UConn Course
The end of the tale of UConn CAMS 3208
Jun 5th
HOMERID PRIME ONLINE
BEGIN TRANSMISSION
My UConn course Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies 3208 (Gaming) Homer, aka Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ, ended at the beginning of May. Since then, I’ve been busy with such things as grading and forcing 115 accountants to sit in a lecture hall and play LOTRO at the same time (long, long story that I may get to tell here some day). So I’m only now finally getting around to figuring out what went right and what went wrong with Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ, which (as previously detailed) may have been the first college course ever taught in Middle Earth, if you discount the credits earned by the fellowship for listening to the bard on the Field of Cormallen.
A daring, epic rescue in the Scrag-Dells
Apr 15th
Homerids Prime (Thrasir) and Secunda (Kayzee) await rescue
Last week I did indeed bring my apprentice bards into the Ettenmoors. We were lucky enough to run into an enormous party of freeps several times. The apprentice bards were suitably impressed by the way Monster-Play puts forward a sociology of zero-sum glory. Or, to put it another way, we were pwnd several times in succession.
Here’s a sample:
The epic plot twist commences
Mar 31st
(This is a post about my University of Connecticut course (Gaming) Homer, which I’m running on the Windfola server of LOTRO. See this post for more information.)
Having lured the operatives (students) into a false sense of security that they knew how the course would play out, with Iliadic and Odyssean factions, we entered into the “Ethical Critique” module. In this module the objective is to learn to analyze homeric epic and modern epic—including LOTRO—as critique of the way people do things in the real world. It’s my way of beginning to approach that slippery ground of “meaning” and “profundity.” If we can talk about what epic, ancient and modern, does, we can avoid having to have endless discussions about the meaning of meaning.
Bardic Rebellion and Ecphrastic Muffins
Mar 2nd
[Kinship] Erohir: My blueberry muffins are so, blueberrily.
[To Kinship] Do they smell like death?
Aeargalad defeated the Quicksilver Cave-crawler.
[Kinship] Insidiose: Ew.
[Kinship] Erohir: No, they smell of life.
[Kinship] Kevolas: from our heroes dangerous ventures into the realm of the mound wights, kevolas proudly holds up a broken dagger
[Kinship] Erohir: A life that passionately follows the way of the sword
You clap your hands.
[Kinship] Kevolas: its small, bone white, and has been obviously used for centuries and centuries
You cheer.
Zannoette defeated the Quicksilver Cave-crawler.
Sulaniel defeated the Quicksilver Cave-crawler.
(This is a post about my University of Connecticut course (Gaming) Homer, which I’m running on the Windfola server of LOTRO. See this post for more information.)
Homerids in the Shire!
Feb 9th
No, not some new mutation of Nerbyg—rather the neaoidoi (new singers) of my course (Gaming) Homer (in Middle-Earth). See this post for the beginning of the story. “Homerid” is a modern way to say ὁμήριδαι, which was the name of the original kinship of the bards of archaic Greece.
Sunday night we celebrated the completion of the first module of the course, and the “operatives” first mission in Middle-Earth, which was simply to leave the elf-introduction in as epic and heroic and glorious a fashion as possible. Six operatives and three “senior Homerids” ran from Celondim to Michel Delving to have a drink at the Bird and Baby.
I was praying that all would not go smoothly, and indeed one of the recruits, Allindir, proved not yet to have mastered the bardic art of finding one’s way across Middle-Earth (which of us modern bards has, really? I, the Homerid Prime, lose my way in the Foundations of Stone every time). In plain terms, Allindir became lost in Rushock Bog.
The Homerids, senior and recruit, needed no other cue. The (mock) epic tales of Allindir’s great adventure began even before Thrasir of the Lonely Mountain, the leader of the recruit kinship Meldor i Lindaiva (friends of the singers) had bought each recruit an ale, and one of the Homerids, a hobbit burglar, by name Rhiain, had begun dancing on the table.
Thrasir sang of Allindir, lost in mud, and of the glorious deeds of the other recruits, who saved him from slugs. The onomatopoeia festered in such heroic sounds as “squelch” and “ooze.”
But though Thrasir tried hard to make the event an entirely joyous one, after a few ales he could not conceal his anxiety from the recruits. He had to warn them, he said, that elements from outside the order of the Homerids might try to lead them astray. Should they be contacted by anyone unexpected, they were to report it immediately. Thrasir wished it were not so, but the work of a bard is fraught with conflict; other voices are always trying to drown out the message of glory and honor that true bards bring.
Dark days are ahead for Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ, we fear. Reporting live from Michel Delving, this is Roger Travis. May the Muse be with you.
Ancient epic in Middle Earth: a college course starts up in Ered Luin
Jan 27th
Mae govannen! I’m Roger Travis, an associate professor of classics and ancient mediterranean studies at the University of Connecticut, sometimes better known as UConn. Over the past few years, I’ve been getting deeper and deeper into the strange interddisciplinary intersection I’ve found between classics and video games. If you’re interested in following my amusing journey, have a look at my blog, Living Epic: Video Games in the Ancient World, and at the initiative I founded with wonderful colleagues at UConn and also elsewhere, including my three main co-conspirators Michael Abbott (sometimes known as the Brainy Gamer), Jeff Howard (author of the marvelous book Quests which is about medieval literature and game design, and is well worth reading for any LOTR fan or LOTRO player), and Mike Young, an amazing scholar in Educational Psychology who works on learning in virtual environments and game-worlds.
