Blog Archives
Space-Cast! #26. Voting for Women
Now that Tory Brown’s supernal Votes for Women has escaped into the wild, it’s time to sit down and discuss the important questions. Listen in as we chat about approachable “war” games, the importance of understanding one’s political opposition, and why Brown chose to include a guano magnate’s whining about Emmeline Pankhurst. As a bonus, we also delve into the game’s relevance today.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Justice, Not Favors
I wish I could say Tory Brown’s Votes for Women didn’t feel so timely, coming over a century after the passage of the 19th Amendment, but here we are. Back around the turn of the new year, an acquaintance mentioned offhandedly his belief that the country might be better off today had the amendment not been ratified in 1920. My surprise had less to do with that he held such an opinion — people’s heads are stuffed full of silly notions — than that he was willing to state it so baldly. What can we agree upon, if not the idea that everyone should be guaranteed that most basic expression of political will, the vote?
Then again, that’s a large part of what makes Votes for Women so valuable. It returns us to a time when the rights we take for granted were anything but secured.
The Shorts of Tripoli
The Barbary War of 1801-1805 is one of those half-forgotten conflicts, immortalized in the opening line of the Marines’ Hymn — “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” — but also overlooked in most American high school history courses, possibly due to being sandwiched between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Or maybe it’s because the war’s defining battle only involved eight marines, a tiny figure next to the hundreds of Greek and Arab mercenaries who assisted in the capture of Derne. Or because the particulars of Mediterranean politics aren’t featured on the AP United States History test. “Period 4,” the AP designation for the first half of the 19th century, focuses entirely on westward expansion.
More’s the pity. The Shores of Tripoli is the first release by Kevin Bertram and Fort Circle Games, and it presents the conflict with the Barbary States as an important turning point in American military history.
SPACE-BIFF! 