Baldur’s Gate and History: Race and Alignment in Digital Role-Playing Games

This paper, part of a wider study of the connections between romance, fantasy and political rhetoric in the twenty-first century, seeks to historicise some of the defining features of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)-based role playing games, using as examples the Bioware games, Baldur’s Gate I and II and Neverwinter Nights. The starting point of the paper is that technical, procedural and aesthetic innovations in gaming arise from contexts given by history, and by social and cultural processes. While D&D may appear to be nothing more than escapist fantasy, at the heart of the genre lie questions profoundly related to history: issues to do with temporality, race, class, gender and morality. The paper argues that there are pressing reasons why digital culture’s reinvention of romance (and its representations of Empire-making and management in the case of strategy games like Civilisations, and the Total War series) must be understood not just formally, or structurally, or narratologically or post-structurally, but politically, in the context of the disturbing signs of our times. In return, such analysis promises to illuminate far more than its immediate objects of study. The genealogy of the D&D concept is, in one sense, relatively clear: tabletop wargames focussing on medieval battles were individualised to allow for character advancement and more sophisticated plots, and infused with elements from fantasy (derived from Vance, Moorcock and, unavoidably, Tolkien). D&D was then translated successfully into digital format, with the Bioware games representing a high point of digital versions of the genre. In another, more theoretical sense, there is nothing clear about this process. Why does the medieval period continue to have such a hold over intelligent, commercially-focussed forms of cultural production? If the Bioware games are viewed as representing a refined point of conjunction between technology and romantic nostalgia, then is it not a paradox deserving of lengthy reflection that every last technical resource of the most advanced commonly available machines of the digital age have been made to strain towards the re-creation of the pre-industrial, the medieval, the magical? Ever since the events of September 11th, 2001, it has been clear that, as medieval scholar Geraldine Heng puts it, "history and the Middle Ages have returned with a vengeance" (12). The most dramatic and important expression of this shift is the blurring of politics and religion currently taking place in the United States. For an emblem of the process one has to look no further than the cross of twisted steel rising as if naturally out the devastated remains of the north tower of the World Trade Centre in New York. The multiple significations of this space – ‘Ground Zero’ - are now compacted into the most loaded sign of the religious/imperial ideology of ‘crusade’. The recurrence of this very term in the language of Bush, Rumsfeld and Powell serves to confirm the point. Critical discourse is far from understanding the nature of the link between historical crusades, their contemporary incarnations (Afghanistan, Iraq, but also as ‘jihad’) and the choices game designers make, and by contrast squabbles between narratologists and luddologists should seem somewhat trivial. A focus on ‘the politics of re-enchantment’ (McClure) provides the necessary context for this investigation. To understand the nature of digital romance we need to understand the historical reasons behind the rise of romance, and those moments and movements by which it has been revived. According to Heng, the example of Geoffrey of Monmouth shows how romance developed "as a form of cultural rescue in the aftermath of the First Crusade, a transnational militant pilgrimage during which Latin Christian crusaders did the unthinkable – committing acts of cannibalism on infidel Turkish cadavers in Syria, in 1098" (2). Heng’s analysis makes clear that cultural fantasy, at one of its most important points of origin, is linked to issues of race, to transnational militancy, and to the need to deal with cultural trauma. These three aspects of medieval romance’s genesis provide a useful starting point for a properly historicised understanding of what lies behind fantasy’s open embrace of escapism. A second context that provides telling evidence of fantasy’s debt to history concerns that genre of Victorian adventure tales now identified by critics as ‘imperial romance’. By means of a contrast between the characters of Gagool in King Solomon’s Mines, and Ayesha in She, it is possible to show how the example of Sir Henry Rider Haggard illuminates D&D’s crucial insistence on race as determinant of character. At the founding moment of this strand of fantasy questions of race, intimately related to the experience of colonialism in South Africa, surface as problems – perhaps traumas – from which fantasy proposes cultural rescue. From Haggard to Edgar Rice Burroughs to Tolkien and on to the Bioware games, race, like setting, is represented as innocently escapist, harmlessly entertaining. But properly historicised, elves, dark elves, gnolls, dwarves, halflings, gnomes and so on can be seen to depend for their fictional existences on cultural conditions of possibility enabled by colonial encounters with otherness. The transference of race from the realm of the real to that of the imaginary is part of the "apparatus" of romance identified by Heng, causing to surface in mediated and consoling ways difficult questions about race and history, to say nothing of ongoing oppression and inequality. There is another aspect of the D&D games that intersects yet more dramatically with history, one that is particularly relevant at the present moment. Characters in D&D must choose an alignment: good, neutral, or evil. This principle works well within the games, and serves as a basis for considerable narrative complexity. But what kind of a world view does it reflect and support? My answer is one very similar to that of George W. Bush, who, on September 12th, 2001 expressed his understanding of the geopolitical consequences of the bombing as follows: "This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail". It would be naïve to claim that, like the adventure stories of an earlier Empire, computer games prepare the youth of the West to go out and conquer, rule and reproduce the cultural values of the Imperium. It is unlikely that many players of games of this level of complexity actively uphold such morally simplistic world views. However, it takes a naivety of a different kind to assume that no link exists between these varied contexts. The task for criticism is to elaborate the nature of such discursive continuities, thereby granting us a better understanding of the relationships between economic and political power and the digital tools we use to console ourselves and to escape our tortured present

Unattended Digital Libraries

Unattended Digital Libraries investigates the best use for unattended presentations as used in museums and libraries. The objective is to find out how much text and images and for how long any slide of content will capture the attention of a potential viewer. A subset of a digital library, namely the Online Bleek and Lloyd collection, was used in various slideshows and reviewed by users. The results show that users prefer to read less than ten words on any screen and the screen usually catches their attention for roughly 2 minutes

Preparation and Application of an Inexpensive α‐Formylglycine Building Block Compatible with Fmoc Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis

α-Formylglycine (fGly) is a rare residue located in the active site of sulfatases and serves as a precursor to pharmaceutically relevant motifs. The installation of fGly motifs into peptides is currently challenging due to degradation under the acidic and nucleophile-rich conditions accompanying resin cleavage during solid-phase peptide synthesis. We report the synthesis of acid- and nucleophile-tolerant α-formylglycine building blocks from vitamin C and use them to prepare callyaerin A, a macrocyclic peptide containing an fGly-derived motif

Vision function in children 10 years after grade 3 or 4 intraventricular haemorrhage with ventricular dilation: A masked prospective study

Aim We examined children 10 to 11 years after grade 3 or 4 intraventricular haemorrhage and ventricular dilation (IVHVD) and investigated whether the grade of IVHVD affected their visual outcome. We explored associations between visual outcomes with cognitive outcomes and extra support at school. Method The visual examinations were part of a 10-year follow-up study for children in a randomized trial. Testers followed a protocol and were masked to whether the child had experienced grade 3 or grade 4 IVHVD and all other data. Results Thirty-two children were tested: 24 were male and mean (standard deviation) age was 10 years 5 months (1 year 2 months); range 8 years 9 months to 12 years 9 months. All had at least one visual impairment. The median (interquartile range) number of impairments per child was six (six to nine) for children who experienced a grade 4 IVHVD compared with three (two to four) for children who experienced a grade 3 IVHVD (p = 0.003). Each extra vision impairment per child was associated with increased educational support at school, after adjustment for developmental age equivalence (odds ratio = 1.7 [95% confidence interval 1.1–2.6], p = 0.015). Interpretation Children who experience grade 3 or 4 IVHVD have a high level of visual morbidity at age 10 to 11 years. These children may have unmet visual needs and their outcomes might improve if these needs could be addressed. What this paper adds Parent-reported questionnaire responses underestimated directly assessed visual morbidity. Grade 4 intraventricular haemorrhage and ventricular dilatation (IVHVD) was followed by more vision impairments than grade 3 IVHVD. Simple tests of visual perceptual skills correlated with the neuropsychology tests. Children with supranuclear eye movement disorders were more likely to be receiving extra help at school. Each additional visual impairment increased the likelihood of extra educational support

Congenital and childhood atrioventricular blocks: pathophysiology and contemporary management

Atrioventricular block is classified as congeni- tal if diagnosed in utero, at birth, or within the first month of life. The pathophysiological process is believed to be due to immune-mediated injury of the conduction system, which occurs as a result of transplacental pas- sage of maternal anti-SSA/Ro-SSB/La antibodies. Childhood atrioventricular block is therefore diagnosed between the first month and the 18th year of life. Genetic variants in multiple genes have been described to date in the pathogenesis of inherited progressive car- diac conduction disorders. Indications and techniques of cardiac pacing have also evolved to allow safe perma- nent cardiac pacing in almost all patients, including those with structural heart abnormalities

The Framingham Heart Study 100K SNP genome-wide association study resource: overview of 17 phenotype working group reports

Background: The Framingham Heart Study (FHS), founded in 1948 to examine the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease, is among the most comprehensively characterized multi-generational studies in the world. Many collected phenotypes have substantial genetic contributors; yet most genetic determinants remain to be identified. Using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from a 100K genome-wide scan, we examine the associations of common polymorphisms with phenotypic variation in this community-based cohort and provide a full-disclosure, web-based resource of results for future replication studies. Methods: Adult participants (n = 1345) of the largest 310 pedigrees in the FHS, many biologically related, were genotyped with the 100K Affymetrix GeneChip. These genotypes were used to assess their contribution to 987 phenotypes collected in FHS over 56 years of follow up, including: cardiovascular risk factors and biomarkers; subclinical and clinical cardiovascular disease; cancer and longevity traits; and traits in pulmonary, sleep, neurology, renal, and bone domains. We conducted genome-wide variance components linkage and population-based and family-based association tests. Results: The participants were white of European descent and from the FHS Original and Offspring Cohorts (examination 1 Offspring mean age 32 ± 9 years, 54% women). This overview summarizes the methods, selected findings and limitations of the results presented in the accompanying series of 17 manuscripts. The presented association results are based on 70,897 autosomal SNPs meeting the following criteria: minor allele frequency ≥ 10%, genotype call rate ≥ 80%, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium p-value ≥ 0.001, and satisfying Mendelian consistency. Linkage analyses are based on 11,200 SNPs and short-tandem repeats. Results of phenotype-genotype linkages and associations for all autosomal SNPs are posted on the NCBI dbGaP website at http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/study.cgi?id=phs000007. Conclusion: We have created a full-disclosure resource of results, posted on the dbGaP website, from a genome-wide association study in the FHS. Because we used three analytical approaches to examine the association and linkage of 987 phenotypes with thousands of SNPs, our results must be considered hypothesis-generating and need to be replicated. Results from the FHS 100K project with NCBI web posting provides a resource for investigators to identify high priority findings for replication.Molecular and Cellular Biolog

Adjunctive rifampicin for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (ARREST): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia is a common cause of severe community-acquired and hospital-acquired infection worldwide. We tested the hypothesis that adjunctive rifampicin would reduce bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death, by enhancing early S aureus killing, sterilising infected foci and blood faster, and reducing risks of dissemination and metastatic infection. METHODS: In this multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, adults (≥18 years) with S aureus bacteraemia who had received ≤96 h of active antibiotic therapy were recruited from 29 UK hospitals. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) via a computer-generated sequential randomisation list to receive 2 weeks of adjunctive rifampicin (600 mg or 900 mg per day according to weight, oral or intravenous) versus identical placebo, together with standard antibiotic therapy. Randomisation was stratified by centre. Patients, investigators, and those caring for the patients were masked to group allocation. The primary outcome was time to bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death (all-cause), from randomisation to 12 weeks, adjudicated by an independent review committee masked to the treatment. Analysis was intention to treat. This trial was registered, number ISRCTN37666216, and is closed to new participants. FINDINGS: Between Dec 10, 2012, and Oct 25, 2016, 758 eligible participants were randomly assigned: 370 to rifampicin and 388 to placebo. 485 (64%) participants had community-acquired S aureus infections, and 132 (17%) had nosocomial S aureus infections. 47 (6%) had meticillin-resistant infections. 301 (40%) participants had an initial deep infection focus. Standard antibiotics were given for 29 (IQR 18-45) days; 619 (82%) participants received flucloxacillin. By week 12, 62 (17%) of participants who received rifampicin versus 71 (18%) who received placebo experienced treatment failure or disease recurrence, or died (absolute risk difference -1·4%, 95% CI -7·0 to 4·3; hazard ratio 0·96, 0·68-1·35, p=0·81). From randomisation to 12 weeks, no evidence of differences in serious (p=0·17) or grade 3-4 (p=0·36) adverse events were observed; however, 63 (17%) participants in the rifampicin group versus 39 (10%) in the placebo group had antibiotic or trial drug-modifying adverse events (p=0·004), and 24 (6%) versus six (2%) had drug interactions (p=0·0005). INTERPRETATION: Adjunctive rifampicin provided no overall benefit over standard antibiotic therapy in adults with S aureus bacteraemia. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment

Nurses' perceptions of aids and obstacles to the provision of optimal end of life care in ICU

Contains fulltext : 172380.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access