The Comfort of Physical Media

“Your library is your paradise.”

— Erasmus

JRR Tolkien's painting of Smaug
on his gold, with “invisible” Bilbo.

A host of recent news stories, think-tank surveys, and academic studies focus on the phenomenon of younger generations preferring physical media rather than the supposed cornucopia of digital delights. Many examine this trend in Generation Z (roughly those born from 1997–2012), though I can attest from personal experience old curmudgeons like me, relics of the last century, can also cling to our physical media like jealous dragons on piles of gold. It’s a strange phenomenon for those living in a century flooded with electronic media of all kind, often to the detriment of old, more reliable, more vetted formats (such as print magazines and newspapers). For some it’s resistance to, if not an outright revolt against, an increasingly corporate urge to sell subscription services rather than actual product one can own and put on their shelf; electronic products companies can withdraw for whatever reason, even after consumers have paid for them. For others it’s convenience of access. And some prefer the ability to display physical media in their spaces as an expression of their personal interests. Society keeps imposing on us to adapt to new developments and technologies — even if they prove detrimental to our lives and world, like data centers and artificial intelligence — yet preserving “the old ways” has its benefits on the individual level.

Vacation Staff Rides

 “There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.”

— John Stuart Mill

The author peers out over the wall along
Fredericksburg's Sunken Road.

Our family doesn’t care much for vacations where we lounge on the beach, relax at some lakeside cabin, or hike in the mountains; we much prefer to engage our minds visiting sites of historical interest across numerous periods and subjects. Whether we’re making a summertime day trip or planning a slightly more substantial journey, we make sure the itinerary includes some places of historical significance to explore. Sometimes we re-visit and re-discover past favorites, other times we venture forth to someplace new. Like the “staff rides” of the 19th century Prussian officer corps — and continued by military personnel to this day — we use them as opportunities to place the history we read about, view in movies, and play on the gaming tabletop in a real-world context we experience first hand.

Summer Reading & Play Pile

 “A home without books is a body without soul.”

— Cicero

Midsummer has come and gone. Around here the holiday quite accurately represents the middle point of my son’s academic summer vacation, for a school system that ends classes right before Memorial Day and resumes classes the first grueling hot week in August. So I apologize that my “summer reading” post comes a bit late in the season. I’ve made recommendations for summer reading in the past. Rather than look over what books and games I’d recommend from the past year as appropriate to summertime diversions, I thought I’d take a look at my piles to be read and to be played, with a few recent, notable exceptions.

In the Grand Scheme of Things

 “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”

— Cicero

Several weeks ago I was reminded how minuscule our adventure gaming hobby appears in the face of the many other seemingly far more important subjects society prioritizes. Prolific Games Workshop fantasy illustrator John Blanche died on June 1, 2026. And French-Iranian author, activist, and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi died on June 4, 2026. Someone somewhere in my social media feed commented how John Blanche’s passing received little notice when compared to Satrapi’s. I experienced some of their work, Blanche’s in my formative gaming years and Satrapi’s only recently. They each had a profound impact on the way I viewed various aspects of my world. Yet the treatment of their passing was telling. Many in the adventure gaming hobby remembered Blanche. Satrapi enjoyed greater fame from her graphic novels about her youth in Iran, Yet for a majority of people, especially in America, neither name held any significance. It’s a sad reminder how extremely niche entertainment like graphic novels and adventure games garner very little attention compared to far more popular and lucrative forms like sports, movies, and television (or their lamentable 21st century equivalents). Yet their work and presence affect the lives of a small portion of us...and for that we celebrate them.

Considering ACW Fog of War

 “Throw forward your cavalry, as soon as you approach your new position, to Culpeper Court-House, and carefully watch the whole country toward Richmond and Gordonsville.”

— Union Major General John Pope

Battle of Cedar Mountain, Aug. 9, 1862,
engraving from a sketch by Alfred R. Waud.

My feature on “Watch, Read, Play: Battle ofMidway” and one of the games noted, Sebastian Bae’s Find, Fix, and Finish, started me thinking about how two opposing forces come together on the battlefield. At Midway the battle came about through a confluence of intelligence analysis and aerial reconnaissance, with each carrier fleet probing for the other before deploying attack forces. The guessing game of Battleship came to mind as a very basic, extremely abstracted representation of this process, but Bae’s game refines it into a fast-playing micro-game modeling modern naval operations. I’ve long wanted to design an easy game around the American Civil War Battle of Cedar Mountain (not far from where I live in Virginia) simulating the fog of war as two armies move toward each other, probing with cavalry and infantry, maneuvering with limited information about enemy location and strength, and screening forces with cavalry. And I found some inspiration for game mechanics in Bae’s game, a starting point from which I began tinkering with ideas on how such a game might work.

Watch, Read, Play: Battle of Midway

“The plump silhouettes of the American Dauntless dive-bombers quickly grew larger, and then a number of black objects suddenly floated eerily from their wings.”

— Captain Mitsuo Fuchida

SBD Dauntless squadron seeks the Japanese fleet.

Many argue the Battle of Midway, June 4–7, 1942, was the turning point in the Pacific War. The engagement epitomizes the role of carriers and aircraft in naval operations as strategies relied less on massive battleships (though they’d still have a final significant moment at the Battle of Surigao Strait). Numerous factors played a role in its outcome: interception and interpretation of intelligence; preemptive deployment of American carriers; and Japanese indecision reacting to emerging threats during the engagement (among many others). All these considerations — as in depicting any historical event — prove challenging to interpret on the screen and the gaming tabletop. Given the battle’s importance, an abundance of Midway media offers many opportunities to engage with history by watching films, reading books, and playing games, all with varying degrees of quality.

The Context of Form

“The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”

— Lao Tzu

I admire discourse that challenges me to think more deeply about tabletop games, whether new perspectives or ones investigating (and sometimes affirming) concepts I advocate. I often wish the adventure gaming hobby had more such discussion geared toward the kind of hobbyists and informed generalists who wander the borderlands between more steadfastly ensconced professional and scholarly game circles. Secondary education offers some promising opportunities as young people, not yet established in our staunch intellectual silos, explore and develop their own ideas on gaming subjects. Dr. Jeremiah McCall, himself an innovator in the field of games for learning, recently mentored one of his students at the Cincinnati Country Day School through a senior independent study project examining how different media — literature, film, and video games — presents the same historical event in different ways...and to different ends. It encourages us to more closely analyze how we interact with the various media we consume and how the context of form shapes its messages.