The Avatar Faculty creatively examines the parallels between spiritual and digital activities to explore the roles that symbolic second selves—avatars—can play in our lives. The use of avatars can allow for what anthropologists call ecstasy, from the Greek ekstasis, meaning "standing outside oneself." The archaic techniques of promoting spiritual ecstasy, which remain central to religious healing traditions around the world, now also have contemporary analogues in virtual worlds found on the internet. In this innovative book, Jeffrey G. Snodgrass argues that avatars allow for the ecstatic projection of consciousness into alternate realities, potentially providing both the spiritually possessed and gamers access to superior secondary identities with elevated social standing. Even if only temporary, self-transformations of these kinds can help reduce psychosocial stress and positively improve health and well-being.

Daisy Upton has two little kids. She loves them - but they drive her mad.

So, to try and keep her sanity she started to come up with quick, easy games using stuff from around the house. And @FiveMinuteMum was born.

In her first book, she has collected 150+ games that take 5 minutes to set up & 5 minutes to tidy up.

From pasta posting to alphabet knock down, it's a recipe book for guilt free parenting!

And as Daisy was a teaching assistant, your little ones will be learning while they play! What could be better?

GIVE ME FIVE is the perfect companion for anyone who wants five minutes peace.

"I love Five Minute Mum. She's managed to come up with a huge array of activities for kids that are fun and educational yet don't require an Art degree or Diploma in Patience to execute."Sarah Turner, aka Unmumsy Mum

Are you fed up losing at family board game nights? Do you want to learn how to destroy the competition? Get the inside tips from preposterously overqualified experts on how to win a range of common family games, board games and more. * A mime artist tells you how to do the best charades * A mathematician tells you how to win Connect 4 * A professional racing driver tells you how to take corners in Scalextric * A Scrabble champion reveals his secrets * A game theorist tells you what properties to buy in Monopoly in order to bankrupt and embarrass your competitors. This is a must read for anyone who takes games too seriously and for bad losers everywhere.

In Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming, Kishonna L. Gray interrogates blackness in gaming at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability. Situating her argument within the context of the concurrent, seemingly unrelated events of Gamergate and the Black Lives Matter movement, Gray highlights the inescapable chains that bind marginalized populations to stereotypical frames and limited narratives in video games. Intersectional Tech explores the ways that the multiple identities of black gamers some obvious within the context of games, some more easily concealed affect their experiences of gaming. The normalization of whiteness and masculinity in digital culture inevitably leads to isolation, exclusion, and punishment of marginalized people. Yet, Gray argues, we must also examine the individual struggles of prejudice, discrimination, and microaggressions within larger institutional practices that sustain the oppression. These ""new"" racisms and a complementary colorblind ideology are a kind of digital Jim Crow, a new mode of the same strategies of oppression that have targeted black communities throughout American history. Drawing on extensive interviews that engage critically with identity development and justice issues in gaming, Gray explores the capacity for gaming culture to foster critical consciousness, aid in participatory democracy, and effect social change. Intersectional Tech is rooted in concrete situations of marginalized members within gaming culture. It reveals that despite the truths articulated by those who expose the sexism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia that are commonplace within gaming communities, hegemonic narratives continue to be privileged. This text, in contrast, centers the perspectives that are often ignored and provides a critical corrective to notions of gaming as a predominantly white and male space.

Readers of The Expanse novels have thrilled to the adventures of the crew of the Rocinante. Now it's your turn to make your mark! Abzu's Bounty presents a series of six full-length scenarios designed for a new crew of characters in The Expanse Roleplaying Game. They embark on a series of adventures, from a fateful discovery in the rings of Saturn to acquiring their own ship to a deadly confrontation that could change the course of history for the entire solar system. Abzu's Bounty is the perfect way to kick off a new campaign. Get ready for launch!

Emerald City is a brand new setting for your "Mutants & Masterminds Third Edition" campaign. Set in the same universe as the award-winning "Freedom City", "Emerald City" provides a home base for your heroes and a place they can shine. This rich and detailed sourcebook describes a fully realized city that until recently was downright normal. It didn't have alien armadas filling the sky, or mad gods trying to turn it into a Hell on Earth. Things were stable ...until the Silver Storm tore through the city and unleashed a flood of dangerous super-villains and monsters! Now criminal masterminds have cast aside years of fragile peace, ready to go to war to settle old scores and claim the throne of the city's underworld. Emerald City has no established teams to call on in this crisis. It is a city that needs heroes. Will you answer the call?