Tea and Castle

Where creativity meets comfort

Liar’s Dice

This is the second post in a series on fictional board games. If you want to learn more, check out the previous 2 posts, as well as the one coming up. This is another of my favorite games that is used in SFF. I say 'used in', because unlike the other two, Liar's Dice does not have it's origin in a piece of fiction. Instead, it is a real world game that was used in Pirates of the Caribbean as a storytelling device. However, all the rules of the...

Pai Sho

This is the first post in a series on fictional board games. If you want to learn more, check out the previous post, as well as the coming 2. I think my first great experience with fictional board games was with this lovely game from Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I think it's only right I talk about this one first. Pai Sho is a strategy game akin to chess, checkers or go, where players take turns placing and moving pieces across a large...

My Favorite Fictional Board Games

I love board games. I love sci-fi/fantasy fiction. So no wonder when the two combine I absolutely love it. This is going to be the introductory article for a small series I am going to do, where I talk about my all-time favorite board games that have come from works of SFF fiction. The three games I am going to talk about are: Pai Sho from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Liar's Dice from Pirates of the Caribbean, and Sabacc from Star Wars. There...

Halloween: A History of Vampires

It was 1816, and Lord Byron had invited a few friends to spend time at his villa near Lake Geneva. Among these friends were fellow poet Percy Shelley and his 18-year old wife Mary Shelley, and also John Polidori, his personal physician. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley later wrote. 1816 has been named the Year Without a Summer, because of a climate disaster that followed the eruption of Mount Tambora that left most of the world...