C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933)
C. S. Lewis — Oxford and Cambridge scholar, and Christian apologist
Bright, quick, and slightly out of breath from the length of the road.
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
STAMINA — Moderate. It is an allegory of one man’s road, and it runs for as long as the road does.
CONTEND — Moderate. It argues by showing the errors as characters, and the reader is walking through them before he knows it.
DEFEND — Low. It is a young man’s first Christian book, and Lewis later said he had made it too hard to follow.
POPULARITY — Very high for a first book. It brought its readers into the story before they knew what it was for.
The Pilgrim’s Regress, in 1933, was C. S. Lewis’s first Christian book. It tells his own road from atheism in the manner of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and the roads that turn out to be dead ends are the ones a reader will recognise. It is the smallest of the Lewis books, and it explains why the others were written.
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 1 | In the Manner of Bunyan | Allegory | Argument | 80 | 100% | 15 |
| 14 | Affirm | — | Status | — | — | 1 |
| 30 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 40 | A Path Between Two Ditches | Allegory | Argument | 84 | 100% | 15 |
How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.
Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.
In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.
