The Magic Circle

The term magic circle is appropriate because there is in fact something genuinely magical that happens when a game begins. A fancy Backgammon set sitting all alone might be a pretty decoration on the coffee table. If this is the function that the game is serving-decoration-it doesn't really matter how the game pieces are arranged, if some of them are out of place, or even missing. However, once you sit down with a friend to play a game of Backgammon, the arrangement of the pieces suddenly bec...

 Earthseed 31-35

31. Sculptor and Clay As wind,As water,As fire,As life,GodIs both creative and destructive,Demanding and yielding,Sculptor and clay.God is Infinite Potential:God is Change. ∞ = Δ 32. Your teachers Your teachersAre all around you.All that you perceive,All that you experience,All that is given to youor taken from you,All that you love or hate,need or fearWill teach you—If you will learn.God is your firstand your last teacher.God is your harshest teacher:subtle,demanding.Learn or die. ∞ =...

 The Race to 100

The children take turns rolling the dice, which are labeledu00a0zero 1s tou00a0five 1su00a0onu00a0the first die andu00a0zero 10s tou00a0five 10s on the second die. Afteru00a0a studentu00a0rolls theu00a0two dice, he takes theu00a0rodsu00a0and cubes representing the number of 10s and 1s he rolled and puts them on his mat. It is then the next player's turn to roll. When a player has ten or more 1s cubes on his mat, he must replace ten 1s with a 10s rod before he hands over the dice for the nex...

 The Cost of Irrational Fears

Imagine the typical emotional reaction to seeing a spider: fear, ranging from minor trepidation to terror. But what is the likelihood of dying from a spider bite? Fewer than four people a year (on average) die from spider bites, establishing the expected risk of death by spider at lower than 1 in 100 million. This risk is so minuscule that it is actually counterproductive to worry about it: Millions of people die each year from stress-related illnesses. The startling implication is that the r...

 Gary Gygax Explains Dice

As the DM, the tools of your trade are dice — platonic solid-shaped or just about any other sort. The random numbers you generate by rblling dice determine the results based on the probabilities determined herein or those you have set forth on your own. In case you are not familiar with probability curves, there are two types which are determined by your dice: linear (straight line),'which has equal probability of any given integer in the number group, and bell (ascending and descending lin...