Miscellany

Here are some miscellaneous items related to role playing and/or Star Trek that may be of interest.

RPG MANIFESTO
Here is a short manifesto that I wrote on the art of role playing. It argues for an immersive style of play, in which the sense of perceiving an imaginary environment through the experiences of an imaginary character takes precedence. It gives tips on how to foster the immersive style of play, and it contrasts the immersive style with other styles, particularly ones involving lots of rule-crunching and/or combat strategizing that is disconnected from the character’s (as opposed to the player’s) experience.

STATISTICS OF COMPETITIVE ROLLS
A short analysis of the statistics of competitive rolls.

DICE ROLLING SCRIPT
Here is a dice rolling script, written in Perl, that allows you to generate dice rolls using standard notation (e.g., d10 or 3d6+5).

[TURNING] star trek INTO NONSENSE
May 2009: In contrast to most everyone else (though a minority of fans share my views), I was hugely disappointed and frustrated by the J.J. Abrams Star Trek “reboot.” Here’s why.

May 2013: Well the new movie is coming out soon, and both critics and audience members are predictably (yet inexplicably!) gushing about what looks to be more of the same pointless violence, nonsensical plot, and unlikeable characterization that we got the first time. Here’s a well-written review that most likely agrees with what my opinion would be, were I inclined to watch this movie:

http://www.theoohtray.com/2013/05/09/film-review-star-trek-into-darkness/?_r=true

But as for me I’ll studiously avoid it, thank you very much. As Scotty said in Friday’s Child, “Fool me once...”