25 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
RPG as Sophisticated Make-Believe
A roleplaying game is, in may ways, a sophisticated version of the childhood game of make-believe. If you ever played cops-and-robbers (or cowboys and indians, or army), you remember the arguments about who shot whom, or how quickly you could reach cover before you got blasted by some bad guy, or how much damage a hand grenade did to a bunker, and so on. One of the main differences between roleplaying games and childhood games is that hte rules answer all these questions, and more: The rules...Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
05 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Star Trek is Atheist
On the subject of faith, Trek had a very clear position. Of everything in my past, it is this one show that I most credit for being able to identify myself as an atheist. There was a recurring plotline in so many episodes that it almost became a running theme—some all-powerful being would set itself up as God but would eventually turn out to be nothing more than an advanced alien or megalomaniacal computer. As a little kid watching episodes like “Return of the Archons” and “The Apple,” I lear...The show has a reoccurring theme of finding planets of aliens worshiping powerful beings that are pretending to be gods, which are usually evil and which the crew must take out.