Greetings traveler,

Welcome to the fifty seventh 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.
It has been a very, very active month on Alcarin. The summer holidays have left me enough time to do some serious work on the site. I've added tables to the section index pages with extra info on the material in that section. E.g. the list of monsters (name, link) now contains info on what type of monster it is (animal, construct, undead, etc.), the difficulty of the monster (e.g. the challenge rating in D&D or the amount of experience points in AD&D) and of course the game for which it is intended. I've also added three new poems and new Morrowind plugins. Furthermore, a lot of work has been done behind the scenes, as part of the site's current restructuring and redesign project (see Coming Up, below).
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:

31/08/2005 - new link in the Gate, new link section in the gate: "Online games/gaming", changed Gate index

26/08/2005 - new link in the Gate

15/08/2005 - added new plugin (mods) for Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to the Barracks: "Rethan Manor Add-on 1: Livingroom & Personell Bedroom (v.1.2)"

10/08/2005 - added infotable (type, class & level, system) for Spells to School index

09/08/2005 - added infotable (type, difficulty, system) for Monsters to School index, added infotags to the Items (School)

08/08/2005 - added new plugin (mods) for Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to the Barracks: "Rethan Manor Add-on 1: Livingroom & Personell Bedroom (v.1.1)"

04/08/2005 - updated licencing of Items (School), added infotable (type, system) to the Items section on the School index page

03/08/2005 - added 3 new poems to the Temple: "Twin Blades", "Roseblood: A Tower's Walls", and "Roseblood: A Raven's Gift", added infotags to all classes and proficiencies in the School, added a table with information on the Classes, Proficiencies and Custom Rules (type, game system) to the School index page, modified School index page, updated licencing Custom Rules (School)

02/08/2005 - added infotags to all Stories in the Temple and Wyvern Inn, added a table with information on the Stories (author, genre, wordcount) to the Temple index page, removed Dragon Flight webgame, removed old erroneous JavaScript code from Town Screen

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

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COMING UP:

The "coming" month has already started with a big new update: a new plugin for the computer RPG "Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind". The latest plugin is called "A Lord's Men" and alows players to hire guards and other staff (ranging from cooks and butlers to miners, dancers and skill trainers) to employ in their houses and strongholds. The plugin can be found in the Barracks section of the site.
The main work in progress at the moment is the restructuring and redesign of the site.
The new site will no longer have a colored scrollbar. The content will be placed in centered, fixed width tables, in order to prevent it from being overly stretched in higher resolutions. The navigation bar will be much smaller than it currently is, and it will be integrated with the overall "crossed wooden bars" theme of the site. The current entrance page will be dropped and the "town screen" will be made the actual index page. The forms to submit material to the site will be centralized, simplified and made more accessible.
The site will transfer from the current html and javascript base to php, which will allow for many new options. First of all, page counters will be integrated. Later other options such as "view printer-friendly version of this page", new search utilities and perhaps customable styling will be added.
Another important change is that the site will be entirely restructured, to allow for more intuitive navigation. The new site will have 8 sections, just like the current setup. The main content sections will be the Castle (adventuring tools and knowledge; most of the current material from the School), the Mysterious Stranger (quests and plots for adventures and tales from far away lands; material from the current School and the Barracks), Bards College (arts and entertainment; material currently in the Temple and Wyvern Inn), Philosophers Guild (opinions: articles, reviews and columns; currently the Town Square), and the Gnome Tinkerer (computer game material; currently in the Barracks). Other sections are the Notice Board (site info and mailinglist; currently the Townhall), Gate (links; the only section that keeps its name), and the Town Inn (Forums).

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

"The computer-nerd-stereotype"

This entire world is divided in nice and neat incorrect stereotypes, which are correct for just a little bit, but exclude all possible exceptions to the rule.
The typical Dungeons and Dragons player, I believe, is quite similar to the computer-nerd-type. This stereotype is that of a very intelligent male person, who wears glasses and has pimples. He goes to a high level of academic achievement. Later in live, he might grow his hair to be long and sloppy.
The stereotype is quite low on personal hygiene and achieves high only in courses like math or science. He is socially inept, especially when it comes to girls. He mostly interacts with some geeky friends in conversations no-one else will or wants to comprehend. The group laughs at their own inside jokes in a weird matter and will be totally absorbed by the topic of their conversation, which mostly will be about calculating something which does not need to be calculated, just for fun.
They often are highly imaginative and can talk on in abstract levels everyone else would walk past in a big circle.
Then that's where the role-playing comes in. Being mostly about imagination and with loads of rules and statistics, they love to play this together.
When together, they can secretly talk about their desires about girls and how frustrated they are. Since they are all in the same boat, there's a perfect understanding.
One area they will stay clear off is sport. Their eye-hand-coordination won't be much to begin with and they won't see the point of running behind balls or anything.
They much rather would like to spend their time on the computer, reading web comics and looking for links. They might come far in the ICT-business.

That's the stereotype for you. People born with a high intelligence, a sort of clumsiness and not very good eyes. They are devoid of a lot of social business due to their distraction toward the field of thinking and reading. They create more about an own world around them, fed by their imagination and talent for abstract thinking. They will read lots of fantasy books. Which makes this creature extraordinary well capable of creating characters and situations. And which gives this creature a nice outlook of the world, from more of a distance then others. So it makes them capable of inventing solutions and ideas others will not see. Yes, a nice addition to our world indeed, the computer-nerd-D&D-stereotype. And cheap enough. Give him a computer, chips and coffee and it will work on on it's own.

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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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