Analyse This! - Or the Science of RPGs

[major_clanger]

For the last couple of years I've been a subscriber to Pyramid, the on-line magazine of Steve Jackson Games. It's very much aimed at GMs (Game Masters, aka Keepers or Referees - the person who runs a role-playing game) with articles on scenario and character ideas, or discussions of the problems and opportunities that crop up when running RPGs. It'

Comments

[fjm]

I'll be teaching The Railways Up on Cannis in a couple of weeks. It's still exemplary for what it does.

[major_clanger]

A digital IC would, I would have thought, be very puzzling. Even something as simple as a 7400 series chip would be hard to figure out unless you had some insight into what you were looking for ("apply low dc here, ground this pin and then start to see what happens to certain pins when you apply low dc voltages to pairs of others in different combinations.")

A diode would be simple enough - it conducts in one direction but not another, which would be familiar behavior to a 1930s electronics engineer, even if surprising in a small, un-powered component. Given the hint, said engineer might soon find out that a field effect transistor behaved an awful lot like a vacuum tube, albeit again without needing grid heater power to make it work. But ICs are in effect magic boxes unless you have a pretty good idea what they are meant to be doing in the first place.

[ffutures]

did he ever feature a female character?

The only ones I can think of are slaves in a dreadful story about a Terran agent sent to overthrow the government of another world - so bad that I can't even remember the title, think it was a two-parter in Worlds of If.

The UE stories are great. Wonder if anyone has ever built a model of the railways on Cannis?

[bookzombie]

I'm not sure whether this is the original source of ironic phrase 'probably of ritual significance' but one of the regular guest archaeologists on Time Team is a chap called Francis Pryor who irritates the wotsit out of because every time something comes up, the use of which is not immediately obvious, he immediately starts to say that it must be ritual.

Every time.

[dalmeny]

"probably of ritual significance", which is apparently a standing joke amongst archaeologists

Hah. I had long suspected this.