About

So, what's a Servitor Ludi, and why should you care?

This blog is a place for discussions about two of my game-related interests:

First, I'm developing an "old school" fantasy role-playing game (yes, sort of like Dungeons & Dragons), and this blog will be used to post about my progress, point to places where the game can be obtained when it's finally done, and so on.  I haven't played a game like this for 20 years, but I've been inspired by the online "Old School Renaissance" that's going on right now to flex those creativity muscles once again! An introductory post on old-school fantasy role-playing is HERE, and I'm also creating a hub for information about my own game project, Homebrew '82.

Second, I've long been fascinated by Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game (from his 1943 Nobel Prize winning novel of the same name). Some brave souls over the last few decades have been working towards building real-life, playable versions of the GBG, and their insights into philosophy, spirituality, and the meaning of life have had a big effect on me. An introductory post on the Glass Bead Game is HERE.

Hesse's novel was subtitled Magister Ludi, which is Latin for "Master of the Game."  That's certainly not me, so I thought that an appropriate title for this blog would be "Servant of the Game" (in Latin, Servitor Ludi). I'm looking to stand on the shoulders of giants, here, not to wow everyone with my own awesomeness.

Do these two weird topics share any common ground?  I'm not sure! I look forward to exploring that in this blog, too.

2013 update:  The banner image is a highly processed view of the night sky from the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, taken by Yuri Beletsky.  Original image: here.