series that uses this basic system.

Jardin Japones - planning ponds in zen gardens

Jardin Japones/Japanese Gardens is a Roll and Write where you draw a Zen garden on a grid, the garden features and locations determined by dice rolls. Honestly, that is such a very common mechanic in R&Ws. However, Jardin Japones does get some credit for embracing its theme.

Mechanically, you are working with a six by six grid. Each turn, you roll three dice. One die will determine the row or column you will be working with. The other two dice determine what two garden features you add from a table. You also can fill in one of the three branches on your convenient bonsai tree to ignore the dice and place one garden feature of your choice anywhere. After twelve turns, you’re done.

The most novel element of Jardin Japones is ponds. Every fourth turn, you draw in a pond, outlining one or more spaces. The only restriction is ponds can’t be next to each other. (Otherwise, they’d be one big pond) Some elements have to be in ponds, like bridges, but you can draw a bridge in first and draw a pond around it.

As I mentioned earlier, Jardin Japones has some solid theming for so slight a game. Lanterns need to be far from each other. Bridges need to be in ponds. Bamboo has to be in a group. And so on. 

You can violate the placement restrictions but that will affect scoring. At the very least, an item will score no points. A bridge on dry land or a lantern in the water will score you negative points though.

Ultimately, the two things that give the game interest to me are the possibilities that drawing ponds unlock and the fact that you will get a drawing of the Zen garden at the end of it.

There are advanced rules that… actually make the game more interesting. Some of the scoring is made a touch more intricate, forcing you to be a little more specific in your choices. But, more importantly, it adds bonus points. These give more focused goals for your play.

Jardin Japones does remind me of an older roll and write game, Yard Builder, where you create a backyard. I do find Yard Builder to be the stronger game because it has more elements for you to work with and your choices are more flexible.

Jardin Japones is ultimately in the hinterlands for me. It is enjoyable enough that I can see myself adding it to the regular rotation. At the same time, it has enough in common with other games that I play that it doesn’t really stand out.

Waystation is a quiet, perhaps lost, gem of science fiction

Last year, I decided to try reading Clifford D. Simak for the first time since I was a teenager. I enjoyed City enough that I decided that I would keep reading Simak. I don’t plan on doing an exhaustive study of his work but I do want hit what has been decided are his highlights.

Waystation won the Hugo Award for best novel in the 1964. And, having now read it, yeah, I can see why.

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Waystation is about Enoch Wallace, an American Civil War veteran, who serves as operator for an intergalactic teleportation station. In this setting, you can only teleport so far so intergalactic civilization needs junction stations. The waystation is located in rural Wisconsin so it’s off the beaten path. Enoch doesn’t age when he’s in the station so a hundred years pass without much change.

Then everything changes.

Earth is on the verge of a nuclear war that will wipe everything out. Surprisingly sympathetic government agents have accidentally desecrated an alien tomb, starting an intergalactic incident which is fascinatingly openly admitted to being actually political. And we learned that intergalactic civilization is having serious issues as well.

Basically, not only is Enoch about to lose everything, everyone else is in pretty bad shape too.

What might be the biggest knock against Waystation, everything ends up working out. A powerful artifact that is required to help restore civilization(all of them) ends up in Enoch’s station and the mysterious local deaf-mute girl turns out to be the one who can use it. 

Having said that, all of that is methodically set up throughout the book. It’s not a Deux ex Mechina.  I am sure that the next generation of science fiction authors would have written the same idea a lot bleaker. But, even as it stands, Waystation is still ultimately a bittersweet work.

And that bittersweet element is why the book works. Enoch is a sympathetic and decent person, but he is also flawed. His experiences have left him apart from the rest of the human race. And, while things work out, so that, you know, civilizations don’t end, there is a cost to it, and he is part of that cost. 

Waystation is a thoughtful work. There is some fascinating elements of alien culture and technology. Teleportation leaves a dead husk behind, which Enoch has to dissolve in acid tanks below the house (Star Trek never showed us that) He has been given gifts of alien items that he never learns what they’re for.

And the book spends a lot of time on alien in philosophy. Quite frankly, it never really conveys it very well, but I do like that Enoch is convinced that thinking differently is going to be the real game changer, not advanced technology.

At times, Waystation can be meandering and slow. It might be a short book, but it takes its time getting to its point, letting ideas simmer. As a teenager, it would have confused me. However, it works for me now.

Couple of highlights of 2024

 I’ve pondered doing some kind of summary of the last year. You know, it’s the kind of thing that is human nature to do. But that can get pedantic and boring.

So I’ve decided to just mention two high lights for me in my gaming life: discovering Postmark Games and joining ButtonShy’s play testing forum.

Postmark Games has a small but robust library of games. I started playing their games in January and I keep going back to them. I can’t even decide which one is my favorite.

However, what really puts them over the top for me is that they are the perfect publisher to recommend to folks who might be scared of Print and Play. Possibly because they’ve seen how it’s become an obsession for me. Not only are they good games but they are easy to make. Just print out one or two pages and you are good to go. No other construction necessary. Just add dice and pencils.

Later on, folks can learn about ButtonShy and Hammer Dice and PnP Arcade and DicePen and…

While I am not a stranger to play testing but ButtonShy’s playtesting forum was still a big experience for me. It became a major focus for my gaming time for a while and I really enjoyed the community. 

Part of it is the idea of giving back to the hobby. Part of it is seeing part of the process of development. But the community was really rewarding.

I can’t find the time to focus on playtesting all the time but I am sure I will keep doing it.

My December Gaming

December ended up being my big month for learning games. That was entirely because of Dicember. I decided to challenge myself by learning fifteen new dice games.

I learned:

Battle Card - Moro River 

Xmas Sweaters

Road to 300

Pentaquest 

Koala Rescue Club 

Inverted Dice

Roll to the Top

Diceathalon 

Diceduko

Orchard Recipes

Paleontologists 

Vault

Jose Garcia Saves the Alhambra 

Sketchy Ski Lifts

Forage

Tiny Maze Things

Mind you, a couple of those require asterisks. The Moro map of Battle Card can easily be viewed as part of Battle Card as one game and Orchard Recipes is an expansion. But I also had to balance learning games with, you know, actually life stuff so I’m okay with a couple asterisks.

I was also concerned that I would get burned out on learning games, that I wouldn’t really grok new games by grinding them out. And there was a touch of that with some of the little games I learned on Board Game Arena. However, the games I was going to enjoy anyway I did enjoy.

While there are a number of games I learned that I want to revisit but the two I have already continued to play are Forage and Koala Rescue Club. Forage is the third and currently final game in the Orchard series and Koala Rescue Club was (at the time) the latest collaboration from Post Mark Games. Both games have ancestry I appreciate.

I ultimately didn’t do as much gaming on paper but that was because I spent more time learning games. Which isn’t a bad way to end the year.

My PnP December

December was a quiet month for PnP crafting for me. That was because I focused my gaming time on Dicember, playing a lot of different dice-based games. I still made a couple projects.

I made:

Glass Garden

Orchard Recipes

Glass Garden was my ‘big’ project for the month but my real goal Orchard Recipes was my real goal. I wanted to finally learn Forage (which I did) but I wanted to try out the Orchard expansion first.

My gaming time in December was focused on dice games with Dicemember. However, I made sure to get in some crafting.