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...
I absolutely love this song! I don't know whether it is that I know more Tom Jones and Welsh songs which the Owain Glyndŵr song calls on, or whether it is just more my sort of music, or that - which I think is another consideration - this is about a historical figure who drifts into the realms of legend. At the moment, I am rereading my family saga and I came across this line: That man will be a legend until the day he dies, and an inspiration beyond. When I decided to write today's blog on Owain Glyndŵr, this quote fitted rather well. The man being discussed in the book was not a real figure from history but - after sharing more than 400,000 words with him during the course of my family saga - it certainly feels like I know him better than any of his real-life contemporaries! When I was researching Owain Glyndŵr for this blog, I was surprised to find just how long his reign lasted. I had assumed it was almost a flash-in-the-pan uprising, similar to those we had in Scotland se...