Greetings traveler,

Welcome to the forty-first edition of the alcarin.com newsletter.
There is an archive of the previous newsletters in the Townhall and the columns are added to the Town Square, so you can always read it again.
A very busy and productive month at Alcarin resulted in the addition of a new prestige class, a new story, two new tables for the Landlord RPG, and several other things. In the past few days, some new things, such as a new item, "Jibble's Fist-in-a-Box", have been added already. The Elfstone MUD has seen some steady progress as well, with several new spells designed. Still, we've not been able to get the program running on the host.
Enjoy reading.

This letter's content:
1. What's New
2. Coming Up Soon
3. Column: Men with a Mission

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WHAT'S NEW:

31/03/2004 - added Landlord RPG Table 6a: "Skill upgrade cost", added legend for city of Rachnor, Elfstone Campaign Setting, to the School, added user comment to "Yidobbi's Dwelling" rpg mission (Barracks)

25/03/2004 - added Landlord RPG Table 5b: "Wall cost and properties"

22/03/2004 - created custom Alcarin.com error pages

20/03/2004 - added The Jonathan Saga (so far; including: "The old man", "The un-hearable bard", "The powerful voice", "Performance", "Confidence", "On his own", "The hard life", "Jonathan the Goat", and "The clumsy goat") to the Temple

12/03/2004 - new prestige class in the School: Dwarven Mastersmith

Visit http://www.alcarin.com/townhall/updates.htm for the latest updates.

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COMING UP:

The two largest running projects, the Elfstone MUD and the Landlord RPG, have been running smoothly this month. I expect this to be the same in the coming month. While I haven't had time to finish the chapter on Contacts & Diplomacy I was working on, I did manage to finish and upload two new tables. The chapter is in the planning for the coming weeks or months.
The things that have the highest priority at the moment are some new additions to the RPG Archives (School) and perhaps the Reviews (Town Square) sections of the site. I've uploaded a new item, Jibble's Fist-in-a-Box and hope to add some magical versions within one or two days. I've also got a new prestige class and several new spells planned in the coming one or two weeks. Furthermore, I hope to modify the design of (especially) the School index page, adding more information to the links to various items, monsters etc. Currently, only the name and game system of a certain contribution are displayed. The plan is to make tables displaying a bit more information on the contribution itself.
Another point, is the creation of Geography pages and legends for some of the Elfstone maps in the School. I've added a legend for the city of Rachnor only. Because I can't find the other city's legends, they are going to take a bit more time than expected. The upcoming D&D Mission "The Crypt" is going to take quite a while. I hope to start work on it soon, but considering the time I have available at the moment, I don't expect it to be finished until after a month or two at least.

For up to date news on these major projects and other major developments on alcarin.com, see the Announcements forum at http://www.alcarin.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9

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COLUMN: MEN WITH A MISSION
A column by Wouter vd Zandschulp; wouter@alcarin.com

"Weird people"

Most role-players agree on one thing: role-players are weirdo's. Of course, it seems popular for all people to call themselves weirdo's these days, but role-players do not just pretend half of it. They are.
After all, role-playing itself is a very unusual hobby. Try to explain it to someone and that person no doubt thinks you are one. And who will be attracted for such a hobby for a long time? The weird people.
Weird people tend to immediately make contact when they meet. They often are in a room full of people and find themselves in a strange, abstract, own little world in which they just 'observe' the outsiders. The can participate, of course, but they will take their own little position then. The funny person, or the person who makes unusual remarks… the weird person will immediately sense that people look at him/her and see his weirdness. So the weird person might be interesting to talk too, for a little while, but he should not get to close. Because that's a bit too dangerous. After all, you do not know what to expect from someone whose behavior you cannot predict.
The ones that do allow them to be close are mostly the other weird persons. Since they are not scared by anything unfamiliar. They actually like that. It makes them not alone as outsiders. All you can hope for a weird person going to school is that other weird persons will be in his/her class. Otherwise one can become terrible alone. Even if the others are accepting, finding some understanding is a need too.
I use the term 'weird' quite easily. That's because weird people seem to me as some sort of group that is seen as such. Mostly they always have been, since they were born. But what makes people belong to this group?
Yes, another difficult question! Brought to you by Wouter van de Zandschulp! YAY!
The sentence above, that would qualify me as weird. Thousands of other things I could sum up too.
Well, weird people actually can stand out because of all sorts of reasons. Anything that makes them stand out or neglected. All others seem to be in some sort of fake-normal-world. Pretending to like soccer or wanting to earn a lot of money is 'normal'. Those 'normal' people sometimes seem to me as people afraid of the world, and therefore creating some sort of much smaller world than they actually live in. In this world all is limited with a boundary named 'normal'. This way, they create their own false sense of understanding the world around them. Of course, they cannot risk people getting in this world, who will not obey their rules. So they are ignored, avoided, or bombed to 'comedians', like they say unusual things on purpose, only to make people laugh.
Well, that's 'normal' people for you. Weird, uh?
Back to the weird people. What makes them fall into this category? They can not accept the 'normal'-boundary set by 'normal' people. Or they can try to fit in there, but not manage, because their brains works too much differently, they are too sensitive, too stupid, too much without emotion, too… well, anything that is too much 'too' to be able to fit in.
That's not a problem of course. Unless you make a problem out of it. Sure, loneliness can be sometimes. But not fitting in with the 'normal-boundary's', that's not a problem at all. For happy acceptance, all that needs to be done is shifting from the ones that try to fit in to the ones that won't accept the 'normal-boundary'. That's all that is too it.
And then, too avoid loneliness, there is always one way that is sure to make you find other weird people. Just find a group of role-players or start posting on the forum of Alcarin.com. You will be sure to find more weirdo's and can happily role-play together. Yes, life can be good.

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Well, that's it for this month's newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it.
Lord Gildor
"May the stars guide you on your journeys"
http://www.alcarin.com

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