Emotional Labor in Games - High Will and Resolve Characters.

 It was my wife and women in my life who had to explain to me the importance of just being Present and being able to listen. While most of my mentors are men in problem-solving and critical thinking, the women in my life had to teach me the value of emotional labor and intelligence. 

In a TRPG we don't have situations of emotional labor, but in real life - Holy crap the amount of emotional labor we have to face outweighs the Problem Solving. Problem Solving can be Googled or you can Youtube it or Crowdsource it - Emotional Labor is like Muscle and Bone density and disposition - you either have it or don't. 

So when I saw Lucina the Brave Herder - I realize she is Sub Optimal in Conan. In a Conan story she would be a damsel in distress - an empowered damsel "unFrazetta Sexy" damsel - but in need of Brawn. 

Emotional Labor in Games are scenes where someone has to Listen and Take on large amount of Stress. Like Listening to End Users and their problems, BUT resisting the urge to solve it for them and instead get it out in the open and make the person feel like they can communicate their problems without their worth being diminished. 

Understanding how we as a society are dysfunctional in the ability to talk about problems is essential in understanding how to frame how Important and life-changing - and dramatic and epic Emotional Labor can be. 

Agency - what we crave in the game - the feeling that despite the odds we matter - is a seed that springs from feeling we matter and someone who makes us feel we matter. When people make bad decisions and in the AGGREGATE all these problematic behaviors create a dysfunctional and scary society - Resolve, Empathy, and Understanding are powerful forces that drive a character to act in a heroic context. 

Too often in Stories focus on the ACTION. while ignoring the CAUSE OF ACTION or CALL TO ACTION. Information/Knowledge - that we matter, that there is someone to protect or care for makes a character into a hero of a story that is interesting and engaging. 

Emotional Labor = the work done by social workers, councilors, suicide hotline volunteers, mediators, therapists, friends and loved ones - is TIME these people will not get back given to another person to repair and recover their agency and their ability to make sense and master their future. 

Imagine if we were taxed by our Time and not money, how "equal" things will be, and how much empathy can we have for people in systemic problems and ills of society. If one cannot value time - it's hard to see our effect on the time of others and those around us. My gamer mindset is always trying to see things in a different set of mechanics and systems. I realize some narratives are not appropriate for some games - i don't think it would be appropriate for this kind of meta agency analysis in a Conan game. Its more for CoC or Kult. So I realize the character is sub-optimal for the sample adventures given, especially when Violence is the agreed-upon catharsis of the group.  

Simple Behavioral Mechanics

 I have a SIMPLE bad mood Mechanic. 

We have personalities that make us have a Bad mood as related to our dislikes. If I like Games and dont get to play them I am in a (various degrees of bad) mood. 

My likes and Dislikes predict what will get me into a BAD mood. 

Every degree of bad mood affects my behavior and decisions. 

There are two common strategies (not the only two) - Process it OR Defer it (aka Distract from it). A common Distraction is something Pleasurable - again this depends on my personality what gives me pleasure as well as other Attention shifting strategies. 

Then there is PROCESSING it and the most common type of processing is Talking about it, then there is talking about it with oneself in writing, and then there is Reflection and meditation. 

Deferring it is FAST and the go-to given most circumstances since we have very Spare or scarce attention. Processing eliminates the Cause and Reshapes the personality but takes the most time and INACCESSIBLE for most people because of a lack of relationships, time, or access to sources. 

Lately, I've made any "Disadvantage" or Trait where the character has to behave in a particular way affect their mood and their mood will distract them and change their behavior. They can be hostile, unfriendly, or distracted and troubled. 

I found it interesting to Role-play because basically, that's how my personality works. 

Stuff that sucks - makes me feel bad. I can either process it or defer it. Most of the time, because of the scarcity of time and knowledge I defer it, most of my personal improvement and change comes from Processing it. 

Its like a story where We confront our behavior and our behavior leads us down interesting stories. Stories about who we are and with the opportunity to process we come out of it differently - grown. 

Not tackled is the vicious cycle when our bad mood leads us dark paths and we let these bad decisions Define us. That tricky thing about permanent and changeable: Are we changeable? Are we permanently this way? Does bad actions make us Bad People? Or can Good people do bad things? 

In the end - Time and Opportunity determine how well we can Process or Defer our Problems. 

I basically threw out the GURPS disadvantage control numbers in the game and said: IF you don't act like your character you feel shitty - and you role play being shitty. 

An honest person not being honest feels shitty, greedy not getting hustling feeling shitty, people who fail their own codes feeling shitty, etc... People are not 100% their trait but they feel bad when they don't live up to it. The Vegan Pacifist will eat some cheese and throw a punch - but will feel BAD when he does.

ROLE PLAY Feeling BAD - that's fucking MIND BLOWING - when have we asked or stepped into someone's bad mood, feeling shitty, loss, confusion, dissonance, etc...

And OMG that's so effective - it makes more sense "We do what we do because we are avoiding feeling shitty" (Oversimplified of course). 

So even the characters where Players intentionally choose "SAFE Disadvantages" they are STATIC - nothing to PUSH no Issues, no ideals, no beliefs, nothing - the character is NOTHING - our problems - the disadvantages or traits that PUSH us to Action are Important. 

These are our FLAWS our FLAWS are us - if a character is Completely STABLE then they are stagnant. They DO NOT ACT! They do not CHANGE! They ATROPHY! they fall into Viscious Cycles!

It makes you realize why in nature there are Humans with Higher Risk Appetites - who like to venture to the Unknown (like my Dad, gamblers, risk takers, Idealists, Scientists, Adventurers etc...). 

Psychological Traits will BORE most people, Combining Psychology, Storytelling, and Engineering is not respectable - especially when one argues that our flaws and irrationality is the seed for a Virtuous Cycle - like the first Life - by random accident of nature and its cycles - some bunch of elements got together and began to replicate itself. Our irrationality - the behavior that is sub-optimal - is life and is us changing and making ourselves and others better off. 

Death is Painful in many ways I didnt and can't imagine

the more I understand about the body, the more uncomfortable I am in killing scenes. One cannot help it as a GM, World Builder, and Storyteller - getting some powerfully sticky details that just burn itself into your mind. 

Particularly that:  

1) people just don't die "instantaneously" when hit in a vital part. As long as there is oxygen in their blood and atp in their muscles involuntary movement happens. Some part of them is still "alive". from the bowel movement of dying, to the enemy that holds the trigger down even after dying unleashing a spray of death to its own allies or at the PC involuntarily.  

2) a lethal injury means the person is either in Numb or Painful agony until they die. 

3) that burning is its own kind of torture 

4) that oxygen starvation from drowning or waterboarding is also another kind of torturous pain. 

4.1) the destruction of brain areas in oxygen starvation is a special kind of torture as parts of oneself cease to exist and can never be the same. 

5) that consciousness has a relativistic time element - it can stretch out time or it can just shut off abruptly. 

6) Characters with enough battle first aid will have extensive knowledge of injuries. Combat physicians will have knowledge of injuries and LONG term effects. Both calls for a sanity check. 

7) My idea of mercy kill is an opiate overdose. 

I stumbled on the reddit discussion about Chris Watts. I follow the morbid reality thread in reddit as part of my mindfulness reflections as well as my study of Horror after finishing GURPS Horror by kenneth hite (4e). The analysis of what constitutes a "Sanity Check" overlaps heavily with my Psychology, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, Cognitive-behavioral Therapy Studies. Note that Psychology and Behavioral studies overlap with Game Theory and Economic Studies if as a GM we want to simulate authentic behavior for players and analyze behavior we observe.   

The reddit thread talks about some bits on the autopsy reports of the murders which if ever done to the NPCs the players kill, it would be interesting to get their reaction. 

Stress is where Heroism can be better viewed. Stress Mechanics

Because of the Stress Mechanic (its like HP but the Stress doesn't go away so quickly without coping mechanisms like Vices and Habits; unified Conditions see 200425 GITB Quick Combat - Combat Mechanics,), I can now impose some tangible costs for very SMALL spaces and very difficult and frustrating equipment. 

the way I handled Load (Level of Effort), Stress, and Wounds is a Single Track of Penalties: 0, -1, -3, -7 and -10 and one of the 4 Modifiers to a Roll (so players don't get overwhelmed by the number of factors). 

I don't know yet how, but the NASA data on the crew would be my baseline. Noting that NASA crew is the exceptional or Elites and PCs fall under lower levels unless the GM sets it to more heroic competence levels. This means PCs require more maintenance and not as stable (no psych evaluation and filtering). 

It also helps that I have a Level of Effort aka Burden or Load Mechanic for operating Space Suits. The Time and Motion of Operating a Space Suit (like Space welders) and the physical toll even if in Zero G reminds me of Rapid Changes in Temperature exhausting the Body which leads to the superstition of Rain Causing sickness - that rapid changes in temperature exhausts the body because the body will switch gears and have to recalibrate itself (as it will always try to maintain equilibrium). It is the exhaustion that causes a weakened immune response and not the "rain" which leads to adequate rest and managing the transition to reduce the exhaustion. 

Interestingly it was discussed in the chapter of Embodied Emotions has started talking about Proprioception (I'm currently listening to Boosting your Emotional Intelligence by Jason M. Satterfield and a lot of CBT and Mindfulness studies seem to give me Ideas how to simplify my Management of all these factors: physical, energy levels, and stress). 200510 Cepheus Engine Variant Rules

Title: Stress is where Heroism can be better viewed. 

You explain to your Kids that Courage is Overcoming Fear. Then you reflect on that statement and where that saying leads oneself. Does that mean Virtue is overcoming Internal Weaknesses and Vulnerabilities? Is the Heroism found in overcoming the Physical Obstacle or the Internal obstacle? Is it heroic to overcome prejudice, intolerance, engendered bad behavior, and biases? When you think about the Economic vs Moral decision -what is $2 to a person who has nothing vs yourself, vs the moral/ethical act of providing aid - there is a disconnect between the Economic Decision (measuring the Physical Obstacle) vs the Ethical Decision (overcoming the Bias, prejudice, internal weakness). 

In an interview Jim Dinnigan (Who I never heard of until last night when Jay Duggar sent me the link and I listed to this while looking him up in Wikipedia) noted that Wargaming allowed them to Simulate and Model the situation so as to Systematically review Alternatives and review the Forces. Breaking the GAME, disrupting the prevailing forces in a situation is what we always look for when the Forces are against us. When it is to our advantage, we look at how the Opposite party can disrupt our advantage. The Change of Perspective lead to More information, and Actionable information to affect outcomes. 

Behavior and Cognition are the same, imagine what Jim Dunnigan was talking about but the battlefield for your attention and your behavior. To be able to MODEL the forces that affect your behavior and to disrupt these forces with levers and mechanical advantage. 

After Jon Oliver's lesson on how we teach history (I'm more studied in Filipino and Chinese and Roman History but his video is TRUE to Filipino and Chinese history; instead of race in Filipino history how the Poor has been used and vilified) the BIASES and false dichotomies/equivalencies that surround it is a ready example of Overcoming Internal Conflicts, not to remove conflicts but accept and make sense of them (example: Humans are capable of incredible compassion and love; while capable of cruelty and evil beyond comprehension - that cognitive dissonance is healthy and actually true to a degree).  

The thing about any good intention, action plan, and self improvement through Games is that these are tiny changes that can be easily disregarded and belittled. But over time allows us to shape our behavior and our gamer mindset. We seek to understand and play, I realized Gaming is emotionally ENGAGING with something I otherwise would not care for. Learning science, math, business, and all these things because I want to play or test these forces in a theoretical model gives me hope that the hobby is a wholistic way of self-improvement. echoing the domain: game in the brain. 

Shameless Plug

I dont know who still reads Gaming Blogs or listens to them using Text-to-Speech Apps. I think people my age are into podcasts now, but sometimes prefer blogs when they dont have the time and want to skip tot he meat by scanning for key words. 

https://tryingtogamework.blogspot.com/ Is the overlapping Blog where I go to far outside Gaming and tend to talk about work and how I see work with the lens of a gamer. 

Know that I’m in my 40s and this is the same thing to me - its like I didnt grow up - I’m still a kid with just better toys or more experience with the toys I have now. All these skills are toys - to make a better game experience and gamify life to create a sense of agency, control, and acceptance of all things that dont make sense. 

I also have a youtube channel when I do gaming and work rants. I try to structure it - but I really have terrible working memory and my priorities are tangled with the need to make money and the needs of my attention to do only things my attention wants to do. The mess that is my skillset and perspective is the mess of being lucky enough to have enough and surviving to cultivate skillsets that are useless in the market - Gaming skills. 

Survivorship Bias: you never hear about the losers; Traveller's Losers

Growing up wanting to be an Artist - I never heard about the losers - the people who failed to be artists. That's why I kinda like telling people I'm one of many who didn't make it, no one ever hears about or considers those who didn't make it. It seems society tends to turn a blind eye to it. 

Update. 

This basically means I should make all the Sample Spreadsheet of Ship Operations with Critical Flaws. I need to look at some old Accounting text books to look for some typical business problem while I do have a lot of real life problems to draw from. The challenge is that in Scifi TRPG the problems have data already - its symptoms are in the books, but not the cause. 

• Work in Progress Built-up, speculative cargo with no payoff or strategy. The Speculative cargo are all "great deals" relative to their prices have accumulated - reducing remaining cargo hold and occupying 
• Growing Overhead with no end in sight. The Maintenance Overhead of the ship keeps growing and the engineering crew is insufficient to manage the technical debt. 
• A crew working with smaller margins in competitive but safe areas, loaded out for frontier safety but operating near hubs.  

Processing Games Emotionally oops I mean Processing Emotions with Games

If you notice the title of the Blog - Game in the Brain, then it may come to no surprise that gaming is how I process things. 

I got depressed last year, I saw the futility of my circumstance, and I just wanted to quit work. Every problem was preventable, but it required me to have extraordinary authority and resources to correct. It needed me to be above a regular person in some way. As the son of the owner, I felt that I had to fix every problem. I felt guilty and frustrated in the politics and the maneuvering that I had to do. 

Around that time, I was listening to the Late Ronald Siegel's The Science of Mindfulness, which was damaging my mental architecture. I was so used to multi-tasking and finding specific ways to get my dopamine hits that what the lecture was asking me was to give it up. 

I had a headache after listening to the audiobook while walking to work or doing a chore. It was because it was talking about being present in the moment. The lecture sent my brain to focus on my walking or the task. But then there was a conflicting command by being engaged with the lecture. 

I wrote a lot about it in my Work Blog and finally was able to process it all. To simplify Meditation is not continuous activity; the way Physical Exercise or diet is not a continuous activity. We diet and exercise at specific points of the day, but its effects are felt throughout the day.

I felt better after being able to realize the nuance of how it's supposed to work. 

Ronald Siegel's lecture led me to various other realizations and awareness of my behavior—mainly how I process my experience - and why I always Game. Or why I always have "Game in the Brain". 

When people think of mountains, animals, and nature to be calm, my safe and peaceful place is with friends and family gaming. I grew up with two other brothers with an hour's commute from school going home. Gaming is how we passed the time. Gaming is how we developed and became who we are. So it's natural that when I think problems at work, I believe it in terms of Game Mechanics and mental models that would be easy to run or play. 

So now I'm all grown up and have work—my work beyond my capacity and temperament. I'm a bit more fragile and sensitive than most people, and can easily fold up and get frustrated. My responsibilities are difficult with its Politics and Complexity, and scarcity that so many people don't understand. It doesn't help that my first experience in management was serious hustlers, scammers, and sharks. That we had to take over of our BPO's IT around 2011. That my first boss, who was hands-on, was not who he claimed to be. That the Plant where I had been later assigned had a ton of problems that I tried to fix solo and realized I needed everyone's cooperation. Every year a new challenge and a new terrible discovery of something wrong. Things became surreal and that I needed to process it, and I stopped gaming. 

I knew I had "game in the brain," but I didn't realize how much it figured into my ability to emotionally process everything I had witnessed and experienced. 

It is after the Mindfulness Lecture did I realize that I do like the work: the Analysis, System Building, Consensus Making, Active Listening, and Hacking systems to work with less and fewer costs. I realized that those fears and trauma could be separated from the Good and Rewarding Work. 

That Mindfulness aligned with the Gamer Mindset. That we look for Optimum strategies - not out of fear, anger, addiction to the dopamine, but because we See a System where we all affect each other, and this is how everything can be made to work. 

So the strategy of escapism takes a more nuanced approach in this kind of gaming. I'm technically escaping the factors of my job - the real costs and consequences if I pursue a particular course of action. But in a game, I can have the same situation and try to act on it and deal with the unintended consequences and additional complexity. In the Game I can feel all this in a safe place and come out of it stronger or more mature. 

So all the crap at work is now game material. I've accepted and acknowledge that I hate it, but usually I'd have more bad dreams about work and feel stressed about it. Now I've accepted it in a way that it doesn't bother me as much. It's hard to differentiate the nihilism of "I hate it, and it won't get better" as compared to the "I hate it, and it's ok." I think the difference is that I believe that "it will never get better" is a lie. I guess I've accepted that It can get better or worse, and no matter what, I'll be ok with that. That in all that pain, a massive chunk of it is just me magnifying it with my fears. My body can only take so much pain before any additional pain stops being sensed. 

I thought this is a Game Related Post, because some people are Wired to have Game in the Brain. 

Hints of Elder Gods - Moloch and Slavery

When I started separating NPCs to Adventuring and Non-Adventuring, to explain why certain NPCs are "Stagnant" as compared to PCs, I inevitably ran into SOCIAL MOBILITY. The prickly question that "Does Social Mobility" exist in this world? Why?

World Building is taking Economics, history, Ecology, Sociology, etc... and weaving it into a HOBBY. as a hobby there is no wrong way to do it, as long as you're having fun. At the same time different levels of practice gives you insights to different things - like starting out in minis painting might just be for differentiation of your mini, or getting into drawing because you want to draw NPCs and Characters, and then later I become obsessed with color theory, lighting, rule of thirds, telling a story with an image, etc.... I can appreciate the 1st 30 mins of exploring a hobby, I can appreciate the 1,000 hour of exploring the hobby, I can appreciate and relate with the guy in the 90 min mark as well as the guy in the 8,000 hour mark. I dont feel any insecurity about the guy in the > investment of time than me, nor do I judge the person with a small investment of time from me. Whats important that when we play together we let each other enjoy what we enjoy out of the hobby.

So when the question of Social Mobility, Elites, and various problems of INEQUALITY I will take notes and chisel out the details behind the screen. It will be details in how I describe NPC's, that needs to be subtle. Like describing farmers as "Sharecroppers", having an offhand comment about "Taxes and Obligations", hinting on Crop Failure rates as described in my previous studies and subtle hints of debt-bondage.  Since PCs are "Socially Mobile" characters lets see if they can perceive the natural forces of such systems in place.

I just finished Chapter 168 of the Vinland Saga and the narrative of War and Slavery is interesting motivation and plot in the story. Slavery being alive in well in the modern world makes me remember that no matter how much a World Build like the forgotten realms may say Slavery is only practiced in certain parts of the world, when you enter into social mobility, inequality, and the messy details of making a living and economic scarcity you will run into broken Systems.

I was Introduced to Meditations of Moloch in 2016 but I cant help but recall this Elder God that we face everyday,

The question everyone has after reading Ginsberg is: what is Moloch?
My answer is: Moloch is exactly what the history books say he is. He is the god of child sacrifice, the fiery furnace into which you can toss your babies in exchange for victory in war.
He always and everywhere offers the same deal: throw what you love most into the flames, and I can grant you power. 

Moloch is the Elder God that one of NPCs has a pact with as a Warlock. It's also an Elder God that is hinted when I cater to the moods of superiors and not the reasons for the business. When I exploit biases to push my agenda, and the frustration of never being able to argue the assumptions of my proposal so that I may know what I cannot see beyond my perspective - the desire to be told that I'm wrong and be able to follow the logic, or a different experience and perspective that makes so much sense. Sacrificing TRPGs to study and perform these dark rituals of Influence Magic makes relate to Warlocks.

I remembered Moloch during the Ketil Farm Arch, during the arguments between Ketil and his Father Sverkel. The father, Sverkel, argued that a Larger Farm will control them while Ketil desired the security of having more tenants and land under cultivation. Remembering Farm failure rates (i cant remember the exact numbers) that farms fail about every 3-5 years (thats why a "stable" farm is a Hide of 120 acres). That what Ketil wanted was "reasonable" (a prerequisite of being a Moloch warlock, is to make reasonable demands but tended towards decisions that took a life of its own) which has interesting conclusions.

TRPGS are addicting to me because I get to see Players tell their story, in ways that challenge our narrative-biased brains. That AWE one sees in spiritual revelation, seeing nature, scientific discovery, and mindfulness-interconnectivity is what I experience when Players express an Internal Logic for their PCs in new patterns and the many unpredictable sub-optimal ways.

Drawing the Line. The veil that can be placed back.

My favorite technique at work is just not thinking about the Problem too much. I can say its an Elder God dilemma - and my mind will leave it at that. The way GMs who've run Cthulhu has to deal with illogical postulations and can leave it at that. Inequality, Social Mobility, Slavery, in a D&D world can be blend as Irrational things in the Background along with Owl bears, Gnomes, and Elven demographics. I can always cast a Cthulhu shade that - why dwell on the humanity of slavery and war - when there are spell plagues, zentharim, gods walking the earth, etc... To have such values would brand a Character "Crazy" in the setting.

Hanging out and Catching up with Gaming Buddies

I was on study leave but I did the quick analysis of the likeliness I'll be able to see old friends again and It just doesnt compare. Also the wife has to remind me to be human sometimes.

These are the guys where the Games sounded like a Black Lagoon Episode a mix of incredible attention to detail of hardware, tactics and outrageous feats. From reading all the books they can get their hands on prior to the Youtube or Internet age making it all the more accessible. These were the older brothers I grew up with while I was gaming in College.

So being 40 and looking back at knowing many of them for about 20 years (meeting Bobby around early 2000 thanks to Henry and Jack). it's interesting to catch up and see how much I appreciate their advice and their perspective.

Bobby was who opened the possibility of doing Historical and Contemporary games. It was a BIG leap for me to play more modern games and other games outside D&D. Bobby was the one who told me about a book called "Anarchy of Families" as well as Filipinos at War by Carlos Quirino. Books that helped me get out of a very small world into a much larger and intimidating one - the real world and the fascinating messiness and inelegant anti-climax of History.

The habits of Research, Reading, Critical Thinking, and Analysis that helped me make sense of Work and Allowed me to Convert the Framework of Systems Thinking into something I use for my work in IT, Quality, Manufacturing, and Management. (https://tryingtogamework.blogspot.com/ is my blog where I continue applying my Gamer mindset in work and life).

These guys are also my Airsoft team, so not only did we Game, we took the Game to the Airsoft and tried to practice what we read about. I notice something about GURPS players of my generation - that they are so much into DIY and Experimentation - they are at home at HEMA or any Freethinking mindset where we challenged our knowledge or notions. Of course, the tradeoff is that we tend to spend too much time in these things as compared to more social or balanced endeavors. Our networking is not very good as a trade-off.

Being older, having our own kids, it is only natural that we want our kids to Game. I am worried if my Son doesn't take into TRPG he cannot overcome the negative Traits he inherited from me: the excitable or hypomanic tendencies that can crash our moods and make us feel very strong negative emotions. Gaming was a great coping mechanism for that trait and I'm definitely not resourceful enough to give my child a coping mechanism I don't have.

Bobby tells me not to worry. Of course, I still worry. I guess us gamers with our coping mechanism, we just want our kids to get it earlier to enjoy more things and develop the capabilities more - in ways we were not able to imagine when we learned them on our own.

Being able to Catch up reminds of the cost we pay when I prioritize work over friends. It really is damaging to the psyche and creates greater fatigue, and longer periods of rest. My slight hypomania shows when I sacrifice to sleep earlier and more but It doesnt give me any energy. The psychic cost of the sacrifice is now measurable. Still, even if I can now measure the effects, the solution should involve my family. Recovery time should also be quality time. Thats another puzzle to solve.

I can deny my Gamerness for so long but that ability to derive pleasure and recover and reinforce my sense of self atrophies along with it, and thus the ability to RECOVER and continue to endure the difficult reality of the world weakens when I lose that part of me. 

I'm not looking forward at the painful cost benefit analysis of Getting Fantasy Trip all the way from the USA as an experiment of getting my TRPG back on.

Plan-Do-Check-ACt in EVERYTHING - even in Game Systems, and Game System Design

Seeing Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk 2020 it makes me wonder why it isnt an acceptable model to Rewrite a Scifi Setting every 3-5 years updated to consider all the new technology and Trends like a new D&D edition?

It would be so beautiful work of Documentation Management 😅. But I realize people are people and Change and updates are not very welcome, what's wrong with how I do things now? Still its an exercise of creating an Approachable Living System.

Its kinda weird since most Gamers I encounter in G+ are Programmers and Version Control and Iterated Improvements and Rollouts/handoffs are something deeply understood and appreciated. 

So PDCA in Everything - A System for Systems - is a very meta but usable framework in Looking at TRPG systems. TRPGs are not just Games but Playable Models of a Story (or Narrative "reality").

What's wrong of how I do things? Or Whats wrong with the Status quo?
Architecture is a word I encountered in CISP and in BPM that talks about Designing Frameworks - Designing how a System in teaching a Target system (Designing System A, System A is designed to Teach System B). Architecture is the Term for Designing System A. So wow take a breather.

Anyway, so Architecture in Designing a TRPG's Design would be kind of Heavy. But the things Some TRPG Game System nerds think in this way. They can put to writing the system by which they design the system of Developing the User Experience. Tobie Abad's works and his discussion of these works is what reminds me of this. This is Architecture. There is a Wikipedia Article in TRPG Design Theory and there was another book about it - which come to think of it was a great foundation for me getting into ISO, BPM, and other PDCA systems.

So what's the point
TRPGs is a great way to Learn some Key System Literacy skills that is essential in Learning more complicated frameworks and models that deal with real life work. The obsession about it is what allows us to get deeper and deeper into it and seem to see PDCA systems like in ISO or BPM (and the many other Process Frameworks) one of many systems we can understand as we've been given a system framework from TRPGs.

Its great education - its a life skill, and its fun to talk to other Gamers who think in System Architecture and find a FUN use of such  a serious skill. A fun use of a serious skill - how games and play is a strange evolutionary memetic of preparing us for harder problems ahead.

Initial Cost and Running Cost of Skills in Life

So I've been keeping a notebook of my TRPG mental ramblings. One of the Key thing I've gotten into is Decision Analysis for stuff. I realize that the same Decision Analysis for a Car or a House has some parallels to Skills.

Example.
Becoming Literate in Chinese has an Initial Cost. This can come in the form of the Classes as well as the manhours invested.
Buying a Car has its Initial Cost, both in Manhours and Investment.
Getting into Linux has an Initial Manhour Cost.

Then there is a Running Cost.
For a car this can be the Gass, Maintenance, cleaning, parking, etc....
For Chinese its Usage of the skill, See forgetting Curve,

These two costs are a key to understanding Skills, Opportunity Costs in life, and creating a model in understanding what We Put Into pursuits and what can we expect to get from them.

How do I spend my Time is a question I always ask about myself. Its my reflection about what I should expect from myself. If I put my time in Family, Distractions, Skills, Work, relationships, etc... then I can only expect this is what will grow and what will evolve.

In the same way Character Creation and Development follows this basic principle. That What we spend time in is what makes us who we are. That our choices shape us - even our flawed choices (choices out of weaknesses ) shape us. 

Combined with the Scale of Manhours,
Tens, hundreds, and Thousands.

Plus the model Consistency
Reliably (of course exceptions do exist),
Unreliably,
and Rarely to Never

Then add a mechanic for Conscientious Learning - that the Person Identifies with a Skill or a set of skills. That when it comes to this skill - he has some Flow .

And then a mechanic of Building Complexity:
Defining what 10s, 100s, and 1000s manhours means to the Character of a particular pursuit or practice.

Skills, the Pursuit of Knowledge and the acceptance of Forgetting (and Atrophy) of some skills is one of the most troubling and challenging aspects of the Real world that games simplify to make it fun - but when explored is quite satisfying.

I have the components of a Skill System that can be used for a Game but used to Ask some hard personal questions to the Younger me about what I want out of my life. Its easy to Answer for a Character but hard to Answer if it was really being asked of me. But in a TRPG I can explore characters and world views.

I cannot have all the Skills, I will have to choose between some skills in many points in my life, and will have to work with the ignorance of the skill I did not pursue (the inability to make an informed decision). That the world is changing - and that as awesome as a skill may be in a TRPG he real world will create so much noise, uncertainty, and screwed up incentives to devalue hard won knowledge and painful decisions. 

That the world does not care how much you paid for a skill - that it makes you need them but won't pay a fair price for them without a lie or a story. Speaking as a person from the Developing world where you can look out our Education index as see how unfair and inaccessible knowledge is to the rest of our country.

I see it when I have to plan in the scale of years and months the smallest detail of ability for personnel in our company.  That there is so much grift and noise - and skills (and people) are devalued in the machine of the world.

Ideas/musings: Applying Life Lessons in TRPG Design. 10 years of blogging Game in the Brain.

My Work Fuels my TRPG musings, TRPG musings inspire my work.

I know break things down to 5-10mh (manhours), then ordeals of 20mh. Its based on the load I have to juggle at work and how difficult it is to have time to Write and Concentrate until there is greater level of mastery (in the form of Predictability and Systems set up to use this predictions).

A TRPG booklet where I apply a lot of the Gamer Systems Thinking lessons and skills.

An A5 or Statements sized booklet that makes it easy to carry around. Optional and Expansive rules are easily added on physically. Example expansive Character creation tools - allowing for other regions, ethnicity, backgrounds, etc... modularly designed. Designed with a particularly LOAD out in running games or with Phones in mind.

Handbooks is something that work has migrated towards. Particularly Pocket sized handbooks where I work. When I need to transmit a body of knowledge - like Material Handling (Inspection of Delivered Goods, Their Custody, Care, and Reporting on their COnditions, security, and Quality), to Basic Project Management, and other Skills that people do not have the Luxury to Study but I have since I'm the (child of the Owner and a Gaming nerd that is skill obsessed). Its strange Listening (using an App to read to me the text and my brain learning to recognize context despite the robotic nature of the reading) to all these books and textbooks and picking up applications and uses of some of  the skills and learning What skill covers what.

Small Pocket sized Handbooks is a remnant of a lower Technology Level that is natural for an Emerging Market of the Philippines - that is needed even when Phones can contain all that data. It is that mixed nature of Technology and the World where we have Analog and Digital despite creeping closer to 2020.

Revolving around this is the Analogue skills of Note taking and writing. The ability to write with the barest and most basic of tools. This is an inportant skills because Writing is still one of the best techniques, a thousand manhour pursuite, that allow us to train our thinking. Blogging and Writing constantly is a Valuable skill - since you have learned to express yourself in a way Everyone (especially yourself) can Pick Apart the Thesis to Learn from its Flaws. A BAD IDEA stays a bad idea until it can be viewed objectively in context with a Ton of Other Data.

I want the Character sheets are not sheets but Notebooks and a note how to plan, layout, or arrange the Stats and the character's goals, experiences and progress. Its basically the kind of note taking you would eventually have if you were religious in note taking and approached everything with a PDSA/PDCA. A skill for your character but also for yourself - how you take stock of your status in life and how you plan for the pursuits and challenges that lie ahead.

I have a sprained wrist right now. This is kinda painful to type.

So yeah I'm in a many year hiatus because I have to fix the family business - as I'm in a strange position of Using a ton of skills I learned because of gaming and applying that Gamer Approach to life. I learned to do Costing, Bill of Materials, Bill of Scope/Scope of Work, Analysis, Tables-Data Arrays, etc... from Gaming in TRPGs. Its weird how "Fun" it is to enjoy a textbook when one grows up with TRPG books.

I'm in a weird position coming from a nouveau rich family - in the emerging market of the Philippines - and to see the wild untamed worlds of Philippines and my neighboring regions  as well as Studying Chinese and China. Because of the 0.61 education index - that incredible skill gap and unstable conditions of an Emerging Market - its a strange time to be alive and to look at the world. We are a generation different from the Technology Literate world and we are playing catch up - and so much resources are concentrating around various people who can either abuse it or enrich those around them.

been blogging since 2003, and this blog is practically 10 years old since I started this branch of my life at 2008. You can see pretty much the evolution of studying arcane gaming stuff evolve and escalate to practical skills.

Complexity and Details; Bad Benchmarks

In the last Post I talked about how I use The 20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge as a criteria for books and knowledge in general.

I wanted to talk about some pet peeve, particularly Physical limitations. Something I talked about before and can be seen in how I use movement rules to look at how well a game models physical limitations. Now that shit doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things, at the same time details do matter. The whole argument about GURPS and other such crunchy systems is about how to deal with complexity.

This is where 20rffk applies and can make my life in gaming and work so much easier. It helps us by being able to deal with complexity - we are not afraid of it, neither daunted, or bothered in a way that would distract us. It is in mastering how we organized knowledge (what ever note taking system you use) and how we 5S our mind, workspace, or gaming space that allows us to deal with any sort of complexity.

Of course there are details to this thesis. There are Constraints (a term I  use to categorize a group of details that limit actions and goals) to consider.

• It helps that the Game Book educates or facilitates the learning of being better organized and able to prioritize. That it give knowledge that adheres to the 20rffk - so its saves time and facilitate practice in 
• That the game book has well defined goals and objectives for the gamers can use for themselves. Something more useful and SMART than FUN.
• That it teaches how to set up a feedbackloop between the Participants and the Goals.

Call to Action

to deal with Complexity we have to have a foundation of Knowledge acquisition and organization. 

1. Try to Define your SMART gaming goals. Define and Measure how you and your group, have fun. When you do, you slowly start creating testable criterias. 
2. Have a Methodology, Communicate that with your Peers or Group, and have feedback loop going. 
3. Organize your knowledge and feedback, adapt, think and feedback. 

The Distracting Rant I wanted to talk about

Physical Limitations are details worthy of our attention. Physical Education 体育 is one of those things related to First Aid, Being healthy, and understanding the Ethics of Being Healthy. Its one of those Skills that are prerequisite to a healthy and stable society. 

No your character cannot hike 30miles/48km a day carrying 60lbs/27kg for  like a month! Reasonable physical benchmarks have become more accessible each passing year. Its just amazing how a person without lifting skill can pick up 50% their bodymass and not injure themselves. 

You know how often I think of Physical Limitations- EVERY TIME I WORK OUT! EVERYDAY I wonder if I'm permanently injuring myself or making my core stronger so I can do HEMA in 30lbs of gear one day or when I play airsoft  with 20lbs of gear doing encircling maneuvers in hilly terrain with my 38 year old knees against guys under 30. That all my friends are suffering some kind of physical ailment and are trying to do some physical therapy to get over their weaknesses. 

I dont like character physical benchmarks and limitations to be set on SUPER specialized Modern day Olympians. I dont like Physical Limitations that fail to capture what IS remarkable. I don't like setting up the wrong benchmarks - that demotivate people from achieving tangible gains or appreciate every hard won millimeter. 

The same goes with Mental Limitations - my learning Chinese has taught me a lot of what it costs to be able to speak it and read it. That when every company tries to squeeze the productive hours of its employees to the last drop, that what is left is for self-care, family, relationships, and recovery - that there is barely any time or space for personal development. 

To sum it up, I dont like bad benchmarks. I know we make shit up in the fly but when more realistic benchmark comes up, lets be ready to adapt to a better model. We go through game mechanics the way we go through apps, games, movies, tv shows, etc.... Its a tiny detail - its wrong, but it annoys me to no end because everyday mandarin at broken has added up to more than 600 manhours. That just eating right takes about hundreds of hours of Tries, failed experiments, and going too far. That there is a lot of Human Experience behind some bad numbers.