Tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs), also known as Pen-and-Paper role-playing games(PnP-RPGs), are games that can be described as a mix between board games and improvisationaltheatre. Each player takes on the role of a single character, while the game’s leader(GM or DM) is in charge of both simulating the game world, acting out all remainingcharacters and facilitating the game rules. The games are often played in campaigns,continual stories told over several gameplay sessions. This thesis investigates whetherplayers’ types/characteristics and preferences affect the enjoyment of play, and in particularwhether being coherent with the rest of the role-play group in these respects affects theenjoyment of TRPG play. The research questions were addressed primarily by a surveyamong TRPG players that received 1,982 completed questionnaires. These were thenanalysed by correlation and factor analyses in order to find connections between responses.The thesis work shows that the length and depth of previous experiences have almost nocorrelation to the level of enjoyment. Some aspects of the game itself contributed to theenjoyment, but a clearer factor was that of group coherence – if the player perceives thegroup to have the same or similar stances as him/herself on game preferences.Keywords: tabletop role-playing game, pen-and-paper role-playing game, groupcoherence, game enjoyment, satisfaction / Bordsrollspel (TRPGs), även känt som penna-och-papper-rollspel (PnP-RPGs), är en typ avspel som kan beskrivas som en blandning mellan brädspel och improvisationsteater. Varjespelare antar rollen av en karaktär, medan spelledaren (GM eller DM) ansvarar för simuleringenav spelvärlden, agerandet av resterande karaktärer samt ansvar för regelhållningen.Denna uppsats undersöker om spelartyper (egenskaper) och deras preferenser påverkarspelglädjen, och i synnerhet huruvida det är viktigt att ha samma uppfattning som den övrigagruppen i dessa frågor (gruppkoherens). Forskningsfrågorna besvarades huvudsakligengenom en enkätundersökning bland TRPG-spelare som gav 1982 komplett ifyllda enkätsvar.Dessa analyserades sedan med korrelations- och faktoranalyser för att hitta kopplingarmellan svaren. Uppsatsen visar att längden och djupet av tidigare spelupplevelser nästan intehar något samband med nivån av spelglädje. Några aspekter av själva spelet bidrog däremottill spelglädjen, och den tydligaste faktorn var gruppens koherens – om spelaren uppfattar attgruppen har samma eller liknande ståndpunkter som sig själv när det gäller spelpreferenser.Nyckelord: bordsrollspel, penna- och papper-rollspel, gruppkoherens, spelglädje, nöjdhet

This master´s thesis deals with design of small CNC milling machines and comparing CNC tabletop milling machines in the world market. It is also done design of small CNC milling machine through the use of contemporary and modern trends, used in design of machine tools.

This work describes the issue of tabletop object detection in point cloud. Point cloud is recorded with Kinect sensor. Designed solution uses algorithm RANSAC for plane detection, algorithm Euclidean clustering for segmentation and ICP algorithm for object detection. Algorithm ICP is modified and mainly it can detect rotational symetric objects and objects without any transformation against it's models. The final package is build on platform ROS. The achieved results with own dataset are good despite of the limited functionality of the detector.

This thesis falls into a field of user interface design. It focuses on tangible user interfaces which utilize a camera and projector to augment physical objects with a digital information. It also includes description of calibration of those devices. The primary object of this thesis is the implementation of an augmented user interface for application windows management. The system consists of a stationary camera, overhead projector and movable tangible objects - boards. The boards are equipped with fiducial markers, in order to be tracked in a camera image. The projector displays the conventional desktop onto the table and the tangible objects. For example, application windows can be projected onto some boards, while the windows move and rotate simultaneously with the boards.

This study’s purpose is to explore the online medium known as “Actual Play” through the perspective of both content creators, who work within the format as well as their audience who consume and interact with the content. This is a qualitative interview and observation study on the subject of Actual Play. The empirical material consists of four interviews with participants who are in one way or another involved with Actual Play content creation or distribution, an entire episode of an Actual Play series has also been analyzed to demonstrate the concept to readers unfamiliar with Actual Play and/or role-playing games. The questions this study has sought to answer regard what Actual Play is and looks like in practice and what the interactions between participants within Actual Play as well the interactions between these Actual Play creators and their audience looks like. The study’s findings show that the interaction between the different social actors within Actual Play is similar to that of improvisational theater. To maintain the trust between the participants, social contracts that employ safety tools are often used. The interaction between the Actual Play content creators and their audiences seems more personal than average, since they’re all able to inhabit and interact over the Internet. The audience also seems to enjoy that aspect of getting to know the Actual Play actors and/or creators on both a personal level and through their characters. Finally, Actual Plays main appeal appears to be based around being a way to share and engage with others around a shared interest.

I denna studie undersöks hur bordsrollspel kan användas i en behandlingskontext. För att studera detta har vi genomfört en kvalitativ studie av verksamma utövares medverkan i podcaster och panelsamtal uppladdade på Youtube där de berättar om metoden. Resultatet visar att bordsrollspel används i två, delvis överlappande, syften: social färdighetsträning och behandling av psykisk ohälsa. Bordsrollspel beskrivs som en social aktivitet med många inneboende positiva följder för spelaren, exempelvis ökad samarbetsförmåga, perspektivtagande och känsloreglering. När aktiviteten leds av en tränad behandlare kan spelet användas för att nå uttalade terapeutiska mål. Detta ställer emellertid stora krav på spelledaren som behöver ha god kännedom om både behandling och spelet. Behandlingen riktar sig främst till ungdomar med svårigheter med socialt samspel, men den har också potential att användas med vuxna klienter. För att diskutera materialet har ett symbolisk interaktionistiskt perspektiv använts. / This study examines how tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) can be used as an intervention. We have conducted a qualitative study of practitioners' participation in podcasts and panel discussions published on Youtube where they talk about TTRPGs as an intervention. The results demonstrate how TTRPGs are utilized with two, partially overlapping purposes: social skills training and treatment for mental health conditions. TTRPGs are described as a social activity with a number of inherent benefits for the player, such as increased collaboration skills, perspective-taking and emotional regulation. Whilst being led by a trained professional the game can be used as a tool to reach defined therapeutic goals. This, however, requires the game master to be well-versed in both the role of therapist as well as game master. The intervention studied is primarily used with adolescents struggling with social interactions, but also has potential to be used with adult clients. To discuss the results a symbolic interactionist perspective has been used.

This thesis explores physical and social aspects of playing tabletop games physically versus remotely. It also examines the experiences of contemporary players of tabletop games, with focus placed on play during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report begins with an explanation of tabletop games, including social and material aspects as examined in previous work. To explore the thesis’ problem area, several tabletop game players were interviewed, resulting in a number of recurring themes. The interview results suggest that social rituals and material aspects of tabletop games are highly important to players. This has implications for the future of tabletop games, many of which are discussed in the text.

Teaching AI to play Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TRPG) is a difficult challenge due their negotiable rules and open-ended nature. This is further exacerbated when considering the act of roleplaying, where players do not play or act as themselves, but as a character in a fantasy setting. Previous studies attempting to teach LLMs to play TRPGs do not explicitly discuss role-play in their work, highlighting an absence of a definition in current research. This thesis endeavours in introducing role-playing to AI through developing a prompting method called Control Chain of Thoughts, aimed at teaching it the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system. The prompting method is evaluated through an ablation study where GPT-3.5 is tasked to guess the alignment of characters based on exctracts from D&D gaming sessions. The results indicate a small improvement in GPT’s predictions. Further work needs to be done to evaluate if its alignments help LLMs understand roleplaying.

As technology evolves, new devices and interaction techniques are developed. These transformations create several challenges in terms of usability and user experience. Our research faces some challenges for data input or content exploration in scenarios with restrictions. It is not our intention to investigate all possible scenarios, but we deeply explore a broad range of devices and restrictions. We start with a discussion about the use of an interactive coffee table for exploration of personal photos and videos, also considering a TV set as an additional screen. In a second scenario, we present an architecture that offers to interactive digital TV (iDTV) applications the possibility of receiving multimodal data from multiple devices. Our third scenario concentrates on supporting text input for iDTV applications using a remote control, and presents an interface model based on multiple input modes as a solution. In the last two scenarios, we continued investigating better ways to provide text entry; however, our restriction becomes not using the hands, which is the kind of challenge faced by severely motor-disabled individuals. First, we present a text entry method based on two input symbols and an interaction technique based on detecting internal and external heel rotations using an accelerometer, for those who keep at least a partial movement of a leg and a foot. In the following scenario, only the eyes are required. We present an eye-typing technique that recognizes the intended word by weighting length and frequency of all possible words formed by filtering extra letters from the sequence of letters gazed by the user. The exploration of each scenario in depth was important to achieve the relevant results and contributions. On the other hand, the wide scope of this dissertation allowed the student to learn about several technologies and techniques. / Com a evolução da tecnologia, novos dispositivos e técnicas de interação são desenvolvidas. Essas transformações criam desafios em termos de usabilidade e experiência do usuário. Essa pesquisa enfrenta alguns desafios para a entrada de dados e exploração de conteúdo em cenários com restrições. Não foi intenção da pesquisa investigar todos os possíveis cenários, mas sim a exploração em profundidade de uma ampla gama de dispositivos e restrições. Ao todo cinco cenários são investigados. Primeiramente é apresentada uma discussão sobre o uso de uma mesa de centro interativa para a exploração de fotos e vídeos pessoais, a qual também considera um aparelho de TV como tela adicional. Com base no segundo cenário, uma arquitetura que oferece a aplicações de TV digital interativa (TVDI) a possibilidade de receber dados multimodais de múltiplos dispositivos é apresentada. O terceiro cenário se concentra no suporte a entrada de texto para aplicações de TVDI usando o controle remoto, resultando na apresentação de um modelo de interface baseado em múltiplos modos de entrada como solução. Os dois últimos cenários permitem continuar a investigação por melhores formas de entrada de texto, porém, a restrição se torna a impossibilidade de usar as mãos, um dos desafios enfrentados por indivíduos com deficiência motora severa. No primeiro deles, são apresentados um método de entrada de texto baseado em dois símbolos de entrada e uma técnica de interação baseada na detecção de rotações do pé apoiado sobre o calcanhar usando acelerômetro, para aqueles que mantêm pelo menos um movimento parcial de uma perna e um pé. No senário seguinte, apenas os movimentos dos olhos são exigidos. Foi apresentada uma técnica de escrita com o olho que reconhece a palavra desejada ponderando o comprimento de a frequência de ocorrência de todas as palavras que podem ser formadas filtrando letras excedentes da lista de letras olhadas pelo usuário. A exploração de cada cenário em profundidade foi importante para a obtenção de resultados e contribuições relevantes. Por outro lado, o amplo escopo da dissertação permitiu ao estudante o aprendizado de diversas técnicas e tecnologias.

This thesis has explored how to create a board game rulebook, for the board game Curators, in order to facilitate learning the rules as well as reminding players of the rules. This was done via research through design. The design of a rulebook incorporates many parts of design theory, from layout and typography to the use of color, gestalt principles, and images. All these were combined with knowledge about how existing rulebooks convey rules and the way board gamers use rulebooks, gained through the pre-study, in order to create a rulebook for the coming board game Curators. The analysis of this study shows that the resulting rulebook was successful in both teaching the game and helping players look up rules, though improvements could still be made to make it better. It was concluded that the use of many iterations of designing and testing is ideal for creating a rulebook with as few issues as possible.