Every week we settle down for a family games night. This week was a game called £GREED , which is a variation on the long established dice game 5000 . It's a favourite in this household, as it is a precarious balance between tactics and gambling. Caesar's famous remark that "the die is cast" as he crossed the Rubicon, shows that he knew and acknowledged this balance. Dice are amongst the oldest continually used form of gaming. They have a long history in every single continent, although not always as the cubes we recognise today. Early forms of dice were made from bone, wood, or stones such as agate or marble. They did not always show numbers, but could also be used for fortune telling, with pictures and letters inscribed on them. As a player of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay , I have always known that dice cannot be held at face value. They are regularly used in fantasy stories and situations to denote the power of luck and the ability to hold control over the realms of...
The pen is mightier than the sword, so it’s said. One man who proves this statement to be true was William Shakespeare. He remains to this day one of the most quoted writers in the world and his insults have become legendary. There are scores of books of them, and countless internet generators for them. But his insults, some of which work better than others in the modern world, are not the only things he used as weapons. As the song says, there are countless things we say because he strung them together and tucked them into our cultural knowledge. Phrases like “wild goose chase” and “love is blind” are so ingrained in our minds we use them without stopping to think where they came from and only a little bit more about who came up with them. Along with this power, comes the supreme act of propaganda. Here, we see the truth in that statement, for we see the pen is truly mightier than the sword. Shakespeare rewrote – or, is some cases, just wrote – history. There are lines from his plays ...