As Pharoah came to Joseph, I call upon the nascent dream interpreters of the OSR blogosphere to tell me the meaning of the dream I had last night. (There used to be a regular commenter who was spookily good at this; is he still around?) It was the most vivid I have had in years, and, unusually, it has stuck in my memory.
In it, a friend and I had discovered the PDF of a supplement to an obscure medieval wargame, released in 2004. With great care, we were able to use this supplement to reconstruct the core rules. We then arranged to play a game of it with Daniel Craig, David Starkey, and various other more anonymous figures. This took place at night in a dimly-lit room in a flat above a shop, with a large drinks cabinet full of obscure aperitifs, like dubonnet and Ricard. Each of us had to choose a 'general' to command our forces; my friend chose Olaf from Frozen; I chose Pascal the chameleon from Tangled. I can't remember the rules or how the game was played, except that it took place on a huge tabletop that was covered with a dense forest of minis; I couldn't work out which were mine, and David Starkey kept berating me for my failings.
The name of the game was Legendarium.
Heed these words Oh King. Legendarium, with all its bewildering forest of miniatures and tangled rules, is none other but life and society itself, revealed to you in familiar guise. Daniel Crag is your instinctive masculine side, who chooses to remain silent, and David Sarkey represents ancestral wisdom and your conscience.
ReplyDeleteIt is telling that you choose as your general Pascal while your friend chose Olaf. Both are quirky and benevolent, a good omen, but crucially, Pascal is a chameleon, always blending in against unfamiliar backgrounds. You cannot differentiate your pieces from the other of the board because you have not completed your actualization, you are still trying to blend in with the rest of the modern world, and while you do so, you cannot act.
That's pretty good. Maybe you don't know which side you're on, who your friends are?
DeleteThe fact that it is a wargame and not a game of monopoly should also not be discounted. The Stars Have Spoken!
DeleteThat was a something indeed.
ReplyDeleteI can’t offer any interpretations, but I’m sure my friend Kate, sometime professional dream (no, really!) can. She runs the Society of Dreamfishers - https://dreamfishingsociety.com/ - (although that’s more about navigating the oneirosphere via the collective consciouness of dreamers)
ReplyDeleteAh, Pharoah and Joseph, man! When we went to see the musical in junior school I fell so madly in love with it that I got run over on a zebra crossing on the way home, because I was preoccupied with music rather than looking where I was going.
Also: gaming with Starkey... AAAARGH! GET ME OUT OF HERE.
ReplyDeleteActually, I would probably listen to a podcast of Gaming with Starkey, for shits & giggles.