#419
Oct 11, 2026
Books
This week I read:
Reading and Writing in Babylon by Dominique Charpin
It’s been on my shelf for a while (I’ve really fallen behind on the Akkadian stuff) but I’m glad I finally got around to it. It makes some arguments that I’ve seen in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture (a very large book I am slowly working my way through) about how widespread literacy was, and concludes that actually despite how complex cuneiform seems (to us), there is enough evidence to conclude that many people could read, and even write, to some degree. Literacy wasn’t just the domain of professional scribes or the king.
For fun, I tried translating some of the personal names mentioned in the book, as Akkadian names all meant something. Typically it’s a short statement about divine protection, faith, or some wish the parents have for the child. I got quite a few of the names, but others were a bit of a mystery, so I did a little research and found that there’s a foundational reference book on Akkadian names, that catalogues all known ones, breaking them down into their components and giving translations… but it’s in German, as so much early Akkadian research is. I’ll have to look for an English translation.
Roleplaying Games
Hot Springs Island
Hot Springs Island came to an end this week.
Earlier in the week one of the three players, who’s had to miss several sessions, said that they had to drop out for personal reasons. Unfortunate, but it happens.
Simultaneously, I’d been thinking about the game. I’ve been enjoying it, but not as much as I thought I would, which manifested as putting off prep and just generally putting less effort into it. But there is a game I’d be more interested in playing: The Lions of Tell Arn, which is a Bronze Age megadungeon, city, and associated adventures. I was planning to combine Tell Arn with a few other Bronze Age resources I’ve got (e.g. Let Us Build a Tower) and come up with a fun Mesopotamian setting full of adventure. So I was leaning towards telling the players this week “hey, I’m having fun, but something else has caught my eye; it’ll be a few weeks for me to get everything ready, so I’m not ending the campaign right now, but let’s work towards some sort of conclusion.”
But about an hour before the session another player dropped the bombshell that they were feeling burned out on OSR stuff and were going to drop out.
So we had an emergency meeting, and we’re going to pivot to something else. They wanted a mechanical change, and also adventures where the character motivation is something more than “I go into the dungeon because it is there.” Next week we’re going to have a one-shot of Pioneer (the near-future Traveller game) and then after that most likely a Traveller campaign. It’s been quite some time since we did Traveller so I’m looking forward to it!
Miscellaneous
I picked up a little A6 pocket notebook this week (a Midori MD notebook with gridded paper) mostly to keep track of my workouts but also to give journaling a go, if I feel the inclination. I’ve tried keeping a diary before but don’t really do enough day-to-day to make it worthwhile. But I do have a problem with how I’ve been tracking my workouts: during the workout itself I had to keep switching between the stopwatch and my notes app. But with a separate journal I can just use the phone for timing and scribble down what I’ve done on the paper, no flipping between apps (or pages) needed at all.
I’m not using the journal for to-do lists (I’m very happy with Vikunja and Donetick for that; at most I’d use the journal to note something down to add to one of those tools later) or shopping lists (I already keep a cheap flip notebook with tear-away pages and a pen in the kitchen for that), so it’s pretty much just for workouts at the moment, but who knows how things will change when I get into it.