Territan (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} territan) wrote,@ 2008-01-06 12:51:00 |
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| Current location: | home |
| Current mood: | plotting |
| Current music: | Secret Agent on SomaFM-msng-msng |
| Entry tags: | home |
A Little Problem
Has everyone got their calculators, scales, and sacrificial daggers ready?
Good, then let's begin.
Let's say that someone has a large collection of RPG books. He had six shelves of them, laid out cover to cover as good books should be, filling each shelf completely. He had acquired others, such that he had some books set on top of those, and some books on the floor in front of the bookshelves awaiting placement.
One day, he lamented the situation and set about organizing them better. He got some book boxes, and started pulling books off the bottom shelves. He observed, as he did this, that the book box would ideally hold 19 inches worth of books. This would still allow the box to be picked up by the sides, but everything inside would be more or less secure.
He filled two such boxes mostly to capacity and set them aside. He measured one shelf, which was 28.5 inches long. All six shelves have the same capacity. He cut the books from on top of the shelves and on the floor into his collection, and came out once again with six mostly full bookshelves, The first three shelves, which have about 10 inches remaining across all three, cover from A-F. The second three shelves cover from G-Sh.
Now, given how many books he has, why doesn't he play more games?
Seriously.
Really and truly, I wonder that now. I've had a good look over my collection in the process of organizing it, and there are many things I wish I could play. They range in setting from precambrian to so futuristic we're precambrian to it, in style from meat-and-potatoes fantasy and science-fiction to thrillingly offbeat and off-kilter system cuisine, and in complexity from pre-industrial up through the atomic age and back around to new-age neo-hippie claptrap (though fun-looking claptrap, I'll say).
There is a stunning wealth of ideas in that collection, as well as the tools needed to roll my own.
So why haven't I?
