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More stuffs drawn that will not be shown yet.

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This is taking forever.

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[Rose]

PTW

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Since Descent is undergoing a restart I guess there's no point keeping these panels a secret.

http://imgur.com/nPfK6dd
http://imgur.com/ahEk09A
http://imgur.com/jW3fxAm

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http://imgur.com/mZl1aIE

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http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=165355.msg7549569#msg7549569

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[Egan_BW]

Jack Spades is totally a girl, right? Because Jack is totally a girl's name. ;P

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http://imgur.com/UbfFKUA

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A Multi-dimensional Insight Into Gambling

Since the dawn of time, humans have been playing games of chance. Cavemen played dice, the ancient Chinese played the lottery, and now in our modern world there are casinos, lotteries, and sports betting platforms all over the globe providing environments for those who wish to wager their money. Games of chance provide us with leisure activities and psychological enticement to spend money on projects such as government fundraising, charities, or churches, by stimulating a person’s taste for risk-taking. The negative effects of gambling should however be kept in mind, and many governments have opted to ban gambling entirely. This, of course, does not stop illegal gambling from flourishing, and ravaging society with the harms caused by unregulated gambling. For society to harness gambling for good, more education must be provided into how gambling came to be and its influence throughout history.

It is difficult to say when and where gambling was first invented. Games of chance had existed long before recorded history, evidenced by the discovery of dice-like objects in dig sites dating at least 40,000 years old, and cave wall paintings depicting dice of diverse varieties. In Ancient China, 2300 BC, there were tiles used to play a rudimentary game of chance, which likely evolved into Pai Gow today. The Shih-ching, also known as the Book of Songs, detailed ‘the drawing of wood’, one of the precursors to the lottery, used in ancient China to raise funding for state works. Ancient Romans and Greeks enjoyed gambling in almost every opportunities, and dice games became extremely widespread in cultures assimilated by the Romans. When all forms of money wagering were forbidden in Rome, the gambling chips were invented to claim that the players weren’t playing for money. Games of chance and divination were closely intertwined in the cultures of ancient Egyptians and Chinese, and gambling was used as a way to test out one’s luck, which was used as an omen to tell the future. Winners would know that fortune was favouring them, and losers would know that they should not take risks for a time. It would have seemed that in ancient times, most games of chance were played with dice, tokens, or tiles.

Following late after dice and lottery, playing cards appeared around the 9th century within China, though the cards used at that time would bear little relation to the modern standard 52 cards deck. The playing cards would exert a significant influence on gambling, with games such as baccarat, poker, and blackjack staying popular throughout the ages, still played today in casinos and in households. In medieval times, the formal society would play card games such as baccarat or bridge as a form of social activity, much like alcohol is a social lubricant. For peasants, the carnivals would provide game tents, which provided semi-structured gambling environments. One of the first gambling houses which could reasonably be called casinos, the Ridotto, was established in Venice to provide a controlled gambling environment, as an alternative to the chaos of the carnival games. Many casinos would soon crop up afterward, springing up all over Europe in the 19th, and informal gambling houses would spread over to the United States.

It could be said that gambling was never in full force until the proliferation of the casinos, which kickstarted the gambling industry, formerly in the domains of the government’s lottery, organisations’ fundraising, and sports wagering. More than 40,000 tourists flock to the city of Las Vegas in the United States, known for its casinos. Similarly, the country of Monaco and the city of Macau in China also gain most of their tourists from visitors looking for casino games. While no doubt most tourists return home disappointed and poorer, casinos themselves as well as hotels and restaurants profit greatly from the revenue, and in turn, the local economies. Though it would be hasty to suggest that gambling is as much of a driving force as sightseeing in tourism, it is arguably more resilient, able to attract the same visitors back to the same place, again and again, stimulating the economy and spreading prosperity. Its beneficial effect on the economy isn’t only limited to tourism, either, as fundraising events would attest to the power of gambling in gathering funds through the lottery.

Governments are some of the major beneficiaries of gambling through lotteries, with most if not all of the countries in the world monopolising the sales and organisation of legal lottery games. While altruism is a valuable trait in a citizen, the reality is that it is often difficult to justify spending more money on the government beyond one’s taxes. The lottery gives a reason. Through the lottery, the funds can go to the government while providing participants the slim chance to earn a life-changing sum of money. Outside of large scale lotteries, non-profit organisations also commonly use raffles to gather funding, by selling out tickets to donators which can then be traded for prizes. Gambling can also be used to provide more entertainment to events, such as organised sports betting, which no doubt gives one a more tangible stake in their local sports team winning. Informal gamblings also crop up throughout society, whether it be poker among friends or even the wagering of money on future situations. It can be seen, then, that gambling must have provided significant entertainment, for it to be so pervasive in many aspects of culture.

Though there are a few professional gamblers out there who leverage their advantages to gain profit through casinos and other forms of gambling, the advent of casinos and other forms of organised games of chance have firmly established gambling as mainly a negative expectation game. Researches by Stanford GSB showed that most gamblers play for fun, a view which may seem strange to non-gamblers, despite the obvious difficulty in reliably winning games designed mainly to be unreliable. It stands to reason, after all, that for games of chance to persist so long throughout the ages, there must have been a particular element of it that humans enjoyed so much. Experts working in the casino industry have studied the psychology of gambling to obtain greater insight into what makes gamblers tick and pay more money to the casinos. It is human nature to feel a thrill when taking risks, and they can easily become intoxicated by the sensation of winning. When there is a stake in a game, winning is that much sweeter, even if a loss is also that much more devastating. To some people, the rush of gambling establish a habit that may be destructive if left unchecked.

No doubt, gambling can encourage destructive habits in irresponsible individuals. By serving alcoholic beverages and enticing customers with the atmosphere, the glamour, the socialisation, casinos seek to lower the inhibitions of the players, making them take more risks than they should without thinking of the consequences. Because of how statistics operate, the casinos inevitably win in the end, and so by keeping their customers trapped in their positive reinforcement the casinos can relieve them of their cash, making a profit off the expense of the weak-willed. This phenomenon of the compulsive urge to squander one’s money excessively to games of chance is called ‘ludomania’, and the sufferers can be likened to those struggling with substance abuse. Problem gambling is a serious problem that ruins lives, destroy families, and promote criminal behaviours that propagate and severely damage society just like drug abuse. Irresponsible gambling can also result in toxic, fraudulent behaviours such as confidence artists swindling money from their victims with rigged games, and sports betting can provide motivations for athletes to lose on purpose or for matches to be sabotaged, going counter to the spirit of competition. These consequences of gambling are serious and harm society as a whole when left unchecked, and justify heavy regulations on the gambling industry.

Gambling, much like alcoholic beverages, should not fall simply into the black and white world of good and evil. While indulging in it too much can cause serious issues to an individual, the same could be said about many vices available to us in the modern world. It is easy to propose asceticism, but abstinence is an unrealistic goal, and it is better for an individual to satisfy their basic desire for risk-taking in a safe environment rather than engage in reckless actions. Part of what makes humans so great is our willingness to take risks, and in the modern world of safety net, there are not many opportunities to embrace the human desire for adventuring that is as safe as gambling. Gambling has been around for a long time since the dawn of humanity and is likely to stay around, no matter how much one can attempt to ban it. Without a realistic, balanced view of games of chance, its industry, and how it operates, one risk falling prey to the issues that come with gambling’s presence, or lack. Gambling can provide many benefits, chief of all entertainment, as well as provide psychological rewards for many projects. With both its good side and its bad side kept in mind, gambling and risk-taking could be harnessed to further the goals of society, and drive the wheels of advancement and human bravery onwards.

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