Wishing wells are a fascinating Western [citation needed?] tradition. I remember as a kid seeing all the money at the bottom of public water features, and wondering why people would do that. I think I was given some vague answer about granting wishes, but I've never been tempted to throw a penny in a fountain and see if all my dreams came true. This Wikipedia article tries to explain some of the history of throwing money into perfectly good bodies of water, but the original sources they cite don't look the most up-to-date. The cynic in me suspects that now people throw coins into fountains because they've seen other people do it. 

As I was writing the script for this comic, it did occur to me that most public pools and fountains donate any money they find to charity, or simply add it to their coffers if they are already a charity. While I think this is a phenomenal practice, part of me wants to believe that we are collectively funding visitors from a world of Space Quails. 

Continuing with my ability to only play one game a week, this past weekend I played The Bard's Tale, a game I have thoroughly enjoyed. Its not a perfect game, by any stretch, but it is an almost perfect parody of the click-everywhere, hack-and-slash, Baldur's Gate RPG-style game. Its a game that looks like it was made in the late 90s / early 00s, and that actually works in the game's favor. It lets you remember what RPGs were really like only a handful of years ago, and then spends the rest of its time lampooning how bad those games could be. The quests are endless, and hilariously pointless. At one point, you stop picking up gold from kills because the narrator thinks it wouldn't make sense for a wolf to have the contents of a treasury and a small kitchen lining its intestines. While Bard's Tale can drag at certain points, the little moments of genuine, un-forced humor writing make up for it. 

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See you Friday!

Philip