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Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Category: Children
We spent Friday afternoon and evening walking in the sunshine, eating like kings, listening to some pretty far-out and eclectic music and playing the Swedish 70s board game Marinattack.
Posted by Martin R at 10:12 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Gaming
I never was much of a game console nut. My video game crazes mostly played out on the PC. But I did play the Atari in the 70s, the C64 in the 80s and the NES and SNES in...
Posted by Martin R at 3:13 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Tree House Ruins
One of these men is an extremely zany comics artist and celebrated wit. The other is a stuffy scholar in an abstruse field. We've had a three-day holiday thanks to Friday being 1 May -- a red-letter day in...
Posted by Martin R at 3:20 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Art
13 September: Samuel and Ludvig play the piano at Ludvig's aunt's house in Viggbyholm. 12 October: Playing Pandemic at a gaming convention in Gröndal. 21 October: A mechanical excavator is delivered to my dad's property to start work on...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Gaming
The Swedish language has produced three truly great fantasists. Two are internationally reknowned: Astrid Lindgren (with Pippi Longstocking) and Tove Jansson (with Moomin). The third, Erik Granström, is almost exclusively known among Swedish gaming nerds like myself. From 1987 to...
Posted by Martin R at 4:37 PM • 12 Comments •
Category: Gaming
I'm reading Steven L. Kent's engrossing 2001 book The Ultimate History of Video Games, and of course it reminds me of a lot of games I played as a kid. My first real video games were played on the...
Posted by Martin R at 9:09 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Gaming
My son just played me a song he can't get out of his head, "Still Alive". It's the closing-credits music of the 2007 computer game Portal, sung by a heavily vocoded Ellen McLain. As it turns out, the song...
Posted by Martin R at 7:13 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Gaming
With kudos to Mattias who sent me the link, here are Stephen Lynch & Mark Teich performing a fine song about being a 14-y-o D&D-playing young man. To those of our readers who currently fit that description, let me...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Gaming
Continuing our military theme from the other day, I regret to inform you, Dear Reader, that the Axis won World War II. After Pearl Harbour, the US couldn't decide whether to concentrate its efforts in the Pacific or the...
Posted by Martin R at 2:50 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Gaming
I got my driver's licence late, at age 22, because I wasn't interested in cars and didn't want to support automotive culture. When I finally did get myself a licence, it was because I was starting to feel embarrassed...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Gaming
Scrabble was first published in 1948. Shortly thereafter, it was ripped off for the Swedish market by a firm named Lemeco, under the tell-tale Anglophone title Criss Cross. The main difference between the ripoff and the original is that...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Gaming
Anybody got a copy of Chaosium's 1980 game-rules booklet Basic Role-Playing? And the 1982 Worlds of Wonder boxed set, specifically the Magic World booklet? I'd love to have a look at them (photocopies or a brief loan would be fine),...
Posted by Martin R at 2:17 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Gaming
You discuss among yourselves who goes where to whack-a-mole infected cities.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Gaming
Played a fun card game with a somewhat off-colour name today: Spank the Monkey from 2003. The object of the game is literally to catch a monkey and whack its little hairy behind. Why? Because all the players are employees...
Posted by Martin R at 11:04 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Gaming
Lately I've been playing more board games, thanks to gaming friends moving to my area, and also to my son and his buddies reaching an age where they can understand and enjoy games. I have a number of good board...
Posted by Martin R at 5:49 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
In 2005, a team led by myself and Howard Williams excavated a 9th century boat inhumation burial at Skamby in Kuddby parish, Östergötland, Sweden. The finest finds we made in the grave were a collection of 23 amber gaming...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Gaming
Now and then I like to play board games: mostly Blokus, Drakborgen (a.k.a. Dungeonquest), Scrabble and Roborally. The latter is an award-winning 1994 game where each player programs a robot to move through a treacherous obstacle course and tag...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Lore Sjöberg at Wired celebrates the achievement of recently deceased gaming wizard Gary Gygax with an entertaining look at what it would be like if Dungeons & Dragons characters behaved like archaeologists.May 16 We have nearly finished our initial survey...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Gaming
If you talk to present-day software you soon become aware that there's no intelligence in the box.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 22 Comments •
Category: Gaming
I've got to check out what kind of text adventures people are writing these days!
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 15 Comments •
Category: Tech
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Gaming
I've even played it with house rules and a home-made alternative map.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 23 Comments •
Category: Gaming
... innumerable somewhat younger and even more enthusiastic gamers ...
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 24 Comments •
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