Our third and final destination: Paris! We originally had only a day the city of lights but a change of plans gave us nearly a week. Among other things, this meant we hadn’t planned all that much for Paris compared to our other two locations. We figured we’d show up and decide how to spend our time on a day by day basis.
There were some ups and some downs to this approach. The main downside, we found, is that when it’s cold and rainy in Paris, nearly everyone lines up for attractions that are both high-profile and indoors. For example, the line for the Louvre the day after we arrived was around the (underground) block, stretching multiple hours. We discussed whether it was worth finding the time for the line alone, let alone the actual museum, and decided against it. Now that our vacation was in its final days, we really wanted to enjoy every moment, not spend hours waiting in line.
And how, you might ask, did we enjoy every moment? By eating! Truly, I loved every meal in Paris. The food was so good we even stopped bothering to track recommendations. That’s not to say we picked restaurants at random, no no no. We had a very specific requirement to fulfill. Namely, Amy had to be able to have French Onion Soup at every meal.
To those who have never had French Onion Soup (or in Paris… Onion Soup), first of all, consider rectifying that at your earliest convenience. The tangy cheese and warm broth has a way of soothing the soul as it fills the belly during frightful winter weather. It’s found easily enough in the US but you do have to actively seek it out. In the colder months of the year, though, it’s absolutely worth the effort.
Onion Soup is spectacularly simple and cheap to make. However, making it well requires a practiced hand and constant oversight as the onions caramelize. This duality underlies why I love French cuisine so much. Throughout our dining, every dish felt loved and every choice felt intentional. Serving the best possible food felt like a point of pride – As a customer, you feel that pride in every bite.
Speaking of pride in every bite, we haven’t even gotten to the baked goods! It took all the discipline I had not to try one of everything from every bakery we passed. I mean just look at them! Don’t worry, though, we certainly indulged. It can’t be a trip to Paris if you don’t have at least a bundle of croissants in one hand and macarons in the other.
Traveling to Paris also gave me the opportunity to dust off my very rusty french. I was certainly reserved (and our assorted waiters and hotel receptionists had excellent english) but did manage to navigate a few interactions fully in french. While I only had a few words and phrases to use, I was pretty good at understanding long sentences from context alone. (Most notably, a man asked me to watch his guitar while he went to the bathroom. I got “…. guitar” and him pointing to the bathroom, which was enough.) Aside from the general fun of successfully ordering a baguette in another language, I feel that the real value of speaking the native tongue is that it lets you experience a city and its culture more authentically. From our few days in Paris alone I can clearly tell that when we were able to get along with french alone, we were treated differently. Not “better” (or worse), per-se, but more like “one of us.” When I spoke french, I was assumed more competent; people held our hands less and didn’t try to upsell us (both which they did, occasionally, when we were conversing in english). I’m sure our terrible accents still gave away that we were in no way natives of the city, but even still, we felt the difference clearly. At the end of the day, all it cost us was one additional crepe that I didn’t mean to order. Worse things have happened!
Finally, we arrived at our last day. This was the day we actually planned to have in Paris, so it had an actually pre-planned activity. Thinking this would be our only day the city, we booked a running tour of the city. To keep the tour fresh, we deliberately avoided the main tourist attractions up until this point. We met our guide early dark and early in the morning. While the rest of the city slept, we proceeded to run over seven miles in a large loop around the center of the city. We stopped every so often at points of interest to learn about history and snap a few photos. (If you added a lock to the Pont des Arts on a previous trip, heads up: The city had to remove them because the bridge was in danger of collapse. You might just have to go back and add a lock somewhere else!) Overall, the run was a fun way of experiencing the city and a welcome relief after three days filled with various forms of butter, flour, and sugar.
When all was said and done, it was time to bid Paris (and Europe!) goodbye. We stopped by La Grande Épicerie de Paris to pick up edible gifts for our coworkers and marvel one last time at the variety of food, wine, and household goods available in one gigantic store, then made our way to the airport. Despite (or perhaps because of) many warnings from friends and social media, we managed to make it through five days in Paris without being pickpocketed, and our flight departed without a hitch.
This ends my brief stint as a travel blogger – Until next time!
On to destination two: Munich! This was a shorter stop but no less a part of the trip, so it gets its own post. We rode from Berlin to Munich on the Deutsche Bahn, a quick four hour ride. We got up to speeds of 160km/hr but the train was amazingly smooth. Truly, the best long-distance train ride I’ve taken to date. If any Germans feel Deutsche Bahn isn’t all that great, consider a “quick” ride from New York to Washington DC on the Amtrak. It’s less distance, takes longer, and is considerably less smooth. You’ll return with a newfound appreciation for Deutsche Bahn, I promise!
After resolving a hostel flub (we booked the wrong location) and getting lost in Ostbahnhof station for a good fifteen minutes, we managed to set our bags down and head out into the city. Munich felt distinctly different from Berlin, almost across the board. Overall, the city feels German in a way that Berlin doesn’t. We overheard more German than any other language, as contrasted with Berlin where it was a hodgepodge of essentially every language. Amy also noticed that the populace in Munich was a wider range of ages. The dogs were cute in both places though. We checked.
While we knew it to be a bit of a tourist trap, we couldn’t resist heading to the Hofbräuhaus for dinner. I worked my way through a full liter of beer and Amy worked her way through a pretzel as big as her head. The experience was worth it, but I ultimately have to agree with what our tour guide would tell us the next day, “It’s a great place to go for your last beer; by then the tourists will be gone and you will be so drunk you won’t be able to tell the difference.”
The next morning, we woke early to prepare for the main reason we inserted a one day stop in Munich: We planned a full day tour at Dachau, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazis. Growing up Jewish, I learned about the Holocaust frequently. We watched movies, we read accounts by former prisoners, we examined the high level history that preceded the final solution. Even after a teenage life steeped in what should have been pre-work for this experience, I was truly not prepared for the contents of the tour. I fully believe that every person should take a tour of a concentration camp at some point in their life. They chronicle one of the darkest episodes in human history, and we all must find the courage to face them head-on.
The tour corrected a number of misconceptions I had about concentration camps and the Holocaust writ large. First, that concentration camps were developed and utilized only within the context of World War Two: Dachau was opened in 1933, six years before World War Two would even begin. In the six years between, Dachau was used to refine the formula of how to optimally torture and dehumanize. We walked through reconstructions of barracks and saw how the number of beds in each room increased exponentially through the years. We walked through an early gas chamber, later improved because the early design subjected the guards to prisoner screams. It was horrific, in the truest sense of the word.
Second, the Holocaust has always been pitched to me as targeting Jews, plus others. The more I learn, the more clear it is that the Nazis were far more far reaching in their distribution of punishment. Anyone who did not fit into their ideal mold was a candidate for the camps. While some reasons were racial (being Jewish, being Sinti or Roma, having even slightly darker skin), others were lifestyle (being a pacifist, being an alcoholic), and still others were simply opposition to the Nazi party in any way (having left-leaning political views, working slightly less hard than you should). While this should not diminish the cataclysmic impact the Holocaust had on the Jewish people, it seems to me that had the Nazis run out of Jews to kill, they would have happily continued onward with the next targeted group in line.
Third and finally, I had always believed that the goal of every concentration camp was death, as efficient and quick as possible. After all, with so many people committing so many “crimes.” (for example, not paying multiple parking tickets), there’s always another prisoner, always another condemned. Even the gas chamber has been taught to me as a brutally efficient means of dealing death on a massive scale. If the prisoners could only die faster, that would be more efficient, more ideal. Touring through Dachau, I was stunned by the amount of effort put into extending the deaths of prisoners, of developing more and more cruel ways of killing, even if they required drastically more guard resources to execute. In one particular example, a small room was set aside to house a single prisoner in complete darkness. They would be kept alive, for a full year, only to be forcibly blinded by the sun and then shot seconds later. It is clear that assigning guards to perform this work was lowering the total death count of the camp; so much attention on one prisoner, kept alive for so long. Yet, the goal does not seem to be death alone. The increase in suffering, the increase in torment, was somehow the purpose of this place.
Over the years since the end of World War Two, these camps have been transformed into memorials. Small chapels, art, and mementos have been added, dedicated to those who lost their lives here and to those whose lives would never be the same. Doors throughout the camp are permanently open, as a symbol that this place will never again trap a soul within its bounds. Most importantly, tours are held 364 days a year for any who would come to learn. I truly think that everyone should take them up on the chance.
Back in Munich, we had only a few hours left before our flight to our third and final destination. We talked to our guide for a few more minutes on the train ride back and he heartily suggested Schneider Bräuhaus. Located only a couple blocks from Hofbräuhaus, Schneider Bräuhaus was clearly the “real” version of the same idea. We shared a table with a bewildered looking older local couple and chowed down on roast pork and kaesespaetzle. To top it all off, I had a secret tip: Our guide was adamant that Schneider Tap #4 was The Best Weissbier In The World. Of course, I promptly ordered a bottle and even had it poured for me in just the correct style. How was it? You’ll just have to visit to find out! (Or find an international beer outlet, I suppose. But you should visit!)
It’s a travel post! To keep my sanity, I’ll be posting once per location instead of once per day. Off we go to our first destination, Berlin! We spent just over six days in the city, including New Year’s Eve. On the whole, I found Berlin to be an exceptionally international city; We were able to get around in english without any trouble whatsoever. The city is constantly mixing ancient history, recent conflict, and the search for a modern identity. Berlin is many things to many people and exploring it was a blast.
Our main order of business when we deplaned in Berlin was to stay awake. To these ends, we filled our first two days with tours. First, a general “Berlin History” tour that focused mainly on the 20th century, then second a more targeted tour about Holocaust resistance in Berlin. Both were great fun, though there was some overlap in content between the two. I was surprised that I already knew many of the broad strokes, given that the last time I formally studied Berlin in any capacity was in AP European History some 13 years ago. Once you learn about the Holy Roman Empire it sticks with you, apparently.
Both tours noted Berlin’s centrality as an artistic hotbed, but the constant street art, graffiti, and general “use of wall-space for artistic expression” really sold the point. Some images were historical, others simply beautiful and abstract, and still others were sarcastically witty. For example:
Throughout both tours and the entirety of our trip, I was constantly reminded how recent Berlin’s history is. It is tempting to think of “history” as sterile and dead; laid bare on a medical table for examination. Simply existing in Berlin challenges that notion. Every time you cross a line of cobblestone bricks the in middle of a paved street it reminds you: These were two different countries. A war was fought across these few feet. People spent their lives trying to cross these few feet.. sometimes literally. And now they are only marked by a zig-zagging cobblestone line, frequently ignored by tourists and locals alike as they go about their business. It gives me hope that other seemingly all-encompassing conflicts could be similarly laid to rest, one day, if only the will for peace outweighs the will for domination.
But, let’s say you visit Berlin and don’t spot the cobblestone line in the pavement. Or, lets say you are too far from the dividing line. How can you know if a particular corner once belonged to East or West Berlin? Simple: Follow the Ampelmännchen!
The Ampelmännchen (literally, “little traffic light man”), shown above on the right, was the symbol shown on traffic light signals in East Germany during the Cold War. (On the left is my girlfriend Amy, doing her very best Ampelmännchen impression. Hi Amy!) The west, in contrast, had a pair of regular old stopped stick figure / walking stick figure symbols, similar to the US and many other cities. When the halves of the city reunified after the wall fell, the Ampelmännchen was one of the few characteristics of East Berlin to stick around. If you walk around Berlin today, some walk signs will use the Ampelmännchen, while others still have the boring stick figure pair, neither of which have a very cute hat. Our understanding is that the intersections with the Ampelmännchen were once East Berlin and the others were once West Berlin, but it’s unclear if this is 100% true. After all, the Ampelmännchen has become such a hit with Berliners and beyond that there are multiple Ampelmännchen souvenir stores, featuring Ampelmännchen shirts, Ampelmännchen mugs, and even Ampelmännchen gummy candy. I’d hazard a guess that if a non-Ampelmännchen intersection broke down and needed repairing, the Berlin civil engineers might jump at the opportunity to sneak in just one more copy of the beloved little guy.
Now on to my favorite part of every travel destination: The food! While I’m not sure exactly what I expected from Berlin’s cuisine, I was definitely happily surprised. Berlin’s cultural scene is so dramatically international that it was almost hard to identify and track down distinctly German food. Even still, we ate like kings over the last week. Pho warmed us up on cold nights and Schnitzel over Fries filled rumbling bellies. Generally speaking, whenever we found ourselves in a line filled with people speaking German, we knew we were in for a treat. The easy winner, however, was Katz Orange, a lovely restaurant located in a former munitions factory. Every single item we ordered was fantastic, from the roasted cauliflower to the Flank Steak Tagliata to the “Candy on the Bone” Lamb. Best of all, food in Berlin is cheap, (compared both to food in other countries as well as other categories of expenditures in Berlin), so the meal felt like a steal. We would eagerly visit again, possibly even multiple times if time permitted. A big thank you to my dad for suggesting Katz Orange! We wouldn’t have had this fantastic experience without your suggestion or your very, very, very frequent reminders to make a reservation.
On top of all the lovely food, we got to share some of our meals with some lovely people! Amy has old friends in Berlin who were kind enough to entertain a pair of American tourists bumbling our way through the city. Through these friends we got to see Berlin through a Berliner’s eyes, a view of the city that is often hard to find as a tourist and a foreigner. We heard from one how the Berlin train system isn’t actually that great (sorry Saskia, it seemed pretty darn good to me…) and how it’s impossible to find a good apartment to rent for the location you want and the money you have (that one sounds familiar). We got to take a moment outside of the normal tourist track and hang out with a very fluffy dog, who, despite ignoring his owner and almost running into mud multiple times, was a very very good boy. In many small ways, we were included in the zeitgeist of Berlin, which is very big thing indeed.
Our biggest struggle during our stay was, somewhat ironically, New Year’s Eve. When our German friends warned us that Berlin goes a little crazy with fireworks every year, we brushed them off. After all, they’re just fireworks. They’re loud and they light up the sky, but there are surely worse things, no?
Here’s what we misunderstood: The fireworks were not always operated safely. Or in specifically designated areas. Or even consistently pointed upwards. Every third person we passed on the street seemed to have a pocket full of gunpowder and a head full of bad ideas. While no one specifically wished us harm, we frequently had to cross the street to walk around clouds of sparks, horizontally angled plumes of smoke, and shattered glass windows. One group of unsupervised teens even through a small bag at our feet which promptly erupted into flame, causing Amy to erupt into loud expletives and me to steer her away from them as quickly as possible. Our short journey from our dinner restaurant to the NYE club was, to say the very least, not fun. We now fully understand why other Berliners avoid the city each year; If I lived here, I would too.
Once we finally got to the club and away from the active explosives, we were able to relax and enjoy the party. The club we found was ideal for New Year’s Eve: Multiple dance floors, multiple bars, and extremely efficient bathroom lines. Berlin’s view of pop music is delightfully delayed, allowing us to jam to classic hits like Wannabe (1996) and Everybody [Backstreet’s Back] (1997). When the clock struck midnight we cheered, drained the remainder of our drinks, and kept right on grooving into 2024.
Nursing hangovers and lack of sleep, we spent our final two days in Berlin tying up loose ends and preparing for our next stop. Mostly, we spent four hours fighting with a laundry machine and begging it to actually dry our clothes. As a final postscript, I managed to track down Currywurst in the main Berlin train station. The ubiquitous dish is a fast and easy combination of chopped sausage and french fries, topped with ketchup and/or mayo, plus signature curry powder. The result is a tangy and salty combo served in a matter of seconds that hit just the spot before our long ride to Munich. So long Berlin!
It’s been over two years since I set out to patch what I saw as the most glaring hole in 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. To briefly re-summarize my complaint, the assumption that most parties will face “six to eight medium to hard encounters in a day” simply does not align with the way most 5E DnD plays out. Constructing six to eight consecutive plot-relevant combats is extremely tough on the DM and resourceful players can wiggle their way out of basically anything else. That’s not to say that players are “avoiding playing the game,” more that the smartest thing to do when you’re low on resources and a gaggle of goblins is heading towards you is to avoid them entirely. This leads to a world in which players expect a long rest after every one to two combats and play accordingly, further disrupting combat prep and heavily tilting the power balance between classes towards whoever can deal the most damage on turn one. This in turns forces DMs to push the difficulty of combats higher and higher, as anything short of a “deadly” encounter (as defined by 5E) is essentially a waste of time and mega-deadly encounters themselves can become a coinflip between unexpectedly easy and a TPK based on initiative rolls alone.
In short, over my years of playing vanilla DnD 5E, I found the balance… lacking. On one hand, I could play mechanically “correctly” and exacerbate all the problems I’ve explained above. On the other, I could deliberately handicap my characters’ abilities in the name of roleplay and try to ignore the fact that the struggle and challenge I so desperately sought out was entirely self-imposed. Neither was particularly satisfying.
In July of 2021, I set out to fix these issues as best I could. To those ends, I developed In Darker Times(IDT), a 5E rules supplement aimed at organically creating challenge and tension. The rules supplement itself is here, and here is the post I wrote at the time explaining my issues and goals in more depth.
Since then I’ve played three campaigns that used IDT, of which I was a player in two and a DM in one. Today I’m going to be breaking down my own work: What worked, what didn’t, and what I learned along the way. Let’s go!
Diamond: Medium Rests
Far and away the best piece of IDT is the concept of medium rests. In case you don’t want to open the supplement to read it yourself, here’s how they work, along with the modifications to long rests to make them relevant:
Rule Change – Long Rests
Long rests can only be taken in an area of relative safety such as an inn in a town. Taking a long rest requires a three day period of relative inactivity including as many uninterrupted nights of peaceful sleep wearing no armor and with comfortable conditions. The day between can include light activity such as visiting a market or a library. Characters capable of casting spells cannot cast spells above a cantrip. Any abilities that recharge on any type of rest cannot be used.
New Rule – Medium Rest
Medium rests require only the unaltered long rest requirements: At least six hours of sleep (or equivalent) across an eight hour period. They can be taken in any location, though they still require relative shelter from the elements. A medium rest grants a character:
Hit dice – one hit die, but no hit points.
Any ability that recharges on a short rest
One additional Medium Rest Benefit from the list below.
More Hit Dice
Spells
Abilities
Remove Exhaustion
I can’t emphasize enough how much these changes hit the nail on the head. Honestly, these two rules alone just about fixed the issues I had with vanilla 5E DnD.
First, the change is intuitive, easy to understand, and cleanly integrates with other core systems. Even players new to DnD as a whole have had no trouble understanding how medium rests work. (This doesn’t yet address the issues I’ve outlined, but it’s a sort of “table stakes.” If the proposed rules were too messy or complex, the cost may outweigh the benefit. Remember this for later…)
Second, they effectively extend the adventuring “day” beyond a single calendar day. Players now have to think about when they’ll reasonable get their next long rest and whether their resource expenditure that day can be paid back with a single medium rest. These changes make easy encounters matter, even if the players have no chance of “losing.” Even losing chunks of health or having to commit resources may matter down the line.
Third, they make the DM’s life drastically easier. Restricting long rests to towns and areas of safety gives the whole rest of the world an implicit challenge, one that before the DM was forced to generate themselves. The DM no longer has to convince the players that the dungeon is scary. It’s scary simply because the players know that once they enter, there is absolutely no way to fully recharge their resources until they leave. (In vanilla 5E, a single Tiny Hut per day generally defeats all but the most dangerous dungeons in a single stroke.)
Fourth and finally, they help correct power balance between classes. Bursty classes that are used to spamming powerful spells until the enemies stop moving have to think twice lest they be caught with their pants (spell slots) down. More sustained martial classes get their day in the sun as they consistently deal solid damage and even get to spend medium rests keeping their health topped off. I can truly say that playing a high level fighter is a blast in IDT, in a way that it simply isn’t in vanilla 5E.
I’ve seen the positive benefits of these changes, from both sides of the looking glass. On the player side, I’ve had to make difficult choices when taking a rest, debating whether to heal up or to get greedy and recharge a powerful ability. I’ve felt the tension slowly build as my party has limped through the wilderness, the nearest town still days’ travel away. I’ve felt the overwhelming relief at finally crawling into an inn and shrugging off all my burdens and passing out in a bed for the first time in a week. It’s a complete synthesis of mind between character and player, a roleplaying gold standard. With these rules, I the character and I the player agree that the wilderness is scary, that even a single wound is of concern, that there’s something special you get about the rest you get in a place of safety as compared to a random clearing in unknown woods. It’s incredible and it’s something you have to see and feel to believe.
From the DM side, I’ve seen how even a low-powered encounter gives my players pause. How longer journeys are contemplated carefully. How every coin and every item they receive is treasured as a future failsafe for a dire circumstance. It’s given me incredible flexibility to challenge my players while not shoehorning in forced, unavoidable combat. It makes DMing for experienced players fun in a way that the vanilla rules simply do not.
If you play or DM in 5th edition, I would highly recommend you consider adding the medium rest and modified long rest rules to your games, evenif you don’t read any of the rest of this post!
Rough: Traveling Mechanics
I promised some rough to go along with my diamonds and I intend to deliver. First up, the traveling mechanics. I added these rules in an effort to make long distance travel less hand-wavey. After all, with the new spiffy medium rest rules, shouldn’t traveling from Plainsberg to Delport pose some challenge to the players? I wanted to formalize that challenge, to make the players feel how their characters would feel traversing through an unknown landscape.
To these ends, I created various roles the players could take in their traveling party. One character could scout, another could navigate, a third could forage or make a map. Each would make some number of related skill checks, determining the outcomes for the traveling day. The hope was that these mechanics would create the space for challenge and lead to interesting new developments in the story.
In practice, it ends up being a lot of rolling dice and not a lot of interesting outcomes. On one hand, the players could all roll well, in which case nothing bad happens and the traveling day is uneventful. In this case, it’s essentially the same as if you hadn’t used the mechanics at all. On the other, perhaps the players roll poorly, in which case the players suffer setbacks and injury. In practice, I can say this felt more like an inconvenience than a challenge. Because players weren’t trying to accomplish anything in particular other than make progress in traveling from Plainsberg to Delport, suffering a setback along the way simply wasted time. Either way, the players didn’t end up actually caring about the travel nor the travel mechanics.
In reflection, I think the reason these mechanics fell flat was that I was trying to solve the wrong problem. Travel isn’t interesting. However, the reason it is not interesting isn’t because the mechanics make it boring. It is because it is disconnected from the interesting parts of the game. The way to make travel interesting isn’t to stuff it full of mechanics. It’s to make the travel matter. For example, if there’s some plot in Plainsberg and some plot in Delport, but those two pieces of plot are fully disconnected, no amount of mechanics will ever make the players care about the travel from Plainsberg to Delport. If they take three days to get there and skip into Delport’s front gate, or if they limp in on day eight, spitting blood and fragments of teeth… so what? If the plot doesn’t care, neither will the players.
On the other hand, if the plots in Plainsberg and Delport are connected, then suddenly the travel might matter. If the players learn in Plainsberg that there’s a once a century carnival happening in Delport in five days, suddenly the difference between three and eight days of travel matters.
This burden ends up falling on the DM, but I think it’s a valuable point of (self) feedback nonetheless. Broadly speaking, players rarely want to play DnD for the simulation of walking 100 miles. Either connect that travel to something they do care about (plot, treasure, combat, whatever), or hand-wave it away.
(To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with handwaving travel. In fact, even in an “optimal” campaign, I think most travel can be narrated away. However, it’s a good idea to keep strictly mechanical travel in your back pocket for those few situations where the players’ travel schedule really matters.)
Diamond (With Some Rough): Grievous Injuries
As a long time DnD player there is nothing I dislike quite so much as “going through the motions.” It’s a special kind of frustrating to sit through a 90 minute combat, knowing from turn one that not only is the party certain to win, there is straight up no chance that anything could happen that would matter after a long rest later that night. Thus, one of my goals in IDT was to make sure that even the smallest combat could matter. Even beyond the medium rest additions I’ve already explained, I wanted there to always be a chance, however small, of sustaining a greater injury in battle, one that wouldn’t be gone tomorrow.
Another related area of immersion breaking that I never loved is how 5E handles unconsciousness and death saving throws and what it does to “optimal” healing. “Down” is “down,” after all. If you take 40 fire damage from a powerful fireball, it doesn’t matter if you were at 39 health or 2 health, you’re equally down. This does some really weird stuff to incentives around healing and action economy. Generally speaking, this system means you’re better off waiting till your party members fall unconscious before you heal them. For example, a cure wounds on your 2 health teammate before the fireball hits does absolutely nothing, but a cure woundsimmediately afterwards gets them up and fighting again with literally no consequence. Even worse, this effect is far more pronounced at lower levels when healers have fairly few healing spells to go around and enemies don’t have legendary actions that could legitimately kill your unconscious teammate before the healer gets to act. Newer players constantly fall into the trap of healing too early, particularly because the “correct” play is horribly unintuitive and breaks immersion. Who would think that waiting until your barbarian hits the dirt is the right time to spend your healing word? What cleric in their right, in-game mind would wait that long?
In a completely separate column of my DnD hopes and dreams, I’ve always wanted the ability to fight with more strategy and tactics than DnD allows. “Health” is a wonderful abstraction that does away with huge amounts of bookkeeping that would certainly arise without it, but it has the tendency to reduce epic flights into monotonous slapping back and fort to see who can make the other’s red number hit zero first. If I’m an archer fighting a cyclops, shouldn’t I be allowed to try to blind it with a regular old arrow? If I’m a wizard fighting a red dragon, shouldn’t I be able to freeze it out of the sky? And if I’m a monk fighting Strahd, wouldn’t it be awesome to punch him so hard he flies across the entire room and through the wall like a DBZ villain? (Trick question: of course it would be cool!) I’d long assumed, though, that there was no way to unlock the cool without compromising the simplicity offered by health. Gain one, and you lose the other.
Turns out, though, that there was a shared solution to all three problems. Enter the Grievous Injury! I won’t copy paste it all here (the full rules are a lot longer than medium rests; you can read them in the supplement), but I can address the above issues with a few highlights:
When a creature is knocked unconscious or suffers a critical hit, they have a chance of sustaining a grievous injury.
The injuries can only be restored by some number of long rests (not medium).
When a creature is knocked unconscious, the saving throw to not receive an injury is equal to the amount of overflow damage the creature took.
Starting at fourth level and ever four levels after, player characters gain Griveous Strikes, an ability that lets them deliberately try to inflict an injury.
The save type and consequence of the injury vary by the type of damage inflicted.
This fairly concise system addresses all of the above points in one neat package. Because injuries take time and resources to remove and critical hits can happen at any time, even a rogue skeleton can inflict a meaningful blow on a high level character. Because the saving throw DC increases with overflow damage, hanging around at 2 health in battle is terrifying and preemptively healing to a safer, higher number is a strategically valid choice. Finally, because the save type and consequences vary by damage type and players can force saves through Grievous Strike, unique and immersive battle tactics open up combat (like punching Strahd through a wall).
All in all, it’s added a lot of fun moments to my games. It allows dramatic range in consequence during combat (that vanilla health simply doesn’t) and helps players who prepare to get an extra little edge on their enemies. Overall, I’d call it a clear win.
The system does have its rough edges, ones that can probably be ironed out with a bit more tweaking. First, the level of severity of injury isn’t perfectly balanced across the injury types. This can be fun when the players are picking damage types (different injuries may be more effective against different enemies), but less fun when an enemy happens to highroll the perfect injury to cripple your abilities. There’s an argument that this is “realistic,” but at the end of the day I’m not sure it’s that fun.
Second, Grievous Strike is only a cool mechanic when it actually works. Otherwise, when you line up your best attack and the enemy saves, the “well, then nothing happens” feels like a bit of a letdown. It also violates my general TTRPG invariant that needless dice rolling should, as often as possible, lead to some kind of outcome. Again, there is an argument that this is “balanced,” (I don’t know if I’m allowed to buff Grievous Strike any further), but again, not sure it’s that fun.
While more work is probably needed here, I’m fairly confident that Grievous Injuries and the associated rules are a net positive to my games and will continue to strive to improve them.
Rough (With Some Diamond): Blood Magic & Chronomancy
Honestly, I kinda let the theming run away with me here. With all the added rulesets around making the world grittier, tougher, darker… it felt almost too obvious that I should build a few extra schools of magic to go along with it. To these ends, I created two additions: Blood Magic and Chronomancy. To fit in with the overall theme of power coming at a cost and persistent consequence, I wanted to build both schools of magic around an inherent drawback. My idea was that both schools would feature very powerful spells (more directly, spells more powerful than the vanilla 5E spells at equivalent level), but that they would have a built in cost that would balance them out.
To keep the flavor and play style of the two separate, I designed two separate cost schemes. For blood magic, every single cast has a cost in health, scaling upwards with spell level. This damage is unpreventable and in some cases even increases the power of the spell as more blood is poured into it. Additionally, after you cast a blood magic spell, you have to make a saving throw to resist the pull of the magic. Fail, and the blood doesn’t come back: Your maximum health is reduced by the damage dealt until you can rest it off of heal it with a restoration style spell. This gives the school an incremental cost, a drip-drip-drip of loss as you cast powerful blood magic spells. One’s amount of dependence is directly measured by loss of maximum health. How weak are you willing to become to unlock great strength?
In contrast, I wanted chronomancy to be less material. Rather than a constant cost to be paid with every spell cast, I created a scheme of slowly building risk. When you cast a chronomancy spell you gain fracture stacks based on the spell level. The stacks themselves do nothing, but you then roll a d100 and compare to your stacks. Roll lower than your number of stacks, and a consequence occurs, ranging from fairly bad to positively catastrophic. On the flip side, fracture stacks slowly fade as time passes naturally; restrain from chronomancy and the issue will resolve itself. However, as time mages know, sometimes there simply isn’t enough time. How much will you risk to do what must be done?
While I find some of the individual spells to be absolute gems and create fascinating play patterns, I need to do a lot of work before they’re truly play-ready. My first few sessions with these new spells showed that they had a number of game-breaking balance issues that had to be patched mid-combat. More broadly, they are probably simply too much to explore in a single campaign, let alone a oneshot. Perhaps picking either blood magic or choronomancy would have let them shine. Trying to cram both in at once was a bit too much, too quickly.
All in all, I’d call In Darker Times a success. I certainly accomplished what I set out to, at a very minimum, and I can easily say that I enjoy playing with these rules more than without them.
As I wrap up my writings about this ruleset, I want to reiterate that DnD, and TTRPGs more broadly, are fun for a multitude of reasons. Every player has their own reasons for playing and different set of activities they are looking to get out of the game. Some who tried IDT found it particularly unfun. In listening to their criticism, they mainly found it unfun because IDT successfully accomplished its goals. For example, some wanted the flexibility and freedom to express themselves in roleplay and combat and didn’t like the way the rulest restricted their resources. Others enjoyed the sensation of being powerful and flattening enemies and didn’t like how the rulset made even previously trivial fights meaningfully challenging. (Notably, I haven’t met a DM who hasn’t liked IDT yet, but that could change.)
These players are completely valid in these opinions. It is totally fair to seek out a game with these qualities and I can certainly say that IDT doesn’t help create such a game. If anything, these discussions point more towards having a meta-conversation with your play group before you start the story about what everyone is looking to get out of the game. Making sure everyone is aligned about where the fun is makes sure you all spend a lot more time having a real great time!
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to even more time.. In Darker Times.
Today, we planned for the very best. The top of the top, creme de la creme. Etc etc. It was also our last full day in the city so we mixed in a bit of shopping. Jumping out of our AirBnb, we grabbed a bit more coffee and then headed on a streetcar to jazz brunch at the Court of the Two Sisters. As for what that is.. Read more below! Along the way we stopped in some antiques stores, full of novelty lamps and decommissioned dollar bills.
The brunch itself was in a courtyard out back, covered in a trellis of leaves and flowers. The food was quite tasty and the champagne surprisingly good. We got there right as the band was changing so we only got tidbits of jazz, but it accented the ambience in a very nice way.
From there we headed to Southern Candy Makers for our necessary souvenirs. (We hoped that visiting after eating would limit our impulse purchases.) This mostly succeeded, as Andy and I got a gift box each and we all split one seal salt dark chocolate tortue. I’m always a fan of sea salt and caramel together, and adding pecan to the mix only improves the sensation!
From there we had a bit more time to kill before our next scheduled event, so we ambled around, shopping a bit more and peeking into the St. Louis Cathedral we walked by two days ago. While imposing from a distance, the architecture is exceptionally impressive from the inside.
One more streetcar and we got to the main event: Live jazz at Preservation Hall! As the name implies, the hall is “a historic music venue in the French Quarter working to protect, preserve and perpetuate the spirit of traditional New Orleans jazz.” On these fronts it certainly delivered. As the music came and went I had a bunch of flashbacks to high school jazz band: The freewheeling solos, the foot-tapping refrains, and of course the frequent use of plunger mutes. No pictures were allowed during the show, so you’ll have to visit for yourself!
Before dinner we stopped at Antoine’s, an ancient restaurant that remains family-owned to this day. We stopped in for a specific reason: to see and try Café Brulot Diabolique, a flaming mix of coffee, brandy, triple sec, and spices. The staff were somewhat put off that we were only there for what is normally a after-dinner drink, but we made do and tipped highly before scooting to dinner.
For dinner we made it back to ACME, the oyster bar across the street from us on our first day. We’ve gotten pretty darn good at agreeing on a suite of dishes to try, so we piled up a mix of seafood and chowed down!
After dinner, we had a few final bars to hit. First up, the The Carousel Bar! The whole bar is a carousel and rotates about once every 15 minutes. It’s not so fast that it’s unpleasant but it’s definitely noticeable. If you ask a bartender for a drink, you’ve moved 5-10ft by the time they’re done with it. The drinks themselves were very tasty, though I’m slowly learning that I’d prefer an old fashioned to basically anything else.
And finally, we stopped by The Sazerac Bar. Located in a gorgeous, historic hotel, the bar itself is surprisingly intimate. The main attraction is the Gin Fizz, which we only catastrophically mispronounced once and thankfully not while ordering. I stuck with my bourbon-based drinks and was not at all disappointed with the honey-sweet Gold Rush.
Then, we decided to head home. The night was pleasant and the wait for a streetcar just about as long as a walk anyway, so we walked our way home. Tomorrow, our final hours in New Orleans!
With an easy, late wakeup, we donned clothes nowhere near our Sunday best and headed out. Today’s first item, the national fried chicken festival!
The city recently moved the event to a new outdoor venue, and for good reason: The place was full of people and only grew more busy as the hours went by. We split up to each pick a dish to try and met back under a tent to share our spoils. I opted for the 2019 award winning chicken sandwich from Southerns and stand by that choice. The chicken was juicy and the breading was crunchy, with a slight kick at the end; I’d certainly eat again!
From there we walked around the festival a bit more, playing some cornhole and winning a key pair of free sunglasses. We had one more round of food that we forgot to photograph, then headed onwards towards our next destination – Bevi Seafood Company!
We walked and, looking over the menu, were immediately extremely indecisive. The man behind the counter was extremely friendly, pushing free samples on us as we discussed various menu items. We eventually settled on another cup of gumbo, three passionfruit daiquiris, and a pound of medium crabs. The food came out in a flash and we settled down outside to chow down. Special shout out to Pop and Nanu for teaching me proper crab technique; it came in clutch today!
After working through our second lunch, our next destination was Louis Armstrong Park. To get there, we navigated the local transit system and took a streetcar! Maps said it would be much slower than a bus but it ended up being about the same if not faster as we cruised by stop after stop without stopping. Once at the park we followed our ears within the park to Congo square where a group had gathered for a drum circle. The square has a history of live music on Sundays, notable especially during the early 1800s when African congregation was outlawed. The rest of the park is a series of bridges and pathways over calm waters, studded with statues to Jazz legends such Buddy Bolden, Sidney Bechet, and of course Louie Armstrong himself.
As the day began to wind down, we made our way back to Frenchman St for, arguably, New Orlean’s main attraction: live music! We picked out a pile of venues and settled in for band after band after band. First up, the Spotted Cat. There was a slight mixup with the artist’s band but we got the lead singer and the bassist, and they played a wide range of songs, from oldies to this year’s hits.
After the first show we took a break for dinner, grabbing loaded hotdogs from Dat Dog just down the street. I got the werewolf dog, on the bottom: sausage, onion, pepper, bacon, sauerkraut, and mustard! It was very tasty though I would have loved a second sausage under the generous pile of toppings. From there we continued onwards to our next band, a six-man group that centered around 90s tunes. They did play a fun number called “I’m not drunk I’m just drinking” under only marginal duress from a particularly devoted fan.
After the second show we stopped by the Frenchman’s art bazaar, an open air small business market full of custom jewelry, art, and more. Taylor picked up a ring made from a retired drum cymbal and Andy grabbed a New Orleans-inspired horror poster.
Next we headed to our final show of the night at Favela Chic. This one was my favorite as it was the closest to what we came for: Jazz! The sax player in particular was fantastic and the group as a whole was a lot of fun.
To cap off the night we stopped by Cafe Du Monde for some late night beignets. Going here late at night seems like the move; with no line you can get your sweet treat fix fast and the pastries are as well suited to night-out closer as they are to morning breakfast. Comparing Cafe Beignet to Cafe Du Monde, I’d give the victory to the latter. Though the pastries were a bit smaller, they chewier and more flavorful and, in my opinion, better overall.
We stumbled on home and hit the hay. See y’all tomorrow!
Well I was back in the US for a week and thought, “you know what, let’s go on another trip!” (More accurately, some friends thought that and I said yes to joining.) Taylor and Andy found cheap round-trip tickets and a fantastic AirBnb, so off we went to New Orleans!
The day started with a mad dash to get to JFK for our flights. The cheap flight we found boarded at 7:20AM so I woke up bleary-eyed just in time to miss the downtown A. With Taylor and Andy cheering me on (having not missed the train), I ran to 6th ave to catch the uptown E, circling around to make it to the AirTrain transfer at about the same time as them. With the moment of panic done we boarded and made the quick three-ish-hour hop down to New Orleans!
We arrived to a hot, dry, sunny day, a relief from the rainy cold that has recently descend on NYC. We didn’t get our AirBnb until 4pm so we spent the day traveling to major sites in the city with our luggage. First up, French Truck Coffee and Cafe Beignet on Canal St!
There are a ton Cafe Beignets around the city, probably spurred on by the nonstop flow of tourists hungry for the titular pastry. For those who haven’t visited, a Beignet is a slightly more chewy historical doughnut of sorts. It’s missing the hole but has the same texture and sweetness in the dough. Top it off with copious amounts of powdered sugar (don’t wear any dark clothing) and you get the picture. We washed it down with some chicory coffee from French Truck Coffee. It was very tasty but we wonder if we can find even better, so be on the lookout for more chicory coffee in future posts.
Our appetites were only just getting warmed up (we had missed breakfast) so we headed up Royal st to find lunch. Oysters caught our eye so we hopped into Felix’s for some, along with some New Orleans specialties.
On the right we have Oysters prepared two ways, one creamy and one cheesy. And on the left, blackened alligator! It’s somewhere between chicken and pork and very hard to describe. Taylor also got turtle soup and highly recommended it, so that’s another item to add to our list.
We still had a few more hours to kill before the AirBnb opened up so we wandered up Bourbon st looking for live music. Thankfully, Bourbon st is packed full of it, so we immediately stumbled upon a live band and stayed through the end of their show.
We continued outwards to Jackson Square, a lovely park with an impressive view of the St. Louis Cathedral. After a brief history lesson about former President Jackson we heard chanting and turned around to find a protest behind about the situation in Iran. I found it to be a poignant contrast between old and new, while at the same time a historical echo: Could there have been protesters here during President Jackson’s term?
Looking at our watches, we decided it had been long enough and we could start day drinking. We headed back into bourbon st towards Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. The bar has been serving customers since the 1700s, including some recently notable ones judging by the pictures on the wall which included Muhammad Ali, Miley Cyrus, and the entire Manning family. We got a mix of voodoo daquris (that purple drink) and hurricanes and sat down to sip. Both are very sweet, very cold, and very strong, so we took our time and people watched. An entire wedding party came out of the back and left to cheering, and then we heard the sound of music as a marching band worked its way up the street, terminating just outside the bar! The whole city seems to be in a perpetual state of party and it’s fantastic.
We successfully made it to 4pm so we called a lyft and headed to our AirBnb. The number of people on the trip was initially in flux so while there’s only three of us actually here we ended up with a huge AirBnb that could comfortably sleep 10. We took a moment to chill and plan out the rest of our days, then headed out to dinner. With all of the planning we’ve done for the rest of the trip, one type of food we missed was BBQ. We found a place called Cochon near our AirBnb and headed there. After much deliberation we settled on a table-full of food to split: BBQ sandwiches each, plus mac and cheese, brussels sprouts, a sausage sampler, and a full round of Oktoberfest beers.
Full and happy, we started to wander back into town. Taylor and I made the mistake of not using the restroom at the restaurant and eventually found one in a movie theatre, accessible with purchase of a water bottle from the concessions stand. We closed out the night at Sucre, a french-style sweets shop featuring macarons, sparkly pastries, and gelato.
While it was still early our 4am wakeup was starting to take its toll, so we decided to call it a night. Tomorrow, it’s fried chicken time!
Last day in Korea! We were all exhausted (something about getting home at 3:30am) so we opted for a chill day to wrap up the trip. After caffeinating our hangovers away we headed next door for some tasty soup! This restaurant was probably the most local of any we’ve had and we struggled a bit with our exceptionally limited Korean language skills. We eventually managed communication and were rewarded soup for our efforts.
For the day’s activity, we decided to go to Hongdae, a trendy and young district full of shopping, street performances, and all manner of games. We split into two groups, with some heading to a PC lounge and the rest of us finding a board game cafe just next door, passing the time indoors while a rain shower passed through the area. I recognized a bunch of games on the shelf, (Great selection! Dominion, teraforming mars, splendor, and agricola are particularly notable) but our options were narrowed down to those we could play without being able to read any text. Luckily, Catan fits the bill, and we had just enough time to play. I have many feelings about Catan and could easily write a whole post about it, but suffice it to say here that it’s a fun game when played casually. My “all-sheep-and-sheep-port” meme strategy ended up working as I snagged the win, just barely beating out Zack’s superior production.
By the time we finished Zack had to head to the aiport. He had some minor trouble with getting his bag out of a locker, but Kelly jumped into save the day and he made the flight on time. We continued down the street to an arcade and piled in. Rhythm games are all the rage here and sure enough the top floor had multiple Pump It Up machines. I find Pump It Up with its 5-arrow system to be significantly harder than DDR’s 4-arrow system, but it’s hard to say if it’s actually harder or if I’m just lacking the muscle memory that I have with DDR. We got through a few games before I got too sweaty to continue; playing in a mask is difficult! Ben won a prize but then lost a few thousand won on a merciless crane game.
Finally, we closed out the day with one last KBBQ meal on our way back to the subway. This one was, I felt, more authentic than the meal earlier in the week. Though the prices were likely inflated by the neighborhood, the various meats we ordered felt more down to earth rather than inventive, though were no less tasty for it. We must have appeared exceptionally foreign as our waitress somewhat insisted that she fully tend the grills for us and showed us how to make wraps from the lettuce, sauces, and pork belly. She was satisfied with Andy’s job with cutting the pork and Raghu’s basic Korean, though, so I’d like to think we made it out ok in the end.
With that, we bid Hongdae goodbye and headed home. While some of the crew went on to bowling, I went straight to sleep, preparing for a 5am wakeup and transit to the airport. Tomorrow, the trip comes to an end!
Today my our penultimate day and the last day with everyone still here. Our momentum has slowed a bit overall, and we got a somewhat late start heading out of the AirBnB. Our first activity of the day was actually lunch at 필경재, a traditional restaurant in Seuso-Dong – while it lacks the urban density of central Seoul, the infrastructure is still very connected and we managed to make it there in just under an hour.
The restaurant itself was very fancy, set inside a series of buildings that is not too dissimilar from those we saw on our village tours earlier in the week. We sat in a large, private room as the waiters brought in dish after dish. Everything was really tasty, and while each individual dish was small I was quite full by the end.
From lunch we continued onwards to the Olympic village. Seoul hosted the summer olympics in 1988 and the infrastructure has been preserved fairly well. Near there we stopped by an insta-famous field of cosmos, vibrantly in bloom. Not one to buck a trend, we grabbed pictures for the ‘gram and headed on our way.
Next up we went to Sincheon-Dong, boasting a huge mall and an impossibly tall tower. The Lotte tower is the tallest in South Korea and the 6th tallest building in the world, so we were pretty excited to journey to the top. At the top we shuffled in to a small movie theatre-like area and watched a short cinematic of the construction of the tower and the ride upwards. With a flourish the cinematic ended and the screen split in half to reveal an incredible view of the entire city and beyond.
We went down to the mall and wandered around for a few hours. I grabbed a real nice black denim jacket with an assist from Raghu after I had credit card issues. This brought us to about 8pm and we were starting to get hungry, so we went to Jamsilsaenae for a long-awaited meal: Fried chicken! You know it’s good chicken when, after sampling the whole menu, we all agreed that the plain chicken was the best.
The night was still young and we had big plans for the night: going out clubbing! Already drunk, we stumbled home on the subway and changed into nicer clothes, knocked back a few more bottles of soju, then headed out towards Itaewon. The first couple of clubs were a bit disappointing but the third one was fantastic, with great music and open-air access to a balcony. It was a touch overfull but that’s a vibe in its own right, and we hit a sweet spot around 2:30. Promptly at 3am the lights snapped on and threw us out into the street. We briefly debated finding another place but didn’t manage to summon the energy, so we hailed a cab and made it home before 4am.
There was a further dark spot, a lesson learned. What may be acceptable in one place is not in another, and non-verbal communication across cultures is no easier than communicating across languages. It’s a learning experience, one I won’t soon forget.
Today’s Korean word of the day: Sorry / 죄송합니다 (joe-song-hab-ni-da)
Today ended up being a day filled with a lot of Korean tradition, in more ways than one. Here’s what happened!
Breakfast was tasty fast food fried toast sandwiches from a chain called Isaac Toast, which felt like a breakfast-themed Wendy’s with a side of christian messaging on the wrapper. Returning from that, we waited for the whole crew to wake up and get dressed, then headed out for lunch. Our lunch destination today was Gwangjang market, a famous traditional open-air market full of food, fabric, and clothes. Apparently it’s also featured on Netflix, according to signage about the market. Between the vendors selling dried nuts and those selling fried pancakes it felt very reminiscent of the Shuk in Tel Aviv, though with notably fewer calls to purchase yelled out in hebrew and arabic. I ended up having a lovely trio of a fried potato pancake, a katsu corndog, and a twisted cinnamon doughnut. All very fried and all exceptionally tasty.
From there we dove into Korean history with a tour at the Gyeongbokgung palace – but first, we have to look the part! We stopped by a rental store nearby to checkout hanbooks: Traditional Korean robes and dresses dating back to the three kingdoms era (57 BCE – 668 CE). Not only is it encouraged for tourists to dress up, you get free entry to the palace tour if you do! Not one to pass up a deal, we went for all the bells and whistles and came out looking fresh as hell.
Walking around the Palace, full-scale thrones, idyllic man-made lakes, and green gardens. The palace itself has a storied past as a former center of government, burned down in war, rebuilt, conquered again, then rebuilt.. again. As with everything, the world we see today is built on layer upon layer of history.
Exiting the palace grounds we found ourselves at the Blue House. Once the residence and executive office of the acting president of South Korea, the house was opened to the public as a park and tour grounds earlier this year. (The move was a political one, apparently: The president moved his office into downtown Seoul in an effort to be and/or appear more in touch with the country in its modern state.) Regardless of the exact reasons, the change is notable to locals, and apparently everyone is lining up to get in. In the interest of tourism, foreigners can get in immediately and for free, but Korean citizens need to enter a ticket lottery. We opted not to leave Kelly behind, so we snapped some pictures from the driveway and headed onwards.
Our next main plan was to meet up with some friends of Kelly’s for a second palace tour, but we had an hour to kill first. We made our way to Jongno for the second tour and stopped nearby for some donuts and coffee to keep us awake. Once the sugar and caffeine kicked in we headed out, making it to the Changgyeonggung Palace and meeting Kelly’s friend Hyeju and her husband Du at the entrance.
This place tour was similar to the first, though as the sun had set the palace grounds took on a distinctly tranquil and mystical feel. I particularly liked the walk around a lake at the back, the path lit with periodic lanterns.
With all of our walking, we worked up quite an appetite! Capping off our day of tradition we made our way to Bukchang-dong for Jokbal (pig’s feet), along with a spicy seafood soup, vegetable pancakes, and cold noodles! The table overflowed with food and we accrued more and more dishes, interspersed with bottles of soju that stacked up at a similarly rapid rate.
We finished up our food switched into full drinking mode, playing a number of drinking games and going through a bunch more bottles of soju. We played a few rounds of “bottle cap game” (an improvised title, as it seems there’s no official one) where you take turns flicking the metal spiral left at the end of a soju bottle cap trying to be the first to break it, then a few rounds of categories mixed with a hidden timer. I suggested a variant of rage cage with 100 won coins and shot glasses, which worked well enough until we lost one of the coins in a dish of sauce. As we went through “one more bottle” about four times, I learned that I am no match for Korean drinking culture. The soju goes down far too easily and the company is far too much fun! At some point we reached our limit (or our more sober-minded members noticed the staff was starting to get sick of us, whichever happened first) and we stumbled out, bidding goodbye to Hyeju and Du.
In our final stop of the night we went to Gwanghwamun square where there are huge statues erected to ancient Korean figures. The first, Li Sun-Sin, was an admiral who defended Korea from Japanese naval attack and, legend goes, never lost a single battle. The second, King Sejong the Great, was an ancient king who created the Korean alphabet, a point of pride for a culture historically pervaded by external influence.
We made it all the way home and passed the heck out. Goodnight!
Today’s Korean word of the day: Cheers / 건배 (geonbae)
It's Just A Game 