“Table-top roleplaying is a parallel simulation on a cluster of humans.”

-My own PhD thesis (2010)

This phrase comes from one of my PhD propositions, and it really embodies how I think about roleplaying games, or RPGs.

Most people know RPGs from computer games like Diablo or Final Fantasy, and perhaps a bunch of you have even played a tabletop game like Dungeons and Dragons or Mafia/Werewolf. In all these games you take on a different character role, and take responsibility for that role throughout the game story line. Now the depth of that role can vary a lot. Let me illustrate that with two simple examples in video gaming:

1. Diablo 3, battling some boss monster.

2. Dragon Age Inquisition: weighing your options in a dialogue with a non-player character.

In first example you point and click to let your character launch an attack. There's a lot of strategy depth in Diablo, but not much depth in terms of playing the personality of your character. The second example, from Dragon Age, is quite different. Here your character develops according to the way she/he behaves in the different interactions with non-player characters, and the game as a whole comes much closer to the idea of roleplaying as people playing table-top games experience it.

Tabletop roleplaying: trad & indie

This one comes in many flavours too though! The reference version is Dungeons and Dragons, which was kicked off by Gary Gygax in the 70s. I played it for many years, but especially the earlier editions did have a few drawbacks...

“Now, where did it explain how polymorph worked again?”. Image courtesy of the Guyliner.

...most of which was that you needed a huge volume of books to appreciate the sheer breadth of the ruleset. In general, “D&D” comes with quite a few rules, and one needs a sizable spreadsheet to create and manage a single character in the game. There are many other roleplaying games in a similar style to D&D, and this genre of table-top gaming is often referred to as traditional, or trad.

The other main subgenre (indie) emerged from a different direction: that of cooperative storytelling. A basic version of this is to have somebody start a story, and then others chip in to give it an interesting twist. The aim is much less on enforcing correct use of the rules and character skill development, and much more on the underlying plot and on creating believable scenes. Ribbon Drive, The Quiet Year and A Penny for my Thoughts are for me personally a very good example of these indie roleplaying games.

The book of Dungeon World (it has fewer books than D&D). [Note to the Coil devs: any reason this image turns out so much larger than the others? Is it the aspect ratio perhaps?]

As a player (or game master), you don't have to choose between the two though: games such as Dungeon World happily straddles the gray area between the two extremes (though more towards the trad end), and a friend of mine even developed “Concept D&D”, which reproduces Dungeons and Dragons on a measly handful of rules pages (but which I also unfortunately can't find back due to the horribly generic game name(!!!)).

The benefits of tabletop RPGs

So what can you do with these “simulations using a cluster of humans”?

Well, for starters it lets you learn a lot about how other people act and react. This is obviously because you play a different character, but also because you'll see your friends playing their different characters too! You'll find players that map the very same personality to each different character, others that rely heavily on flat movie-cliche concepts, and yet others that steal traits from their real-life acquaintances to try and realistically play their characters ;).

Some players go overboard in terms of behaviour, and this used to be quite a problem in some groups. However, in recent years the X-card approach has become quite commonplace, and fortunately it's extremely effective in keeping games sensible.

Overall, amidst all the roleplaying there is one skill that in my opinion does appear to improve with everyone over the years, and that much of society is painfully lacking these days: empathy.

But that's not the only benefit roleplaying provides. In this LifeHacker article, Patrick Allan summarizes the following other benefits:

1. It cultivates creativity.
2. It improves your social skills (I guess that overlaps with my empathy point?).
3. It encourages teamwork and cooperation.
4. It teaches problem-solving skills.
5. It's apparently fun ;).

Oh, and as an added bonus, it's also great for your English if you decide to play in that language as a non-native speaker. For example, without role-playing I'm reasonably sure I never would have had the language skills to write academic papers at uni... :).

Closing thoughts

If you ever want to give this stuff a try, why not propose it to your friends, or alternatively just join an online gaming group somewhere?

And if you don't want to do actual roleplaying, but you want to have a better idea of what it's like, perhaps have a look at The Gamers.

It's actually on YouTube, so let me throw in an embed:

As for myself, after having played D&D for 15 years, I limited myself to roleplaying once or twice a year for quite a while. But that changed now that I'm taking part in a monthly event of online roleplaying fun. Admittedly, it can be tricky to combine it with bringing the kids to bed, but it sure is a load of fun :)

Last but not least: if you are one of those people who think they've never been part of a parallel simulation using a cluster of humans (i.e. a real life roleplaying game), then I can prove you wrong with reasonable certainty:

- Did you ever have to do a fire drill?

Credits

Header image from Star Trek (I found it in this Medium article)

It's weekend, so time to take my mind off work and have a look at the video games that influenced my taste (and sometimes my life) during the 90s!

Zaxxon (1988)

My first computer was a Commodore 128 (with a monochrome screen by the way), and the first game I can remember having played was Zaxxon. It left no remarkable impression, although I did purchase the board game a few years later, which just looks hilarious:

Image courtesy of 2 Warps to Neptune, where you can find a *full review*.

Legend of Zelda (1991)

Like many, my first console was the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. I shared the console with my older sister, and we would play mostly Super Mario 1 and Duck Hunt on it. Later on, I would receive the Legend of Zelda though, and that was really the first game that got me into the RPG genre. This game got me hooked for a while, but things were about to get far worse when I bought a Sega Megadrive...

Shining Force 2 (1994)

Yes, back in the days I would name the lead character after myself ;).

...and found the game Shining Force 2 in Videoland. Now perhaps I shouldn't say too much about this era now, as my 16-year old alter ego already kindly left a review of this on his first personal website. I've included it in the bottom for your interest, but in short I completed the game 36 times, had friends over to my house specifically for this game for several years*, and even ended up developing a fangame of it many years later.

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (1997)

Now my parents were divorced, and I could only have my Megadrive in one place. So in the other I gently got used to playing PC games. Around this time I got into the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, and started exploring quite a few niche offerings in that subgenre. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands stood out from the rest to me.

The graphics were notably ugly (even when it first came out in the early 1990s), and the game was pretty buggy. But the plot was solid, very non-linear and the gameplay mechanics worked exceptionally well. I played this game for many years, until my computers became so fast that pressing an arrow button would cause my character to instantly sprint to the opposite side of the map...

Civilization 2 & Transport Tycoon

Image courtesy of dosgames.com, where you can also play the game.

Later in the 90s I got quite into simulation games, and the first major one I enjoyed was Civilization 2**. I think that one is well-known, so I won't dwell on it for too long. Transport Tycoon was similarly addictive though, and I personally ended up playing that well into the 2010s. Unlike Civilization though, the TT franchise didn't enjoy long-term success, as the much-awaited sequel Locomotion in 2004 had dated graphics and flopped spectacularly. These days, the genre of transport simulations is very much alive, but when it comes to Transport Tycoon, the open source community now leads the way...

Closing thoughts

My taste in video games was definitely formed in the 90s, and I'm very grateful to all the developers who brought these games to the global community!

There are excellent games released in the 2000s and 2010s as well of course, but I'll cover those in a separate post :).

As for these days, I am mainly playing Splinterlands*** on the laptop from time to time, after having played Magic: Manastrike for a while on my phone :).

Footnotes

* We actually played Shining Force 2 in black and white with poor noise for about a year, as we didn't realize we accidentally had flipped the PAL/NTSC switch on the Megadrive, causing the machine to send signals with the wrong frequency. All that time I thought my Megadrive was just broken... ;).

** Civilization 2 was a 256-color game, but I always played it in 16-colors at the time, due to the limited capacity of my machine.

*** Note: the link here is not a referral link, as I don't post referral links normally :).

Credits

Header image courtesy of Shining Force 2, Sega.

Appendix: the unedited Shining Force 2 review from my 16-year old (and not so PC) self

(still up at http://www.angelfire.com/on/devlyn/SHF2.html but I suppose it might collapse soon, so it makes sense to mirror it here imho :))

It was february 1995. I went out to hire another Sega videogame because I was getting tired of Ultimate Soccer and Wimbledon. When I got there, I started looking for games...

”...Clayfighter? Done that......Flicky...yuk......Kings Bounty...ugly...”

and then, my eye fell on a knight, swinging with his sword above his head.

”..hmmm, what's this? Kewl, nice colors. I'll go for this.”

Yes, I took Shining Force 2, payed five guilders and went home. Once home, I turned on my brand-new Megadrive 2 (with those beautiful red buttons), inserted the cartridge and started to play on my oversized 15 years old television. I played every day, every hour, every minute that I wasn't at school, eating or sleeping. I played on and on and I lengthened and lengthened the renting of the game. After I had rent it three weeks I had to buy it. I just had to. So I went back to “Videoland” to ask if I could buy the game. The man behind the counter looked at me and said: “60 guilders. Then it's all yours.”. I raced home, begged my father to borrow me the money and hurried back. The moment had come. I was owner of Shining Force 2!

Later, my friends also got hooked and everyone impersonated a character. There were nights we sat there with the eight of us sitting around the tv watching how our heroes were victorious over Zeon's evil forces. We renamed the characters with the cheat to our own names and started to yell for our own character. Later on, my addiction ceased a little and I gave my friends the possibility to play. And they did. One guy came and played so often that my father couldn't watch tv even if he wanted to. He was plundering the refridgerator, torturing my dearest console! There seemed no choice left but...to sell my computer to him. For the meager sum of 225 guilders and two cd roms I abandoned that which I enjoyed most, to turn my interest towards the Personal Computer and Internet.

Ok, enough about the blatter let's talk about the game. The story is not very special. The two magic jewels have been stolen by SLADE and because of that, the evil that was sealed has been released in the form of Zeon. Besides that, the princess of Granseal gets kidnapeed by the evil king of Galam. These problems are yours to solve, but...

You're not alone at all. If you are patient, and you know where to look, you may find 29 additional characters! Of course, the cpu has its limitations; you may only put 12 characters of your Force in battle. The others just tag along in the Caravan.

This game has the highest hooking factor a man has ever seen and will ever see probably. Of the 17 friends who tried it, 1 was not addicted. I rest my case.

The graphics are quite exceptional for Megadrive standards, but since most reviews only show the best pics, I'll also show the worst pic of the game.

This is the animation you'll see when you're being teleported. This pic should show enough. The rest of the game is more beautiful than this. The sound is excellent. Once it is in your head, you keep humming and whistling it (ask my friends!). Especially the attack music is a huge improvement compared to SHF 1. Another unique feature is the optional promotions. With special items you can promote some of your chars to extraordinary classes (scarcely-clothed fighting monks, pegasus knights). The game balance and the A.I. have also significantly improved. The only bad thing about this game is that the story is boring and ....well...that's it actually. This game just rocks.

Graphics: 9 of 10 Sound: 8,5 of 10

Story: 6 of 10 Interactivity: 7 of 10

Hooking Factor (here it comes): 10 of 10

If anyone disagrees, he'd better shut up!

It is 3 years after Covid-19 first broke out in China, and the world has become a different place. But in what way? In this first edition of The Fork, I briefly speculate about 4 possible outcomes of the current pandemic.

Any resemblance to reality in 2022 will be pure coincidence, as this post relies on speculation, and is not a proper forecast.

(I) 2022: The Parting of the Pandemic

Sketch of a randomly partitioned planet.

3 years after SARS-CoV2 was first discovered, 1.5 billion people are found to have been affected after improved serology tests emerged and the pandemic has split the world in three. Quite a few “Clean” countries largely prevented further spread, and daily life and travel has resumed as normal, at least with other Clean countries.

But numerous “Struck” countries never seriously tried to stop the pandemic. Here, 99.5% of the people have been infected, survived and become immune (sometimes at the cost of newly acquired long-term health conditions). The overwhelming economic and healthcare costs have forced them to impose tax rises of 5 to 10%. Struck countries, too, facilitate travel and trade between each other. They cling on to the convenient assumption that Covid-19 immunity is permanent, even more so after their previous assumption of achieving effective herd immunity fell apart. The Safe countries don't trust their assumptions, and they don't trust their policies.

Lastly there are a few dozen countries that are still “Fighting” their epidemics. Often remote, relatively poor and effectively quarantined by the rest of the world, these nations fight an uphil epidemiological and economic battle. They know that one day they will emerge as either Clean or Struck.

Research into different treatments helped reduce the mortality rates by about half, and Covid-19 vaccines have been tested and deployed on limited scales with some success. Everyone eagerly awaits the day those vaccines can be produced globally, as only then perhaps the world can be reunited again.

(II) 2022: A New Expectancy

Courtesy of *Wallpaperflare*.

After Covid-19 came Covid-20, the virtually identical disease caused by a virus that is just a few mutations away from Covid-19. And then there was Covid-21a, b and c. Who knows what will follow. Some of the coronaviruses spread a little bit faster, and others are slightly more lethal. We found that immunity lasts for a few years, but only for a specific type of virus, and now all five of them are raging across the planet. A few countries desperately try to stop the spread, but after the existence of possible airborne transmission over 100s of kilometers was proven, their attempts seem increasingly futile.

The number of cases, the number of deaths, they are very high but governments have stopped recording. Vaccines are at best partially effective against one of the strains, and people grudgingly accepted Covid as a new part of their lives for the foreseeable future. 2019 was the year of Peak Life Expectancy, and forecasts now predict that reaching 80 years of age will be a real accomplishment for most people in 2040.

SARS-CoV2 used the world as its wetlab. And left it changed forever.

(III) 2022: Fool me once, Fool me twice...

Courtesy of NIH.

2019 caught the world asleep. And 2020 caught the world initially half-awake, coming forth with a few helpful treatments but no effective vaccine in sight yet. But when the second wave hit the global community was ready. Large scale deployments of clinical trials, strict enforcement of masks and distancing policies, millions of people and trillions of dollars redirected to testing, prevention and research. One lucky collaboration between two medical schools and a pharmaceutical company led to a safe and effective vaccine in May 2021, which was then tested in 3 months across 6 nations in a trial involving 5 million participants. The company charged only a modest premium per vaccine, in the interest of the global community. And now everyone has been vaccinated, in every country.

The SARS-CoV2 pandemic cost the world a million lives, and trillions in cash. But at least it will never return, and life now is as it always had been. The main debate remaining today is: who will pick up the bill?

Closing thoughts

Three possible paths for 2022. But of course many others are possible...

If you like this new category, or you would like me to focus on something else instead, please let me know by filling in the 2-minute blog survey!

Credit

Header image courtesy of Elchinator / Pixabay.

Seeing the latest Economist issue with “The World If” about alternate futures, and reminiscing of the 2008 book “The Next 100 Years”, I figured it would be fun to start a new post category, called The Fork.

The idea is that I take a topic and a year in the future, and I sketch out 3 alternative scenarios about how things can play out around that topic by that year. And to keep it catchy: each scenario should be accompanied by a picture and not be longer than 250 words :).

And I will sort the scenarios from negative to positive, just to end on a high!

Let's see how it goes :).

Credits

Header image courtesy of Linnaea Mallette, public domain pictures.

Two days ago I wrote about our plan to cycle around 100 kilometers with the kids, for the Ark Sports Day Challenge. And yesterday we finally got around to doing it!

Sleeping with a big trip in our minds was very difficult, and we were both already awake at 4-4:30 AM. So it was a breeze to get ready in time!

0km: we set off at 7:15 AM with two bikes. My wife on one bike with my youngest daughter in the babyseat, and me and my oldest daughter on the bike with train extension. You can see parts of it here, as well as ourselves:

15 km: we arrived on the west side of Southall for our first break. There were plenty of shops nearby, but unfortunately the place was also littered with trash... so we kept the break very very short ;).

20km: happily following the Grand Union Canal, but we need to follow a diversion due to construction works. After following two diversion signs the construction workers clearly didn't bother giving further directions anymore, so we drove on roads around the canal desperately trying to get back on it, and repeatedly getting stuck in cycle locks or dead ends. Some solid time wastage in this phase!

27km: first casualty of the day. I notice a low-hanging branch by the Canal-side too late, and my helmet-mounted bicycle light goes straight from my head into the river. Now it's clear we need to be back before dark (~9PM) today.

30km: we went off the Canal towpath onto the National Cycle Route 61! Our initial experience was disappointing, as we faced the worst tracks of the day, signs consists of tiny stickers on lampposts, and some arrows point in confusing directions. At some point we realize that we've went from the 61 onto a bridle path. After correcting ourselves we realize the cycle path goes straight through a private garden and then continues on a route which absolutely looked no more cyclable than the aforementioned bridle path.

35km: we give up on “cycle route 61”, which now just goes straight through grassland, and opt for a main road / towpath-based route to Slough instead. Dehydration and tiredness are setting in, so we opt for an early lunch.

40km: big break in Slough. Unfortunately, the ultra-cheap Tang's all-you-can-eat restaurant is closed, so we go for the nearby noodle shop instead. Personnel is pretty friendly and helpful, but unfortunately the kids only want rice, and the rest of the dishes are very hit and miss.

This is the place, but when we were there it had more trash, and less social distancing on the streets ;).

45km: Windsor Palace is somewhere there...

50km: arrival in Windsor. We eat ice cream which is almost as expensive as the lunch (!). The place is crowded, but most less crowded than in non-Covid days. Here we go on to the National Cycle Route 4, which we hope is a bit better than the 61. And indeed it is!

57km: we take a wrong turn in Windsor Great Park, and then end up confusing each other about where to go next, in a clear sign of peak mental exhaustion. It's pretty warm, pretty hilly, and the kids are pretty tired. Our youngest one is about to embark on a long nap, and we are off to a period with frequent short breaks.

65km: Here the “4” degrades into a rocky road steep downhill deep in the woods, which immediately goes into the side of a dual carriageway. One second out of the woods, a Lambo zooms by at breakneck speed. We've woken up again.

67km: Staines upon Thames. Directional arrows for the “4” point in all directions, and as a result an elderly couple on a tandem desides to simply ride in circles on the cycletrack. The roads here wouldn't do ill justice to a Trackmania race imho.

75km: Strange bends and a sudden steep hill lead to the first chain falling off, so we break for a quick fix. During the break, I begin to wonder whether the route we picked might be much more than 100km... and indeed it is! We realize that we'll probably hit 120km if we continue our original route, so we opt for a shortcut...

...which leads us to a far-too-small ferry (77.8km)! Last year on our holiday in Rugen, Germany we had to take a ferry once as part of our cycle route, but this ferry is much smaller, and is for sure not able to take us all in one go! And given the time constraints we realize the only option left is to abandon the National Cycle Route 4 for good, and take the journey to the main roads.

83km: mostly main roads. We briefly break, and the realize the tracking phone is almost out of battery. But we ignore the gas station, thinking that better opportunities emerge soon...

89km: but of course they don't, because we're right next to Heathrow! I'm pretty sure the phone would have died under normal circumstances, but because there is a HUGE wind in our backs, we suddenly reach record speeds for the day, and find ourselves in Hounslow just in time for our phone not to die! (92km)

99km: Gunnersbury park. We cycle this route so incredibly often, but this time we do it at half speed.......

102.9km: We reach home. Total time: 11:40:46 :).

Closing Thoughts

The day after I'm tired and stiff all over the place, as well as a bit sunburnt! My wife is clearly in recovery mode as well, but given that she barely cycled during the lockdown (she had a broken hand for most of it) I'm impressed she pulled it off! As for my daughters... they ready to go at 5:15 AM this morning... unbelievable!

Overall, we all thought it was actually slightly easier than we expected. Perhaps the good weather and the spreading of the cycling over the day helped us out? In either case, it feels like a great accomplishment to have done this, so we're all very happy that we went for it :).

Lastly, there will still be a donation coming along for this. I need to track this post, but hopefully next week I can give more details about that either on Twitter, or as part of a next blog post.

Appendix: stats & stuff

Here's the total route we undertook:

And here are some key stats:

• Elapsed time: 11:40:46
• Average speed: 12.3 km/h
• Number of flat tyres: 0
• Number of chains fallen off: 1
• Number of bicycle lights lost in river: 1
• Number of elderly cyclists spotted on tandem: 2

The full info is here: https://www.strava.com/activities/3718757534?utm_content=63006977&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=twitter