10 Business Lessons I Learned From Playing D&D 257
Esther Schindler writes "Those hours you spent rolling dice in your youth weren't wasted according to my 10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons. Playing fantasy role playing games did more than teach the rules of combat or proper behavior in a dragon's lair. D&D can instruct you in several skills that can help your career. Such as: 'One spell, used well, can be more powerful than an entire book full of spells' and 'It's better to out-smart an orc than to fight one.'" What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
Real Life (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, this seems a lot like just made to work out from D&D. These are pretty much general principles in life that apply everywhere, and hence its not a surprise that they apply in *roleplaying* games aswell.
If you take it further, the same general principles that also works in business also works with women, or for that matter, any stuff. This can be something along the lines "dont be afraid to be yourself and be convinent when saying your say, because it works a lot better". It works the same way in RPG's, real life, women, business and for that matter in everything. Its just general human philosophy.
Like said, RPG games tend to reflect real life a lot. You just take different character. That's why the stuff is pretty much the same.
Re:Real Life (Score:4, Interesting)
Something I learned from D&D : Just because the NPC has 10 minutes of prepared dialogue doesn't mean that the NPC actually has anything of interest to say. Maybe he's just wasting your time. And maybe he's doing it on purpose...
Re:Real Life (Score:5, Funny)
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The fact that this is was modded informative says a lot about the Slashdot Community.
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They've changed the rules a bit....
Placing a Portable Hole in a Bag of Holding causes a Gate to the Astral plane to open sucking in all objects within like 10 feet. The bag and hole are destroyed and the items contained in both containers is then either destroyed or scattered across the Astral plane.
Placing a Bag of Holding in a Portable Hole causes a Rift to the Astral plane to open, causing both containers and their objects to be lost forever.
Placing a Bag of Holding in a Bag of Holding causes no adverse
Everything I really needed to know re: Real Life (Score:5, Funny)
These are pretty much general principles in life that apply everywhere....
Sure. Just like, "Everything I really needed to know about life I learned from playing Tetris [geoffreylandis.com]"
Re:Real Life (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say people act braver in RPG than in real life, because most of the stuff you can do in a game is beyond your normal capabilities. And even more important: If you die you can start all over. Beside a depression that your character died, nothing of consequence happens. IRL you have to face the real consequences. If you trick your chef or a customer, this will come back to you. And all behavior patterns (protocols in certain situations) can be learned IRL even better than in RPGs. This is because RPGs are only a model of a world, which is beside some fancy features as dull as the real one, but only a model. The real thing is much more complex, and challenging, and rewarding. Think of it: You collect 1000000 of currency X in game. However, IRL using the same time to collect 100000 $/EUR/Pound would be more rewarding. And think of real relationships vs. RPG-relationships.
However, Real Life as Real Consequence (Score:3, Insightful)
So isn't it good to ***play*** and work out what Real Life holds for you ***in the future*** rather than wait until you get there and work out the rules?
What is play for but to try out the rules of Real Life?
And as for nizo's comment later, I gained a hot (if slightly older) girlfriend at D&D. Didn't stay, but that wasn't D&D's fault.
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'It's better to out-smart an orc than to fight one.'
If you take it further, the same general principles that also works in business also works with women...
You must know my ex-girlfriend.
What I learned (Score:5, Funny)
What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
D&D: the more you played the less likely you were to get laid.
(Queue up the, "but I only gamed with hot vixens back in high school!" responses)
Oh and I also learned that playing D&D makes you sarcastic and bitter.
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I learned that the dice were out to get me, and even when they weren't, it was a trap laid to get me to believe in them before they could take me down.
Hence why I play poker. At least then I can blame the guy across the table and secretly plot his demise.
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Re:What I learned (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What I learned (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, D&D taught me how to interact with my fellow males. I'd largely forgotten in high school, and my college years were significantly richer for the extremely intelligent, down-to-earth and wise people I had around the gaming table.
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I also learned that playing D&D makes you sarcastic and bitter.
Really? No shit.
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Kill real fake monsters.
Earn fake money.
Make people love you with fake money.
Attract whorecraft-esque gamer girls.
Repeat.
And secondly - Never assault any group with the battle-cry of 'I am the Master of Flowers! Fear my fists of fury!" Even if you can back it up you're just going to be all sweaty and nasty when it's over. 'Tis better to walk the other way and know that your enemy will probably die a painf
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My wife also plays D&D, thank you very much... in fact, it is one of our "together" activities
Re:What I learned (Score:4, Insightful)
I learned this one (Score:2)
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It was a hard lesson, but I realized, if I am focused on making money and running a business, I make more money that when I'm focused on killing orcs and playing games. Seriously.
But are you having more fun?
If so, then carry on.
If not, then why are you doing it? If making more money isn't making you happier, then you are wasting your time.
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But, if I don't make enough money to pay my ISP, how can I play my online games?
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But, if I don't make enough money to pay my ISP, how can I play my online games?
Then you aren't having "more fun" and that's clearly not a good strategy either.
The point is you need to work enough to maximize your fun. Working more than that lowers your quality of life. As does working less.
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It was a hard lesson, but I realized, if I am focused on making money and running a business, I make more money that when I'm focused on killing orcs and playing games. Seriously.
And trying to rush blindly into either of these without a balance of wisdom, intelligence, strength, dexterity, and charisma is a bad idea.
Oblig. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" quote (Score:5, Informative)
What I learned... (Score:2)
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Well, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Best X-Files episode ever.
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This is not happening. This is not happening.
Wait, I got the right episode, didn't I?
Pick up groups suck (Score:4, Insightful)
Always try to work with people you already know.
Playing as a team works better than being out for yourself.
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Oh I learned the same thing IRL. Including the following:
Don't kill your neighbor.
Drive safely.
Be nice to your teammates, but do not become an apple-polisher or teams idiot it won't help you and the team.
A yes and, a team goes through different phases:
a) You meet them the first time.
b) You start working
c) You start fighting
d) hopefully you work it out
e) you work perfectly with your colleges
f) you release in time
And don't push people. Their performance will suck. Its better when they want it or at least acce
RPG Lessons (Score:2)
Smaller does not mean less dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
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Otherwise known as "the crippling effect of a Cone of Cold."
Re:Smaller does not mean less dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
D4: the caltrop of the dice world.
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Stepping on a d4 hurts a hell of a lot more than stepping on a d20.
Or to put it another way... when you have more choices, you're less likely to get hoisted on your own petard.
Not always applicable!! (Score:5, Funny)
What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
Always loot the corpse!
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It's not dead until it gets two in the head. If magic exists in the setting, stake the body, cut off the head, burn both, throw remains into a vat of acid, throw vat of acid into an orb of annihilation. If it comes back after that it was probably the dm's pet npc.
The rogue may be the one who unlocks the door but it is the minion's job to open it and walk through.
When in doubt, fireball. Repeat as necessary.
Wisdom (Score:3, Funny)
No matter how clever the idea sounds, livestock never fixes anything.
I learned all about Tedium and Red Tape (Score:5, Funny)
In a dungeon, I just wanna pull out my Dwarf's Double Blade Axe, lop the head off a goblin and escape with the gold. At work, I just wanna go into the php file, remove the fucking ampersand, roll it out and go home. Either one however, requires sign-off and verification from multiple parties.
They'll try telling you that you "can't do that without creating a subversion branch first". Or "You can't do that without a level 6 Ring of Hurt".
Either way, you're better off just going to Home Depot, buying a real axe and running down all the goblins that stand in your way.
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Maybe there needs to be a rule 11.
"When all you have is a Double Blade Axe, everything looks like a goblin"
Modeling reality (Score:2)
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To follow up on this, looking at problems from a variety of perspectives will help you understand it better.
Walk through the problem as others might. It will help you produce a more useful solution.
Lesson learned (Score:2)
I learned that Rust Monsters are as annoying as fuck.
If I see one of those around my neighborhood, I am totally going to be ready for them. Eat Kevlar, motherfucker!
Don't get me started about the Gelatinous Cubes.
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I learned that Rust Monsters are as annoying as fuck.
That would teach you both about the importance of a maintenance schedule and the futilty of all work. Everything that we do will eventually wear out and crumble to dust.
Or, put more poetically, "in spite of us, Nature wins."
He left out my biggest one (Score:2)
What did I learn? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
These are all things that can be trace back to books written hundreds of years before our time. for example The Book of Five Rings and The Art of War, these two books have pretty much the blue print on problem solving. You can pretty much apply them to business, school, games, women, etc..
So what *you* learned from D&D is, pay attention to the lore... the answer is already there.
Life... (Score:2)
One thing I learned that is not helpful (Score:2)
But in real life, I found that to be rather bad advice. Things that look dead generally are either dead or helpless - whether it is a creature or a company.
Re:One thing I learned that is not helpful (Score:4, Funny)
Real lessons from gaming. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a losing strategy in real life, or even real war. (Roman saying: "The legion is not composed of heroes. Heroes are what the legion kills.")
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Animats, I think you're a straight-shooter with upper-management written all over you.
the wisdom of Mr. Burns (Score:3, Funny)
"Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business" -- Mr. Burns, The Simpsons
Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, and Neutrality (Score:4, Interesting)
and gave me a starting point on 'measuring' motivations and tendencies. This in turn helped me predict behavior for various people in the workplace. If nothing else, it makes it obvious that people have motivations and tendencies along more than one axis; I then added on a 'radius' from true neutral and a 'strength/weakness' axis and it still serves me (albeit simplistically) in learning how to work with other people to get results.
If absolutely nothing else, it gives me a common language and a starting point for identifying good and evil behavior that I can use in discussions with D&D-familiar wage slaves -- otherwise it sounds weird to use the word 'evil' to describe behavior in a world of moral relativism. Being able to back it up with a clear description helps. (Read from here [giantitp.com] on for the next 210 strips for a version with pictures).
One unstated rule... (Score:2)
... it's easier to find a new DM than a new boss. Though unlike a boss, the Tinpot Dictator model of DM - the kind who doesn't listen to the players, who's "my way or the highway" with the rules, who tells you can always find another game if you don't like how he does things - is more likely to eventually change his tune if his players are unhappy.
How to Barter ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. Growing up in the US suburbs, the concept of 'bartering' is foreign, and considered impolite at best, and offensive at worst, to the point where you will be banned from a shop for it. Fast forward a decade after my D&D experience and I found myself alone for half a year in a middle eastern country. And shopping in the bazaar for supplies. Almost immediately the bartering skillset I had learned playing D&D for the better part of five years raced to the forefront. While spells and armor were not available (but automatic weapons were) , I still made out just fine, and never had to roll the D20 I kept in my pocket. Yes, I still have that talisman some 30 years later, it's a useful decision making tool.
Other things learned (Score:3, Insightful)
What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
For one thing, that wisdom is different than intelligence. I'm still not sure what the difference is, but at the time I read the rules, I assumed that someone wiser (or is that smarter) than me had written them, so he probably knew what he was talking about.
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Wisdom is the sum of all the facts, tidbits, trivia, and other things you remember. How many factoids have you got in the tank? The physical analog would be constitution, sort of.
Intelligence is how quickly you can react to a situation mentally and use the parts of the problem against itself to come up with a solution. Mental dexterity, if you will.
So yes, IQ tests and puzzle questions check your wisdom -- not your intelligence -- since they bascially test "have you seen this problem before?"
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I think you're confusing wisdom with experience. You can memorize any number of facts and still be an insufferable know-it-all. I've always looked at it like this: Intelligence is the ability to figure thinks out and think quickly. Experience/skill is what you know, and wisdom is knowing when to (or more often not to) do something, behave in a certain way, etc. It is easy to con
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If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying (Score:3, Funny)
Cheat, cheat, cheat then stick to your story if you get caught.
Paranoia taught me... (Score:2, Funny)
Landscape construction, of course... (Score:5, Funny)
*I* know what a gazebo [brunchma.com] is.
How to handle huge sums of money on the market (Score:2)
I got most of my financial knowledge from "Corporate Shadowfiles": put options, selling short, commercial paper, hostile takeovers, the works.
And I still have to acquire a multinational corp to put that into practice :-(
Shadowrun taught me.... (Score:2, Funny)
Networking your career in D&D? (Score:2)
Poster claims she and her husband were hired by a DM in one D&D game they played a few months in.
Never in all my D&D and role play games career, did I ever get offered a job. Sure I did a lot of problem solving and followed the same business advice in the original article. I even listed role play games as a hobby on my resume. I got my jobs by hard work at other jobs and building up a good reputation by writing reliable source code that optimized memory and ran faster than other programmers, plus I
Paranoia and CoC unfortunately... (Score:3, Interesting)
... were my group's main games - so we learnt all about being an expendable clone (gives you the right attitude when working in an consultancy firm), living (and dying) at the inexplicable whim of the Computer (got me used to designing and developing big-iron ERP software) or power crazed Ultra Violets (helped me understand the motives of consultancy managers - i.e. they don't have motives, they are actually mad with power and fresh coffee).
We also learnt a lot about unspeakable horror (which has helped me cope with the inevitable fallout when what a customer originally told you they want turns out to be something so wildly different and pointless that it makes grown men cry), inevitable loss of sanity (which usually happens when I find out what BAs and developers are actually doing), strange incantations that will raise you-know-who from his icy palace in the North Pole (I use a similar technique to get senior management to tell BAs and developers off for whatever they were doing) and all manner of spells and chants to excise minor minions of you-know-who in return for a minor loss of sanity (which I use to rid clients of big-5 leeches in return for never getting work from them again).
So yeah, I learnt a lot.
Also, I have nightmares (huge insect-like creatures with flashing beacons for heads, floating drums with tentacles, Thor, people dressed up in coloured overalls waving guns in my direction, a big eye in my PC monitor, and of course, a really weird dream where I take over a library by producing a small card voucher).
From Cyberpunk: 2020, I learned... (Score:2)
- The right shoes can be a weapon if you have the appropriate melee skill.
- Rockerboys are mostly just good for "creating a distraction."
- You may have come up with a great narrative, but you need the numbers to back it up. (I'm a grant writer for a living; I can write up a great proposal, but if the budget doesn't work, it's irrelevant. When I tried my hand as a GM the first time, I had a good storyline, but hadn't actually specced out my NPCs at all, so combat fell apart.)
I learned (Score:2)
that the rules of business are much like the rules of an RPG simulation. Some can be bent, others can be broken.
Oh shit, no. Sorry, I learned that watching The Matrix.
Better than... (Score:2)
Though the lessons one learns LARPing also throws in how to tread softly, gain confidence and outtalk your enemies, to make friends, how to fix 'Anything' with duct tape, that you are not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you, and adds a good amount of runn
Running away (Score:2)
We were playing "Grim", where the PCs are children transported into a dark fairytale world. (Just about the first thing that happened to us was that Hansel and Gretel tried to eat us.) This is a world full of Big Bad Wolves, evil princesses etc, and we were just children. I very quickly developed an aphorism which proved very useful:
"A problem run away from is a problem solved."
Re:Wisdom? (Score:5, Funny)
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As a great prophet once said : "Lighten up Francis."
Re:This list is horrible (Score:4, Funny)
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I admire your confidence in attacking his analysis when you clearly haven't read the article.
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I find your analysis to be faulty. Sure people could have learned them from other places, but this particular guy claims that he learned them from this game.
The author claims to have a husband. While same-sex marriage is becoming legal in more and more places, this still makes it statistically more likely that the author is female.
Re:Rolling the dice (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew a few players who were just in it for the game mechanics and they got bored with it too. If you're playing an RPG correctly that number crunching system is merely the "how" and not the "why".
I mean, the last group of players I was playing with weren't optimizing statisticians, they were people who wanted to contribute to a great story and have some fun in the process. We had more than one session where dice weren't rolled at all, or if they were it was out of combat.
That's role playing.
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Yes, but you don't need to play an RPG to contribute to a great story.
I don't deny that "role" playing is funner than "roll" playing, but you don't need to "roll" play in order to "role" play.
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It's all about creating scenarios where people can try bizarre crap and see what happens, an much less about adhering to some statistical dogma.
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I've only roleplayed three times, when I was ~14, ~15 and ~16 (I'm now 20-something). In all cases it was with more-or-less the same group, all between a month and three years older than me. The first time wasn't very good, we roughly played D&D but got bored with it.
The second time, we were much less structured. The dice weren't rolled very often, and the story was much more interesting. However, like the first time I was more interested in getting drunk...
The third time, a girl with an incredible ima
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Re:Rolling the dice (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe Tetris was just an early attempt at cloud computing to solve the backpack problem?
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I learned that RPG's are nothing more than fancy statistical simulations that have as much to do with simulating anything as the order of playing blackjack.
Other than the content background which I can get from reading novels, playing RPG's is about as exciting as moving numbers around a spreadsheet.
Someone recently joked on Eve Online in the newbie corp channel about the game being "SPREADSHEETS IN SPAAAAACE!"
But something interesting happened to me about a year ago... Being an avid number cruncher and pow
Re:Rolling the dice (Score:4, Insightful)
I forget where I heard it, but someone recently said something to the effect of "Many math nerds have lost plenty of money because they saw the stock market as a simple system of cause and effect."
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It is like gambling but the house is usually on your side (most of the time).
Here's a lesson from someone who has worked inside the bank^H^H^H^H house: you wish. The house is there to make money irrespective of which way the market goes, and it's very profitable being the house.
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You are completely right.
My brother became a world of Warcrack addict. But his addiction was to the numbers, the statistics, the urge to "tweak" a numerical system designed to reward that part of your brain that makes you come back for more. People are naive if they don't think MMOPRG authors and companies know EXACTLY what they are doing and how to make their pseudo gambling system as addictive as hell. It's not that hard. All they have to do is fly out to Vegas and watch people and the games.
I often told
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I learned that RPG's are nothing more than fancy statistical simulations that have as much to do with simulating anything as the order of playing blackjack.
Do I hear the sound of a FASA [wikipedia.org] player griping? :)
Re:Rolling the dice (Score:5, Insightful)
"Other than the content background which I can get from reading novels, playing RPG's is about as exciting as moving numbers around a spreadsheet."
Because you said "reading novels" and not "writing novels", it's pretty clear why you don't get it.
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I get it.
People asked me what I learned. And what I learned is that is what all MMOPRG's and MOST tabletop RPG groups degenerate into. Tweaking of numbers, fighting over the interpretation of the english language as used in the rulebook...etc.
The idea that a simulation of fantasy can be simulated with NUMBERS is crazy.
Why use numbers at all? Why not just sit around a table and start a round the table story making it up as you go? It would be just as fun provided you get the right motivated people only witho
Re:Rolling the dice (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, you don't even need dice. Some systems (like World of Darkness) avoid random elements wherever possible; there a skill check just means comparing your skill value to the target number.
Or you go with completely freeform gaming... Forum RPGs tend to do this. Unfortunately they also tend to show why most gamers prefer having rules and stats around - they keep people from declaring every ridiculous action their character takes to be successful (and all attacks on them to be ineffective).
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I learned that RPG's are nothing more than fancy statistical simulations that have as much to do with simulating anything as the order of playing blackjack.
Other than the content background which I can get from reading novels, playing RPG's is about as exciting as moving numbers around a spreadsheet.
Sorry to hear that... It sounds as if you have never been in a good gaming group.
My suggestion would be to try again, playing with other people
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The first two apply to XML:
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more."
CHA is the only stat that matters in real life.
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Charisma has a short shelf life. Every charismatic person I've ever met seems interesting at first, but within about one to three years turns into an asshole.
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We have an axiom from 15 years or so of writing and running tounaments at roleplaying convertions: "No plot survives first contact with the players".
This is especially true of LARPs vs tabletop. Tabletop players tend to be more conservative when it comes to following the plot, this breaks down as soon as you get LARPers at the table.