D&D and the rising pandemic

[ad_hoc]

In some ways I am lucky. I have an extended family all under the same roof and most play DnD. So we are starting a "Virus" campaign. A short two month run.

Bad news......

Printer is broken and we don't know if Staples is considered an "essential" store. Hard to run modern games on hand written notes.

I hope it isn't!

And even if it was open best to stay home anyway.

 

[MarkB]

In some ways I am lucky. I have an extended family all under the same roof and most play DnD. So we are starting a "Virus" campaign. A short two month run.

Bad news......

Printer is broken and we don't know if Staples is considered an "essential" store. Hard to run modern games on hand written notes.

I use Google Docs for most of my gaming note-keeping these days. Works well if you have a tablet and is reasonably practical with a smartphone.

 

[Umbran]

Printer is broken and we don't know if Staples is considered an "essential" store. Hard to run modern games on hand written notes.

"Modern games". I don't know what that means, or why it requires printing. But...

1) I don't know your financial situation, but you can get a good, durable laser printer for around $100, and Staples, Officemax, and Amazon are certainly still delivering.

2) The core of RPGs was devised before everyone had a computer, much less a printer. You can embrace the essence.

 

[megamania]

Run mainly 3.5 so notes and page references would be huge

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

2) The core of RPGs was devised before everyone had a computer, much less a printer. You can embrace the essence.

Ha, I remember trying to create my own character sheets on a manual typewriter. And then on a PC with dot-matrix printer in the early 80's. Getting those columns and rows to line up properly was a pain. But I finally gave up and bought one of those packs of blank 1st Ed AD&D character sheets and made copies at the library.

 

[The Green Hermit]

I hope it isn't!

And even if it was open best to stay home anyway.

It is, because of how many people have to work from home.

 

[Umbran]

Ha, I remember trying to create my own character sheets on a manual typewriter. And then on a PC with dot-matrix printer in the early 80's. Getting those columns and rows to line up properly was a pain. But I finally gave up and bought one of those packs of blank 1st Ed AD&D character sheets and made copies at the library.

I just wrote sheets by hand. A sheet of college ruled paper did me just fine.

 

[Zardnaar]

In some ways I am lucky. I have an extended family all under the same roof and most play DnD. So we are starting a "Virus" campaign. A short two month run.

Bad news......

Printer is broken and we don't know if Staples is considered an "essential" store. Hard to run modern games on hand written notes.

You can. Not sure how much toner us in my printer but I can't get more atm.

 

[Azzy]

Ha, I remember trying to create my own character sheets on a manual typewriter. And then on a PC with dot-matrix printer in the early 80's. Getting those columns and rows to line up properly was a pain. But I finally gave up and bought one of those packs of blank 1st Ed AD&D character sheets and made copies at the library.

Heh. I remember my old 8-pin dot matrix printer. I was so stoked when I got a 24-pin dot matrix. Yeah, I made my own character sheets with Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS way back when.

 

[tomBitonti]

This year 20 million more people where born than died. 31+29+30 days is 90 days, so 222 thousand per day.

Yesterday, for which we have complete stats, there where 3,204 deaths. As noted above, this may be an undercount.

Over the past week, deaths have grown from 14,640 to 34,065, a rate of 12.8% per day. The deaths per day has also been growing at roughly that rate.

3204 * 1.128^X = 222,000 is the number of days, at this rate, before Covid-19 causes deaths to overtake births for a day. Solving for X we get ln(69)/ln(1.28) or 18 days.

So at the current rate of growth, on April 17th more people will die than are born. Definitely for the first time since WW2, and if not that since the 1918 pandemic.

Spoiler

There are many ways the rates can change. Social isolation may prove effective, reducing the curve from larger areas. New outbreaks may be preempted with early response.

But the 13% per day already includes the under control Wuhan deaths, and the relatively under control Seattle, Italy, etc. There are a number of places where it is getting out of control (NY, France, Spain, UK) and there are weeks of growth left, plus a myriad of under tested places where an epidemic could be exploding.

A week ago, the USA looked good with a declining growth rate in deaths; then NYC exploded and overtook Seattle. That wasn't a surprise; that was expected to happen. If not NYC, then somewhere else.

Every week we should expect an exponentially increasing number of new hotspots in the USA and around the world, as pandemics have local exponential epidemics, and a global exponential number of epidemics.

That’s a somber statistic.

Although, were there no events in WWII which match this statistic?

Thanks,
Tom Bitonti