Compared to standard tabletop games (and to games "meant" to be played online), this online chat format changes the balance of duties for a gamemaster quite a lot. Descriptions require more preparation, even when using cut-and-paste; acting and voice skills can not be used to get the personality of NPCs and monsters across, making background music as a playing aid more useful. The GM is likely to need copies of player-character records, not being able to look at the originals as in a normal face-to-face game. The format also forces the issue (particularly when players do not all know each other) of whether to leave all rolling of dice to the GM, or to trust all players to honestly give the results of their rolls (the honor system may be strained when rolling well is a very good thing).
However, over time there have been answers to these problems. The use of Wiki software helps GMs and players keep track of game data, sometimes turning into a home-made gaming aid. Scripting software allows difficult parts of gameplay (e.g. a complicated formula or lots of die-rolling) to be done at the push of a button. Teleconferencing lets groups use voice, video, and a shared whiteboard to interact. The use of technology to allow online play is growing, as seen in products like the D&D Insider.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (; November 11, 1836 – March 19, 1907) was an American literary figure. He is best known for the long time he was the editor of "The Atlantic", when he published works by Charles Chesnutt and for his poetry, such as "The Unguarded Gates."
Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on November 11, 1836. When Aldrich was a child, his father moved to New Orleans. After 10 years, Aldrich was sent back to Portsmouth to get ready for college. This time in his life is talked about in his semi-autobiographical (written about a fictional character but partly about himself) story "The Story of a Bad Boy" (1870), in which "Tom Bailey" is the young hero.
Aldrich gave up on going to college after his father's death in 1849. At age 16, he joined his uncle's business office in New York in 1852 and started working on the newspapers and magazines. Aldrich made friends with other young poets, artists and wits of New York's "bohemia" of the early 1860s, including Edmund Clarence Stedman, Richard Henry Stoddard, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Bayard Taylor and Walt Whitman. From 1856 to 1859, Aldrich worked for the "Home Journal", which was edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis at that time. During the Civil War, he was the editor of the "New York Illustrated News".
In 1865 Aldrich went back to New England, where he was editor in Boston for ten years for Ticknor and Fields — at the time they were very well thought of — of the eclectic weekly "Every Saturday". It stopped being made in 1875. From 1881 to 1890, Aldrich was editor of the important "Atlantic Monthly". As editor, he made tension with his publisher Henry Houghton by not agreeing to publish commissioned articles (ones that had been paid for) by his friends, including Woodrow Wilson and Marion Crawford. When Houghton argued with Aldrich for refusing articles from his friend Daniel Coit Gilman, Aldrich threatened to quit his job and finally did so in June 1890.
Meanwhile Aldrich carried on with his private writing, both in prose (the sort of writing found in most books) and verse (poetry, songs, etc). He had many skills. He was well known for his form in poetry. His many books of verse, mainly "The Ballad of Babie Bell" (1856), "Pampinea, and Other Poems" (1861), "Cloth of Gold" (1874), "Flower and Thorn" (1876), "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book" (1881), "Mercedes and Later Lyrics" (1883), "Wyndham Towers" (1889), and the collected editions of 1865, 1882, 1897 and 1900, showed him to be a poet of lyrical skill and light touch. Critics said that his work was like Robert Herrick's.
Aldrich's longer narrative or dramatic poems did not do as well. Important work includes "Hesperides," "When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan," "Before the Rain," "Nameless Pain," "The Tragedy," "Seadrift," "Tiger Lilies," "The One White Rose," "Palabras Cariñosas," "Destiny," or the eight-line poem "Identity."
Beginning with the collection of stories called "Marjorie Daw and Other People" (1873), Aldrich wrote works of realism and quiet humour. His books "Prudence Palfrey" (1874), "The Queen of Sheba" (1877), and "The Stillwater Tragedy" (1880) had more dramatic action. The first showed Portsmouth with the loving touch shown in the shorter funny tale, "A Rivermouth Romance" (1877). In "An Old Town by the Sea" (1893), Aldrich wrote about his place of birth again. Travel and description are the theme of "From Ponkapog to Pesth" (1883).
Aldrich married and had two sons. Mark Twain is said to hated Aldrich's wife Lilian. He wrote in 1893: "Lord, I loathe that woman so! She is an idiot—an absolute idiot—and does not know it ... and her husband, the sincerest man that walks ... tied for life to this vacant hellion, this clothes-rack, this twaddling, blethering, driveling blatherskite!"
The Aldrich family were close friends of Henry L. Pierce, former mayor of Boston and chocolate magnate (he made a lot of money from the chocolate business). When Pierce died death in 1896, he willed the Aldriches his home in Canton, Massachusetts.
In 1901, Aldrich's son Charles, who had gotten married the year before, was found to have a disease called tuberculosis. Aldrich built two houses, one for his son and one for him and his family, in Saranac Lake, New York, which was the leading treatment centre for the disease at the time. On March 6, 1904, Charles Aldrich died of tuberculosis, at the age of thirty-four. The family left Saranac Lake and never went back.
Aldrich died in Boston on March 19, 1907. His last words were, "In spite of it all, I am going to sleep; put out the lights." His "Life" was written by Ferris Greenslet (1908).
Eric Brown (pilot)
Captain Eric Melrose "Winkle" Brown, CBE, DSC, AFC, Hon FRAeS, RN (21 January 1919 – 21 February 2016) was a Scottish Royal Navy officer and test pilot. He flew 487 different types of aircraft, more than anyone else in history.
He also held the world record for most aircraft carrier landings performed (2,407) and was the Fleet Air Arm's most decorated living pilot. He achieved several "firsts" in naval aviation, including the first landings on an aircraft carrier of a twin-engined aircraft, an aircraft with a tricycle undercarriage and a jet-propelled aircraft.
Bruno Zuppiger
Bruno Zuppiger (24 February 1952 – 19 February 2016) was a Swiss management consultant and politician. He was a member of the conservative Swiss People's Party. He served on the Swiss National Council representing the Canton of Zürich. In 1999, he was elected to the National Council. He was chairman of the National Council's Finance Committee and also served on the Security Policy Committee.
Zuppiger was born in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He graduated from the University of St. Gallen and the Zürich Teachers' Seminary in 1976. Zuppiger died in Zürich on 19 February 2016 from cancer. He was aged 63.
Samuel Willenberg
Samuel Willenberg (February 16, 1923 – February 19, 2016) was a Polish-born Israeli prisoner in the Treblinka extermination camp. He was part of its prisoner revolt, and a participant of the Warsaw Uprising. In the uprising, he used the name Igo.
Willenberg was born in Częstochowa, Poland.
After the war he lived in Israel. He received the highest of Poland's orders including Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit. It was awarded by President Lech Kaczyński.
His memoir, titled "Revolt in Treblinka", was published in Hebrew, Polish and English between 1986 and 1991. He was a sculptor and painter.
Willenberg died on February 19, 2016 from complications of a stroke in Udim, Israel. He was aged 93. Before his death, he was the last living survivor of Treblinka.
Fernando Cardenal