My group has agreed that we will not use miniatures or tiles to play AD&amp;D 1e. Instead, we will rely upon the "Theater of the Mind" style gameplay. This will be a major change for me as a DM, as I played 4e strictly with miniatures and maps.   I believe that we will still assign the group a "cartographer" (as the DMG suggests) but this will only be used (I assume) to have a general idea of tracking the players' movement over time.  My question is, what general advice do you have to somebody planning to DM 1e with as little intervention of minis, maps, etc. as possible?
I think the title says it all. Let's say you're mastering a game without the benefit of miniatures, maps, or any kind of physical representation of the environment. How would you keep track of details like line-of-sight, ranged attack viability, and all the other small nuances which go with creating a "believable-enough" environment in which your PCs live and thrive?  (I admit that @LoganMacRae, who is my own DM, is an inspiration for this question. He does this with panache, and in my one-off, I feel like I have some mighty big shoes to fill!)
Can I boot a Live USB fully to RAM, allowing me to remove the disk? I have a live USB made with the standard Ubuntu disk image creator for 16.04 LTS. In the current state, I can boot to this disk, but it still requires the original USB to run properly at all times.  Attempting to pull the drive and use the system generates a large amount of I/O errors, further suggesting that the USB drive is actually needed for things not already loaded into RAM (For example, Firefox worked without the USB, but I used it once before already. apt, on the other hand, did not.)  Is there a way to copy the entire Ubuntu live disk to RAM, so I can remove the drive and free up a USB slot for other things? Can a fundamentally deceptive character work? This question is in the spirit of another . I would like to explore a style of role-playing in DnD (specifically 3.5e) that may be slightly different from how characters usually work. The question aims to answer if and how such a character can work and be played for everyone's amusement. I am still relatively new to the game, so please forgive me if this question is naive. Probably people have tried before and discarded the idea.  Character concept The character is supposed to be deceptive, on both the character and the player level. He will thrive to achieve some higher goal that is different to the party's, but not in an open way. He will play along and work for the party's interest, but wait for his moment (ideally towards the end of the campaign) to strike. As such an evil religious fanatic would be ideal, who works towards achieving the goals of his deity by deceiving his party members, gaining their trust and acquiring resources together with them, but when given the choice would take the powerful magical item and bugger off with it. Motivation and Concerns The main motivation is to bring some diversity to the usual scheme. People tend to play funny characters and there is usually (at least in our games) happy peace in the party with the only dispute being about who gets the loot. I feel a character like the one suggested would make things more interesting since people can't take their party members for granted anymore. The concern is of course that it might not be very fun for the party to have their plans destroyed by one member of the party playing an &quot;extra cool&quot; character. I think done well, it could still be fun for the other players though, which is why the rest of the question will be about how to do it. How? First of all the DM should probably know, maybe he can even build it into his campaign. The exact story details will then depend on the exact setting, but I am sure together with the DM something could be worked out. I am mainly interested in if it can work and how it could be fun. The  spell says:     The spell captures some of the incoming energy, lessening its effect on you and storing it for your next melee attack. You have resistance to the triggering damage type until the start of your next turn. Also, the fist time you hit with a melee attack on your next turn, the target takes an extra 1d6 damage of the triggering type, and the spell ends.   The  cantrip says:     Lightning springs from your hand to deliver a shock to a creature you try to touch. Make a melee spell attack against the target. You have advantage on the attack roll if the target is wearing armor made of metal. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 lightning damage, and it can’t take reactions until the start of its next turn.   If I absorb fire damage with absorb elements, would I be able to add an extra 1d6 fire damage to my next shocking grasp attack? How can an int be cast to an enum in C#? I'm trying to compute the shadow of 3D objects on the ground. To do this I'm assuming parallel rays from Sun origin.   Let's assume the Sun direction is given by azimuth $\varphi$ and elevation $\theta$ angles. So the direction unit vector is retrieved as:  $$ \hat{\mathbf{s}} = \mathbf{R}_y\left(\theta\right)\mathbf{R}_z\left(\varphi\right)\hat{\boldsymbol{\imath}}$$  where $\mathbf{R}_{x/y/z}$ are the rotation matrices along the $x, y, z$ axes given by, for example, Euler-Rodrigues equation, and $\hat{\boldsymbol{\imath}}$ is the unit vector along $x$-axis.  A point on a ray-line has the equation:  \begin{equation} \mathbf{r} = \mathbf{r}_p + \lambda\hat{\mathbf{s}}  \tag{1} \end{equation}  being $\mathbf{r}_p$ a point on that line.  A point on a general plane is given by the equation:  \begin{equation} \left(\mathbf{r} - \mathbf{r_0}\right)\cdot \hat{\mathbf{n}} = 0 \tag{2} \end{equation}  being $\mathbf{r}_0$ a point on the plane and $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$ the unit vector normal to that plane.   Ensuring the validity of both equations (1) and (2) allows to compute the $\lambda$ multiplier and retrieve the position vector of the projected point (writing $\tilde{\mathbf{r}} = \mathbf{r_p} - \mathbf{r_o}$)  \begin{gather} \lambda = - \left(\frac{\tilde{\mathbf{r}}\cdot \hat{\mathbf{n}}} {\hat{\mathbf{s}}\cdot\hat{\mathbf{n}}}\right) \\ \mathbf{r}_\text{proj} = \mathbf{r}_p - \left(\frac{\tilde{\mathbf{r}}\cdot \hat{\mathbf{n}}} {\hat{\mathbf{s}}\cdot\hat{\mathbf{n}}}\right)\hat{\mathbf{s}} \tag{3} \end{gather}  Applying eq. (3) to all the vertices of a mesh $\left\{\mathbf{r}_{p_i}\right\}$ .   A problem can be noted: $\hat{\mathbf{s}}\cdot \hat{\mathbf{n}}$ can be zero (e.g. Sun is horizontal, i.e. the ray is ortogonal to the normal of plane).   Are there some conceptual mistakes in my reasoning? Is there a way to rewrite the operation as a linear operator applied to the set of vertices position vectors?   $$ \left[\mathbf{A}\right]\left\{\mathbf{r}_{p_i}\right\} = \mathbf{r}_\text{proj}$$ Inheriting non-implicit constructors on Apex classes If I have an abstract parent class like this:  abstract class Vehicle {     public Vehicle(Person driver) {         //     } }   and then I create a child class like this:  public class MagicCarpet extends Vehicle {     //this won't compile }   I encounter the following Compile Error:     Error: Parent class has no 0-argument constructor for implicit construction at line ... column ...   Obviously I can explicitly re-declare a constructor on the child class toget it to compile:  public class MagicCarpet extends Vehicle {     public MagicCarpet(Person driver) {         super(driver);     } }   But I feel this isn't DRY. Not sure what's actually going on under the covers here.  How can I get a constructor (other than the implicit 0-argument one) to be inherited by a child class? How to retrieve multiple rows from database in PHP I have 2 1tb hard drives on my computer with Windows 8 on the first hard drive and nothing on the other.  I want to install Ubuntu 14 on the second hard drive. I've looked up some guides and they all say to install Ubuntu on the sdb partition when booting off a usb stick. I have also seen some say to unplug the Windows HDD and then install Ubuntu onto the second HDD, and Ubuntu will automatically detect Windows and ask what you want to boot into upon boot.   I am really concerned about this - Will it ask me to choose what OS I want to boot into? Is there something like rEFInd(Mac) for Windows? Can anyone please give me a guide on how to do it without ruining my computer?  Thanks Positive operator has a positive spectrum? Holomorphic function has at most countably zeros Let $f$ be holomorphic in a domain $U$, then $f$ has at most countably zeros.  How can I prove this statement? I have seen it in Sheng Gong  explicitly, but without any indications. Any smart ideas on finding the area of this shaded region? Why is the gravitational force always attractive? What is the logical form of the definition of validity? My text book gives the definition of validity as "An argument is valid IFF if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true". Using a conditional elimination on the RHS of the IFF yields "An argument is valid IFF the premises are false or the conclusion is true".   Yet, this seems strange to me. Am I doing something incorrect with my manipulation or is this definition actually true? Surely the criteria for a valid argument goes beyond a false set of premises or a true conclusion. How can I find the smallest set of groups of $n$ elements such that every element is in the same group as every other at least once? Background: I'm working on  for , and I've run into a problem with how I'm creating the individual matchups (groups of 4 entries).  Currently, I'm simply generating all combinations of 4 elements (in the combinatoric sense) of entries, but that gets really big really quickly:  $$x \choose 4$$    (from )  Therefore, my question is: How can I choose subsets (of length $n$) of a set such that each element of that set appears in the same subset as every other element at least once, while maintaining a minimal amount of subsets?  I can figure this out for $n = 2$, since the solution is quite intuitive: simply combine the first element with every other element, combine the second element with every other element that comes after it, etc. For a set of length $L$, this yields:  $$\sum_{x=1}^{L-1}(L - x)$$    (from )  which is much smaller and more manageable.  However, I still have not been able to figure out: How can I generalize this to any $n$? I am trying to prove the following identities:  a. $$\sum_{k=0}^n(-1)^k{n\choose k}^2 = \bigg\{^{0 \ \text{if k is odd}}_{(-1)^m{2m\choose m} \ \text{if n = 2m}}$$ b. $$\sum^k_{i=0} {n+i \choose i}={n+k+1\choose k}$$  For part $b$ I know I can use induction. It is clearly true when $k=0$ and then assuming for $k-1$ we get $$\sum^k_{i=0}{n+i\choose i}={n+k\choose k-1}+{n+k \choose k}={n+k+1\choose k} \ ...$$ Why does chown report "Operation not permitted" on OS X? I am trying to do the following on my Mac (10.6.7):  sudo chown myusername:wheel ./entries   but Unix/Mac is returning "Operation not permitted". When I ls -lash the culprit file, it looks as follows:  8 -rwxrwxrwx   1 myusername  staff   394B Apr 26 23:26 entries   I've tried sudo and sudo su; nothing works. Any ideas what's up?  I'm trying to chmod files I've copied from my old Ubuntu box. Most of the files have successfully chmod'ed recursively; just this one is stuck and I don't understand why. Is there an example of a ring $S$ with identity $1_S$ containing a non-trivial subring $R$ which itself has an identity $1_R$, but $1_R\neq 1_S$ (or equivalently $1_S\notin R$). I'd also like to know under what conditions the identities have to be equal. I know they must be equal if $S$ has no zero divisors, since for every $r\in R$ we have $(1_S-1_R)r=0$  In other words: Is the category of unital rings with identity-preserving morphisms a full subcategory of the category of rings (where morphism are only required to respect addition and multiplication)? How does the loopback interface work Wrap text at any point if normal hyphenation not possible I have reviewed this:   but it does not answer my question. The suggested fixes in this question is to set up FB, IG, and other social media pages. We have had these for months. We have 576 Instagram followers, 293 followers on Facebook, 17,425 views on Vimeo, Youtube, Pinterest and LinkedIn presence. Here is the response in a YouTube search:  Let's be clear. If you search for my company name and product name YT changes the spelling to something that doesn't exist and suggests a video with no matching result terms (using either spelling) disparaging OTHER luxury handbags, while insinuating it is referring to my handbags. When a user searches for our business, , Google and Youtube changes the spelling to Aslan Vaughn and displays these results:  For the first few months it just seemed like it was taking some time to percolate, but over 7 months we have had 17,500 unique visitors and nearly 90 backlinks.  The only results for Aslan Vaugn is the birth announcement of the second child of a musician in New Jersey. It is a Facebook post and has 14 likes. Google is favoring a spelling that has only two results with 14+ views over dozens of links and tens of thousands of views. How is this possible? An FB post with 14 likes is that much more popular than a business with 17,500 unique visitors (despite the Google obfuscation)? Is my company on some list? On other search engines my company covers the first few pages in results. Through Google, you cannot find our company no matter how many pages in you go. Unless you search for the term in quotes, . In which case we cover the first few pages here as well: