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?
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.
Or maybe the author was just having a little light-hearted fun for fun's sake. Kinda like when you play an RPG.
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...
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
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.
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.
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.
Can't say I ever played with vixens (at least, none that were single), but I can say that I was seduced by a D&D playing siren.
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.
...which is actually precisely how capitalism, the US, etc, predominantly works. All of the rules apply, unless you have enough money that you can give to the guy who makes the rules - then the rules bend as much as the money allows.
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.
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.
What I learned is that when your small, not terribly dangerous character happens to be the only one standing up on the ridgeline this turn taking a shot at that humongous monster (while everybody else is recharging their spells or reloading their weapons)... you die.
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.
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..
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.
Alignment [d20srd.org] has worked as a good first pass on identifying the behavior of myself and coworkers. It helped me separate the axes of
good vs. evil
law -- e.g., bureaucrat/corporate citizen vs. disorder -- bending or violating the rules
neutrality -- just don't make waves, I don't care, or it's not important
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).
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.
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.
... 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).
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.
Sounds like you either:
1. Had some really bad players/DM's
and/or
2. Are stupid enough to think that people that like things you don't like should be insulted, as should the things they liek.
How DARE they enjoy something you dislike? They should be taken out and SHOT. And you certainly have the right to make fun of them and insult them.
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?:)
The numbers don't simulate, they arbitrate. Essentially everyone does just sit around and tell a story; the numbers only come in once you need to know whether someone is really strong/smart/adept at pottery enough to do the task they intend to. You can, of course, decide to use every rule in the book at every opportunity... but if you don't your game is going to run much smoother.
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).
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."
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.
Maybe he would have learned them later - like say after he got fired. Better to learn things when you are young BEFORE it really matters.
That by the way is the reason why all mammals play. It is learning without consequences. It lets the cat learn how to stalk without starving in the first month. It lets the wolf pack learn how to cooperate, s
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.
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."
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...
Parent
Re:Real Life (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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]"
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What I learned (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I also learned that playing D&D makes you sarcastic and bitter.
Really? No shit.
Re:What I learned (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
I learned this one (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Oblig. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" quote (Score:5, Informative)
What I learned... (Score:2)
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.
RPG Lessons (Score:2)
Smaller does not mean less dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Smaller does not mean less dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
D4: the caltrop of the dice world.
Parent
Not always applicable!! (Score:5, Funny)
What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
Always loot the corpse!
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.
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.
Parent
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.")
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).
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.
If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying (Score:3, Funny)
Cheat, cheat, cheat then stick to your story if you get caught.
Landscape construction, of course... (Score:5, Funny)
*I* know what a gazebo [brunchma.com] is.
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).
Re:Wisdom? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rolling the dice (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe Tetris was just an early attempt at cloud computing to solve the backpack problem?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Parent
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).
Parent
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."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This list is horrible (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:One thing I learned that is not helpful (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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."