Feb
25
The Secret Lair Episode 0006: Interrogation of Ken Newquist
Filed Under Games, Interrogations, Software | 9 Comments
If you question the effectiveness of our Retrieval Squads, you may wish to ask Mr. Ken Newquist about his opinion on the subject. They came in the dead of night and before Ken was even aware that his home had been infiltrated he was subdued, transported to one of our Interrogation rooms and submitted to “methods of inquiry” that would make anyone even marginally acquainted with the Geneva Conventions weep.
Once satisfied that we had wrung every useful iota of information from Mr. Newquist, we wiped every memory of the interrogation from his mind—leaving only a powerful sub- and semi-conscious fear of all things related to The Secret Lair—and turned him over to our Detrieval Squad (which probably needs a better name) who returned him to his home.1
In retrospect, Ken may not be able to provide the best testimonial to the effectiveness of our Retrieval Squads, but he can certainly attest to the thoroughness of our upgraded memory alteration hardware. More accurately, the recording we present in this episode of The Secret Lair and Mr. Newquist’s complete lack of memory regarding the same should demonstrate that the hardware works quite well indeed.
Our interrogation of Mr. Newquist (or, at least, the bits of it we’re sharing) was primarily devoted to roleplaying games, wikis and open source content management systems. While a roleplaying game about a content management system might be incredibly dull, there are certainly ways in which RPGs can benefit from web-based tools, and such is the core of our discussion.
Roleplaying Games
Online Tools for Gamers
- The wiki, a tool that allows multiple users to easily create and link web documents.
- MediaWiki is the software upon which Wikipedia and Mahalo are built.
- The Griffin’s Crier wiki is powered by MediaWiki.
- The virtual table top, usually a client-server application, allows remote gamers to play pen and paper RPGs together.
- OpenRPG is an open source application developed in Python that runs on any OS.
- Battlegrounds: RPG Edition runs on Windows and Mac OS X.
- The Screen Monkey GM server runs on a Windows PC, but clients need only a web browser.
- Play-by-Email
- Other Tools
- RPTools, a collection of tools to help with mapping, tracking initiative, dice rolling and more. [Kudos to Trevor for the link.]
Open Source Software
- Moodle is an open source Course Management System, an alternative to Blackboard.
- Drupal is an open source Content Management System with lots of module support.
- WordPress is the open source blogging software upon which The Secret Lair website is built.
Promos
Ken Newquist is the editor of Nuketown and host of Nuketown Radio Active. His gaming column, Summon Web Scryer, appears in Knights of the Dinner Table magazine.
Popularity: 80% [?]
- Mr. Newquist’s family was totally unaware that he had been abducted, such is the power of our new temporal arrestor. [↩]
Jan
9
Upcoming Interrogation: Mur Lafferty
Filed Under Interrogations | 3 Comments
Attention: On Monday Jan 14., I’ll be interrogating…erm…interviewing the Divine Ms. Mur about all manner of things, notably her book Playing For Keeps, as well as other topics. Do you have anything you’d like me to cover?
Popularity: 80% [?]
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