Learning J2EE

I was at the Knutepunkt larp conference in Norway, and there I met Verneri, a friend, and he whispered something more or less to the effect of:

> “Make yourself useful with J2EE.”

Hm, Enterprise computing. Where the jobs are. So, I asked what the first step was, and he answered the day after:

> “Install [the application server] jBoss. ”

And, I have. Now there are quite a few tutorials from Sun, on J2EE.

I have only met the J2EE thing in polemics, as yet, and my first impression of the thing is verboseness. Very much talk from an application like that. But there **are** things to read, unlike in other environments.

Why do you do roleplaying games?

I was asked the hardest question in an email, a while ago, and then I had to answer, and now that I go back to it, looking at it, it sounds very much unlike me. Why is that? Why does your own speech of the past sound so alien a bit later?

From: Juhana Pettersson
To: Olle Jonsson
Subject: Re: Interview yes!

So, Olle, why do you do roleplaying games?

OK, I do role-playing games because I get to **tell the beginning** of stories, I get to **do the talking**, and **pull people into “my trip”**. When the feedback effect of the players’ minds starts churning **I get electrified** by the creative momentum. The **pliancy of the material**, the “softness of the wares” so to speak, is the main thing with role-playing games, to me. This softness allows for real-time editing of the story in very direct ways, which in turn allows for **the exploration of limits in the players** – how far can we take this?

Something like that.

What kind of a question is that, anyway?