Monthly Archives: March 2016

D&D now on Steam, complete with dice and a Dungeon Master

By Charlie Hall on Apr 22, 2015 at 5:00p

Fantasy Grounds, one of the leading virtual tabletop platforms, now offers officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons content from Wizards of the Coast. Available through Steam, the software can allow players to virtually recreate the 5th edition D&D tabletop experience complete with dice rolling, 2D maps and a play experience completely controlled by a dungeon master.

Anyone who’s been playing D&D over the last decade remembers the promise of Wizard’s Virtual Table. First publicized in the back pages of 4th edition core rulebooks, it promised a fully-realized, 3D tabletop roleplaying experience. But over the lifecycle of 4th edition the vision wavered, and in 2012 the Virtual Table beta was officially cancelled.

In the meantime, a number of virtual tabletop solutions cropped up organically online, allowing players to come together from remote locations around the world and have an experience very similar to playing at a table together in the same room.

fantasy_grounds_phandelver

One of the most capable solutions is Fantasy Grounds, which has a bewildering assortment of features and flexibilities that allow game masters to create everything from homebrew games, to Pathfinder and other established tabletop systems. Add to that the officially licensed D&D modules available for download, including add-on classes and monster collections, as well as entire campaigns.

The first set of products, including the D&D Complete Core Class Pack, D&D Complete Core Monster Pack, and The Lost Mine of Phandelver went on sale last week. Polygon has spent some time checking out the content in The Lost Mine module. Believe it or not, the entire experience, page-for-page, of the physical 5th edition D&D Starter Set is represented there. Beyond that, Fantasy Ground’s modules even include annotated maps hotlinked to spawn enemies onto the grid, ready to roll initiative.

We talked to the president and owner of Fantasy Grounds, Doug Davison, who said that more products are already in the pipeline.

“We have a queue that we’re working through right now,” Davison told Polygon. “We just finished up the preliminary work on the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure module, and so that’s currently in review right now. We’ve already conducted our internal reviews, and now it’s out in the hands of a few folks at Wizards of the Coast. So depending on how much needs to be changed during that process, I think you’re looking at a matter of maybe weeks before that’s available.”

Greg Tito, Wizard’s communications manager, confirmed for Polygon that other campaigns, including Rise of Tiamat and the recently released Princes of the Apocalypse, are on the way for Fantasy Grounds.

It’s interesting that Wizards is partnering with a tool which, for all intents and purposes, allows users to scrape content off the internet for free and easily insert it into their games. Fantasy Grounds’ own online tutorials give step-by-step instructions on how to grab maps and art from Google Images and drop it directly into user-generated games.

But Tito says players have been doing this sort of thing for generations, so why not support a tool that lets them do it easily? Furthermore, he hopes that fans will see the value in the for-pay Fantasy Grounds modules, as they leverage the strong work that the Wizards research and development team, as well as their publishing partners, produce in the physical books.

“It goes down to everything that we’ve been excited about in this partnership withFantasy Grounds,” Tito said. “It’s just another tool to allow people to play D&D the way they want to play it.”

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Scientists discover how to ‘upload knowledge to your brain’

Enhanced training through NeurostimulationPlay!04:55

00:0504:56
 Link to video here – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/01/scientists-discover-how-to-download-knowledge-to-your-brain/

Researchers claim to have developed a simulator which can feed information directly into a person’s brain and teach them new skills in a shorter amount of time, comparing it to “life imitating art”.

They believe it could be the first steps in developing advanced software that will make Matrix-style instant learning a reality.

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Cosplay Pictures for the Weekend

Cosplayers and cosplay for the weekend…

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Random Humor to Start the Week

Random humor for your Monday…

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Cosplay for the Weekend

Cosplayers and cosplay for the weekend…

(finishing editing on my sixth book, due out soon, sorry for slow posts…)

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Cosplay Pictures for Your Saturday

Cosplayers and cosplay to enjoy!

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In Japan, a burger that looks like the earth

Have you ever been so hungry you thought to yourself: ‘I could eat an entire planet!’ Yeah, I sometimes get that too. The Orbi Yokohama science museum in Japan is currently serving a burger that you could say is pretty close to home: the Earth burger. The not-so-appetizing burger closely resembles our planet with its blue and green bun. It’s the product of a collaboration between BBC and Sega, and is priced at 470 yen (around $4.50)

While the color blue has been long known to be an appetite suppressant, I wouldn’t mind taking a bite out of this one. After all, how many people do you know have eradicated an entire species using their hunger for natural resources? Oh wait…

Via Foodiggity

earth burger 2

About the author

Inigo is a writer and graphic designer from Manila, Philippines. He is a soldier of love who will carry you on his strong back of awesomeness when the zombie apocalypse arrives.

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‘Vicious’ new praying mantis discovered in Rwanda

The female wingless "bush tiger mantis" (Dystacta tigrifrutex) from Nyungwe National Park in southwestern Rwanda.

The female wingless “bush tiger mantis” (Dystacta tigrifrutex) from Nyungwe National Park in southwestern Rwanda.(Gavin Svenson)

On a cool and rainy night in a dense, mountainous forest in Rwanda, insect-surveying scientists discovered a new species of praying mantis, one whose wingless females are “vicious hunters” that prowl for prey as if they were marauding tigers.

The researchers have named the newfound praying mantis species which was discovered in Nyungwe National Park Dystacta tigrifrutex, or “bush tiger mantis.”

“The new species is amazing, because the fairly small female prowls through the underbrush searching for prey, while the male flies appear to live higher in the vegetation,” stated Riley Tedrow, a Case Western Reserve University evolutionary biology student who led the research.

Researchers found out about the species after a winged male was attracted to a light trap the scientists had set up to study the local insects. After fortuitously trapping a female from the leaf litter, the scientists got another lucky break: She laid an egg case (called an ootheca). This allowed the scientists to study the nymphs and adults in one three-week field session, which is a rarity in insect science for one field trip.

The researchers compared the new specimens with those found in museums and described in scientific papers; the scientists also looked at various measurements of the bush tiger mantis’ bodies, such as color and length. Through these analyses, the researchers concluded the species belongs to the genus Dystacta; until now, this genus had consisted of just one species, D. alticeps, which is spread all over Africa.

One feature could have provided a big help in identifying the species, the male genitalia. This, however, was missing, as ants had gobbled up these vital parts while the male dried up in the Rwandan heat, the researchers noted.

The scientists also tracked down a dozen species that were previously not known to live in Rwanda, and urged that conservation authorities place the park under protection so as not to endanger the new finds. A follow-up expedition is planned in June to gauge the size of the bush tiger’s habitat.

A study based on the research will be published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

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Cosplay for your Saturday!

Cosplayers and their awesome cosplay for your enjoyment!

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