Gaming at Troynovant:
sporting with the nature and history of games,
Achilles and Ajax playing dice, circa 500BC board games and role-playing games,
playful strategy and tactics, and sports with a plot;
listed by Title

Note that analyses, histories, or novels about games or sports generally are not reviewed at Troynovant unless the review holds cards to play about gaming and creativity, or about a sport more plotted than played, politics or criminality in sports, and so on. We like games with writing, sports with a plot.

Mr. Bennett (to his daughter Elizabeth):

"But Lizzy, you look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be Missish, I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report. For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"

Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Vol. III, Chapter XV  (1813)
  

If I were free now, all my struggling would be unnecessary. I could turn to a work or an action and test all my strength against it. — As things stand now, I can only hope to free myself gradually, and up to the present I feel I am becoming more and more so. So the day of my real labor is also coming, and the preparation for the Olympic games is over. —

Friedrich Nietzsche
"We Classicists", section 189  (1875)
Unmodern Observations
edited and translated by William Arrowsmith


  
Absent-Minded Professor, The Robert Stevenson / Fred MacMurray, Keenan Wynn RW Franson
Adventures of Sally, The P. G. Wodehouse RW Franson

Bicycles & Guns
  CDC's Public Safety Double Standard

S Farrell
Big Bounce, The Walter S. Tevis RW Franson

Campaigning in the World of Atlas Shrugged WH Stoddard
Cards on the Table Agatha Christie RW Franson
Celebrated Jumping Frog
  of Calaveras County, The
Mark Twain RW Franson
Chessplayers, The Charles L. Harness RW Franson
Chivalry on the Wing
  Medieval Falconry
S Farrell
Crazy Good
  The True Story of Dan Patch,
  the Most Famous Horse in America
Charles Leerhsen RW Franson

Dentist, The W. C. Fields RW Franson
Derby Day Hal Roach / Our Gang RW Franson
Do You Wanna Date My Avatar Felicia Day / The Guild RW Franson
Dreams of Albert Moreland, The Fritz Leiber RW Franson

Gambit Rex Stout RW Franson
Game of Rat and Dragon, The Cordwainer Smith RW Franson
Girls und Panzer Tsutomu Mizushima WH Stoddard
Golf Specialist, The W. C. Fields RW Franson
Great Dan Patch, The Joe Newman / Gail Russell RW Franson
Gulf Robert A. Heinlein RW Franson
GURPS Fantasy William H. Stoddard RW Franson
GURPS Steampunk William H. Stoddard RW Franson

GURPS Steam-Tech
  A Compendium of Marvelous Devices
  for the Age of Steam

William H. Stoddard RW Franson

Halting State Charles Stross WH Stoddard
Homer's Contest Friedrich Nietzsche RW Franson

Infield Fly Rule
  (Keep in mitt for reference)
DL Franson

Living in the Current Middle Ages
  Discover The Society for Creative Anachronism
S Farrell

Mage: The Ascension White Wolf Game Studio WH Stoddard
Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe, The Sydney Anglo WH Stoddard

Now Inhale
  [the Towers of Hanoi game story]
Eric Frank Russell RW Franson

Olympic Champ, The (Goofy) Disney / Kinney RW Franson

Participatory Fiction WH Stoddard
Playing Poker with Palin NO Coulter
Poker Face Theodore Sturgeon RW Franson
Prisoner's Base
  (Out Goes She)
Rex Stout RW Franson

Queen's Gambit, The Walter Tevis RW Franson

Reversible Klondike
  Alternate History Solitaire
RW Franson

Solar Lottery Philip K. Dick RW Franson
Sweet Science, The
  Boxing and Boxiana — A Ringside View
A. J. Liebling RW Franson

Three Sailors' Gambit, The Lord Dunsany RW Franson
Titans' Daughter James Blish RW Franson

Win At All Costs S Farrell

You Could Look It Up James Thurber RW Franson
  

  
[Elsinore Castle, Denmark. Polonius' apartments.]

Polonius:

        'I know the gentleman,
I saw him yesterday' — ...
'There was a gaming, there o'ertook in 's rouse,
There falling out at tennis', or perchance
'I saw him enter such a house of sale',
Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth. See you now,
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; ...

William Shakespeare
Hamlet, 2.1.55-62

  
A Bluff in Chicago - Poker, 1909


  
Match Up
Match each word in the left column with its synonym on the right. When finished, click Answer to see the results. Good luck!

 

  

  
Urn in upper right —
Achilles & Ajax the Great playing dice
Workshop of the Diosphos Painter, circa 500 BC
Louvre; photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen (Jastrow)

Guise at Troynovant
masks, disguise & camouflage;
roles, acting, reenactment
  

Henry George and the zero-sum society:
The Bad Economics Behind Monopoly
by Chris Calton
Mises Institute


  
I had begun in 1733 to study Languages. I soon made myself so much a Master of the French as to be able to read the Books with Ease. I then undertook the Italian. An acquaintance who was also learning it, us'd often to tempt me to play Chess with him. Finding this took up too much of the Time I had to spare for Study, I at length refus'd to play any more, unless on this Condition, that the Victor in every Game, should have a Right to impose a Task, either in Parts of the Grammar to be got by heart, or in Translation, &c. which Tasks the Vanquish'd was to perform upon Honour before our next meeting. As we play'd pretty equally we thus beat one another into that Language.
Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography
  

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