Loaded Dice: Volumes 1-3


Book Description

After three years of writing for The RPGuide, we’ve talked a lot about running and playing role-playing games. Thank you for listening for all these years! This is a collection of our best and favorite articles from all three years of RPGuide posts. It includes three volumes of Loaded Dice, each one covering a year of our ramblings. There are sections on Storytelling, plotting and pacing your game, non-player characters (NPCs), game rules and mechanics, and advice for players to create characters and then play them in a team sport like RPGs. Whether you’re new to role-playing games or have been gaming for years, come learn from our mistakes and take advantage of our experience. Most of the posts included in this boxed set build on the ideas that we set out in our first guidebooks: My Guide to RPG Storytelling, My Storytelling Guide Companion, and From Dream to Dice. You don’t need to read them, but it might help.




IJER Vol 1-N3


Book Description

The mission of the International Journal of Educational Reform (IJER) is to keep readers up-to-date with worldwide developments in education reform by providing scholarly information and practical analysis from recognized international authorities. As the only peer-reviewed scholarly publication that combines authors’ voices without regard for the political affiliations perspectives, or research methodologies, IJER provides readers with a balanced view of all sides of the political and educational mainstream. To this end, IJER includes, but is not limited to, inquiry based and opinion pieces on developments in such areas as policy, administration, curriculum, instruction, law, and research. IJER should thus be of interest to professional educators with decision-making roles and policymakers at all levels turn since it provides a broad-based conversation between and among policymakers, practitioners, and academicians about reform goals, objectives, and methods for success throughout the world. Readers can call on IJER to learn from an international group of reform implementers by discovering what they can do that has actually worked. IJER can also help readers to understand the pitfalls of current reforms in order to avoid making similar mistakes. Finally, it is the mission of IJER to help readers to learn about key issues in school reform from movers and shakers who help to study and shape the power base directing educational reform in the U.S. and the world.




Loaded Dice


Book Description

Valentine is in Las Vegas, on the trail of his wayward son, Gerry, who has gone AWOL from card-counting school. Mixing work with parental responsibility, Tony also agrees to help maverick casino owner Nick Nicocropolis prevent two rival owners from putting him out of business.




Many Mahābhāratas


Book Description

Many Mahābhāratas is an introduction to the spectacular and long-lived diversity of Mahābhārata literature in South Asia. This diversity begins with the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, an early epic poem that narrates the events of a catastrophic fratricidal war. Along the way, it draws in nearly everything else in Hindu mythology, philosophy, and story literature. The magnitude of its scope and the relentless complexity of its worldview primed the Mahābhārata for uncountable tellings in South Asia and beyond. For two thousand years, the instinctive approach to the Mahābhārata has been not to consume it but to create it anew. The many Mahābhāratas of this book come from the first century to the twenty-first. They are composed in nine different languages—Apabhramsha, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu. Early chapters illuminate themes of retelling within the Sanskrit Mahābhārata itself, demonstrating that the story's propensity for regeneration emerges from within. The majority of the book, however, reaches far beyond the Sanskrit epic. Readers dive into classical dramas, premodern vernacular poems, regional performance traditions, commentaries, graphic novels, political essays, novels, and contemporary theater productions—all of them Mahābhāratas. Because of its historical and linguistic breadth, its commitment to primary sources, and its exploration of multiplicity and diversity as essential features of the Mahābhārata's long life in South Asia, Many Mahābhāratas constitutes a major contribution to the study of South Asian literature and offers a landmark view of the field of Mahābhārata studies.




The Prize


Book Description

The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm. The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein. The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement -- and great importance.




Reliability-Based Mechanical Design, Volume 1


Book Description

A component will not be reliable unless it is designed with required reliability. Reliability-Based Mechanical Design uses the reliability to link all design parameters of a component together to form a limit state function for mechanical design. This design methodology uses the reliability to replace the factor of safety as a measure of the safe status of a component. The goal of this methodology is to design a mechanical component with required reliability and at the same time, quantitatively indicates the failure percentage of the component. Reliability-Based Mechanical Design consists of two separate books: Volume 1: Component under Static Load, and Volume 2: Component under Cyclic Load and Dimension Design with Required Reliability. This book is Reliability-Based Mechanical Design, Volume 1: Component under Static Load. It begins with a brief discussion on the engineering design process and the fundamental reliability mathematics. Then, the book presents several computational methods for calculating the reliability of a component under loads when its limit state function is established. Finally, the book presents how to establish the limit state functions of a component under static load and furthermore how to calculate the reliability of typical components under simple typical static load and combined static loads. Now, we do know the reliability of a component under static load and can quantitively specify the failure percentage of a component under static load. The book presents many examples for each topic and provides a wide selection of exercise problems at the end of each chapter. This book is written as a textbook for junior mechanical engineering students after they study the course of Mechanics of Materials. This book is also a good reference book for design engineers and presents design check methods in such sufficient detail that those methods are readily used in the design check of a component under static load.




Wonderland of Numbers (Vol 1)


Book Description

The book, a result of extensive research on numbers is intended for the general public - even for those who are not so enthusiastic about mathematics. It conveys the message that mathematics is a very exciting and interesting subject. Numbers possess some amazing properties which will not only amaze you but also provide thrill, excitement, fun and keep you spellbound. The mathematical ideas in the book provide hours, days, and months, if not years of “entertaining numbers”. Moreover, it will also result in increasing the general knowledge of the readers. The book takes you through a thrilling, stimulating, and adventurous voyage of exploration into the realm of numbers.




Cashing Out


Book Description

When Nazis looked to flee Europe with stolen art, gems, and gold in tow, certain “neutral” countries were all too willing to assist them. By the end of January 1945, it was clear to Germany that the war was lost. The Third Reich was in freefall, and its leaders, apart from those clustered around Hitler in his Berlin bunker, sought to abscond before they were besieged. But they wanted to take their wealth with them. Their escape routes were diverse: Sweden and Switzerland boasted proximity, banking, and industrial closeness, while Spain and Portugal offered an inviting Atlantic coastline and shipping routes to South America. And in various ways, each of these so-called neutral nations welcomed the Nazi escapees, along with the clandestine wealth they carried. Cashing Out tells the riveting history of the race to intercept the stolen assets before they disappeared, and before the will to punish Germany was replaced by the political considerations of the fast-approaching Cold War. Bestselling author Neill Lochery here brilliantly recounts the flight of the Nazi-looted riches—the last great escape of World War II—and the Allied quest for justice.




Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems


Book Description

This book presents recent research in intelligent and fuzzy techniques on digital transformation and the new normal, the state to which economies, societies, etc. settle following a crisis bringing us to a new environment. Digital transformation and the new normal-appearing in many areas such as digital economy, digital finance, digital government, digital health, and digital education are the main scope of this book. The readers can benefit from this book for preparing for a digital “new normal” and maintaining a leadership position among competitors in both manufacturing and service companies. Digitizing an industrial company is a challenging process, which involves rethinking established structures, processes, and steering mechanisms presented in this book. The intended readers are intelligent and fuzzy systems researchers, lecturers, M.Sc., and Ph.D. students studying digital transformation and new normal. The book covers fuzzy logic theory and applications, heuristics, and metaheuristics from optimization to machine learning, from quality management to risk management, making the book an excellent source for researchers.




Cradock Nowell (Vol. 1-3)


Book Description

The story full of twist and mysteries tells about two twin brothers Cradock and Clayton Nowell, who are often mixed updue to their striking similarity. Their father and a nanny don't know who's the elder one. Their life is full of teenage adventures, the romanticism of the first love and beauty of the beauty of the nature around their home. Yet, the idyllic life comes to an end as one of the brothers gets shot by a stranger and the other one is accused in his murder. Now, Cradock has to save his life and honor, prove his innocence and find a real murderer.