2024 1031 Play Hades and read the Iliad

Last December I had an idea,

@micahrl: Do u guys know what would be a fun infrequent Gamer Event

@micahrl: Reading the Iliad and playing Hades

It started because I was reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, which I first heard about in a Slate Star Codex book review. If nothing else, the book is a really enjoyable work of speculative fiction with the premise that people of antiquity were constantly hallucinating gods who gave them orders moment to moment. It postulates that this enabled civilization and the birth of religion, and that you can find evidence in ancient liturature of the gradual loss of these hallucinations. One of its most cited sources is the Iliad.

I am not convinced that this is strictly true, but I devoured the book as science fiction. I also loved its prose — old-fashioned and rich.

In any case, I was reading this passage:

This is Achilles’ mother speaking to him, but for some reason I head it in the voice of Hades. And how cool would it be to read the original literature and play a game inspired by it?

Then Josiah decided to actually make it happen, he invited people and set a schedule, and we did it! We all started new Hades characters on the same day, we had a group chat to discuss the book and our game achievements, and we met up every month or two hang out and play the game in person. We also occasionally did other related activities, like watch Troy. Josiah gave out cool prizes for participants who finished the game.

It was fun, and anyone reading this should do it too.

Hades and the Iliad

Hades needs no introduction, and there was a new translation of the Iliad that some of us decided to try.

Our original expectation was that it would take a few months to finish the Iliad, but unfortunately we lost steam and found many of the chapters to be a slog. The larger group regrets the book choice, although personally I am glad to have read it. In any case, the lack of motivation meant the book dragged on more than it had to, and it took us most of this year to finish.

I think our biggest mistake was that we did not use a study guide or Youtube lectures to give us more context for the Iliad. We picked different translations to read based on our interests and what we had handy, and we could have done the same for a supplement, which would have been a good discussion generator when we met up. It also would have kept us interested when we got bored with the repetitive battle scenes and total lack of relatable characters. The past truly is a foreign country, and it would have been worth it to hire a guide.

Next: demons

Our group wanted to keep playing and reading together, but everyone needed a more engaging book to read after the Iliad was so difficult to finish, so we chose a theme of demons and we’re playing Diablo IV (new expansion just came out!) and reading Angelology. None of us had heard of the book before, but it’s a modern novel on the NYT bestseller list. We expect to finish the book quickly, and we might move on to something more challenging, maybe a book about Revelation, but TBD.

Future pairings

I do want to return to more educational books for future pairings.

Suggestions for picking a pairing:

• Game
  • Fun and engaging individually / asynchronously, and to play multiplayer or together in single player
  • Works on everyone’s existing hardware; we had Switch and Steamdeck players
  • Playable in short sessions, so that the more casual players still had fun
• Books
  • Educational or challenging in some way; something you wouldn’t have otherwise read that feels like an accomplishment to finish (but it should still be something you actually want to read)

A few I’m particularly interested in trying together:

If you try this, you should email me and tell me about it!